tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23263289556471762162024-03-05T19:42:42.909-08:00Reactorcore's gameplay designBlog about video games, gameplay design and my projects.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2326328955647176216.post-82147032189757071352011-08-17T02:38:00.000-07:002011-08-17T02:42:19.522-07:00MGDA: Part 2, Design Phase<span style="font-size: x-small;">(MGDA means "Making a Game: the Direct Approach" and it is a series of blog posts meant to educate people to learn how to make a video game professionally.)</span><br />
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To advance to this phase, you should now have a potential idea that you would want to develop into a video game. Preferably something you want to do with a passion.<br />
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In this phase, your task is to turn that idea into a functional game concept. You do this by making all of its features as clear as possible for yourself. This is so you know exactly how the game looks and functions in its finished state and how are you going to get there. Thats the entire goal of the design phase.<br />
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During this phase, these words are most sacred: Focus on what matters.<br />
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<b style="background-color: #b45f06;">Product/Service.</b><br />
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I'll be using this phrase a lot during this post, so it would be a good idea to explain it.<br />
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A video game can be released as a product or as a service. The difference between them is that if you buy a product, you then own that particular item or a copy of it. Its yours. If you buy a service however, you are essentially renting it. You will not own it.<br />
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To use an analogy, buying a car from a car shop makes the car a product. Renting a car from a car renting company makes it a service.<br />
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For video games, you may sell them as a product, with the customer paying a certain amount of money for it and a that copy of the game will then belong to him/her. Or, you may have a game that is hosted somewhere, but instead of selling the game itself, you sell access to it. This makes it a service.<br />
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Whether your project produces a product or a service, depends on the project. Usually a traditional singleplayer game is commonly sold as a product because it doesn't require support or gets no new content, whereas an online multiplayer game is sold as a service, because the developer possibly keeps updating the game with new content or providing other support, so selling his game as a service is preferable to compensate for his time continuously supporting the service he provides.<br />
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<b style="background-color: #b45f06;">Documenting is key.</b><br />
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Documenting is key when designing a game. Regardless of how small or large the project is, a video game is just too multiversed and loaded with small details you otherwise don't realize right away. Especially with code. If you're new to programming, you will be amazed just to what basics you must go to achieve for a program to do even something very simple.<br />
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There is just too much information for a human mind to handle. You need to write it down to free space in your brain. If you keep it all in your brain, there is a high risk you will miss something or forget. Your brains will simply explode from all the information involved in making video games. Getting a burnout is not fun, I can tell you that.<br />
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Make it a habbit to put every idea you get on paper as soon as possible. As time goes by and you keep working on a project, you will be able to focus better on new ideas as you can rest assured knowing, that any ideas you came up in the past are safely stored on paper for future reference.<br />
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For any project, always do the following documents I instruct in this guide. They are all both necessary and useful, so there is no worry about making pointless documents or useless work. These documents are recommended to both solo and team developers.<br />
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If you're working a team, documents are even more important as they are the main source of information from which the team members will draw accurate information and data to do their respective work.<br />
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If you see your partners face to face, then its better to focus on physical documents like paper or printed text documents. These are much more accessible and more comfortable to read by anyone.<br />
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If your team partners are remote, then you will be better off making text documents on the computer for easier distribution.<br />
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<b style="background-color: #b45f06;">Formatting and grammar.</b><br />
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Pay close attention to formatting and grammar. If you want to be taken seriously, you have to be serious yourself. You do this by taking great care of the quality of writing in your documents. This blog post itself is a good example of good writing for a document.<br />
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<ul><li>See how my spelling is correct.</li>
<li>See how the text has a clear structure and a logical flow. </li>
<li>See how I break down text into paragraphs for easier reading.</li>
<li>See how I use titles, headers and formatting to distinguish the content.</li>
<li>See how my text is direct and to the point. </li>
</ul><br />
Put thought and effort into your documents. You will need to come back and read them later some day, so do your best to make them as professional as possible using the tips I gave you above. <br />
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This is extremely important for good teamwork, so make sure your documents are presentable and to the point, otherwise your team mates will only laugh at you if the document is badly made or get bored if you're not direct enough.<br />
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<b style="background-color: #b45f06;">1. Initial Idea Document.</b><br />
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First, you start off by writing down the rough idea of your game and its most prominent features. You can do this on paper or a text document. This document will be like a quick explanation about your project and what its supposed to look like in the end. Roughly.<br />
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Here is a example template:<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">(Hold ctrl + mousewheel up/down to zoom)</span><br />
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<blockquote><div style="text-align: center;">================================================ </div></blockquote><blockquote style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; font-size: x-small;">[Project Name]</span><br />
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<span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; font-size: x-small;">[Document Name]</span><br />
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<span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; font-size: x-small;">Summary</span><br />
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<span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; font-size: x-small;">[Write a short summary of what this document is and what is its purpose. </span><br />
<span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; font-size: x-small;">In this case, its the initial idea document, so you explain the premise of the game as short as possible, but accurate enough to understand what you meant.]</span></blockquote><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><blockquote><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; font-size: x-small;">[Generic Feature/Aspect Title]</span><br />
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<span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; font-size: x-small;">[From here on, you begin to describe the project in further detail, by explaining the most important aspects and features of your game, starting from the very basics and going downwards all the way to the gory details. You can seperate each major aspect with the [Generic Feature/Aspect Title] for easier reading.]</span><br />
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<span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; font-size: x-small;">[Here's the order of things you should talk about:</span><br />
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<span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; font-size: x-small;">Main Idea</span><br />
<span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; font-size: x-small;">Important Features</span><br />
<span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; font-size: x-small;">Story/Concept</span><br />
<span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; font-size: x-small;">Game World</span><br />
<span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; font-size: x-small;">World Elements</span><br />
<span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; font-size: x-small;">Characters & Items</span><br />
<span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; font-size: x-small;">Art Style/Format</span><br />
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<span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; font-size: x-small;">Notice how there is a certain order in this list, starting with the very basics and coming down to the other, more detailed parts. This is because the requirements made by the things above in this list have a direct impact on the things below them.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; font-size: x-small;">Always start from the basics and work your way down to the details, as the basics will define the details.]</span><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">================================================</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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Do note that this is just the initial idea you will write down. It might (and will) change on the way, but atleast you have written down the basics so you (and your team) can review it and possibly improve it until its good enough. <br />
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By writing down the basic idea, you will be able to focus on designing the details of the project from now on, because you no longer have to hold it in your head.<br />
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<b style="background-color: #b45f06;">2. Feature Prototype Sketchbook</b><br />
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Every time a random idea pops in your head, do your best to write it down immediately. <br />
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For this purpose you need a sketchbook or a notepad. It will be a place where you can dump every single idea that you get as time goes by and then be able to remember it when you need it.<br />
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Writing down the idea doesn't need to be too detailed. Just write down a couple words, a sentence, doodle, photo, web link or whatever. The point is, when you look at it later, you would remember what it means.<br />
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There is no format or any restrictions to this, just dump the ideas and make sure you can identify them later. By "later" I mean anything from a day up to a year. Make the reminder be clear and direct as possible.<br />
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Being mysterious, incomplete or ambiguous will only result in confusion and misunderstanding. Avoid that at all cost and be straight to the point instead.<br />
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Besides dumping ideas, sketch books are also really great for making short-term todo lists.<br />
These are just simple vertical bullet lists of things that you need to do at that moment. These help you focus on a set of short-term task. Once you're done with a task, you can open your todo list and strike through that task, marking it as done. This is satisfying to do and gives you a sense of progress on the project.<br />
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Heres an image of what I mean by a sketchbook:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLLGQ6Lq7SJSl2d__sIPpdKLSsuCdjXK5R4zkN1yhXWHQLGXlUVXkKxoAyJb_-Sis1qqF7QRsrS2Q69NLhm2favQSK9kJXLN6dOr7JK6S32FMsNCG501A_ULnqKwCJt_1BiyvlRAkuGsU/s1600/Sketchbook+Example.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLLGQ6Lq7SJSl2d__sIPpdKLSsuCdjXK5R4zkN1yhXWHQLGXlUVXkKxoAyJb_-Sis1qqF7QRsrS2Q69NLhm2favQSK9kJXLN6dOr7JK6S32FMsNCG501A_ULnqKwCJt_1BiyvlRAkuGsU/s320/Sketchbook+Example.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">(Courtesy of Google Image Search. This image is just to show you how freeform a sketchbook is.)</span></div><br />
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Remember: Put all your ideas on paper as soon as they come. As time passes and new ideas pop up, you will forget older ideas. You'll be very glad you wrote them all down once you start compiling all the features in next document.<br />
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<b style="background-color: #b45f06;">3. Required Features Document.</b><br />
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This is the next step after the idea document and the sketch book. When you have the rough idea of the entire game written down and sketchbook filled with ideas/features, you will now need to think and list all the possible features you will want to see in your game based on all the ideas so far. For this, you need a new document.<br />
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Simply list all the major and smaller details that come to your mind and write them down in a vertical bullet list as you figure them out. You don't really need to categorize or organize anything at this stage. Just write down everything you want in your game.<br />
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This is more of a central collective of all the features you want to have in your game and it will greatly help you figure out the overall picture of the game and its complexity. It will also help you figure out what programming language, tools, libraries and other systems will work the best for your project.<br />
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This list isn't permanent, just as the initial idea document, because you might (and will) end up making revisions to improve the initial idea over the course of time as you get new thoughts and better ideas. Thats why these first two documents are rough and expendable. <br />
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Always feel free to start new versions of these two documents to improve over the old one, but don't delete the original documents just yet, keep them archived instead. Old ideas might prove useful or provide better solutions in some cases. You could even use some good unused ideas for other projects.<br />
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<b style="background-color: #b45f06;">Set limits for the project.</b><br />
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This is very important. Without limits, you are in serious danger of being stuck in the design phase forever. It is vital to know when to stop perfecting or adding new features to the project.<br />
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The key here is to focus on what it necessary. If you allow yourself to be too relaxed with changing the main idea too freely and often, the project will be stuck in a cycle of infinite evolution. <br />
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In such a situation, you will be unable to start working on the project as the design constantly mutates with each new idea, potentially redefining the original idea entirely every time. With a situation like this, a project cannot be completed. If you try to complete a project by adding things as you go, the result will be an unstable mess. Do not make that mistake.<br />
