Game Design

[Fenrir]

I'm currently working on creating an exploration platformer, and wanted some input.  I already have a very loose plot I intend to follow, but lack ideas for side missions, secrets and such. Feel free to offer advice on game design, or suggest ideas the could give the world I'm trying to create substance.  I'm mostly working on this by myself, and would appreciate the help.

Here's some concept art...

[Asia Kali Yusufzai]

Well what's the tone gonna be like, and the themes and the ideas that you already have. There's nothing but concept art to work with here.I mean is it just going to be "walk somewhere, pull switch to open door, jumping puzzle to get to open door, to push block to collapse building to open new pathway to a prize or to continue in the story?"....

Yeah that's not a bad idea....

I mean, side missions and secrets come in late on after the framework and main  path of the game is mostly there.



As for general ideas of game design, I subscribe to the Valve school of thought. Since it's exploratory, then story reveals itself visually, through exploring areas and seeing strange and potent things.  Of course dialog helps a hell of a lot, but this method avoids the character breaking exposition dumps most games suffer from.

A believable world of substance requires a history and a meaning. I mean, what's the plot, what do you want to say. And from that, the world acts as a vessel for meaning, being constructed with this idea in mind. Of course it also needs to be believable, so a strong history is good to make. How did the world get to this state? and why? how does society work, and why?

Stuff like that. Once you have the world, it makes it a lot easier to think of ideas, because they mostly write themselves through the world's existence.



Good luck on this. I've always been interested in game design and interactive narrative.

[Fenrir]

Gameplay:
The gameplay is going to draw emphasis from Cave Story, a remarkable indie game.  As far as I've decided, you'll wake up in a section of this massive building known as the Steamworks, and from there you can explore in a non-linear fashion and pick up helpful objects or learn new skills along the way.*  At the end of every "section" of the building, you'll encounter a boss, but generally the dangers in the game will be environmental, largely eliminating those cliched "monsters".  There will be a hub, sort of a village area where the protagonist can interact with the citizens to complete missions or discover secrets.  This area will contrast with the intensely isolated and lonely atmosphere perpetuated by the other sections of the building.  This game will place heavy emphasis on puzzle solving.

*Note that it's not required to get any of these, and many will be secret.  But some of them will allow you to further explore the game, and should therefore be desirable.

Characters:
Cassidy - The silent protagonist, he just wants to go home.
Mordecai - The enigmatic antagonist, it almost seems as if his mind works on a higher plane.  
(I've been working almost obsessively on trying to create the perfect villain, and Mordecai was the result.  This brief description doesn't do him justice.)
Captain Knotts - Every game needs comedic relief, here he is.
Atlas - The leader of the village/hub area.

History:
I haven't quite figured out what I want to do with this yet.  I'm pretty sure that early in the game nobody will be able to tell you anything, but the deeper you explore the world the more you'll learn about it.  And seeing as the exploration isn't required past discovering and destroying the bosses, furthering the story will be something the player has some control over.  Anyway, history of my world needs some work, and is one of the aforementioned areas in which I could use some help.

...And that's that.  Sorry for the huge block of text.  Anyway, here's some concept art of another section of the building.

Note that I've already started work on the skyline and have gotten the different layers of the background to move at different speeds, simulating distance.

[Asia Kali Yusufzai]

Well what is the Steamworks? What is this building for? How old is it? who built it and why? Who's in charge of it? Why is it so big? Is it on its own or part of a larger city?

As far as I can see, the building is the second main character, so you need it to feel real.

[WingedZephyr]

I like the concept art so far. It's too difficult to distinguish the silhouette in the second (night time) one though because the background is so dark.

[flames]

The art so far definitely has that indie feel to them and I can't really add much that hasn't already been said but if you pull this off it could be interesting. Also, arguably this is not really to do with design although it affects it but, I was wondering what language/tools you're going to use for this. Naturally what you actually use will place some degree of restrictions on what you can do and even something as simple as how physics work whilst falling can have a major difference on the feel of the game with even one adjusted value sometimes being enough to make a serious game seem a lot less serious.

[Asia Kali Yusufzai]

I wasn't gonna say it before but the whole thing of "a serious game seem a lot less serious." is quite important. And I'm worried about one particular aspect.

Captain Knotts - Every game needs comedic relief, here he is.

No game needs a character purely made to be laughed at, unless it's a comedy game. This is not a comedy. I mean, it's fine to have jokes and things, but I don't think you need one character for it to focus on. Small games like this have so few characters, so each have a great power over the tone of the story. Comic relief characters tend to be quite two dimensional and rather cheapen the serious, enigmatic darkness of what I'm seeing in your ideas.

Good writing doesn't have a "look at me, I'm funny" character, because good characters are capable of cracking a joke or two, while also being capable of incredibly serious ideas.

I think what I'm saying is make sure your characters are fully fleshed human beings. And make sure this Captain Knotts doesn't hamper the voice of your game.

[Fenrir]

Hm.  All very good points.  I'll try to form a backstory for the building (the building itself has no name, the Steamworks is a certain section of the building).  The fact that the silhouette  is hard to distinguish from the background in the Skyline section has been corrected in the game alpha, and the point about Captain Knotts is valid.  I'll make him a "quirky" character instead of pushing it too far.

I'm using the Game Maker engine.  It's not incredibly efficient, nor does it offer a lot of freedom, but it's the one game engine I've tried that I've been able to work with effectively.  I lack true coding experience except for a few classes in Python and Visual Basic, which renders the coding aspect of the game quite daunting.  If anyone here has experience in Game Maker code, I could use some help.

And as a note to this topic's viewers, my avatar was self-made, and once scaled down, is going to serve as the running animation for the protagonist. 

Thanks for all the feedback!  You're going to help make this game great.

[Asia Kali Yusufzai]

Yeah I think you might have to change your avatar to something less heavy. It makes this page totally lag out... at least for me anyway.

But yeah hope this all turns out well. I love indie titles.

[Fenrir]

Apologies for the lag, I'll drop the avatar.  And is there any way to post music to the forum without providing an external link?

[WingedZephyr]

No, you can't upload music files directly to the forum.


Edit: The thread was lagging because both of the pictures you posted were over 4000x5000 pixels in size. Even though pictures automatically appear downsized to 600 pixels on the forum, it still downloads and acts like a 4000x5000 sized picture. I had to save the pictures and reupload them myself so that they're now 600 pixels high. Please resize your images before posting them in the future.

[Fenrir]

My apologies, I made those pictures some time ago.  I'd forgotten how... sizable they were. 

[flames]

Yeah, this thread would seriously slow down almost every browser I threw at it, but thankfully it's okay now and I can view this normally.
I used to use Game Maker myself but that was quite a while ago now and I only ever used the free versions so I was limited as to what I could do. Plus I used 6 and 7 so I bet a lot has changed on the coding side of things since then. Plus I probably won't be able to run Game Maker or your game (when you release any test versions) so I'm afraid I'm not going to be much help there.
Sorry I can't be of help but if you ever decide to use python in the future (or anything based on python like pygame) I could give a few pointers.