Hey everybody, a lot of people don''t understand how important the actual game story is. It serves almost like a walk-through, and details everything the charecter does. I''d like if we could all share some tips regarding this, and how we approach our game storys. One of the best parts in the Design Doc. I think if people are having problems writing their game story, they could start from the End, and then backwards. Think of an ending. Maybe think about a final battle, who will this enemy be? If you know how the game ends, there is a lot that can be done in the beginning and middle of the game, that all leads to the ending. I''d like to know what you guys think, and your different methods. Best President

Personally, I like to make sure I have a story that is relevant to the game, and if not - then one of them has to change...

Start out brainstorming (appropriate that I still have this in clipboard from the landfish post ) and then sort them out into possibilities. Work out your ending, then work out your beginnings. You can then work into the middle from both ends... And you come up with a rather interesting combination when you have to tie it all together

-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)

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A story should definately be designed from the end. I recal when I was younger I used to amuse myself by trying to write sci-fi books. I started w/o thinking about the end, from the very start and always got in trouble with the story line. If you think of the end and of the characters who take part in it, it is easier to get the story evolving "down the tree", it will make it much less complicated that way. But this is only design of course, you can''t really start writing from the end .

Just like in programming... Sometimes when you do design (esp. in OOP) you at first think of the end, what oyu should have available, but start writing the code from the beginning.

Cool analogy . Very true about OO. Very efficient way of doing it... So that implies that you should use that method for your story

-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)

Check our site:
http://www.crosswinds.net/~dwarfsoft/
Check out our NPC AI Mailing List :
http://www.egroups.com/group/NPCAI/
made due to popular demand here at GDNet :)

Also,
before somebody comes and brings this up: We all know that it is important for each designer to develop his/her own style. Thats what makes their design unique. Maybe we all have different ways to do the same thing. The purpose of this post is to know the different ways we approach different parts of our design.

President
Go! Go! Go!

Well. . .first I like to start with a killer 3D engine, with high polys, blistering framerate, and real-time spectral volumetric parallax voxel-based organic fog effects, oh, and LENS FLARE, gotsta have tha lens flare, tweak and tune it for three years, throw in a buff, testosterone crazed hero and some big guns, and maybe some enemies with smaller guns. . .

heh.

I know, I''m easy.

Seriously, I like to start with a "Big Vague Idea", (to be scaled to size as time goes on :]) something like "fighting game where you can breed a stable of fighters, obtaining genetic code from defeated enemies", or "RPG based on Appalachian legends" etc. (off the top of my head), then I develop characters, setting, basic gameplay,(what the player will spend 80% of the time doing) and so on, to flesh out the world and theme.

As you can see, the first "Big Vague Idea" is often derivative, or a combination of themes, but in the second part, I will get as particular as needed to differentiate (sp) this particular game from every other game on the market. If I have any trouble doing this AT ALL, its back to the drawing board.

Then, I''ll try it out in text based format, using my imagination to see whether it will work out in final format. Experience playing MUDs is indispensible here. To be honest w/ you all, this is as far as I''ve gotten, because I don''t have all the skills to make a game (yet) (d''oh, just gave myself away for a pathetic newbie ;P), but this system works w/ just about any other media, and as far as I''ve gotten, it seems like an efficient way to "trim the fat" off these crazy ideas that seem to breed like Everquest goblins around here. Just my twenty pesos.