Time saving tips.

[Stupot]

I really want to get on with making a game and I'm annoyed with keep using lack of time as an excuse.
However it is a genuine excuse.  Does anyone have any tips for being a more efficient game designer.  To get as much done with little spare time in which to do it.

Whether it be in the backgrounds, character design/walkcycle, scripting or whatever, do you know any shortcuts or subtle cheats?  How do you save time while making a game?

[TheJBurger]

What I do sometimes (for long, and I guess short games too):

- Don't try to make every background perfect. You'll just get bogged down by 1 art asset. Make quick sketches that have all the functionality you need, and then use those for every room. Then you can come back to them later and polish them.
- Same with sprites for me. Just create a base sprite only, and use that. Forget about walkcycles and talking animations. A second up-side to this is that you can spot flaws in your base sprite over time, instead of creating all of his animations immediately, which you would then have to change later.

[woodz]

i agree with TheJBurger build the game almost like a story board first, theres nothing worse than spending days on a layout just to find the character looks all wrong in it, or walkbehinds wont work..
I always think of something else to add to a scene, and it'll clash with something else
Its also easier to over come short comings in skills.. if your not good at character animation you can easily move stuff around to make life simple.. In my version of NOTH the dart board is horizonal with the bar just to cut down  the amount of animation the barman needed, in Roy's original he walks up across and down then turns, if the game was 8 bit and pixel art it wouldn't be a problem but the barman was 350px high, shaded etc, less frames is good!!

Plus its a great motivator to see a lot of progress in a short space of time

[Snake]

Wow, great thread, Stupot.

JBurger is certainly right with drawing the BGs as to what is sufficiant and workable for the time being - same thing with walkcycles. I plan on doing this from now on aswell since I always spend, literally, DAYS, even weeks on one background when I could be working on the scripting.
For example, the Neighborhood BG in Leitor's Edge took me weeks to finally have a final version, and after that I STILL picked at it over the following year before I was satisfied, which at the same time, zero scripting was being done. All that time waisted on the BG and the asthetics (ie; animations, noise, etc...). I should have just wrote notes of what I wanted the end result to be and forgotten about it.

So don't worry about the asthetics aspect.

One thing I can think of is to keep your rooms, global ints, local ints and things like that organized in a notebook and in a file on your computer. This helps me since I know right where these things are located so it takes no time to refer.
What I do with global ints is also take note of every one of them in my global script, along with a description, incase I forget what ones do what.


Hopefully that helps,


--Snake

[Radiant]

Three words: avoid feature creep.

You should have a clear list of things you want in your game, and stick to it. Keep the list short if it's your first game. Don't add other things to it because "it'd be cool" - it's way cooler to complete a short game, than to work on a game that gets longer all the time and never seems to end.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Yes, adding whizz-bang neato things as I go along is the bane of my creative existence, so to speak.

[auriond]

This is an awesome thread - thanks Stupot! Picked up some really good ideas in here. Especially about not doing perfect backgrounds yet - I think I will practice that now.

More of a time management tip: One thing I noticed is that things really get done if you set aside some time in your regular schedule to work on it, no matter how short. Eg: if I have 15 mins free every night before getting into bed, instead of spending it watching silly videos on Youtube I can use it to work on my game.

Of course this is assuming your life works on a regular schedule