Remember when I said I was working on an actual game? Yea that's still happening. So I guess it's time for an update!
Apparently it's not difficult to start work on a game. There's no shortage of things that need doing be it programming, graphics concepts, gameplay brainstorming, figuring out the story and it's characters let alone all the legal and business stuff. I guess the difficult part is figuring out what matters most, especially with such a small team.
To us it seemed important to first figure out what the game was and to make a prototype to make sure it all worked. As good as we think the concept is, it's pretty important we dive into the nitty gritty as early as possible to make sure it's as fun in real life as it is in our heads. A common theme of our progression is doubt. It stems from that fact that apart from programming knowledge and passion for video games, none of us have much of a clue about developing and creating an "actual" game. At least at this stage in the development we can use that doubt to be critical of everything we do and hopefully come out with something that's refined to a high level. Either that or it will cripple us emotionally and the game will be a hideous wreck - time will tell!
Another reason to get a prototype working as soon as possible is we're going to be pitching this game to at least two parties and the game we show them will more than likely be a big brother of the original prototype. The two organisations in question are Valve (to secure a Steam release) and Microsoft (initially for entry in the Dream-Build-Play competition). The deadline for both of these is the start of June. Tick tock!
With that in mind, we all got to work on setting up whats needed for the prototype. These include:
Platform: Can we design for multiples concurrently, what coding framework to choose, do we concentrate on PC or console?
The Rules; win conditions, AI states, controls, goals, time and ability constraints.
Planning level design; How it looks, how the graphical styl3 influences gameplay, how graphics influence our ability to design varied levels, how we can use levels that properly utilise AI and player movement, where a level starts and ends, scalability.
Graphics; Whats the styl3 and how easy it is to reproduce, how long does it take to make each element, how many do we need, menu graphics, logo, character art.
Controls: How it works on each system, are they simple, do they reflect the actions on screen.
Difficulty: Scaleability, learning curve, replayability, challenge, reward.
That basically means a we're not allowed spent any time on the "NOT IMPORTANT YET" list which includes the soundtrack, the story, mission structure, the game's title and loads more. In fact blogs are supposed to be on that list as well, so I better cut this short. On the next blog we'll have an actual prototype so look forward to more actual screenshots, actual gameplay footage and actual solid facts about the game - perhaps even a title!. But for the time being I better get back to work.
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Oh, and take a guess about what type of game it is....here's a clue:
