WP7项目经验教训编辑本段回目录
概述
Phyne Games是位于墨西哥城的独立电子游戏工作室。工作室旨在制作表达本土文化的有趣作品。
《Mictlan》诞生于某家星巴克，当时我和Yahir在此展开讨论，一天下来，我们确定具体目标：制作我们的首款游戏。几个月后，我们完成这款作品。
Mictlan Promo from gamasutra.com
表现突出之处
开发工具和目标平台
在项目开发初始，我们有三点非常明确：制作一款墙面防御游戏，基于“死人节”主题，瞄准手机平台。随后我们选定Windows Phone 7，这是游戏不多的新平台，最重要的是，我们具备制作游戏的工具，无需在此花费金钱。
XNA 4.0 SDK和Visual Studio Express都无需付费。我们采用专业版Visual Studio，因为学生无需付费，此外我们也无需支付微软的99美元Marketplace内容发行费用。
我之前有接触过XBox 360和Windows的XNA（游戏邦注：实现跨平台的软件工具），我之前在大学的几个项目都是基于XNA，我觉得自己完全有能力在WP7采用同样的技术。如果我们选择iPhone，就需要花时间学习另一种技术。
XNA采用C#编程语言，我有JAVA背景，所以C#算是个自然跨越。虽然C#遵循高层次的规则，但我们从未在手机平台遇到过严重的运行问题。
Gameplay from gamasutra.com
正如iPhone一样，WP7的标准硬件规格让我们能够省下众多时间，无需调节游戏，以适应各种不同的平台。尽管做出承诺，但当《Mictlan》在Marketplace发行时，我们发现法国玩家无法顺利运行游戏（游戏在法国获得的评分是1/5星），有评论称游戏页面过于空白。调查后我们发现，其他开发者也存在相同问题，真是不可思议。
在《Mictlan》中，XNA和C#堪称完美搭档，而且也几乎是唯一选择（Silverlight是另一选择）。在开发末尾，我们制作出若干基于Unity 3D的原型，我们很喜欢这个引擎，我们考虑未来在自己的iPhone/Android/Web游戏中都采用此引擎。遗憾的是，WP7不支持Unity 3D。
艺术风格和主题
初次看到《Mictlan》，玩家的反应是：“非常惊人”。在设计游戏时，我们非常清楚，视觉风格必须有墨西哥特色，但不要过于本土化，令外国玩家丧失兴趣。游戏包含许多微妙的墨西哥元素，我的意思是说，并非随处都有Mariachi Sombrero。
Vineta from gamasutra.com
游戏艺术旨在从不同角度和玩家分享死亡的乐趣，这个视角更加活跃、有趣和幽默。主角Luno是普通墨西哥儿童和当代典型儿童的结合体。
我们的沟通
我和Yahir在配合彼此工作安排上遇到很多问题，通常，重要谈话都是在星巴克或午餐时间进行。帮助我们保持联系的一个重要工具是Yammer，这是个免费网站，你可以通过社交网络、私聊信息及发帖之类的传统方式同团队保持联络。我们还通过Yammer上传素材。GTalk和Skyper也是很棒的工具，但我们沟通和分享内容的官方渠道是Yammer。
我们将GitHub付费账户当作项目的资源库，通过每月支付不到10美元的费用，我们的项目得以安全地保存在云端。我是唯一使用资源库的成员，Yahir和Enrique将素材上传至Yammer，然后我将内容添加至项目中，然后发送至GitHub。重要的是，要记得对项目内容进行备份。
PhyneTeam from gamasutra.com
团队随时去除无效内容
在开发过程中，我们遇到过缺乏可行性或视觉效果很糟的内容，当出现这种情况时，我们随时都会去除或调整可能给游戏产生消极影响的内容。
这种态度对于开发团队来说非常重要。之前在学校制作其他项目时，有些成员总是觉得批评具有攻击性，因此选择离开。配备优秀的美工、程序员、设计师和音乐家非常重要。但团队愿意尽自己所能创造出杰出的作品也非常重要。
Game Jams和Dev Houses
我们在有些阶段的工作效率出现下滑。由于学校或工作事务，我们的进展非常缓慢。我们参加了一个Game Jam和若干Super Happy Dev Houses活动，这有效提高我们的积极性。
这些活动不仅扩宽我们的人脉，还让我们获得有关游戏和编程方面的回馈，他们的意见颇有价值。《Mictlan》通过这些活动得到很大突破。
大家的一致建议是，你应该多参加这些活动，有很多东西需要共同学习和分享。我知道地下室是个编程的好地方，但和杰出人士接触也能够让我们受益匪浅。
Map from gamasutra.com
失误之处
