Game creation theory - looking for advice on my process

[LetterAfterZ]

Hey everyone,

I've been stopping and starting to create an AGS game for about 10 years, so I thought it's time to finally bite the bullet and get things going.

I'm out to make a game with the potential scope for sequels. At this stage I've determined the whole story arc, for both an individual game, potential sequels and a finale.

I have the key moments and history and world rules worked out, and now I'm tackling the best way forward from here.

I thought a good starting point would be to begin fleshing out the rooms, etc with placeholders and then doing the graphics and audio as the final stage.

What are your thoughts on this, is this a good way to go ahead? Any thoughts on how I should layout my story, and what's the best way to approach introducing puzzles to the game?

Anyway, I'm putting together the comps of my backgrounds and I've just finished the first (the apartment of the main Player character).

I intend to redraw over the top of it in a retro style, but what do you think of the room layout, vanishing point, perspective etc?

I haven't got any characters fleshed out yet, but they are roughly a foot shorter than the door if standing inline with it.



Sorry if this is a bit question overload btw!

EDIT: Added another image

[Anian]

I think there'd be a lot of people who'd consider these backgrounds as finished and not placeholders. But I'm looking forward to seeing this finished.
In the living room, I'd remove every second column of lights, nobody has that many lights in a living room, but that's about it.

Yeah, laying out things will probably be good, because you'll discover any flaws you might have in the story or background or general gameplay design before you invest more time, so in the end it'll save you time.

[LetterAfterZ]

Thanks a lot Anian, I'm actually rather keen to see how I end up redrawing these backgrounds because I've got no idea what the end result may end up like.

Agreed with the lights. I knew something was off but I couldn't pick it.

I've been trying to get at least some degree of placeholder together for my character, (walk cycles are HARD!).

As it's my first ever character sprite, I want to make sure I'm getting my proportions and sense of weight in the right direction before I make too many more frames (or other sprites).

Also, how do people handle different light sources with player characters? I'm not sure what to do with the different angles. I've attached my concept sketch to give an idea of the direction I'm going for with the character.

Thanks for your advice, I really want to get everything right so I really kick my butt in to gear and get this finished.

   

   

[antipus]

I thought a good starting point would be to begin fleshing out the rooms, etc with placeholders and then doing the graphics and audio as the final stage.

What are your thoughts on this, is this a good way to go ahead? Any thoughts on how I should layout my story, and what's the best way to approach introducing puzzles to the game?

Several years ago, I bought the Civilization Collector's Edition (Civ I-IV + bonus stuff). The best part of it was a long and extended interview with game designers on how they did it. Their philosophy was pretty much what you've written above. Make the game cheap, with lame graphics, and work on gameplay, gameplay, gameplay. Have people play it and test it and work and rework the plot. Then, once you're convinced you have things just the way you want them, work on all the art once and only once.

Their main objective is making a great game for cheap. If you've got a core crew of half a dozen designers and programmers, it doesn't cost much to produce and rework things. You can hire two dozen artists for a few months at the end of production to make it pretty.

That's more or less how I did Arden's Vale.  If you're familiar with the game, you can check out a shameful early version of the project with the first few rooms worked out with awful placeholder graphics. You'll notice that the puzzle for the first room has been much improved since then. After having some testers play through the rooms, it was voted down as a lame puzzle, and without too much waste, was easy enough to change.

As for creating puzzles, put in way too many and let people play. A lot of puzzles that seem obvious to you will probably be way too obtuse for players. My biggest changes after testers were improving in-game feedback. You need others' feedback in making responses of "You can't do that, BUT..." without being too obvious or too vague.

[mystazsea]

Hey!! Welcome to the next best 10 years of your life..hehe

On any Kind of game design that has a story ..I suggest you get down to it on a notepad doc or similar and write out your story completely..
Ive been making adventure and other games for years and for Adventure type games...START WITH YOUR STORY

Write out the entire Gameplay as is you were doing a Game walk through ..From the Players perspective..
This way you can kind of play it in your head or on paper before you make anything else.
Although some games start with gameplay elements an adventure game is usually about a story that unfolds during the game..so Make the story first ..Write the entire plot line make sense in chronological order
Like writing a screenplay for a movie..

!!!!SAVE THIS SCRIPT/SYNOPSIS/PLOTLINE/STORYLINE!!!

Then once its finished and it reads well and has no plot holes,
Go back through your Script/storyline and make a list of all the elements you are going to need..

like...

-SCENES/ROOMS
-OBJECTS
-PROPS
-Inventory ITEMS
-CHARACTERS
-CUTSCENES & SPECIAL EVENTS
-ETC

Once you have this list...as it relates to the story...

Start making these assets..
You will probably think of hundreds of better ways to do stuff once you get your list together...

So revise your storyline if need be and revise your prop/Scene/Elements list as well

This process will help you keep your project understandable and easy to find where you are at because you can tick off each item as you have finished or "nearly finished" them.



on the other points..

Your rooms look great already and IMHO only need minor detail work to bring to final stages..

You have done a really good job

I would only suggest that you try make sure you dont make all your rooms follow the same layout...
it can get visually boring...so make sure you use not just perspective but break the rules sometimes and get cinematic with your "camera eye view"

On Character lighting, AGS has several options for lighting and brightness adjustments to characters etc...

As for directional lighting...hm...Harder to do but I use semi transparent object overlays that are animated which can be light glows say from a lamp...that if your character walks near or into the light overlay object they get a visual color tint..You can also accentuate this effect by using "REGIONS" in your rooms and apply light levels, Tints or Use scripted Global functions (look under "Tint" in the AGS Dynamic Help contents..There is a wealth of lighting and tinting ideas in there if you follow my thinking..I use those features alot to dynamically adjust lighting and color tints to do with room lighting and as I said...Semi Transparent object and/or GUI overlays!!

Hope that helps....

You are doing really well...

Looks great so far...!!




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[LetterAfterZ]

Fantastic feedback everyone, thanks so much.

@ antipus, I haven't played Arden's Vale, but I've downloaded both your pre-game version and the real deal (I'll play the finished product first!)

Might I suggest hosting your game files on a service like DropBox? Using the public folder available you could freely share the game without the crazy ads And you could do it for free with the 2GB allowance they provide.

I think the pre-art version is a good idea.

@ mystazsea You basically completely changed my direction, I've been pretty solidly just scripting and writing and rewriting everything now for days. I've got a word doc that's about 5000 words of notes, HEAPS of backstory, character investigation, etc.

I'm slowly realising how intense an undertaking some of these characters are going to be, but on the plus side my story just increased it's complexity and awesomeness pretty dramatically from my original vision. The process has introduced A LOT of character to my game world, and I'm really seeing a good story arc coming out of it.

I guess my next challenge will be integrating some good, challenging puzzles logically into the story. I've got some ideas, but can anyone recommend some good articles on puzzle development and the game concepts behind them to help me really make great puzzles rather than forced mediocre ones.

Thanks!