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Don't get me wrong here, creative thought and improving the idea is always a good thing and it should be encouraged, otherwise we would never evolve or improve. However, you must develop some discipline to restrict yourself on how far you can go with a design.<br />
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In order for this to work, you must have a clear idea of the final product/service you're supposed to create. If you don't, make it so. Visualize a strong picture of what you're supposed to do and stick with it.<br />
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This is the entire purpose of this phase. You make yourself a very clear plan of the project with instructions on how to build it. Then, you make it come to life in the next phase (pipeline phase).<br />
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<b style="background-color: #b45f06;">The Limits.</b><br />
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Firstly, you must realize what limits you have already. Time and resources(money is among them) are the most obvious and imminent limits a human has. By time, I mean how much life you have left and by resources how long can you sustain yourself in the world. These are natural limits.<br />
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Then you take into account what other limits you (or someone) have issued for yourself. A deadline is the most common one and is widely used in the industry. A deadline means that you have a preset amount of time to finish your work or else you fail. The other limit is how much money can you spend on production and research. These are artificial limits.<br />
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Limitations are a bitch, but you must deal with them. Usually, limited time or scarce resources mean that the quality of your product/service will suffer (by being more simple or smaller than what you might have had in mind). You can make up for little time by hiring more workers and you can make up for scarce resources by allowing more time for developing.<br />
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Finally there are also the technological limits. These are things like how much the hardware (computer or console) can handle in terms of complexity or size of the program. Stuff like "what is possible" and "how complex or big can it be" are the main questions you will have to ask and find an answer to.<br />
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While engineers continue to improve hardware, there will always be limitations when designing a game, so do your best to recognize them and work with them without crossing the line of smooth performance, because lag, glitches and crashing are not good to have.<br />
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Hopefully the limitations in the future will be so little that there will be more computing power and memory in devices than you will ever need for a project, but at the time of writing this guide, it is not the case. Deal with it.<br />
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<b style="background-color: #b45f06;">Don't reinvent the wheel.</b><br />
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Learn from other peoples mistakes and don't repeat them yourself.<br />
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Use existing technology to help yourself advance in your own work. There were people before you and chances are that they've already created something that you would find very helpful. It can be a solution to a problem, a better workflow, a useful application or helpful knowledge.<br />
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Learn from the past. Do things better than the last generation did.<br />
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<b style="background-color: #b45f06;">Think about publishing.</b><br />
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What is the purpose of your project? Are you aiming to sell it? Or maybe distribute it freely? This is the time to answer those questions and take appropriate action to prepare for it.<br />
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For this, you will need to learn some marketing and do some research into distribution methods, as well as all the details involved. Ask yourself these things: <br />
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<ul><li>What format will the project be presented in? </li>
<li>What is the target audience of the project? </li>
<li>Who is it intended for? Who might be interested?</li>
<li>How will you recieve the money from your customers?</li>
<li>What kind of presentation will you do and how will you set it up?</li>
<li>Will there be any advertising, promotions or campaigns to market the project?</li>
<li>How will people acquire or access the product/service?</li>
<li>What methods of payment will you support?</li>
<li>Will you use the help of an existing distribution platform or will you create your own?</li>
<li>What kind of licence of use will the product be released with?</li>
<li>Will you release source-code and on what terms? </li>
<li>How will you enforce said terms?</li>
</ul><br />
Reading more about marketing and publishing can help you answer these questions and more if you can not at the moment. Learning those two topics, as well as advertisement, will be of great help to you if you wish to have a financially succesful project.<br />
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Notice how I don't mention about pricing your game. You simply can't do that just yet. You may only do this once you have a working product in your hands. This is because after you have evaluated on how much work, resources and time went into it (and how greedy you are), you will be much more confident to determine the real value of your product/service.<br />
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If you can't estimate the value of your product at that point, simply look at existing products/services, let trusted people test the game and tell you how much could it be worth in their opinion. Think what could be a fair price that a customer could afford to pay for your product/service. Its also a good idea to look at the state of economy in the world.<br />
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If your game is genuinely good, is readily available, it has been advertised/directed to the right audience, the price is not too high so that people can actually afford it and not too low so that you're not getting bankrupt, your project should be a success financially.<br />
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Remember this: Make the price be worth the true value of the game, no more and no less. Customers will be happy and so will you. Don't be a sellout. Be Fair.<b> </b><br />
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<b style="background-color: #b45f06;">Skills involved in creating video games.</b><br />
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As you finally begin to grasp what you project is about and what it requires, you will then have a good understanding what you must acquire, learn and/or research to complete it.<br />
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Making a traditional video game involves lots of different skills:<br />
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<ul><li>Writing/Designing</li>
<li>Graphics</li>
<li>Audio</li>
<li>Code</li>
<li>Marketing/Publishing/Advertising</li>
<li>Project Management</li>
</ul><br />
These are the main skills you will need to create a complete, traditional video game. Video games are very flexible and different skills can differ very radically in their content depending on the project and its requirements. Lets take a closer look at these skills:<br />
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<b> <span style="background-color: #783f04;">Writing/Designing</span></b><br />
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This is the most important, most difficult and most complex of all the skills. Designing and writing comes with big responsibility and pressure as it defines the entire project, regardless the quality of art and sound involved. Without good design, the project is doomed to fail from the start. Even the most impressive visuals and audio can't save a bad design.<br />
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Designing and writing involves lots of study, experience and research to be proficient at it. There is no way around that. Being able to come up with interesting ideas is one thing, but to figure out how to turn that idea into a functional plan is a whole different task. Thats what this is about, figuring out how to make ideas a reality. Its similar to engineering.<br />
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Writing and Designing are both a very mentally challenging tasks. To design something, you will need to focus your mind to get a clear idea of the overall project, then figure out every little detail, content and tasks related to it, that are needed to be done to complete the it. Then you need to organize it all into a plan that you (and your team) can use to build the product/service.<br />
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Among all that, you will also need to research and study various things relevant to your projects requirements. This is done to figure out how to achieve something and overcome any problem. For this purpose, the internet is a priceless source of knowledge and your most valuable tool.<br />
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You will also be in charge of critical design decisions that affect the entire project. In teamwork, there will be plenty of pressure directed at you and your work, because you will greatly influence what others will have to do, depending on your decisions in your design.<br />
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While it will seem like a designer/writer doesn't do much work physically or isn't particularly contributing anything instantly visible, like what a coder or artist does, I assure you, its extremely challenging and a tiring task mentally.<br />
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During the entire project, you will be dealing with extreme amounts of information, infinite choices and hard decisions. Getting a burnout from information overload is very common. Sometimes it feels like your head will explode as you struggle to handle all the data. <br />
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Being a designer/writer in teamwork is much harder, as the added pressure from your partners can be a tough challenge to deal with, especially if you're on a tight deadline to finish a project. Team members can also add an additional level of stress by constantly providing more information for you as new ideas, critism and feedback.<br />
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However, planning ahead is always worth the effort. Start with smaller projects in the beginning and gradually accumulate experience to deal with increasingly larger projects. Dealing with information overload is a skill and it can be trained. Don't give up.<br />
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<b> <span style="background-color: #783f04;">Graphics</span></b><br />
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Graphics represent the visual elements of a game. Basically anything your eyes percieve is graphics. Their task is to give a visual feedback of the current situation for the player, which gives them all the necessary information on their screen to understand what is going on and what are they capable of doing.<br />
Things that graphics represent in video games:<br />
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<ul><li>Fonts, Text</li>
<li>Menu graphics</li>
<li>Object graphics</li>
<li>Animation</li>
<li>Effects</li>
<li>User Interface</li>
<li>Backgrounds </li>
</ul><br />
There are countless ways you can represent anything in a video game. Depending on your project, you have countless options on what kind of art style and techniques you can use for the presentation of your product. <br />
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You don't have to follow the example of other games if you're confident enough that something specific might work perfectly fine for your project. Be creative, experiment and try something crazy, but fitting for what feel you're aiming at in your project.<br />
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Anyone can become an competent artist through enough training, patience and experience. <br />
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If a certain skill doesn't feel right for you, try something different and find alternative methods that work the best for you. Focus learning only the necessary skills you see relevant to the project.<br />
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Learning to create graphics of any kind is not a fast process. Also not every art style might seem like the thing you want to learn and use. Or perhaps you might feel that you just don't have the patience to do it. Just keep trying different skills, until you find something interesting and suitable for the project.<br />
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If all else fails, you can hire an artist with the right skill to do the job. Do note, that you will need to compensate the artist for his time and effort. You will also hold responsibility of directing the artist, so he will know exactly what you want done. More about teamwork further below.<br />
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In any case, don't give up too fast. Creating art can be easy and rewarding once you find your thing and get the hang of it.<br />
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<b> <span style="background-color: #783f04;">Audio</span></b><br />
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Sounds and music. These are often very underrated and initially neglected aspects of video game development, because you only notice them when they are missing.<br />
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Although you can't see sound, it makes a very big impact in a video game. Sound effects add detail and authenticity to the experience. Music provides ambience and immersion.<br />
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Same things I said about graphics apply to audio just as well. Even you could make sound effects by yourself with a bit studying and experience if you choose to, but usually its more common to acquire existing sound effects and music elsewhere than to make your own. This is less common with graphics, but this possibility also exists.<br />
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Remember this though, the more original you are, the more authentic your game will be. It is always a good choice to make original content rather than acquire ready made assets. This applies to both graphics and audio. Always aim to make original content.<br />
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Still, in case you have no time to create graphics and audio of your own, you may always outsource the job for someone else. Or simply acquire existing assets for use in your project. There are plenty of stores, libraries and artists out there that have put up their work for others to purchase and use. Both online and offline.<br />
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<b> <span style="background-color: #783f04;">Code</span></b><br />
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Programming is what makes video games possible in the first place. While that does make this skill particularly very important, without good design, you can't do good code.<br />
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Code is dependent of the design, while design is dependent on limitations. So this means both code and design are heavily dependent of each other.<br />
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Programming is a very tricky science. The whole idea of programming is essentially figuring out a solution for technical/mathematical problems on how to make the computer perform a certain tasks, using the computer's own language. And perform it so that it runs smooth as possible.<br />
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In order to program, you will have to understand the limitations of current technology and the logic behind programming. With that knowledge acquired, you may then begin to think how to make your video game possible from a programmers perspective.<br />
