Game development is a very interesting and at the same time very complicated process. In this article, we will look at the most pervasive problems in the game development process, as well as possible ways to solve them.
Table of Contents
What is the game idea?
For the creation of any project to end in success, it is very important to initially analyze and plan everything well.
Before you start creating a game, you need to think carefully about its purpose and type. It can be a logical or gambling game, strategy, simulator, or action game. Next, you need to determine the game development plan and its scenario.
Also, it is useful to analyze in detail similar games, their advantages and weaknesses, and what functions users lack. This will help you avoid common mistakes that occur when developing similar games, design the architecture correctly, and reduce the time to fix common mistakes in the future.
Often, developers create a very complex game that does not meet their goals. To avoid this problem, you need to create the game iteratively. First, implement the basic functionality that will work. Then, gradually add new features and test them for compliance with the initial set plans.
What is the game’s target audience?
For a game to have a large number of users, it is necessary to conduct research and analyze what group of users the game is intended for. Indicators such as users’ age, type of activity, nationality, etc. are important.
For the successful launch of the game, it is important to know how users react to it, and what comments they leave. To do this, it can be useful to run a beta version of the game for a limited number of users in order to collect feedback and improve the game based on it.
Which game engine to choose?
There are a lot of game engines that provide different ready-made solutions and tools out of the box. Before you start creating a game, you should conduct a detailed analysis of existing engines and determine the advantages of using them in the development of your game.
Using ready-made solutions can significantly speed up and simplify the game development process compared to writing your engine from scratch. The main disadvantage of using ready-made engines is that you need to read a lot of documentation and understand the engine’s interface.
One of the popular game engines is Unreal. It has great blueprints that work like building blocks, so you can easily use this engine to assemble and customize basic things even without programming knowledge. Also, this feature is great for prototyping. Unreal uses rendering technology and post-processing works very fast.
Unreal has good VR integration. It has visual editors for standard shaders. This allows you to edit them without using code.
Also, in Unreal, there is a large set of tools for optimizing the game and access to visual debugging, with which you can easily test what, when and how is rendered. Want some other game developer tips?
How often do you need to update the game?
To keep users interested in the game, there is a constant need to release updates. You can create new modes, heroes, features, events, weapons, etc. Along with this, game programmers need to support the already developed functionality, by fixing existing bugs for example. In this regard, developers have to constantly perform a large amount of work.
To have time to complete all of the above tasks, it is very important to create a clear plan and follow it. This plan should include tasks that developers can complete in a specified period of time.
To speed up the process of creating a game and simplify the developers’ work, it is important to choose the right development tools. Different tools provide the ability to automate many frequently performed actions.
How does operating system fragmentation affect game development?
There are a lot of different operating systems nowadays and over time new ones appear. For the game to be played by as many users as possible, it must work on all operating systems. Each OS has a different SDK and a different set of interaction rules.
This greatly complicates the process of developing a game that will be compatible with each OS. Therefore, there is a need to use ready-made engines that allow you to create cross-platform games.
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What tools make game development easier?
If you develop games using Visual Studio C++ and Unreal Engine, then we have good news for you. Visual Assist Extensions for Visual Studio has support for Unreal Engine and provides tools that greatly simplify and speed up the game development process.
Let’s list the main benefits that Visual Assist provides for Unreal Engine projects.
Visual Assist provides the possibility to display comments from the base classes for Unreal Engine C++ and U*Macro specifiers in the code. This feature speeds up the process of studying the documentation and, accordingly, speeds up the development. Now you can learn Unreal Engine easily.
Visual Assist provides functions for quick code navigation and refactoring such as Goto, find references, rename, and change signature. The ability to read U*Macro specifiers optimizes these functions.
It offers the ability to type code quickly thanks to smart suggestions for U*Macro specifiers. For newly entered specifiers, Visual Assist quickly finds and displays suggestions.
Visual Assist automatically adds a call to the Superclass to the template when you extend the functionality of the engine. This reduces the number of actions you have to do manually.
Visual Assist provides the ability to use the Rename function to rename classes, files, methods, variables, and any other types or objects. All its uses, including comments, strings, and headers, rename automatically. Also, you can preview these changes in a special dialog.
After reading the article, you understand that game development is a very complicated process that has a list of difficulties. At the same time, it is quite interesting and useful work.
Install the Visual Assist for Visual Studio extension with Unreal Engine support and create games easily.