Game ideas?
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Just finishing up the non-campaign parts of the game (the non-meat) so I need ideas on the actual meat. This is a text based game. Any ideas for anything ever? Even an original story?
Wait, what?! You are making a game with no story in place? Isn't it kind of hard to write one without it? Coding things (non-meat) without a story in place and then going back and adding the story will most likely result in one of two things:
1) The story is limited because you have write it just so that the non-meat features fit in with it.
2) You make the story and discover the non-meat things don't fit into the game now.
It is usually better to have the story and everything in place before you start coding, but I realize this isn't always the case. Just wanted to point out some pitfalls that I know of off hand.
1) The story is limited because you have write it just so that the non-meat features fit in with it.
2) You make the story and discover the non-meat things don't fit into the game now.
It is usually better to have the story and everything in place before you start coding, but I realize this isn't always the case. Just wanted to point out some pitfalls that I know of off hand.
I'm sorry by non-meat I mean bones. The thing that makes the game work. Then we add the meat as in organs and then meat2 as in the fat (the best of the best) Sorry about the vocab.
closed account (S6k9GNh0)
Why not make something like Pong and move from there?
Text-based adventures are hardly exciting, you can download them by the millions online and only maybe 2 or 3 of the millions actually grab my attention.
Text-based adventures are hardly exciting, you can download them by the millions online and only maybe 2 or 3 of the millions actually grab my attention.
@RealGiganitris
Software development, especially game development doesn't work that way. You have to start with the body and work in reverse. You get the idea, write the story for it, decide what mechanics you will have, and then start breaking everything down and start coding it.
The method you are doing is about the same as an artist just randomly creating assets and then the creator saying "Okay, now what story can we build around them? We already have it so they do shooting, running, and transform into other things." In that scenario the artist would either have to go back and redo the assets for the transform part, or the creator would have to say, "Okay, well lets drop that."
You would save yourself from these headaches if you sit down and say, "Okay, we want to make a text-based adventure, lets come up with the story and possible actions. " After writing the story you may find the things you have coded so far don't fit in your idea or would require you to write way more or leave out parts of the story to make them work. You should always have the idea and story done before you ever open the editor.
Software development, especially game development doesn't work that way. You have to start with the body and work in reverse. You get the idea, write the story for it, decide what mechanics you will have, and then start breaking everything down and start coding it.
The method you are doing is about the same as an artist just randomly creating assets and then the creator saying "Okay, now what story can we build around them? We already have it so they do shooting, running, and transform into other things." In that scenario the artist would either have to go back and redo the assets for the transform part, or the creator would have to say, "Okay, well lets drop that."
You would save yourself from these headaches if you sit down and say, "Okay, we want to make a text-based adventure, lets come up with the story and possible actions. " After writing the story you may find the things you have coded so far don't fit in your idea or would require you to write way more or leave out parts of the story to make them work. You should always have the idea and story done before you ever open the editor.
@BHXSpecter I think he mean things similar to that which would go into an engine: map loader, map editor, player/enemy/game objects, etc. At least that is what I understood from his (rather twisted :) ) metaphor.
Well to be fair, this is how I started my console game too.
I had like maybe the most basic idea of what I wanted and then started coding the beast. I don't have any story yet, but thankfully I am satisfied with the results. I admit with some embarrasment that I enjoy playing the thing almost as much as I enjoy coding it.
I had like maybe the most basic idea of what I wanted and then started coding the beast. I don't have any story yet, but thankfully I am satisfied with the results. I admit with some embarrasment that I enjoy playing the thing almost as much as I enjoy coding it.
Yes! Script Coder is right! No way in hell I'm making pong and I have heard enough people tell me to delete my hard work for some crap that won't get played. Just stop commenting you haven't even seen my work. I do have one AI who says one line and doesn't do anything more. It's not a complete engine because I need suggestions for how things should go and you will have to edit stuff as you go along so everything is compatible.
