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I don't have any vr equipment but if I were to buy one I'd get the Oculus Quest, it's self contained and simple. On the other hand I have no idea. Maybe it's the worst possible thing you can buy for development because it's a separate computer. Don't know if you can connect it to your env wirelessly. e: Huh. There is a guide for that https://developer.oculus.com/quest/ Nolgthorn fucked around with this message at 23:59 on Aug 21, 2019 |
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Aug 21, 2019 23:56
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ShichiNoBushi posted:I'm hoping to share the document with some companies that might get some interest in my idea but wanted some advice before sending it to anywhere professional. Unless you personally know someone in the industry that is willing to help you with this, I honestly don't think anyone will care if all you have is a design document. There is a podcast by Paradox called The Business of Video Games, look it up on whatever podcast platform you like, and go through the series. Pitching your game idea to a professional means, at the very least, having a fun, working prototype.
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Aug 22, 2019 00:16
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Xik posted:Unless you personally know someone in the industry that is willing to help you with this, I honestly don't think anyone will care if all you have is a design document. There is a podcast by Paradox called The Business of Video Games, look it up on whatever podcast platform you like, and go through the series. Pitching your game idea to a professional means, at the very least, having a fun, working prototype. That's an expected dilemma and a large hurdle to get over If I lack the skills and hardware to do this on my own. I already have a game I intended to try to make a prototype for and try to get crowd funding to actually produce it. But then I ran into some difficulties and became demotivated. Here's a link to that if anyone's interested in checking that out. Nyctophobia GDD
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Aug 22, 2019 00:54
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ShichiNoBushi posted:That's an expected dilemma and a large hurdle to get over If I lack the skills and hardware to do this on my own. I already have a game I intended to try to make a prototype for and try to get crowd funding to actually produce it. But then I ran into some difficulties and became demotivated. Here's a link to that if anyone's interested in checking that out. Nyctophobia GDD Also it's barely even a design, it's a concept at best. You have a weird tendency to gloss over anything that actually needs designing, like levels and puzzles and mechanics. eg. "The higher branch leads to a more complicated platforming challenge and ending with a switch for Nick to activate, and the other leads to a short maze below that leads to another switch for Nick." And then you go into very explicit detail for the bits of text that are really not very important to a game. Apparently there are "5 to 25" levels, but you described two. Even if anyone was interested in a game design in purely written word format, this would still not be something anyone would want. Worst of all, I can't even actually tell from this document what the core gameplay mechanic actually is. The player controls the fairy with the mouse; is the fairy just attached the mouse pointer? Do you have to drag? Click a destination? Move the mouse to apply acceleration? Nick responds to things based on the environment and where light sources are, but how? You provide a couple of examples "jumping straight up or at an angle, or running faster" based on where the fairy is, and "responds based on the environment such as climbing a ladder", but an actual design would lay out the conditions for each of these things, probably with drawings to make the conditions clear (like the 'boxes' relative to Nick that define "the fairy is close" / "the fairy is far" / "the fairy is above"), and decision tree diagrams for what Nick will do (is Nick on a ladder? -> is the fairy above? -> climb up) As written, if I'm a programmer trying to make your game mechanics based on the design, if Nick is walking by a ladder that goes up, and the fairy is to the right of Nick, I have no idea what is supposed to happen, I can think of at least 3 reasonable candidates that are each completely different. (Edit: and what does the camera do?) Maybe you were going more for a pitch document rather than an actual design, but in that case the detail about the verbiage is insanely too much. A pitch could honestly be as little as "it's a puzzle platformer; the player controls a fairy that is a light source, with the mouse, and the main platformer character is controlled by the computer, trying to follow the fairy. The main danger is darkness." Finally, it's a dangerous pitch because platformers where you don't directly control a jumping character are typically not very fun. This is why we prototype.
