Tim's Mod/Game Dev Tips

Tim’s Game/Mod Development Tips			(not yet finisheed)

Note:
 This can be considered a “what to do, and what not to do” of all the rights and wrongs you should and shouldn’t do while developing a mod or a game. This is from my own personal experiences. Take from this what you will.

Sidenote: I will be “flaming” or poking fun at some developers/games and giving examples about them so if you care about having your previous sensitive feelings hurt, I advise you to skip to the “How to handle criticism” part of this document immediately. ;)





How do I start out with making a game/mod? What do I do to start up a successful development team? Do I do it independently?:

Whew, this is a pretty lengthy explanation, but just bear with me. First of all, you have to determine if you want to be an independent developer, or if you want to have a team to help you out with different aspects. Also, you must decide if this project will need to shell out money, and/or if it’s going to be freelance for devs,  and not require you paying them. Also, determine if the mod/game will be free. This matters a lot and is important for you to know. If it’s your project and your idea, and you want to be the lead developer and game/mod designer. Before you get into actually making the game, I recommend you have already screenwritten the entire story, ideas you want to implement, and all that other stuff, but you can immediately start working with, for example, only two missions and the intro for the game written out. Then you will need to find an appropriate game engine to work on your game first, or an appropriate game to mod, and ensure you have a reason why you want to make this mod in the first place. Now, after that’s all done, you can either pay someone to program, model, texture, etc. your game/mod or you can do whatever you need indepently. If you are at this stage already and you don’t know a lick about anything specific, such as programming, then I suggest you learn as this is how most devs gain freelancers, unless you are independant. After that, I suggest you start just working on the mod by yourself for a good amount of time until you are finally ready to showcase something and put it online. Yes, I said that. Almost no one will want to freelance for you if not. Alternatively, you can just shell out money to devs looking for work and hire them for your specified price, although I have no experience with actually paying developers, I can tell you that you will need to agree on a price and make it obvious when they join the team that you will pay them on time, and for the work they do.



If your devteam uses a discord server to communicate with each other, and your team isn’t a building or anything that requires physical contact only, I recommend having a channel on the discord server for posting memes. One for developer memes, and one for general chat memes. Yes, I just said that. I know it might sound strange and seemingly have no reason, but just hear me out here.  (not yet finisheed)


How do I become part of a devteam? Any tips if you are in one?: (not yet added)





Making and keeping people interested in your mod/game:

This is something that surprisingly, a lot of devs fail at, despite being mostly common sense. If you are like me, or really anyone who loves to psyche people up, I like to make my audience aware of what I’m doing at the moment during the development, and show off features that are implemented as a sort of “sneak peak”.  And this isn’t the only way to do this, promotional art, gameplay videos, even just showing assets and screenshots off helps with this aspect of making people interested. Now, for posting updates. Updating people on what the hell is going on is a good way to maintain your audience. If you go dark for about a month you are likely to lose some of your audience, as well as draw suspicion or make them assume things that may, or may not be true. This isn’t good either way. What you can do is, you can choose to update people regularly when you implement or work  on implementing features, tell about bugfixes, whatever you can talk about that’s interesting and preferably very visual rather than you just saying it, unless it’s something that should just be text, like bugfixes. and even if you feel comfortable and want to make your foundation more solid, you can tell about your personal life as reasons for what’s been going on with development or why it’s being so slow to level with them more. Alternatively you can set a schedule for yourself and post according to it. This can allow you to have a large content-filled post with all the stuff you have done since your last one depending on your schedule. Post these updates in your own personal blog, on your social media, wherever your audience will likely see them, even on multiple social account to cover more ground, but make it easily understandable and to the point. Not everyone who is interested in your mod/game will care to hear your technical mumbo jumbo, and if it trails off topic, that’s a great way to lose the readers interest almost immediately. Now don’t get me wrong, people love details, go crazy with that aspect, but don’t expect people to go crazy or even just be interested over a code snippet and you explaining what it does in a very professional manner instead of in layman's terms. Lastly another thing. Post updates about the cool stuff you added, but don’t spoil anything that happens in the game while doing it. Don’t spoil the plot, story, or what’s going to happen in-game. You can do this for some things, but do not do it for everything. Otherwise you will end up spoiling the game before it even comes out *cough yandere dev *cough*. Now, release dates…. You wouldn’t be able to guess how many devs I’ve witness spit out a release date cause they want to assure their audience, despite just guessing that, and not releasing when they said they would. Do not make false promises like this. It’s better to tell them the truth other than lie to them and assume a new deadline right then and there. You can tell them that it will be soon, or if you know when you are going to release for sure, then yes tell them when it will be out if you are ready for that info to be public. The fastest way for people to lose interest or get mad at you and/or your devteam is delaying the release date multiple times, and also making false promises. *cough Hunt Down The Freeman* *cough*





