How To Finish a Game With XNA Joel Martinez

Experimentation VS Finishing a Game

How To Make Games Inspiration Prototype Play Testing Design Do It! Polish Release!

Some Motivations 1 I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1 160k 2 Avatar Drop 117k 3 RC-AirSim 74k Top 20 Games "they all do one thing and do it very, very well: They fulfill the desire of gamers for something which they can't get on XBLA and would never see on a disc-based game. They're like a sugary snack and a can of pop - an instant hit of fun and refreshment. " DrMistry

The Spark Find Inspiration in everyday life Make a Statement, or Focus on an Interesting Mechanic

Don't Follow the Masses

The Prototype Single Focus Prototypes Make more than one prototype Be prepared to throw away code Don't be afraid to Suck!

Tech

PlayTest Free Testing, use it! No Penalty for Uploading unfinished game concepts Community Based o PlayTest other games o Be nice to reviewers

The Design Put together different prototypes Avoid "The Game Design Document" Find "The X"

Be Prepared to Cut Features

The Grind Plan out your work Agile in Stages Don't Give Up!

You Can't Finish Them All

Plan Early for the Check List No "Official" TCR Process Best Practices for Indie Games The Evil CheckList:

Technical Issues Avoid Crashes at All Costs Avoid excessive allocations Profile to avoid GC Problems o XNA Framework Remote Performance Monitor for XBox 360 o CLR Profiler

Layout/Design Choose 1280x720 on the XBox XBox and Microsoft Windows Phone 7 Series will automatically scale up or down if necessary. On Windows, must handle different resolutions resolution-rendering/

Safe Area Don't be the "Works on My Machine!" guy Title Safe Area: 20% Gutter graphics.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.TitleSafeArea to-show-video-safe-areas.aspx

Input Considerations Use Standard Input conventions o A to accept o B to go back or cancel Use "Press Start" to determine what controller the player is using

The Final Stretch Keep Polishing More PlayTests as you add levels o Take the feedback seriously, these are game players too o But be careful not to burn out the testeres Peer review... if you fail, fix the issue and resubmit Don't give up! Marketing!

Chop More Features!!!

Thank