I am starting my first serious game in a LONG time and would like help in remembering and setting up my workflow.  I have an outline of my idea and have chosen two engines to test for best function.  I am refreshing my programming skills.  What I need now is some help deciding what to do first, then next, etc.  Initially it will be a two person work group with my wife as the resident artist (although I think I will be buying sprites and world art to speed things up).  I will be doing the heavy lifting as programmer and project manager.  HELP!!! and thank you in advance.

I understood workflow in game design to be different then other programming tasks.  If not appropriate here then where?  Also I apologize.  I did not know I was in Business>Production and Management but now that I do work flow seems to me to be appropriate to the forum. Please enlighten me.

Actually I did a lot of research on "Where to start" a while ago, it's a common question. The info was gathered by chatting with developers and looking and postmortems of games.

Starting at the start:

Star by designing the level structure:

Start by prototype:

Start by problem solving:

I couldn't do each topic justice in a small post, I hope this is clear.

The truth is there is no real way to start a game. Every developer does there own thing and often starts different games different. Games is too complex to have a by the book way of starting them.

Often the best is just to start and don't think about it, let you instincts guide you.

A design document allows you to keep things ordered.

Thank you Scouting Ninja. That is the kind of help I needed.  To be truthful this is my first attempt at a complete project as I only did my little section (except for a user interface job) of the programming.  Now I have to plan the work so I can work the plan.  I will be looking at all your references and many more as this is not the only forum I am joining.  I don't know if you can see the post from Tom, our moderator, But it seemed odd and not helpful.  Thanks again.

2 hours ago, MagicMike said:

the post from Tom, our moderator, But it seemed odd and not helpful.

It isn't that the moderator is unfriendly, the exact opposite in fact. The moderators give that message to show that the post has moved, it isn't part of the topic. It is only so you know why and that it did move. There is no penalty for it.

It's also not uncommon for moderators to not answer these questions that get asked hundreds of times. However from personal experience I know they answer topics that have been left unanswered for a few hours.

They also answer the difficult topics, leaving these smaller open discussion topics for the community.

4 hours ago, MagicMike said:

If not appropriate here then where? 

The rule of thumb for the game design forum is that if you use the word "design" it probably belongs there. For example: "I was working on this level design..."

Some of the topics are difficult to place, so they get moved around a bit.

The reason it works like this is because people browse topics they like and can help with. For example I am a artist, so I check the art forum each day. I don't check the Business forum because I have little advice to give there.

Your topic gets moved to the people who can best answer it. The people who post are in fact trying to help you.

The beginners forum also has a unspoken rule to be extra friendly to the poster, so if you have a difficult topic that you fear you know nothing about, that is a safe place to post it.

The Critique and Feedback forum is about honesty above all else; or at least it should be.

2 hours ago, MagicMike said:

To be truthful this is my first attempt at a complete project as I only did my little section (except for a user interface job) of the programming.

It's good that your working to finish a project, it's something all developers should aim to do first.

Once you make that first game from start to end, everything starts to go easier. Making a small puzzle game is often the easiest or a remake of a retro game.

2 hours ago, MagicMike said:

I will be looking at all your references and many more

There is lots of developers who posts postmortems on there games in the blogs, they make for great reads and they can be goldmines of information.

Welcome to the community, this is a place for sharing knowledge so don't be afraid to respond to posts.

I understand why we have moderators, and I did have a different more encompassing meaning for game design.  My complaint was because I was given notice of the move with scant reason and no indication of where it was moved.  When people ask for help of course we do not know what we should.  Please educate us first and scold us second.