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有效执行7天游戏jam的7大建议

发布时间:2016-07-13 16:02:38 Tags:,,,,

作者:John Cooney

在一周内创造出游戏并不是件简单的事。作为曾在不到一周的时间内创造过大约30款不同游戏的我便遭遇过许多反直觉的障碍。

好消息则是,一周似乎也是衡量设计的最佳时间。一周能够提供给我们足够的时间去执行游戏的主要细节,同时也能给予我们优化游戏的必要空间。尽管每支团队都是不同的,但通常几天时间是不足以去真正执行游戏设计,而一个月时间又有可能导致过度优化或过度设计。而一周刚好是最合适的。所以一周的jam能够教给你许多有关游戏开发的东西;游戏jam也将基于一些有趣的方式去突显你作为游戏开发者的能力。

说了这些后,现在让我们开始讨论在7天内创造游戏的7个相关建议:

1.计算时间。并预留出20%的时间。

严格按照时间限制去执行是非常困难的。但你必须意识到时间对于你的jam的成功至关重要,所以你应该做出相应的计划。

从开始到结束,一周的游戏jam的总时为168个小时,但需要将其进行细分。如果还要扣除正常睡眠时间的话总时最多只有110个小时。如果你还要算下你的一些日常事宜的话时间将会变得更少。你肯定要吃饭吧?或许你还有自己的小孩?还是你还在上学?你有心爱的另一半?这些都是你不能忽视的对象(详见第6点)。

一旦你明确了自己到底拥有多少时间后,你需要将80%的时间作为真正的开发时间,并留下最后20%的时间。尽管20%算得上很多时间了,但是出于多种原因你有必要这么做:

1)你可能会滑倒。游戏开发就像是非常努力的滑行过程,而即使是非常有纪律的团队也有可能遭遇失利。

2)你可能会改变你的设计。这时的你只是在尝试设计,所以你可能会改变你一开始的设计,而这将需要你投入更多时间。

3)情况可能会变糟。在游戏开发中动荡是再正常不过的事。开发中总需要解决一系列的问题,一帆风顺是不可能的事。

4)你是一个会安排不同优先事宜的人类。你可能需要先去喂狗或需要先去图书馆还书。尽管你会为这些事提前做好准备,但总是会发生一些不可预见的事。

5)在任何计划中都会有一些未说明的时间。就像你总是会忘记为主菜单安排时间。而通过开发缓冲,你便能够为自己铺下通往成功的道路。

诚实对待自己以及你需要投入的时间:

time(from gamasutra)

time(from gamasutra)

2.在jam开始前尽可能地做出足够的准备。

在jam开始前你需要做许多事。以下便是一些最重要的事:

1)将你的团队组织在一起。尽管在jam开始后再组织团队可能会更有趣,但是你最好能先了解你们团队以及每个成员所负责的工作和他们所需要的时间。如果你是独立开发,你也需要确保自己能够全身心投入于jam中。

2)将你的代码库和工具组合在一起。如果你非常熟悉工具和框架的话这对你来说便会轻松许多。确保你能够始终遵守jam的规则或者避免做任何可能会破坏规则的事。

3)阅读规则。然后再次阅读。jam经常拥有一些很容易被忽略的小规则。你必须了解所有的这些规则,如此才能避免你的辛苦劳作被取消资格。你还应该清楚到期时间以及所有与jam有关的过程。千万别破坏规则!

4)熟悉时间表。基于jam时间规划全新活动很简单。如果你需要拥有最多时间,那就让所有人知道你将会非常忙碌。

5)人类需要的基本要素。确保你能够准备好所有基本要素,包括食物,水,药,电,网络,以及能够正常运行的计算机。避免前往杂货店能够帮助你节省下许多时间。

6)与计算机相关的基本要素。不要在开始前进行任何软件或OS升级;没有什么比开始jam后还要调试机器更糟糕的事了。

7)交流并分享策略。在jam开始前确保交流与文件传输的有效进行。

3.公告,提炼与时间安排

主题公告既会让人充满压力,感到困惑,也会让人激动不已。主题将决定你的游戏的整体基调与设计,所以你将因此得到别人的相关反应。而你去执行主题的能力真的非常重要。

当你平静下来后,你将开始思考基于这一主题马上想到的游戏理念。你需要将它们全部写下来,如果某些内容太长,你可以进一步去分解它们。

如果主题是“停下”,你马上能够想到什么?

