preparing the prototype: introduction
Posted by agleed on 2009-07-18 22:51
Just to give you a short introduction on how it's (probably) going to work out:
At first, I'll need some detailed gameplay mechanics information from you. Having that should enable me to develop a very short prototype (you could also kind of call it tech-demo) of the game. It should include stuff like this but feel free to add more as you see fit:
very basic gameplay: is the player running and jumping, or flying? can he even jump at all? i guess he'll have guns to shoot, do you want the bullets to be visibly flying over the screen and take a time before arriving at its target? or do you want the projectiles to hit the target instantly?
basic controls: basic keyboard layout? W,A,S,D for movement, mouse + mousebuttons for aiming + shooting?
relation of player height and movement speed to "screen size": how "big" is the protagonist in relation to the actual enviroment he's in. small, like in the mario games or big, like, lets say, in the street fighter games for example?
remember that these are not requirements for you to tell me, they're just examples so that you understand what kind of information i need at first. if you could draw sketches that show stuff that would be awesome.
prototype means: it'll look shitty. it serves as a platform to get a first rough implementation of the gameplay ready. it'll change constantly, depending on your updates, until it has the desired "feel". the look is not important at first, I'll use a lot of dummy graphics (blank boxes with "DUMMY" written on it or something like that) along with everything you provide me with.
prototype from the coding side means: i'll "hard code" it. meaning, i'll build a pretty unflexible and hard to maintain piece of code, in order to get it done QUICKLY. since i have most of the 2d engine / framework already set up (don't have things like map editors yet though, so even that will be hardcoded) the first prototype should be ready by monday or tuesday, if everything goes wrong it should take until wednesday, but definately not longer (I'll add a milestone after posting this). it definately won't look good or anything, so don't expect much. it's just for the purpose that we both get a feeling of what we want to create.
i seriously have no idea how long this "prototype" stage is going to last, since i never worked on a project like that. i was never able to find any graphic artist, or in general someone doing the "artist" work. so i certainly have high hopes for our collaboration.
the prototype in its finished version should contain the basics of what the final gameplay may look like, and maybe even the basic look of the game itself (not taking interface and that kind of stuff into consideration).
i still have to figure out what we do after the prototype is "finished". I'll probably start by re-building the prototype using a more flexible code-layout. i don't know how much you know about coding so i can't get really specific here.
but we'll first things first, lets start developing that prototype! really looking forward to starting with this.
travis
At first, I'll need some detailed gameplay mechanics information from you. Having that should enable me to develop a very short prototype (you could also kind of call it tech-demo) of the game. It should include stuff like this but feel free to add more as you see fit:
very basic gameplay: is the player running and jumping, or flying? can he even jump at all? i guess he'll have guns to shoot, do you want the bullets to be visibly flying over the screen and take a time before arriving at its target? or do you want the projectiles to hit the target instantly?
basic controls: basic keyboard layout? W,A,S,D for movement, mouse + mousebuttons for aiming + shooting?
relation of player height and movement speed to "screen size": how "big" is the protagonist in relation to the actual enviroment he's in. small, like in the mario games or big, like, lets say, in the street fighter games for example?
remember that these are not requirements for you to tell me, they're just examples so that you understand what kind of information i need at first. if you could draw sketches that show stuff that would be awesome.
prototype means: it'll look shitty. it serves as a platform to get a first rough implementation of the gameplay ready. it'll change constantly, depending on your updates, until it has the desired "feel". the look is not important at first, I'll use a lot of dummy graphics (blank boxes with "DUMMY" written on it or something like that) along with everything you provide me with.
prototype from the coding side means: i'll "hard code" it. meaning, i'll build a pretty unflexible and hard to maintain piece of code, in order to get it done QUICKLY. since i have most of the 2d engine / framework already set up (don't have things like map editors yet though, so even that will be hardcoded) the first prototype should be ready by monday or tuesday, if everything goes wrong it should take until wednesday, but definately not longer (I'll add a milestone after posting this). it definately won't look good or anything, so don't expect much. it's just for the purpose that we both get a feeling of what we want to create.
i seriously have no idea how long this "prototype" stage is going to last, since i never worked on a project like that. i was never able to find any graphic artist, or in general someone doing the "artist" work. so i certainly have high hopes for our collaboration.
the prototype in its finished version should contain the basics of what the final gameplay may look like, and maybe even the basic look of the game itself (not taking interface and that kind of stuff into consideration).
i still have to figure out what we do after the prototype is "finished". I'll probably start by re-building the prototype using a more flexible code-layout. i don't know how much you know about coding so i can't get really specific here.
but we'll first things first, lets start developing that prototype! really looking forward to starting with this.
travis
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1 Comments
By Subterfuge on 2009-07-19 01:19