没有用于测试的手持设备
我们从开发《Mictlan》当中学到的第一点是：不应基于自己在开发初期不具备的设备设计游戏。显然这存在例外情况，例如，如果你瞄准iPhone制作Unity游戏，而手中只有Android设备，你也可以完成测试工作。问题是，你已投入3个月开发内容，但只是在电脑的模拟器上进行测试工作。当收到WP7移动设备，就所制作的内容进行测试时，我们发现多数内容在设备的屏幕上都显得过小，玩法会受到用户手指的影响。所以我们做出系列调整，以解决这些问题。
拿到手机设备并无法解决所有问题，因为我是唯一能够每天就内容进行测试的成员，Yahir只能够每周测试几次。现在，给开发团队配备足够设备变成优先考虑事项，这样所有人都能够看到游戏。
无人负责营销工作
非常重要！这一问题在如今《Mictlan》入驻Marketplace后变得越发严峻。当我们发行游戏时，我们坚信自己无需进行宣传，因为这一类型的游戏数目不多。大错特错，虽然这点看起来平淡无奇，但我还是要强调，务必安排人员负责在网站、杂志、twitter和facebook等平台发布消息。
举个例子，当《Mictlan》投放至marketplace2个月时，只有350位用户下载游戏，随后当我们腾出时间发布游戏相关消息时，1周内就有2500位用户下载这款游戏。
Scene from gamasutra.com
没有期限的冗长开发周期
刚着手《Mictlan》时，我们认为3个月内就能完成项目。这是我们的首个大型项目，我们不知道要如何安排开发时间。最糟的是，我们直到项目结尾才执行不尽人意的计划，因为在取得多次巨大进展后，我们认为自己只需再几个月就能够完成项目。
现在，我们打算采用若干敏捷开发技巧。我曾在某公司接触了9个月的SCRUM，这定能够给《Mictlan》带来有效帮助。这里，我推荐设计师们阅读两本书，一本是《Agile Game Development with SCRUM》，书中详细论述SCRUM在游戏开发中的应用，另一本是《Practices of an Agile Developer》，书中提供很多宝贵意见，告诉开发者如何多快好省地做事。
scoreScreenOld from gamasutra.com
质量保证
我们的QA工作有些不足，主要集中在项目末尾（游戏邦注：在项目完工前3个月）。朋友、家人和同事都帮我们发现漏洞，进一步就内容做出完善。例如，早先的GUI（图形用户界面）有些令人困惑，所以我们就将特效和新元素添加至hud，旨在让游戏变得更易于理解。
此外，我们还需要将用户反馈方式设置成自动化模式，因为Marketplace的评论不足以追踪漏洞，也许可以考虑向网站服务发送报告。我正在考虑Get Satisfaction，《Draw Something》也采用这一服务，这将是个可行选择。
平衡问题
游戏的首个版本过于随意，改变角色行为的方式太少。下个版本将截然不同：游戏平衡方面将包含更多灵活性，这些参数源自XML文件，任何人都能够进行修改。
Gameplay 02 from gamasutra.com
我们希望能够在无需安排新人员的情况下完成游戏平衡工作。至少就测试而言，游戏要能够连接至网络服务，检索XML文件，然后通过邮件或其他东西，测试者能够发送反馈信息，我们只需要调整文件数据，重新启动游戏。
总结
《Mictlan》是我们的首款作品，我们对于玩家的反应非常满意，其中包含很多正面反馈，对此我们非常开心，但同时也有许多负面评论，这令我们意识到，我们还需要采取更多举措，方能制作出完美的游戏。
现在我们变成一个稳固团队，其实我们有邀请外部人员加入。我们对于未来发展充满期待，我们希望尝试新东西。基于我们积累的经验，我们非常期待采取下步举措，着手更大规模的项目。
个人来说，我想要邀请若干墨西哥游戏开发同伴分享他们的经验，这样我们就不会犯下相同错误。墨西哥有很多杰出人才，现在大家是时候该团结起来了。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，作者：Arturo Nereu ）
Mictlan Postmortem
by Arturo Nereu
Introduction
Phyne Games is an independent video game studio from Mexico City. The studio was born from the desire we have to make games that express our culture – Mexican – but also be fun.
