Time Travel: 2014 - Chapter 388

c388 Hardcore professional analysis (continued)

After the product project is approved, it takes a certain amount of time and preparation to get the development team personnel in place. There is a more important thing to do in this process, which is to sort out the prerequisites and version plans of how to make it.

Framework gameplay: When the project was established, the core gameplay of the game had been determined, and the demo preview also proved the feasibility of the gameplay. But the most important thing about a game is that it is fun, and fun is an experience process, so any core gameplay needs to be further enriched and packaged, and a series of behavioral modules are built around the core gameplay. For example, how the character grows, what content guides and supports the player’s behavior, what the game produces and consumes, etc. all need to be considered. These contents are generally completed by game planners, and the planning of designing these functional contents is generally called system planning.

Style specification: The style specification here mainly includes the setting of the game story background, which determines whether the game’s theme is fantasy, magic, martial arts, or science fiction, and whether the art style is realistic, Q version, 3D, or 2D, and then It further determines the character composition, background structure, story line, etc. in the game world. This alone is not enough. When it comes to specific implementation, the art also needs to further determine the expression methods of resources such as scenes, characters, interfaces, music and sound effects, as well as the production size. For example, how many faces should be limited to scenes and characters, how big should the interface be, etc. These also require the involvement of the program, and evaluation together with the technical solutions and engine framework used, and even some testing needs to be started during this process. The conclusion is verified…”

flyingtiger’s articles are often lengthy.

In addition to introducing the content in the game project planning, he also took the trouble to popularize a lot of content related to game design and development and game launch:

“Design and development are the core and most critical aspects of game development.

The task of this link is to build the product bit by bit with real guns and ammunition.

This link has the following steps.

The first is program design, which means clarifying needs. This need cannot stay at the level of description such as “I want a XXX”. There must be a clear and detailed explanation of the composition, usage, and rules and procedures of XXX.

For example, what is this XXX used for, which functional modules does it contain, and what is the flow chart for using it? Then further refine what each module is used for, whether there are subdivided modules, and what the process is like. Go to Down……

Experienced planners should stand from the perspective of players and users, simulating how players operate and how pages jump. This is also Page-Flow.

Of course, you can also have a planner who is more dedicated to interface design to be responsible for designing Page-Flow, and provide page size, layout and material requirements at the same time. In this way, the art can be produced more conveniently given the interface requirements. In addition to the interface, the requirements for art resources may also include scenes, characters, some icons, music, etc., which are all formulated during the planning and design stage. If the planning is difficult to figure out by yourself, you can also find related production help. design.

At this stage, the test can already start to carry out related work content, that is, participate in the “requirements review”. This is usually initiated by planning, with participation from programmers, art, testing and even operations, and is carried out in the form of group meetings. The goal is to review the design logic, evaluate the effort, and formulate a specific development plan.

Programming coding, art drawing. When the requirements are confirmed and the development plan is arranged, production begins. The main responsibilities here are programming and art. The two processes of coding and drawing are generally carried out at the same time, so they are mentioned together. Let’s talk about the program first. Except for stand-alone games, almost all games currently need to be connected to the Internet. That is to say, program development must be divided into at least two modules: client and server, commonly known as front-end and back-end. The front-end is mainly responsible for performance, and the back-end is mainly responsible for calculation. Of course, some games will also be placed on the front end for calculation, and the back end will receive the calculation process and results for re-verification. If your game only has front-end calculations, it can be easily cracked and used by cheats to gain rewards, etc., which greatly affects the life of the game. Click to introduce the structure of game production. The art production process is also relatively long, especially for 3D resources. You must first draw the original painting and then model it, which requires at least two artists. Therefore, a large number of art resources will also be outsourced, including music, animation, icons, etc. When outsourcing, you must pay attention. In addition to stating the art requirements, you must also clarify the production and acceptance standards, and even have some commercial confidentiality agreements. Otherwise, if the other party is not satisfied after delivery, the back-and-forth communication and wrangling will be worse than painting it yourself.

