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Game Design Help
wildhalcyon
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I'm requesting your assistance purely as fellow gamers. I'm looking at developing a freeware game in my (little) spare time, and I'd like some help deciding which direction to run with. What I would like from you is to tell me which game idea you like better, based only on the brief descriptions below. All three are RPGs, so if you don't like RPGs, then you may respond with "I don't like RPGs! Make a platformer instead!"
Your assistance will be forever appreciated!
1. "Adventure, Inc." - This game puts the player in charge of a battalion of warriors, similar to Suikoden, where the player may select a team from their character roster to go out adventuring. The dungeons are somewhat randomized, similar to roguelikes, but random encounters are preserved. The most unique feature is player advancement. While individual characters advance in level, to truly advance your progress, you need to recruit better characters. Characters are randomly generated based on several factors, designed to ensure that players (a) get a relatively unique character set each time they play and (b) no specific type of character is optimal for most definitions of the word "optimal".
2. "Verdant Dawn" - This game takes place after a terrible cataclysm destroyed a highly advanced civilization. The wilderness has largely reclaimed the land, but towns are continuing to grow. The player is in charge of an intrepid survivor that will scavange the land, but also work on rebuilding their community in a harvest moon/animal crossing fashion. More light-hearted than most post-apocalypic genre games. Although the characters are saddened by the destruction that ruined their culture, ultimately they move on with their lives and look forward to making the world a better place.
3. "I think I'm Learning Japanese (or Spanish)!" - In the land of Libria, two twin children must flee the night when a dark power breaks into the town library searching for something... The children learn that their heritage was that of the great Wordsmiths of old - magical humans who could cause change in the universe through the power of words. The gameplay here is classic 2D turn-based RPG. Unlike regular RPGs however, all the characters attacks are language-based - in particular foreign language. The twins would cover nouns and verbs, temporary characters might cover numbers and colors, while later more powerful characters would cover conjugations and sentences. If the language were japanese, there would also be a character to teach kanji.
Thanks for your support!
Your assistance will be forever appreciated!
1. "Adventure, Inc." - This game puts the player in charge of a battalion of warriors, similar to Suikoden, where the player may select a team from their character roster to go out adventuring. The dungeons are somewhat randomized, similar to roguelikes, but random encounters are preserved. The most unique feature is player advancement. While individual characters advance in level, to truly advance your progress, you need to recruit better characters. Characters are randomly generated based on several factors, designed to ensure that players (a) get a relatively unique character set each time they play and (b) no specific type of character is optimal for most definitions of the word "optimal".
2. "Verdant Dawn" - This game takes place after a terrible cataclysm destroyed a highly advanced civilization. The wilderness has largely reclaimed the land, but towns are continuing to grow. The player is in charge of an intrepid survivor that will scavange the land, but also work on rebuilding their community in a harvest moon/animal crossing fashion. More light-hearted than most post-apocalypic genre games. Although the characters are saddened by the destruction that ruined their culture, ultimately they move on with their lives and look forward to making the world a better place.
3. "I think I'm Learning Japanese (or Spanish)!" - In the land of Libria, two twin children must flee the night when a dark power breaks into the town library searching for something... The children learn that their heritage was that of the great Wordsmiths of old - magical humans who could cause change in the universe through the power of words. The gameplay here is classic 2D turn-based RPG. Unlike regular RPGs however, all the characters attacks are language-based - in particular foreign language. The twins would cover nouns and verbs, temporary characters might cover numbers and colors, while later more powerful characters would cover conjugations and sentences. If the language were japanese, there would also be a character to teach kanji.
Thanks for your support!
wildhalcyon on
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Posts
That's your answer.
I want to make them all, but I don't have that much time or energy.
PSN: Corbius
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUDTabzn6Sw
Beaten to it by almost a decade.
Oh that doesnt count. I just want to be a wordsmith
edit: TIER PARGON PARGON CHATURRGHA ARETEK
That's what I was thinking. Especially in relation to the OPs idea of it being a foreign language.
Edit: Yes, Eternal Darkness. That is correct.
PSN: Corbius
b) Do not start by making a big RPG. You will never finish it. I would bet money on that.
c) If so, have you ever made a complex game like an RPG? If not, then
d) Refer to this quote from another forum:
e) If you've done all of the above, I'd be happy to weigh in on the interesting game designs you have posted above.
Two other things to consider: Which one do you have the clearest idea of how to make? Which one seems like it would be easiest for you to make?
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
Your first game should never be what your dream game is. If you try to make your dream game and fail, you'll be disappointed and disillusioned and will likely have trouble revisiting that concept because you associate it with failure. If by some chance you succeed on your first try, you will look back at it years later and hate it for how simplistic and shoddy it seems then. Make a throwaway game first, make several, and then take a deep breath and start planning your masterpiece.
