Idea
by Kenneth Beckerdite · in Game Design and Creative Issues · 01/03/2005 (5:23 pm) · 16 replies
I was thinking of a game like Tony Hawk Underground but with a snowboards. You can get off your board in a city, your not restricted to a hill you can go through the whole city and go to new areas, new citys, get pro, and do all sorts of crazy things.
Your just a kid who gets a board for Christmas and your a newbie but you grow to be the top of the hill(so of course there is going to be extensive game time). Buying your own boards by doing compitions until you get sponsered, create videos, etc...
This is just an idea that I thought of. Can you give me any comments.
Your just a kid who gets a board for Christmas and your a newbie but you grow to be the top of the hill(so of course there is going to be extensive game time). Buying your own boards by doing compitions until you get sponsered, create videos, etc...
This is just an idea that I thought of. Can you give me any comments.
About the author
#2
01/04/2005 (6:53 am)
Jay is such a killjoy. Even worse - he is right:)
#3
01/04/2005 (2:24 pm)
Snowboarding in a city! I think it's a cool idea... make a small demo out of it and try the idea out.
#5
Now that I'm done ranting....
I agree with Jay on all points, even though I dont have any titles to my name, I've learned that it takes time, commitment, and yes, even as an indie, money.
Specify, specify, specify! You'll be constantly changing things unless you write out specifics for what you want in a game. Plus itll help you realize what you can and cant do.
And my personal opinion is that unless you can come up with a description of your game without referencing other games, your project will be just another rehash of a game thats already on the market - and most likely sold by the big guys, not an indie. You can also get more people to read your game idea if you dont reference any other titles. I would have stopped at "...like Tony Hawk...." if I wasnt planning on writing a smart comment, because skating games dont interest me. Now if you would write a nice explanation of your game plan w/o referencing THU I would have read the entire thing. Moving along....
To your idea....
I think if you could get a game like that working with just the snowboarding/city idea that you would have a great selling product. You could then add all of the other stuff like sponsoring, videos, etc. i a sequel game, once you have a budget and a game under your belt.
Just my unprofessional indie quarter of a cent, take it as you want, but no more clicking on crappy subject lines for me
01/04/2005 (6:06 pm)
I couldnt resist clicking on the topic to see if the author of this post was the same one who wrote this. Lo and behold! It is!! How could I have known that? Am I psychic? Nope. YOUR SUBJECT LINE SMELLS WORSE THAN A ROTTING CORPSE ON A STEAMY SUMMER DAY!Now that I'm done ranting....
I agree with Jay on all points, even though I dont have any titles to my name, I've learned that it takes time, commitment, and yes, even as an indie, money.
Specify, specify, specify! You'll be constantly changing things unless you write out specifics for what you want in a game. Plus itll help you realize what you can and cant do.
And my personal opinion is that unless you can come up with a description of your game without referencing other games, your project will be just another rehash of a game thats already on the market - and most likely sold by the big guys, not an indie. You can also get more people to read your game idea if you dont reference any other titles. I would have stopped at "...like Tony Hawk...." if I wasnt planning on writing a smart comment, because skating games dont interest me. Now if you would write a nice explanation of your game plan w/o referencing THU I would have read the entire thing. Moving along....
To your idea....
I think if you could get a game like that working with just the snowboarding/city idea that you would have a great selling product. You could then add all of the other stuff like sponsoring, videos, etc. i a sequel game, once you have a budget and a game under your belt.
Just my unprofessional indie quarter of a cent, take it as you want, but no more clicking on crappy subject lines for me
#6
But, like Nate said, the first step is to get some sort of demo together.
Keep in mind that you'll have to make sacrifices to get the game made. You'll have to sacrifice your time to making. You'll have to sacrifice lots of cool features so that the game can get made. You'll probably even have to sacrifice some money to buy software and pay contract workers (if you can find enough dedicated indies to work on your project for royalties, you won't need contract workers - the problem is that finding people and convincing them to do what you want even though you're not paying them up front is hard).
