As Chris Crawford writes in his 1982 book - The Art of Computer Game Design, when deciding to start to develop a video game, the most crucial point is setting the goals.
I guess it's something that gives you focus when you face tough decisions, like having to rule out a feature that you really like from the final design. If the feature resonates well with your goals, you should keep it, otherwise it's garbage.
Taking seriously a book that's 26 years old, especially in one of the most dynamically developing areas in the industry may seem odd, but the principle makes sense to me, so that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to define the goals of my game:
1. Military tactics in modern warfare
The main goal of the game is to let two players compete against each other by figuring out ways to optimize the overall combat effectiveness of their army in given situations by exploiting battlefield conditions and enemy weaknesses, controlling critical locations, managing reinforcements, and many other aspects of modern military tactics.
2. Realism and Simplicity
The game should have a degree of realism that makes it fun to play, yet it is fast to learn. Most people are not playing video games because they want to make difficult calculations, and they don't want to spend too much time learning the game either. Too detailed gameplay asks for a too detailed I/O structure, which results in way too much complexity and frustration.
However, realism helps people find smart solutions intuitively, since they already have guesses on how it's all supposed to work in real life.
So finding the right mixture of realism and simplifications is vital for the game to be fun.
Simplicity and realism are not necessarily contradictory notions, though. Having to order around every single troop on the battlefield is neither simple, nor realistic. Having smart squad leaders do this job for you is much simpler, and closer to reality as well.
3. Choices
A fun game is all about choices. Scenarios and units must be designed in a way that excludes ultimate strategies. Linear map design leads to boredom, so this must be avoided.
Unit types should be balanced and have rock-paper-scissors qualities.
4. Historical accuracy
The topic of the game is the Second World War. Scenarios will be based on historical battles. I think this makes a lot of difference, since reliving actual battles are far batter then blowing up some random fuel depot.
5. Openness
Being a single developer, it's important for me to be able to rely on user-generated content. Adding artwork and scenarios must be made really easy, so that anyone could help.
The game engine must be flexible enough to allow extensions and modifications. The game should be extended to all major theaters of the Second World War, so flexibility is of great importance.
Also, I believe in open source software, so the source code will be available for anyone.
The game shall be platform-independent as well.
This sounds quite strict and formal -- after all we're just trying to make a fun game with yankees and krauts shooting at each other -- but there are thousands of pitfalls in game design, and I think that having a basic concept and a well-defined set of goals as a strong foundation rather than just getting cracking willy-nilly, might make quite a big difference.
In following posts I'll go a little bit into details, like the language I chose, the tools I'm using, my basic ideas of the gameplay, and so on. See you next time!
[bullet skull by skull-a-day]
I guess it's something that gives you focus when you face tough decisions, like having to rule out a feature that you really like from the final design. If the feature resonates well with your goals, you should keep it, otherwise it's garbage.
Taking seriously a book that's 26 years old, especially in one of the most dynamically developing areas in the industry may seem odd, but the principle makes sense to me, so that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to define the goals of my game:
1. Military tactics in modern warfare
The main goal of the game is to let two players compete against each other by figuring out ways to optimize the overall combat effectiveness of their army in given situations by exploiting battlefield conditions and enemy weaknesses, controlling critical locations, managing reinforcements, and many other aspects of modern military tactics.
2. Realism and Simplicity
The game should have a degree of realism that makes it fun to play, yet it is fast to learn. Most people are not playing video games because they want to make difficult calculations, and they don't want to spend too much time learning the game either. Too detailed gameplay asks for a too detailed I/O structure, which results in way too much complexity and frustration.
However, realism helps people find smart solutions intuitively, since they already have guesses on how it's all supposed to work in real life.
So finding the right mixture of realism and simplifications is vital for the game to be fun.
Simplicity and realism are not necessarily contradictory notions, though. Having to order around every single troop on the battlefield is neither simple, nor realistic. Having smart squad leaders do this job for you is much simpler, and closer to reality as well.
3. Choices
A fun game is all about choices. Scenarios and units must be designed in a way that excludes ultimate strategies. Linear map design leads to boredom, so this must be avoided.
Unit types should be balanced and have rock-paper-scissors qualities.
4. Historical accuracy
The topic of the game is the Second World War. Scenarios will be based on historical battles. I think this makes a lot of difference, since reliving actual battles are far batter then blowing up some random fuel depot.
5. Openness
Being a single developer, it's important for me to be able to rely on user-generated content. Adding artwork and scenarios must be made really easy, so that anyone could help.
The game engine must be flexible enough to allow extensions and modifications. The game should be extended to all major theaters of the Second World War, so flexibility is of great importance.
Also, I believe in open source software, so the source code will be available for anyone.
The game shall be platform-independent as well.
This sounds quite strict and formal -- after all we're just trying to make a fun game with yankees and krauts shooting at each other -- but there are thousands of pitfalls in game design, and I think that having a basic concept and a well-defined set of goals as a strong foundation rather than just getting cracking willy-nilly, might make quite a big difference.
In following posts I'll go a little bit into details, like the language I chose, the tools I'm using, my basic ideas of the gameplay, and so on. See you next time!
[bullet skull by skull-a-day]
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