A dedicated tool for game conceptualization & design

Michael Boeni · 2014-02-09T17:21:38

Hi guys In most studios (at least in my experience), early game concept and a lot of game design work is done in disconnected tools (wikis, excel, mindmaps, etc) which make it very hard to organize things, especially when working in a team. I did a bit of research to see whether dedicated tools are available but was not able to come up with much... Having the same issues at our studio, I have started to design a tool specifically for game design / conceptualization in my off-time. Ideally, the tool would used as a 'hub' from the first idea through to post-launch expansions. It should integrate with a chosen game engine (where sensible) and other production tools. I got a lot of encouraging feedback from the team and some other studios and am now considering turning this into a full-featured product. Here's a high-level 'teaser' of the functionality I have in mind for the tool: World design: setting, plot, world concepts, factions, etc Narrative: setting, plot, events, dialogue, character journeys, etc Entities (Characters, NPCs, Mobs, etc): definition, stats, progression systems Items: Item definition, item stats, item progression, enchantments, etc Buffs: Temporary char / item stats changes Crafting: crafting & material systems, progression, stats Level design: sketching & interconnecting level maps in 2D (what about 3d?) with hotspots, item links, etc Gameflow: Tracking of stats & variables through a journey of a character (simulation of possible journeys, based on player choices) Balancing: Stats simulation and analysis to iron-out any stats peaks (e.g. checking DPS of potential character builds with certain items & buffs, etc) It will be a highly visual tool and I would like to put a lot of emphasis on usability and reduction of complexity, e.g. through smart infographics. The system will also have a strongly-defined underlying structure (imagine a simple form of an ontology) which allows me to do analysis runs on almost anything in the system.Now its your turn: What do you think about such a tool? Would it be useful to you? What would you like to see, i.e. what would be important to you in such a tool? Let me know what you think! Cheers, Michael

Game Design and Theory Game Design

Started by mboeni February 05, 2014 12:53 PM

10 comments, last by Tutorial Doctor 10 years, 11 months ago

ddn3

1,610

February 08, 2014 11:02 PM

I'm also making a generic rapid prototyping engine for 2D games mostly but I'm not focusing on pre-building logic for the users, I'm more focused on making a tool which fosters experimentation, incremental development and modding. Encoding things which I've learned over the years as "best practice". I'm gonna start a journal soon of the progress if your interested in following its development.