Story writing, where to go from here

[tjohnman]

First of all, I'm not 100% sure this is the place to post. For what I've seen it looks like it, but please tell me if I'm doing it wrong.

OK, so here's the deal. I've been preparing to start my first serious adventure game, and after reading a lot around the internets on how this process is supposed to go, I've started writing a script.

Right now I have two pages of general story outline, and a couple more of background concepts and context I want to build the story around. I'm in the process of writing character profiles and background. There are 15 major characters, most of which won't appear directly in the game. Three or four will surely do.

The premise is quite basic. A psychological space opera where nothing is at it seems. A delerict ship and an antihero that finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hard science fiction. Mostly Greg Egan and Stanislaw Lem.
The problem I have is that I feel this is snowballing into something that I'm afraid I may not be able to handle in terms of production. I know I can write this kind of thing, but making a game out of it is a different story. I really want to make it justice.

So what I ask is, should I start writing the script proper? Sketch some concept art? Perhaps stop fleshing out the backstory and making smaller episodes instead, and see where it leads? I'm at a loss here.

Well, thank you a lot for reading all that!

EDIT: Just to clarify, I'm a pretty competent programming, not such a good artist, but I have people who can help me. It's more a matter of organization than actual production.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

The CL isn't for asking advice on whether or not you should do something, it's for providing samples of actual work and getting helpful feedback for you to use to improve your work.

Please provide a more detailed outline of your story (if you want feedback on it), artwork, or something tangible or I will have to move this to adventure talk.

[tjohnman]

I'm sorry. Please move the thread.

[Snarky]

It's no problem. 

I'll try to answer your question, but I don't think there's a right answer in general. It depends on your personal style and where you're most likely to get stuck. Personally I think it's good to get things into the game engine quite early in the development rather than perfecting the game design document, because it's inspirational to see it in playable form, and it sometimes makes you realize things that aren't working and need to be redesigned. You might want to stick with programmer art for things that aren't stable, just so you don't annoy your artist friends with too many change requests, but again that depends on your relationship with them and how they like to work.

Don't postpone the things you're most scared of/bored by, because that just means you risk putting in a lot of work and then giving up once you have to deal with those things.

Don't spend too much time on the backstory, focus on the events of the game itself. It's nice to have some depth to the world, but a little bit goes a long way; you don't want to overwhelm the player with reams of information about a meticulously created universe that they have to study and understand before they can play the game. Besides, working on the game itself is going to give you more ideas for the backstory and help it come into focus.

And yes, it might be best to pick some small part of the game and try to just make that. (It doesn't even have to be the first part.) Even a short adventure game is a lot of work to complete, and the experience will help you as a designer, plus it helps build a fanbase for future adventures. (The Technobabylon games are a good example of that.)

[Haggis]

I agree with Snarky, I put a fair bit of time into pulling together the story / design for the game i'm working on but found during the development process that I'd be inspired by a character / dialog / background etc and start tweaking the original story / puzzles to fit new ideas. Whole portions of the game are now completely different to how I had originally designed them. For example I originally had a fairly sensible 'historian' character, but as I developed the game he became a 'crazed locked up grave robber' to fit in with the feel of the background art and the puzzles. Also not sure about others but don't waste time scripting dialog - like me, you'll find dialog will change often as you work on the game. I usually have to rewrite the same piece of dialog multiple times before I settle on the version I'm happy with.

I would recommend getting your main high level story in place and a list of all the puzzles / set pieces / locations you want (the foundation work does help). After that get developing and let that creative process guide the detail of the characters / dialog / art etc. Of course what works for me may not work for you - i'm working on all aspects of my game on my lonesome, a team environment with shared creative input may be different.

This:

Don't postpone the things you're most scared of/bored by, because that just means you risk putting in a lot of work and then giving up once you have to deal with those things.

is great advice. So is the point about game length - I once read on here that people are far too ambitious with their first game (creating their magnum opus). I am guilty of this. Either start with a short game or produce a game that can be released episodically. I can only assume but I expect you will feel you've achieved more if you can release your first game fairly quickly and it will also give you the opportunity to refine things for the next episode.

Ramble over - hope it was useful.

[tjohnman]

Yes, of course it was useful. Thanks for the advice guys!