General Game Design Part 1: Basic Competence

Off hand, there are two things I know are important in designing games. Lots of other things are, but this is where I'll start.

At the lowest level, there's the Model-View-Controller pattern. The Model is how the computer 'thinks about' something. The View is how it presents that thing to the player. And the Controller is how the player changes the Model. There are some serious simplifications I'm making here, I think, but right now, I'm not too worried.

At the high level, a game will be in one of several modes. To start up, there's the main menu, which can segue into an 'attract mode'. Obvious modes include the game itself, pausing, changing the settings, and reading help files. An individual level can be viewed as a mode that must be completed to progress in the game. I have no clue whether this modal idea is explicitly part of game design literature, but it's a fairly obvious thing, when you look at nearly any game.

Something specifically related to SRMDWS: for the most faithful animesque look (to match the concept), I'd want to be able to have different objects pick their shading style. People and the rooms they're in get toon-shaded, or something like it, and the aliens and the SRMDWS get a more traditional cgi (some part of my brain popped from the effort of putting those words together) look.

I'm going to lay out the modes and sub-modes at some point, and I feel, as I occasionally do, that the best tool for this is tiddlywiki.

Another random idea

So, I've been playing Defense Grid a lot. (Actually, replaying, due to problems with my fribble-frotzer, or something.) I got to thinking, somehow... what would it be like to have completely 3D tower defense? Like, in space... I ended up with this:

Super Robo Modular Defense Weapons System!

In the vague future, mankind is under attack by creatures from the far reaches of space. The governments of the world band together, and outfit their space-fleets with advanced weapons! Actually... no... They built a giant robot for the PR value. Unfortunately, the budget appropriations for the rocket feet died in committee, so the SRMDWS can't actually move, as such. If you can keep it from being destroyed long enough to charge up the long-range cannon, you can take out the alien headquarters. Until then, though, wave upon wave of fighters will descend on the SRMDWS, attempting to sabotage Earth's last hope. You play one of several hapless interns placed in charge of deploying weapons onto the SRMDWS, in order to repel the attackers with the gun of justice, using the twin barrels of COURAGE and superior firepower.

Standard tower defense stuff applies: every component that you can buy, you can upgrade. Enemies give you resources when killed.

Differences: resources persist across levels, but some will be spent on repairs and upgrades to the SRMDWS. As a result, you'll have a target resource quantity that you must finish above, which will be increased if there's any damage to the SRMDWS. A well-played level should end with the resources recovered from sold Defense Components going most of the way to the target.

Differences between levels manifest as different waves of enemies, and different arrangements of weak points and modular layouts.

Now, if I ruled the world, I'd have Dan Green doing some of the voice acting in this thing...

EDIT: Feedback: "Get [this] done, or I'll kill you." H'okay, guess I know which of my ideas gets priority.

So, I kind of fell off the planet, so far as dev stuff is concerned

I've been working on other projects, but I don't want this to stagnate. So, here are some random ideas, though UP gets priority...

Something like Pokémon, but more to its roots. So, the creatures are all insects, and insect collections are Serious Business...

A Theory Of Fun made some good points about making 'female-oriented' games (should rely less on spatial reasoning, for one thing), and I think it might be interesting to apply those...

I also thought it might be interesting to look at class-based multiplayer etc etc (fill in until you get a broad description of TF2), except divided into roles that don't reflect traditional ideas of combat. What I was think was some kind of element-users setup, where I have to try really hard to avoid ripping off Read Or Die... (I've got an RPS-esque strength/weakness diagram drawn up for determining resistances and powerups for a group of five traditional-style elements—Air, Fire, Water, Metal, Wood.)

In that setup, Air would be the lightest hitter, because ammo is so plentiful. Each element would do certain types of damage... Air and Water would do suffocation, Water and Metal would bludgeon, Wood would... Wood would depend. Fire is a bit obvious, and if anybody else has suggestions...

(So far as style goes, I think it would be interesting to see rendering in an 'oriental' style, because the whole five elements (though not the traditional ones. Most lists include Earth, IIRC, but I couldn't really see how to balance that.) thing lends itself somewhat to that. Ideally, this would not come off as a ripoff of Avatar, or anything... But yeah, since this whole idea obviously lends itself to a conversion of TF2, I wonder if the rendering could be pushed that far. Note that I have zero modding experience, for the record.)

A lack in this year that I intend to rectify...

In the last two years, I got into a habit of buying games at AnimeBoston. However, unlike the first one I got, Whack a Catgirl, or the second, Collateral Damage, I couldn't find one this year that showcased personalities. Clearly, this is a deficiency that I must remedy personally! (With help.)

Any suggestions?

Idea: Dream Sequences that actually accomplish something

So, the dream sequence has a bad rep for its role in erasing plot or showering the player/viewer with BS. (... Must... purge... mental... image...). However, I just thought of a way that dream sequences could do something useful in the course of a game: go along with the possibly-true idea that dreams are how we sort out lots of information from the day before, and make connections. The point of this isn't to be psychologically trendy or anything; what I had in mind was, in games centered around confusing reasoning, making the really hard problems tangible. That way, players can feel involved in the problem-solving without having to wrestle with a parser. So, for example, suppose, I don't know...

While investigating an ancient civilization, the main character found an inscription that doesn't translate meaningfully. Suppose further that not much is known about this civilization, because I came up with a puzzle that only makes sense if there isn't a ton of prior knowledge. So, if the main character dreams, the player can be given, in some kind of tangible form, the knowledge that they do have: the sky was believed to be a dome, and the characters they used were made in a very formal, almost mechanistic fashion that makes it difficult to tell whether a given character is, in fact, upside-down. It might be weird of me to consider it obvious just from that, but that should be all that's needed. For realism and length, there would presumably be some red herrings.

Sadly, I'm not sure how this would be shown (point-and-click adventure game?), but the basic idea seems sound and interesting enough that I figured I'd throw it out there.

Another vaguely-related post...

This is a heart-felt request to all aspiring comedians, but also any indie developers who are also aspiring comedians:

If you ever have the urge to describe yourself as the next Monty Python, SLAM YOUR HEAD IN A DOOR UNTIL YOU COMPLETELY FORGET THEIR EXISTENCE.

You'll just be setting everybody up for disappointment, and joining the ranks of the developers of Limbo of the Lost and Stalin vs Martians. Monty Python was good, make no mistake, but their humor is mostly funny for reasons completely opposite the original now. I somewhat suspect that they were in the right place at the right time, and no amount of talent or writing or posturing will get you there. You can be funny in your own right, but it's a bad idea to aspire to directly recreate their success.

HOLY CARP KOI AND SALMON

Scary...

Anyway, the lesson to take away from that is, people will do demented things to any game that we happen to make. We're not too much closer, tbh, so far as I know, because I haven't seen anything from the others, and I've been doing exam-related stuff, like slacking off.