next »

[Ethan_Hall]

Hey all,

I've only made one game, a 2D spaceshooter in XNA (I did all the artwork/sounds myself too so it took a while). I'm trying to build more games in XNA while learning hardcore C++ and OpenGL on the side so I can become a better programmer.

I want to make games that are very personal to me. I had a good idea for a game mechanic in a platformer to reflect something personal to me, but I can't think of a good way to build interesting constructs around it. How do I recognize if a mechanic is good? I can't tell if the mechanic itself is bad, or if I am just not experienced enough to be able to implement it in a good way.

So, that leads to the question... how do you become a better designer? Should I start by cloning the games I loved as a kid? I won't have scope issues because I know what the end product should look like, and then I can start tweaking it to make it slightly different. Or should I just make small prototypes every 2 weeks or so and come up with the mechanics from scratch?

Also, I've been playing games my whole life, but I haven't had time recently because I've been programming so much... how much time should I spend playing indie games to get a grasp for what works and what doesn't? What does YOUR play/program ratio look like?

Any help/comments are appreciated. Thanks TIGSource!

[iffi]

The short answer is to make the games you want to make, and to expect the first few games you make to be pretty bad. There's no substitute for experience so get that as soon as you can, without worrying too much about making a masterpiece.

To tell if a mechanic is good or bad, prototype it. If you find your prototype fun/meaningful/whatever it is you're trying to accomplish with your game, then you're off to a good start. If not, then you're going to want to think about how you can improve it.

[mirosurabu]

1. Come up with a game you'd really like to play.
2. Make it.
3. Use intuition to recognize bad parts.
4. Use reason to tell why these parts are bad.
5. Try fixing the problem.
6. Go to step 3

There's gonna be shit-ton of iteration since human mind is incapable of (or is lazy to) deduce all possible outcomes. This is especially true if you're building game for emergence (i.e. you work on ruleset and AI, rather than rules and levels).

If you can keep your motivation up while going through all these iterations, then you're doing great job already.

It is useful to play other games because you can quickly tell what works and what doesn't as well as why.

What a study is to a scientist is a game to a game designer.

[Udderdude]

I want to make games that are very personal to me. I had a good idea for a game mechanic in a platformer to reflect something personal to me, but I can't think of a good way to build interesting constructs around it. How do I recognize if a mechanic is good? I can't tell if the mechanic itself is bad, or if I am just not experienced enough to be able to implement it in a good way.

It can be difficult to determine how a given mechanic or addition of a mechanic will influence the overall game rules.  It helps to be able to rapid prototype ideas in order to test them and see how they feel.  Try to think in terms of "How will this affect the player?  How will the player attempt to optimize their own play to take advantage of the mechanic?  Is the mechanic interesting and requires thought/skill to use, or is it tedious and feels like busywork?"

So, that leads to the question... how do you become a better designer? Should I start by cloning the games I loved as a kid?

Break down the games you like into all of their component game elements and then examine each one to see how it works with the others.  Try to work your way from the disassembled design elements back up to the whole picture of how it works together.

Also, I've been playing games my whole life, but I haven't had time recently because I've been programming so much.

If you're hardcore into a project, working on it all day, you may have very little time or energy left to play the kinds of games you like.  That's just how it goes.

[forwardresent]

The way I'm learning is by cloning initially, then I combine parts and things I've learned to make something slightly better or different each time.

I made a pretty basic Gauntlet clone, a racing game and an R-Type clone at the start of my Games Design BSC. Using everything I learned from that I could progress.

It's an interesting way to look at individual mechanics of games you like and how they work, I used the shooting mechanics of my R-Type clone to influence the attacks in my Gauntlet clone. (I liked Binding of Isaac's shooting method so I cloned that).

