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TIGSource ForumsDeveloperDesignAdvice on an idea
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Armageddon
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« on: August 06, 2017, 12:42:01 AM »

Hey y'all, I'm pretty bad at making games so I want to make a thread to get some feedback on like an idea, since you guys are good at making games.

The idea is pretty bad but uh, it's kind of a Night in the Woods thing, open-ish world that you explore everyday then you make choices of which friends to hangout with. At the end of the week everything starts over but you start being told that you've been doing shit around town or people just saw you, there are doubles and parallels of you popping up around town. It'd get into this plot of some weird folklore or science shit going on in the town idunno yet. Maybe I'll Lindelof it and be like, it never really mattered let the mystery be only thing that matters is characters, cause I got a lot of characters that I think I'm gonna love and wanna see and write.

But I'm debating a bit with myself on how to tell it and make it. On the one hand I originally wanted it to be like Mizzurna Falls or Deadly Premonitions or Persona 5-ish. Where it's in real time and you gotta keep track of events and where to be when shit happens or you miss opportunities, I don't really know how this would help the overall design other than it'd be fun to program.

The other way is just Night in the Woods, no time limit just make your choices, some choices block off huge story sections but it's all linear for the most part. It'd be a lot easy but sort of, been there done that, seen it before. I'm also considering if I want hunger and sleep and stuff, would it put you into the mind of the character more and build empathy or would it be annoying and distract from the story?

Other way is just do a fuckin' visual novel but I don't draw too gud you know??


I just need some guidance, I want to make something more than anything but I can't make non-narrative-driven games tbh. Shrug
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Squire Grooktook
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« Reply #1 on: August 06, 2017, 03:27:23 AM »

Where it's in real time and you gotta keep track of events and where to be when shit happens or you miss opportunities, I don't really know how this would help the overall design other than it'd be fun to program.

Depends, would there be any challenge or combat to the game? I can see a time limit / schedule being interesting if there's some impetus or skill ceiling for accomplishing your goals quickly.

I'm also considering if I want hunger and sleep and stuff, would it put you into the mind of the character more and build empathy or would it be annoying and distract from the story?

In general, hunger and sleep mechanics are used to simulate realistic, survival style games. Otherwise, if there's no real tension to it, or no resource management element, then it's just a chore.

You could always write eating and sleeping into the scenes and character interactions if you want to do empathy. Interactivity should be saved for the things that are fun to do, IMO.

Other way is just do a fuckin' visual novel but I don't draw too gud you know??

You could always commission an artist you like on the internet. There are many artists out there who charge relatively little for solid artwork and designs.
« Last Edit: August 06, 2017, 03:35:47 AM by Squire Grooktook » Logged

Armageddon
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« Reply #2 on: August 06, 2017, 07:14:24 PM »

Where it's in real time and you gotta keep track of events and where to be when shit happens or you miss opportunities, I don't really know how this would help the overall design other than it'd be fun to program.

Depends, would there be any challenge or combat to the game? I can see a time limit / schedule being interesting if there's some impetus or skill ceiling for accomplishing your goals quickly.

Nah it'd all be non-combat I think, maybe some mini-game type stuff for certain scenes and actions.

I'm also thinking a lot about characterization. Night in the Woods your character would talk without you making a choice a lot of the time, then you look at Read Only Memories where you are also playing a pre-existing character but you make every dialogue choice. What're the pros and cons of writing each way? One makes you more active I guess but constant dialogue choices, the other makes you more observant to a character and you get to develop the character how you want, similar to Kentucky Route Zero, you can make backstory choices but not really current choices. ROM doesn't really let you make choices like Night in the Woods or to a lesser extent KRZ, ROM just lets you choose what info you want to hear kind of?
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diegzumillo
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« Reply #3 on: August 21, 2017, 02:51:02 PM »

Designing a game around a plot is tough. I know because I tried that with my sister. She has this story in mind and is writing a comic book, and I would make a game on it. It's hard.

At the end of the day you really want a game that works with the story you want to tell, where the game mechanisms reinforce the experience and all that. No use in trying to make the player feel guilty for shooting people if shooting people is super fun and rewarding. Like in GTA, where cutscenes and actual gameplay exist in different realities. "I.. I killed one person" and five minutes earlier I was shooting missiles on police cars and laughing.

Guess what I'm trying to say is, define what you want your story to be like a little better (I honestly didn't understand your explanation very well) and think of ways a game could help telling it. Or go the other way around; figure a game that would be fun to make what kind of narrative could make use of it.

From what I could understand, seems like your plot has some paranoia in it. I would reinforce that in a game by hiding information from the player, and making sure he knows it. A simple example being your party of 4 has a traitor in the middle, so you have to manage food and keep everyone healthy with the knowledge that one will try to kill everyone else. It adds  some depth to a simple resource management game. I can't think of anything more specific because I didn't really get your plot idea.
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JindrichP
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« Reply #4 on: August 23, 2017, 03:13:33 AM »

If a narrative is a key then derive a gameplay from it. Probably from the very ending: you said you will hear stories about yourself doing stuff you didn´t. I believe that story will end by somehow explaining what was happening: people are trying to make you crazy; experiments; fairy tale magic etc. To really make it ticking as a nonlinear game, you can create the world, in which you can induce/deduce/hypothesise based on the things you hear, read, see, find etc. That is: the main mechanism of a game would be some sort of induction work. You living your own life and trying to make sense of what is happening. In level/interaction design you would have to place clues for the player so that once he has some of them, they will lead him to other clues and other more general/more correct things. And at the end, he should find a final evidence by his own. You should also place false clues and false info. The point is to design it nonlinearly: it shouldn´t matter when you find a clue, cause clue != go there, but 3 clues + players mind = go there.
As English isn´t my proper language I am not sure if I am clear. :-(

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