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Game Design Theory / Project to Big I Wonder

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Sasuke
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Posted: 1st Nov 2009 18:05
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Now I'm thinking, when do you think a project is too big for one person cause looking at what I'm making you'd think I'm insane. My game is quite complex, not even that it's got tons of stuff no there game has ever done before, but the game actually runs, there's quite a lot of stuff I've already done and going off my friends words here, after playing the few quests (2) I set up they said it was so amazing they don't think they could go back to playing games like Oblivion (though I still play Oblivion, only for it's great mods now). But for me to complete this game it's gonna take ages, but me doing it alone would be one hell of achievement, but is it worth it I wonder. That's the question I'm asking.

A dream is a fantasy, if you achieve that fantasy it was never a dream to begin with.
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Plotinus
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Posted: 1st Nov 2009 20:11
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Even if you never finish it, you will still have (a) learned a lot, and (b) had a lot of fun writing it. So the answer to the question at the end of your post is Yes. The question at the start of your post is impossible to answer, because it depends so much on the person as well as the project. What is an insuperable obstacle to one person may be just a minor challenge to another, and vice versa.
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Sasuke
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Posted: 1st Nov 2009 20:23 Edited at: 1st Nov 2009 20:23
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Well said, thanks Plotinus

Though looking at my massive 7 year GDD (Game Design Document), this thing would take ages for anything. I think it's mostly down to the insane amount of options you have. For instance one of those quests I mentioned. The quest is kind of a quest to join a faction. You quest is to hit a target with 6 arrows at once while an overseer watches, that is all you are told and this is kind of the point that you have to figure out. Now there are over twenty way to do this (could be more), but here's how I and my friends did it.

First friend: Looked around, hire 6 people skilled with a bow and got them to fire at the same time, though he found this difficult cause one of the bowmen was not as accurate as the other but eventurally he did it.

Second friend: Who fights using collected/grown plants (no joke, he choose to do that and you can), got a plant that can temporally shift things into another dimension, got six arrows into it and funnily got stock in the dimension, but got out with my assistance and got the plant to fire out the arrows at the same time.

Third guy (Brother): Sleathly knocked out the overseer and place six arrows in the target and woke him back up again.

Now my way of doing it: Kill the overseer, create a clone of him and tell the faction that you did it (note: your cloning ablitity will need to be touch notch though to do this, cause they can see through it)

Other stuff I could of done: you illusion to make a single arrow look like six arrows, take control over the overseer, move the target somewhere, I could go on and on but there's just some many ways to do one thing.

A dream is a fantasy, if you achieve that fantasy it was never a dream to begin with.
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Plotinus
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Posted: 1st Nov 2009 21:21
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That's brilliant - any game that models a world with such complexity that it opens up so many possible solutions to a single puzzle will have incredible immersion. I very much like games that allow you to find your own solution to a problem through manipulating the general laws of the game world - laws that are constant throughout that world - rather than those that artificially program a certain "key" to a certain "puzzle" that just works there and nowhere else. I'm working on what I hope will be a game of the first type at the moment, but it sounds like you're well advanced with yours.
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Sasuke
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Posted: 1st Nov 2009 21:43
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Cool, good luck with your game.

I'm currently sorting out the combat, cause it's so different to most RPG's you'd find my friends found it hard, mainly for the fact that you have to plan everything you do. You can't just run in there and tap on the mouse like a mad man. You need to read what it's doing, try an learn it habits and find it's weakness.

If I remember correctly my friend was up against a plant, everything he did he ended up dead. So I said to him, if you saw a lion for the first time outside of town, would you run over to kill it with no knowledge of what it is. With this he figure out what to do. He went and look in a study hall (it as fantasy world so I'll come up with a mad name) which contains thousands of books (kinda), found the plant life section and found the plant he was trying to kill. After he read up he figure out how to kill the thing, funnily with another plant, although there are many way to kill it that aren't in the book.

I always wondered about this with ever enemy, knowledge is power. If your facing a plant that lived for over a 1000 years then it fully knows how to deal with us and any other enemy that's crossed it's path cause it wouldn't be alive it didn't, it also has the advantage of the wild, lay of the land and the weather to it's aid.

But with this in mind it gives you a chance to fully experiment with it. How would it react if the air was really hot, or there was no air, anything I could thing of, I wrote down and played with.

A dream is a fantasy, if you achieve that fantasy it was never a dream to begin with.
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BearCDP
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Posted: 2nd Nov 2009 02:04
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Whoever said you had to finish the entire thing by yourself? If you've got an in-depth design document, you could always take a portion of that design, scope it down to something you can manage within a given time frame and still show off the sophistication of your design. Then post it on here, Gamedev, or other sites and see if anyone's interested in helping you out.

