What is YOUR process for making a game? What do you tackle first/last? etc.

In the past whenever I made games I would, come up with the premise of what sounded like a cool story line, have a few key scenes in my head, and jump into rpg maker making the maps, the events, AND the actual story as I went along, no surprise i never finished a game.

This time I've been spending the last 2-3 months just writing the back story & story Outline, I'm almost done with the basic outline and then on going to do a detailed outline that basically summarizes the entire plot at each point in full. I hired an artist to do the cover artwork which he completed and keeps me motivated.

Before I got deep into the writing phase when I had the premise I took care of all the scripts I need for this game save for 2, I doubt want to see the "new shiny script" and try to shove it into my game and write story around it, this way the only scripts I will take are more efficient versions of the ones I have.

My next phase after the detailed outline is completing the character designs in the generator. Then getting busts done, and other things saving actually making the game and mapping for the end, tight after animations which I hate


So:
Story premise (done)
Scripts (done)
Cover Artwork (done)
Back Story (80% done)
Basic Outline (85% done)
Detailed outline
Character gen
Artwork, being outsourced
Animations
Mapping
actual game making


What about everyone else?

My process goes something like this:

• Getting the initial game idea
• Writing the story outline
  
• Drawing character concepts
• Drawing environment and item concepts
• Creating a basic prototype to get something playable quickly that has the main gameplay mechanics
• Writing full story script
• Level design/mapping
• Menu design and other GUI things
• Scripting/Events
• Drawing polished artwork to replace the placeholder art
• Testing, fixing, testing, fixing... until it works and looks nice.

And I get feedback from people along the way. :kaohi:

My flow goes like this:

First phase: Draft board
> Drafting game mechanic (What I want the game to have)
> Drafting possible game database (rough sketches. Like this character will have skill A that does X)
> Drafting story (if there's any)
> Basically drafting everything I thought for my game.
> If my game is including a story, I will not dev the game until I finished the story draft from beginning to end.

Second phase: Implementation
(After draft is done, my vision is (more) clear on how my game is going to be)
> Build the game system (scripting)
> Build the game database (skills, animation, animation sequence, etc)
> Blackbox testing (i.e, test if all the system works and behave correctly)

Third phase: Prototyping
(After system works correctly)
> Creating a stage for my game. Create one act of story, create maps, create encounters, play ...
> Evaluating. This is really the game I want to make?
> Yes? Continue
> No? Back to either first phase or second phase, depends on the need.
> This, in my opinion the most important part, at least for me.

Fourth phase: Releasing demo
(After I'm satisfied with the game)
> Rebalancing the difficulty
> Cleaning up the mess
> Build up the entire game to make it appropriate for a demo.
> Depends on the state of the game. It could be either closed alpha/beta (only friends who could play my game) or open beta (everyone). It will be closed if I'm not ready to get embarrassed yet.

Fifth phase: Create the entire game
(Continue to dev the game while waiting for the feedback)
> Basically create the rest of the game
> If there're some feedbacks from the demo, I will try to evaluate them.
> I will be focusing on finishing the game.
> At this point, after I finish this phase I could either release a finished product, or delayed it for the last phase.

Sixth phase: Polishing / Maintaining.
> Adding some flavours or QoL.
> Re-evaluate the entire game balance.
> Maybe, replace some placeholder graphics.
> This phase is never ending

Miscellaneous tasks like resourcing I do it anytime. Not bound by the phase. If I somehow want to have a certain resource at certain point, I seek for it.

There are actually several recent threads covering this that you might want to read through as they give a lot of advice and opinion. Just browse through this section of the forum.

Bumped this post. Note: if this is considered as necropost, feel free to delete it.

Anyway,
I don't exactly follow the rules and guidelines, but usually I plan what I'd like to achieve in a week: either storyline, game mechanics, asset-making, or a little bit of everything. If you know something about agile/scrum, you know what I mean.
Once something is done, I record the progress in a logbook so I can track down the progress while keeping in track with the project and make some considerations should random ideas and/or feedback appear. You'll understand why when you get one in the middle of project with set goals.

Also, my pattern is not that fixed when it comes to game development stuffs since I deem this as hobby, so take my words with a grain of salt.

I start with the basic idea of the game''s plot, then proceed with identifying the systems that I will need to write and write them, occasionally making database entries needed to test my systems, then I proceed with database making and working on the map and story.

Systems adjustment also come along during the map and story making as I continuously test the game every so often. Usually I test after I add a new system, or finish a few cutscene parts so that I can adjust right away if needed

I work with checklists.
Do I need to implement a feature? I break down the tasks into a checklist of their own. Found bugs when playtesting? In the checklist they go.

Not only crossing off items feels amazing, it also reminds me of things I have already done :D

This looks good, mostly. I'm a little confused by some points. I think "scripts" refers to coding, not the script of the story (since this is a video game and not a movie). But then there's nothing after "Detailed outline" that suggests any kind of writing in a completed form. I definitely recommend trying to have everything written down. I found that insanely helpful for my game, even though I would change words and actions here and there.

