Basic Game Development Know-How (Design — Create — Build)
By: Roelean Joy S. Maestrecampo BSIT-3B
CJ. Big Smoke. Sweet. Ryder. Los Santos. Ganton. Grove Street Families. San Fierro. Las Venturas.
Does it ring a bell already? Nope? If you have played Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, you’re probably familiar with what I had listed above. An action-adventure video game developed by Rockstar North and was published by Rockstar Games. It was released in 2004. It is the seventh title in the Grand Theft Auto series, a sequel to Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.
It has an open, non-linear environment which allows players to explore and choose how they wish to play the game. Although storyline missions are necessary to progress through the game and unlock certain cities and content, they are not required as players can complete them at their own leisure. When not taking on a storyline mission, players can free-roam and look around the cities of San Andreas. It can be played on different platforms, from PS2 to Microsoft Windows to Xbox and to our mobile phones. I know, I’m too outdated since the recent one now is GTA V (rumored, there is GTA VI), but GTA SA was indeed a time killing or should I say a “literally killing game” that I enjoyed. Hesoyam, baguvix, fullclip, aezakmi, sjmahpe those are some of the cheats that I frequently use whenever I’m playing. Some says, using cheats only lessen the thrill while playing and it changes the gaming experience. I have to agree, but it does make the game easier though, and I’m not really a “gamer” so apologies my dear friends. Though the game was developed 13 years ago, the 3D graphics is really good.
Luckily, we were able to be introduced with Game Development. Not only that I was able to acquire knowledge on how games are developed but it made me appreciate game developers even more, the games we enjoyed (and sometimes frustrates us) during our leisure time are all possible because of them
“But how are games really made?”
That’s the first thing that crosses my mind, back when I still had no idea on how game development works. Here’s a glimpse of how games are made.
Game development involves three phases. First phase is DESIGN which defines the game. This phase contains GDD (Game Design Document), a living design document created by the development team as result of collaboration between their designers, artists and programmers.
This phase includes the storyline (Game’s story) of the game which I think is necessary to give the players a reason to keep on playing. In some cases, a good and unique storyline makes the game more better even if the graphics isn’t that superb.
Concept art is included as well, it is the look and feel of the game. It visualizes how the game will look, from the characters to different environment and to every single detail that is included. It is like a storyboard for a movie, the game will look like a total mess without it.
Gameplay mechanics is the interaction of the player and game elements. It gives the player different options on what to do with the character. That is what makes the game unique from other games. No one is amused in playing different games with similar gameplay mechanics, right?
Assets lists to build, development schedule and development tools are included in phase one too.
Second phase is CREATE which brings the game to life. If concept art from phase one visualizes how the entire game will look, this phase gives life to it. Different 2D and 3D tools can be used, some of which are surely familiar to everyone.
Now, we’re down to the final phase which is BUILD, it assembles everything that the developers had created. Self explanatory, do I need to elaborate more? Just kidding! This is where the listed development tools in phase one takes place. We’re introduced with different game engines, two of those are Godot and Unreal which we’re able to try on. The game engine used in GTA SA is RenderWare.
This phase has four sub-processes, first is assemble that brings the building blocks created into the game engine to finally start creating the game. Next is build levels that puts together the pieces created for an engaging game world. Then we have script gameplay that turns the game into an enjoyable one. Last but not the least is optimize and test, this is probably the best and frustrating part for the developers. Best because their game is finally done and frustrating because they have to play-test it over and over again to make sure it’s not only fun but to find out what’s broken (definitely not your heart), then optimize the game to make sure it runs smoothly on different platforms.
Now, we know how games are developed (have we, really?). A game may be simple or complex, but one thing is certain, developing a game isn’t that easy. Nobody said it was easy. No one said it would be that hard.
