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对于花费4年时间的游戏开发循环的总结

发布时间:2016-12-30 15:37:38 Tags:,,,,

作者:David Amador

当我开始编写本文时我正在回家过节的路上。这是疯狂的一年,我花了将近4个小时的旅程写下了这些内容。很抱歉本文可能会有点不连贯,因为这主要是我的一些想法的集合。

Quest of Dungeons(from cnmo)

Quest of Dungeons(from cnmo)

对于那些了解我的工作的人应该会知道,在将近4年多时间里我一直致力于《地下城探险》这个项目中,这是从2013年开始开发的游戏。

现在我需要面向一个新平台,即PlayStation 4去发行游戏,发行时间为2017年1月17日。不过这也是这几年来我第一次有种《地下城探险》的旅程要结束了的感觉。我仍然想要通过最新更新去修补Android移植版本,我也还需要注意一些补丁等内容,但这却是基于和现在截然不同的方式。因为在这之前我始终觉得这是一个将延续好几个月,好几年甚至永远都不会结束的任务。

花这么多时间致力于同一个项目真的很让人受挫,特别是我还独自工作,所以我对自己感到骄傲的一点便是我能真正完成这项工作。你肯定不会相信我有多少次觉得这一切好不值得。但是所有的一切似乎都在往好的方面发展,我能够将游戏带到许多不同的平台上,它在某种程度上获得了人们的认可。

我认为自己能够找到合适的“立基”玩家,即那些真正理解《地下城探险》是关于什么且能够接受它的缺陷与优点的人们。

在开发的最初几个月,这还只是一款平板电脑游戏,即我并不打算将其带到PC以外的平台。这也导致我做出了在之后将游戏移植到主机时感到后悔的决定,但同时这也让我能够抄近路并且不用去担心那些不适合PC游戏的内容,如此才能加快游戏进度。我花了很多时间不断去思考每个全新平台的而界面(除了与Xbox One相同的PS4),这已经需要占用很多时间了,当然更不用提那些特定的主机功能。因为每一个全新平台都与之前的平台有所联系,所以这并不是我需要放太多精力的地方。

我一直在使用自己的技术去进行游戏发行,这么做似乎有点太顽固了。但事实却并非如此。现在,基于像Unreal 4,Unity和Gamemaker等多种不同的引擎,再自己创造技术似乎有点奇怪了,但对于我来说却不是如此。过去我也使用过其它引擎,并在XNA上发行了我最初的两款游戏,然而在那之后我决定开始创建自己的技术,如此我便能够更加灵活地工作且不用担心引擎是否会停止,这也是我真正决定这么做的目标。从这方面看来我的决定的确取得了成功,因为同样的代码可以运行于所有平台,除了一些特定渲染和输入等。在将游戏带到许多不同平台上后我也想出了一些更棒的理念,实际上在过去几周我一直在为之后的项目整理代码,现在的我觉得自己很有干劲。但也有一些平台是我移植了引擎后又感到后悔且不想再使用的,如Wii U,或者还有任天堂3DS。

我尝试着使用了3周Unity并对GameMaker进行了一些测试,这也的确是一次非常酷的试验。但即使如此也未曾改变我不放弃自己的技术的想法,可能主要还是因为我非常了解自己的技术,所以我可以在每个项目中快速改变某些内容,或者也是因为我非常热衷于致力于这项工作吧。当我要将游戏转变成完全的3D游戏时我还会再来使用它。

这么多平台!

我所创造的是一款已经出现在许多平台上的游戏,而我之所以这么做的原因也有许多,不仅能够吸引更多用户,能够赚到更多钱,同时也能让更多人认识这款游戏,对于我来说品牌认知是非常重要的。同时也是因为我觉得现在的自己拥有这么做的机会,毕竟谁都不知道未来,而这也是与Steam,Xbox,任天堂和索尼建立关系的机会。我认为不断面向不同平台创造游戏是合理的,只是我们需要去缩短每次发行之间的时间间隔。

但市场营销仍是我的软肋,我拥有一个Twitter账号并且会在上面分享我的游戏以及其它东西,主要是关于电影以及自己的一些日常琐事,这能算是一种市场营销吗?很迟的时候我才决定创建一份新闻通讯列表并将其放在Upfall Studios网站上,虽然我在去年获得了100多个订阅者,但如果我能够更早去做这件事的话就更好了。