Of course if none of these are meant to be masterpieces then go ahead. The first step is to not get hung up on a question like this; if this is a problem, how do you expect you'll be able to decide on anything once the design is in motion?
Yes, yes, I've given the same advice to others.
a) Yes, I've made a game before. A couple, actually. Nothing fancy. Some java clones of classic arcade games.
b) It wasn't a big complex RPG, and although these will all be RPGs, I'm not planning on creating a dev studio-level game here. Just a fun side project.
c) See above.
d) While I don't doubt that it wouldn't be a useful exercise, I find your argument fallacious. You assume, quite wrongly, that the time cost of developing a single room would be the same as developing a game universe. While the undertaking is large, it doesn't scale linearly.
More importantly, I think you're over-estimating the scope of my project. I'm not trying to create the next great XBLA download. I just want to make something fun and interesting. If its half as neat as Knytt Stories, I would be thrilled beyond expectation.
EDIT:
I never said it was a problem. I just have a few ideas, and although I will narrow them down to the one idea I truly wish to try out, I wanted to get some other opinions to mull over as well.
Absolutely.
You'll find the second room to take much longer than the first one.
猿も木から落ちる
That quote is pretty misleading. To get that room, you need to get a development environment started, create an engine, create artwork, and put it all together. Assuming the game isn't just some disgusting piece of spaghetti code, making another similar room should take no time at all. A lot of the road to that one room is one-time development cost.
Now, if you can figure out how both apotheos and I can be correct, then you're on your way to making a game!
Well, it's not my argument, but somebody else's. I agree with you that it doesn't scale linearly, but I also agree with his point, which was that it's best to start small and see if you can get the very basics down--the basic framework of an RPG--before you dive into a big commitment in terms of content, systems, etc.
Anyway, I like your "Verdant Dawn" idea. Mostly I like the idea of an RPG where a large part of the point is just to subside. Scavenging for food, taking care of the daily necessities. There have been many RPGs with strict food/rest systems, but I don't think I've seen one where it was the focus of the game.
No, you just crank out RPG Maker and prototype it with stand-in default sprites. Even that takes an eternity, and after finishing one map you're tempted to leave all those default sprites in, it's not that bad that your main character has red hair instead of blue...
Now we're cookin'! Be sure to overhype the project, tire of it and fake your own death.
Of course, relatively quick when it comes to game development is still pretty slow when it comes to real time.
Adventure, Inc. & the language game are both pretty similar to ideas I've had myself. I think either would be pretty fun. Still, this is really something you need to figure out yourself. Even a simple game can take hundreds, even thousands of hours to complete. If you're not 100% sure of yourself when you begin, you're never going to finish.
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire,
Just getting anything off the ground is truly eye-opening to how big of a project an RPG is. And that's kind of the point--to be able to take a step back and say, wow, this is a lot of work.
Most people don't want to make games. They want to have made games.
YOU WILL NEVER ACCOMPLISH ANYTHING, KILL YOURSELF
Make the Japanese game.
Do you actually know japanese?
This made me laugh way more than it probably should have.
Then you will never make a game. Games require both.
If it was an idea you really believed in, you would make the time and find the energy.
To be fair, everyone has this immature and adolescent-like (both words not to be taken prejoratively) mindset that the vague concept floating in your head and the few maps you've doodled on a napkin make you a game designer. Creating a game requires an incredible ammount of time and energy, and it's not as simple as people sometimes think. Oh, sure, we've all had this good idea for a game we'd like to see, but how many people actually pull it through?
Only game I've ever made was a puzzle game with VB in highschool that was a mix of Fire&Ice, Sokoban and Lolo, and even though it's a pretty fun puzzler (if I do say so myself), and very hard too, it's a very small game in terms of engine, most of it is hardcoded, and even then it burned me on game development forever.
I don't think I'm a game designer and I don't have a good idea for a game I'd like to see.
But I am not about to think everyone is me. It is not even like guy-o is asking for people to pitch in with the graphics and the music and the programming like so many others. No need for such a pile-on.
"Oh, a near-future shooter you say? With scripted scenarios and class-based multiplayer? Yeah, wake me up when...oh, it's one of the greatest games of all time. Blimey."
Whichever game you want to make the most will probably end up being the best.
First, that isn't what we skeptics are saying.
What you have to realize is that when you've been on game development message boards a bit, you've heard variations on "I have this great game idea..." (usually some form of RPG) hundreds of times, usually from people who have never made a game and often have never even programmed Hello, World.
I know this is not the OP's case, it sounds like he's fairly realistic and has made some simpler games before. So: No offense to the original poster. I'm not talking about you here.
