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DarkBASIC Professional Discussion / Story-Based Games

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PirateJohn
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Posted: 9th Jul 2013 21:16
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Okay, so this isn't really a question about programming, per se...

I've seen a lot of great games made by people right here on these forums that have an excellent story behind them. Often very simple, concise, and engaging. I'm curious as to how people get their ideas for game stories?

Thing is, I write fiction as one of my other hobbies and seem to have an endless supply of ideas that I can develop into great fiction stories, but when it comes to making stories for games, I'm stumped. I might get an interesting idea but have no idea where to go with it or how to develop it into something that would be fun for a person to play as a game. I think one major reason for this is because when I write fiction, I can simply write and let the characters dictate what happens to the story. However, I cannot do that for game-based storytelling because game stories are not written serially, and it is the player, not the character, that ultimately dictates how the story unfolds.

So what are some of the different things that people do to develop their story ideas?
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madmaz
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Posted: 9th Jul 2013 21:32
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Hello,

In my opinion you can really go one of two way with that.

1.Write a story that is linear. That being it goes right from start to end in a strait line. In this fashion, yes it is the player controling that character, it is the writer however that will control the outcome of every major situation. Many games do this in sometimes similar ways. Even in a game with a very simple story, the main thing that can happen is the player dying. Most games today will just restart you from a check point as a way of telling the player that, that action is not the right one to progress the story. Game Examples. (All call of duty, devil may cry, tomb raider, ect...)

2.Write a non linear story, one that can have many different little or major outcomes and place them all as branches for the story. Most people take this as making a game with multiple endings, and even though it's the simplest way to go, there are many other possibilities for stories with branching events. Let's say you have an event in your story where there hero must choose if he is going to run, or stay and fight for some guys. If the player runs he might never end up being friends with those guys and not knowing a certain part of the story. And if he does stay, he might not run passed a beautiful crate or box of rare supplies.Game Examples (Legend of Mana, Heavy Rain, ect...)

If you choose method number one or two it doesn't really matter. It's still you in control of every aspect of the story. You just give the player a sense of freedom at every simple possibility. Normally game makers tend to do this with small, localized events that will not take any effect into the actual story.

Programing is not as easy as it seems at first... the learning is never really over...
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Libervurto
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Posted: 10th Jul 2013 08:14 Edited at: 10th Jul 2013 08:18
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Every game has a story in some form. Space Invaders is actually pretty depressing when you think about it: "They kept coming, more and more, faster and faster! There were too many, we were overrun... GAME OVER"

Narrative can exist at different levels.

The overarching story, which I will call "macro-story", concerns only major events and cannot be influenced by the player (tacking on multiple endings does not change the macro-story). During game-play, the macro-story is frozen in time and will only proceed once the player has completed their objectives. The macro story can be expressed through the game world itself, for example, if a political revolution takes place in your story there might be a statue of the leader in the beginning of the macro-story but later on it has been toppled by revolutionaries. Placing many narrative objects around the world is a good way to immerse the player into the storyline and expand on points you want to convey; maybe the revolution was started because of economic crisis, so you show people starving and begging in the streets.

What we might call the "micro-story" is the "protagonist's story": the places they go, things they do, the people they meet, the conversations they have and the emotions they feel. These aspects can be altered by the player if you wish. The micro-story can also be frozen in time during game-play, and rely on cut-scenes for delivery, or it can be conveyed dynamically.

If you have a branching storyline then you can have many paths through the macro-story, and these paths can be of unequal lengths: you might spend more time in one section of the macro-story on one path than another, or there might be dead ends where the protagonist never sees the end of the macro-story. You may also have unequal numbers of sub-branches on different story branches: one path might involve more choices or random events than another.

I made an image to try and illustrate this by it might be confusing to look at. The coloured boxes are the macro-story, the lines are the different story branches. VIEW →
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Pincho Paxton
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Posted: 10th Jul 2013 14:29
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Quote: " I'm curious as to how people get their ideas for game stories?"


The best way to get a story is to put things together that normally do not go together. Alien Vs Predator for example. And a mystery can use a random slot of an unusual twist in the same way.
What things work well together? Dark with Dark...

Zombie Nuclear Incident.
Black Hole Invasion.
Robots From Another World


Dark With light...

Angels V's Demons
A Popstar ate My Hamster
Candy Crush Saga


Anything woks well together, but the unusual works best.

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ShellfishGames
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Posted: 10th Jul 2013 17:48
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Quote: "A Popstar ate My Hamster"


I sense the beginning of an amazing revenge story...



