How we Manage Making our Games

[@cftpafan]

The Trello board is so valuable, I’ve started using one lately and it makes everything feel way more concrete and actionable

[@rmt3589]

Just looked up, then downloaded Trello, due to this comment. Thank you. The ones I could find had limited items for free, and I have literally $0 budget. (Until I get on disability)

[@Martinit0]

4@@rmt3589 How did you "download" Trello? It's a web-based cloud Kanban (I use it too).

[@sealsharp]

Tools are easy to over- and underemphasize, imo. Adding a new tool for organzing or managing is a tempting choice because it feels like progress that it may not be. In the past i've seen devs waste time and energy on forums, websites, discords, forums, teamspeak servers. Tools that no one uses are just as useless as not having them. That's why it is important to find tools, that have very little friction while creating a benefit. If something is annoying, it won't be used. The friction part is what i learned when my employer got certified to work according to norms for the pharma industry and that enforced a lot of structure. You can only get people to follow lots of new rules and procedures when doing it the right way is both simple and beneficial for the individual. Ain't that easy to get that right. As a database of knowledge i've worked based on file documents ( open office ) web-documents ( google docs ) and wiki style ( notion and sharepoint ). I prefer the wiki style as software does not really fit the top down structure of a document and a wiki is easier to search than a document structure. Personally, i think notion is "good" and better than a lot of the competition which does not mean it's perfect. Some handling of things in notion is borderline retarded. For task boards i adopted two terms from the world of enforced project management norms, which are "defintion of ready" and "definition of done". The defintion of ready are the requirements for a task to be started, because not all the tasks in a taskboard are equal, they exist in a hierachy of dependencies. Most task boards made for software do have the ability to reference dependencies between task items. Notion has a limited sub-items system, so in that case i use two columns for undone tasks: Tasks that can be started and tasks that can not yet be started. And of course, it only works if you include the requirements in the tasks. The "definition of done" if what you assume. What needs to be done to put it from "working on it" to "test this". For code documentation i use code, just like at work. The harder part to organize right was components in the editor. I'm heavily using NaughtyAttributes to get comfortably usable components ( it's Odin Inspector for broke people, lol ) and i added an editor attribute that shows my code documentation text in Unity, which is a short summary what everything does.

[@ytmiva2]

Great useful video as always! One thing I learned from working as a software developer in many different companies using the Agile method is that retrospectives are super important. So I assume that's what your weekly meetings are like. In the team that performed the best that I worked in we spent 2 to 3 hours every 2 weeks. It really helps clear a lot of things and solve underlying problems people have but don't always want to bring up. It really brings the team together and makes it more efficient in return. It sounds like a lot of time spent 'not working' but it pays off in motivation and efficiency. I hope other companies also use this method.

[@SPAC3R4IDRGAMES]

Thank you for packing so much information in every video! I think the management and business side of game dev gets overlooked and doesn't have as many informational videos as other aspects of game dev. So thank you for sharing your experience with us!

[@Martinit0]

Even as a solo dev there are way more "management" tasks to do than one would think: 0. Financial planning (aka business plan) 1. Register a company 1.1 Find a company name that doesn't clash with existing names 2. Tax registration (and then recurring tax reporting, depending on country), incl. talking to your accountant 3. Trademark registration (obv. requires prior research and coming up with a name) 4. Set up homepage (big one) 5. Legal docs: EULA and Privacy Policy 6. Finding a bank and opening bank account 7. Insurances (health, liability, IT security etc) 8. Software licenses (not everything is free) - includes figuring out which software to use for what (wiki, business docs, code repo, backup, kanban/collab etc.)

[@impulsegamestudios]

Bitbucket with LFS so no need to have sep repo for media :) also Trello board for everything! Good stuff dudes!

[@yusefth]

Thank you for sharing your expirence!

[@ElianeGameDev]

Thanks for this video !

[@lukdev]

niceeeee very professional. Congrats on the games bois!!!! well done!!! i am super excited about the next one you guys will release! ;)

[@UKara-uj9lt]

Could you do a step by step on how to set up the kanban board?

[@JoeHannouch]

Very interesting! Concerning the repos, since you have your assets (2d, 3d, etc) in a separate repo, i believe those folders/files are ignored in the main one?

[@bitemegames]

We run 2 seperate repos, and move only the files we need from the asset repo to the main one. We're not using nested repos, they're usually too much pain. -M

[@kirxcy-rj]

Any tools suggestion for internal wiki?

[@bitemegames]

We use a (selfhosted) WikiJS. If you are working solo you can also just run it on your PC. -T

[@kirxcy-rj]

@@bitemegames cool! thanks for the info

[@yorecreator]

You seem very professional, but the best games ever made were made by teams with great freedom to create, and being too corporate like will constantly undermine your team (they wont tell you that directly, it's in the body language). I know because I just left a corporate where the boss was a great systemised guy but I felt depressed. But I wish you well it's a hard industry to find that balance. Not saying you are over bearing just the feeling I get from this video. Anyway I subscribed good luck!

[@lucasalmeida7951]

i agree with you mate (about freedom and good games). What i think they talking about in the video is more like, how to keep yourself on track, how to properly know if u wasting time or not, etc. Imagine you use all of this he mentioned buuuuut, with the freedom to create whatever you want in the game. boom!!!

[@gryzlaw]

Do you genuinely think that larger studios develop their games without at least this basic level of project management?

[@furiousfurfur]

He stated this is how they work as a caveat at the start. What you say is valid, but you made some broad statements though. These systems and processes are fairly standard organization and management practices he is listing at their core. These systems get scaled down or up depending on your business needs. There are various other systems and processes that can be adopted for game development. They all have their pros and cons and are dependent on team and requirements. Without a system and management pipeline things won’t get done.

[@sealsharp]

Some of the best games ever made were created in a country where people wear suit and tie even when it's hot enough to fry an egg on your desk surface.The freedom to create is not the same as a lack of knowledge abot the state of the project. Games because of their iterative nature are subject to changes much more than the average software product, which means that it's more important to keep control of the state it is in. Especially if your own limited money that is running out.

[@yorecreator]

@@gryzlaw Yes I agree! Otherwise you get endless coffee breaks, that wasn't what I meant hey

[@Ferenc-Racz]

Hi Martin! BTW: How many people in your indie dev team / worked on forge industry? We already saw 3-4 people across videos, but I suppose there is more. :)

[@Ferenc-Racz]

WOW.. Did youAlready started to working on your second game? WOW Guys! Respect! :o

[@bitemegames]

Hi, it's 4 people, all of which should have made an appearance on this channel at some point. Nobody else in the team for now. -M

[@VtheFifth]

First

[@sealsharp]

...fourth!

[@IBelieveInCode]

@@sealsharp Nth.

[@holyshiftstudio]

[@holyshiftstudio]

very intresting and informative, great video