Specifically, I would appreciate any references to how to storyboard a game. Some background on my situation: I am developer/project lead for casual internet games. My company is starting preproductions for the first time and I'm the first to do it. My team pitched a couple of ideas and they were well received. I am now charged with making a storyboard, design document, and/or a wire frame to explain the details of the game. I'm in the process of drawing on the game flow with MS Visio and have found some design document templates. However, the process has been just ad hock. Generally, I'm looking for solid references on best practices of preproduction and game design. Thanks ahead

Well, you do not Storyboard a game, unless there are cut-scenes.

I am a game design student, and each semester we learn a bit more about pre-production (even with some methods I disliking, we learn something usefull)

The idea is that on the pre-produtction of the game, you must first set-up a focus and see if the rest of the team agree, you do not work on a game where the team does not agree with you (I made that mistake this semester, resulted in a team becoming two), then you need to create the design document using the focus as base, you only need to write whatever you want about the gameplay that fits in the focus.

About pictures that the manager loves, you can do a lot of flowcharts, they are many times usefull, also tables, mostly about game values, like score that a given action do, or the effect of each action, like the damage of a weapon, or distance flown by various jetpacks.

Storyboards are only usefull to cut-scenes or some other scripted scenes (like on the first Prince of Persia game, in the many apearances of the "Shadow Prince")

But you can create some concept drawings, mostly of the interface, and of a basic level, to show to the boss to make explaining the things easier, since it is more easy to say to him "the player need to get a key like that" while pointing to a key on a concept screen drawing, than saying "The player must get the keys with a square head and purple colour that stays always after a special door opened with a puzzle in other screen of the same level"

I hope that I helped and do not wrote only redundant information to you.

Thank you very much for the great advice. What methods do you like and do you not like?

When you do do a storyboard, how do you go about it? I seen some examples but none that seem thoroughly researched as effective.

Storyboards are essentially your "shots," with longer shots staged across multiple panels. Their general intention is to convey both storytelling and shot composition. This is why you would only really use them for cutscenes or other situations where the player doesn't have control over the focus of the scene. For actual gameplay "storyboarding" there seems to be a bigger trend to diagram out choices for the player (like a splitting tree diagram) or to lay out a directional map of a level, pinpointing where various events or enemy spawn points occur.

Here is a mini-tutorial on storyboards from Polykarbon.

Great advice Bill, thanks!

Are there other tools besides Visio to display the game flow? Is there a common term for this process? I tried googling "game flow" and diagram without much relevant hits.

I use pencil and paper, it is great! (real life pencil and paper)

Or, if you need somethign digital, I after doing it in pencil and paper I use a vector drawing program to draw it, in my case I use macromedia fireworks.

Like Visio I know only Visio, and some old programs that do not work anymore (and that I do not remember the name anymore)

But remember, do not get stuck on tools, use your creativity, I already created many things using only a spreadsheet program and a word processor

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Original post by Speeder Well, you do not Storyboard a game, unless there are cut-scenes. I am a game design student, and each semester we learn a bit more about pre-production (even with some methods I disliking, we learn something usefull) The idea is that on the pre-produtction of the game, you must first set-up a focus and see if the rest of the team agree, you do not work on a game where the team does not agree with you (I made that mistake this semester, resulted in a team becoming two), then you need to create the design document using the focus as base, you only need to write whatever you want about the gameplay that fits in the focus. About pictures that the manager loves, you can do a lot of flowcharts, they are many times usefull, also tables, mostly about game values, like score that a given action do, or the effect of each action, like the damage of a weapon, or distance flown by various jetpacks. Storyboards are only usefull to cut-scenes or some other scripted scenes (like on the first Prince of Persia game, in the many apearances of the "Shadow Prince") But you can create some concept drawings, mostly of the interface, and of a basic level, to show to the boss to make explaining the things easier, since it is more easy to say to him "the player need to get a key like that" while pointing to a key on a concept screen drawing, than saying "The player must get the keys with a square head and purple colour that stays always after a special door opened with a puzzle in other screen of the same level" I hope that I helped and do not wrote only redundant information to you.

