Game Design and Development Basics

Hi there! My name is Louis Kraml and I want to share with you some of the game design and development basics I’ve learned throughout the years.

Designing a game from scratch is a time consuming task, especially if you run a small game development team. Actually, more and more people decide to create a full game by themselves, many of them being disappointed by their former team members.

I’ve seen this happening quite a few times, and from what I know you can’t expect to meet more than 10-20% hard working, indie game developers. OK, so how do we maximize our chances of creating a successful game?

Everything starts with the brainstorming stage; what you are doing here can turn your idea into a successful project that actually gets completed, or into a poor attempt that never sees the light of the day.

It’s easy to get carried away: you might have so many great ideas flowing through your head! Right now I’m thinking at an RPG where you would have your hero change its form from solid to liquid to vapor and back, as he moves on along these danger-filled caves. Yeah! And he will enter some rooms where there will be several instances of him, and all these instances will have to work in harmony, discovering what buttons need to be pushed in order to open the gate to the next level.

As you can probably guess, we could go on and on with this, and it’s actually recommended to do so at the brainstorming stage. Still, when you’ve gotten about 100 great ideas, it’s time to throw 90 of them out of the window! Yes, you read that right, you will have to give up and simply ignore most of your fantastic ideas, because this will greatly increase your chances to actually finish the game.

“But my ideas are great!”, I hear you saying. Sure thing, but we are keeping a few of your BEST ideas, so your game will have increased chances of success. Not only that, but if your game is successful, you could create lots of sequels that incorporate the previously brainstormed, unused ideas.

So how do we decide what ideas should be kept? The answer to this question is very simple: we will NEED some features, and we might WANT to have some features in the game.

As an example, we are going to need to have a loading / saving system most of the time; very few games don’t have them these days. On the other hand, we could have a checkpoint-based load / save system, which saves the game automatically when we reach a certain goal / area, or a game that has a load / save system which allows you to load your own picture, tweet your high score, craft a press release about your gaming performances, and so on.

To begin with, you will want to keep the ideas / features that bring in a lot of originality, without needing a lot of development time. It is important to have an overall perspective of your project; if you want to include a museum exploration level, you would have to create at least 50... 100 (if not hundreds or thousands!) of artwork pieces that will be displayed inside it.

If you work in a small team, remember to filter all the ideas with the other members of the game development team; you might find out that some of the elements (deformable terrain, to give you a simple example) might not be possible to do using your game engine.

At this point you should have a list with some great features that require little time and effort and another set of great features that will need more time in order to be brought to life. Don’t forget to ask yourself this question obsessively: do I really NEED this feature in my game, or is it something that I’d just like to have?

Sure, you can add as many features as you like, but these features might push the project back for several months and even years. It helps if you are a lazy person, doing it all by yourself; you should be able to identify the time consuming operations.

What is your game about? Most times, you have a clear understanding of what you're getting is about. Still, try and jot down the very core of your game. If you would have to use a single phrase to describe your game, what would that phrase be? What is so exciting about your game that the entire world will want to purchase a copy of it?

Do not skip over this part, because it is crucial and it will help you refine the game design process, making it much more efficient. Try and imagine that you have finished your game, and now one of your clients is looking at the game box. What does it say on that box? Is the title and the description of the game so exciting that it makes the client pickup your game and rush home to plate? Do not forget that these days the market is full with high-quality games, so the offer is very broad.

By now you should have a list of ideas, a brief description of the game, and the fantastic title and description for your game. It is time to do a reality check. Your friends and relatives are among the most precious testers you could ever dream of having. Present your game idea in front of them and see if that has gotten them excited.

Sure, your grandma might not be the best person to discuss these matters with, but if you have a few friends that have an interest in gaming, you should get some good feedback, provided that you ask them to offer constructive, and yet honest feedback.

Here's an elevator pitch example: you are a princess looking for your frog prince. Your mission is to search the forest, solving puzzles and discovering the pieces that will create a huge poster with your beloved prince. As soon as all the puzzle pieces are found, the frog prince will be brought back to life.

The following step of the process is to create a mockup of your game. Basically, you want to have a hand-drawn picture of your game screen. You don't need to be a skilled artist for that; even a black and white image will do the job. Make sure to include all the game panels and digits that will be displayed on the screen at all times; this way, you will discover some of the parts that you have missed during the brainstorming process.

Having this game sketch has an additional role: it will help you understand better what is happening in your game. Not only that, but you also have the chance to pick the best layout for your buttons, panels and so on. But the best benefit of them all is the fact that now you will be able to evaluate properly if your future game design project has the chances to be turned into a successful game project or not.

If you still like the game idea a lot and your testers find it excellent as well, then you are ready to start working at the first game prototype. This prototype doesn't have to be perfect, nor does it have to include high-quality artwork, all there is to it is to highlight the great gameplay ideas that you have gathered during the brainstorming phase.

The sooner you are able to create this playable prototype, the better. Fortunately, there are lots of game development systems out there, so your task shouldn't take more than a few days. Basically, you want to have this prototype functional as early as possible because it will give you the energy to continue, as well as force you to discover some problems and maybe change minor parts of the gameplay, in order to speed up the game development process or even adapt what you thought was possible to the existing technology options.

Once that you have your ugly looking, and yet fully functional game prototype, it is the time to add polish trick. Resist the temptation to add a main menu, splash screens, and so on at this stage; they will eat a lot of

your time, which is much better spent by adding more actual features that boost the value of your game.

Now it could be the time to add high-quality artwork to your game. How much video memory will your game is for 128 x 128 pixel sprites? Does the game look well enough that way? If you can do that, go with higher resolution sprites; this will improve the aspect of your game. Don't forget that the project will use more memory, though.

Okay, so now you have a game that is actually playable and looks decent. It is the time to start working at all the other features, but be very careful while taking care of this part of the project. There is a very serious danger that might put to risk your game: you might like your game so much that you want to work at several features at the same time. Whatever you do, be sure to work at a single feature; then, after you have finished all the work at it, move on to the following feature and so on.

Start by creating older levels for your game, for example. Then, move on with all of the characters. Then, create all the 2-D graphics, for example. The idea here is to maintain your focus and actually get to finish all the game aspects one by one, without multitasking, because that would be an energy and productivity killer. It is essential to work at a feature until it is polished enough and ready for shipping.

There is a logical order in which these aspects should be tackled, of course, so don't start creating the weapons for your characters before you have those characters drawn or modeled.

Don't forget to make backup copies of your game on a regular basis; resist the temptation to overwrite the old copies with the new ones. Too many projects get lost this way because the developers didn't save an early copy,

so they have lost a huge amount of work by overwriting it. Many advanced game developers will use version control software, but if you are just starting out you can get away with it by simply saving your game prototype daily, in a folder that has the car and they month and year as its name.

Whatever you do, try and do your best to polish everything to perfection before moving on. This way, if you run out of patience and you decide to ship your game earlier, including only 50 of those 100 levels that were planned initially, you will have 50 well built levels, rather than having 70 so and so polished levels.

Okay, so now you're getting is almost ready for shipping. It is important to look back at some point and decide that the game is ready to be shipped. Sure, some of the features that were included in the game design document initially might not be available in the final version of the game, but you have a solid, fully working, great-looking project that is ready to heat the stores.

While being enthusiastic is always great, it is also important to do some reality checks from time to time. Just look at the game credits that fly over the screen at the end of a best-selling game type; you will notice that there are hundreds of people that have worked at that particular project! This doesn't mean that you should give up year great game development ideas, though, but rather to have a realistic approach and try to create a medium-sized project that has much greater chances to be turned into a solid, highly playable product.

Louis Kraml, the author of this report, is a game programmer that likes to share useful information with all the aspiring game developers. For more information about Louis Kraml and his game tutorials, make sure to check out http://louiskraml.org