Taking a crack at game development

[Hoeloe]

E-Man, it's fine that you have started planning the story, but I think you should start by planning gameplay and testing out gameplay concepts. You have to develop a game with the mindset that you're making a game, not a movie or book, and therefore gameplay should be thought up first.

I'm not trying to discourage you from planning the story, it's just that many modern games focus on story first and gameplay second, and suffer because of it.

There's nothing particularly wrong with planning the story first, but you should always keep in mind whether a particular story element would be fun to play. For example, if your story involves collecting things, you have to be very careful about how it's done, because wandering around places looking in every corner of places you've already explored looking for one item is a pain and often not fun.

There's no problem in having an idea of how the story will go before you go through the details of the gameplay, but Paladin is right that gameplay has to be considered as a part of that. I personally find that a game is best when the story and gameplay complement each other. Either you can tweak the gameplay to work with the story, which is really hard, or tweak the story to work with the gameplay, which is easier. Alternatively, how I like to do it is to get a basic overview of both, and then intertwine them in the details, to make sure the story works with the gameplay, and the gameplay works with the story.

[E-Man]

You both raise a good point. The concept of doing the gameplay before the story is one Shigeru Miyamoto keeps closely to heart and what helped Capcom when they created the Oracle games. If I was working on a platforming game, this is what I would focus a lot of my energy into.

However, since this is a click and point adventure game, I feel like the rules are different this time around. You see, if you ever look at a few standard click and point adventure games, the overall gameplay is practically the same. The graphics and characters may be different and each one has its own story, but that's just it. A few other adventure games have a few exceptions (such as having more than one playable character in Day of the Tentacle), but that's more or less besides the point. There's not a whole lot I can do to change the core gameplay (unless I want to attempt to make it more like a platforming game), so I attempt to explain how the gameplay works, it would be irrelevant when anyone could just type "general gameplay of a click and point adventure games" on Google and get more readily available results. As a result, the story development gets a lot of attention. This is only what I speculated for a situation like this and I'm sorry if I sounded whiny.


Speaking of the story, though, I just had a talk with ShadeDBZ last night. He thought the story I had was fine, but the idea of mentioning those two users in the story like that left a bad taste in his mouth. Thankfully, I just so happen to have another story idea stashed around somewhere that doesn't involve anyone on this web site. I was originally going to do this with the buddy I am doing the RPG with, but why not develop it here?

Goblin Misadventure Quest

Inspired by the Monkey Island series, this game is a parody of the King’s Quest series. Play a good, old click-and-point adventure game with a few possible twists thrown in for good measure! With its gorgeous backgrounds, fluidly animated characters, good voice work, an entertaining story, and humor that would knock your socks off, Goblin Misadventure Quest has something for everyone!

What starts off as your typical knight-saves-princess-from-dragon plot (or so it seems) turns into a situation where the very dragon gets fired… By his own boss! After experiencing the last straw by watching his employee let Princess Nana rescue herself (the prince was a bit late and the toilet was clogged), CEO dragon Rex Agmungus gives poor Frailfire the pink slip! If that’s not enough, that Foghorn Leghorn wannabe Rex decides to kidnap that one knight in shining armor, Guard Captain Charles “Charming” Ming! Without a hero, Princess Nana takes matters into her own hands! Of course, she’s not alone. Accompanied by a sleazy goblin of a con-artist, Gobnok, the duo will travel across the whole kingdom to save Charming, overthrow Rex, and get Frailfire his old job back! Will they succeed, or will they die trying? …….. Well, maybe not actually die… The worst that could happen is if the player rage quits because he can’t solve a certain puzzle or two

Do you like it? I mentioned the idea to Shade and it appealed to him better.

[puggsoy]

In terms of gameplay, even if it's basically like every other point-and-click adventure you've played, it's still important to make sure everybody understands exactly how it should work. Some people might not play many (or any) point-and-click adventure games, and in my personal experience they can actually differ a lot. For example, Strong Bad's Cool Game For Attractive People is quite different than The Neverhood. The former has an inventory that you can view and experiment with, while the latter only has a few key items that Klaymen uses automatically when he needs to. Also the dialogue system: once again in SBCGFAP you have some very simple dialogue choices ("nice" or "mean"), while in The Neverhood there's actually no dialogue at all.
Then you've got Myst which is first-person, and Gemini Rue in which you can choose interact with objects and people in 5 different ways: with your eyes, mouth, hands, feet, or any of the items in your inventory. You've also got a communicator which you use to call people and store important information.

Your experience of point-and-click games might to be a number of games of similar natures, but as I've just shown the genre is actually quite broad and as someone who hasn't played Monkey Island or Day of the Tentacle, I'm not really sure what your game is supposed to play or look like. And who knows, if you lay out the gameplay and share it, people might have some nifty suggestions to make it a bit unique.

As for the story, choose the one you think is better. It's your game, after all. "Better" can rely on a lot of factors though, so if I were you I'd sit and have a good think about it. Like I've said, think about the experience you want to give the player, which story can do that, and how that affects the gameplay.
Also, keep in mind that as development progresses you're bound to make changes to a number of things including the story, be it big or small, so you shouldn't expect everything to fall into place right away. This is no small project and things will need to be refined to fit together comfortably.

