Game Design Without Breaking the Bank Brian Windsor The Ohio State University Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design ©2006 The Ohio State University

Game Design Where to start – the same place pro game designers start, and that’s with the concept or idea. This can be tough in a class room…guided vs. non-guided game development has different benefits. People have to work together. I think guided for undergrad and unguided for grad works fine…your mileage may vary. ©2006 The Ohio State University

Game Design What to next? The Design Document! This is also known in its final form as the “bible” of a project. Everything ends up going into here. They become huge for pro game companies, but provide a road map for what has to be done ©2006 The Ohio State University

Game Design The basics – we used “On Game Design” by Adams and Rollings. There are others, but I found this one easy to follow. Only 5 people in the “Experimental Game Design” class. All used WIKI for communication and assignments. The only paper was in the form of handouts. ©2006 The Ohio State University

Game Design 1. Introduction - what are we doing and what do we want to do? 2. Game concepts – idea, target hardware, genres, etc. 3. Storytelling, Narrative, and Environment – what’s happening and where? 4. Character Design – where does it come from, do they seem to be a part of the environment, what are the characters? 5. Interface Design – how do you make it go? how do you give people good information and balance it out? ©2006 The Ohio State University

Game Design 6. Game Play – is it fun? what’s the player experience 7. Core Mechanics – flow and balance 8. Audio – how does audio fit in…where can it be a problem and/or a benefit 9. Highlights – how is this game different than others….what sets it apart? 10. Licensing and Business – the nasty stuff that you have to deal with in order to sell a game and not get sued doing it ©2006 The Ohio State University

Game Design Results were a game document Document was for purposes of a grant Students now wanted to take this forward Students wanted an all around series of classes to take on video games…how do you do this in a “center”? Could we have done this in this class? What are we really trying to teach and why? ©2006 The Ohio State University

It’s All Out There Physical Development can be the biggest black hole. How do you do it on a limited budget and with limited resources? Easy, use limited content creation and free ware or low cost software. The frustration level goes up, but keep in mind that all video game companies write their on tools to customize workflow and make things easier. ©2006 The Ohio State University

And Those Would Be Blender – has a game engine also does 3D modeling, animation, etc. Milk Shape, Valve Hammer Editor, etc. Panda3D – complete game creation software with Python scripting tools. Can load blender models in. GameMaker – Dutch, not free, but used a bit in primary education Gimp or ArtRage2 for texture maps. Flash – not free, but makes it very easy to deliver web games. ©2006 The Ohio State University

Are There Others? Yes, PopCap has one, there’s also OGRE, Torque, etc. Panda3D seems to be the most complete and easiest to use in my opinion, but I haven’t played with everything out there. I also like Panda because I’m not a programmer, but I can hack apart someone else’s script and see what makes it all work ©2006 The Ohio State University

How Big? Not Big! Don’t try to recreate every game that’s out there…it takes from 50 to 100+ professionals to make a game. A classroom full of people not devoting their entire day to working on a game will not be able to create the same content. Keep goals realistic, manage content, add the longer reaching goals into the game design document but not the game Students need to have accomplished something and not have a half baked experience with games ©2006 The Ohio State University

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