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Aug 22, 2019 01:23
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That document was written as my final capstone project for my degree, and I believe I had edited it some degree since then. But since I haven't seen an official GDD, I'm not aware of the necessary level of detail and perhaps more the more particular nature of detail or presentation it would need and be helpful. I thought the method of moving the fairy was clear, but it is specifically attached to the mouse (no clicking and dragging). And I didn't get into the specific details of the level design since that isn't my strong suite as I find I'm better at the larger scope of a game concept or setting, and I expected I would get into better detail of the levels during the process of building the game rather than planning every small detail out purely through word. And I also hoped that that task would be left to a team of specialized level designers. Though I would at least figure the level of contribution to that would be deciding that first chapter in the house would be focusing on introducing the basic game mechanics, the second chapter in the basement would get into detail of lighting, power, and fuses and fuseboxes, and the factory would focus on logic puzzles. I would probably agree that in its current state it is more of a pitch rather than a professional game design document, but I would appreciate if I could at least work with someone to fill in details and build it up to a proper GDD. In the mean time, I would appreciate if anyone could help me refine it to a sufficient pitch document that can likely get a company or team to help work on it. As I stated working on a prototype but ran into some troubles and became demotivated. There was first a simple concept version in GameMaker, and I then tried remaking it in Unity. If someone can help me with learning Unity, that would be extremely helpful.
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Aug 22, 2019 02:36
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ShichiNoBushi posted:I would appreciate if anyone could help me refine it to a sufficient pitch document that can likely get a company or team to help work on it. What sort of degree can be capped with a document like that? Edit: the problem you have here is that almost every game developer already has 8 ideas better than this that they don't have time to work on. If they had the time to spare for free, they'd use it making their idea, not yours. And if you manage to find a rare game developer who doesn't already have a backlog of ideas, they'll collaborate on one of those other game developer's ideas before they'd work on yours. roomforthetuna fucked around with this message at 02:57 on Aug 22, 2019 |
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Aug 22, 2019 02:53
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Concurred: nobody will pay any attention to a pitch document, regardless of how well-crafted it is, unless they have significant reason to believe that the person behind the pitch is able to deliver. That means that either you're one of a very small number of well-known figures in the games industry, or you have something concrete to show along with the pitch document. Consider a music analogy: if I tell you I have an idea for a song about teenage love, are you going to pay any attention to me? Maybe if I'm a well-known pop star, but otherwise probably not. If I can sing you that song, and you can tell, yeah, it's a bit rough but with some polish it'd get attention, then I have much better odds of gaining your interest. I'd guess that right now, games are if anything even more overloaded with "ideas people" than music is overloaded by people who want to be stars but have no musical skill.
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Aug 22, 2019 03:09
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In a perfect world, in a pipe dream scenario AND they decide to take it, they pay you some money for it and that's it. Why would you be involved at that point? It's not like you can copyright specific game "ideas" (can you?) I think people that pitch scripts to Hollywood are a better example and in most cases I believe that's what happens, they pay you a little money and put it into a big pile of scripts in the Hollywood Archives TM for someone to film if they want it. I don't think that's how it works in game dev though, at least not that I've read. It's more like a genius game dev makes their own perfect idea and it becomes popular, no one notices until it starts cutting into their profits and fanbase, at which point AAA makes a shiny expensive version and puts genius game dev on crowdfunding life-support due to competition, or at least that's how I imagine it. Edit- I guess if you wrote your own game engine with some revolutionary proprietary code they may buy that, but probably not the game idea. I dont work in the industry but from everything I read and heard, basically novel ideas are just that, novelty. Tried and true is what brings in safe money and secures investments. Dr. Video Games 0112 fucked around with this message at 04:48 on Aug 22, 2019 |
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Aug 22, 2019 04:32
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ShichiNoBushi posted:If someone can help me with learning Unity, that would be extremely helpful. Unity is lots of fun to learn. Download it and follow a simple tutorial. You will learn by doing. Once you have a basic idea of how to use Unity, try and make your game idea. It'll most likely suck but once you've finished you will know a lot about Unity. And then you can make a better game!
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Aug 22, 2019 04:56
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BarbarianElephant posted:Unity is lots of fun to learn. Download it and follow a simple tutorial. You will learn by doing. I've already been working on it in Unity, and I'd just like some advice with it. One of my major hangups right now is the lighting system which would be a major element of the game. Currently how I have it is that I have spotlights focused on the 2D plane to create a circular radius rather than a point source. Though one (likely minor) frustration I have is that overlapping light sources are additive where I would prefer that there would be something like a maximum value or discrete lighting resulting in overlaps being seamless rather than brighter (I want it to be A=1, B=1, and A&B=1 and not A&B=2). How I accomplished this in Game Maker was I overplayed a black layer over everything and subtracted from it in a radius around light sources. If there's a way I can accomplish the exact same thing in Unity, I would like to know.
