Author Topic: Hack 'n Plan  (Read 12631 times)

Offline Draco18s

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Hack 'n Plan
« on: May 17, 2017, 11:55:31 pm »
So I ran across this website/service just now:

http://hacknplan.com/

Anyone heard of it? Thoughts?

Offline TheVampire100

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Re: Hack 'n Plan
« Reply #1 on: May 18, 2017, 07:46:01 am »
Oh, hey, Failbetter Games has appearantly used this tool.

As a non-developer this looks like a good tool but that does not say much because I lack the experience to notice the value of such a tool.
I think a lot of failed Kickstarter and Early Access titles happen only because the developers fail to plan their game accordingly and dedicate their work time on too many things at once, resulting in a lot of stuff but nothing that is fleshed out. Really aweful example (and doN't except this to be the norm), Starforge. A game with big promises andgreat potential. They had many different ideas and designs, placed this stuff in the game just to "have it there" already,s o people can experience already, what they will get. Later they added even more. RPG mechanics, Tower Defense Mode, realistic physics, destroyable environment, aliens that attack and destroy parts of your fortress to get to the core, tunneling enemies. A lot of this stuff was scrapped, because they couldn't handle the management of all that and eventually the money ran out, people got fired (or simlyquit the job) and took their assets with them which threw the game back even further and int he end because of terrible planning they could only put the bare bones of the game.
In the end you had a terrible physics sandbox with bare crafting and survival ideas.

Other developers have the same problem, inexperienced developers of course. Developing teams that are longer into the buisness get a feeling for what they need to do first and how much time they can distribute to it until its "too much". Even they may fail but it' a lot smaller than say a person who does their first game. These people could use such a tool because it helps them to divide the project into chunks, track the progress and so on.

That's just the opinion of an ordinary person however.