[Paul Eres]

i don't think the two contradict. when you first start making games, *even if* you try to make games that you want to make and that are personal to you, *in effect* what you are going to do is to make clones of your favorite games. because that's all you know at that stage, your tastes are 'i like such and such a game, i want to make a game like my three favorite games, but combined'. so you should not intentionally set out to clone a game, but don't be surprised that when you finish your first "dream game" it turns out to basically be a clone, despite your intentions and expectations. most of the time people don't set out to make derivative games, they set out to make something original but it's derivative anyway, because their knowledge of games and game design is limited at first

[EddieBytes]

i don't think the two contradict. when you first start making games, *even if* you try to make games that you want to make and that are personal to you, *in effect* what you are going to do is to make clones of your favorite games. because that's all you know at that stage

Don't kid yourself. Regardless of how much experience one has, the end result will still be a derivative. It's just that you get better at hiding it, mixing elements so well and taking so little from each game the source is no longer obvious. It's just how the brain works.
And just for everyone's entertainment I'm going to link to this:
http://www.everythingisaremix.info/

In the end, if you ask me, (regarding being original or making a clone) a good game dev amounts to knowing which features to keep and which features to lose in a game, regardless of source.

In essence, I still agree with what Paul is saying, with the twist that I don't believe the remixing ever stops, no matter how experienced you get.

[Paul Eres]

eh, i didn't say that you will one day reach the point that what you create isn't *derivative*, just that one day you'll reach the stage where what you create isn't a *clone* -- there's a difference between taking inspiration from something and copying it. i think you're conflating those two. i never said that remixing ever stops, i said that beginners tend to copy things more directly

it's like with writing. when you begin to write at first you use a lot of cliches, and copy phrases, character types, story structures, etc., from your favorite authors. after years of writing you get your own style, and what you write begins to sound like you and not like the books you read

[BlueSweatshirt]

If you want to become a better designer, design more games.

If you want to become a better developer, develop more games.

If you want to become a better <x>, <verb of x> more <result of x>

For design, try thinking about interactions on a fundamental basis: making decisions, weighing options available, emotional reactions, etc. Board games are a great way to learn because you can drill in on the interaction and not worry about much else.

For development, just make more games. Come up with for yourself a good workflow and discover the processes that work for you. Figure out how to minimize the boilerplate(trivial parts that only serve to eat your time and distract you from the actual development of the game) and maximize the time spent actually creating your game's content.

[Ethan_Hall]

i don't think the two contradict. when you first start making games, *even if* you try to make games that you want to make and that are personal to you, *in effect* what you are going to do is to make clones of your favorite games.

This totally makes sense and I see it a lot; I'm a huge Stephen King fan, and I'm going through a creative writing class right now. Everything comes out sounding King-ish because he is my biggest influence, and I don't have a ton of experience writing stories.

I guess what I meant was, should I explicitly set out to make a clone, just for practice? Like, "I am going to remake Megaman X and try to get all the mechanics (jumping, dashing, sliding on walls, shooting) SPOT ON". Focus on getting the mechanics perfect first, then say "OK, let's make Flame Mammoth's stage, just for practice". Then after making a stage or two, I can step back and look at what I've made, and compare it to the original. I'll also have a better understanding of "Oh, this is how dashing works" or "Oh, this is why they included sub tanks".

I want to understand game mechanics in terms of design AND programming. Maybe I'll just receive the same answers as before, but would making an explicit clone be a good way to do this?

Thanks again everyone for the help, it is greatly appreciated.

[mirosurabu]

Personally, I wouldn't do explicit clone unless it's something I really want to play. The reason being is that loving what you're making is crucial for intuition to work properly. It enables you to tell what makes something better, and it allows you to tell which parts of your game need improvement.

If you don't really want to play what you're making, who will tell you what's good and what's bad about it?

Like, "I am going to remake Megaman X and try to get all the mechanics (jumping, dashing, sliding on walls, shooting) SPOT ON". Focus on getting the mechanics perfect first, then say "OK, let's make Flame Mammoth's stage, just for practice". Then after making a stage or two, I can step back and look at what I've made, and compare it to the original. I'll also have a better understanding of "Oh, this is how dashing works" or "Oh, this is why they included sub tanks".