我还为Upfall Studios创造了一个Twitter账号,所以这里将只有关于游戏及其发行的一些新闻,这也是一个更加专业的账号。关注于社交事宜,Twitter,Facebook等等都需要消耗大量时间,所以对于我来说这也是个需要面对的问题。我所关注的大多数是开发者而不是公司,更多的是独立开发者,因为这也是我自己想做的事。

社区

我喜欢与人们互动,我并不介意被问问题并且我也会100%回复我所收到的邮件,不管那是关于游戏还是游戏开发。我会在其他开发者想要跟我提问的时候花时间亲自与他们见面。以你想被对待的方式去对待别人。我便非常幸运能够拥有一群玩家和社区拥护着《地下城探险》,他们都很好,会活跃地向朋友推荐这款游戏,这是我所奢求的最棒的社区。我的目标便是能够继续扩大这一社区。

永远不要对你的用户撒谎也不要突然消失。有许多Early Access游戏便是莫名其妙地突然消失甚至未发表任何离别公告,这其实是错误的做法。因为这会导致用户不再信任你们,即使你转向了其它工作室,用户也不会忘记自己曾被骗的事实。所以如果你的项目遭遇了失败,你也要向人们解释清楚,如果你延迟了补丁的发行也要说明。因为几乎所有玩家都会报以理解与支持。当我在进行Xbox One和任天堂的移植时我便延迟了PC的更新好几个月,玩家也对此报以支持,只要你告诉他们你推迟的原因便可。

这并不只是“还需要X个月的开发”

如果你认为只需要再2个月的话,实际情况通常是还要4个月。大多数情况下我们总是不能有效计算时间(至少我是这样),因为我们总是在脑子里构思游戏,但事实上将其付诸行动往往需要更多时间。就像我的PC版本便遭遇了延迟,Xbox和任天堂移植也花费了比我预想中更长的时间,不过PS4时间便短了些,因为我一开始设想了最糟糕的情况但没想到第一次尝试的结果便不错。根据我的经验,在游戏发行前1,2个月完成游戏会更好,特别是对于只有一个人的团队来说。我便是提前2个月完成Xbox One版本,并利用剩下时间去推广游戏,累积游戏的认知度等等。而任天堂版本则只提早了10天,从而导致不得不延误游戏的发行,我现在也很后悔自己不能更有效地计算时间。这是必须吸取的重要经验教训。

其它

在过去我曾犯的错误同时也是我现在仍在犯的错便是,我不能有效划分开发时间与现实生活,如此便导致我总是长时间地投入于工作中。

在一年半的全职工作期间,我是利用晚上去创造《地下城冒险》,但这并不意味着我能够承担双倍分量的工作。当你在为别人工作时你总是拥有一份时间表,但如果你是为自己工作,你便很难去调节时间。很多人都跟我说很难专注于工作中,我也是如此,但这主要还是因为我将休闲时间与工作时间混合在一起。如此我们便很容易分心,然后你便会有愧疚感并投入更多时间于工作中。尽管我不认为自己很慢,但本来我可以更有效地利用时间。这也是我想改变的现状,我不认为严格的时间安排很有效,但是如果缺少明确的划分也是不行的。

当你面对一个解决不了的问题时,不要再将大把的时间浪费在电脑上,请出门走走,做些其它事,如此解决方法便会自然而然地出现。只有将你的思绪分散到其它事情上你才能够冷静下来解决问题。

那现在呢?

游戏的PS4版本即将在3周后发行,我也不再计划其它移植了,所以我将能够转向一款全新游戏。说实话我还是很担心,因为现在我还没有一个可靠的想法,我只是在勾画一些理念或尝试一些原型,像“让我花1至2年时间于这款新游戏上,”“我能否赚回本,”以及“它是否会有好的表现”等问题都让我很担忧。

我希望自己拥有一个只需要几个月时间进行尝试的小型理念而不是什么巨大的理念,但就像我之前提到的,《地下城冒险》本来只是一个6个月项目,最终却花费了4年时间。我尝试着不去想“这将会是所有人都能喜欢的理念”,相反地我将尝试着去想出自己会喜欢的内容,即使其他人不一定会喜欢,因为开发流往往是如此发展的。

在PS4版本发行后我要花2周时间去旅行,在长达2年时间里我都没出去玩过,我想去一些国家当背包客,因为这是一种既廉价又能放松心态的方式。

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

Some thoughts about a 4 year game dev cycle

by David Amador

As I’m starting to write this post I’m on my way to my home town for the holidays, It’s been a crazy year(s)(?) and I’m taking these near 4h of travel to write down some things. I’m sorry if it’s incoherent, this is mostly a dump of thoughts.

For those who follow my work a bit more closely you probably know that for almost 4 years the project I dedicated more time was Quest of Dungeons, which started development in 2013.

Right now I still have one more platform to release, on Playstation 4, 17 January 2017, it passed certification, ready to be released, so for the first time in years it feels that my QoD journey is finally completing. I still intend to patch the Android port with all last updates and sure, there will always be patches and things to take care of, but it will be in a whole different way now. Until now it always felt incomplete and a never ending task that extended for months, years.

Working for so much time on the same project can be incredibly frustrating, especially if working alone, so one thing that I’m proud of myself is that I actually finished it. You wouldn’t believe the amount of times that I said “F** it, is not worth it”. Things went good with the game, in a sense that I was able to put it on a lot of platforms and it was well received for the most part.
I think I was able to find a good “niche” of players that understood what QoD was all about, with all its flaws and good things.

The game was never meant to be released outside of PC, heck, during the first month of development it was a Tablet only game. That led to decisions that I regretted later when porting to consoles, but also allowed me to cut corners and not caring about things that weren’t meant for a PC game early on, thus speeding up development time. I spent a lot of time just rethinking the whole interface for each new platform (except PS4 which is identical to Xbox One) and that is time consuming, not to mention specific console features, on the other hand players do feel like it was hand-crafted for their device, so there’s that. Each new platform was made possible with the previous one, so it’s not something that I can say it was a total mistake.

Technology wise, I’ve kept using my own tech for all releases, stubbornness perhaps? And that is not without it’s caveats. With engines like Unreal 4, Unity and Gamemaker these days if feels almost ridiculous to consider building your own tech for many, but not for me, not yet anyway. I used other engines in the past, I did release my first 2 games on XNA, and after that I decided that it was time to build my own tech, so I could be more flexible and not caring if an engine is discontinued or not, that was the goal. And on that part it succeeded, the same code runs on all platforms, except for specific render, input, etc. It took work, a lot, and after so many platforms I have a better idea of things that need better abstraction, in fact for the past week I’ve been just cleaning up code for future projects, feels more robust now. But I have a bit of regret of platforms that I ported the engine and possibly will never use it again, like Wii U, maybe even Nintendo 3DS. While the others, now that the work is done I can reuse for future games, it’s possible that I’ll never use for some again, so it was an effort for a one time only, and that is a problem, one that could have been prevented by using an existent engine.
I tried using Unity for 3 weeks, did some tests with GameMaker, and it was a cool experience, knowledge doesn’t hurt right? But haven’t made my mind yet about switching away from my own tech, mostly because I know it well, I can quickly changes things around for each project and mostly because I love working on that part as well, it’s fun, even if it’s just for me. I’ll revisit this if/when I need to switch to a “full 3d” game.

So many platforms!!

It’s a game that’s on a lot of devices now, and there are several reasons to do so, more audience, chance to make more money, get the game more known, etc, brand recognition and proving the studio is capable of delivering. I also made it because I had the chance right now, I don’t know the future, may not be able to pull that again, also it was a chance to establish a relation with Steam, Xbox, Nintendo and Sony. My idea is to keep making games for platforms that each makes sense, but trying to cut down time between each release. It was too sparse now, because of the reasons mentioned above.

