The Stages of Game Development

Planning your project

CRC Cards

Your First Milestone: Vertical Slice

In this project you will learn how to keep a sense of the big picture by dividing the game development process into stages and milestones, hit your first major milestone in the development of a game through creating a vertical slice, and learn two planning tools you can use to plot a course to a finished game. 

Milestones

Course Introduction and Planning

Game Jams and Skilling Up

Set your goals and find your community

What is the Design Process? 

Scope

Constraints and Our Theme

Concentric Design

Why Prototype? 

Assets shouldn't be liabilities

Why Agile?

Vertical Slice - Part Two

Refactoring

Sprint Planning

Alpha Build

What is Playtesting?

How To Playtest

Sprint Plan

Review and Redesign

How to Release your Game

Alpha and Beyond

Bonus Content

In this project you will learn about what's ahead for you on your journey to finishing a game! You'll also get a chance to confirm that you have the right knowledge and skills to get the most out of the course, along with links to useful resources that will help you on your way. You will also learn how to equip yourself for your journey, and meet some of your fellow adventurers.

Goal Setting and Community Building

In this project you will learn about using a design process to take your idea from a broad concept into a finished, polished game, the concept of scope will help you achieve your goal of making a game, how constraints can help you create rules to keep you in scope,  and how to use the specific design process, concentric design.

The Design Process

In this project you will find out if your game idea is fun through Prototyping. You will also learn how to make a plan for assets you will use in your game – the sounds, images, models, animations and other resources that make up a game – to avoid nasty surprises later in development. 

Prototyping

Agile Development

Professional teams schedule some time for code cleanup after each milestone so their code stays flexible and easy to work with. This project will give you some tips and general principles for this process, known as refactoring. With your vertical slice done and your code in good shape, this is where you’ll start down the road to alpha.

Writing Better Code

Playtesting is more than just asking people if your game is fun. It's a structured process for collecting useful information about specific parts of your design. In this project you will learn why Playtesting helps you collect useful information on your design and how to execute the entire process. 

Playtesting

In this project you will learn how to release your game, what the next steps are after game release, and additional tips for getting to the end. 

Release your game

Lots of people start games, but it’s surprisingly hard to finish one. This course guides you through the process used by professional game makers to develop their ideas, keep their projects on track and deliver a complete, released game. 

Explore the Unity Asset Store for game toolkits and template assets that will help you quickly design and prototype your games. These resources can accelerate your development process and help you achieve your goal of releasing a polished game!

Design and Publish Your Original Game: Unity USC Games Unlocked

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Scope Check

Resources for Writing a Backlog 

Assignment: Creating a Backlog

Documentation of backlog based on game design document

backlog

raulsanchezmicheas

Documentation of backlog based in my first Game

BackLog of The Equilibrista

Agustin Dominguez

Backlog

unity_ABBB8FB9151B27AEEBC3

have player and has other object idk i am stupiid sorry guys 

safasfafsagj

adaa96

Made a list of all the tasks required for the project, how important they are, how much time they will take, and which I plan to do this week.

Strategy Combat Backlog

Arcane_Creator

Onur Kucukoz

My backlog,The Ss represent priority,the numbers represent the time may spend

Cursed Backpack Backlog

CatshitOne

Scope Check.mp4

Game development is unpredictable, but that doesn't mean you should start without a plan. In this session we'll introduce you to planning tools that you'll use to plot a course to a finished game.

Unity + USC Games Unlocked

Games

A longtime EA engineer, now a producer, describes the difference between writing tasks and writing user stories, and why user stories are a better way to approach game development. “Describing games as tasks is a little like describing a painting by the color of the paint.” 

This is a bit disorganized but gives a few good concrete examples of user stories for a game. 

This has a few more examples of user stories for a game. Note: it’s not necessary to use the “as a player I should be able to” at the beginning of every story.  

In this assignment you’ll create a to-do list for your whole project using a specific format. We’ll see in the next project how this fits into a larger approach to software development called Agile.

Game projects are complicated, and it can be easy to lose track of what you should be working on. Professional teams use dedicated tools like Jira or Asana to keep everyone on track, but even for solo projects you’ll need somewhere to keep your to-do list and track your progress from week to week. It’s a critical part of finishing your game . 

We’ve provided a simple spreadsheet in the form of a Google Sheet that you can copy and use. If you’ve already got an effective system for managing your work, or if you want to try out a different tool like Trello or Basecamp, or even if you prefer physical Post-Its, go ahead. 

Once you’ve chosen how you want to keep track of your work, it’s time to generate an initial list of things to do. Look at the end of this document and in the provided spreadsheet for examples of each step. 

1. Think about the broad areas of things you need to do to make your game. Aim for four to six of these, and don’t put in more than eight total. Create these categories in your task tracking system as categories . In our provided spreadsheet, these would go in the Backlog tab in the leftmost column. 

2. Now think about each area in turn and generate a list of tasks . Aim for 20-30 tasks total, and don’t get too far into the details. 

So far this is how most to-do lists work. For an Agile backlog, though, we’ll take one more step and convert the tasks into user stories, but that will be done in the next project. We do this because we are focusing on the experience – a task is only considered done when the player can actually see the results in the game. 

1. Think about each of the tasks you wrote down in the last step. How does the player actually see this work reflected in the game? Rewrite the task as a short description of what the player can see, do, or interact with. 

2. Finally, go back through and look at your user stories. For each one, think about: 

On a scale of one to three, where one is the most important, how important is this story to achieving the player experience that you wanted? Try to end up with an approximately even number in each priority level. 

How much effort will this task require? This is only a rough estimate – use only the values 2, 4, and 8 hours. If something will take longer than 8 hours, break it down into smaller tasks. Enter the estimate into your system next to the task. 

Part 3: Choose what you’ll work on this week 

Using the priorities you’ve assigned, choose your work for the week. As you choose an item, think about it in greater detail and refine your rough estimate. Make sure the total lines up with how much time you actually have this week. 

For a platformer: player movement, enemy movement, death and respawn 

For a visual novel: dialogue system, character avatars, player inventory 

For a solitaire card game: card tableau, turn system, card animations 

For a platformer: implement running, implement jumping, implement wall-climbing 

For a visual novel: plan player choices in chapter 1, find royalty-free art for character avatars, write Gabriela’s dialogue for chapter 1 

For a solitaire card game: implement card shuffling, write validator function to check legal moves, detect whether game is over 

For a platformer: player can run left and right, player can jump when standing on solid ground, player can cling to walls and move vertically 

For a visual novel: player can experience different endings in Chapter 1, player can see avatar for Gabriela, player can ask Gabriela about the evil wizard 

For a solitaire card game: player gets a new randomized hand each round, player can see card returned to hand after invalid move, player sees Game Over screen when there are no more valid moves 

1. Set up your backlog using the instructions above.

2. Take screenshots and write a description or do a screen capture video of your backlog, explaining how you completed your assignment and upload it to the submission gallery.

3. After you submit, we review and give feedback, via comments in the Gallery, to at least 2 fellow course participants. 

Planning your project

1. Scope Check

2. Resources for Writing a Backlog

3. Assignment: Creating a Backlog

Your submission preview

Complete this Exercise