Hmm.. indeed, if you find your levels to be not as good as those from Megaman, you may question what's so good about Megaman and then try to figure out the answer. But isn't that something you can do without actually cloning the game? I mean, isn't that something you can do simply by analyzing the game?

Though, it is true that cloning may be beneficial in that you can get to do both programming and designing at the same time. The only problem you could run into is fail to understand why Megaman works simply because.. you didn't address the real problem -- that of game analysis.

Often, people know when something is fun and when it's not, but they don't really know what makes the difference. Analyzing games and especially the way you enjoy them can help you understand this. Cloning - not so much.

[alastair]

I think making a clone of a game made by professionals is good practice when your new to game development. It helps you learn a ton of things by studying their games so closely. 

[Paul Eres]

yeah i think explicit clones can work, but you can also aim to improve or change them in some way in a way that makes them interesting

the first game i ever programmed was a pac-man clone where you can eat through walls, for instance

some examples of "exercises" you could think up:

- a dungeon crawler like wizardry, with the same mechanics and graphics style, but set in the future instead, with appropriate changes to the monster design, character classes, weapons/items, etc.

- a shmup like gradius or life force, but with "ghosts" that do exactly what you did in your previous life (after you die) to help you

- a platformer like ghost and goblins, but where double-jumping takes up resources that you need to collect, so that you have a limited number of double-jumps in a stage

and so on, you can "clone" a game while still keeping it interesting enough that someone would want to play your game if they enjoyed the original

cloning a game explicitly can be compared to tracing a drawing when you are learning how to draw. it's a good way to learn how to draw something, training wheels for when you don't need to trace anymore

[EddieBytes]

Personally, I wouldn't do explicit clone unless it's something I really want to play.

See, for that exact reason I'm not making a clone right now, even though this is my first game ever. I don't feel like I would want to play yet another clone of Super Metroid or Super Mario, two of my all time favorite games.

It's also a lot like Paul Eres sais. I'm not cloning those two games, but I'm still using some elements from each. For example, my game has an exact gravitational acceleration of 61.92 m/s2, that's about 6.32Gs (fun fact, average humans lose consciousness at about 5Gs). That's exactly the one in Super Mario World, because I felt this makes the character more controllable. Here's a cool article:
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2007/mariogravity.shtml

Also, a form of backtracking is there, inspired from Super Metroid.

You don't end up with a clone this way, and you get to experience a game you would still want to play.
And by deciding which features of other games to incorporate in your own, you will basically be training your 'game designing' skills. You'll find it quite hard to decide which features add value to your game and which ones are game-breaking.

For example, you'd never add a teleport through walls skill in a metroidvania

[kukukupo]

Personally, I wouldn't do explicit clone unless it's something I really want to play.

See, for that exact reason I'm not making a clone right now, even though this is my first game ever. I don't feel like I would want to play yet another clone of Super Metroid or Super Mario, two of my all time favorite games.

It's also a lot like Paul Eres sais. I'm not cloning those two games, but I'm still using some elements from each. For example, my game has an exact gravitational acceleration of 61.92 m/s2, that's about 6.32Gs (fun fact, average humans lose consciousness at about 5Gs). That's exactly the one in Super Mario World, because I felt this makes the character more controllable. Here's a cool article:
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2007/mariogravity.shtml

Also, a form of backtracking is there, inspired from Super Metroid.

You don't end up with a clone this way, and you get to experience a game you would still want to play.
And by deciding which features of other games to incorporate in your own, you will basically be training your 'game designing' skills. You'll find it quite hard to decide which features add value to your game and which ones are game-breaking.

For example, you'd never add a teleport through walls skill in a metroidvania

The teleport through wall skill worked well in mari0 (portal + super mario bros)