And, finally, you must be prepared for the fact that you may fail. And even if you succeed, it's statistically unlikely that you're game will be one of the few games that gets a ton of sales.
Even so, that's no reason not to try. If you're one of the lucky ones who ends up making games for a living, it's worth it. Even if you're not one of the lucky ones, it's still time well spent.
01/04/2005 (7:20 pm)
There's nothing wrong with your idea, but you need something more to set your game apart from other games.But, like Nate said, the first step is to get some sort of demo together.
Keep in mind that you'll have to make sacrifices to get the game made. You'll have to sacrifice your time to making. You'll have to sacrifice lots of cool features so that the game can get made. You'll probably even have to sacrifice some money to buy software and pay contract workers (if you can find enough dedicated indies to work on your project for royalties, you won't need contract workers - the problem is that finding people and convincing them to do what you want even though you're not paying them up front is hard).
And, finally, you must be prepared for the fact that you may fail. And even if you succeed, it's statistically unlikely that you're game will be one of the few games that gets a ton of sales.
Even so, that's no reason not to try. If you're one of the lucky ones who ends up making games for a living, it's worth it. Even if you're not one of the lucky ones, it's still time well spent.
#7
-Ajari-
01/05/2005 (9:03 am)
I think the whole idea is too ambitious for you and realistically will never happen. Start off smaller. Like Jay said, just getting the character on the board with all the physics, tricks, and animation will probably make your life a living hell. Also, a guy going around the city (flat ground) on a snoboard?? Unless your on a mountain don't you need wheels to gain momentum? I'm sorry, I just don't think it's a good idea. Maybe a hoverboard would work. But it doesn't matter cause without some major help from someone it's not gonna happen anyway. Don't waste your time. I say start over smaller and learn what you need to learn to create a snowboard game that people will actually play. Good luck.-Ajari-
#8
Indies on tiny budgets can do some amazing things - even guys with no previous game development experience. I just wanted to point out how you were really jumping on some pretty high scope elements that, when I put my 'risk assessment' hat on, come up as immediate red flags.
It's okay to shoot for the stars, but it's stupid to do so without any understanding of what it takes to get you there.
PROTOTYPE, PROTOTYPE, PROTOTYPE. Start with the core of what the game is supposed to be fun. If you can't do the prototype, or can't make it fun, then you know you are on the wrong track or if you are jumping in over your head. But scope things down first so you know where to focus your prototyping efforts.
01/05/2005 (11:29 am)
I don't want to necessarily rain all over your parade, Kenneth. That wasn't my intention. Indies on tiny budgets can do some amazing things - even guys with no previous game development experience. I just wanted to point out how you were really jumping on some pretty high scope elements that, when I put my 'risk assessment' hat on, come up as immediate red flags.
It's okay to shoot for the stars, but it's stupid to do so without any understanding of what it takes to get you there.
PROTOTYPE, PROTOTYPE, PROTOTYPE. Start with the core of what the game is supposed to be fun. If you can't do the prototype, or can't make it fun, then you know you are on the wrong track or if you are jumping in over your head. But scope things down first so you know where to focus your prototyping efforts.
#9
To piggyback on Jay's prototyping comments I would say that if you have several different gameplay styles in your project you can make a demo/game from each one. For example if you have elemets such as vehicle, air, space, and sea combat in your game you could make a demo/game from each. This will help you learn how to tweak Torque to suit the needs of each element. Once you have demos/games made, tested, and critiqued you can begin to combine all of the elements into a single large project. I would save really cool stuff for the final 'big game' rather then putting everything in your small games to begin with. This is what my project has been evolving into as I gain a little experience in game dev as I go along doing things.
@ Ken: I know that this may not be useful to your team because it seems like your idea is pretty much a single central element of snowboarding with no other areas that could be made into additional games. Good luck though.