“时间”,“十字路口前的汽车”,“终点”,“VCR上的按键”,“红色的六边形标志”,“红灯”,“阻塞”,“不能再移动”。

通过记下你从主题中想出的所有动词,名词和感受,你将能够明确之后的前进方向。你要去思考这些单词和短语对你的意义并思考与这些单词相关的机制。

现在你便可以开始设计了。通常这时候你便会开始想到一些游戏理念,所以你最好能与团队成员对游戏的发展进行头脑风暴讨论。思考与机制和主题相匹配的美术风格。考虑游戏音乐和声音以及它们会如何弥补图像与机制。对于每个设计元素,你还需要考虑它们的执行难度。有些图像和音乐风格在短时间内是很难执行的,所以你应该在计划的时候思考自己的优势与劣势。在设计中做出合理的冒险,不要将自己陷于绝对的不可能中。

是时候进行时间规划了。

在前几个小时中你应该掌握游戏的大体方向以及你和团队成员间的时间分配。

通过进行计划,每个人都将了解何时该完成工作,这也将减少障碍的出现或工作重叠的情况。在基于有限时间的工作中效能是非常重要的。而计划能力将提供给你更大的成功几率。

关于时间安排的例子

尽管这样的时间安排不一定适合所有人,但这却是我在好几个项目中都有效使用的方法。

example(from gamasutra)

example(from gamasutra)

4.不要害怕冒险。学会去接受失败。

在游戏开发中事情并不会总是一帆风顺,特别当你致力于全新概念中的时候。在做计划的时候我们总是会认为某些事比实际上更有趣,太过执着于结果是不对的。而在围绕着某件事开始工作前你应该先做这些事:

1)获得团队的支持。显然交流真的很重要。

2)获得其他人的支持。有时候执行并不是最重要的。你应该在某些内容不对劲的时候与别人交谈。有时候旁人的角度真的非常有帮助。

3)尝试着走向你的全新方向,但同时也给自己留下可回头的后路。

即使所有的一切都非常完美,信息机制也是你将在游戏jam中所做的最有趣的工作。确保你不要忘记去调整并优化最初的设计。同时你也要在游戏快要完成的时候继续思考如何去完善它。

5.推动有效的交流。

有效的交流不只是关于你们的内部团队之间,同时也是关于你的jam团队。你必须提前让你的jam团队清楚他们将如何进行交流以及分享内容。当jam开始运行时,团队成员就不应该再搜寻着Dropbox,电子邮件之类了。你应该思考着该如何推动成员间的交流。是通过Slack,Skape还是Google Hangout?同时确保所有人都认可你所选择的平台。

实时分享你的jam是让开发者和玩家了解你的设计和开发进程的一种有效方式。你应该去分享截图,快速架构,团队努力工作的图像等等。即使你未能马上看到这么做的价值,其他开发者也会了解到自己是身处一家正致力于一周项目的公司中。同样地你也能够因此吸引玩家的注意并获得他们的关注与支持。

6.保持士气。

完成一个7天项目真的很有压力。不管是什么情况,为了获得额外的编程时间而3天不睡觉或不吃饭是不可行的。你必须首先满足自己的基本需求然后才去考虑jam。如果能够有效进行计划,一周足以做出有效的执行了。

人们都认为jam很有趣且很吸引人。虽然通常情况下jam是一场竞赛,但不管怎样竞赛也不能阻止你去友善地对待其它团队并给予他们帮助。游戏jam是基于开发者们之间的情谊而发展起来的。虽然在开发过程中不免会出现意外,但是开发者在此能够拥有的最佳心态便是始终保持镇定并适当做出调整。只有拥有积极的态度,足够的耐心,友善和助人为乐的心以及强大的团队工作才能帮助你们走向终点。

7.从完成的作品中获得学习并将其运用于未来的项目中。

尽管jam是验证游戏机制是否可行的一种有效方式,但是其更大的益处还是在于你能从中更好地认识自己,认识别人,并清楚在如此短的时间内自己能够做出什么。你可能会在这个过程中突然发现能够用于下一款游戏中的机制,或者你可能会偶遇符合你的风格的全新美术师或程序员。通常情况下我们总是能在紧要关头发现自己真正擅长的与不擅长的。有时候我们也会犯一些人之常情的错误,如忘记委托一个人去订披萨或用光了咖啡而不得不让某人去咖啡店买咖啡。当你经历更多jam时你便会越做越好,而当你开始投入一款全新游戏的时候你便会发现自己比经历这7天之前更加优秀了。

本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转发,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

7 Tips to 7-Day Game Jams

by John Cooney

Making games in a week isn’t easy. As someone who has built around 30 different games in less than a week, I’ve encountered a lot of counter-intuitive hurdles to working in this timebox.

