From idea to reality

[David Lindberg]

I wrote an article a little while back, when I had some students involved with Undefined Games. It was about the process of turning an idea into something that could be produced. A concept that I believe all people, regardless of what aspect they deal with in game development, should familiarize themselves with: No matter what you do, the content you create will be fed into this process.

Recently, I dug up the old document and decided to give it a revision and release it on my blog. If anyone's interested, here's the link:

http://generomachina.blogspot.dk/2015/0 ... ality.html

And as usual, if you can't be bothered clicking links without some idea of what you're heading towards, here's an excerpt from the article:

"If you're at all acquainted with the process of trying to get your ideas from paper into a real, tangible game, you have probably encountered this feeling: No matter how awesome your idea felt when you came up with it, if you keep working on it, it starts feeling really rough. Eventually it gets to the point where your brain goes - "look at all these other great ideas I've had in the meantime! I should just make one of those instead."

Then you quit what you're doing, enthusiastically going head-first into your new idea. The previous idea has now been filed in your brain-cabinet under "learning experience." And with what you've learned from that, this new idea is going to succeed without a doubt! Right?

Unfortunately, that's probably not going to happen. The reality for many people who go through this rigorous "rinse and repeat" process, without examining why their ideas collapse, is that they'll eventually get completely stuck and loose motivation to work. We all want to see our ideas come to life, but it requires more than just the inspiration to see that through."

Hope even you people who are well-acquainted with the concept, learn something new (or remember something old)!
~ Dave

[khornel]

Cool article! I've been struggling with this problem for at least 10 years. That, and coming up with ideas.

I really like the idea of trying to find solutions to simple questions. At face value they seem a bit trite, but the ideas kind of blossom when you really start thinking about them.

Having a job where I've been forced to see projects through to the end, I finally started finishing my own projects. I find that working on the same thing gets tedious often, but it passes really quickly if you keep working, I just needed to go through this to really understand it. The longer you stay away from a project, the bigger a task it seems to get back into it.

Organizing my ideas and tasks has also been extremely important. Not just because it helps me in being organized, but looking through my ideas and re-organizing my tasks is really motivating. Sometimes I forget what my original vision was or the potential of a project. Trello works pretty well for this.

[David Lindberg]

Thanks for your reply, glad you enjoyed the article!

I personally tend to struggle a bit on the organizing-part as well. It's such a dynamic element of any project, since it's always made up of the substituent parts of what you're doing, that I never really found a go-to general approach. Trello looks like a very interesting way to keep track of those aspects, especially considering the way it's all "up there," as a reminder of where you're heading.

Come to think of it, Unknown Worlds Entertainment are actually using it to develop their game "Subnautica" as an open-to-public process:

https://trello.com/b/yxoJrFgP/subnautica

It really reminds me of Valve's flat management process, where people just perform and assign tasks as they see fit.

[khornel]

It has done wonders for me. I've been able to interface with their API and organize my board in such a way, that I can auto-generate my changelog (http://softwareinc.coredumping.com/change-log/) and get an idea how long tasks take, how to plan and what keeps me from working, by comparing the list with events in my day-to-day life. But, being a one-man team, my experience with it is limited in regards to teamwork.

It also works well as a community building tool, I've only gotten positive feedback from people and it makes it easier for them to give good suggestions.

[David Lindberg]

Just a quick update: Apparently Epic Games have open Trello-boards for their development of the new Unreal Tournament game. They're running two separate boards; one for programming and one for general content creation. They're really interesting to look at, in contrast to how things work at Unknown Worlds - bit of inspiration for project planning from both worlds:

- UT programming board: https://trello.com/b/Q07L4mSS/unreal-to ... rogramming
- UT content board: https://trello.com/b/z5txloGA/unreal-tournament-content

I found out while investigating Unreal Engine 4, which is now free to use by anyone.