Alright, I suppose it boils a bit down to your concepts of storyboards, but I believe the OP may be refering to a combination of "game screens" (IMPORTANT!), and storyline (important for any game with a real story, to be honest though, casual games rarely apply here, and many times themes can be changed adhok at any moment in production)

And as for your "team leaving you if they dont agree". HOGWASH IN A PRODUCTION ENVIORNMENT. If these people are programmers or artists, and you provide them with cold hard cash as a positive motivator (we are talking salary or hourly, not "in the future") then they will work. Im getting sick and tired of people not understanding that money is a very powerfull motivator, perhaps the most powerfull. I speak fluent C++/C#, but my language of choice has always been dollars/draccos/euros/rubees/pounds. And trust me, im not the only one. From the phrasing of the OP, it sounds like this guy isnt going to be doing this for nothing, and it will be a payed project, in which case his team members will be getting paid through him, in which case.. they will work for money!

Quote:

Original post by Speeder I use pencil and paper, it is great! (real life pencil and paper) Or, if you need somethign digital, I after doing it in pencil and paper I use a vector drawing program to draw it, in my case I use macromedia fireworks. Like Visio I know only Visio, and some old programs that do not work anymore (and that I do not remember the name anymore) But remember, do not get stuck on tools, use your creativity, I already created many things using only a spreadsheet program and a word processor

Yeah I start out on pencil n paper too but I have to present it to the big whigs. Anything less than Visio to clean it up would probably looked poorly upon. It's pretty interesting that a pretty known industry and there are not any major standardized practices.

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Alright, I suppose it boils a bit down to your concepts of storyboards, but I believe the OP may be refering to a combination of "game screens" (IMPORTANT!), and storyline (important for any game with a real story, to be honest though, casual games rarely apply here, and many times themes can be changed adhok at any moment in production)

Well, it is a casual game. We pitched two ideas. One is a brainless mechanical approach and another is more involved with a storyline. The storyboard will certainly help with the storyline one. Bottom line though, we're trying to avoid ad hock changes in mid production. How do you do it, or do you accept it as part of the process?

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And as for your "team leaving you if they dont agree". HOGWASH IN A PRODUCTION ENVIORNMENT. If these people are programmers or artists, and you provide them with cold hard cash as a positive motivator (we are talking salary or hourly, not "in the future") then they will work. Im getting sick and tired of people not understanding that money is a very powerfull motivator, perhaps the most powerfull. I speak fluent C++/C#, but my language of choice has always been dollars/draccos/euros/rubees/pounds. And trust me, im not the only one. From the phrasing of the OP, it sounds like this guy isnt going to be doing this for nothing, and it will be a payed project, in which case his team members will be getting paid through him, in which case.. they will work for money!

Well yeah, I do get paid, but money only goes so far. The burden of the results of the project rests more on my shoulders than their's, as I am the project lead. If they decided to, they can just sit there and twiddle their thumbs, I cant do that much about it as far as the project is concerned. I can tattle on them after the fact, but that doesn't do anything for me. My project still failed.

There is a lot to say for getting to know your team in the beginning of the project, trying to assign tasks that they enjoy doing, and seeking their approval in general areas (sometimes you have to be decisive), and overall just treat it as a group effort rather than a tyrant running the show.

[Edited by - FlashChump on July 3, 2007 8:38:38 AM]

Quote:

Original post by FlashChump Yeah I start out on pencil n paper too but I have to present it to the big whigs. Anything less than Visio to clean it up would probably looked poorly upon. It's pretty interesting that a pretty known industry and there are not any major standardized practices.

I could tell this was going to surprise you from your first post. You've come into this slightly informed, which is often worse than coming in totally uninformed. :)

Basically, there are no standardised practices, because virtually nothing is standardised. People often make the mistake of thinking that games are much like movies, so they try and look for the equivalent process in games, and are surprised that it doesn't have one. Storyboards are a linear, discrete, and visual tool, but games are rarely linear, not always packaged into discrete elements, and the essence is rarely visual. How would it be possible to storyboard Tetris in a useful way? Or Zork? Or Doom? Or the Dungeons and Dragons D20 combat system? Storyboards convey stories in simplified graphic form; if story isn't the focus, or the story isn't conveyed visually, or there are no distinct scenes or episodes that visually stand apart, then why do this?

So basically you've been charged with producing a document that, while not useless, doesn't have anywhere near as much worth as might be presumed. And since so many games don't find much worth in this, there's little chance of any sort of standard process arising.

On the other hand, it's certainly common to see concept art, usually mockups of the in-game screens you're going to have, including the sort of interface and style that will be used. You might want to arrange them in such a way that shows arrows between them to represent the choices a player can make.