How do you plan?

[Calin Leafshade]

How do you plan your games?

Since im doing voice overs for mine (see my voiceover thread in TCL) a modicum of planning is pretty necessary and i wondered how detailed everyone else goes into it.

Do you have your full story/dialogue planned before you even start up AGS or do you wing it?

How do you plan rooms? load up paint and scribble or map it out first?

The below is a 'room plan' for one of the rooms in my game.. is that how most people do it?

Room: 3, Chapel
Room Description

A small derelict chapel with a young naked girl strung up on a cross/satanic alter of some kind. Its dark with only candel light and the moon to illuminate the room.
There's blood everywhere and messages are scratched into the wall.

Room Hotspots

Girl.
Look: She looks young, 17 maybe. Smells like gasoline. I hope they weren't planning what i think they were.
Touch: She's dead, theres nothing i can do.
Talk: She's recently become the silent type.
Use Matchbook: Do i look like the type to burn dead bodies? Don't answer that.

Blood Stained Rope
Look: It doesn't look like its supporting her in anyway. maybe they used it to get her up there.
Touch: [Pick up] Blood is stickier than you might think.
Talk : It doesn't answer me.

Tattered Match book
Look: An old matchbook, how beautifully cliche. It's from the Grovesnor hotel. Sounds like a good next stop.
Touch: [Pick Up] An old matchbook, how beautifully cliche. It's from the grovesnor hotel. Sounds like a good next stop.
Talk: It doesn't answer me.

Window
Look: Seems like a good way out.. cant reach it though.
Touch: Can't reach it.
Talk: It doesn't answer me.
Use Blood Stained Rope:
    [If got matchbook]: Lets check out this hotel shall we. [Leave Room]
    [If !got matchbook]: I can't leave yet, I need something more to go on.

Alter
Look: I haven't seen anything like this before. Let's hope i don't ever again.
Touch: I'd rather not.
Talk: It doesnt answer me

Wall
Look: Someones scratched something into here. "Valui ad satanam invocandum". I succeeded in summoning Satan. Nice
Touch: Feels like it was scratched in with a knife. Or claws.
Talk: It doesn't answer me.

[ddq]

Oddly enough, most of my ideas come from either dreams or daydreams. I'll be sitting around or driving around town and all of a sudden, I'll think, "Hey maybe if Denis Leary and a lovable crew flew around the world in a dirigible during the zombie apocalypse? I better write this down." So after I am no longer operating a two-ton lethal weapon, I do write it down, usually in a plain-text file. I start with the basic premise, then I outline the characters and story structure. If I get actual rooms written down, I'll jot down rough ideas for the hotspots, too. After I've fleshed out my thoughts, I start making some graphics (Denis Leary sprites, backgrounds, etc.), and design choices, (resolution, speech style). It pretty much just flows from there.

But enough about my next project; for my current one, aside from dreams and free-writing, I get most of my ideas by collaborating with my co-designer over the phone. We toss ideas back and forth until we come up with something original.

[ThreeOhFour]

I have a notebook which is full of scribbles, x,y coordinates, crappy puzzle ideas, crappy dialog exchanges and then other random things not actually relating to games design.

For me, a game isn't something that you can plan out perfectly, because (like anything) you will want to make changes and adjustments as you go to make it more enjoyable, and also as you have new ideas.

And besides, stuff like descriptions of the stuff in the room isn't totally necessary to plan. AGS has features that make getting a script for voice acting easy (unless you're doing all the voice acting before you make the game, which seems a bit odd but I guess we all have our own preferred methods).

[Mr Flibble]

Tree diagrams. Lots of them. Do a big tree diagram for goals and then do it again with all the puzzles in place and see how they could inter-relate, and maybe if you should move some puzzles around.

As for actual hotspot descriptions and dialogue, I usually do those on the fly unless it's an important scene.

[Ethan D]

For my first game I would write every so often but that got me finished very.. very slowly.  I've started going to Starbucks and writing for several hours at a time. 

But to answer the question I get a full script finished before I even start sketching out rooms.  Although, I do have a general idea whats in them.  And then I use programming art until I can get the actual art.  At least that's how I'm working now.  On my first game, I was doing everything at once and several times had to scrap art and it doesn't make an artist happy if you scrap their hard work because of your poor planning. 

So that's how I would recommend doing it but everybody has their own style.  Just make sure you are sure what you want from other people before you ask for it.

[LimpingFish]

On the fly. All aspects.

[Lionmonkey]

Cases of subconciously self-induced hypomania.

[TerranRich]

Cases of beer.

[Stupot]

I feel like I'm making a lot more progress (although still very slow) now that I have decided to plan properly.  All my previous projects have failed, probably because I was too busy trying to make backgrounds when I'd barely thought about the actual puzzles.

This time round I'm not even going to think about artwork until I've planned the game inside out, apart from some very very brief sketches to work out where things are going to go.

[Wesray]

In the past I have scrapped several game ideas because the looming workload scared me off - especially since I suck at drawing. Anyways I have found a planning and development process that really suits me and my first game progresses well for now. I agree with Stupot here, good planning is essential.

I started with roughly planning the game in a design document: the story and its major milestones, the basic structure of the game, the most important characters, some central puzzles. But I didn't go into detail yet. The next step was deciding on the game resolution and a graphic style that I could manage with my drawing skills. So I did some test backgrounds, drew the player character including his walk cycles and designed the sprites for the important supporting characters. I also designed a GUI and experimented a bit with more advanced AGS scripting which I would need for some of the puzzles.