When creating a story you need a setting, certain characters, a basic plot and probably more. Usually your game already defines a few of the characteristics, at least partially, for instance a futuristic first person shooter limits the possible settings to a small, manageable set, such as utopian, dystopian, space, post-apocalyptic etc. If, for example, you decide to take the dystopian route, that already affects what kind of characters the game will include and what plot they are involved in. In this case it could be a middle-aged man or woman who's suppressed by the system and tries to change that. From that point on you would think of a background for the character (his/her motivation) and a more detailed plot.

When thinking of a story that's usually my approach. I always start with some idea of the gameplay (which is not necessary though, I'm sure the other way - creating a game based on a story - works equally well) and sometimes a setting, and the rest revolves around that more or less automatically over time.

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Rick the Programmer
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Posted: 11th Jul 2013 18:33
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Think about those old Goosebumps books where you pick your own ending. I'd imagine storytelling in a game would work well if subtley implemented in that fashion.

Ask not for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for ye!
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Libervurto
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Posted: 12th Jul 2013 03:53
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Quote: "Think about those old Goosebumps books"

Those books taught me an important lesson: just because something is popular doesn't mean it is good.
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PirateJohn
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Posted: 12th Jul 2013 04:47
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I think the first commercial (ish) game I'd like to make would be a children's focused game where the player is a young wannabe pirate who joins a crew. The idea of the game would be that you have to solve puzzles in each phase of the game, so it would have a bit of an educational bent to it. I'm just lost in thinking of the story points themselves... Maybe I need to approach it as though I was writing a children's book?
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wattywatts
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Posted: 12th Jul 2013 05:17
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I usually get my ideas from weird dreams that I have, but so far the only game I've finished is a puzzle game on ios, so I'm probably not the best person to answer this.

For your idea, you'll probably want to play through Monkey Island for some inspiration.

http://mattsmith.carbonmade.com/
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Libervurto
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Posted: 12th Jul 2013 05:21 Edited at: 12th Jul 2013 08:04
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Since you write stories often I'm guessing your problem is that you are coming up with plenty of ideas but don't know how to work them into the game.

First you want to plan out the framework of the story, like you would if you were writing a book. Once you've worked out who the characters are and where they are going it gets slightly different: think about the different places your characters visit, what would be fun to do there? What things could the player learn?

When making an educational game you have to be careful not to shoehorn in tedious tasks that don't make sense in context, if you want to teach something specific make sure it works in context. For example, if you join a pirate ship as the cabin boy and are tasked with pouring the rum for the pirates, the game shouldn't ask you to get out a measuring jug and divide it exactly between the pirates (I don't think the pirates would be too pleased having to wait for their rum to be measured!), so maybe the Captain could ask you "Ey me lil' lad! Yer a clevir sort, tell us ow many days rum we 'ave lef. We don' wansa run oot a rum now do we!", Then you could ask how much each pirates drinks a day (or just be given a list) and you work out how many days the rum will last.

"Only four days‽", cried Captain Knotbeard, "but we're five days from land m'lad, and a pirate can't sail wi' no rum in 'is tum!"
How can you make the rum last for five days? (If "Glass-Eye" and the Captain each drink one fewer bottles per day the entire crew will have enough rum to last an extra day at sea.)

So you see the little tasks and games can be steered by the overarching storyline, whereas the rough plan would have been: they sail from A→B, now we've thrown in this rum fiasco half way through that the player has to solve so that they make it all the way to port B, and then we refer back to the story plan to see what happens after they reach port B and we repeat the process of finding things to do and problems to solve in the next part of the story.

I really like the idea that the kid got his place on board by showing he has some useful skills that the pirates lack, like maths in my example. When the pirates have a problem they can't solve with brute force they ask the "lil' lad" for help. He could do all sorts of things like navigating, reading (the pirates are illiterate), using treasure maps and sharing out the treasure, etc.
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Daniel wright 2311
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Posted: 12th Jul 2013 05:46
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1. It is easer to build a story taking examples from films and or tv. What are people interested in? reality, ghosts, zombies=over done.

2.some story's advance as you are creating game leaves.

3. two weeks ago I did not have a game character so now I am making a story only on him and adding it to the main story.

story boards are a good thing to have if you are a good artist, me? not so good on paper.

You get the idea, the story grows as your game does.

my signature keeps being erased by a mod So this is my new signature.
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Ortu
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Posted: 12th Jul 2013 08:32
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As a writer, it sounds like you have the stories, and that's often the hard part. To turn a story into a game, look through the plot and identify points at which you can present the player with choices or challenges which flow naturally out of that point in the story. This will give you your game play

Shazam!
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PirateJohn
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Posted: 12th Jul 2013 22:35
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Thanks for the advice. I think you're right, OBese87, in that I have a lot of ideas but don't know how to make the ideas into something that could be played as opposed to simply read. I like Daniel's idea of a storyboard. I might just go that route.
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MrValentine
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Posted: 12th Jul 2013 22:51
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This thread is interesting...

just tagging in for now...

been ghosting this since it started...

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