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Based on what features you require, you will then be able to figure out what programming language is most suitable for your purposes and what libraries and other applications might be helpful.<br />
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When you find out what suits your purpose the best, you can then learn how to use that language safely, as you have a clear purpose for its use. In other words, you know you are on the right path and there is no fear of studying something useless.<br />
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Besides languages and libraries, there are also special developer kits that are dedicated for creating video games. These come with lots of useful features and tools that can help you create a video game much easier than doing it the traditional way.<br />
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Usually these kind of developer kits have been designed to create games around a certain system that while might be suitable for certain project, they might inherently have limitations or methods that might not be suitable for your particular project. Study these developer kits beforehand to make sure your project is compatible with them in terms of what you want to achieve and what features you require.<br />
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Check out all the potential options you find and compare them. Once you narrow down your options, you'll be able to choose the best one out of them and happily develop your project, knowing that you've got a solid base to work on.<br />
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If you are completely new to programming, I strongly suggest learning the basics of programming as a whole. Since different projects have different requirements, there is no single programming language that is best for them all.<br />
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Infact, the only thing in learning programming you should really focus on, is mastering the basics. After that, its just a matter of choosing the right tool (=programming language) for the project. Think of programming languages as tools in programming and not as programming itself.<br />
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Most languages share the basics of programming, but just have different ways of implementing certain things, so ultimately its the basics and problem solving skills that really matter in programming.<br />
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And remember: Don't reinvent the wheel unless you have no choice. Find and use existing technologies and solutions before reinventing them yourself.<br />
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<b> <span style="background-color: #783f04;">Marketing/Publishing/Advertising</span></b><br />
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These skills plays a big role in projects that are intended to be published and perhaps even sold commercially. While you might have created the best game in the world, you will still need the power of marketing and publishing skills to make it well known and financially successful. This is vital if you wish to earn money on your product and/or distribute to as many people as possible.<br />
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Advertising is about making people become aware of the existence your product, meanwhile making them interested and convinced, that your project is worth their attention and their money. This requires the knowledge about correct advertising to get it right.<br />
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Publishing is about setting up a plan of distribution. The core idea is that Interested people would be able to find and access the product/service as easily as possible. For commercial projects, it is also important to have an easy and secure way for customers to pay you for your hard work. It is important to make the process of purchasing as easy as possible to the end-user.<br />
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Marketing is about building up an image for your product that you will advertise to people. <br />
This said image will communicate to any human about things like: <br />
<br />
<ul><li>"What is your product/service about?"</li>
<li>"Why would they find it interesting?"</li>
<li>"Is it worth their time and money?"</li>
</ul><br />
When I say image, I don't mean a graphic/picture. Image can also mean an essence of something. Look up "essense" in a dictionary if you don't know the word. Infact, do that for every unknown word you encounter. There is no shame in doing so and it will improve your grammar.<br />
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Building an attractive image for your product/service requires careful planning, knowing your target audience and clear goals that you want to achieve. Your advertisements must be of highest quality possible, well designed and consistent to get serious attention from people. <br />
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Presentation is key and you need to make it count when you begin marketing you project. First impressions are extremely important and they need to be well organized, so that people would get the right idea and a good first impression from the very start, thus making them interested in finding more about the product/service you're working on and possibly even buying it once its released.<br />
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To attract as many people as possible to buy your product/service at the very moment you release it, you must make some noise during development, starting earliest only in the pipeline phase. <br />
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Generate hype. Let people know you exist and you are creating something they might want. People will be aware of your work and will be prepared to recieve when comes out. You will need to be prepared yourself to give them information on when it will be released and where to get it.<br />
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While advertising and marketing takes time and resources, potentially slowing the progress of the actual development, it is absolutely necessary in order to ensure financial success, especially if you are aiming to make large sales at the very release of your project. This is even more important if you have a team that needs to get paid or you have any urgent expenses you need to deal with.<br />
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Marketing and advertisement doesn't stop after the release. You will need to provide continuous advertisement and support for your product/service. You must do this as long as you possibly can, as every new day, a new person is born and thus not everyone might have been aware of your project during its production or release. <br />
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Many people do actually live under a rock, either by choice or fate, so there are millions of people that might be unaware of the things going around them for some time until they resurface. <br />
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For this, you must have a consistent advertisement campaign going on as long as possible to get those new people to notice your project and hopefully buy it. Keep you advertisements accessible and easily understood by newbies, as they are the main audience that will bring you the money. Never assume that people know everything. They really don't.<br />
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<b> <span style="background-color: #783f04;">Project Management</span></b><br />
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To a solo developer, this skill is simply about knowing:<br />
<br />
<ul><li>What phase the project is at right now?</li>
<li>What is the ultimate goal?</li>
<li>What is the next step to achieve that goal?</li>
</ul><br />
For team developers, however, its a bit more complex.<br />
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This is mostly because of more than one developer working on the project, which causes a need for human resources management, communication between team members and leadership. All of this is required to keep the whole project from falling apart, running smooth and on schedule, if there is one.<br />
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Most important aspect in project management is communication. Other aspects include keeping track of the project and monitoring its progress.<br />
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You will need to learn basic communication skills and some simple psychology to be able to deal with people efficiently. It is also necessary to have any chance at good leardership. When you understand people and what makes them tick, communicating and leading becomes easy.<br />
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Gaining experience simply by talking with different people is also beneficial. Analyze each conversation during and after. See what you can learn from each encounter with a person. Pay attention to what body language they use, how they talk and behave themselves. <br />
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All this will help you greatly in understanding the people you work with and allow you to... *cough* manipulate them easier. Please, do not abuse this power and do your best to respect your fellow human. Treat others as you would want them to treat you.<br />
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It is also vital for all team members to be on the same frequency. This means that everyone in the team has a clear, unified idea of what the final product/service is supposed to be and everyone knows exactly what must be done to get there. Having everyone be aware of a deadline or any other important information regarding the project is also crucial for succesful teamwork.<br />
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If this is not the case with some or all team members, you must take action to fix this problem. Ask them questions and find out what they think and what they know. And when you get an answer, verify it. Be 100% sure that you understand what they said and be 100% sure that they understand what you say. <br />
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You cannot afford to have miscommunication. Its safer to ask something multiple times than to assume that your partner already knows about it. Often the case is, he doesn't. Don't fall for this pitfall and always verify during communications.<br />
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Project management also involves figuring out what are the current tasks that need to be done and who is supposed to work on them. You will need to gather all the information you can on the project and its progress, then use it to assign work for your team members.<br />
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As a project manager, you will continuously need to monitor the situation to make sure that things are running smooth, especially during the moments where things seem to become stale and you have a deadline to meet. <br />
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Even in the event of tight moments, be sure to explain the situation to your team members and take the time to listen to their point of view before going on a rampage. No one likes it when they are being yelled at without a good reason. <br />
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Encourage team members to voice their concerns and try to make communications as transparent as possible. Secrecy and dictartorship is not healthy not have in a project as it usually slows down progress and causes severe internal issues within the team. Be open instead.<br />
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<br />
This pretty much wraps up all the skill related things I wanted to talk about. <br />
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As you can see, there are many things involved in making video games than what meets the eye. While even this is just a quick overview, it should give you a good idea which steps you will need to take to become a succesful video game developer.<br />
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<b style="background-color: #b45f06;">How to learn the needed skills.</b><br />
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What so great about living in this age is the internet. Anyone can become skilled at any of the above mentioned skills and more, provided you have enough time, will and patience to sit down, find the information and then study it. Thats it in a nutshell.<br />
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You don't even need to become a master at any of those skill mentioned above, infact, it is often enough to know the basics to get the job done, unless you want to specialize in something particular to create something more advanced.<br />
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All you need is an internet connection, plenty of time and a search engine like Google.<br />
<br />
<ol><li>Search for what you want to learn.</li>
<li>Once you found something, study it.</li>
<li>???</li>
<li>You can now fly helicopters and do kung fu.</li>
</ol><br />
Props to anyone who got that reference. Seriously though, you can find all kind of tutorials, guides and information on the internet that will help you learn whatever you want. The knowledge of the entire world is in the palm of your hand.<br />
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If you don't know how to properly search stuff on the internet, you can learn that too. Just write in google "how to search the internet" or something similar and you should be able to find a guide that tells you how to find information more efficiently. Experiment and remember to use simplified queries in search engines since they're machines, not humans.<br />
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Oh, and take care not to get stuck forever browsing all that infinite information by the way. <br />
Like I said before: Focus on what is necessary.<br />
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Word of warning though, while there is plenty of good stuff out there on the internet, you must be careful not to trust everything you see there. It is a free place where any human can put up any kind of information, so not everything is guaranteed to be reliable or good. Filter out what seems like trash or false information, ignoring them completely and focus only on stuff that is relevant to you.<br />
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<b style="background-color: #b45f06;">Alone vs Team.</b><br />
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It is fully possible for any human to create a video game from scratch, alone. The main differences between working alone or as a team is: <br />
<br />
<ul><li>Communication</li>
<li>Amount of workforce </li>
</ul><br />
When alone, there is no need for communication. You are the master of your project and you don't need to share information with anyone, which simplifies things and removes an entire layer of difficulty that is present in team development.<br />
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Teams require much effort in communication between team members. Teams also require organization and guidance (leading, aka project management). Teams also have more pressure and interaction to deal with, unlike the developer who works alone and does everything himself.<br />
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Its obvious that while working as a team, you have more people to do labor and thus, making a project can be inherently faster. However, you get a whole new assortment of things to deal with (which I just mentioned), and if badly managed, the project can end up as a mess and progress even slower than if someone determined was doing it alone.<br />
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In team development, there are two types of team members.<br />
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The first type are subcontracted people that are hired to do only a specific job and then leave with an agreed compensation for their work once its done. If you're a project manager, you already must have a clear idea what you want a subcontractor to do. You will instruct and guide the person on how you want the job to be done. You will also need to inform about any possible deadlines you have in mind. <br />
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Once everything is settled and both of you have made a contract, the subcontractor will then begin his/her work once they have enough information to complete their task, and will expect a fee or any other reward to compensate for their time and effort.<br />
