Tassadar88

Hi guys, it´s been a while, daughter has been keeping me entertained for a year now and I find I have very little time for gaming

There is however a gaming-related thing I would like to ask for advice about - a friend of mine came to talk to me about a computer game project he has been developping for a while now, specifically he wanted to know about whether HTML5 would be well suited for his multiplayer strategy game. When I asked him for a few details concerning what the game should actually be like, I found out that he did not have detailed specifications made, only ideas about parts of rules, a few about the game progression and a few sketches for the graphics. He says that he has the resources to pull it off and it might be true, but I suspect that there are a lot of things he never began to calculate with (infrastructure, database design, probably the whole server part of the game, testing, etc.) He already booked a friend of mine to do some artwork for him over the next 6 months.

Now, I don´t want to dissuade him from doing it all, but I remember a lot of projects that ended up unfinished for various reasons, some of which I either was trying to help with (RTW for example) or was watching grow and then freeze over time (The Broken Hourglass for one)

I wanted to ask if someone had a good guide for what one should have covered before embarking on a project like this - what should be done in each phases of the development, how to increase the chances that the project will be completed, how to detect design flaws as early as possible and how to react when something goes wrong