Anyway, after awhile, you start to have a gut reaction of, oh no, not another one of these... and your instinct is to try to get the person in question to slow the fuck down. Because you honestly want them to succeed, and you know they won't if they try to start out by programming the next Final Fantasy 7 or World of Warcraft. For these people (not the OP), their best route is to jot down their idea, or maybe even throw it in the trash (ideas are a dime a dozen, it's making them into something great that counts). In any case, put it aside. And then make the first few rooms of Zork. And then make Pong. And then make Asteroids or Tetris or Galaga.
Then they might be ready to start making "real" games. (But still not the next WoW or FF7, because hello, millions of dollars and dozens to hundreds of employees.)
Think about the game you decide to make in terms of systems that fit together to make the whole experience. For instance, maybe in the post-apocalyptic game different foods give you energy, which burns at a constant rate. You can develop a system for hunting and gathering food and a separate system for agriculture, where the player can use either or both of these methods to stay alive.
If you break it down into smaller challenges for yourself like this and build it up one system at a time I'm sure you can accomplish anything you want.
I think the best way to stay motivated is to show progress to people and see them react to the things you are doing well. It will encourage you and give you new ideas for how to improve what you have made.
I've spent quite a bit of time on a couple game design forums also, and I've heard all this stuff before (and I've even said some of it - particularly to kids who say "I've got a great idea for an MMO, but I've never programmed before!")
And, since people are asking, I do know some japanese. Not a lot, but enough to use some two-years worth of college japanese lessons.
Secondly, I think the wordsmith idea shows great promise. Hacking and writing share the same creation-space with sorcery, after all. There's some great fiction that uses that concept (snow crash!).
Also it allows you to have an interesting method for positive gameplay. Don't just beat monsters, repair their damage with the correct grammar, and learn to 'fortify' reality to prevent them.
Rather than monsters you can have the children fighting insiduous propaganda- and another level of meaning is added.
It's a great concept, with a lot of promise, and there are rpg engines out there that can get you started on creation right away.
I'm thinking of doing something myself that's best described as "an RPG", but really all it is is a two-player Pokemon-meets-MtG-meets-Final-Fantasy hybrid battle mode. It's best described as an RPG because its gameplay is a subset of RPG gameplay - but it's perfectly achievable as a solo thing.
:^:
That's actually something like one of the projects I have on the (immediate) backburner. Most of the actual content is just the art needed for battles, and 90% of that is characters and their animations. The game world is navigated by browsing menus and is represented mostly by text.
I've also tried to make an RPG before. It was... my first project. I then decided to try a shooter (which I did pretty well, I think), now I'm working on a platformer. RPG will be next. I think they're the toughest because they require the most art resources.
Choose Your Own Adventure (no graphics, just reading text & making choices) --> the next Dragon Quest 3 (retro RPG with 8-bit level presentation) --> the next Phantasy Star 4 (RPG with a setting similar to the Phantasy Star games, a chapter system similar to DQ4 & Mother 3, and improved but still retro presentation).
I figure that I'll finish the CYOA early next year, and the two RPGs will each take me 12-18 months to finish if and only if I work like crazy on them.
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire,
Was it...slime forest adventure?
God bless 'em, they're trying.
But yeah shmups win the award for best game/development time ratio.
First, don't get discouraged. Sure your finished product may not end up to be what you had in mind, and you may not get all of it done, but the process of creating and sharing a simple game project is REALLY rewarding. DO IT!
I'm a huge fan of the game design blog lostgarden.com, and he occasionally has game design challenges he posts, providing a sample "design seed" and a bunch of free artwork and asking programmer/designer types go put something together. To illustrate why it's so important to start, observe the awards he gives out on his web site:
I also find MDA agreeable and interesting. Consider leaving all of the theme and artistic stuff in your head and build a game that uses crude tokens. When YOU play it, YOU know what the crude things represent and what they could become later. Use those crude tokens to finalize the gameplay. Find the fun. Imagine how a player feels when approaching your game for the first time. They carry some previous game experience with them, so some game mechanics have already been mastered from previous games. The new game mechanics your game introduces should be fun to learn. Learning implies failure -- your game should facilitate rapid low-cost failure, and the cycle of try, fail, get feedback, try again, fail a new way, get more feedback should be fun.
Most importantly, no matter who you are I GUARANTEE 80% of your attempts will playtest badly and not be fun. (oh yeah, by the way, playtest constantly.) Don't get discouraged. Keep trying, keep refining your design. Don't be afraid to kill your precious baby and start again if, despite all your efforts, your cool idea just isn't any fun.
Most of all, just like with writing, photography, music, or anything else: you become good and experienced from doing something A LOT. You must have lots of failures under your belt.
Again, lostgarden.com. He doesn't write that many essay-posts per month, but they're pretty much all worth reading. Rewind back to 2005/2006 and read everything.
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