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These services are temporary and such people are generally not part of a permanent, full-working team. Or even if they are, they are doing it for the compensation (money) rather than the project. <br />
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As such, while they can give you suggestions and ideas, the project is still completely yours. What this means is that you will always have the final word on the project and its direction. They depend on you and your decisions, because you're the one paying.<br />
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The second type of team members are very different however. These people are usually friends or other associates that are a more solid part of your team and care for the project.<br />
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Such partners are often more concerned about how the project evolves and what direction it will take. Since they are primarily in it for the project and not compensation (even if its a commercial project you and your team are working on), they are more likely to voice their opinions and give suggestions. <br />
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And unlike a subcontractor, you depend on your partner as much as they depend on you, regardless the project is a commercial or a non-profit one. This is because they are voluntarily with you for whatever reason, and this means you cannot force them to do things they do not agree with.<br />
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Working with such partners means that everyone on the team has the power to shape the project and affect its fate very dramatically.<br />
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To prevent the project from collapsing on itself or being sucked into the void of infinite design cycle, its absolutely required to have a solid way of deciding decisions and drive the project constantly forward.<br />
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There is only one good solution: Project Manager, Lead Designer or Leader.<br />
A single person must take a responsibility of monitoring the project and moving it forward.<br />
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This person does not make final design decisions (although if you and your team feel the leader is competent enough to do this, then go ahead. It would make things more simple anyway), instead he supervises the project and brings the team together to drive the project forward.<br />
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By supervising, I mean monitoring all the team members and hearing them out so you can collect all the information they give you into one place, then letting everyone know about it so that everyone knows what everyone is thinking and what suggestions, feedback or ideas they might have. This brings everyone together and strenghtens their understanding of whats going on what needs to be done. It helps everyone be on the same frequency and work more efficiently.<br />
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By driving the project forward, I mean notifying the team where the project is at, who needs to do what and by when it must be finished. With this, everyone on the team should know where at is the project in its current state, which helps to understand how it is progressing and this helps with motivations, because progress is more visible.<br />
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When every individual team member knows exactly what he/she needs to do, how to do it and by when it must be finished, it makes it easy to do their work with maximum efficiency, because there are no obstructions or missing information. As a supervisor, you need to make sure these specification meet their target.<br />
<br />
<ul><li>If a member doesn't know what to do, find out and tell him.</li>
<li>If a member doesn't know how to do it, find out and teach him.</li>
<li>If a member doesn't know when it must be done, tell him immediatly.</li>
</ul><br />
Always check up on your team members to make sure all the above things are in good shape.<br />
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As for dealing with the risk of infinite design cycle in a team, the key here is to gather all the ideas from every member. Then get everyones agreement before pre-production, after which once the design is set, no new ideas are to be accepted until the next project.<br />
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Its harsh, but it is necessary in order to be able to develop a project of highest quality as possible, because attempting to add new features and making design changes past the design phase can seriously mess things up, resulting in instability and bad organization in the project.<br />
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The only way to mitigate this harsh requirement, is by having the design phase last a good while before hitting a lock to prevent further changes. So allocate lots time for design.<br />
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<b style="background-color: #b45f06;">Remote Teamwork.</b><br />
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It is also entirely possible to work on projects remotely as a team over the internet. By remote, I mean the team members of a project might live far from each other, often in different countries and seldom see each other in real-life, if ever. <br />
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Thanks to the internet you can find a partner to work with that lives on the other side of planet. This type of working involves lots of risks and it requires special care.<br />
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As with normal teamwork, communication is extremely important. It has to be open and loud as possible. Even more so with remote teamwork, because you don't see your partner face to face, so you must take extra care to verify that you both understood each other and have the same view of the project or a certain task.<br />
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Everything I said in the "Alone vs. Team" part applies just the same for this situation.<br />
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Remote teamwork involves some complications and risks that can become obstacles for the project if not dealt with properly beforehand. Many of these complications will also determine what kind of system of communication is the best for your team and what sort of agreements you must make before starting to work on the project.<br />
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<b><span style="background-color: #b45f06;">Timezone Difference.</span> </b><br />
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Timezone difference is a common problem for teams that consist of individuals living far from each other. This has a big impact on how often, if at all, you have the ability to engage in live interactions with your partner.<br />
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If it is simply not viable for you and your partner to talk to each other live, you will be forced to work slower, because you will need to rely on traditional communication (email) to exchange information and files. <br />
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You will also need to focus on the quality of your emails. Aim to send as much information as possible at once, because you may only get a reply tomorrow due to timezones. Don't be shy about sending small emails though, do it even if it is a simple question or notification. Every bit of communication is important.<br />
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As always, to do good work, you must be sure of what you're doing. If communication is slow, you wont be able to get instant response, thus the overall speed of progress on the project will suffer. For this reason, live/instant communication is very desirable as it will make it easier for you and your partner to talk back and forth.<br />
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<br />
<b><span style="background-color: #b45f06;">Contracts.</span> </b><br />
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Contracts and other such agreements are a must if your project is commercial and you do not want any of your partners to leak the project, claim it their own or harm it in any other way. <br />
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By making legal contracts with team members, you insure that everything stays fair and no one can do anything bad to the project and get away with it. Its obligatory protection for you, the team and the project. Don't work on a commercial project without it.<br />
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This is even more important if your partners live far from you and you've never even seen them face to face. Always do your best to minimize the risks, so bad things will have no reason to occur.<br />
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"Anything that can go wrong will go wrong". Keep Murphy's law in mind and prevent things from being able to go wrong in the first place. Or if anything, minimize the risks at least.<br />
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You may find out more about popular contracts used by teams around the internet, such as the <b>NDA</b> (Non-Disclosure Agreement), or make one yourself if need be. All that a contract is, in the end, a simple piece of paper, a physical proof of what terms were agreed upon.<br />
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This proof can then be used to figure out who is wrong and who is right, so that your local court/police/whatever can make the right judgement in the event when things go bad.<br />
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I recommend looking at existing contract templates found on the internet, as they were made on hard experience and they should cover everything you will ever need.<br />
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<b style="background-color: #b45f06;">Project-file Management. </b><br />
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Good project-file management is also crucial for effective teamwork. By this, I mean that you need a system that every team member can access, view and share their contribution as easy and fast as possible.<br />
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I highly recommend having a single person be a dedicated project manager, that will compile the final product by gathering and using all the contributed work done by the team members.<br />
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There are many solutions for this on the internet. You can compare them and see what suits best for you and your team. Just keep in mind that it needs to be secure, fast and easy to use for the entire team.<br />
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<br />
<b><span style="background-color: #b45f06;">Allocate plenty of time for the design phase.</span> </b><br />
<br />
I can't stress this enough. Designing a project before doing it is crucial. If you don't plan ahead or give too little time for designing, then you're essentially shooting yourself in the foot.<br />
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Without enough time to design the project or saying "I'll deal with this problem later" is going to come back to bite your ass no matter how you try. <br />
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Don't rush it, good design grows over time. As you go about your daily life and wake up every next morning, your mind will be filled new ideas and fresh thoughts on a daily basis. Not to mention any other inspirations you might catch by watching a video, listening to a song or playing another video game.<br />
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The more time to think, research and plan ahead, the better your design will be. A good design will save you time and money during production. You will be prepared to avoid most problems before you even encounter them and this will allow you to make more efficient work and better choices, which in turn, mean better stability and faster production. <br />
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You will also have a better understanding of when your project will be completed, so that you would be able to set a release date or atleast know if you are able to meet your deadline, if you have such.<br />
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Thats all for the design phase. <br />
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Hopefully, you'll now have a better idea how designing a video game is done professionally. This is a lot of information to grasp, but its all equally important and I hope really you don't skip any part of it unless you're already aware of it.<br />
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Next up, I'll be explaining the Pre-production phase, during which the design will be cleaned up and organized.<br />
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Stay tuned and if you have any questions, just leave them in the comments and I'll reply as soon as I can.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2326328955647176216.post-22370943879069001782011-07-19T03:46:00.000-07:002011-08-18T23:05:49.140-07:00MGDA: Part 1, Idea Phase<span style="font-size: x-small;">(MGDA means "Making a Game: the Direct Approach" and it is a series of blog posts meant to educate people to learn how to make a video game professionally.)</span><br />
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<br />
<b>What is a video game?</b><br />
<br />
Before I begin to teach you how to make a video game, lets see what a video game really is, what it can do and what uses does it have.<br />
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A <b>video game</b> is an interactive program that puts player in a <b>world</b> with a set of <b>rules</b> he/she has to follow to achieve a <b>goal</b>. Thats the premise.<br />
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The <b>world</b> can be anything from a realistic representation of real life to something completely abstract like an alternative dimension, for example.<br />
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The <b>rules</b> are anything you want them to be. Most commonly you are given control of something to interact with the previously mentioned "world" and that, in itself, creates the rules. When I say "rules", think of the word as "rules of nature". Like as in, "stuff that just exists" and "it just happens/works that way". Gravity is a good example of this. Its a rule and it happens.<br />
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The <b>goal</b> is essentially the point of the game. You are put in a "world" with its own "rules" and your task is to reach a "goal" within the said "world" by its "rules". This is what challenge is all about. And thats what games are all about ultimately,<b> a challenge.</b> Either or both physical or mental.<br />
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Often there are multiple goals in a game, some small, some larger, some finite and some infinite. It all depends how complex and what type of a game is in question. A goal can be anything from doing something small like moving over from point A to point B, to defeating the final challenge of the game. A goal's purpose in a game is to bring a sense of progression to a game. A reason to play the game. Without a reason, the game is dead and pointless. This applies to sandbox/freedom/free-roam based games as well.<br />
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A video game can have many purposes, but essentially its main concept lies within the idea of the player facing an interactive challenge that he/she attempts to overcome in order for him/her to do progress, and in turn, gain something from the experience. <br />
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This "something" can be satisfaction, entertainment, inspiration, skill improvement, gaining friends, learning new things, personal growth and/or recieve a message from the author to make you think or be aware of something.<br />
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Games have a lot of potential as a medium. They have many uses and many qualities that no other form of media has, with the main one being <b>interactivity</b>, requiring the user to participate and this makes games feel more of a personal experience than any other media.<br />
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You, as a developer can use video games to a great extent for various purposes. This doesn't mean it has to, but I just want to point out that video games can be used to do big things.<br />