01/05/2005 (12:13 pm)
Shoot for the stars! Go ahead, come up with big ideas! BUT, make them long term ideas. I personally think shooting for a high end project is great and you can attain it if you plan long term.To piggyback on Jay's prototyping comments I would say that if you have several different gameplay styles in your project you can make a demo/game from each one. For example if you have elemets such as vehicle, air, space, and sea combat in your game you could make a demo/game from each. This will help you learn how to tweak Torque to suit the needs of each element. Once you have demos/games made, tested, and critiqued you can begin to combine all of the elements into a single large project. I would save really cool stuff for the final 'big game' rather then putting everything in your small games to begin with. This is what my project has been evolving into as I gain a little experience in game dev as I go along doing things.
@ Ken: I know that this may not be useful to your team because it seems like your idea is pretty much a single central element of snowboarding with no other areas that could be made into additional games. Good luck though.
#10
Start a lot smaller. Perhaps closer to a game like Happy Happy Boarders. While it's a snowboard simulation game, its primary focus is as a "get girl" game. They're really popular in Japan. Instead of the typical play-novel style of most Japanese get-girl games, it takes a different approach: girls like mad skillz. So, as you're boarding down runs, you can stop and talk to hot chicks and other snowboarders who will compete with you. You can teach them how to board or help their little brothers, etc. Or you can trick your way to love (though the snowboarding mechanics are rather clunky in HHB). But, it's a much smaller premise and one that is much easier to prototype.
Step 1: Create boarder model and snowboard model. Mount the boarder to the snowboard (for future board expansion).
I'd recommend downloading Blue Guy and go to town.
Programmer art step complete.
Step 2: Create a mountain.
This is initially much harder than you would think. Simply raising the terrain may work, but the steep angles that you need won't be pretty. My solution: create the mountain as a DIF. Then, check the texture to adjust your physics. Don't create the whole mountian. Pretty much just create a bunny hill. This will give you enough misery as you apply physics to your character and tweak just how your character will fall. You can board around on little moguls and slip and slide down tiy hills. Once you have the bunny hill created and basic snow physics in place, you can move on to other cool features. Like jumping and tricking and rails.
Step 3: Jumping and Tricking and Rails.
Now that you have a semi-workable boarding prototype, you have to figure out how to create an intuitive trick interface. In most snowboarding, bmx, and skateboarding games, you press a button to set yourself and release it to jump. This is probably the best scenario here, too. Using the keyboard, you can use the space bar's initial press as a "set" move which will allow higher jumps, more precise control, etc. Then when you release the space bar, the character will actually perform the jump.
Okay, the jump is set. Take your character model and do a "hand grab" animation (for future fun, you can create a mount point on each hand and on the board where you want them to grab, but that's in the future). This is your one trick. You'll be seeing it a lot while you tweak your trick system. Now that you have an animation, tweak the way the character is leaning. This is your "tweaked hand grab" animation. You have your two animations now. You now get to create bindings for them. Bind the grab to the left mouse button and the tweak to the right. Now, you have to have a number of control binding states. When you're on the ground, it doesn't make sense to grab your board or to tweak a grab. But when you're in the air, it does. So you need to create a few states which change the bindings.
On ground:
A, D - Move left/right
W, S - Speed up/Slow down
LMB - Nose press
RMB - Tail press
Prepping for a jump
A, D - Lean
W, S - Lead into the forward/backflip
In air:
A, D - Rotate board left/right
W, S - Rotate boarder forward/backward
LMB - Grab
RMB - Tweak
Prototype it until it works somewhat nicely. Now that you have a working bunny hill and two trick animations, you can concentrate on pulling out the big guns.
01/05/2005 (12:50 pm)
Since I'm ghosting configurations for our labs here at work, and it takes quite a while, I thought I'd brainstorm in your topic. I'm annoying that way. I'm sure there are a lot of other ways I'm annoying, but this is one of them.Start a lot smaller. Perhaps closer to a game like Happy Happy Boarders. While it's a snowboard simulation game, its primary focus is as a "get girl" game. They're really popular in Japan. Instead of the typical play-novel style of most Japanese get-girl games, it takes a different approach: girls like mad skillz. So, as you're boarding down runs, you can stop and talk to hot chicks and other snowboarders who will compete with you. You can teach them how to board or help their little brothers, etc. Or you can trick your way to love (though the snowboarding mechanics are rather clunky in HHB). But, it's a much smaller premise and one that is much easier to prototype.
