Lessons learned Whilst Making Games | Game Development Tips and Advice

Game development is a fickle thing, when its good its fantastic and when its bad it really is the pits but each and every game is a learning experience. Here is a few tip and techniques from a like minded game developer:

• Telling all of your friends and family about your latest indie game (work in profess) doesn’t demotivate you (as seems to be the general thought). Instead, they will keep nagging you so much that you will not be able to just give up and start something new.
• Try and read as much as you possibly can about different techniques, algorithms, theory and even other developers case studies. Even if they do not apply to your situation, it will teach you to think differently about your own games and how you approach them.
• You may have experience with the a certain programming language, but making a complete game is a whole new adventure. Assume you know nothing and you won’t disappoint yourself.
• Don’t expect computer memory to be this infinite resource. If you’re doing a lot of crazy loops and calculations on very big collections (lists, arrays, etc) you’re gonna find yourself hitting some trouble.
• Keep a notepad handy. Write down anything that comes to mind when it pops in there. This is especially handy when your are away from your computer and travelling or stuck in the kitchen making dinner.
• There’s so tonnes of different ways you can do things so don’t be afraid to do it your own way.
• Sign up and learn Git (or any other version control) is will be your best friend.
• Get some remote backup such as dropbox, Google drive or any online storage as this will be invalauble.
• Split and re-use. It’s easier to roam through a couple of different methods and fixing once than it is to read through a over a thousand lines of code and then fixing the same piece of code wherever it occurs.
• Use forums and chatroom, people are generally nice and have had the same issues. Also help others once in a while as this can speed up the response rate of getting help yourself.

I hope these have helped and if you have any others please feel free to add them on the comments below.