Mictlan was created in a Starbucks, Yahir and I started brainstorming and by the end of the day we had a clear objective: to finish our first game. And a few months later, we made it.
What went right?
Development tools and target platform
At the beginning of the development, we had three things clear: create a wall defense game, with the Día de Muertos theme for a mobile device. Then we picked Windows Phone 7, it was a new platform with few games and the most important thing; we had the tools to make a game without any need to pay anything.
XNA 4.0 SDK and Visual Studio Express are free. We used the Professional edition of Visual Studio because for students it is free along with the 99 dollars fee that Microsoft charges to publish apps and games on the Marketplace.
I had previous experience with XNA in XBox 360 and Windows, some of my university projects were developed with XNA and I felt prepared to use the same technology on WP7. If we had chosen iPhone, I would have had to spend development time learning another technology.
XNA uses C# as a programming language, I had a JAVA background so C# was a natural step. Despite the high level order of C#, we never had serious performance issues on the mobile device.
As with iPhone, having a standard hardware specification on WP7, saved us a lot of time that had been devoted to adapt the game to many different devices. Despite the promise, when Mictlan reached the Marketplace we noticed that French players were having problems running the game (our average grade in France is 1 out of 5 stars) and the comments said that the game screen was blank. After investigating, we found out that other developers are having the same problems … weird.
XNA and C# were a great combination for Mictlan, besides being almost the only alternative (Silverlight is another one). At the end of the development, we made a couple of prototypes using Unity 3D and we loved the engine, we are considering using it for our iPhone / Android / Web games. The bad news is that there are no signals of Unity 3D for WP7.
Art style and theme
When people first sees Mictlan their reaction is: “It looks amazing”. When we designed the game we had very clear that the visual style should be very Mexican but without being too local and not appealing to the foreign public. There are a lot of Mexican elements in the game that we think are very subtle, I mean, there is not a Mariachi Sombrero everywhere.
The art in the game tries to share with the players the joy of death from another perspective, one that is more active, fun and with humor. Our main character, Luno, is a mix of a common Mexican kid with the contemporary universal kid.
Our Communication
Yahir and I had a lot of problems with our schedules in order to work together, generally, the important talks happened at a Starbucks or during lunch time. A great tool that helped us to never lose touch was Yammer, is a free site where you can communicate with a team via the traditional ways of a social network, direct messages, posts, etc. We also used Yammer to upload the assets. GTalk and Skyper were other great tools but the official channel to communicate and share anything was Yammer.
We used a GitHub paid account as a project repository, for less than 10 dollars per month we had our project safe on the cloud. I was the only one who used the repository, Yahir and Enrique uploaded the assets to Yammer, then I added them to the project and then pushed to GitHub. The important thing is to be sure that you have a back up of your project.
Team ready to dismiss broken stuff
During development, we ran into things that didn’t work or looked bad in the game, when this happened, we were open to dismiss or change the stuff that may affect the game in a negative way.