>one AI who says one line and doesn't do anything more
>AI who says one line and doesn't do anything more
Pretty sure that doesn't count as an AI :P
As for ideas for the uhh the meat, do you want suggestion on genre? Or story? or what?
>AI who says one line and doesn't do anything more
Pretty sure that doesn't count as an AI :P
As for ideas for the uhh the meat, do you want suggestion on genre? Or story? or what?
| RealGiganitris wrote: |
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| Just stop commenting you haven't even seen my work. |
Then how will we help you with ideas if we stop commenting? ;)
| Cheraphy wrote: |
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| Pretty sure that doesn't count as an AI :P |
Well, technically, it is an AI WIP, as AIs always start out doing one thing and then getting fleshed out more. :P
| Manga wrote: |
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| Well to be fair, this is how I started my console game too. |
Yeah, a lot of people do that for small things, but once you start larger projects you learn fast that you have to have a story and fleshed out idea otherwise you will be continually rewriting parts of the code or finding that your gameplay will be drastically jumping every few levels. Text games don't matter much as they are either plain text or ASCII graphics.
| Script Coder wrote: |
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| I think he mean things similar to that which would go into an engine: map loader, map editor, player/enemy/game objects, etc. At least that is what I understood from his (rather twisted :) ) metaphor. |
Not according to his original post:
| RealGiganitris wrote: |
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| Just finishing up the non-campaign parts of the game (the non-meat) so I need ideas on the actual meat. This is a text based game. Any ideas for anything ever? Even an original story? |
Basically he was asking for campaign ideas, story, etc.
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| Lachlan Easton wrote: |
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| No he means the engine part is the non meat and the story part is the meat. |
He never said anything about the engine. "non-campaign parts of the game" would imply there is a multi-player or mini-games or such (even for a text game) not that he is talking about the engine of the game.
@BHXSpecter:
It's not uncommon to make a game framework without a story. You just have to design the framework to be robust-enough to accept whatever the story throws at it. In fact, I doubt that they hard-coded any of FFVII into the actual code. I would have assumed that they wrote scripts independent of the code which were added later.
Example 1:
Fallout and Oblivion. These games share the same engine. The only differences are the stories and the skins.
Example 2:
Farcry, Crysis, CrysisII, CryEngine. Here we saw a company create a game engine which was versatile enough to handle multiple stories. It was actually so versatile that they started to sell the engine itself.
The point is that the engine and the story can be independent. The engine will be determined by a set of requirements that you lay out: How the battle system works, how characters are portrayed, how they speak and move, skills, inventories, etc. It gives the writers the tools they need to put their story into the engine and then to help the director make the characters move in certain ways.
It's not uncommon to make a game framework without a story. You just have to design the framework to be robust-enough to accept whatever the story throws at it. In fact, I doubt that they hard-coded any of FFVII into the actual code. I would have assumed that they wrote scripts independent of the code which were added later.
Example 1:
Fallout and Oblivion. These games share the same engine. The only differences are the stories and the skins.
Example 2:
Farcry, Crysis, CrysisII, CryEngine. Here we saw a company create a game engine which was versatile enough to handle multiple stories. It was actually so versatile that they started to sell the engine itself.
The point is that the engine and the story can be independent. The engine will be determined by a set of requirements that you lay out: How the battle system works, how characters are portrayed, how they speak and move, skills, inventories, etc. It gives the writers the tools they need to put their story into the engine and then to help the director make the characters move in certain ways.
closed account (3qX21hU5)
It is much different on that scale though and those developers knew what they were getting into and have created multiple AAA games. You can't really compare AAA game companies that have had years of experience with creating games and beginners to the trade that are making a console game.
You need to have the experience that is gain from making multiple games to be able to effectively create a framework/game engine before you know exactly what you want the game to be. Because what you essentially are creating is a framework that is general enough that it can work with anything which is extremely hard to do.
What I believe BHX is saying is that yes it is possible to implement the basic framework or "game engine" of the game before knowing the exact story or genre of the game, but it is just making it harder for yourself.
