The ‘Extra’ Stuff

I’m about to release my first fully solo game on xbox indies.  I’ve done three Ludum Dare games now but a real commercial product is a bit more difficult.

It really has given me as a programmer more appreciation for the other disciplines.  Designing a logo and box art is really tough, as is music, as is UI design.

I’d estimate I spent about ten to twenty percent of the development time on the actual “game”.  The systems and code that move and cast spells and handle buying stuff and researching and making.  The rest was all the stuff I usually push off onto someone else.  Very important stuff, but stuff I am not yet good at.

I completely failed in two areas.  The logo and music I had to get help on.  My efforts on both were so incredibly bad.  For music I ended up buying some royalty free classics.  For the logo I spent several days researching and trying new ideas and running them by IRC people.

All of the advice was contradictory.  You get a lot of design sites that have rules like “never use outlining” or never do shiny stuff, or gradients are unprofessional.  Then I look at games that sell and they have all of those things.  I think this is one case where going out and doing research actually left me worse off than when I had started.  Art and design are so subjective that I can understand why there are no hard & fast rules to follow.