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<br />
<br />
<b>Purpose of video games:</b><br />
<br />
Now lets look at what kind of video games you can create and for what purpose. The purpose can be one or many. Some notable purposes of a video game are the following:<br />
<br />
<ul><li>Entertainment</li>
<li>Education</li>
<li>Simulation</li>
<li>Expression of Art</li>
<li>Message</li>
</ul><br />
Entertainment means fun, thrills, excitement, inspiration and satisfaction, i.e. the stuff that makes you feel good, happy and alive. Stuff that relaxes or gives you a rush of adrenalin.<br />
<br />
Education aims to teach something from the experience. That something is virtually any subject you can think of that is possible to teach. Almost anything can be taught through a video game.<br />
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Simulation is suited for a more serious purpose, like testing out something virtually before (if ever) doing it in real life. Simulation can be entertaining, useful or just simply add more believabilty to the game through detail, which is always a good thing.<br />
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The video game may also be an expression of art or a message, through which the developer is trying to communicate with the audience and bring out thoughts and/or discussion on some matter or idea. Or simply just impress or inspire the player in some way.<br />
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<br />
<b>Genres:</b><br />
<br />
You might have heard of the word "genre" mentioned often by the media. This is just a word used to help categorize games so that people would have a better idea what to expect from it. They help the average human to figure out the type of a game is in question. <br />
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Beyond that, there is no such thing as genres. Every game is a unique project on their own and categorizing them is done only for the purpose of being able to describe a game to the public more efficiently, thus helping the consumer to be aware what its like and what to compare it to, roughly speaking.<br />
<br />
This is just a marketing thing, really. You and I can just as well create as many new genres as we want, both for anything already out there and whatever new we create ourselves, it wont really make a difference. Its just a more accesible and quick way of explaining products/services.<br />
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<br />
<b>Starting a project:</b><br />
<br />
Every serious project begins with a purpose, a goal it aims to achieve. I've already covered the purposes of video games, but I must say that without a purpose there is no reason to create a video game. You really need to have one or you might be wasting your time.<br />
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This is where you and your ideas come in. You might have played various games and were inspired by them to create something better and/or different. Perhaps you want to capture the atmosphere of a movie, video, image, text or audio and make it an interactive experience that you can play and immerse in, as if you exist and live there. Maybe you have some knowledge, story or idea you want share with the world and make others learn from it/experience it as a game.<br />
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Sincere ideas like those roughly described above are driven by a purpose and this is vital if you aim to make a good product and be able to develop it efficiently. This is because you will have a clear idea of what you're supposed to do and achieve with it.<br />
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I want you to realize that I'm not teaching you on how to become rich or milk your customers with a quick, cheap and easy product. I'm teaching you how to make a meaningful product/service that could be considered actually something very good and worth its time and price. <br />
<br />
While money isn't the main focus here, I will however, teach you important things about marketing and PR to make your product be succesful so you could get compensated for your effort monetarily so that you can sustain yourself and be able to fuel your future projects.<br />
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<br />
<b>Where to get ideas:</b><br />
<br />
Incase you don't have one, ideas can come from virtually anywhere. See what are you are interested in personally and think what you could come up out of it to create a game. Sources of ideas are everywhere: daily life, nature, movies, music, art, games, news and anything else you found personally interesting, important or impressive.<br />
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So if you have no clue on what kind of project to start, simply get inpired by anything through any means I just mentioned above. If the idea doesn't hit you right away, don't push it or force it. Just keep exploring, listening and looking everything around you. Sooner or later something will get you interested to come up with a genuine idea.<br />
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<b>Is the idea worth developing:</b><br />
<br />
Once you get an idea, examine it thoroughly and be convinced its going to be worth the effort. Making a good game isn't a fast process, so you will want to be sure the project has a worthy purpose for you to invest your time into it.<br />
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Check if its not already made, so you dont end up making a duplicate. Check if its even possible to make in the first place, as hardware and software do have limitations that you must abide to make your game work at all. Check if you have the resources to actually finish the project, since there is no point in making something you don't have the time or manpower to accomplish.<br />
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Don't worry about insufficient skill though, that is something you will learn on the way when it becomes necessary. You will also learn things more efficiently when you have an actual use for it. For all skills and checks you require, all you need is access to the internet to use a search engine to find any knowledge you could possibly wish for.<br />
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In the next part I will talk about refining ideas into concepts and how to create a proper design as well as how to plan out your project. Its the most important and largest phase for any project, so I expect to write a pretty massive post about it. Stay tuned.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2326328955647176216.post-7284393169647712862011-07-14T19:26:00.000-07:002011-08-14T22:17:38.949-07:00MGDA: Part 0, Foreword<span style="font-size: xx-small;">(MGDA means "Making a Game: the Direct Approach" and it is a series of blog posts meant to educate people to learn how to make a video game professionally.)</span> <br />
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I want to start off this series with a blog post that explains a couple things. <br />
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So far, I've gotten a basic layout figured out and roughly organized, so typing this out should come out rapidly.<br />
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Firstly, I needed a way to identify which blog posts are related to this series, so I made a short acronym for this series. Its <b>MGDA</b> and it stands for <b>M</b>aking a <b>G</b>ame, the <b>D</b>irect <b>A</b>pproach. After the acronym will be an indication which part is in question, starting with this being part 0. This is all just to make it stand out better in the archives for future readers.<br />
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Incase you're new here, I'm making a <b>series of blog posts</b>, that explain <b>how you can make a video game from start to finish</b>, using crystal clear steps and all the needed details to make you understand what it takes to make a game and be succesful while doing so. This is aimed for both <b>beginners</b> and <b>experienced game developers</b> out there. <br />
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It is also aimed for both solo developers and teams of developers, since I will cover both of these cases, also explaining the social side of developing a game in a team or how to do it all alone.<br />
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<b>Here are the parts planned for this series.</b><br />
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<ul><li>Part 1, Start Phase (aka Idea Phase)</li>
<li>Part 2, Design Phase</li>
<li>Part 3, Pre-production Phase</li>
<li>Part 4, Pipeline Phase</li>
<li>Part 5, Testing Phase</li>
<li>Part 6, Publishing Phase</li>
<li>Part 7, Support Phase </li>
</ul><br />
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<u>Do note</u>, this series is aimed for making a game with a <b>serious intent</b> and <b>commitment</b>. Its does not focus on "prototyping" or "making a game on the run" style of game development. It focuses on a <b>strong design</b> and <b>good organization</b>, which is how the professionals do it in the video games industry. <br />
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This method ensures that the game you create will be of <b>high quality</b> (granted that you design and organize it properly), which is always a good thing. This does come at the cost of being only flexible for major changes only up until the pre-production phase, after which radically changing the design can screw things up. Due to this, the design phase may be a lenghty one depending on how much research, refinement and complexity your game requires.<br />
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<b><u>Dont neglect making a good plan</u></b>, proper design will pay off greatly as you actually start building the game. This is especially important and useful for large and serious game projects. Small projects can benefit from good planning as well, so I highly recommend it.<br />
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I'd also like to mention, that while my blog and this series does focus on video games, this type of plan-of-action is pretty much suitable for creating any type of project. This series does focus specifically on video games though, so don't worry about it, but keep it mind for any other projects you might start.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2326328955647176216.post-71710401839206110892011-07-10T13:12:00.000-07:002011-08-17T02:49:48.624-07:00News: New series and future posts.Now that I'm done with the "what makes a good game" series, I'd like to announce a <b>new series of blog posts.</b><br />
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This new series will be called <b>"How to make a game, the direct approach"</b>. <br />
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This will be a series of blog posts that explain the entire process of creating a video game from start to finish, either alone or in a team, with clear, detailed steps how to make it happen. <br />
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I will break down each major aspect and step into its own post, starting from the very beginning of having an idea or concept, to pre-production and pipeline, and finally all the way to the end, where publishing and releasing takes place.<br />
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The goal of this series will be to teach any person, regardless of skill and experience, to understand <b>how to make a complete game in a professional way</b>, what kind of workflow is involved, what is required and how to achieve it.<br />
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On top of all that, there will also be plenty of other indepth information and tips related to all the phases and aspects that are found in game development. Both technical and social.<br />
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In theory, by reading through this series, you should get a clear idea what it takes and what actions does a person have to do to create a game, either as a team or alone.<br />
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Aside from that, I'd like to<b> list some of the possible topics</b> I'd like to talk about <b>after</b> this series is over. Heres what I have so far:<br />
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<ul><li>What is Casual or Hardcore.</li>
<li>How complex can a game be?</li>
<li>How much to charge for a game?</li>
<li>What exactly is fun?</li>
<li>Movies, Games and Movie Games.</li>
<li>Managing a project.</li>
<li>Emergent Gameplay.</li>
<li>Don't force the player.</li>
<li>Numbers and meta-thinking.</li>
<li>Balancing competetive elements.</li>
<li>Games and storytelling.</li>
<li>Cheats in games.</li>
<li>How to deal with hackers and griefers.</li>
<li>Economy in Games.</li>
<li>Beginning of a game.</li>
</ul><br />
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<b>Feel free to request or suggest a topic</b> you want me to cover about game development or gameplay. You can put the request in the comments, I check the blog almost daily for any activity.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2326328955647176216.post-6093166924907386612011-07-08T18:13:00.000-07:002011-07-09T14:10:29.519-07:00Longevity and the infinite game.Making a game last long is a challenge. How to achieve replayability? How to extend the game? How to make people coming back to it for more? How to do all this, but still keep the game fun and worth playing?<br />
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Well, how about making the game <b>last forever</b> and have <b>endless fun gameplay</b>? It is possible, althought it does require good specific design and certain features to make it work. I'm going to tell you how to do it and what is needed to make it happen.<br />
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<b>What is an infinite game?</b><br />
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It is a game with enough complexity, fun gameplay and that its content is constantly growing, either by the developer, the community, or both. These games are often more than just games, they're best described as <b>alternative realities</b> or <b>virtual worlds</b>.<br />
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An infinite game is what I consider the ultimate game. These games are not small and they are not simple or focus just on a few mechanics/gimmicks either, and they do not always have a clearly defined end, so not all types of games might have the potential to become something as grand as an infinite game. Most commonly, infinite games are simulations of an alternative reality, a consistent world, which possibly shares loose or strong similarities with the real life in terms of that they have environments, elements, characters and objects rather than something completely abstract.<br />
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They usually allow for the player to create and control a custom character, an avatar, that will exist in a world of some sort and the player could interact with it freely like you would in real life. You would use objects, explore, fight, create, do stuff or just live in it. This is just a rough example of what kind of aspects you would expect to see in an infinite game.<br />
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In short, infinite games are like a portal to another world where people can go inside and live in it, be whatever they want and do anything.<br />
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To create a game of this caliber, it will need some advanced features besides the basic game to make it live forever. In addition to that, certain third party social applications and sharing extensions may also be used, depending on the game and its system.<br />
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For those games that do not aim for this goal and have more limited design, will not have the same potential as infinite games, but nonetheless, they can last very long by using the features below and some other methods to keep it alive for more than one playthrough.<br />
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<b>Features and extension for infinite games.</b><br />
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<b><span style="background-color: #b45f06;">Infinite Goal.</span></b> A game cannot be infinite if it has a finite goal, as the case is with most story driven games that follow a preset plot and a set of events that ultimately lead to an ending, where the game terminates, leaving the player with no further point to play it as you've already exhausted everything there was to explore in the game. Even if you add multiple choices that effect the outcome, it will still eventually end as it would without them. This is not the case with games that have an infinite goal. You make the story and you decide when it ends on your part.<br />
