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Original post by Anonymous Poster ALL of this could be accomplished with a universal "master engine" as soon as the computer technology catches up to support that much going on at any one time. As the original poster said, all of these gametypes already exist & have similarities in their engines, it's just that nobody is consolidating them...

Why bother with a master engine? "All" that's needed is compatible interfaces (internal, not user) between the various aspects - so the guy playing Command and Conquer can give orders to the guys playing DOOM and can see them react in real time, but the guys playing DOOM don't even need to have the user interface for Command and Conquer, and can upgrade to DOOM 2 without the C&C players noticing...

As long as the shared data is mutually intelligible, and any required messages can be understood, there's no reason why you couldn't put together a patchwork system without ever having a single master engine. If you get fed up of giving orders and decide you want to blow someone up for a change, you can switch between C&C and DOOM, and continue interacting with the same game-world (issues here with where the world is hosted) but if you never want to shoot people yourself, you needn't even get the DOOM clone...

Another way of looking at it would be to think of it as different "skins" to interface with the same game world. From the user's perspective, you buy a piece of software that lets you interact with a game world in a certain way. If you want, you can buy additional software that gives you different ways of interacting (how well they integrate together is another issue) but you don't have to, at any stage, buy a "master engine", which doesn't even have to actually exist in the first place.



Back to the original topic: for an example of fairly modular game design, you could try consiering the Final Fantasy series. There are definitely common frameworks running throughout the series (at least as far as I've played - currently FF6 to FFX-2). Whether you can successfully break that down in any meaningful way to a set of mix-and-match components would be the real test of how feasible it is to modularise game design...

Wow, people do lose the plot of a thread sometimes. o.O

My original post had nothing to do with programming; I was talking about pure and simple design, not a game engine. I’m not having a go or anything though cus what you guys are talking about sounds cool but I was more over interested in a modular GAMES DESIGNER system as there are similarities between games on a design level. I wasn’t talking about GAMES PROGRAMING just to make my point for those who are referencing my original post.

Siolis

Raph Koster was trying to describe this very thing at the 2005 GDC. He called it game design atoms, and it was a description (he felt pictographic in nature) of a successful game mechanic. He challenged the ludemes theory, among other descriptive attempts. I have a bunch of notes on it, and am waiting for him to get back to me on some details before I can write up his theory in a comprehensive way.

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Original post by Siolis I was thinking has/should something be made to standardize the way games are designed. I mean, all games share common components and the way these games are made conforms to genera’s such as an RPG for example will allways have characters, enemies, a Über strong storyline etc and below that all fantasy-RPG games have things in common just as all sci-fi-RPG games have things in common. Now in theory could a kind of structure be made on a high level* principle to make genera game design standardized while retaining the ability of genera combination and development?

The first question I ask is: why? What benefit would it bring to anybody?

When I am designing a game, I am usually looking for something a bit new. I wouldn't go so far as to call it original, but I do hope that the way in which I arrange the different aspects is going to be very different from someone else's. Apart from very generic categories like "characters", "locations", and "goals", I can't see anything that is necessarily standard across numerous RPGs (for example).

I do see some merit in coming up with common vocabulary, and ways to talk about gameplay mechanics, but I don't see any sort of standard emerging in the way you speak of.

To address your analogy: DirectX has clear boundaries in terms of peripherals - one addresses the monitor, one addresses the sound card, one the network card, etc. Each of those areas in turn has some common operations which you are always going to use. (eg. You will always want to write wave data to the sound card, you will always want to be able to get the state of the keyboard.) Where are the clear boundaries in game design, and what are the key issues that need to be covered within each area?

And I'll take issue with another one of your points - by saying that "all fantasy-RPG games have things in common just as all sci-fi-RPG games have things in common" you are grouping games by their setting. As a game designer - as opposed to a writer - I find it much more useful to group games by their mechanics, as the setting is almost irrelevant in terms of how the game actually plays.