Step 1: Create boarder model and snowboard model. Mount the boarder to the snowboard (for future board expansion).
I'd recommend downloading Blue Guy and go to town.
Programmer art step complete.
Step 2: Create a mountain.
This is initially much harder than you would think. Simply raising the terrain may work, but the steep angles that you need won't be pretty. My solution: create the mountain as a DIF. Then, check the texture to adjust your physics. Don't create the whole mountian. Pretty much just create a bunny hill. This will give you enough misery as you apply physics to your character and tweak just how your character will fall. You can board around on little moguls and slip and slide down tiy hills. Once you have the bunny hill created and basic snow physics in place, you can move on to other cool features. Like jumping and tricking and rails.
Step 3: Jumping and Tricking and Rails.
Now that you have a semi-workable boarding prototype, you have to figure out how to create an intuitive trick interface. In most snowboarding, bmx, and skateboarding games, you press a button to set yourself and release it to jump. This is probably the best scenario here, too. Using the keyboard, you can use the space bar's initial press as a "set" move which will allow higher jumps, more precise control, etc. Then when you release the space bar, the character will actually perform the jump.
Okay, the jump is set. Take your character model and do a "hand grab" animation (for future fun, you can create a mount point on each hand and on the board where you want them to grab, but that's in the future). This is your one trick. You'll be seeing it a lot while you tweak your trick system. Now that you have an animation, tweak the way the character is leaning. This is your "tweaked hand grab" animation. You have your two animations now. You now get to create bindings for them. Bind the grab to the left mouse button and the tweak to the right. Now, you have to have a number of control binding states. When you're on the ground, it doesn't make sense to grab your board or to tweak a grab. But when you're in the air, it does. So you need to create a few states which change the bindings.
On ground:
A, D - Move left/right
W, S - Speed up/Slow down
LMB - Nose press
RMB - Tail press
Prepping for a jump
A, D - Lean
W, S - Lead into the forward/backflip
In air:
A, D - Rotate board left/right
W, S - Rotate boarder forward/backward
LMB - Grab
RMB - Tweak
Prototype it until it works somewhat nicely. Now that you have a working bunny hill and two trick animations, you can concentrate on pulling out the big guns.
#11
Since the mountain is a DIF (remember back when I told you to make it a DIF?), you can modify the loading/unloading of DIF objects according to their zones. This way you can create a huge mountain and "stream" it into somewhat limited memory. If you design the mountain well, you won't notice the pop-up. One problem that you may have is if you allow the player to see the ski lifts, since they will be changing as the DIFs load and unload (chairs may pop around as you swap areas).
Now you can create a huge mountain with a lot of different runs. You only have a single trick animation, but you can actually lure artists in with the promise of a game that actually works rather than a vague description and a lot of hope.
Also, since you have a working DIF load/unload process, you can create super huge areas to board in and break them into workable chunks.
Step 5: Trick and Tweak
Have your art team work on creating trick animations. Watch a lot of Warren Miller. Add them in as you get them and make sure that they don't break anything. Test them thoroughly on every part of your shiny huge mountain.
Step 6: Physics
You've played with basic slippery physics, and if that's good enough for you, then you don't have to worry. But if you want to take your snowboarding game to the next level, you'll need to work in some nice physics. The ODE resources should help with it since nothing (hopefully) will be small enough to cause a lot of collision mesh problems. And your physics don't have to be perfect, but it would be cool if they were at least somewhat real (no boarding uphill at 90 miles an hour). This will also set you apart from really crappy snowboarding/skiing/skating games.
Step 7: Attributes
Your boarder needs to be able to get better at what they do (edging, balance, jump height, etc). An easy way to do this is to give them points for winning challenges. Since you have all the available tricks, you should be able to test how each attribute works. Also, these will help out immensely in the next section.
