Peer Game Design

[rpgdemon]

Hey y'all.

So, I had a thread like this before that sort of died for a lot of reasons, partially because I didn't want to make any important design decisions, partially because there wasn't enough back and forth dialog for it to be interesting, and partially because I didn't have the time to devote to the project, when it was being worked on. Now, I'm going to be having a summer of not-class, and want something to fill my time with.

With my time, I'm going to be designing a game. This is where you all come in, since you'll be acting as consultants. Consider this somewhat like a weird lets play, I'll be working on the game and doing the bulk of things, but it'll be open to suggestion and all of that fun stuff, which I'll do my best to follow.

So, first things first, I will not be only following suggestions for this game. I'll be combining suggestions with my own input, and my input will win if I want it to. This is mostly to keep things from stagnating, by having a final say involved.

Now, to the design. I've got a lot of ideas, which I'll be happy pursuing, but I figure I ought to see what you all think, before I do so. Is there anything that you REALLY want to see made, that doesn't exist? Say so!

And the first choice of the development process: Should the game be a flash game meant to be played in browser (I'll be developing it using flashDevelop and the flex SDK if anyone's interested), or a downloadable PC game (Which will likely be coded in C#, and take advantage of the XNA library)?

The biggest benefit of a downloadable game for the PC is, it's legitimized. Flash games are illegitimate, for whatever reason, and PC games are not. There are other advantages (XNA is pretty great at some things, plus I have a custom engine to work with, within XNA, that was originally developed for a 360 game that has been put on the back burner), but the biggest one is the legitimization.

The Flash route has the benefit that it's multi-platform, and it's very easy to distribute/get into people's hands to play. There's no installation, there's no worry that it could be a virus, just load a web page, and it's ready to play, no matter what your OS is.

It will be approximately equal amounts of work either way. FlashDevelop is a straight coding environment, so it's not as if I have the weird Flash UI to <Help/Confuse> me. I might have a bit of a leg up with C# and XNA, as I have significant-ish experience working with them (I was part of the development of a game/engine with them), and a pretty solid background in C/C++, which transfers over well enough to C#. I've done a little with actionscript, but not enough to say that I have a great understanding of it. What I've seen though, it should be easy enough to pick up.


I think this post is getting long enough, so, the TL;DR:

.SWF(Flash) or .EXE(PC)?

[Token]

My vote goes to PC.

[Sifright]

.exe

[phil_]

Why are you worried about legitimacy when you should be worried about whether phil_ can play your game?

.swf

[Bells]

i think you would probably get more useful learning going forward with PC development, so, EXE.

[Amake]

To me browser games are basic, uncomplicated things while executables you have to download and possibly install have depth and meaning commensurate with the additional effort required to play them. I know that's not necessarily how it works, you can have mini games on the level of You Have to Burn the Rope packed in an .exe and you can play Quake III in a browser, but that's still how I tend to define a game when making the gut-instinct decision of playing it or not.

So I'd say it depends on what you want to do. The next Dwarf Fortress or the next Robot Unicorn Attack? Personally, I've played a heck of a lot more Robot Unicorn than Dwarf Fortress. Actually I've never played Dwarf Fortress beyond the world generation stage. But it's still a game that matters to me a great deal; its mere existence has changed the world more than any amount of hours I may spend chasing pink fluffy dreams ever will. I'd rather see a single game attempting to achieve some degree of art and/or sophistication than a hundred thousand timewasters out of Newgrounds.

Tee ell semico' dee arr: From a psychological standpoint, .exes are cool and .sfws are cheap.

[rpgdemon]

i think you would probably get more useful learning going forward with PC development, so, EXE.

In terms of useful learning, I'm not sure if that's a good way of looking at it. I'd end up being able to learn a lot more about actionscript, as I've got very little experience there, whereas working for a PC I'll be able to use the knowledge I've already got.

[rpgdemon]

I'd like to add, this isn't really a voting process so much as, "Make a convincing argument for your case.", and I'll go with what's convinced me, even if it's not the majority decision.

[Sifright]

It depends what your planning to do in the future but making a playable game that runs off an executable would look better as part of a portpholio at the end of the day though it's entirely your decision and only you can be an effective judge of what will help you the most.

[rpgdemon]

You actually bring up a good point, unintentionally (Well, the thing about the portfolio is a good one too): The platform really depends on the game. I mean, there are some things that just don't work with Flash. No one wants to sit down and play a flash-based RPG, for example. Something like Tactics Arena (http://www.tacticsarena.com/) works great in Flash though. Downloadable games have a wider variety of things that work.

So, I've got a few ideas, and I figure I should outline them, and people can make arguments for the platform, and design of the game.

The first is actually a game similar to Tactics Arena, but with greater variety, and greater customizability. If you play a few rounds of Tactics Arena, you'll notice it gets stale as there's no real variance in the game play, except for how you place your units. I want to fix that.

