Twelve steps to make games (2/2)

The second part of the tutorial about work flow for game design. This is a possibility, not the only one, don't follow each step strictly, create your own work flow using this example.

7. Assemble the parts together
   Mixing all the previous things together is quite hard if you do that directly. The main problem is the spaghetti effect. You have multiple class and each could have some links with other, so the solution for lots of developer is to put a reference on each class to each other class. Conceptually speaking, it's just horrible. Try to join similar class, to make some "helper", to use composition with precaution and not as the unique solution. You can also implement a system of message communication (I will put an article about that later).
8. Test the gameplay
   Don't think it's the funniest part, it's the hardest actually. Why ? Simply because you have created the gameplay and you must be objective to see some default ! The gameplay must be quasi perfect, it's the thing that allow the user to "play" literally. If your hero moves too fast, the player has not the experience that you wanted. This must be the extension of your concept, not a tool to communicate with the game. Try different games and observe attentively how the objects move, the events appears, the character jumps etc. The gameplay needs to serve the game !
9. Improve the graphics
   Yes, until now, I never speak about the graphical part of the game. It's not without reason. Before this point, your character must be a circle/square and all other things too. If you spend too much time drawing/designing things, you could have some problems when debugging especially. Imagine your character has a sword but when you are near a wall, the sword is "on" the wall, you could think it's a problem of collision but actually it's just that the sprite you use is bigger than what you had planned. One of the problem when you develop alone it's to manage a certain balance between working hard on graphics and trying to find perfect gameplay. My opinion is that we need to endure the graphics to have fun with gameplay, for little flash game of course. If you want to make the next best-seller you need to have some artist in your team.
10. Making little beta
    To have objective feedback, you need to find objective people. Of course, friends are never really objective, either they want to be cool with you or you bother, but having a real objective opinion is quite rare and if so, you need to filter all other. So, the easiest way is to publish on a website like Flash Game License (FGL). Initially it's a site to sell / search sponsor but you can enable the view by other develops and preview players, they will let feedbacks to improve your game. You can also try on little forum to have a dozen of constructive feedbacks. When you have improve the more relevant issues, you can go further.
11. Publish the game
    To publish a game, you have some different possibilities. First is to publish manually to big portals and hope your game is nice and people likes it, in this case, little portals will take the games and you can let the viral distribution working. To have such portals, try the two following lists that I found: 45+ on Mochi, 35+ by Emanuele. The second main possibility is to use Flash Game Distribution (FGD), this site will send your game plus some informations to a very large network of portals. The disadvantage of the second method is that your don't control directly the submission, perhaps you want to submit only one portal per week to spread the success during three months. If your game doesn't have a lot of success, try to find where is the problem. Is it the gameplay ? The idea is not as good as you thought ? Perhaps the execution, graphics are not enough good to support the ideas ?
12. Learn from the experience
    When you have finished a game or any other part of your life actually, take a moment to sum up. Weighs the good and the bad things you did during the period and try to extract some useful informations. Perhaps you loose too much time debugging ? In this case search a new way to test your code, it could increase your efficiency. The goal after an experience is to learn something, even the experience was very bad, you can derive an advantage. 

Don't forget, if you have some games, send them to me, I could publish them and ask reader to make objective feedback, like a little beta.

Last tips: Take pleasure in making games !