A lead designer is really not just the 'idea guy', Empirez.
One of those terms is an actual job for someone with experience and skills in design work, team management and a demonstrated ability to deliver a completed product.
The other is a common joke term for people who get in way over their heads and then give up because they lacked realistic expectations of how much effort would be needed for their pet project.
My team has started with One member. I've had some icon assistance but for the most part the coding and construction has been on me alone- but I've been putting in routine time and meeting schedules.
My game has not had its original version release yet (still under construction) but I will be very proud when it's up. | |
I feel like Ideas is a hefty task. Being good at that requires fleshing things out even after you've come up with good design ideas.
That being said, you have to be good at organizing things for your ideas to be really effective. Through the past 8 months or so I've been programming and iconning a game, with another person as my partner in ideas and mapping. Stuff gets really messy, morale goes down.. and things get reallly slow if the team leader doesn't know what they're doing. I've been learning along the way, and I have to say.. write stuff down, thats a big thing in organization. With no notes, you get lost in your tasks. | |
This problem is not BYOND specific. This is simply a developer problem. Developers get great ideas and either lose motivation or underestimate the work involved.
If more developers got practice developing simple and casual games like Startegem, Tomb Explorer, or 0-bit Adventure, we'd get a lot more game releases. Some would be more fun than others, but it would be something. You can make really fun and simple online games too, which takes advantage of BYOND. I'm not necessarily one to talk, but I'm definitely working on games; simple games which I plan to finish, and bigger games which will take a lot longer. I try not to fall into the traps I used to, however. | |
Kitsueki wrote:
I feel like Ideas is a hefty task. Being good at that requires fleshing things out even after you've come up with good design ideas. +1000 I recently started coding a new game, and I have already listed a lot of ideas on NotePad. It's much better that way, because if you are bored and you don't know what to do next, you can just take a look on the list. I fully recommend any developer to write ideas on a note before starting a game. | |
I have found this to be valuable as well, I found the only projects I finish have good notes.
I bought a cheap notebook and jot down ideas and systems I'd like to implement and I have graph paper to draft maps on. Without something like that your going in blind and just hoping you'll remember everything you wanted to do. | |
It's depressing how spot on this remark is. I've always felt this way too -- that most games on BYOND all have the same feel and weight to how they're played.