The good news is that a week is perhaps the best amount of time to gauge a design. It offers enough time to execute the primary details of the game, while giving some space to pivot and polish as necessary. While every team is different (or solo developer for that matter), a couple of days just isn’t enough at times to really execute a design, and often a month leads to over-polish or over-design. A week keeps everything in check. And a weeklong jam will teach you a lot about your own game development; game jams really accentuate your abilities as a developer in interesting ways.

All said and done, here are seven tips for building a game in seven days:

1. Count your hours. Bank 20% for safe-keeping.

Executing in a timebox is tough. Being cognizant of time is critical to the success of your jam, and you should plan accordingly.

A weeklong game jam totals 168 hours from start to finish, but you’ll be using a subset of that. With a normal amount of sleep that’s maybe a 110 hours max. Reasonably, it’s even less time than that if you count all the important human things you do daily. You’re going to eat, right? You have kids? School? You have loved ones that care about you? Don’t neglect those things (see Tip #6).

Once you figure out how much time you have, allocate the first 80% to actual development time, and leave the last 20% empty. While this seems like a lot of time, it’ll become really important for several reasons:

1.You will slip. Game development is hellbent on slippage, and even the most disciplined teams will find ways to fall behind.

2.You will change your design. You’re doing this to experiment with design, and with that you’ll change what you started, and that takes time. For every X and Y we’ll have a Z as well.

3.Things will go bad. It’s rare anything in game development isn’t turbulent. Development is a parade of problems to fix, not smooth sailing.

4.You’re a human being with competing priorities. There’s always a dog to feed or a library book to return. While you can prepare for some of these things, often the unexpected will happen.

5.Unaccounted time is in every schedule. You’ll always forget to budget time for a main menu or a mute toggle. By buffering development you’re giving yourself runway to be successful.

Be honest with yourself and how much time you have to dedicate:

2. Prepare as much as you can before the jam even begins.

There’s quite a lot you can do before the jam begins. Here are the biggest ones:

1.Get your team together. While it can be fun to slap together a team after the jam starts, it’s better to get a good grasp of your team and what each member will be doing, and the time they can commit. If you’re going solo, make sure you’re committed to your jam.

2.Get your code base and tools together. It’s a lot easier if you’re familiar with the tools and frameworks (especially if you’ve built them). Make sure you stick to the rules of the jam or sprint to ensure you’re not bringing anything into play that might be considered foul play.

3.Read the rules. Then read them again. Jams and sprints often have a bunch of small rules that can be overlooked. It’s important you know all of them so all your hard work isn’t inadvertently disqualified. You should know the due dates and process for everything related to the jam. Don’t break the rules!

4.Clear the calendar. It’s incredibly easy to schedule new events over your jam time. If you need the maximum time, let others know you’ll be busy.

5.Human basics. Ensure you’ve got all the basics down. Food, water, medication, electricity, internet, and a working computer are all great. Any time you can prevent going to the grocery store during the jam is a huge plus.

6.Computer basics. Don’t do any crazy software or OS upgrades before the sprint; nothing is worse than starting your jam debugging your machine.

7.Communication and sharing strategy. Get your communication and file-delivery perfect before the jam starts (see Tip #6).

3. Theme announcement, distillation, scheduling.

The theme announcement can be incredibly stressful, exhilarating, confusing, and exciting. A theme sets the entire tone and design for your game, so it rightfully earns the reaction you give it. Your ability to execute on theme is really important!

After you calm down a bit, begin to think about game ideas that immediately come to mind from the theme. Write them all down, and if any are too long, attempt to break them down even further.

The theme is “stop.” What do you immediately think of?

“Time.” “Cars in an intersection.” “The end.” “A button on a VCR.” “A red hexagon-shaped sign.” “Red light.” “Blocking.” “Not moving.”

