Oh okay. I will try to make the uber sword looks like one. Haha!
Wow.. lots of reading!
Any good books that can teach me how to write good games!
When people come and talk about - good game design vs good game play? Are they the same?
There are articles on writing good game design? Hardly can find articles talking about game play!
Anyway thanks for the advice.
You are right, if i am a shooter, in the middle of the way, i had to play chess.. it is kind of stupid!
Haha!
Just worried i cannot create a good plot. Coz there are so many games already been released like Diablo 2, Dungeon Siege,Neverwinter Night - really worried my plots are the same with them!
Regards,
Chua Wen Ching
What is GOOD Game Play?
Good gameplay is FUN gameplay. Dont even bother making a game unless your goal is making something fun. Graphics, sound, all those are extra features. And whats the point in having good graphics when the game is no fun to play? Priorities!
All the things mentioned thus far are good examples of things that spice up the experience. Just be sure not to go into a "feature madness" and get something fun and playable first.
All the things mentioned thus far are good examples of things that spice up the experience. Just be sure not to go into a "feature madness" and get something fun and playable first.
Hi, Wen Ching;
Asking this question in a forum full of game-designers is like taking a box of chocolate into a class of children and saying "anyone want some" : you''ll get mobbed =)
The safest way to say that a game is "good" is saying "would I play this game". It''s not a very good attitude to have when you go professional, but it''s a defensible attitude for college projects, and it''ll keep you excited in what you do.
Find a game you like (RTS?), work out the things you liked in it (commanding troops, building bases, blowing stuff up), and the things you didn''t like (micromanagement, building bases, not having enough stuff to blow up).
A good way to approach brainstorming a game design (a technique used by Bungie, if you check out their post-mortem of Myth on Gamasutra), is to pick a genre, sit down and write down a list of Good and Bad:
Rocks Sucks
Kill Things Building a base every time
Command Units Terrain not mattering
Have a tech tree Not having interactive objects
Have units evolve Superweapons that destroy balance
Being able to name units
Having bonus mission objectives
Having Hidden crates for powerups
From there you have a much better idea of what your game should be, and hopefully you''ll have a vision in your mind of what the game will look like and play like.
Good luck,
Allan
Asking this question in a forum full of game-designers is like taking a box of chocolate into a class of children and saying "anyone want some" : you''ll get mobbed =)
The safest way to say that a game is "good" is saying "would I play this game". It''s not a very good attitude to have when you go professional, but it''s a defensible attitude for college projects, and it''ll keep you excited in what you do.
Find a game you like (RTS?), work out the things you liked in it (commanding troops, building bases, blowing stuff up), and the things you didn''t like (micromanagement, building bases, not having enough stuff to blow up).
A good way to approach brainstorming a game design (a technique used by Bungie, if you check out their post-mortem of Myth on Gamasutra), is to pick a genre, sit down and write down a list of Good and Bad:
Rocks Sucks
Kill Things Building a base every time
Command Units Terrain not mattering
Have a tech tree Not having interactive objects
Have units evolve Superweapons that destroy balance
Being able to name units
Having bonus mission objectives
Having Hidden crates for powerups
From there you have a much better idea of what your game should be, and hopefully you''ll have a vision in your mind of what the game will look like and play like.
Good luck,
Allan
------------------------------ BOOMZAPTry our latest game, Jewels of Cleopatra
I suggest acting as "quality-control" for your gameplay as soon as you have an idea. You''ll have to imagine the game in its final form and then play through it step-by-step in your mind. You may have to skip over some parts or invent things on-the-spot as you think through your game - that''s good, because one part of good gameplay is recognizing what elements you can add to your design to improve it.
Most gameplay is largely like the gameplay of previous games with a change or addition of ideas at some point in the structure, and pretty much all original gameplay in video games has come from either board games and card games, or from a simulation of some kind.
Each time you run through the game, you should be evaluating it like the critic of a game review magazine. They will always make sure to point out the flaws and rough edges in your gameplay, where events either move too slowly or repetitively, or overload the player(too challenging, or worse cause the player to voluntarily give up on features of your game because it is too difficult to try to use them and he can survive sufficently using the others).
Then you have to think like the player and accomodate different styles of play, levels of intellect, reflexes, etc., and come up with reasons for their being unsatisfied.