There's also no mention of prototyping the combat (or other major gameplay components). I generally figure that out as much as possible in pre-production and then implement and tune in production, then have playtester feedback for further tuning.

My process is like:
1-Story idea, (I imagine everything including game mechanics, and concept art.)
I do all this at the same time:
2-Write the dialogues.
4-Make art, character, sprite, items, etc.
5-Star to make the game, events, etc.
Then I finished:
6-Think about the story again, fix what need to be fixing. (dialogues, etc)
7-Continue making the game.
8-Finish the game, test the game, again and again.
9-Release the game

Ooh this sounds fun. Here's my process and I wish I was joking when I wrote this:

Before I start making a game:

• Have a Lucid Dream. I'll sit on it for a week and if I like it enough, I'll make it into a game.

All of my games are based on my dreams. There's only one exception. But for that game.

• Think of a game I want to play. Usually a dating sim...or Harvest Moon inspired.
• Think of the themes I want to tackle. I usually start with determining what conflict I want.
• Do I like the main protagonist and main antagonist enough?
• Discuss with friends about said idea.
• Get invested as you and your friends talk about their set beliefs, start debates and so on.
• Read some works with almost same theme and a ton of research. Usually history books.
• Write basic outline.
• Realize it's not a dating/farming sim anymore. Weep. Someday you'll make that one dating sim/farming sim. Someday...

Game Dev Related Stuff Begins:

• Create a character outline. How many party members at max?
• Write all the basic idea of the skills.
• Create a world map.
• Write down all the areas you want and if you want puzzles/hazards.
• Create enemy list. Determine how many enemies you want.
• How brutal do I want this game to be? Permadeath? You got it.
• Database and Map at the same time.
• Finish.
• Playtest.
• Is the gameplay fitting of the themes of the game? If Yes, proceed. If No, start over.
• Is it fun? If Yes, proceed. If No, start over.
• Now to make the rest of the game.

These all happen at the same time:
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LOOP:

• Start writing.
• Stress out and curse your severe lack of English vocabulary to perfectly articulate the feels.
• Send it over to your editors.
• Spend 7 hours rewriting a segment of the script that you feel is the weakest.
• Ask all your friends to read it. If they don't understand the intent, do over and completely change.
  
• After that hell is over, continue with game.

LOOP:

• Make graphics.
• Stress out and curse your weaksauce technical mastery and patience to perfectly articulate the feels.
  
• Ask all your art friends for advice on anatomy and if the character is appealing enough.
• Curse as you realize that you have to redraw the entire thing.
• Sleep on it and do over. Your arm starts hurting.
• Use placeholders as you dread.
• This hell is never over, continue with game.

LOOP:

• Find Music and Sound Effects.
• Spend hours finding that one perfect track.
• Spend some time asking help from your friend to clean up your sound effect recordings.
• Curse your inability to speak Japanese that you can't commission awesome artists like Rigel Theatre or Sakuyzo or tachi.
• Commission this one good composer+musician
• After that hell is over, continue with game...until you realize you're missing some stuff. But that's ok.
• Play custom tracks on loop while working on said game.

LOOP:

• Struggle with making cutscenes.
• Curse your inability to make better tools just so you can avoid everything from blinking.
• Cry as you figure out why your logic isn't working only to find out you forgot to turn on a plugin after some testing or a switch wasn't activated or the plugin wasn't working at all.
• Repeat.

LOOP:

• Polish
• Get sick of working on the thing.

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Potential Game Breakers:

• Work just called. Deadlines came in. You haven't found the time to work on said game.
• Realize that you're not good enough for this project so it's on indefinite hiatus.
• Have an existential crisis.
• The software you are using broke or updated and has made your game virtually unusable as the back end changed drastically. No it's not RPG Maker.
• Dropbox randomly deleting your files because of that one update and spend hours trying to get it all back.
• Your HDD decides to peace out.

If it gets done somehow:

• It's not what I envisioned it to be. What a failure.
• I'm never releasing it. It's still really bad.
  
• Whatever.
• I hope it's good enough.
• I made it in 1hr ~ 72 hours. I'm happy all things considered.

I am a very story/character/world based developer as I come from a writing background rather than a programming background. Usually I start with a few characters that would work as heroes and villains and a few places that would be suitable as dungeons and cities. I then sketch out at least one dungeon and city in rpgmaker in order to playtest that the basic layout is fun and engaging. If I feel that the project is worth persuing I start to sketch up the heroes and villains, balancing their abilities and try out a few battles. All this is done in the default engine with the default assets and abilities (many modified if I have a specific idea I want to test).

The next step is taking about a week to design everything and put it down in a notebook, as well as researching and testing any plugins and scripts that I may need to fulfil my vision. The writing of the overall story usually does not come until about halfway through the project and I have a good selection of settings and characters.

This gave me the wiggles.