Five traps that can be missed during development, try this

At the conference held on the 2nd day of the BIC Festival 2022, the Indie Game Development and Publisher Nicalis, the Associate Producer, shared the mistakes of the development process as they collaborated with many developers on the podium and collaborated with many developers..

Along with the various examples that have been produced for the past three years in Nicalis, Baek Jun-yeol's cooperative producer has also explained how Nicalis has collaborated with numerous developers and has established solutions.

There are five points that can be overlooked during the game development process he introduced on this day. The first is the vicious cycle of difficulty adjustment, and if the difficulty devised in the repetitive level design process is so familiar, he pointed out that the game will be designed more and more difficult.

The producer of Baek Jun-yeol said, For not only developers but also testers, if the testing process is repeated and becomes more familiar with certain difficulty, it makes the game more difficult, and at the time of release, a game is almost impossible to clear. There are a lot.

In addition, users may feel difficult even if they are designed unfairly the systemic aspects of the game, such as the operation system. For example, in a 2D platformer game, a system that slides in the forward slightly after landing, provides room for users to determine that it is not reasonable because it cannot control it.

To overcome this difficulty problem, Baek Jun-yeol producer advised that it is most important to keep the line that users can understand, and that even after developing the system, it is good to appeal to users to understand the system through tutorials. In addition, it was recommended to conduct a play test for groups with various backgrounds in order to prevent difficulty in the repetitive level design process.

The second point is to be wary of investing most of the development time only in one element of the game. The game is a product that is a product that combines various elements and exemplifies comprehensive experiences, and Baek Jun-yeol's explanation is that it is easy to be ignored by users unless the other part is excellent and the rest does not support it.

He continued this explanation as an example of a puzzle game developed by Nicalis. In the early stages of the game development, he focused only on gameplay that combined the gameplay of puzzles and Daejeon action, so he could not spend much time on the visual side. In the end, he explained that in order to release the final game, he developed arts from the beginning to spend additional costs and time.

The third point is that it is related to the 'sound design', and it is necessary to develop the sound design during the overall development period and develop the development. It also requires time to apply audio mixes for the game, and all the elements of the game, such as art, animation, and visual effect coding, may affect sound application.

Baek Jun-yeol, a producer, advised, Most developers may start making sound with only a month to two months of development period. did. In addition, he is likely to change various elements such as art and animation in the development process. If the changes are systematically summarized, he can also quickly and modify the linked sound.

In particular, unlike other factors that can check the error immediately with the eyes, sound, not visual information, is one of the hardest things to find a bug in the QA process. For the tester, it's hard to see if a certain sound is intentionally entered or not. To prevent this, you can create a database of sound files applied to build and deliver it to the tester.

Next, the producer of Baek Jun-yeol encouraged the game to prepare the localization of the game in advance. Even words that have the same meaning are different in length for each language, and in this case, if the UI is limited, it is difficult to apply. In this context, it is important to design an active UI so that the length of the word can be applied freely, and it is recommended to use font strings instead of art images of the game.

In addition, the producer of Baek Jun-yeol added that it is good to organize all the strings in the game as a database to make the localization process more comfortable. If it is DB, you can check what the translator needs to be translated at a glance, as well as to proceed without complicated when applying other languages to the game later.

He said, Even if you don't plan to put a lot of languages in the game, it is important to prepare localization, he said. If it looks broken, there is a possibility of harming the entire game experience, so be careful.

Lastly, the producer of Baek Jun-yeol cited the fact that he did not postpone the release date frequently. Of course, it is not easy to predict the schedule because the game development schedule is always changed, but if you postpone the release date frequently, you can plant bad images for users.

So I don't rush the announcement of the release date, but I want to advise you to give carefully to the announcement, he said. It is ideal to present.

Lastly, he said, When I encountered the above issues as I developed the development, I hope you can save time and resources in the development process while trying a simple solution explained today. I hope the information prepared today will be helpful. The announcement was finished.