Communication amongst team members

[jasper.davis]

This system you have sounds pretty useful OttoRobba. I might have to use this later on, or at least a modified version of it.

[baconhawka7x]

It is very good to be comfortable with your team members, and just have a general friendly vibe. You should know what type of person they are, simply because of the level of personal expression that comes with developing games. Maintaining a solid friendship and natural environment with your team is very important, make sure you're not just being told/telling your teammates what to do. Know that they are all doing it out of the passion of making games, just like you are.

My team just uses skype to communicate while we are developing. But if someone is not there, (and I know this sounds silly) usually use snapchat to show them our rough outlines and recent progressions in development. It's kind of strange, but it allows for almost instant communication to another developer if they are away. ie, I am away and Keaton just finished a new animation but needs some feedback on it, he will send me a snap of it in flash, and I can respond right then and there.

But yeah, be good friends, know your teammates, and most importantly: Don't forget to have fun. For some reason when you work in a group it tends to be easier to slip into a zone where developing just feels like work, so just remember to be friendly and have a good time and you will have as much fun making your game as your audience will playing it!


PS We all work remotely.

[jasper.davis]

this thread seems to have accumulated alot of good advise. I hope other people can take advantage of this stuff.

[Davidobot]

For conversations, I use Google Hangouts instead of Skype because it makes screensharing stupidly easy and tends to work well even when showcasing code. This way there is no need to copy paste something to show what is going on or where the person got stuck.

I also use things like Facebook and Whatsapp to share screenshots or quick tidbits of information.

For the design docs, I'm going in a different route. I'm basically creating a site (which makes it dead easy to share with others) using a static generator. My design docs are markdown files and I can sync it easily and, being static, I can store it on Github if I want to
I'm using Hexo but an easier one might be Dropplets.
You could even go with something as basic as blogspot - just be sure that it is easily accessible online so that you both can view it and modify it.

For the general development, my suggestions is something akin to the "Scrum" development process - basically, set up a white board to track your progress. This is what mine looks like:



I've found that I slack a lot less now that I've organized myself and I can also see just how gigantic the task ahead of me is. It also allows me to see at a glance what needs doing - this sprint was all about refactoring code, the next one will probably be all about refining the design document, fully implement it on Hexo and back to working on prototyping.

You can implement the same system on Trello - I'm sure there are others but this is one that I know and can recommend.

It is really easy to get stuck, just be sure to have goals set and short deadlines for them (mine are weekly).

Or you can use this website: https://realtimeboard.com/

[Codex]

These are some good points.

@OttoRobba - Those resources seem to work well even with an individual person project. I'm going to be using them from now on soooo major kudos!