Developing Video Games ¶

Video games are complex and involve multiple disciplines.

• Game Design ✍️ (mechanics, rules, story, etc.)
• Level Design 🗺️ (layouts, areas, interactions, etc.)
• Art and Animation 🖼️ (textures, models, animations, etc.)
• Sound and Musics 🎺 (musics, sounds, effects, etc.)
• User Interface 🕹️ (menus, overlays, etc.)
• Programming 🤖 (game engines, scripts, templates, etc.)

There are many tools and online resources that leverage the process of making a game, allowing independent developers to publish their games. They mostly use the itch.io platform.

Many projects are canceled, especially games.

• 🕹️ Always have a working version for others to test it
• 🗺️ Do the minimum first, don't try to do everything at once
• ✍️ It's often not possible to release a bug-free game. Sometimes, it's better to release something to get some feedback.

Game development is structured in at least 4 phases:

• Planning
• Development
• Testing
• Release

The User Interface (UI) represents everything that we are showing to the user, such as a health/stamina/mana bar, a minimap, shortcuts for skills, an in-game chat, a settings icon, dialogs, looting messages, etc.

The major aspects when dealing with UI are:

• 🐣 Usability (easy to learn, easy to remember actions, easy to use)
• 🦋 Aesthetics (match the style of your game, immersive, look good)
• 👍 Entertaining (Microinteractions, feedback)

Epurated interfaces such as in Skyrim are called diegetic interfaces.

• Art of User Interface
• Game Development
• gamecodeur