I'm currently working on a game meant to be a portfolio for showing off my music composition and sound design, and although I had devised several different scenarios for showcasing music & sound, I limited it to just a few different areas. In the meantime all my models will look like boxes with smiley faces on them, and once the game is playable with some music in there, I'm going to make a WIP post asking for modelers, texture artists, and UI designers.

Game Design, Audio, and Music Blog
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Libervurto
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Posted: 2nd Nov 2009 06:36
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@Sasuke
Are you serious?
Can we play this demo, it sounds amazing.

TGC Forum - converting error messages into sarcasm since 2002.
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Sasuke
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Posted: 5th Nov 2009 20:28 Edited at: 5th Nov 2009 20:29
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BearCDP2, that was my thinking at first, but as I got deeper into the project I wonder if I could make a game as epic as this all by myself. Either way it would make a great portfolio item.

OBese87, well I was thinking of starting a wip soon, so maybe I could make one for it also, it's just a bit tricky to make cause you can go anywhere in the world and nothing stops you doing what you want. Maybe I could make one centred round a sort of puzzle, like some of the self quests you get reading from books (thats right, in my game it worth reading stuff to get quests, though there's a little more to it but I'm keeping that a secret).

Oh yeah, I'm using this term "Self Quest", because they are neither quests or side quest since they contain no sort of goal. For example, if I read a book about some great treasure hidden somewhere, I shouldn't get a side quest pop up telling I need to go here and do this and that. The idea is that you choose to seek out this treasure by your own means. Once you find the treasure or something your reward is that and anything you gained on your travels, not another journal update.

A dream is a fantasy, if you achieve that fantasy it was never a dream to begin with.
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tha_rami
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Posted: 7th Nov 2009 00:49
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Not really related, but I'm fascinated by the apparent contradiction in your signature, "A dream is a fantasy, if you achieve that fantasy it was never a dream to begin with."

You say:


But that makes no sense whatsoever. Would you care to elaborate?


A mod has been erased by your signature because it was larger than 600x120
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Peter H
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Posted: 7th Nov 2009 06:01 Edited at: 7th Nov 2009 06:05
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I think the meaning is:
"A dream is a fantasy, if you achieve that dream it was never a fantasy to begin with."

It's just a play on the English language that makes it sound better while being somewhat ambiguous. Since dream and fantasy are equated then it doesn't matter what order the second part is in.

And converting it to code doesn't really work since the point is that if you achieve this dream then the original statement of "dream=fantasy" was an incorrect statement, which doesn't really exist in code... so it would be more like

if (achieve dream)
dream != fantasy
else
dream = fantasy
endif

...

One man, one lawnmower, plenty of angry groundhogs.
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Neuro Fuzzy
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Posted: 7th Nov 2009 23:13
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Quote: "My game is quite complex"

Quote: "but the game actually runs"

Quote: "after playing the few quests (2) I set up they said it was so amazing"


and then...

Quote: "well I was thinking of starting a wip soon"


So... you don't have a demo? and "the game" that actually runs doesn't exist yet?

You're letting on like you already have a ton of this done. Do you?

If you don't... how are you going to design a system that allows for this huge degree of flexibility?
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Sasuke
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Posted: 10th Nov 2009 19:48
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Wow, everyone's picking apart my words these days.

Quote: "So... you don't have a demo? and "the game" that actually runs doesn't exist yet?"


Nope the game exists and runs, but it's not in any state to showcase it in a demo yet. Basically the core game mechanics is all i've been working on. If you looked at my world right now, you'd see tons of reference meshes all over the place.

Quote: "You're letting on like you already have a ton of this done. Do you?"


Well, it depends on how much tons is. The engines is setup in a way so I can easier make stuff. I don't know if you saw my Fallout 3 Engine Remake project but I took most of that and edited it so I could make stuff like this. So a lot of work had already been made in various projects over the years, I just finally combined it all.

Quote: "If you don't... how are you going to design a system that allows for this huge degree of flexibility?"


It kind of works in the same way the wire scripting editor works in Project Offset, but also I made it in a way so that it can generate conditional scripts based of conditions set in the root scripts these being the ones I define. There also more layers to this but I guess it would be better to just show you when its in a more presentable form. But I'll try and come up with something when I'm not busy, maybe a demo vid or something.

A dream is a fantasy, if you achieve that fantasy it was never a dream to begin with.
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TechLord
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Posted: 18th Nov 2009 12:55 Edited at: 18th Nov 2009 12:59
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Hi Sasuke,

Sounds like you have managed to single-handedly develop a very advanced engine. I'm curious as to what type of Game Engine is it - 3D MMORPG?

More options - more work. Deep inside you know that you'll need a design team (if you don't want to spend ages on doing it solo). You were probably aware this possibility from the very start. If so, did you include features to simplify collaboration in your Game Engine and Content Creation Tools? If you didn't it may not be difficult to add support, especially if your game engine supports multiplayer.

Trapped inside the DGDK Open Source Project.
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