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An infinite goal is an <b>on-going reason for a player to play the game.</b> There might be some backstory to the world you play in, but generally speaking, you have sort of come to live in an alternate dimension that you can explore, interact with and leave your mark on it. There may be a beginning, but there is no clearly defined end or ultimate goal that you work towards and that when finally achieve it, it would mean that you are done with the game and its over. Instead, you come to live in the world and what ever you do in that world will be your story and when and how it ends is up to you. Pretty much like real-life works.<br />
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The goal never ends and as you play, there should be a way to notice that your actions do have an impact on the world you're playing in. As an example, you might be fighting an evil empire across the galaxy on various planets. As you defeat the enemies and drive them off planets, the planet becomes a safe place to explore and live on, thus leaving a mark of your victory in the galaxy. And the amount of planets you can fight to liberate is pretty much endless and thus, the game has an infinite goal. <br />
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That's just a quick example, but I hope you get the point what I mean by a meaningful infinite goal that is essential for an infinite game. Just remember to ensure that the on-going goal is meaningful to the player and that the players can leave his mark by playing the game and achieving things within it.<br />
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<b><span style="background-color: #b45f06;">Multiplayer.</span></b> Humans are unpredictable, social, live beings. Put two or more humans to do something together and soon you'll have drama and hilarity fueled by the activity they're doing. Doing something with a stranger or a close friend makes things much more exciting because there is live interaction going on between you, the game and the other person(s). This makes things interesting and possibly even fun, depending on the company you play with.<br />
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There are two main types of multiplayer; <b>competetive</b> and <b>co-operative</b>. The main difference between them, is that in competetive games there must be a loser and a winner, whereas in a co-operative game, everyone is a winner or not a winner, but no-one is ever a loser in a co-operative game. <br />
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On bit semi-related note, I recommend checking <a href="http://www.shareintl.org/archives/cooperation/co_nocontest.htm">this little article</a> out to get some food for thought on this subject of competetive and co-operative models on thinking. I wont go into specifics of that since it warrants a whole post of its own, but you can read that article I provided the link to for now.<br />
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<a href="http://www.shareintl.org/archives/cooperation/co_nocontest.htm">http://www.shareintl.org/archives/cooperation/co_nocontest.htm</a><br />
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Point is, no matter what type of multiplayer, it will instantly boost the unpredicability of your game, making each play session feel fresh, granted the game isn't too strict and allows for emergent gameplay where the human factor has an edge over the machine and artificial intelligence to make fun things happen that would be otherwise impossible or predictable.<br />
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However,<b> with multiplayer comes great responsibility.</b> This is especially the case with competetive games and as such, they are more tricky to design. The main goal for any mutliplayer game is that everyone is equal and every player feels that the game is fair.<br />
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Competetive games have a problem of being self-destructive due to their nature. Losing isn't fun, so some people might even go as far as do anything in their power to gain the edge over their competition, often harming the game itself and its other players. <br />
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By this I mean hackers, cheaters, griefing and exploits. So if you want to make a competetive multiplayer game, you must be prepared to ensure you can prevent such things from ever happening, so that the game would remain fair at all times and would never fall prey to hackers or other exploits that could potentially destroy the game and ruin the fun for others.<br />
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Modding possibilities in a competetive game can also be a two-sided thing. On the cool side, it allows for the community to expand the game to be different thought small mods or larger total convertions. On the other side, if the game is solely designed for multiplayer only, mods can potentially spread the community very thin as there will be more types of games than there are servers to play on, thus making the whole online experience very spreaded, as in, the community will become very divided and distant from each other. This can potentially damage the game and its community. Althought this does not apply to every game design that focuses on competetive multiplayer, I'm just saying this so that you would be aware that this kind of thing can happen.<br />
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Co-operative games, on the other hand, require a <b>worthy common goal</b> that players can agree upon and work towards it to achieve victory. Without a goal or reason worth pursuing, it will be difficult to persuade players to work towards it together, so having a good reward that every participant can enjoy is very important in such games.<br />
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There are also less common types of multiplayer that are the combination of competetive and co-operative multiplayer with many variations as well as expressive multiplayer games.<br />
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The <b>comp-coop combo</b> design in a game will force you to think about both aspects of competetive and co-operative gameplay, so you'll be dealing with both issues related to them, as explained above.<br />
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As for <b>expressive multiplayer</b>, these are games without a distinct goal, but more of a sandbox-like social spaces where players can do creative things, talk with each other and just hang around. Kind of like an internet forum, but as a game. As such, the same issues an internet forum has would apply to the game and you would need the appropriate measures to deal with them. Measures like moderation and constant attention to keep the game and its community running smooth and also enforce any rules to prevent anything harmful or offensive from appearing.<br />
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<b><span style="background-color: #b45f06;">Procedural generation.</span></b> It is possible to program a computer to create content automatically and along with that, it can also randomize this content in various aspects. This means your game can have a feature that will add a factor of randomness, which in turn, can make each time you play it, feel different, fresh and unpredictable.<br />
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This is called procedural generation and it has many uses, but you need to be aware where to use it and how. This is because there are certain things that you would definetely not want to randomize in a game as it would ruin consistency which is very important to maintain at all times.<br />
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I've been talking a lot about how unpredictability and freshness is a key part in infinite games, but this doesn't mean that absolutely every aspect in a game should be random. The goal of using this feature is to add element of randomness that would simulate nature's chaotic behaviour in everything organic/natural that exists in the world, figuratively speaking.<br />
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This chaos adds excitement through uncertainty, forcing a player to adapt and think differently to figure out how to deal with the challenge each time. The more complexity and variables there are in the game, the more interesting it becomes and in turn, the more long lasting it can be. With good mechanics, fun gameplay and sufficient complexity this can last virtually forever.<br />
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The most suitable use for procedural generation is for creating environments, levels, maps, starting conditions, generating variation of attributes between instances of characters/creatures/organic items/other natural elements. It is also very suitable for artificial intelligence to simulate unpredictable behaviour of NPCs to some degree. Some information and data can also be generated procedurally, such as names and other similar bits of text and numbers.<br />
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Some examples where using procedural generation is not a good idea, are randomizing non-organic objects and artificial systems. An example of this are man-made items, structures and other systems.<br />
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Because if something was man-made, an artificially created thing, it always has a purpose, a design or some idea behind it, so randomizing such things would be against logic. This is especially important for games that aim for realism.<br />
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<b><span style="background-color: #b45f06;">Ability to express creativity or skill.</span></b> By having a feature in a game that can potentially allow a player to create or perform something impressive that leaves a mark, is a great thing to have. This feature can be made even better by having the ability to save it, so you could later share it with other people and recieve feedback on it, thus gain experience and learn something new.<br />
This "something" that you can perform or create, can be pretty much anything. <br />
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Some quick examples of this can be a game where you can build structures and systems freely, a game where you can create art on a canvas, where the canvas might be a anything from a piece of digital paper to a virtual world or some sort of environment, while your artistic tools can be anything from a simple brush or a manipulator of some sort that you may use to interact with the elements and objects you can find around you in the environment you're in. Or perhaps you have a game where you can demonstrate impressive skill by doing something very complex either mentally or physically, like solving a problem in a very creative way or performing a certain task with incredible finesse and efficiency.<br />
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It is very important to allow the player to save the moment or somehow leave a permanent mark that can be shared with others. This can be either a recording of audio, video or both, a screenshot or anything else you can think of that can save the moment as proof, so that it can be shared with any other person through whatever means you find most suitable for your game. This way, whatever a player creates will have a meaning, something to talk about with others outside or inside the game. This is a very good thing.<br />
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Being able to <b>give and recieve feedback</b> is also crucial. There is no point in sharing if there is no interaction or feedback of any sort. Feedback allows people to communicate with each other, either for better or worse, and in turn, these interactions can teach something new to both the author or the viewer and help them both grow mentally thought social interaction.<br />
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<b><span style="background-color: #b45f06;">Social interaction.</span></b> I already got ahead of myself and talked about social interaction about doing and saving creative art or impressive display of skill as well as giving and recieving feedback using comments in the above topic, but I want to reinforce the fact that social interaction either inside or outside of the game, is very important for any infinite game to have.<br />
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Communication with other people is essential for survival for any human living in civilization. Through communication, a humans can exchange ideas with each others and learn something in the process. It can also be useful, fun and rewarding depending on the situation.<br />
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<b>Sharing</b> is a really fun activity and it can be a big part of a game. You might have created something within or outside the game, be it art, a moment, information or anything else worth sharing, it would be awesome to show it off to the world and see how it reacts to it. <br />
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This can be either integrated within the game as a feature, or have a third party application, like an internet forum, a gallery or a file database complete with the ability to comment so that feedback can take place. In turn, you could entertain yourself by browsing what other people have created and discuss it and maybe get insipiration or ideas from others and so on.<br />
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Social interaction is also very useful in multiplayer games obviously. During actual gameplay, players might give information to team members, taunt the opponent, talk random stuff, ask questions, give answers, make friends ect. <br />
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For this, it is important to have a <b>good system to handle chat</b>. The most basic form of chat is text based. You can send a limited message to either everyone, someone in person or to your team, depending on the game and its system. It is important to have a good system to enter and recieve text so that its equal to the basic features you can do in MS notepad, such as copying and pasting text, at least.<br />
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The other form of chat is audio based and there are two types of this that are <b>voice-chat</b> (requires a microphone) and <b>text-to-speech</b> system. For audio-based chat systems its important to have full control over when it is used and when it should stay off, because most of the time, chat is something you use only when needed and sometimes, you might want mute everything or someone in particular for whatever reason, so its important to have the option to do that.<br />
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<b><span style="background-color: #b45f06;">Modding.</span></b> For game to be truly infinite, it needs to grow constantly. By growing, I mean adding something new to the game every now and then. The more regularly it grows, the better. A "new thing" can be anything from a new feature to new content or anything else that adds a new thing for players to explore and have fun with in the game.<br />
There are two options. The first one is that the developers commit themselves to updating the game and creating new stuff to the game as regularly as possible. The second option is that you set up the game to be modifiable and let the community expand the game on its own. This is called modding.<br />
This is not a simple matter and it is not suitable/possible in every game. If you choose to make you game modifiable, it can potentially allow the game to live forever and as a developer, the only thing you need to do is to set up the system properly and optionally monitor any creations the community makes, in case you want to enforce rules and an etiquette that you value. <br />
Its also great that the players will be able to improve your game on their own without having to depend on the developer in the case if the developer dies or simply has no time to create updated on his own.<br />
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<b>So what does it take to set up a game for modding and what to keep in mind?</b><br />
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First of all, it needs to be accessible. Do not restrict anything and provide all the information that is needed to create high-quality content and features. If you have any tools that would be useful, be sure to provide them to modders. If you dont have any tools, but there is a demand for them and they would definetely be beneficial, then by all means make them.<br />
