Sat 16 Jan 2010
The Idealist’s Way: Developing Your Dream Game
Posted by Mark Richards under Features, Games & Game Design
[8] Comments
Whilst Ben Chandler and the like are consistently getting game development just right, there is the rest of us, me included, getting it just about completely wrong – or are we? And are we that different from Mr Chandler?
This article, in short, will try to explain why trying to make your first project huge and exciting is indeed a bad idea, but why I’m sticking to it and why you should never give up.
I read an article the other week on IndieGameMag titled Your Game Idea Ain’t so Great. Their idea is, essentially: you’re not a genius so dump your grand idea and clone something for now. Lovely. This isn’t a critique of that article – it was done a lot better than I could manage, over at Mersey Remakes – but it did get me thinking. I have been developing a freeware adventure game for near-as-damn-it five years now because it’s huge(ish). Am I doing it all wrong?
I was 15 or so when I started designing my game. I had been reading the How to make a game articles in PCZone and I wanted to learn to code. Incidentally, I had just finished playing through Beneath a Steel Sky and had watched Star Wars again and so I had ideas of a grand adventure, in space, with spaceships. And an evil Empire.
I wrote the first chapter of the game as a script for a text adventure with pictures, sort of Triby’s Notes without the arrow keys and like a true fanboy I sent it to Dan Marshall, the writer behind How to make a game to get some critique. All credit to Dan, he humoured the naïve 16 year old boy and read it through, suggesting some great ideas.
a side-project in a very different style
For the story I was thinking Bioware in terms of complexity. So far, so ambitious. Admittedly, the story was rubbish, but I was only 16 by then and I did get some critique. I think what I did do completely right at this point was send it off to Dan, because although what I sent was rubbish, the forum I joined shortly after, which is now the Zombie Cow Forum has been a real asset. The people there are great and from them I have basically learnt how to write, pixel and to some extent be a competent designer.
If I’d started small, I don’t think I’d have sought that advice. I was excited about my project, it was big and everything I ever wanted to make. I wanted to show it off. What I did next however was a bad move: after I discovered Adventure Game Studio (the tool that has made all my game making dreams come true) instead of investigating the software first and working out what was actually possible, I jumped straight in and started building my game. This put pressure on me to learn to draw in pixels, something I knew nothing about. I made a quick sketch of my character and starting throwing some brown pixels together in Paintshop Pro. I was advised by the forum community however to look at some samples (i.e. Guybrush) and go back to the drawing board. And that I did, I painted over Guybrush and made him all sci-fi. In the wrong resolution. Without realising I had set myself up to develop an adventure game in a high resolution when I couldn’t draw.
This was the first big mistake I made, and it was big because it damaged the whole project.
Guybrush among his older brothers (nah, just the progress of the hero sprite)
It tied my down to a level of detail I couldn’t handle as an amateur artist. The backgrounds looked empty and the animations took forever. If I had been working on a small experimental project or a clone I’d have given up. I could have started again on something else and done it better. But I’d have lost the project forever, potentially. Instead, I ploughed on and ended up with even more bad design choices.
This is when it becomes important to consider why I’m making my game. I’m not working for anyone, I haven’t got a deadline and I don’t have to sell it. I’m making the game for me and the more people besides that who enjoy it, the better. I’m an Independent Games Developer. I may not have my own company or studio but I can call myself one, because it’s free. Anyone can develop an indie game. And it was for this very reason that, when I got a bit older and wiser, I rebooted my game. I didn’t forget it and move on or resign to it being Not so Great because it was making it for the love of doing so.
Ben said in a previous post that “reworking is a major motivation killer” and I have to disagree; it was the one thing that got me going again. Was the reworking a bad idea? Maybe it was, maybe if I had started again with a different project I could have properly planned it and got rid of every bad decision once and for all. On the other hand, progress has been incredible. I’m now more than two times further into development with the rework than I got with the original one, and I’ve only been working on it a year compared to the four years on the other.
an in-game location before/after re-working
So what can we learn? Firstly, you have freedom. As an indie you don’t work for anyone. Obviously if you are making money from your games, you have to consider that aspect, but why go indie if you can’t develop what you want to develop? The decisions I made were the decisions of an inexperienced gamer but without them I wouldn’t be where I am now. I wouldn’t be part of several invaluable indie communities and I wouldn’t be developing my dream game. I have indeed learnt from my mistakes, and I have the same experience under my belt than if I’d produced several small clones. More, in fact. And I haven’t lost anything in the process, my first project – the one that got me excited about games development – still exists alongside the newer ones, and I haven’t forced myself to work on anything that doesn’t always drive me to do so.
