Getting grip on the learning process

[anonymous_user_fda9afbd1 (anonymous_user_fda9afbd)]

For me, create the menu arrives near from the end of the development. You should first have a strong protocol, so, even a poor UI is fine, until the gameplay itself is fun.
For my part, I usually start with the character’s skeleton and the animations, if you develop a game focus on a main character (of course). And then, I try to create the gameplay in itself with all the interactions with objects and the world, but I don’t polish it for now. I just want to have something which works. And then, comes level design…

But it’s just my way of working, when I want to develop a game’s prototype/experience alone.

Ok, this is my approach as well. I like to play with all different processes to get a feeling of the gameplay and then at a later moment worry about the polishing part.

I use MS Project to plan out project development phases and MS Word to define details about certain Project tasks. The more complex your game is, the harder and more important it will be to have a solid project plan. With a more complex project, you have more interaction between systems which means that if you want to work on a specific system, other systems must be at some base level of functionality. For example, an Item system is not much use if you do not have an Inventory and UI to manage them. Another…a weapons ability to Shoot is rather pointless if you are not able to equip the weapon and your Character does not know how to shoot it.

I believe you can take 2 approaches here:

1. You can choose something with lots of dependencies between systems in order to expose you to many pieces of Unreal (but don’t expect to make much progress or finish a “game”)
2. Scale your project down so that you can focus on individual game play mechanics, which reduces the number of passes you will need on secondary systems.

An organized Project plan allows you to develop pieces more rapidly as the requirements have been defined at the front of a project pass.

The worry I still have, and thats because I can not yet wrap my mind around the workflow completely, is that once I have for example the weapons mechanics working how to get the weapon selection menu working on top of that. It seems so much thinking how to implement and connect all the difference mechanics together and get them all working. I have no clue yet from where to start when I got the weapons working and add the weapon selection menu on top. But I think this will come in time with a lot of practice.

If it’s a smaller project, apps like trello is a must have. Or hacknplan (from a member of this forum) is really really great too.

Ok thanks, will have a look into them.