From that point on it is an iterative process for me. I take the first part of the game, detail its story and break it down in locations. Then I brainstorm about them, i.e. puzzles, objects, characters. The next goal is to make that part of the game playable as soon as possible with only the essential descriptions, programmer’s art for backgrounds etc. After that aim is achieved, I do a revision of the whole game section and improve the graphics, add further descriptions and animations, etc. Mostly things to enhance the presentation; but I also might tweak some puzzles or include some new ideas. Then I repeat the whole process with the next part of the game. After the whole game is (hopefully) completed I plan to do a second revision on it and bring everything up to snuff and in a releasable form.

[Chicky]

This way of planning works for when i'm writing screenplays, i suppose it could be applied to game making.

Write a brief for a three act structure then write a beat sheet (sentence for every background describing key story elements).
Turn the beat sheet into a treatment by writing a good paragraph for each background going into detail on NPC's and puzzle elements. You should then be able to read through your paragraphs and get a good idea of how your game will play out.

[Play_Pretend]

First, I brainstorm a ton of notes for plot, character and puzzle ideas...these end up in a mead notebook, on post-its, and torn bits of paper towel from work.

Then I try to make a full plot synopsis...no really fine detail, but the full game, from start to end, so I know what has to be included.

My artist partner and I start planning the backgrounds, so he can paint them while I start scripting.  I write hotspots and dialogues pretty much on the fly, to let my humor come through naturally, unless I had some specific joke or puzzle to aim for.

(Oh, heh, I also use temporary fill-in backgrounds and characters while waiting for the real art...stick figures and childish bg drawings. )

Then I obsessively nitpick my scripting, getting things positioned down to the pixel, and put everything from my artist into it.  We do checklists to make sure we didn't forget anything (and as positive reinforcement, so we can see how much we've done).

If there's voice acting, I wait until everything else is 99.9% finished before putting it in, since it's so time consuming.  I have dialogue scripts for my actors, but still spot check the length, volume and wording of every line in case  they improvised or made a mistake.

Then I beta test it with obsessive-compulsive care, *then* release it to other beta testers.  Once it's all good, hooray!

[Dualnames]

Whenever I think of an element I really would want to see it in my game I either write it down, or I just think about it a lot all day, then I write it down, and try to implement on the story I have so far, but if it doesn't fit yet, i just leave it on a doc file and open it when I need puzzle ideas or story flesh outs.

I doubt it that made any sense.

[Snake]

Actually, Duals, it makes perfect sence. I do pretty much the same thing. When I get an idea where I think, "Wait a minute!" I write it down right away either in a txt file on the computer or in my notebook so I don't forget it.

I usually sit at the kitchen table with my notebook and ponder, for what seems, DAYS on one thing before writing it down. Unless it's a "Wait a minute!" type idea, I find it very hard to write down. If I write it down, it seems too permanent for some reason... which initiates the problem where I can't think of anything else and have a hard time getting around what I had written down. I also can't sit at the computer and expect ideas to flow without being distracted... unless I'm "in the ZONE", of course. Paradox?

Calin,
That's a good idea, what you've showed us. I like that a lot actually. It reminds me of writing a text adventure with the Adventure Game Toolkit some years ago. I think I might do that myself. Seems like it's a good organizer for thoughts.

More on topic: What I've been doing lately is using a tool called, yWriter5. It's novel writing software (freeware) but works great for adventure writing as well. You write the story down in little organized chapters and scenes. From within each scene you can write down each object that is in it, each character, take notes, insert pictures, etc. It's quite useful. It's great at organizing my thoughts.

[Technocrat]

Depends what I'm doing, but for an adventure game, I split the planning into several different types. I have a tree diagram for the puzzles, how they relate to other puzzles, and things that are needed for them. For people, I'd have small biographies, and with rooms - well, they tend to be on the fly. The descriptions for contents of rooms especially, after all, it's how Sierra did it in the 90s, so it's good enough for me!

[Chicky]

If you're looking for software to help you plan Celtx is good, along the same lines as the program Snake mentioned but with storyboard support, sound clip notes etc.

[Dualnames]

Oh, and I usually get all my ideas on the bus-stop. Or usually while I'm lost in my mind, while girls are talking to me, begging me to have sex with them, but I'm lost.

[Tijne]

I don't really plan; I come up with half my ideas as I'm working on it...  Anything that requires foresight is generally included in my 'vague idea' before I even think of starting to work on the game.  And most of those things are just inspired by other events I've been in or heard of...

When that fails, I walk around for a bit till I step on an idea.



(...Which may explain the low-quality and lack of logic to half of my puzzles.... xD)

[TerranRich]

Surprisingly, when I'm sitting at my computer, I go BLANK. Utterly blank. If I'm sitting in the TV room, watching my kids, or just doing something else, that's when I get my best ideas, as well as my greatest motivation to come up with ideas. Perhaps I should go now, so I can be inspired.

[Ryan Timothy B]

Ya that's the same for me.  I usually think of my best ideas when I'm not intentionally thinking about them.  I just go about my regular day to day life, while I'm at work, driving, whatever, the ideas keep flowing in.  And I never have to write them down, because for some odd reason I remember them.
I still remember ideas for games I thought about several years back.  It's a freakin' vault up there.