Game Design And General Knowledge:

You do not, and I repeat, DO NOT, need to be an expert, or even well versed in game design to succeed in this department. Although, I do recommend studying it to at least know the basics. Here is what you do need however, to succeed in game design and have general knowledge (at least enough to make correct decisions for you or others during development). I’m just going to be flinging these out here at a whim, so you determine if you give a shit about the advice. Critical thinking skills (such as ways to solve problems with the game, or with your team), frequently put yourself in the shoes of the player for your game/mod and asking yourself questions they might ask. This is pretty important because some devs forget that the players will not have the knowledge the devs posses about the maps, like where to go on the map, what objects you can interact with,  etc. For example, let’s say that the dev knows an object can be interacted with, but there is not a way for the player to know besides guesswork. Hudhints, gametext, objectives, and visual indicators can resolve that issue. Use your brain and frequently put yourself in a players shoes. If that isn’t want you want, or you are too busy to handle this aspect, just get some people to test your game out for you, and respond to their inquiries. Testers can harbor a lot of constructive criticism, help you improve your game/mod, solve bugs of course, and give recommendations for what you should do.




Handling And Dealing With Criticism:

*sigh* I’ve seen this this time and time again, and you’d be surprised as to how many devs (especially independent) handle this aspect poorly. First of all, constructive criticism? Yes, take it and try to benefit off of it if you can, but don’t shoot them down if you don’t agree. If you don’t like what they said, either ignore it or respond that it’s not a good idea, and state the reason why. As for negative criticism, yes, unlike some devs, I actually recommend reading it at least. Reason being, they can also have stuff to say that can help you. However, you will find that some people get mad or angry for small stupid things, if you determine that it’s a small issue and they are just nitpicking, then ignore it or find a way to laugh at it. I’ve had people get mad just because we used a particular ambient soundtrack, I’ve had people just nitpick certain stuff that doesn’t change anything at all, I’ve had people get mad for stating we didn’t change anything about the gameplay for a mod and give no reasoning why, despite them being horribly wrong. If it’s genuinely understandable why someone/some people are mad, should you respond to them? Well, it depends. If it’s an issue that is shared with a bunch of others in sort of a “flash mob” behavior, yes, you should address it in a post or update in sort of a public statement if for some reason you haven’t determined it to be a problem already. If it’s one person and they are wrong about what they said and it’s negative? Up to you, but If they are dirty enough with their wording, I’d say let them be wrong. Maybe someone else will come along and talk sense into them. You have to take this into consideration: Maybe he just wants to hate your project for no justifiable reason, maybe he’s a troll, or maybe he’s genuinely mad about something that is, or isn’t justified…. Who knows, you deduce and decide. When responding to negative criticism, depending on their wordplay, determine if you should respond in the first place, and if you do, try to reassure them and level with them, don’t talk down to them or belittle them no matter how much you want to. Use a neutral speaking pattern. They might be baiting you into responding like that, and if you do then they got what they wanted. On the flipside, if they are genuinely mad, that solves nothing anyway and just escalates the problem. If you want, sure, take your anger out on them by posting a screenshot of his comment or whatever to other devs or on your discord server (make sure it’s not in general channel preferably), and tell the devteam how much of an idiot he is, and/or have a laugh, and carry on. They are likely to follow along. Honestly, if you are a bigger person then that, and can handle the criticism, then don’t. Whatever floats your boat. I’d recommend getting someone on your team to handle the PR instead of the lead developer for a lot of reasons. It will save the headache for the lead dev, who needs to focus on the project, the lead dev being an integral part of the development of the mod/game. As for a state of mind to have for PR? State of mind, not state of kind. ;)