Design, design, design

Over the last few days, I’ve been spending a significant amount of my mental resources thinking about the game and the features I would like to see in it.  This alone can be a dangerous line of thinking.  In the end, I could end up with a game that I absolutely love to play, but nobody else does.  That defeats the purpose, in my mind.  On the other hand, building a game that every else would enjoy, but that I won’t, doesn’t seem appealing or inspiring.

Balance…

I’ve been thinking about all of the different MMO’s and single player adventure games I’ve played over the last twenty-five years.  What are some of the things I was most fond of?  How many of those are for really great design versus nostalgia?  I tempered my thoughts with remarks my friends had made about the games and their design.  It’s easy to state the obvious.  It’s more difficult to identify the essence that actually made a particular game worthwhile.

I would like to design a worthwhile game.

This morning, I got up early thinking about the shape of the game.  It doesn’t have a name, it doesn’t have rules, it doesn’t have definition.  I decided to grab a pen and a pad of paper and a clipboard.  I walked the couple of blocks to my local coffee shop, ordered my drink, sat down and started to explore the shape of the game.

I recalled both the positive and negative aspects of games I’ve played.  I jotted notes into broad categories so I could retrigger the thought process.  I covered a very wide gamut of ideas and concepts from the different types of quests to banking, money, characters and their development, merchants, areas, expandability, items, transportation, community, story, crafting, grouping, etc…  When I was done, I had two full pages of very high-level ideas.

Shape…

I now have a very rough shape.  The idea now is to iterate through each of these areas and define the next level of detail.  These details will be written up and I will have some peers and friends review the thoughts and ideas.  This whole project started out with the notion of doing this in a very public manner and soliciting input from everyone.  While that doesn’t mean I’ll utilize everyone’s input, it does mean I will consider everyone’s thoughts and contributions.

There’s a part of me that hesitates to start coding anything without additional shape to the game.  While it might feel like a waste of time to start so early, it turns out there are many supporting framework pieces that can be started.  This includes a basic application framework and coding design documents.  Companion applications can be started and technology assessments can be done.

So much to do… So little time…

And so starts the game development

After some careful thoughts over the last several days I have come to the following conclusions.  First, the game should be small enough initially that it doesn’t require months of architecture work just to get something basic going.  Second, in general, I should use as much existing technology as possible and not try to blaze a new trail here (see my first point).

It’s not enough to just write a game.  Without some planning and thought, it will be a failure from the beginning.  I’ve spent some time over the last few days reviewing the traits and qualities that I personally enjoy in various adventuring games.  This includes sources like Everquest 2, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Tunnels of Doom, Rogue, etc…  I’m not striking out with the ambition of building such a large scale endeavor, but there are many little qualities each of these games possess that I would like to bring to my game.

My first goal will be to come up with a document that describes these qualities and how I see them fitting into the game (or not).  As a sanity check, I will run this list past some gaming buddies and get their reaction.  While this is going on, I can also start with some general framework and utility coding to occupy my developer urges.

My next gaming post will include a project name and a general description.  I will provide a specific category (along with sub-categories) that can be utilized to pivot the topics and discussions.

I’m excited to get things going…

It’s all about scale

How times have changed. Here I am, sitting in my office at home at my desktop thinking about the programming project I want to work on.  It starts out simple enough.  Create a small dungeon crawl game that is lightweight fun.  I figure this would be a great opportunity to start writing a blog describing how I go about thinking, planning and coding such a project.  How hard could it be?

Twenty years ago, I would have simply started up an editor, wrote some code, stayed up way to late and ignored everyone and everything around me.  Today, I find myself in real contemplation assessing the size and scope of the project and asking a lot of questions that begin with ‘Why?’.

Part of me is disgusted by this.  Part of me is proud to show my maturity and experience in this matter. The end result is that it really doesn’t matter much if I don’t do anything.  So, I need to put a stake in the ground and start making some progress.

The thought process goes something like this.  If I’m only writing a small game or game framework to be utilized only as a learning process, then there is little reason to do anything other than jump right in and start coding.  The flip-side being that if I want to create something with great potential, then I need to have the necessary framework in place to make sure the project doesn’t implode on itself.

What’s the answer?  Well, I don’t know that yet.  Hopefully, I’ll find a happy middle-ground and get this thing started.  In the meantime, at least I have some topics that delve into my psyche.

Back to WordPress…

Well, after writing a couple of blog entries on my Spaces account, talking with some friends and some personal contemplation on where I want to go with this project, I’ve moved my blogging efforts back  to WordPress.

Why? Two primary reasons.  First, WordPress allows individual blogs to be tagged with multiple tags.  This allows for a more complex taxonomy for people to sort my blogs in the future.  Spaces only provides the ability to put a single category which I find particularly annoying and constraining. Second, I want the blog to be the central focus and not have the additional ‘gadgets’ that come with a full Spaces site.  I don’t want to dumb down my Spaces site because there is some value in the gadgets for other, more casual visitors.

Just another day at the office

Well, I had hoped to start blogging about some game development at this point.  Unfortunately, I work for a software development company that has interesting rules to protect itself. To make sure I don’t lose my intellectual rights or violate some disclosure agreement, I have had to place an inquiry to understand the bounds and rules and get any permissions in order.

What does that mean? Well, it means I can’t discuss my thoughts quite yet regarding game design and software development.  Bummer.

While that process is underway, I’ll have to just start writing down items on my local system and have them ready to publish when the time is right.  In the meantime, I’m sure I can fill plenty of dead space talking about all the other nonsense I think up or encounter everyday.

Welcome to Digital Bailey

Here begins a new day…  I will use this as a method of expression for ideas, thoughts and opinions.  Primary topics will include software development, photography and games.