You always have to remember guys, almost every feature for your game will need, UI assets, SFX, code and tutorials

@mandisaw

4 ай бұрын

It also adds cognitive load for your player. Everything you want them to engage with, they will need to learn, understand, and ideally, master. So the more you pile on, the more likely you move from "challenging & fun" into "confusing & a chore" territory.

@ultimaxkom8728

2 ай бұрын

This is a very crucial yet easy-to-forget point. Arguably S-Tier advice.

"Your head isn't as good as you think it is" need to put that shit on my wall!

It’s a bit of a weird situation for me. My idea hasn’t really increased in size, but turns out I don’t have the skill I thought I did. Continuing with it anyway because I feel like all the main mechanics are absolutely necessary to fulfill my vision and I’ve already finished most of the mechanics.

@vakuzar

4 ай бұрын

Dont give up! this is how you gain those skills ^_^.

@mrrager1409

3 ай бұрын

been at it for a half a year with absolutely no experience. just keep learning and dont give up

from all the devlogs on YT i realized a lot of devs dont realize or dont know what game they want to make or what game is it supposed to be and think by adding random stuff in will make the game good because X Y Z have that as well if we talk jetpack or grapling hook for example: are you make exploration game with lot of xy and Z! travel? Diving into dungeons and exploring ruins? Discovering secrets - YES those will help and make the game better and richer experience. Are you making a game about grand battles? Zero to hero? NO because thats not the point of your game. Does not matter if its FPS, RPG, isometric or point&click

I hope that someday my Studio has other people in it who can also tell me how stupid I am! You’re Lucky! 😂

Its hard, I actually fight this a lot at work because everyone on the buisness side wants to have everything planned and perfect before development, but all the creatives want to run wild and have tripple the scope. Both have major issues. On the one hand a bad game is always bad, but on the other hand projects have a limited budget / time. In the end you need some vision, with the agility to move in the direction the game needs and the experience to know when you cant go somewhere, or it needs to be scoped down.

I really enjoy all these videos. After watching them for so long I have determined two definitive things. My dude here in the video really really likes trains and white t-shirts. We should all vote that the next game he gets his dang train.

@bitemegames

4 ай бұрын

I have been wearing pretty much exclusively white t-shirts & blue pants for the past 7 months. Sure, it makes me seem like a psychopath, but at least I look decent every day, and I don't have to think about what to wear each morning. -M

@denkkab1366

4 ай бұрын

You can think of the white shirt as BiteMe Games branding by now

This speaks volumes to me. I wanted to do a tower defense. Now it's a game where you also have barracks that spawn units that you can send to attack the enemy base. ENEMY BASE. That means I also had to create enemy IA that also puts turrets and barracks to attack you. I made a promise to keep 3 turrets and 3 barracks and never change that but yesterday I added walls... I will definitely try to write everything down and maybe that will help me keep things manageable. Thanks for the video!

@denkkab1366

4 ай бұрын

Sounds like RTS :)

@JosepPi

4 ай бұрын

@@denkkab1366 indeed. The only thing that makes me hesitate to call it an RTS is the fact its turned based and units don't fight against each other so there is no hard micro. I love rts like starcraft but I suck at micro. That is why I decided to create this game.

@denkkab1366

4 ай бұрын

@@JosepPi I like the idea, TD with RTS-like elements

@JosepPi

4 ай бұрын

@@denkkab1366 Thanks! I've got positive reactions so far when I show the game, but I always thought they were polite to me. It's refreshing to see the same positive reaction from someone with 0 bias!

I personally suffer from scope degradation. I had an idea for a shmup, but with coding being my worst aspect, I trimmed the ideas until I had something I could actually build. Let's just say I'm still disappointed with the end result and it has stalled me from trying to reach the original idea.

@franciscomalmeida

3 ай бұрын

I'm the opposite, I work better if it's expressed in code

@franciscomalmeida

3 ай бұрын

BTW, are you more proficient with art?

