On game development (versus just development)

[ExpHP]

I've been trying to write an addon for BTW, but as of now, I've pretty much given up. I suppose this can serve as anecdotal evidence that coming up with good ideas can be as difficult as implementing them.

This post basically details the design process that went on behind what I consider to be a failed project - one that pretty much was a failure from the very beginning, even though it took me weeks to notice.

Some time ago, somebody posted a topic about how they wanted to filter stone and ore. The general conclusion was that there was no valid way to do this and still preserve the stone. So I saw this and thought to myself, "here is something that is missing. I will provide it." But I wanted to make sure my idea was well-thought out, too. So I started asking myself some questions.

What is a fun mechanic I can focus on that is at present unused?
Alternating destinations for item transport. I wanted people to have a point in their system where items can go one of two ways depending on e.g. which water channels are open or what is receiving power.

What can I make that encourages players to do this?
I came up with the Magnet.

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When mechanically powered, iron or gold items below it are attracted to it and float up to its center. When turned off, the items will fall straight down, back into the channel they were lifted from. This means that, to properly filter metal items, the player needs to change the destination of the water flow beneath the magnet before turning the magnet off. So I wrote up some more specifics on how I thought it should work, and came up with some secondary features (like stopping minecarts, making SFS unstable...). Then...

Does your current design encourage the use of that mechanic?
Originally, I planned to make it attract items in a 9x9 space below the magnet (to interfere with small builds). It was only after half an hour of sketching ways to use the block that I realized that having a magnet beam wider than 1 block made it possible to pick up items from a nearby channel and drop them outside of the channel, entirely defeating the point. Good catch, I thought.

For similar reasons, I also changed the beam to check block collision bounding boxes so that it never goes past the first solid object; this is to prevent it from lifting items next to a fence and then dropping them on said fence. Hey, I'm a natural at this...except that I could still see the design being abused by pushing items out from under the magnet with a piston, and I had no idea how to prevent that.

So I just decided to push on for the time being. I ran into many, many, many problems with implementation. There were many instances where I had to commit deadly programming sins to work around an issue that could've easily been fixed with a base class edit. I have cursed the Java developers to Hell and back over the whole multiple inheritance thing. But still, even when I make a poor decision and am left with a big mess to clean up, I feel that every problem I have in the code can eventually be solved.

But I don't feel the same way about the problems with my design. Thing is, since I've begun working on this project, I've had plenty of time to ask myself other questions.

Where does it belong in the tech tree?
What new capabilities does it bring to the field?
Does this system obsolete an existing and fun system?
Do other systems make this obsolete?
Is it intuitive?
Is it self-consistent?
Where can the technology go from here? i.e. What can I make next?
What new capabilities do the secondary features add? Are any unintentional?
Do any of its secondary features overshadow its main feature?
Are any of its secondary features particularly prone to be neglected?
What reason do people have to use this system?

For some of these questions, the answers are good. But for a lot of them, the answers are either bad, or "I don't know."

And then there's the biggest question of all: Would I use it?

And I realized that the answer is... no. I didn't even want to playtest it. I didn't see how it could add anything to my world. I felt like just letting it loose into the community's hands and letting other people find the value in it. If I would never want to use it myself, then how, pray tell, did I think it was ever a good idea in the first place?. And I honestly don't know. I suppose I just took the idea and ran with it.

And I know barely anyone would use such a thing to begin with. While there may be no method to sort iron/gold from nonmetals, no such method is needed. You can already sort the metal items out of a mob farm, and without automatic mining, what point is there to automatic separation of ore and stone? This was a losing proposition from the start.

All things considered, the magnet receives failing marks. And unlike the numerous glitches and errors that I currently need to debug, I have no idea how to fix a broken design.

Game design is hard.

[FlowerChild]

Game design is hard.

Hehe...well, there certainly are a lot of variables to consider in any design, but you get better at handling that with time and experience.

Don't beat yourself up too much if you weren't pleased with your first attempt man. It's a professional skill worthy of a professional salary, and that wouldn't be the case unless it were a difficult skill to acquire.

Also, if it's any consolation, my long term plans for BTW included an electro magnet for doing this kind of thing, however, it was going to come MUCH later in the tech tree, as yes, I agree with you in that it doesn't fit BTW at its current tech level.

[ExpHP]

Don't beat yourself up too much if you weren't pleased with your first attempt man. It's a professional skill worthy of a professional salary, and that wouldn't be the case unless it were a difficult skill to acquire.

That does make sense.


The thing I find interesting is that even some small additions feel like they should take as much thought as something big. I was thinking that maybe I should try something smaller and easier that won't take Mr. Amateur Programmer 2 weeks to write, but come to think of it, the idea can still suck even if I finish implementing it before I realize it sucks! :P

So I guess the easy route in terms of design would be to instead focus on something relatively inconsequential... but then again, where's the fun in that? :)

[Bazgracz]

Well, I wanted to create topic about game development and game design for few days but now when someone did it first i don't have to write all stuff to start it.