[E-Man]

Wow, I didn't think the concept of click and point adventure games would be that deep, Puggsoy. In that case, this is what you could expect from a game like this one.

- In no point in the game that the playable characters will die or permanently miss the chance to solve a crucial puzzle to the game. Deaths that are a huge part of the story (or maybe as a reversible Easter Egg) and optional puzzles are exceptions.

- Dialog trees consist of several dialog options to pick from to gain information and possibly special items (but nearly all the options contain humorous dialog). Depending on which options you choose in a conversation, you will get more dialog choices. Also, interacting with other characters and objects have the effect of making more dialog options available from characters you previously interacted with.

- You have an inventory that has you click and drag on items to place them where they are needed in the scene. Sometimes, these items are used automatically, such as presenting a ticket to a bouncer to get into a night club. A handful of items are also capable of being put together to create new items. The game has an interface that lets it do this and also separate the items back into their individual pieces.

- The character has three buttons to interact with the world. The examine button button makes the playable character commentate on something (or read a sign), the talk button lets the character start a conversation with a person (or, in rare cases, objects), and the action button lets the character physically interact with an object the way it is intended for the purpose of the story.

- By clicking on parts of the screen without any of the three buttons active, you can move the character around the field. This is useful in some puzzles.

- With a button or two, you are able to switch control of the character you are playing as. Since there are points where the characters become separated, this button is very useful in situations like these.


Anyway, regarding the story, I'm up for either one, really. I persoanlly think that the Goblin Misadventure Quest idea would suit me better because not only would it not land me in possible trouble, but also provide some rewarding challenges by creating a world and characters from scratch. Regarding what I originally had in mind (i.e. the story of E-Man trying to prematurely end a sprite fad but ends up unwittingly making a deal with a demon), I think that an interesting idea to modify it is to take Kosheh's idea into consideration. Basically, Gors would be acting strange and E-Man and co. have to get to the bottom of it and save him.

[puggsoy]

Awesome, now I've got a better idea of how the game should look and feel.

If you think Goblin Misadventure Quest is a better choice, then I'd say go with it. The fact that it's completely fictional means you can also experiment a bit and don't have to comply as much with any restrictions or inconsistencies that might crop up when making a game based on the community.

I am still wondering how you intend to implement puzzles. Will they be separate mini-games, or will they still be in the core gameplay style? Or a mixture?

[E-Man]

Well, I think I know which idea I'm going with then!

Anyway, regarding how puzzles work, I think they will mostly work like the gameplay style. If I find any mini-games, though, I'll tell you about it.

Aso, considering that that I'm creating these characters from scratch, I think the next thing I need to do is develop the characters starting with the playable characters.

   

This is Gobnok. He is a goblin con-artist who thinks he's an oily and shifty sort, but he's hardly either. While he's very keen on duping the wealthy and/or unpleasant, conning the poor and most nice guys does not emotionally sit well for Gobnok. He is actually quite nice at heart and actually trie to remain calm no matter the situation. Even though there are times that he panics, Gobnok rarely gets angry and he's usually the one trying to break up arguments and work out compromises.

The other playable character is Princess Nana. I'm trying to work out a good design for her, but I don't want it to look too much like Zelda. You think she would look good in a green dress?

Regarding her personality, she has a strong sense of justice and a fiery temper. If it was not for being obliged to let Charles Ming save the day all the time, she could save the kingdom with one hand tied behind her back and even when she's still in her dress. Despite this, she insists that she is a polite and levelheaded woman. Even though she is smarter than a fair lot of the subjects in her kingdom, she tends to take the brash approach to her problems. Considering how Gobnok takes his time to view all the details and hardly ever flies off the handle, he and Princess Nana need each other to make a good adventuring team.

[psychospacecow]

Its probably because my most experience with this kind of game is The Walking Dead and Wolf Among Us games, but I find it kind of funny how there's this aversion to death.

[E-Man]

That's mostly due to Lucas Art's impact on the industry. Prior to Loom, all click and point adventure games had situations where you could either die or run into a point where you badly fail a puzzle to the point that you'll never be able to solve it on the current file you are playing. Once Loom was released, the LucasArts Game Design Philosophy came into play.

Loom was also the first game to follow the LucasArts Game Design Philosophy, which states that the player will never be killed or forced to restart the game and won't have to "spend hours typing in synonyms until [they] stumble on the computer's word for a certain object"

This has been used for every Lucas Arts adventure game (and a few others) since then, and considering that some Telltale employees formally worked for Lucas Arts in the past, it's no wonder why the death aversion exists. The only series of click and point adventure games that I know of that still goes against the philosophy are the King's Quest games.

[Hoeloe]

There are benefits to both systems, and great games can be made even with death aversion in play. In some cases, it's actively a good thing. No-one likes starting from scratch because they did something that lead to their death in a way that was non-obvious. You wouldn't expect to be suddenly killed by an invisible thwomp in Mario, for example, and situations just as awkward as that are harder to avoid in point-and-click games. That said, they can still be done very well, both with and without death. It depends on the game itself, frankly.

[psychospacecow]

I actually meant that you die a lot in The Walking Dead if you do things wrong.