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Secondly, <b>you must teach the modders</b>. Tell them how it works and how to do things professionally. I cannot stress this enough. This is absolutely important.<br />
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It is not enough to simply throw the tools and access to people and think they'll figure it out. Sure, some people might and will figure it out eventually if the game is good enough, but you can go a long way to help anyone interested in modding by giving them a full guide, tutorials, full comprehensive documentation as well as tips and tricks and anything else you know to the modders to ensure that they will have the knowledge readily available to create the same level of content that you did officially.<br />
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<b>You must NEVER neglect teaching the modders on how to mod of your game if you plan to make your game moddable at all.</b><br />
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Nothing is worse than trying to figure out stuff through trial and error, especially without any help from the developer. Its pointless, time consuming, frustrating and incompetent. By teaching the modders to use the system correctly to create good content you will also ensure that there will be less mods of bad quality to be made and released by the community when they know how the professional does it. Always teach the modder everything from the beginning to the end as much as possible and do not be arrogant towards newbies, ever.<br />
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Those are the main features that can make a game become an infinite game. It doesn't have to be all of those features in one game, even one or two can be enough, but this is what it takes to make an infinite game. <br />
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Games that are more simple or limited by design (such as story games/interactive movies) can use some of these features to extend its lifetime in some aspects, but generally, they will still remain finite, either until the story the game focused on is revealed or when the player has discovered every aspect of the game and finds nothing else exciting in gameplay since it cannot grow any further from what it was at its release.<br />
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Hopefully this post has inspired you or atleast given some food for thought that games can be infinite if they are made right.<br />
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<span style="color: #cccccc; font-size: xx-small;">(This is a part of the "what makes a good game" series)</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2326328955647176216.post-20965848546562046682011-07-03T12:28:00.000-07:002011-07-09T14:11:21.182-07:00Accessibility and Usability.Easy to learn, hard to master. <br />
Deep, but approachable.<br />
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That is the ideal goal for any game to aim for. The question of how accessible and how usable your game is can determine how easy it is to learn it and how fun it is to play. It has many aspects to it and I'm going to talk about all of them related to this topic.<br />
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This is something you do not want to screw up. It has been the downfall of many projects, both in the industry and the indie scene. So read up to understand how to ensure the success of your game.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><b><u>Accessibility</u></b> is about how fast and well a player can learn the game and immerse himself in it.This is about having a good introduction, good presentation and a good tutorial.<br />
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<u><b>Usability</b></u> is about how well designed the game mechanics are. Its about good controls, readable graphics, coherent user interface and good streamlining.<br />
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So what do I mean by the word "good" for any of those topics? Here's what.<br />
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<b style="background-color: #b45f06;">*Introduction.</b> It is the first impression a player gets from the game. Like any first impressions in any situation, it has a big impact on what a player will initially think about the game. <br />
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A good impression will get the player interested in the game. It will also help with player immersion and excitement a lot. A bad impression, in the worst case scenario, can make the player hit uninstall.exe and perhaps even demand a refund without even giving the game a second chance. Or in a less dramatic scenario, the player will simply forget the game and let it collect dust somewhere far and buried deep. Hopefully, you can see that this is a big deal.<br />
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So what is a good introduction and how to make one?<br />
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Introduction is the first moments in a game. There may be an intro, the menu and the actual game for the first couple minutes. This sums up what the introduction is. The intro and menu are optional, since not all games necessarily need them. Other first impressions may include the actual installation of the game and a start screen. Again, not all games need installing and a start screen is best suited for console or arcade games.<br />
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The overall goal for an introduction is to communicate to the player what the game is about, what is so interesting and fun about it. <br />
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An intro may attempt to interest the player with a synopsis of the story/goal or show a quick example of the action the player will be participating in. The intro may be a text, image, sound, slideshow or a video. The intro comes before the menu. It should be skippable too.<br />
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The menu can be used as a tool to further improve the introduction by giving it a theme or effects that suit the actual game. This is entirely optional, but just so you know that the menu can participate in the introduction in its own way.<br />
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As for the first moments in a game... this depends heavily on the game and its a whole subject on its own. I'll try to make a blog post about it later, because describing it here would easily make this post be twice as long as it is already. Games differ a lot.<br />
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<b style="background-color: #b45f06;">*Presentation.</b> This means the overall appearance of the game. Graphics, sounds, music, story, themes and effects all play a role in this both individually and together. Presentation is important from the introduction of the game to the very end. <br />
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Good presentation is basically that the graphics are pleasing to look at (read: not ugly), the sounds are approriate and tolerable, music is fitting and the story can be understood by anyone and is plausible (not confusing or outright garbage).<br />
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Theres more to this than simply having high quality content. You also need to know how to put it all together in a good way that the entire system works as a whole. This is a skill and it comes from experience from creating various artistic projects and analysing anything from video games, to movies, websites, brands, comics and anything else that uses more than just one form of art in it.<br />
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Using basic logic and indepth thought is very helpful to figure out how to organize a proper presentation.<br />
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<b style="background-color: #b45f06;">*Tutorial.</b> A good tutorial is crucial to get a player to learn the game mechanics as smoothly as possible so he could be efficient at it, and thus, enjoy the game as it was meant to.<br />
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No matter what the game, you must teach the player to play it in one way or the other. Tutorials can be either hidden subtly within the actual game or have a dedicated place for learning/training where new players can go before they are introduced to the real challenge.<br />
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The crucial thing to keep in mind, is that you should never put a player into a situation that he/she does not know how to handle. I dont mean challenges or surprises by this, no. What I mean is that the player must know how to do something before you tell him to do so.<br />
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If you give him a human character and tell him to go somewhere, you must teach him how to walk at first. This is absolutely important and you must never be ignorant towards this. <br />
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Whatever the player will play with, be it a character, function, tool, system or item, make sure you teach him how to use it and then verify he learned the lesson. There is a good reason why people can't drive cars without a drivers licence. Take note and teach the player how to operate and use whatever you give him.<br />
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Another important thing is to teach one thing at a time. If you overwhelm the player with more than one thing at a time, it will stress him and depending on how patient the player is, you can lose lots of players at the very beginning of the game, simply because you gave them too much information at once. Pace the information properly and don't overburden the player. <br />
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It is a game, after all, and the player is here for the experience and fun, not to study and work to learn something (game mechanics) that isn't really necessary in his/her real life. Ration the information to one lesson at a time and keep it fun.<br />
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Additionally, make sure the player can access all the information he learned previously at any moment to review it, incase he missed something or forgot about it. Returning players will find this most helpful.<br />
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<b style="background-color: #b45f06;">*Controls.</b> Very important, the better the default controls, the more naturally a player can grasp them and have fun.<br />
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Remember that you're making a game for a human being. That means you should try to design your controls to be as efficient and comfortable as possible for a human to use them. Think of the most logical solutions for each function based on their importance, the speed at which they should be accessed at optimally during gameplay, how to access it and through where.<br />
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Control interfaces range from the keyboard & mouse combo to gamepads, joysticks, wheels, pedals and so on. Choose the most suitable control system for your game and stick with it. Trying to support multiple control devices can end up in a mess, so its best to focus on one type of control system at all times. It avoids confusion and is more simple that way.<br />
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Allowing customization of controls is also a good idea, especially for the mouse & keyboard combo. Someone might feel more comfortable for one function to be mapped to another key due to personal preferences, so custom control mapping is a very useful feature.<br />
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<b><span style="background-color: #b45f06;">*Graphical Readibility.</span> </b>This means that all the graphicals elements of the game are easily identifiable and recognizable by a human being, so he can easily distinguish objects, user interface, the background and other elements seperate from each other as naturally as possible.<br />
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Essentially, just make sure the interface, background and the game elements stand out from each other so you can tell what is what without confusing one with the other.<br />
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<b style="background-color: #b45f06;">*User Interface.</b> UI is about providing information to the player that he must know in order to efficiently play the game and understand his current status in the game.<br />
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The goal is to keep only what is truly necessary. Anything redundant should be removed as it will only distact the player from what really matters. If possible, hiding UI elements that are context sensitive is a very good idea.<br />
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<b style="background-color: #b45f06;">*Streamlining</b> is about optimizing overly complex or tedious mechanics/controls in a game to be more enjoyable and smoother to use, while still retaining all the features that were intended to be had.<br />
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So if you have something you find cumbersome or tedious, consider streamlining its design to make it better. When streamlining, never remove what is necessary, instead, do your best to preserve the functionality it was first intended to have, just simply have it work more efficiently.<br />
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This pretty much covers briefly all the basic aspects about accessibility and usability in a nutshell. Theres more to each of these topics, but this is more than sufficient to make you aware on what to account for when designing and making a game to ensure that it will be successful.<br />
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<span style="color: #cccccc; font-size: xx-small;">(This is a part of the "what makes a good game" series)</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2326328955647176216.post-54881651862533703382011-06-26T09:33:00.000-07:002011-06-26T09:33:41.900-07:00Make them believe its real.Believability. This is the art of presenting something that could potentially exist in the real world, even though its fiction. I'm not talking about realism in here, although it helps. What I'm talking about is making things look, feel and act as you would expect it to, despite the fact it doesnt exist in the real world. This is useful because it helps for a player to grasp ideas more quickly and immerse in game universe much more comfortably, and thus, enjoy the game better and learn it quicker.<br />
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You can learn this skill this by analysing and researching anything and everything from real life to other works of art. Although when you look at art made by others, do not steal their work, instead, take inspirations from it and combine it with your own ideas.<br />
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You can use the internet, books, movies, artwork and nature as sources of information to figure out how something looks like or how something works. All the information you gather will help you design anything you need that will seem believable. Creativity is useful here.<br />
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Things you can design depend on what you need to create. If you're need a monster, go study animals, humans, machines and the traits you want the monster to have. You can make the sea monster which is tough and agressive, and in turn, this should give you a better idea how to design it. Toughness can relate to the large size of the monster and agressiviness can be implied by large intimidating spikes and teeth. The fact it lives in the sea can be implied by its blue color of the skin or perhaps some fish fins and octopus tentacles. When you show this monster to a player he will be more likely to figure out what kind of monster it is and what to think of it based on its features and design.<br />
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Or how about a scout vehicle? Make it small, fast and maneuverable. Use anything means and features to imply that this vehicle is suited for its job as a scout. Do it right, and the player will be able to distinguish what he can use the vehicle for.<br />
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The thing here is to think about purpose when you design something. When designing something, ask yourself these questions: what is it? what is for? how does it work?<br />
