the Official Hero Interactive Blog

As promised, today I’ll be sharing a bit more about my internship here. The last entry was about the last arc of the development process, so today I’ll talk about the process of getting started. It’s not as easy as you think, but it is one of the more fun parts of the development. For me, at least.

Planning   It’s important to have a pretty solid idea of what the game will be like before you start coding. Sure, you will need to change some features, but you should still have a clear idea of the game going in. You need to set up the code with most of your features in mind, otherwise adding features could mean rewriting a bunch of code. You’ll also want to have a good idea of how you’ll set up the code, which means knowing what variables and functions you need, and what classes they’ll need to be in.

Time  Depending on your situation, this might not be an issue. If you’re in it for fun, you’ve all the time you want. If you’re trying to make a profit, either as a freelance developer or as part of a company, time is very much an issue. It doesn’t matter how great your idea is if you can’t afford to finish it.

Skill  This also affects your time constraints, so it’s important to go in with realistic expectations of yourself. Get some practice on smaller projects before attempting something huge.

Is it fun?  When brainstorming a game it’s easy to get caught up in the thought of trying to be innovative and unique.  But the game should be fun too. Always try to make a unique game, but remember the players come for the fun.

As promised, I’ll be sharing some of what I learned here. Today focuses mostly on the play testing/ wrap up phase.

Always Almost Done  I was surprised how long games can be in the “almost done” or polishing phase. You can add a couple features, do some tweaking, and of course, squishing the dreaded bugs.

Playtest, playtest, playtest!  It’s not just for noticing bugs. Feedback from someone who hasn’t been watching the game throughout the development process is very valuable. For one thing, you get to see how someone who doesn’t know all the little tricks and techniques of the game will react. Things that could have been apparent to the designers are not always apparent to the player.

 Knowing When to Listen  Player feedback is valuable, but you can’t please everyone. Sometimes playtesters won’t be in your main target demographic, and sometimes they might not realize what your vision for the game is. On the other hand, something you meant as a challenge might just be too frustrating for most players.

More in later entries.

While we’re waiting for BTA to be released, check out this sweet fan art! CrobeSama sent it to us and we were rather impressed! Do you have any BTA or other HI fan art that you’d like to send us? Send it to steph@herointeractive.com and it could wind up on the blog or in the newsletter!

For those of you who celebrate the holiday, we at Hero Interactive wish you a very happy holiday! And to everybody else, we wish you an awesome weekend!

Ugh!  I keep missing these holidays!  I’m sorry if you’re Irish and didn’t get the recognition you deserve!

Eric, our lead developer!  Hope you have a super great day, Eric! Here he is enjoying a game of Spiderball.

It’s been a very fun and interesting year for us here at Hero Interactive.  It’s hard to believe that 2009 is already on its way out and that we’re about to embrace a whole NEW year!  Wow.

2010 has lots of VERY cool VERY big things in store so please stick around and continue being patient because it’s really going to pay off!

HAPPY NEW YEAR, everybody!

P.S. Your fan art contest submissions are due tonight…there aren’t very many so far so you could still win!

P.P.S. What’s your new year’s resolution?

Well, yesterday it was relatively warm out.  It was incredibly blustery and snowed a little, but nothing terrible.  Then this morning came…snow plows were out at, like, 4 a.m. or something crazy and the world was white. And we were sitting here talking about how awesome it was that we hadn’t had any snow yet! I suppose the joke’s on us.  Welcome, winter…I guess.

So, as the office/community manager I do lots of random things around here.  That includes making sure that our office is appropriately festive at this time of year!  Check out a bit of my handy work.

Pretty much the second that Thanksgiving was over I had a holiday tree up in the office.

And a couple of weeks ago I made these pretty stockings to hang (okay, all I did was write our names on them) and a few days ago we even drew names for Secret Santas!

I’m actually in the process of cutting out lots of cool snowflakes to hang around the office.  And we haven’t had a single flake of actual snow yet!

Hey everybody.  I don’t know what all this “The cake is a lie” stuff is regarding my birthday cake, but here’s what’s left of the delicious oreo ice cream cake that Jared got me!

Today is Steph’s (MY!) birthday!  Hooray for another year!  Anybody wanna make me a cake?

For those of you who celebrate it, Happy Thanksgiving!  Go eat and get good and fat.  Happy holiday season to everyone!