By dragging out all the verbs, nouns, and feelings that you derive from the theme, you get a palette of direction to go from. Think about what these words and phrases mean to you. Think about mechanics that tie into these words.

Now it’s time to design. Usually by this time some ideas start to flow, so get that brainstorm going with your team on how the game works. Think about art styles that match the mechanics and theme. Think about music and sound and how they complement that art and mechanic. For each element of design, think about how difficult it would be to execute. Some art and music styles are incredibly difficult to execute in sprints, so think about your strengths and weaknesses as you plan. Make good risk in design, don’t box yourself into the impossible.

Got the game? Time to schedule.

Within the first few hours you should know the general direction of the game and how your time is allocated between you and possible team members.

By making a plan, everyone knows when things are due, and it minimizes the chances of blockers or bad overlaps in work. Efficiency is crucial in limited-time events. Your ability to plan well will give you a much higher chance of reaching success.

Example schedule

While this schedule doesn’t work for everyone, this is basically how I would execute on-time for several of my projects.

4. Don’t be afraid to take risk. Learn to embrace failure and pivot.

Things don’t always feel right in game development, especially when you’re working on new concepts. If you have time to pivot and have purpose to pivoting, do it. We often think something is more fun or interesting than it actually is when we plan, and not being dead-set on the outcome is important. But, you should do a few things before doing a hard pivot:

1.Get buy-in from your team. Obviously communication is really important.

2.Get buy-in from others. Sometimes execution is just slightly off, or not even at all (you’re always your own biggest critic). Talk to others if something doesn’t feel right. An outsider’s perspective is incredibly valuable.

3.Fork, don’t replace. Try to make a step toward your new direction, but save a backup in case you need to go back.

Even if everything is going perfect, massaging mechanics is some of the most interesting work you’ll do in a game jam. Make sure you aren’t forgetting to tweak and modify your original design. Continue to think about how you could improve your game as it comes to fruition.

5. Facilitate good communication.

Good communication is not just about your internal team, but also the greater jam. Your jam team should know how they’re going to communicate and share content ahead of time. Teams shouldn’t be relying on finding a Dropbox, common email, or GitHub repo while the jam is already in action. Think about where you’re facilitating the bulk of your communication. Slack? Skype? Google Hangout? Ensure everyone has buy-in and is good with the medium of choice.

Sharing your jam in-progress is a great way to give developers and players insight into your design and development progress. Try sharing screenshots, quick builds, and pics of your team hard at work. Even if you don’t see the immediate value of it, other devs thrive in knowing that they’re in the company of a hard week’s work, and so will you. Likewise, you’re building traction with players and getting them excited and supportive.

6. Be a human being. Keep morale positive.

The pressures of completing a 7-day sprint are really high. In nearly every situation it doesn’t make sense to skip sleep for three days or forego eating to get a few extra hours of programming. Beyond being grumpy and terrible to work with, your work will be compromised dramatically. Your priorities should be aligned with your own needs, first and foremost, then to the jam. Plan effectively. A week is a good amount of time to execute.

Jams are supposed to be fun and engaging. While often jams are a competition, by no means should competition get in the way of you being nice or helping another team. Game jams live and thrive on developer comradery. Both inter- and intra-team drama can be frustrating. The unexpected always rears its head during short development sprints. The best mindset is to keep calm and adjust appropriately. Ultimately positive attitude, patience, friendliness, helpfulness, and teamwork will get everyone to the finish line in good spirits.

7. Learn from what was accomplished. Apply to the future.

While jams are a great way to see if mechanics work, the larger takeaway might not even be a finished game. Game jams are a great time to learn about yourself, others, and what you can accomplish in a short period of time. You might have accidentally stumbled upon a mechanic that you’ll use in the next great game, or you might have met a new artist or programmer that perfectly jives with your style. Often we learn what we’re really good or bad at in a pinch (for me I’m terrible at building levels quickly, but I’m really fast at comping and programming UI). Sometimes we make human mistakes, like forgetting to delegate who was supposed to order pizza, or running out of coffee and having to send someone out to the coffee shop. As you do more jams, you get better, and as you begin new games you’ll already be ahead of where you were just a week ago.

Document and write your outcomes. Share them with the jammers, and bring your experience to others just getting started. It helps you digest your game jam experience and helps others process theirs.(source:Gamasutra

 


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