@markguyton2868

3 ай бұрын

@@franciscomalmeida Kind of, I wouldn't say amazing, but I can draw at least at a (personally) mediocre level.

When i first started with some kind of gamedev around 2000, i would have fallen into scope creep and kinda did in some ways. Not exactly, but the roots are similar. I'm no longer thinking "more is better" so while my 15 year old me would love the idea of 25 different weapons in a shooter, current me thinks mouse-wheeling through 25 weapons sounds horribly annoying and doubts that in an arsenal of 25 different weapons each of them is unique enough to deserve it's place. Currently, after working in software-dev for year, i see projects more from a perspective of allocating ressources. The maximum amount of ressources is limited, so the question is not "would more weapons be cooler?" but "how should the ressources be distributed for the best result". And there is no more than 100%. Adding something reduces the share of somthing else. it's not possible to have game 25% about story and 75% about shooting and then add a fishing minigame. No matter how small that is, if 1% of the ressources to into fishing, story and shooting can only be 99%. So is that worth it? Will the shooter become a better game by allocing resources from shooting to fishing? Well, no. So don't do it.

My 3 month project already passed 3rd year counter😅

I pulled back scope and made a single page GDD, which I broke down to check lists... and have most of it done. It's amazing how much it all is... OMG. Just getting it together for Steam and a little overwhelmed...even with my scope pulled back. You Game Devs rock!!

Great video as always! I'm currently guilty of starting with: - rpg focused on the story with simple but balanced turn-based combat But the story evolved and I decided to add more element that would fit with it. Now we already planned to added: - harder battles with more strategy involved (but less enemies, probably) - puzzles with different rules and interactions for each party member - a class system with 13 classes (atm ^^") I already started working on some of the new stuff and I think they are going to be worth the effort. I'm fighting to stop here and not add anything more hahaha I think I can do it ^^"

@tymondabrowski12

4 ай бұрын

Remember that the more classes you have, the harder it is to balance. And if you work alone, battles with strategy, 13 classes and puzzles customised to who is solving them sounds like waaaay too much.

@isaacpontes

4 ай бұрын

@@tymondabrowski12 yes, the balancing part worries me a bit. The number 13 is not set on stone, of course. The classes are divided between the 4 main characters, but I will work on groups of 4, one for each. If down the line having all the 13 is not viable, I'll just reduce the number. But, hey, thanks for the touch :) Hope to one day get to release it, that will be fun

Think small, then make those few elements as unique and memorable as possible.

I went through my KanBan board earlier today, and I made a new column called "Low priority" where I put all the cool things I want but realistically don't need. Really happy to hear you mention it! It gave me confidence that I did the right thing to actually reach the end.

@oliver_twistor

3 ай бұрын

I can recommend the MoSCoW principle (Must have, Should have, Could have, and Won't have (now)). Sort all your board items in one of those four categories. - In Must have, you would put things that must be implemented to even have a functional game. Think of it as a minimal working product; if you won't have the resources to do anything else than your Must have's, at least your game will have the necessary features to be playable. - Next up, you have Should have. Here you would put things that would really make your game enjoyable, but aren't strictly necessary. For example adding sound and textures to your game. The game works without, but it will be so much better with sounds and textures added. - Next, you have Could have. Here you would put all the polish that would make your game pop. Better models, textures, cool lighting and shadows, voice acting instead of only text, translations of help files, water ripple effects etc. - Lastly, you have Won't have (now). In here you would have the things you don't want to prune or put onto an anti-scope list as the video talked about, but you realise that you will probably never have the resources to implement them. Think of this list as a possible 2.0 release or for a sequel. The problem with having all tasks in one giant list is that you risk working with small details before big important things. When prioritising with MoSCoW or any of the other prioritisation methods out there, you're able to quickly see what is most important and to get that finished first. That is extra useful if you plan to sell your game, because if you have finished all the Must have's and Should have's and you have a pretty good game, but it doesn't sell well at all, you have the option of scrapping the Could have's and instead start on another game. No point in putting in a ton of polishing work for a game idea that didn't turn out so well, is it? (If it wasn't the lack of polish that made it sell poorly, of course.) Good luck with your game, by the way!