When you have the story in my mind and the genre in mind you know what needs to go into that framework and you know what it doesn't need. If you design the framework around the game itself you will most of the time (Especially at the indie level and beginners level) have a much easier time with it and your game will turn out much better in the end.
Where as if you design a framework that can "work" for everything chances are you will end up with something that is just to general to be of use when you finally decide on the game you want to make. So then you have to either go redo most of the stuff in it so it can work for the game you are making or toss the whole thing and start over. Or worse yet you end up with something that can't be used for anything and you just wasted all that time for nothing.
Though then again doing something is better then doing nothing. So keep at it OP though I would side with BHX on this one. You should have a clear idea of what type of game you want. That doesn't mean you can't change things while in development but just make sure you have a broad idea to work with.
You need to have the experience that is gain from making multiple games to be able to effectively create a framework/game engine before you know exactly what you want the game to be. Because what you essentially are creating is a framework that is general enough that it can work with anything which is extremely hard to do.
What I believe BHX is saying is that yes it is possible to implement the basic framework or "game engine" of the game before knowing the exact story or genre of the game, but it is just making it harder for yourself.
When you have the story in my mind and the genre in mind you know what needs to go into that framework and you know what it doesn't need. If you design the framework around the game itself you will most of the time (Especially at the indie level and beginners level) have a much easier time with it and your game will turn out much better in the end.
Where as if you design a framework that can "work" for everything chances are you will end up with something that is just to general to be of use when you finally decide on the game you want to make. So then you have to either go redo most of the stuff in it so it can work for the game you are making or toss the whole thing and start over. Or worse yet you end up with something that can't be used for anything and you just wasted all that time for nothing.
Though then again doing something is better then doing nothing. So keep at it OP though I would side with BHX on this one. You should have a clear idea of what type of game you want. That doesn't mean you can't change things while in development but just make sure you have a broad idea to work with.
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@Zereo
Yes that is exactly what I was getting at.
@Stewbond
Let me use your example to show why it is flawed. If you make an engine before even having an idea of what you want to make. We will use the battle system, lets say you make a battle system for an FPS genre, then you decide you want to do an RPG. Well then you would have to go back and rewrite the battle system.
Yes that is exactly what I was getting at.
@Stewbond
Let me use your example to show why it is flawed. If you make an engine before even having an idea of what you want to make. We will use the battle system, lets say you make a battle system for an FPS genre, then you decide you want to do an RPG. Well then you would have to go back and rewrite the battle system.
closed account (S6k9GNh0)
Or you would just not make the "battle system" part of the engine thus making it more modular.
An engine or framework is nothing but stepping stones. It is not the destination and is not meant to do everything.
An engine or framework is nothing but stepping stones. It is not the destination and is not meant to do everything.
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| do you want suggestion on genre? Or story? or what? |
All three! For the genre, I was thinking of adding RPG elements but I would like to know what is fun and what other things to throw in there. Creative writing for me needs to be worked on so it would be nice to get some ideas and perhaps a great tutorial that you have used in the past?
| he means the engine part is the non meat and the story part is the meat. |
The engine is the bones, the story are the organs and the fun is the fat!
| He never said anything about the engine. "non-campaign parts of the game" would imply there is a multi-player or mini-games or such (even for a text game) not that he is talking about the engine of the game. |
Sorry no MP mode currently, maybe in future versions. <-Yeah right like I'm making another one!) Lots of mini games will hopefully be added and mixed to work in harmony with the whole project. I tried adding one to go with the beginning of the engine but it was impossible because ideas to further development was way to hard and current ideas sucked.
Practice freewriting. Jot down everything that comes to mind until you hit upon something interesting. That'll help you with a story.
Considering this is a text-based game, I personally like escape games or ones with puzzles that let you have that "aha!" moment. I also find any story in the game to have a big impact on whether or not I continue playing.
Considering this is a text-based game, I personally like escape games or ones with puzzles that let you have that "aha!" moment. I also find any story in the game to have a big impact on whether or not I continue playing.
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