At this time, the test should also start its own work preparation at the same time, analyze documents, and write test cases. For specific methods, please refer to How to Write Test Cases. After the program development is completed, acceptance testing can be started (generally also called single-server testing). The goal is to check the completion of program development and ensure the realization of requirements. There are many types of single-server testing, including program self-testing, or planning or testing for acceptance*. In most cases, when the acceptance program is developed, the art resources have not yet been completed. At this time, it is best to have some temporary resources to replace them, rather than waiting until the art resources are in place before acceptance. Because after the single server is accepted, the program code will inevitably be adjusted, and even secondary development will be required. When the test is accepted on a single server, you can also compare it with the test cases you wrote yourself, and modify the inconsistencies in the test cases according to the implementation of the program.

Configure joint debugging. When the program coding has been perfected, the art resources have been produced, and the planning requirements have been basically realized, it cannot be called completed at this time because these materials have not been well organized. This requires planning to arrange the art resources in the game in the form of configuration tables or configuration files, such as which NPCs and monsters to place in which scenes, and to fill in a large amount of text dialogue, explanatory text, numerical formulas, etc. When the planning completes all configurations, this function will be considered to have basic and complete playability, and then the test will be notified. The most important and workload-heavy part of functional testing is about to begin: integration testing.

First of all, the test must confirm with the planning and program the version environment of the content to be tested, and then execute it one by one according to the previously written test cases, record the process and results, and submit the problems found. The specific methods can be viewed Test workflow. The goal is to comprehensively verify the correctness of the functional logic, check the implementation details, and the impact with other system functions. After discovering the problem, describe it clearly, submit it to the relevant planning and procedures for repair, and then perform regression testing after repair. Click to see how to log and submit a bug.

Released online. When all the functions in the version are almost completed, you can go online to meet players. Wait a minute here, there are still some things that have not been done: first, the operator needs to experience the game, and then put forward some suggestions and needs for operational activities. Secondly, the launch of mobile games requires channel apps for promotion, such as Appstore, App Store, WeChat, etc. This requires access to the SDK of these channels, so that Apple accounts, QQ, WeChat, etc. can be used to log in and recharge within the game. Even add friends. If your game is to be released through all channels, then the SDK of each channel must be connected, so that the final packaged game app is actually at least one for each channel (some channels have subdivisions, so there is more than one) , these are collectively called channel packages. Channel packages are different from each other, because the account systems connected, the recharge process are different, and some even require changing the icon, adding a channel logo, etc. And even after it goes online, the product will inevitably have some problems. Some problems are explained vaguely by players and need to be confirmed and reproduced on the intranet. All of this, we boil it down to release testing first.

Release testing includes a lot of content, such as making a channel package checklist, following up on external network issues, and even gathering everyone in the project team to experience the game, check for deficiencies, and hold a bug-rush competition. The goal is to verify the modified content before going online, and finally quickly verify the game as a whole, follow up on online issues in real time, and be prepared to deal with unexpected problems…”

The whole article is popular science because it is not detailed.

Listing all the process modules involved in game development is nothing more than this.

If you can understand these modules and links in game development, if you encounter project problems in the future, the product will not be successfully launched.

Developers can think about the problem holistically while knowing the entire process.

Analyze which link and which work was not done well?

Is there a problem with the product direction? Is it because there was no strict review when the project was established? Is it insufficient market research?

Is there a problem during the development stage? Is it a lack of specific developer capabilities? Or is the version target unclear when doing version planning, and the workload estimate deviates too much?

If there are many online problems, is it because the quality control during the development stage is not in place? Or is the later adjustment too random?

In short, articles like this are still useful in Lin Hui’s opinion.

With more articles like this, people might become more curious about the world of programmers.

However, Lin Hui looked at the data of flyingtiger’s article and found that it only received a few hundred views.

It is unknown whether there is any moisture in this data.

Well, as expected, the hard-core popular science is that grandma doesn’t care for uncle and doesn’t love him.

This flying tiger seems to be very aware of this.

Although this person posts a lot of long and hard-core science popularization in the forum.

However, Lin Hui felt that this person still preferred to post analytical articles.

Lin Hui read a few articles, and I have to say that these analysis articles by this person were quite professional and in-depth, and gave Lin Hui a pretty good impression.