Step 8: Trick AI
One thing that you'll want to do is have challenges in your game, and I'm assuming that some of those challenges will include racing and tricking. So you'll have to write your AI from scratch around this concept. Create opponents and change their texture to red. Start testing their AI by making them extremely bad boarders and then extremely good boarders. You'll probably have to have a number of attributes depending on their ranking (high ranked boarders will be better at chaining points in trick competitions or finding shortcuts).
Step 9: Pathing AI
This is the enemy's ability to create new and better paths. This is a huge portion, and I don't really want to think about joining path nodes right now.
Step 10: Challenges
You should now know (and have tweaked) your mountain significantly. Now you need to add challenges. These are non-AI challenges. Things like "collect all the yellow snow patches to make Bobby a snowcone" or "beat the clock" type challenges. You could also add in a capture the flag mode if you're in a trickstyle arena. That would be cool. Actually, that would be really cool.
01/05/2005 (12:50 pm)
Step 4: Making the MountainSince the mountain is a DIF (remember back when I told you to make it a DIF?), you can modify the loading/unloading of DIF objects according to their zones. This way you can create a huge mountain and "stream" it into somewhat limited memory. If you design the mountain well, you won't notice the pop-up. One problem that you may have is if you allow the player to see the ski lifts, since they will be changing as the DIFs load and unload (chairs may pop around as you swap areas).
Now you can create a huge mountain with a lot of different runs. You only have a single trick animation, but you can actually lure artists in with the promise of a game that actually works rather than a vague description and a lot of hope.
Also, since you have a working DIF load/unload process, you can create super huge areas to board in and break them into workable chunks.
Step 5: Trick and Tweak
Have your art team work on creating trick animations. Watch a lot of Warren Miller. Add them in as you get them and make sure that they don't break anything. Test them thoroughly on every part of your shiny huge mountain.
Step 6: Physics
You've played with basic slippery physics, and if that's good enough for you, then you don't have to worry. But if you want to take your snowboarding game to the next level, you'll need to work in some nice physics. The ODE resources should help with it since nothing (hopefully) will be small enough to cause a lot of collision mesh problems. And your physics don't have to be perfect, but it would be cool if they were at least somewhat real (no boarding uphill at 90 miles an hour). This will also set you apart from really crappy snowboarding/skiing/skating games.
Step 7: Attributes
Your boarder needs to be able to get better at what they do (edging, balance, jump height, etc). An easy way to do this is to give them points for winning challenges. Since you have all the available tricks, you should be able to test how each attribute works. Also, these will help out immensely in the next section.
Step 8: Trick AI
One thing that you'll want to do is have challenges in your game, and I'm assuming that some of those challenges will include racing and tricking. So you'll have to write your AI from scratch around this concept. Create opponents and change their texture to red. Start testing their AI by making them extremely bad boarders and then extremely good boarders. You'll probably have to have a number of attributes depending on their ranking (high ranked boarders will be better at chaining points in trick competitions or finding shortcuts).
Step 9: Pathing AI
This is the enemy's ability to create new and better paths. This is a huge portion, and I don't really want to think about joining path nodes right now.
Step 10: Challenges
You should now know (and have tweaked) your mountain significantly. Now you need to add challenges. These are non-AI challenges. Things like "collect all the yellow snow patches to make Bobby a snowcone" or "beat the clock" type challenges. You could also add in a capture the flag mode if you're in a trickstyle arena. That would be cool. Actually, that would be really cool.
#12
Right now you have a working snowboarding simulation. Is it fun? Probably not, but you can tweak it to make it fun. You can add the get-girl idea, which actually wouldn't require a huge resource strain unless you add buying them things ala Dead or Alive: Extreme Beach Volleyball. You'd simply have to create a variety of models and challenges based on the girls those models represent.
And, if you think about, now you can actually start making the game you wanted to make in the first place. You will know the tools. You will know how to create DIF's to use inside your modified engine. You can create a huge city/mountain with boarders ready to challenge or teach you new tricks, etc. You can create lodges at each peak and start creating content to buy your boarder. You can work on skins for your boarder and board as well as tweaking different board types for performance within the guidelines of your physics implementation.
