Noise Hunters Devlog 20 - Scope

4 years ago by Noise Hunters (@Noise_hunters)

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Hello [Code_Name: MEVYE] [Location: CLASSIFIED], welcome back!

Today we will see how the scope of Noise Hunters changed during the first months of development!

Scope refers to the magnitude of a game, for example: The scope of a game can be 10 levels with 5 different mechanics. Its important to have a scope early on to see the amount of work that has to be done and to make a plan with goals accordingly. But as we mentioned other times, not everything is perfect! most of the times the scope changes during development (It normally reduces, to accommodate tighter deadlines).

Noise Hunters is no exception! We will see the initial scope and it's current scope, plus what we learned in the process. As crazy it may sound, our initial scope was to make an open world game with reusable missions and a full on ranking system with different enemies and a progression system.

(Spanish translation: -Environment Mastering -Strategy & Risk of failing -Open Spaces -Farming loop of enemies)

Unfortunately for us, this required too many resources that we where capable of achieving, so we had to reduce the scope of the game. However, this is more difficult that we thought: When reducing features in a big game you tend to think that everything is essential for the game and end up not reducing anything.

To avoid this, there is a practice that helps a bunch! You have to define the "pillars" of the game, this are the features that define your game and if eliminated, the game would be totally different. With this you have to think objectively and prioritize components, you can make a secondary list with "Want features" with every mechanic you would want to implement and a level of "want". Its also good to ask for the opinion of people outside the project about the pillars. Once the pillars are defined, then you can start to change the game respecting this characteristics.

Advice: Start with a small scope. Its is MUCH easier to expand a game than to reduce it.

Currently our scope has been reduced drastically so we could achieve everything and end up with a finished game at the end of the University year. Now mainly there will be two levels with two different type of enemies, making Noise Hunters a short experience of sound.