Marketing is still something I suck at, I do have a twitter account where I talk about my games, but also about tons of other stuff, mostly movies and general day things, is that even called marketing? Too late I decided to setup a newsletter list and put it on Upfall Studios website, should have done it earlier, I got 100 people to subscribe in the last year and half, I could have way more in these nearly 7 years as indie dev.
I also created a twitter account for Upfall Studios, so it’s basically a cleaned up version of my own, just news about the games and launches, a more “professional” account I call it. Taking care of so many social stuff, twitter, facebook, etc is time consuming and doesn’t come to me as naturally as using my personal account, so that is still a problem probably. For the most part I follow devs and not “companies” even when they are indies, so that’s mostly what I like to do, chances are there are more people like me.

Community (love you guys)

I like responding to people, I don’t mind getting asked questions and I’ve answered to 100% of emails I got, either about the game or gamedev in general. I’ve taken time to meet other developers in person when they wanna ask me questions. Treat others the way you wanna be treated, easy right?
I’ve been extremely luck with the players and community surrounding QoD, they are nice, active in recommending the game to friends and I couldn’t have wished for a better community. Goal is to keep incrementing the amount of course =)
Never lie or go on radio silence regarding customers. There are tons of Early access games that suddenly stop and not even a goodbye post, that’s the worse part, the waiting for months to see if project is alive. They won’t trust you again, even if you switch to a different studio, they won’t forget. So if project fails explain it, if you are delayed on a patch say so. Almost all the time players will understand and be supportive. When I was making the Xbox One and Nintendo ports I had to delay the PC updates for a couple months and players were really supportive, as long as they know why you are late on some promise.

It’s never just “X more months of dev”

NEVER, ever, if you think it’s just 2 more months, odds are that it’s 4 more. We suck at calculating time for the most part (or at least I do), because we conceive the game in your minds and you can see it, mostly complete, but making that happen takes much more time. PC version was delayed, both Xbox and Nintendo ports took much longer than I expected, the PS4 one was shorted, because I counted with worst case scenario but things went well at first try. In my experience completing the game 1-2 months before the release can have a positive effect, especially for a 1 man team. I finished the Xbox One version 2 months before, full approved on certification, and spent that time just trying to promote it, and was able to gather some awareness for the game. I finished the Nintendo versions just 10 days before, and even had to delay the game once, I regret now that I didn’t calculated/handled things better. Lesson learned, let’s see if I don’t make that mistake again.

Everything else

I made that mistake in the past and I still do, I can’t separate well development time and actual life time, so I end up working too many hours, and it’s addicting.
QoD was made partially at night when I still had a day job, and the last 1 and a half year in full time, but that doesn’t mean I was able to do twice as much work unfortunately.
When you work for someone else you have a schedule, but if you work on your own time, it’s harder. Most people tell me it’s hard to stay focused working, and I have that problem too, but not in a way that I can’t work, but mostly because I blend in leisure time with work, and working from home doesn’t help. It’s easy to get distracted, then you feel guilty and spend a couple more hours working. And while I don’t think I’m super slow, I could be using my time better. That’s something I want to change, I don’t thing strict work schedules work well, but not having clear boundaries doesn’t either. If anyone is managing this well please let me know. Open to suggestions :)
It’s easy to find people saying this, but I’ve now experienced it myself, when you have a problem that you can’t solve don’t spend hours on the PC, take a walk, go do something else, the solution will come to mind, seriously, it works very often. You trick your mind into something else and the other problem keeps getting solved in the background.

What now?

In approximately 3 weeks the PS4 version will be released, I don’t any plans for more ports so I intend to move to a new game, and honestly I’m scared, I don’t have a solid idea yet, been mostly sketching ideas or trying some prototypes, and the thought of deciding “let me spend 1-2 years” in this new game is a bit scary, “can I come up with all the money?”, “will it be good?”.
I wish I had a small cool idea to try for a couple months instead of a bigger one, but as I mentioned before, QoD was also supposed to be a 6 months project that turned out into 4 years so better not force anything. I’m trying not to think of “this is gonna be a cool idea that everyone will like” and instead trying to come up again with something that I would like to play, even if others don’t like it, development flows more naturally like that.
Oh and I want to take 2 weeks of proper vacations after the PS4 release, haven’t had vacations in over two years, thinking of backpacking a couple countries, it’s cheaper and it’s good “mind food”-(source:gamasutra

 


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