But it sure took a lot of steps to get to where you wanted to start in your post.
01/05/2005 (12:50 pm)
Step 11: Wow, you have a basic snowboarding gameRight now you have a working snowboarding simulation. Is it fun? Probably not, but you can tweak it to make it fun. You can add the get-girl idea, which actually wouldn't require a huge resource strain unless you add buying them things ala Dead or Alive: Extreme Beach Volleyball. You'd simply have to create a variety of models and challenges based on the girls those models represent.
And, if you think about, now you can actually start making the game you wanted to make in the first place. You will know the tools. You will know how to create DIF's to use inside your modified engine. You can create a huge city/mountain with boarders ready to challenge or teach you new tricks, etc. You can create lodges at each peak and start creating content to buy your boarder. You can work on skins for your boarder and board as well as tweaking different board types for performance within the guidelines of your physics implementation.
But it sure took a lot of steps to get to where you wanted to start in your post.
#13
Seriously, that was an excellent writeup man! In fact, it could be a good start on a "Project Management" tutorial/essay for TGE that could be very useful--we have all sorts of code, art, and features resources/tutorials, but PM is a big black hole for a lot of people, and a rough but generic outline for how a small game should be planned in TGE would be most outstanding!
01/05/2005 (1:12 pm)
Hey David, wanna step out our MMOG for us? /duckSeriously, that was an excellent writeup man! In fact, it could be a good start on a "Project Management" tutorial/essay for TGE that could be very useful--we have all sorts of code, art, and features resources/tutorials, but PM is a big black hole for a lot of people, and a rough but generic outline for how a small game should be planned in TGE would be most outstanding!
#14
01/05/2005 (3:19 pm)
@David: Ditto what @Stephen said. How 'bout compiling it into one doc and filing it as a Resource?
#15
-Ajari-
01/07/2005 (9:05 am)
Damn you weren't lying when you said you had alot of time on your hands David. Good show!:D-Ajari-
#16
01/07/2005 (9:36 am)
I'm amazed that it turned out semi-coherent. I was hopped up on cough medicine and writing off the top of my head. If I were to submit it as a resource, I'd definitely want to flesh out sections and give more practical advice that I've learned from projects that I've killed to help others avoid killing their own.
Torque 3D Owner Jay Barnson
Comment #2 - Trying to emulate a major AAA game is a recipe for disaster. Just take a look at your description - if I'd never played Tony Hawk, I'd have no idea what you are talking about except that it involves some dude skateboarding. What's the point? Is it racing? Stunts? Being a courier on a skateboard? While it's okay to reference specific features or elements in other games, if you think that you can make a game "Like Game X", you'd better make sure that you have:
A) A team that is the same size and experience level as the team that made Game X
B) A budget that's the same size as the budget for Game X
C) An equal amount of time as it took to develop Game X, Plus an extra 10-20% if you haven't yet set up the full shop yet and need some spool-up time.
Guess What? You are an indie. Your team is a bunch of green teenagers, based on your profile. You've never completed a game from what I can tell. THIS IS NOT A BAD THING. It's awesome, and you can do some great things! But it also means you sure as heck ain't gonna make a game that resembles anything like a multimillion-dollar professional AAA game.
Comment #3 - Getting more specific from Comment #2 - Your scope is pretty gi-normous. All the extra stuff about getting sponsored, creating videos, etc... that's FLUFF used to pad out and extend the gameplay of a larger game. Sure, it's entertaining, but as an indie you need to scrape it down to the baer essentials. And the fun part - at least from what I can see - is being on a snowboard "and do all sorts of crazy things" in non-traditional areas. Instead of trying to worry about all the extra stuff you can do apart from actual snowboarding, focus in on detail and depth --- what does "all sorts of crazy things" mean?
Comment #4 - I think that just getting a guy on a snowboard working reasonably well in Torque - with decent physics, tracking your tricks or whatnot - will keep you busy for quite some time.