The second is an idea that I got after reading someone comment on Homestuck, when they got the Gab Badge, or whatever, "Of course it's not a game where you get the ability to talk at the top levels. That would be stupid." Well, call me stupid, because I think there's something to be had with an idea like that, where the player gains what we think to be basic tenants of gameplay, as skills when they level up.

The third is a weird sort of idea that's been half-formed and kicking around in my head. It's a game that I've only got the ambiance really designed for, I know it'll be a side scroller, and it'll be about a reporter, and it'll be black and white, with flat colors or a newsprint texture, but not much more about it.

http://www.franksshopgames.com/silhouette/title.png
http://www.franksshopgames.com/silhouette/silhouette2.png

[Doc ock rokc]

You actually bring up a good point, unintentionally (Well, the thing about the portfolio is a good one too): The platform really depends on the game. I mean, there are some things that just don't work with Flash. No one wants to sit down and play a flash-based RPG, for example. Something like Tactics Arena (http://www.tacticsarena.com/) works great in Flash though. Downloadable games have a wider variety of things that work.

So, I've got a few ideas, and I figure I should outline them, and people can make arguments for the platform, and design of the game.

The first is actually a game similar to Tactics Arena, but with greater variety, and greater customizability. If you play a few rounds of Tactics Arena, you'll notice it gets stale as there's no real variance in the game play, except for how you place your units. I want to fix that.

The second is an idea that I got after reading someone comment on Homestuck, when they got the Gab Badge, or whatever, "Of course it's not a game where you get the ability to talk at the top levels. That would be stupid." Well, call me stupid, because I think there's something to be had with an idea like that, where the player gains what we think to be basic tenants of gameplay, as skills when they level up.

The third is a weird sort of idea that's been half-formed and kicking around in my head. It's a game that I've only got the ambiance really designed for, I know it'll be a side scroller, and it'll be about a reporter, and it'll be black and white, with flat colors or a newsprint texture, but not much more about it.

http://www.franksshopgames.com/silhouette/title.png
http://www.franksshopgames.com/silhouette/silhouette2.png

I think that you need to Design the game more before you star worrying about what type of file it is going to be in. coding is only one third of the job. and on major games it is even less so. the one that seems more though out is The Tactics one but little thought seems to be given to any of the others.

[rpgdemon]

Well, the second idea actually has about an equal amount of thought put into it, but I don't want to publish the full design documents and stuff for the more original ideas. The Tactics-based game, I can go into more detail with because it's not too original, but the other ones I want to keep under wraps for the future, if I don't use them here.

The third idea is much more malleable and up in the air in terms of design.

[Azisien]

Your game isn't legitimate unless I downloaded it off Steam.

.exe

[rpgdemon]

Okay, so, it seems like .exe is the majority, but I've heard the biggest convincing argument for Flash. It gets the game into a lot more hands, even if it's illegitimate. In the case of the first game, getting a lot of people playing is important, in the case of the others, legitimacy might be more important. So, start weighing in on the actual design, and such.

I guarantee you, I have enough design work done on the first two games to have them ready to go. The third game, however, has very little design work done on it.

[A Zarkin' Frood]

Your game isn't legitimate unless I downloaded it off Steam.

.exe

I remember that one time I downloaded a flash game from steam and it became one of my favorite games.

[akaSM]

For a good example of a nice game in flash, look at The Binding of Isaac (http://store.steampowered.com/app/113200)

One of my favorite games that shows that flash doesn't mean that your game has to be a crappy browser game if it's in flash. OTOH, it shows how can a simple looking flash game be SLOW on computers that seem like they would run it.

My netbook? The game's slow ALL the time, a friend loves the game on her netbook though still, I cannot play it on my netbook.

My Old Pentium D PC? Runs fine but gets slow at times.

My phone (using the Newgrounds demo)? sloooooooooooooow.

My current PC with a i5 2500k? It runs perfectly!

[A Zarkin' Frood]

Yeah, Binding of Isaac was the game I meant. Dungeons of Dredmor is also flash based, I think. At least it doesn't have the UI, which is a common "problem" with flash games on steam. Strong point of flash seems to be that it does vectors easily. But apparently it's bad at some other things.

Anyway, it's already been decided, apparently.

[rpgdemon]

It's been quasi-decided, until the concept has been decided though, nothing is set in stone.

[rpgdemon]

So, assuming equal design put into all of these games, which one would be most interesting, in all of y'all's opinion?

[akaSM]

All of them, together. Except I haven't looked at Tactics Arena so, Make a game where the reporter gains abilities that poke fun at characters of other games, with ridiculous inabilities like:


Jump waist-high ledges
Screen scrolling to the left
Swap a sucky (useless for whatever the current puzzle/situation is) item you recently acquired for a previous, more useful one
Ability to talk! (poke fun at mime heroes)
Aim upwards/diagonally
Crouch without silly upgrades...as a silly upgrade
Avoid plot stupidity (ooo, I know that if I go into that room I'll get ambushed but, the game won't give me any other option)
Avoid plot and gameplay segregation (oh noes, my loved one died and I cannot use my reviving item on her for some reason!)


Or, poke fun at tropes...yes, tropes from that one site.