@rstorm7568

3 ай бұрын

I have the same thing, I call it "Bonus Features" List where I put in all the ideas that are good but unnecessary and that I will only consider after finishing everything else, or for the next game/sequel or smthn.

I would just like to add... Ask your friends for feedback but never, ever ask them for ideas. They have no clue what it takes to make trains that transform into jet fighters with 250 optional upgrades in each configuration.

Make a FMK list for your features, incl non-mechanical stuff like SFX, VFX, environmental details, etc. I saw a GDC talk by CDPR once, and they had a breakdown of desired features, vs how much work to implement, vs value-add from a player POV. I made a spreadsheet like that for my current game early-on in pre-production, assigning values for each factor to get a sort of value-for-cost score for each feature. Even broke it down further by player persona, since diff ppl are attracted to diff elements in the same game. Made it super-easy to see what features would be time-sucks for little added value, and what would be easier to implement, with hopefully huge payoff. Also helps guide my money & time investment - I can track if I'm putting too much/too little into a given feature, and adjust as-needed.

@mandisaw

4 ай бұрын

Found it: GDC 2013, _How the Witcher devs turn ideas into features_ kzread.info/dash/bejne/n6OLmo-GiM3PptY.htmlsi=Xr1XsyAQCqWbtGNc

Another great video, thank you :) You played my game, Project Apocalypse. I think "scope creep" can be a subtitle for it - it started as a post-apocalyptic camp simulator with text-based events and simple visualization - you have the camp with some tents and a fireplace, and there were text-based actions which you can select. I still have the original GDD, saying "The project is very small and can be finished in about a month". 10 years later I released it. I took a break for 5 years, though, but at some point a returned to this idea and worked on it for 5 years. Did a few reboots and changes of overall concept. The last iteration took about two years and was released in steam, finally. Now it's an rts-style post-apocalyptic camp builder with indirect control (think Majesty). And now I'm thinking that was one of the worst ideas for a solo indie developer to try to implement :D I like the final result and the overall experience helped me to secure a bunch of gamedev-related jobs. But still, thinking about "5 years" now sounds insane. My next indie project is constantly being scaled down to keep the scope manageable - now I have a small team, but less free time, so... :D

My whole project is about tackling the scope creep as a feature. 😂 Basically i want no man's starfield. But the further you go, the more exotic things become. It's all about how do you map vastness such that it's interesting moment to moment. And how to achieve that with as little mean as possible 😅

*40 seconds in* Me: "This is going to be about Marnix's trains" *20 seconds later* Me: "Called it." But after all the advise we get from you, maybe I can give one back. Make that dreamgame about trains, but wait till you have another 7 games in your pocket, cause by that time, you will have enough experience in gamedev that game could actually become a world wide succes where everyone talks about that game with trains and then I can say: "well, they're obviously well trained". (yes I typed this all out just so I could make that pun)

Really wish you’d stop figuring out what’s in my head. 😅 Great video as always.

This was exactly the video I was looking for yesterday, you guys have great timing 😂

Great video. Thanks! For the record, trains would have been great. There is a huge niche of train people out there that buy games just for the trains. For ex, there are two friends of mine that only play factorio with me to build and manage the train networks. Same thing with equestrian people. Underserved communities.

To be fair the trains looked like a cool idea!

So I started a 6 month title and i m 4,5 years in development. Don't get me wrong, the game looks awesome for a two man team, but still...

One thing I noticed when modelling things and placing it into a game engine is, most of the things don't require coding (nodes) to be added, because I use Unreal Engine, I create a Blueprint, select the object I made and I'm done, the only real time coding is required is for things like opening a door, or maybe a character.