First of all, I'm laic about these things. Myself I just started to design and think about game to create with my brothers. My domain of work is mostly graphic + design with pushing everyone to do a work. Mostly FC and this forum pushed me to think about this. I thought it will not be all that hard, and so I will do it in one evening (seriously). However when I started to think about all these things like "What is point of game? What about gameplay? And graphics? Should they be simple or more complicated? More of RPG or action? Maybe Both?" And so on, I could type all day all these questions that were in my head. It's surely not easy to think about it. It's slow and hard way, but step by step I'm writing everything and doing it somehow. I think mostly about FC when I'm just thinking about all these things when I'm on designing my project.

Many times I thought about this one awful "thing".
That "thing" are changes in game. Jon produce online game. He produce some content.
Players are happy with that content. But then Jon produces new content. Here lies problem and so I can't find answer to it. Why, Jon instead of creating new content that will fit old content, he creates new content so that old content must fit to it? By that I mean:
-When they add new content, they should create new things that will fit old content. Old spells can get upgrade (i.e. Fire ball level 8 at player level 55, will get new spell in new content, where he can get 60 player level and so upgrade Fire ball to level 9, with better stats), also new spells will appear with new items, places to explore and bosses to defeat.
-Why they create new content, with idiotically throwing things that appear to them as "nice" or "good"? They throw "something" but then they see problem with old content which is good. But they say "Nah, new content is better". So they change old content, or even, they delete it by replacing with new content.
-I can understand, that some things can get old or people are simply don't using it. Then they can replace it for "something better" or delete if they can't think of something new.
-Why the hell, they simplify things, that were good? For money? So more people can play it? Because they think it's "good"? For example in WoW, there were really nice talent tree, but then they had to bluntly simplify so a 13 years old idiot kid could understand it and didn't cry when he failed epically.
-Also I can understand that some things are changing and this is inevitable. People change tastes. New things are invented. Better, bigger are created. Some things must go so new can come. But why change so many things that it will not be a thing at start?

Sorry for my English and so I'm sorry if I wrote something wrong and inconsistent I'm truly sorry. Please, correct me then

[BigShinyToys]

I have been thinking about design as well and never quite appreciated some of the design decisions made in minecraft (beta) and better than wolves. I have realized the difference between programing and game design. I always thought the two are the same but having the ability to program "something" doesn't make the "something" a good idea or a fun game. For this particular sorting problem I was thinking about one possible solution.

making explosives break ors into a item called ore chunk and having these filtered out by a hopper with a wool filter these would then be dropped into a crucible for melting into ingots.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sluice#Pla ... plications

Typical sluices have transverse riffles over a carpet, which trap the heavy minerals, gemstones, and other valuable minerals. The result is a concentrate.

[BlackCat]

I really do enjoy this idea, I feel that it is an excellent idea for filtering that would be very fun to work with (especially on the scales that I work with it would be a great new challenge) so I feel that you should push forward with the strength of a thousand stampedes :p

Good luck Exp, may your drunken touhou skills serve you well ^_^

[Gears]

Yeah, dude. I hear ya. Back when I first started actual game design as a hobby the hardest part for me was coming up with good ideas. I could come up with a bunch of ideas, but they were all either dumb, too difficult to implement, or just wouldn't work in the overall design of the game. I would end up adding ideas that sounded fun, but if they weren't out of my league coding wise I wound up with a bad feature. After a while, I managed to start filtering out those bad ideas, but they do occasionally occur.

Here's a story for you about a recent bad idea I had, if you're interested:

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Around September last year, I was working on a 2D sandbox game, and I had just added a farming mechanic to it(Fruit trees and wheat) Once I had finished all the normal farm-able crops, I began thinking about special event related crops. Most of them were fairly subtle, yet fun challenges(ie, dragonfruit, which required the player to grow a lemon tree near a dragon's den) However, I had one fruit tree in mind that would be like a yearly event: zapples(if you know what it's a reference to I'll buy you a beer) Basically, during a fixed point in the year, the player could go through the forest and find an apple tree with metal apples. Trying to pick the apples would cause a fair bit of damage to the player, and the player would receive the message "It's not time yet..." If the player went back the next day, the tree would have the ripe zapples(Which would have rainbow stripes on them) After that period of time is up, the tree would turn into a normal non-fruit bearing tree. After finishing the zapple tree and event, I ran a test of it and realized that although it was an interesting concept, it just wasn't practical for players to farm them. I ended up disabling the event, and turned the metal stage of the zapple tree into a source for mana. The zapples themselves were put into dragon hoards, given the ability to fully restore health.

I guess my point is that some ideas may seem good at the time, but their design just won't work in practice. I'm sure that no matter how good you get at game design, you will always encounter these issues every now and then.