These are some of my little tips and suggestions for making a project^^:
- Before you start a project, think about what you really like to do. In my opinion it dosn't works to do levels and worlds randomly while progressing onto your project. You may need a solid idea of the adventure you like to create for the player. You also should decide about the difficulty you aim for, before you start the first level. It can be very difficult to readjust the difficulty of already done levels.
- If you like to have a story in your project, think about a nice one. Way too many people just use Bowser and his habits of kidnapping someone as a story, while there can be so many interesting and/or funny alternatives involving Bowser and the others. One dosn't necessarily need to create new characters or a super-epic storyline with thousands of plot twists, to have an interesting story. Sometimes simpler stories with a ouch of humor can be way more entertaining than a story about someone very evil wanting to destroy the Mushroom-kingdom or even the whole world.
- When you like to use special game mechanics or gimmicks in your project, refrain from using ones that are buggy (even if they are just partly buggy). You really shouldn't use a gimmick and then tell the player flat out with a SMW-sign, a talking NPC, or a automated message that you are sorry for the bugs that can occur in the level which uses the gimmick. Even if a gimmick is cool by it's idea, it is way more frustrating for the player if he dies because he had bad luck with a bug caused by your gimmick, than actually seing the gimmick in action. Think about how bad that looks and is, when someone on Youtube plays your episode and then your messages tell the player about your buggy mechanic - not so cool, eh? ^^
- Always care about the design-quality. By this I mean try to build your levels in a way that they have no glitches or unfitting effects. It sure does not hurt to avoid broken-looking situations like door or pipe-warps in mid-air, narrow spots which allow the evil and abusive crouch-glitch (tons of evil other glitches can be combined with this one, for a maximum of game-breaking), or the even more harmful layer switch-glitch (standing onto a solid layer which moves below another solid layer so the player dies because of SMBX's bad collision-detection). The more serious you work onto your project, the more serious you can take to finish it.
- If you use a worldmap for your project, design it interesting and non-linear, because a linear worldmap can be so boring, that it may take half the fun of playing the episode. Linear episodes are in no wa bad, but if you use a worldmap for your episode, people certainly expect it to have some or many hidden elements onto it, like in "Super Mario Land 2","Super Mario World", "New Super Mario Bros.", the "Castlevania"-series, the "Zelda"-series, or even the "Final Fantasy"-series. If you do not like to have secret levels in your episode, than you should rather use a HUB instead, as a worldmap is not needed for linear episodes.
- If you like to have bosses in your episode, try not to use the default ones so much. It is way better to design fully custom-designed bosses with the help of layers and events, instead of placing two or three Boom Booms, Birdos, or Mousers in a room with nothing else than some scenery. If you cannot do fully custom bosses, try to make the default bosses more challenging and interesting by adding interesting event-patterns and other things like NPC-generators or obstacles to the fight. Never just use a default boss alone with no other elements, as people will certainly find it boring.
- Work steadily onto your project and do not distract you with other projects or by doing other things. If you work too much onto other things, like other projects, games etc, you may lose interest in working onto your project. Also, if you have not the time to finish at least a level per week, then you may get into real trouble if you try to work onto a project which has around 70 or more levels, as you usually will take around a year for 40 levels, if you put much work into your levels. Also, never rush anything in your project, as it will look bad if you have ecent quality on one end, but bad and rushed quality on the other end.
May these suggestions be of use for someone :-)
Enjl wrote:-don't make a project thread until it's very close to being finished. When making a project you're looking to show off some of your work and get feedback for it. Once you got that feedback - is there a reason to make more? Not really. People already told you you did a great job. Maybe you released a demo and they went more into detail. It'll also reduce the stress of "oh shit I should post new screens but I only finished half a level this last month" to zero, cause you haven't started hyping your project up yet.
In my opinion, this is partly right, but it depends very much onto what kind of project it is and how much you like to work onto it. I would say that if your project has for example 8 worlds and a total amount of 90 levels, I would create a topic for it when you are done with world 3 or 4 or around 30 to 40 levels, as a project often start to get serious around the 40% to 50%-mark. Also, creating a project-topic is to get actual critism about your style, your graphical choice, or your actual progress. Also, the earlier you create a topic for your project, the more you advertise your project, which is also very important if you want to let people know about your project. If you create a topic for it too late, the chance of your project not getting attention by too many people is getting higher, so when you release your finished episode it may not be played much or even cared about.
Enjl wrote:-work on one project total and don't make it too long. Apart from the release pressure, the time you already put into the episode is another discouraging factor. If you work on a 100 level game but don't have too much time because of school/college/work, and only get 20 done in a year, then feel discouraged as you realise you'll have even less time in the future - plan ahead and aim for 20 levels rather and release them after a year.
I think this is right. Too many people do not have a fast progress, and while they may be busy with their RL, they even start another project, which is a sure cancellation for both of their projects, because they will need way too long to be finished. In my opinion, starting and doing a project is not about just making some levels, it is about making something new, interesting, and well made :-).
Enjl wrote:-don't release demos. Same thing as the first - you want the feedback once your work is done, and in this case "work" refers to the entire episode, rather than individual levels.
I am of a different opinion here. Releasing a demo is very important, in my opinion, especially when you have done around 30% to 40% of your project, as the demo shows off your projects general style and design-quality. If you release never a demo of your project, people may not be too much interested in your project, as screenshots are just one side of the medal while the other side is the proof of gameplay (in this case the demo). Also, when you release demo, people can give you way better critism, as they could ever do by judging some screenshots.
Enjl wrote:-don't tease too much of it. The occasional well-taken screenshot in the screens thread is a good way to get some feedback on your design, but only start mentioning that you're working on a project when it's almost done. Also, never tease the cool stuff, like plot-relevant scenes or stuff which is meant to induce a "whoa" effect in the player.
I am mostly the same opinion. I think 2 to 3 800x600 pixels (400x300 pixels, if 1x1 pixeled) screenshots per level are sufficient as proof of progress and to get critism. Many people release screenshots of whole level-sections, which is somewhat boring, in my opinion - it takes away too much surprise and exploration. Often they even reveal hidden paths or secrets. About the "never tease the cool stuff"-thing, I think if you have enough nice and interesting mechanics in your levels, you may show off some sprecial stuff, as people will see a bit of what awaits them. But of course I would not suggest to show off all the interesting things of your levels. Just around 30% of them, to advertise some of the aspects of your project and that it has something nice for the player to expect.
Enjl wrote:-make sure you got ideas for your episode to begin with. You don't want to run into the "hm I need to make this ... level but I don't have any ideas" situation. I suggest making a text document for level ideas and sorting them by theme. Once you think you have enough for a project, start working!
I fully agree onto this. This is also my way to work. If done right, even a project with 100 or more levels can be very entertaining with many varying level-themes, level-ideas, and interesting mechanics. In my opinion, the most important factor here is to care about variety and to fight the laziness.