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Why do it this way? Because its easier for a human mind to relate to things when they resemble things from real life or have defining traits that you can figure out by simple logic.<br />
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Imagine this: Two balls. Both are the same size. No differences. They can act virtually anyway the moment you first see them. Well how about this: we make the first ball look like its made out of rock and the second ball is made out of feathers.<br />
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See what happens? You can instantly get the picture on how they would behave in a game now that they are more clearly defined.<br />
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Use the same logic for characters, items, worlds and other elements to communicate to the player how things might work and behave. This will go a long way of making players get inside a game much more effectively as they can relate to it better.<br />
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<span style="color: #cccccc; font-size: xx-small;">(This is a part of the "what makes a good game" series)</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2326328955647176216.post-13065331106207268822011-06-26T06:15:00.000-07:002011-06-26T06:15:56.978-07:00Keep your game consistent at all times.Consistency is vital. Its extremely important. Without it, your game has a large risk of becoming a horrible mess with the effect of the player not trusting the game because he notices that it cheats on him or does something completely illogical or just plain ridiculous that makes him raise his arms and shout "bullshit!". <br />
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This eventually makes him stop playing the game altogether because no one likes it when they're being lied to. And this is what consistency is all about: Trust.<br />
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Good consistency ensures the trust of the player. When everything functions as it logically should, the player can safely have pure fun without thinking what stupid crap the game will pull off next. Sure, there are games that do this and even as far as focus on this randomness, but these are rarely those serious games that have endless potential and infinite gameplay. Such games are very shortlived anyway.<br />
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<b>What is consistency? </b><br />
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Its about organizing the game and its mechanics that it all works seamlessly together as logically as possible. This makes the game feels natural.<br />
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Look at it this way: If you do X, Y will happen. If you jump, you will fly up into the air. If there is gravity, you will fall back down. You set fire to a piece of wood, it burns. You burn ice, it melts. You burn metal, it will get hot, but it wont catch on fire. A ball hits a wall, it collides with it.<br />
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Its all about simple logical thinking, basic interaction and feedback of elements. This is what good consistency is all about.<br />
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If you give a player a character or object to control or interact with, make sure it has all the features you would expect from it logically. Atleast the very basics and don't limit it with cheap limitations or other illogical restrictions.<br />
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Consistency is important in everywhere. Both in story, gameplay, behaviour of objects, potential of what characters are capable of doing, environments, difficulty and so on.<br />
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<b>What is inconsistency then?</b><br />
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Example: You control a human. It makes sense that you can do all the following:<br />
Walk, Run, Jump, Crouch, Climb, Look, Smell, Eat, Hear and Interact with solid objects using your body. Its all part of being a human, after all.<br />
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It doesn't make sense if you lack all or some these features. Wouldn't it feel strange if there was small rock in your way and you can't jump on it or climb over it? Or if there was a ladder or a door that you can't climb or open? <br />
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That is not consistent. You were given a human to control, as the game claims, so its obvious you should be able to do those actions, but if you can't, then the game is fraud and unfair. You're being lied to.<br />
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This logic applies to everything, not just this example of a human. Be it a world, story, a mechanic or behaviour of objects and characters. It all matters how it behaves. When something doesn't work as it would by logic, the player will becomed distanced from the game, the immersion breaks and the player can't properly enjoy the game as he can't trust it. While the player might try enjoy the other parts of the game, the damage has already been done. <br />
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So get it done right from the beginning and avoid ruining the game with inconsistency by organizing the system and its element in a consistent manner.<br />
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<b>Spawning and origin.</b><br />
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One very infamous element of bad design is spawning things. If you've played games where you have to fight enemies of any kind, you might remember that there are instances where monsters are spawned out of thin air, teleported in your face or appear suddenly behind the corner. This is even worse when the enemies are endless and spawn all the time and you can't do anything about it. This is probably one of the worst inconsistencies you can ever have in any game. Especially if its based on real-life, even partially.<br />
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Not only its unfair, but its ridiculous and illogical as well.<br />
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Everything has a beginning. Everything has an origin from where it comes. This applies to every part of the game too. World, characters, items, monsters, story... all of it and more have an origin, a beginning. <br />
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Always think where something comes from before you put it there and make sure the player will understand this origin of whatever comes up in his way during the game too.<br />
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Also, If you really have to spawn something out of thin air, at the very least, apply a limit to how many can spawn and inform the player about it, or he will get frustrated. Always be fair to the player, keep his trust up and never lie to him. <br />
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Player trust and consistency is key to a good game.<br />
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<span style="color: #cccccc; font-size: xx-small;">(This is a part of the "what makes a good game" series)</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2326328955647176216.post-5107039595821081182011-06-25T23:55:00.000-07:002011-06-25T23:58:46.971-07:00Give your game purpose.Every object, feature, story and mechanic in a game needs to have a purpose or a reason why it exists. Without a goal, a game will feel empty. Without a purpose, a character or item will be obsolete. Without a meaning, a story will have no impact.<br />
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Aim to give every aspect of your game a purpose, goal, meaning or reason.<br />
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Usefulness must be taken into account when designing a game or its content. Everything you put into a game should be useful to the player in some way. Or have a purpose to exist. If it doesn't have a purpose, the player will ignore it because its useless and there is no reason for it to exist.<br />
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There are games that attempt to create a world, a universe of their own that mimics the real world we live. It may try to recreate things like objects, physics, creatures, people, technology, environments, materials and other real world things to create a convincing representation of the real world, either as realistic as possible or altered with fiction and fantasy to any extent. Then there are other games that are much more abstract. These abstract games might have subtle references of the things mentioned above, but in their core, they define a completely different world of their own on which the game works.<br />
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A quick example to demonstrate the two types:<br />
Real game = Minecraft, World of Warcraft, X-COM, Half-Life, EVE-Online, Red Alert.<br />
Abstract game = Tetris, Pacman, Audiosurf, Breakout, Card Games, Pinball.<br />
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The distinction between the two is not always clear, although essentially if a game is based on something from the real world, rather than an artificial fabrication (that might use references from the real world), then its a real game. More accurately, a real-life inspired game.<br />
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Thing is, whatever gets put in the game must have a purpose. If you take a look at the nature, you'll see that every single thing has a function somewhere. There is absolutely nothing in the nature that has no point. Apply this same logic to a video game and it will become more natural, easier for a human to understand and interact with.<br />
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Obviously there games where you cannot be or have everything at once. You have to choose, usually due to limitations or restrictions. Be it a character class, abilities or equipment, my advice is to keep every choice a good one. So no matter what the choice is, it will always be the best, but just different in functionality. The player can pick anything he wants (or is able to) and not worry that the game might be unfair. He will then focus on having fun, rather than pondering if his choice was the best one the game can offer. Whatever the game offers, make every offer a best one.<br />
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Besides gameplay, a goal is extremely important in the overall story/plot of the game.<br />
While you can make a sandbox game where people can do various activities, there needs to be a goal, an incentive to make their activities feel meaningful. If there is no point, the player will feel empty and there is no longer any satisfaction or fun had in the game. He won't play it anymore.<br />
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The above is often the fall of many sandbox games that allow you to do and be anything you want, but doesn't give you a constant, meaningful goal to achieve. This is even the more critical if the actual gameplay mechanics are limited or poorly designed.<br />
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Same thing with life itself. What is the point in life? People often have an activity they enjoy doing or a goal towards they work for that has value to them. You can create this enjoyment and value for video games too.<br />
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When you give your game a point that actually matters, something the player could care about personally, you can potentially create a game that is more important than life itself.<br />
It can be scary how big the potential is, but it is true and some popular games have actually achieved this. With purpose, your game could be virtually infinite and endless.<br />
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So, in short, make sure that whatever is in a game has a point, a use or a reason to exist. If it doesn't, either make it have one or remove it. Focus on what is necessary to enjoy your game and keep away the redundant things that have no meaning.<br />
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<span style="color: #cccccc; font-size: x-small;">(This is a part of the "what makes a good game" series)</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2326328955647176216.post-76765289531952428412011-06-22T00:44:00.000-07:002011-06-22T00:47:11.303-07:00So you're making a game. Do you like your game?You must like your game yourself.<br />
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If you don't, you are at great risk in not honestly knowing what you should be focusing on. Often I see developers focusing on earning money from their product and putting their focus on the money rather than on the game they would love to play themselves. They try hard to please people they don't really know about with the intention to get as many people as possible to buy the game and thus, they rip themselves and their game into pieces in attempt to please everyone.<br />
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What happens, is the game become a bloated abomination filled with things that the developer himself might not play with, but still hoping it would please the customers. This is a wrong way to approach this. <br />
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What you should do instead, is focus on the game and make sure you will enjoy it. That you will love it. That you would play it yourself and actually enjoy it and play it more. Then, make sure it is accessible enough by having the mechanics be easy to learn and the story easy to understand for the average joe so he doesn't have to think too hard to get into the game.<br />
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Don't please others, instead, please yourself because you know what you like.<br />
Do make it accessible so you can share it with others with relative ease.<br />
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Whether they like it or not, is their opinion. Just like everyone has their own taste.<br />
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This applies to non-profit projects with fan-bases too. People might have enjoyed a product that you or someone else made, and you're working to create a better version of it or maybe a sequel. Take all the feedback and ideas you can get, but since you're the one developing the project, its important to put yourself ahead, because you don't want to be in the position to create something the fans probably want, but you won't necessarily like it.<br />
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You also will be much more motivated to work on something you like than if you'd try to stretch yourself to please someone else. Keep in mind, that not everyone always truly knows what they want and they might have blind or false opinions about things that can very easily be irrevelant for what a product is really about.<br />
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Stay true to yourself.<br />
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<span style="color: #cccccc; font-size: x-small;">(This is a part of the "what makes a good game" series)</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2326328955647176216.post-60390271291091120032011-06-22T00:33:00.000-07:002011-07-09T14:08:06.836-07:00Making a series about game design.I'll be doing a series of blog posts about "what makes a good game".<br />
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It will consist of a couple very important topics about game design that can help you make much better games. <br />
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These are the main points that I will cover:<br />
<ul><li>Fun (for you)</li>
<li>Purpose</li>
<li>Consistency</li>
<li>Believability</li>
<li>Accessibility/Ease of use</li>
<li>Longevity (replay value)</li>
</ul>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2326328955647176216.post-20613704803031227592011-06-17T20:36:00.000-07:002011-07-03T12:33:37.153-07:00Reactor online. Sensors online. Weapons online. All systems nominal.Welcome!<br />
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This is Reactorcore and I'm a professional gameplay designer.<br />
You may read about me <a href="http://www.reactorcore.webs.com/">on my website</a>.<br />
On this blog, I'll share my thoughts on gameplay design in video games, games in general and news on any projects I'm working on.<br />
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Hopefully you'll enjoy your stay and find something useful or interesting from me.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0