I have probably close to 100 double-sided pages of notebook paper filled up with ideas, sketches and such that I wanted to implement into a game I am working on. After taking a few months break (due to personal issues and harddrive being difficult), I sat down and skimmed through the pages going "Wow.. I really need to reorganize these ideas and figure out what I actually want in the initial game design...". That kind of lead me to breaking things down a bit more from the ground up and starting to sort things into separate parts and sub-parts that I can really focus on one at a time and focus on the primary aspects that I want to implement first and foremost. Thanks for the video, it's really one of my big issues. I want to build big and always end up coming up with a lot of ideas all at once and have to rein myself in a bit.

@DigitalWolfGameDev

3 ай бұрын

For context: A while back I started working on a little project in Unity3D. It is a retro-style DRPG that uses some rogue-like features, leveling, a top-side town as a hub, randomized dungeons, crafting and a few other features. I ended up overwhelming myself with too many features I wanted to implement and I had to effectively start over twice. In that time I'd collected a LOT of notes/ideas/sketches on paper. After having to take a few months from the project, I realized it was getting out of hand and I had to sort things out. Now I am working on it again, and trying to prioritize features I want to have working first (dungeon generation, basic leveling, basic inventory and such). Things like the town with shops, crafting system, etc can come after I have the primary features working right.

This is really helpful thanks

Thanks for a great video! I agree with you that listing a project's limitations is almost as important as listing its scope. Some would argue the limitations are more important. I think a good way of knowing whether an added mechanic constitutes scope creep or not is to think about the game's core game loop. What in a word or sentence is your game? Is it a fishing game? If it is, will making the players craft their own customisable baits add to or subtract from that core experience? That question can be difficult to properly answer, but it's important. One way of finding the answer is to ask yourself whether your playtesters wish they were able to craft their own bait. If they seem perfectly happy without, then it would probably be scope creep to add it. Or you could be more formal about it and do a cost/benefit analysis. How much negative effect would a missing bait crafting mechanic have versus the cost of you developing it. I've noticed that my comment is but one big push for testing in general. Test test test. Not only functional testing, but putting the game into the hands of people and ask the question: is this enjoyable at all? Testers are wonderful, especially laypersons, because they usually don't focus on the technical aspects (do this function work?) but more holistically (am I enjoying myself? is there something that annoys me?).

"Your head isn't as good as you think it is" that's what she said

I always have friends tell me that my game looks cool and I should add this or that to the game. I quickly tell them no. That's too much work to add more features or modes.

When my wife got pregnant, I thought I would finish the game before the child is born. The kid is now 5.5 years old and I still continue working on it. Thankfully I released it after 4 years and now I am living the indie dream! (at least part-time).

@jonaspriebeofficial

3 ай бұрын

Do you have any links to your game?

I came up with a idea to seemlessy land on planets without harsh rendering, and thats just to transform my players scale on collision with a sphere resulting in an expanded area to traverse, unfortunately it doesn't work as intended because a sphere isnt completely round, this means I'm walking in mid air at times. The collider for the sphere is perfect but the object isnt. 😢

You guys have helped me tremendously. I've been able to start indie deving myself fulltime. I started with no experience so I'm a testament that it can be done if you keep pushing and itll be done right thanks to yalls in depth, no bs, informative videos. cheers!

I think there is already a scope creep if you plan a demo for your first game or a small project. I understand the marketing need to put your steam page up as soon as possible. But having a demo means that your project is big enough to have one, and two, you increase your scope to deal with a demo.

@bleizius

4 ай бұрын

Should be MVP instead.

A Tetris game without scope creep: ASCII graphics, single level without score or anything. Tetris game with scope creep: any other implementation. Dwarf Fortress without scope creep is just Rogue, which can be simplified even future by using abstract rooms and events, instead of simulating actual level grid with characters on it.

00:25 because i do not have someone to work with, i do just forget to work on it, because i work on a game for 5 days and than i work 5 days on something else...

how do you handle task management? we have a kanban using Jira, but, before, we had all are tasks in it; now we are experimenting having all our tasks in Excel and then move some over for 2 week sprints.

@bitemegames

4 ай бұрын

Video about that coming soon! -M

My 1 year game is over 3 years into development. Finally will have a demo this Summer. I would say scope creep hasn't been massive. It's mostly just the game implementation far exceeded my expectations.