What’s also important is I am not really disagreeing with Ben. Take his advice, he is better at making games than I am but although his projects are small and well planned, he still makes what he wants to make. The dimension of experimentation is still there and that is what defines a good indie developer, whether you do it through short games experiments or your grand game idea, which in time, I assure you will be great.
About The Author
Mark Richards is a physics undergraduate, making games with AGS in spare time (not easy by the way). His big project is called The Longevity Gene (a dystopian sci-fi game) and he has a couple of collaborations lined up that will happen with a bit of luck. The Longevity Gene‘s progress, vids, screenshots & other goodies can be followed here.
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8 Responses to “ The Idealist’s Way: Developing Your Dream Game ”
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I remember that old screenshot, and I think that you made a damn fine decision to rework what you’d done. After 4 years of doing something you’ll have learnt so darn much that what you were doing back at the start just doesn’t match what you’re capable of.
I don’t think there’s any actual “right” way to make games, just ones that work better for the individual. I have grand ideas myself, and I hope that one day I will get around to forcing myself to build one of them.
As for The Longevity Gene – somebody asked me the other day to list the 10 AGS games in production that had me the most excited and your game was in there
Thanks for the interesting read!
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Excellent read, and the game looks to be coming along splendidly!
That said, there’s an important difference in using an existing, low-fidelity engine and framework, which is not always part of someone’s learning process (depending upon their goals, it’s helpful to some and harmful to others). Using AGS or Game Maker is a different beast than programming an engine while designing and making assets at the same time; on the other end of the spectrum, using a 3D engine from id or Epic as the foundation for a total conversion mod can be mind boggingly intensive, in a way that lessons learned while doing it show clear seams between start and (if it ever happens) end of a project.
That “if it ever happens” is huge; in your particular story (I’m by no means attempting to argue that things ought to have gone any differently in your case – you’re on a great track!) you were starting as a teenager, when time for the mind to wander has fewer obligations than when people get older, and many indies start in thei college years while juggling clubs, more demanding classwork, and a social life with greater complexity. I’ve seen a lot of people start a bigger project than they should, and not only did it never turn into a game, it broke their spirit from building anything else afterward. The one or two beginnin game developers that I saw make even medium-sized games for thee first projects (mind you, this was all programming from scratch) were only able to do so with considerable help by more experienced indies, then came away from it feeling too exhausted to build up momentum into future ideas.
Having finished huge games (on huge teams) and micro games (mostly alone, sometimes leading tiny teams), for people looking to learn game development in the broadest sense (including technical design / programming) I weigh strongly toward the size of recommending that college-age devs start simple and master the process before trying to be innovative. Though if a developer’s interest is particularly focused in writing, animation, 3D level design, or some similar segment of one or more existing genres, tools and existing engines are surely the more relevant way to get where they’re going sooner rather than later.
Scope also becomes an issue when (1.) an amateur error early in a game prevents anyone from experiencing what’s later in it, wasting all that work (or 2.) a long game lacks the sort of variety in inspiration that comes from past projects, which like a magician on the stage or a good dancer means knowing a few tricks to keep an otherwise consistently decent and competently assembled experience from being overly formulaic.
Thanks again for the perspective on your story, and best wishes with the project!
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Sorry for the handful of distracting typos – I typed that message from my iPhone, which in this particular blog format made going back to cure minor errors a pain
Meaning did not appear to be trampled though, just a few missing letters here and there.
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Ben:
Thanks for the compliment and yes, that is exactly why I went back and started over!
ChrisDeLeon:
Your comment was a great read in itself. I think you’ve highlighted a lot of my concerns. I’m still learning and that’s why, with a bit of luck, I’m starting on some smaller projects soon alongside this one.
AGS is great because I’m a designer and an artist. I’m no programmer, really. Luckily though, being a Physics student means you meet a lot of programmers! So the next step is moving away from AGS and maybe even away from exclusively 2D games.
P.S. There are probably some typos in here, too!
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Excellent and really helpful. Thanks!
BTW, duly noted
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I can understand reworking an old idea rather than starting again. I hate it when I don’t finish things, and often starting something new and killing an idea is a lot less fulfilling than completing an old project.
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Thanks for the comments, Gnome and Azure! It certainly is fulfilling, it’s great to see an old idea brought back to life and made better by your own experience.
@Gnome: what is that that’s duly noted?
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