I've said this to many BYOND developers, and I firmly believe, that a game will never be finished unless it spends at least an hour in the planning phase. That's only the lower bound, though. If you need to make your entire game in one day, an hour is a pretty good starting point, but even then you can save yourself time by spending more time planning. If you were going to make a new game for this month long challenge, then I'd suggest at least two and a half work days of planning before you ever write a line of code or lay down one colored pixel. So grab something to drink, something to write with, and something to write on, turn off your computer, and let's start.
Where do we start, though? Some of us come at a project from a 'professional' angle. We may have a set of conditions that we must meet, and we work from there. Consider for a moment that you are a lead developer at Squeenix, and you've been put in charge of the group that will be developing Final Fantasy 23 (that's the one where Squall fights the Russian, right?). From the start you know that there are certain core aspects of gameplay that you will need to include in your project to make it a Final Fantasy game. Any other features or ideas you have can only be added if they help the main idea, and fit in the time frame you've been given.
We on BYOND arn't generally given an exact form of gameplay, though. We're expected to come up with a great idea for an original game; it should be unique, it should be fun, it should reflect your interests and personality. We're expected to be artists, and we rightfully are. That doesn't mean we can't approach our work like professionals, though.
Imagine that you've just had an epiphany. You were watching some nature program and suddenly got a glimpse of a game in your mind: A snow covered forrest, deep in the Wuling mountain range of central China; here a lone monkey, wearing a thick coat of black fur almost completely covered in clumpy white snow, explores his wilderness.
Now, you could jump in and start programming immediately. Start with a say, worldsay, and who verb, make some icons for trees and your monkey (use a large white square for the snow), and lay down a quick map. If you decide to go down that route, though, then you'll end up spending five times more than otherwise, and you'll never finish the game.
Instead, we're going to take a moment and approach this like a professional, and like an artist. We need to identify our core gameplay. Why would someone play our game, and what are they going to enjoy about it? Be as specific as possible here, this one step is more important than all other steps you will take in producing your game.
In fiction writing, Dr. John L. Flynn calls this step determining the M.I.C.E. Quotient. (How did I ever stumble across, and why did I ever bookmark, this link? That's a story for another day.) He argues that every story can be boiled down to one of:
- Milieu (setting; time, place, culture)
- Idea (information is discovered, over time the idea is revealed and fleshed out)
- Character (a character is explored and developed)
- Event (a life changing event occurs, and the story is driven by it)
Doesn't sound like much of a game, though, does it? That may be a cool experience, the wilderness of a remote forest in winter, and we may be able to succeed in giving the user that experience, but we want to make a game, and this falls too close to 'interactive art' for the scope of our one month challenge. It would take us most of the month just to discuss if it should be considered a game or not. Here is where we take our second most important step in producing our game: We ditch it.
No idea is bad, and every idea has the potential to yield a game. Most ideas also have the potential to eat all your time. If you're a good artist then you'll have an entire brain full of ideas you can pick from. Pick the one that you'll have the best chance of completing in your given time frame.
Ready with your idea then? Ready to turn back on your computer and get to work? Hold on! We havn't even started planning yet.
Until next time, think about your idea. If you don't have one yet, that's fine. If you're fixing up an old project, but never gave much thought to its core gameplay, that's fine, too. Before continuing, though, get a clear grasp of your idea, and what is most important about it: what is at its core. Is your game about testing your reflexes and mental skill against the clock (Foomer.TombExplorer), applying multiple levels of strategy to best a human opponant (Flick.ManoAMano), or simply spreading a little insanity and maybe making a point about something (Elation.DBZrelegr8)?
In our next article we'll explore how to take that core gameplay and build a game around it.
This article is one of a series highlighting the development process, as part of the Get Something Done challenge for the month of may.