One important thing to do is not to merely copy the gameplay ideas of other games(score, lives, time, hit points, ammo, map, levels, obstacles, units, resources...) but break them down and rebuild them - they are like building blocks and the better you understand them the more you can do. Innovation is mainly a matter of either coming up with a brand new gameplay idea to resolve a "simulation problem," "challenge problem," or "convenience problem," or something imported from a game that uses the same idea in a different context. Examples of the two:
You have the "sim problem" of needing a way to represent the damage the player has taken. So you add hit points and end the game after all hit points are lost. But then you have the "challenge problem" of how to allow a player to continue if he plays well with occasional mistakes. This is resolved by adding in items or areas to replenish hit points. Finally, you have the "convenience problem" of how to record the accomplishments of the player. You resolve this with a score counter.
You want to add more player-character depth to your rail-shooting light-gun game, a simplifed simulation where you hold a limited selection of weapons and ammo. You decide that you can steal a page from adventure and RPG games and give the player a full-blown inventory listing, and then only have to resolve the task of controlling the inventory.
There isn''t any completely scientific method of determining good gameplay as of today - it''s still a lot of mix-and-matching and polishing up. But then, if there truly was a scientific method that anyone could pick up "on the side," I don''t think game design would be the "glamour job" people portray it as today.
Most gameplay is largely like the gameplay of previous games with a change or addition of ideas at some point in the structure, and pretty much all original gameplay in video games has come from either board games and card games, or from a simulation of some kind.
Each time you run through the game, you should be evaluating it like the critic of a game review magazine. They will always make sure to point out the flaws and rough edges in your gameplay, where events either move too slowly or repetitively, or overload the player(too challenging, or worse cause the player to voluntarily give up on features of your game because it is too difficult to try to use them and he can survive sufficently using the others).
Then you have to think like the player and accomodate different styles of play, levels of intellect, reflexes, etc., and come up with reasons for their being unsatisfied.
One important thing to do is not to merely copy the gameplay ideas of other games(score, lives, time, hit points, ammo, map, levels, obstacles, units, resources...) but break them down and rebuild them - they are like building blocks and the better you understand them the more you can do. Innovation is mainly a matter of either coming up with a brand new gameplay idea to resolve a "simulation problem," "challenge problem," or "convenience problem," or something imported from a game that uses the same idea in a different context. Examples of the two:
You have the "sim problem" of needing a way to represent the damage the player has taken. So you add hit points and end the game after all hit points are lost. But then you have the "challenge problem" of how to allow a player to continue if he plays well with occasional mistakes. This is resolved by adding in items or areas to replenish hit points. Finally, you have the "convenience problem" of how to record the accomplishments of the player. You resolve this with a score counter.
You want to add more player-character depth to your rail-shooting light-gun game, a simplifed simulation where you hold a limited selection of weapons and ammo. You decide that you can steal a page from adventure and RPG games and give the player a full-blown inventory listing, and then only have to resolve the task of controlling the inventory.
There isn''t any completely scientific method of determining good gameplay as of today - it''s still a lot of mix-and-matching and polishing up. But then, if there truly was a scientific method that anyone could pick up "on the side," I don''t think game design would be the "glamour job" people portray it as today.
The most important part of a game will allways be the storyline - if the story is boring - nobody will play the game. Also nice menu graphix and an easy-to-use interface is important.
A feature which many people will love your game for is the degree of user-customiseation. If the user can change the keys and the interface - he will feel more at home in the game and quite possibly play it more often than other games with standard interfaces.
It was mentioned earlier that treashures would make your game better. What makes the game better is not that you get some extra coins or something - more the element of surprise. Giving the player bonuses along the way will get him to keep playing, but beware! Too many bonuses will have a negative effect on the users interest for the game and too few will annoy the user. Hiding too much of the game will make the game appear much smaller than it realy is which creates the risk of the user discarding the game after a brief look.
Thats all I can think of, besides what has allready been said.
-------------
E-)mil
"I feel like... I feel like...
Like taking over the world!"
- Day of the Tentacle
A feature which many people will love your game for is the degree of user-customiseation. If the user can change the keys and the interface - he will feel more at home in the game and quite possibly play it more often than other games with standard interfaces.
It was mentioned earlier that treashures would make your game better. What makes the game better is not that you get some extra coins or something - more the element of surprise. Giving the player bonuses along the way will get him to keep playing, but beware! Too many bonuses will have a negative effect on the users interest for the game and too few will annoy the user. Hiding too much of the game will make the game appear much smaller than it realy is which creates the risk of the user discarding the game after a brief look.
Thats all I can think of, besides what has allready been said.
-------------
E-)mil
"I feel like... I feel like...
Like taking over the world!"
- Day of the Tentacle
Emil Johansen- SMMOG AI designerhttp://smmog.com
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