This attitude is important in a development team. When we worked in other game projects at school, some people thought that every comment was offensive and some of them just left the team. It is very important to have brilliant artists, programmers, designers, musicians, etc. But is also very important to have a team that is willing to make everything to finish an amazing game.
Game Jams and Dev Houses
We had some stages where our productivity decreased. Because of school or work, our progress was small. We attended a Game Jam and some Super Happy Dev Houses that helped us with a boost.
These events helps a lot with networking (we met Enrique Ibarra, sound designer, at the Global Game Jam) but also to get some feedback from people that knows about games, programming and whose perspective is very valuable. There were major advances on Mictlan during those events.
The general recommendation to everyone is that you must attend to those events, there is a lot to learn and share. I know that a basement is a great place to code, but interacting with bright people helps a lot.
What went wrong?
Not having a handheld device for testing
The very first thing we learned from Mictlan development is: you should not make a game for a platform that you don′t have in early development stages. Obviously there are some exceptions, for example if you are making a Unity game for iPhone and only have Androids, it is ok to test. The thing is that you have three months of development and you only test on a simulator in the computer. When we received a WP7 device to test, we found many things that were too small for the screen and that the gameplay was affected by the user′s finger. So we made several changes to solve the problems.
Having a Phone did not solve all our problems, because I was the only who could test the game every day, Yahir could only test it a couple of times per week. Now, this will be a priority, having enough devices for the development team or multiple builds so everyone is able to see the game.
Nobody was in charge of marketing
Very important! This point is probably the one that hurts us more now that Mictlan is in the Marketplace. When we launched the game, we were very confident that we did not needed marketing because it was not a saturated catalogue out there. Big mistake, and even if it seems obvious, I really want to emphasize that is a must to have someone in charge of sharing the news to websites, magazzines, twitter, facebook, etc.
As an example, when Mictlan had two months on the marketplace only 350 people downloaded the game, when I took some time to share about the game, we received 2,500 downloads in just a week.
Long development time with no deadlines
When we started Mictlan, we thought that in about three months the game would be finished. It was our first big project and we had no idea how to project the duration of the development time. The worst part is that we carried our bad planning until the end of the project because after every big advance, we thought that we needed just a couple of months more to finish.
Now, we are going to implement some agile development techniques. I worked at a company for nine months using SCRUM and it would have helped us a lot with Mictlan. Here, I can recommend two books for every game developer out there Agile Game Development with SCRUM with an amazing explanation of SCRUM for game development and Practices of an Agile Developer with tons of invaluable advices for developers and how to do more with less.
Quality Assurance
Our QA process was scarce and came at the end of the development (three months before completion). Friends, family and colleagues helped us to spot bugs and improvement opportunities. For example, the previous GUI was confusing, so we added effects and new elements on the hud to make the game easier to understand.
Also, we need to automate the way we get feedback from players because the comments on the Marketplace are not enough to track bugs, maybe sending reports to a web service. I′ve been checking Get Satisfaction, Draw Something uses it and this can be a great alternative for us.
Enemy Spawner / Balancing
The Enemy Spawner never convinced me, in fact the first version was too random, with few ways to change its behavior. The next iteration is a different story: there is more flexibility to balance the game, those parameters comes from an XML file that can be modified by almost anyone.
We want to implement a way to balance the game without the need to generate a new build. At least for testing, the game should be able to connect to a web service and retrieve the XML files, then via mail or something else, the tester can send the feedback and we just need to change the values on the file and restart the game.
Conclusion
Mictlan is our first game and we are very happy with the response from the players, there is a lot of positive feedback that makes us smile but also the negative feedback makes us realize that we have a lot of work to do in order to deliver the perfect game.
Now, we are a solid team, in fact we have invited some guys to come abroad. We are very excited with what is coming, we want to experiment with new things. With what we have learned, is an amazing moment to take the next step and create something more ambitious.
Personally, I want to invite my fellow Mexican game developers to share their experiences so we won’t make the same mistakes again. There is a lot of talent in Mexico, now is a great time to collaborate.（Source：gamasutra）
