something i dont think people really get is that when development of a game is say, 80% finished you don't have 80% of a game, you have 0% of a game and 80% of the disparate parts that would make up a game if they were actually 100% done and put together - ThreadSky

eniko.bsky.social • 379 days ago

something i dont think people really get is that when development of a game is say, 80% finished you don't have 80% of a game, you have 0% of a game and 80% of the disparate parts that would make up a game if they were actually 100% done and put together

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jamesmunns.com•378 days ago

Is this: "80% of parts, 0% of integration is still 0% product", or "80% of parts, 80% of integration is still 0% product"?

As someone who knows nothing about gamedev, I wasn't sure if this was typical "integration is everything", or much more specific "the last bit of polish/tuning is everything"

eniko.bsky.social•378 days ago

integration. when i say 0% of a game i mean 0% of a game as finished games are experienced. having all the disparate parts of a game but disconnected is not, experientially, at all like playing a game. even if you can access some of them together, you can't access most of them together in context

taconite.bsky.social•378 days ago

I usually split gamedev into two: systems and content. Systems aren't a game without content, and any content made before the systems are finalized may be thrown out if the systems change

eniko.bsky.social•378 days ago

even if you have both systems and content, there may be no* way to experience said content because it hasn't been integrated into the final product

*obviously you can make it so said content can be experienced but that's additional work that has to be done first

marcsh.bsky.social•378 days ago

Yeah

Find the fun is our (and Id guess others) standin for saying that

gargaj.umlaut.hu•378 days ago

"80% finished" means "the code is mostly there, but there's (more than) half the content-missing, some features still suck, and there will be at least 2 complete redesigns of the entire UI at some point".

Basically the 90-90 rule.

eniko.bsky.social•378 days ago

That's also true but it's not what I'm talking about here. A game can be 80% finished, with most of the content, code, etc almost done, but be in pieces like an Ikea flat pack, with virtually no way to experience any of the "mostly done" disparate parts in their appropriate context

gargaj.umlaut.hu•378 days ago

Mmm, I admit I've rarely experienced that, unless you mean "the UI is missing so you have to use console/ImGui to use it", or that parts of the game are working but they don't "gel" yet / don't feel great yet.

nullstar.bsky.social•378 days ago

I finished the first part of Bondage Mermaids just now, and before I even started on the first part, I probably made 60+% of the game. Game development is a weird beast where it feels like you make a ton of stuff and zero progress and then things are starting to fall into place faster and faster.

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