Analyze Game Structure
Analyzing the structure of the game, before its creation and development, will be the backbone of the project. Hours of intense thinking, changes and undo’s, corrections and moments of cluelessness. That is the life of videogame creators. Endless talks within the team, figuring out what the next step is.
Performing this analysis comprises emancipating the sensations you feel playing the game, acknowledge the innovations, appreciating the graphics and the soundtrack of the game … All of these comprise what is the game’s ultimate test. For that reason, the experts say that a game without structure or without a story that “addictive” cannot be released to the market.
There is a risk of receiving negative comments from gamers and specialized magazines, which can reduce months of work to ash. Public opinion is becoming increasingly decisive. A game, video game or application will be popular based on contrasted expert opinions.
To avoid catastrophic outcomes, game localizers have adopted the habit of releasing free demos. It provides further directions, whether to confirm the main ideas or to modify the contents, graphics, sounds, music…… On one hand, it unlocks the consumer’s preliminary feedback without finishing the game.
On the other hand, it reveals trends to the competition that can later adjust their own productions without taking any risk.
The structure of a video game is comprised of:
In this phase, graphics, sound system, text and all basic systems are initiated. It is advisable to save memory storage, destined for the objects that intervene in the game or to create data structures. The loading of sounds, images and all resources also start. In addition, the initial character positions are established, the scores are loaded from the files, and so on.
Here we have a loop, where all of the action in the game takes place. It is divided into three main phases. The cycle ends when the player loses, reaches the end of the game, or voluntarily decides to quit by pressing the appropriate key or mouse click.
The first part of the cycle is the entry, where the player, depending to the context makes the decision to press a key, click with the mouse, or even move a joystick in a certain direction.
From then on, you have the logical part of the cycle, where the information recieved is processed and the action that matches the player’s movement is activated. Network data communication, artificial intelligence and physics work.
The action triggered by the player’s movement, which has been processed, then release the appropriate graphics.
All images, sounds, music, etc. are removed from the memory. All the systems that were opened in the initialization are now shut down. And the scores are saved on a file. When the score is saved, the player can start the game from the beginning or from his last score.