Watching this video while planning to add a unicorn 🦄 for traversal in my open world farming game. 😅 Feels like this is a reminder for me to don’t be scope creep🙏

@Verloren167

4 ай бұрын

On the other hand... a unicorn sounds pretty good

@hamzahgamedev

4 ай бұрын

@@Verloren167 hahaha don’t say that now, i am planning to scrap that feature 😝

@mandisaw

4 ай бұрын

​@@hamzahgamedevA unicorn is just a fancy horse. 🐎 Presumably you already have some kind of basic traversal, so a horse can be as simple as a sprite you toggle on/off to show "mounted". If it's 3d, it's a little trickier (there are good horse/mount assets), but still, doesn't have to be complex if you don't want it to be. Even AAA games just send the horse to "pocket space" 'cause they don't want the player to worry about properly stabling the animal (a lengthy process IRL).

@denkkab1366

4 ай бұрын

Came here to say exactly what @mandisaw was pointing out but was happy to see it was already there. Scope creep is not really about a single thing that you can easily add, but more about bigger things - lets say this would need you to add a whole traversal system that was not originally planned or needed but just because you want to add an unicorn you'd need to do that, then it could be considered scope creep. Or if you suddenly got an idea that you need to add hundreds of variants of mounts just because every npc needs to have a unique looking horse with special traits, then it's a scope creep

@hamzahgamedev

4 ай бұрын

@@mandisaw hmmm, i am making a 3D open world farming game, will see if this is still feasible and in my scope 👍

Super cool :)) 🌼😄

The only part I disagree with is the make a one page GDD part. That's great for setting up the minimal viable product or what the game must be at its core. But the less you plan, the more room you have for randomly adding scope to make it look more appealing. Because unless you're making a game jam game or something to finish within a few months, your game is likely going to have more mechanics than is what on that one page. Personally I write down all my ideas. All of them. And then I add conditions and priorities. Some I mark what to cut from the scope or leave for a potential sequel. Some I'll consider adding if I gain funding or get a team, or if the game is getting done faster than I thought (slim chance though). Some features are considered low priority, which I plan to revisit after high priority mechanics are implimented when I have a better idea of how much more time I should spend on the game. Maybe this isn't recommended because you're basically planning for scope creep, but then you're also cutting the scope in half with no plan to add more than what's needed.

It's like I just wanted a "simple mechanic" where you have two characters and can easily swap their positions :) But one is small, and the other is big :D so you don't want to get stuck in a small cave with the big character after swapping. Therefore, you have to perform a raycast before swapping to check and then add or subtract the Z location because the big guy will spawn halfway into the ground if you take the position from the small guy. Also, there are a lot of problems when jumping or just running and pressing the "swap button," so I decided to impose restrictions: you have to stay on the ground and not move. At this moment, it's only a prototype, so I don't want to add animations, effects, or sounds, but I just added a simple "clap in hands" animation to check, and new problems showed up. Even now, as I write this, it sounds "not that hard," but there are still many programming problems in the meantime.

We're only 15 updates from release, and its hard to not add cool features we think of

My original concept was going to be in one building but now it turned into an open world game…

"Rpg leveling system" the PoE skill tree. Yeah, lol

@6:30 no trains??

A gdd once past the draft stage will free up your brain to better use it's power elsewhere.

It's actually fine if its your dream game...you want to make it the best it could be...but the problem is its a game... Just Imagine that you want to make a full movie alone... Its hard and gonna took you years of your life. And now add with coding and everything...even full movie gonna took you atleast 2-5 years to make. And now 10x time it. Yeah it never finish and you will add everything endlessly. Unless you already have money and a team..you can go for highest quality as possible.. If youre solo? Just make a simple but interesting game! That simple game gonna took you 5 years of your life anyway. Thats the reality of it. Its better to update it on the way..instead of perfecting it in the first version of the game...its a game and not a movie...you can update a game but not a movie.

Shooting the dog :C

Yandere Simulator was a throwback.

guilty :)