More so a discussion question than a specific one with a problem, point and solution, but what do you guys think the steps to writing a game should be?
(This goes under the assumption that your game has some sort of basic story line…because those things are what engage the people of the APPLEverse…)
So you have your simple game premise set (your a bird who’s going to unite with his buddy’s to seek vengeance on the green swine…and you’re ANGRY™)
Now what?
There’s now the character you play as, the setting,the boundaries, the equipment, the win condition, the lose conditions, the movement of the objects, the random events, the cosmetics, you name it…
And this is just a personal preference question, not looking for one straight answer, but I’m quite curious about you guys and your processes? What’s your train of thought with the game design and steps towards making it?
Personally, I work on making the perfect character with the perfect movement system for the game…one with great flexibility in moves, easy to use, interesting, and simple. Then I go onto the setting. Then the random event generator.
To be honest, when I come up with an idea for an app, I’m somewhere random and I have an epiphany and I say to myself “Yes! That sounds cool, I can definitely make that!” So you can ask yourself a question: “Do I think you contain the knowledge to make said game?”
You probably can. Then, i get working, and I come up with great additions to the game while I’m making it. I would start with the setting and the boundaries just to get yourself started, and then get to the parts that might take awhile like the events and the conditions. For example, I’m making solitaire right now (spoilers!) and I started with the game board first, and then I moved on to drawing a card, and now I’m going to start on the logic/mechanics of the game. Do you see what I mean? I hope this helped you:). -Collin
I start with the basis, usually the player. Once I feel the player is playable then I’ll start working on the setting. There’s not really a big idea at this point but then when the setting gets worked on and things get added the ideas evolve and you end up with something which is sort of like what you were aiming for but completely different. You can watch a few videos on my channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSSREupS6n8e3dYNqzGuHeA/videos
as I like to record/screenshot or even note what’s happening in the app and what has been added/removed. The key to a good game is organisation of resources and plenty of feedback.
I’m no where near finished with Aedif in Aedifico and as you can tell by the videos I’ve been working on it for almost 8 months with a gradual increase in aesthetics and kinesthetics of the player especially. I thought it would be a good idea to add a vignette type effect and light up the screen surrounding the player, after weighing this out with efficiency I got rid. It’s only recently I came back to the player to perfect it (in my eyes).
From the start there was a storyline just no story behind it as I feel this should come last when the polishing takes place. My process differs to yours quite a bit and I imagine mine differs from many others, I have no win conditions, no lose conditions, no aim. Just trying to get to the point where coding can be stopped and story writing can begin, but even then I’m thinking it might take another 8 months to create the perfect story line and polish the game.
All in all I think the steps the writing a good game is organisation and time, and get yourself a good artist if you’re no good yourself (like me). If I were to try (which I won’t) I wouldn’t be able to summarise the steps as they do often differ depending on the game.
@luatee: artist…what kind of artist? Do you mean just someone to do backgrounds? Graphic design artist? An artist who draws fantastic images on paper and scans them?
@Invad3rZIM one that does the job and does it well. If you’re looking for a pencil and paper type game sketching is what you want, otherwise aim to find someone like Kenney.nl who does backgrounds, user interface design and general graphic design. But even so if you have the time and a friend that sketches, get them to send you a couple designs then you can use an app like iDraw to basically trace over that sketch with vector art.
I seem to have an uncanny ability to rewrite nearly the exact same project base for all of my games, slowly evolving it each time I write it. Right now for a project I usually try and get a decent menu (last time I made a new “TextButton” class) and some states working before I go on to gameplay mechanics, where I’ll make a Game state/class. I usually make a Utility tab for functions I need like table.len() when I have a non-indexed table I need the size of. I like to polish a feature when I first make it, but sometimes I polish it afterwards (in addition to the initial polishing).
I suppose I haven’t really made a full App-Store-ready project yet, but I have a lot of good ideas. I just wish I could focus on one. @-)
Hi @Invad3rZim, I usually start from something I’d really like to play with. I try to build up a user story and start writing a poc, so I’m sure it can be developed despite my technical ( and artistic ) limitations. Said that, I’m still up to my Invader-like shmup (you helped me for), as my day job drains most of my motivation
