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DESIGNING YOUR GAME - Ken Deel

 "The Unholy", still under development, was an idea being built upon until the game actually got it’s official start in development.

    The concept was since as early as October 1995, with the design really started in January 1997.  A good story is where to start; The Unholy is a story that could spawn into an action/adventure Movie as well as a game. This is probably a good idea if you want to build an action adventure game.  Writing it so for a GOOD movie will certainly make it good for a game. But it needs to fit a game. Of course a few tweaks will have to be done. Since you will be creating your game levels as Missions, or “chapter” of the story. Your going to be restricted to the game engine you are using, and your ability to make the story into a game. With the Unholy, I always had the game in mind in design, so there wasn’t a transition that needed to be done. Notice lately that famous authors are turning their stories into games or writing story just for a game, but much like their novels. Like Rainbow Six, this will be seen more and more. So stories will be more an important part of your game.

Sci-fi: We all love sci-fi, but there is far too many games out there, I suggest you take a hard long look at what is there and done to death. Again don’t try to be too original either; the idea itself has to be a good game idea. 

  In the Unholy I wanted it to be built around all that one could be afraid of. So this prompted many character designs. As you design you levels you will ask yourself: “What bad guys would be in this level”?

Just think about where the game level is designed to be. If it is in the water: Shark, piranhas, sea monsters, pirates maybe even.

Jungle: Baboon, tiger, Tribe natives, see what I mean? So these characters I call “stand ins”. Because they mainly fill-in the levels to keep the action and turmoil going.  “Bosses”, are what we dub the characters that are hard to kill, usually a climactic scene, like when your about to uncover something significant to the game, complete your mission objective. Note the published games and how they use this. Say if you’re in a cave looking for an artifact, small spiders could be around. Then waiting near the artifact is a huge spider, the “boss” spider, to make your quest not so easy where you can just grab your mission objective and leave with little effort.   Design your bosses carefully so they fit into the story.  

Entertainment Vs. Realism:

   Keep this in perspective as to when it isn’t entertaining for something to be more like real life. For example, would you really sustain the damage you endure and survive by opening first aid kits? This is because it isn’t entertaining to drop dead from every few hits, and the game is over. Try to make your game entertaining first then real second if it doesn’t interfere with the first element. Don’t forget like in the movies the suspension of disbelief element needs to be here. Notice our hero’s always endure a lot yet triumph in the end? I really believe that first person action games are my way of being Bruce Willis in Die hard, Stallone or Arnold. Which brings me to the next topic of design: Weapons! Don’t get cleaver with trying to come up with new weapons. Stick with the tried and true ones. Else you’re just showing off your new weapon designs, that maybe cleaver but not as fun to use as something more traditional. If you’re game story calls for a new weapon as The Unholy, like the Ghost trap, (as in ghost busters), then make one! Here’s a list of well known versatile weapons: (a few)

1)      Pistol – great standard default weapon! Make it an automatic…

2)      Shotgun – give it a punch! Love those duke nukem days where this was all you need most of the time.

3)      Rocket launcher – speaks for it self, an exploding bullet we’ll call it.

4)      Grenade launcher – this is different because you call shoot at angles or just over an unseen ledge with the firepower of the rocket launcher.

5)      Blaster – my favorite from the Jediknight dark forces games. Not as common but fun especially for sci-fi/star wars fans!

6)      Remote pipe bomb

7)      Trip bombs – fun for death match, but not much help for some single player games.  I had fun with these I admit outsmarting the black ops forces in Half-Life: Opposing Force.

8)      Chain gun – I feel like the “Terminex” pest controller in quake2 when I spray around the room with bullets to more effectively waste a lot of bad guys at once.

    So you’re not building your game so that people can see how innovative you are with new weapon designs. That won’t sell games. It’s nice to have weapons that enable different style of kill. Instead of having different handguns. Be better to not waste you programmer’s skills on new and innovative weapon designs. Stick to the Game effects and character AI.   Remember how I said to keep the line between entertaining Vs. Real? In Half-life I found it frustrating waiting for him to reload his weapon one shell at a time, sure it’s more real but it really did add to the realism as much as it was simply pissing me off that I had to slowly reload when being ambushed by rangers.

---- to be continued ----------------

Basic steps:

(In a nutshell)

1)      Design your game, story, etc. On paper.

2)      Sketch level design concepts or floor maps for game levels so you can design the gameplay better, instead of adlibbing or designing as you build. Unless you change the code with Genesis3d, like add “objects”, or new functions/classes, etc. (programming), you should be able to build much of your levels while you or someone codes the basic game app, A>I for weapons, interactive F.X, and characters/actors.    You won’t get away with using only the texture supplied with G3D, so plan on getting someone to acquire images for you as you need them, make a list of textures you’ll need and make sure they are at least 128x128 or higher better yet.  Texture artist can often help out the modelers also (the 3d character modelers), since most modelers aren’t that great at making their own image maps/textures.

3)      You’ll need a real artist for the box art, and mainly the conceptual drawing etc. For the sake of selling your game to sponsors and publishers without it being entirely finished. Here a DEMO version, say one full game level will be needed to snag the money and attention.

4)      Expect to need two or maybe three programmers. A.I. is a full time thing, lots of stuff moving and interacting with the player. Your second guy will be the one who pus together the game app, video driver setup etc.

5)      Sound effects: lots of free ones, and CD libraries. Contact theatrical supply house and video production services for companies that can help you find a good collection. Also you WILL have to create some on your own, mainly characters, so get a good recorder/MIC  set-up and a reasonable sound program like cooledit or gold wave or more expensive, sound forge.  I have a Peavey Add-verb effects processor from the rock band days that I run between the computer and MIC, you can do this but programs like Cooledit allow you to add effects after you digitize the sound.

6)      Music: Going to need a musician for some soundtrack music that suites well as background music. Be ready to not use MP3’s, there’s a royalty with them also compressed sound files are bad on game framerate. Since it has to decompress the file before.  For Music best to try to get someone who can do .MOD files, or MIDI, if not go straight off the CD playing the track continuously, ignoring the games scenery. The first two react quick when it comes to fire’n up a special music track to suite the coming event in the game. Like a sudden moment of action. Make your sounds WAV, probably the best. But the other uncompressed formats like RAW, SND, are okay too.

More later..

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