The order of work

What to do before what, and which decisions are cheap now and expensive later

The steps go from the most expensive to the cheapest. The earlier a step, the more it costs to redo once everything else is built on it

The foundation

1. The track, finished. Converted, normalised, trimmed. Everything else is measured against it. Replacing the track later moves every frame in the level
2. The level's fps and length. Both can be changed, but the fps is the expensive one: changing it recomputes every key. The default is 60, and there is rarely a reason to move it
3. The beat map. Segments, tempo, offset, bars. Until the beat map is right, nothing snaps to the beats correctly. Everything placed before it has to be nudged afterwards
4. Markers on the structure. Intro, verse, chorus, break, drop, outro. It is ten minutes of work, and the markers show on every timeline

The skeleton and its playtest

5. The skeleton. The main patterns in plain shapes. No decoration, no theme, no effects
6. Playtest the skeleton. Before decoration: once a section is decorated, you will not want to delete it

Filling it out

7. Content proper. Fill out the patterns and add the objects that were only implied
8. Themes and colour. From the start, set colours as references to the theme, not as fixed values
9. Effects and post-processing. Last. They are the easiest thing to overdo, and they are hard to judge while the level is still changing
10. Metadata. Name, description, authors, age rating. Fill in a resource's record when you add the resource, not at this step

Cheap and expensive changes

Cheap to change late: colours through the theme, decoration, post-processing, the level's description

Expensive: the fps, the track, the beat map and the hierarchy

Save at every step. What autosave and undo cover - Not losing your work

Next: Reuse: prefabs, copying, generators, Not losing your work