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Aug 22, 2019 05:08
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Don't focus on how things look at all until you get the actual game working.
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Aug 22, 2019 05:14
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ShichiNoBushi posted:I've already been working on it in Unity, and I'd just like some advice with it. One of my major hangups right now is the lighting system which would be a major element of the game. Currently how I have it is that I have spotlights focused on the 2D plane to create a circular radius rather than a point source. Though one (likely minor) frustration I have is that overlapping light sources are additive where I would prefer that there would be something like a maximum value or discrete lighting resulting in overlaps being seamless rather than brighter (I want it to be A=1, B=1, and A&B=1 and not A&B=2). How I accomplished this in Game Maker was I overplayed a black layer over everything and subtracted from it in a radius around light sources. If there's a way I can accomplish the exact same thing in Unity, I would like to know. This doesn't sound like you want to use the lighting system at all. I would do this more like how people do custom FoV meshes for overhead games, fog of war, or roguelike visibility/shadow. Like what you are describing in game maker is a simple way to do fog of war where everything is covered by a black plane and then areas are cut out / rendered transparent in the shader as the player explores. I vaguely recall doing something like this but I did it with vertex colors to indicate transparency. Searching for things like unity + fog of war or field of view visualizing will probably get you started in the right direction.
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Aug 22, 2019 05:30
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This is probably going to sound harsh. I do not intend to be mean.ShichiNoBushi posted::snip: ShichiNoBushi posted:And I didn't get into the specific details of the level design since that isn't my strong suite as I find I'm better at the larger scope of a game concept or setting, and I expected I would get into better detail of the levels during the process of building the game rather than planning every small detail out purely through word. ShichiNoBushi posted:And I also hoped that that task would be left to a team of specialized level designers. ShichiNoBushi posted:Though I would at least figure the level of contribution to that would be deciding that first chapter in the house would be focusing on introducing the basic game mechanics, the second chapter in the basement would get into detail of lighting, power, and fuses and fuseboxes, and the factory would focus on logic puzzles. ShichiNoBushi posted:I would probably agree that in its current state it is more of a pitch rather than a professional game design document, but I would appreciate if I could at least work with someone to fill in details and build it up to a proper GDD. In the mean time, I would appreciate if anyone could help me refine it to a sufficient pitch document that can likely get a company or team to help work on it. The mega man battle network pitch is a good example. They focus on “the mega man for current kids” and why their internet setting is better than the robot setting of the classic games. If that’s the stuff you want to work on, get a degree in marketing. It’s unfortunate that maybe someone fleeced you out of lots of money for what is likely a useless and unaccredited degree. ShichiNoBushi posted:As I stated working on a prototype but ran into some troubles and became demotivated. There was first a simple concept version in GameMaker, and I then tried remaking it in Unity. If someone can help me with learning Unity, that would be extremely helpful.
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Aug 22, 2019 12:08
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I'm a developer and I can confirm that not only do I have tons of backlog, but there's competition to add to my backlog. Competition in the form of money. I'm constantly in a state of dying inside wanting to work on my own projects. When I tell people I'm a software developer one out of ten of them has an idea for a project that I need to hear. When one of them sounds interesting I still can't work on it, and if one of them is an especially large project like a vr game, what I want to hear is that you are a large company with an office and a concrete delivery plan. Even then I can't work on it, but at least it sounds like you have the resources necessary. It's nice to have a design document but there just aren't enough developers in the world. I would look at this like a new hobby and try to learn game development with that set as a very lofty goal that you could start working on 10 years into the future. Or start working on it now just know that you're going to delete it and start over a lot. The best approach is small projects that you can easily finish, like in a month so that you don't get worn out by the process. Finishing development projects is an incredibly important contributor to mental health.
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Aug 22, 2019 16:22
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leper khan posted:This “proper GDD” thing you’re trying to build is a relic that effectively doesn’t exist any more. In so far as it ever did, it was often paired with a functional prototype. It’s purpose is to convince executives or publishers that your marketing strategy is a good one. Wait wait wait wait wait wait a moment. So Is there no equivalent of a functional requirement documents? Not even in very large companies?
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Aug 22, 2019 16:32
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I wish GDDs existed, because trying to write something from a bunch of vague suggestions in JIRA sucks.
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Aug 22, 2019 16:38
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BarbarianElephant posted:I wish GDDs existed, because trying to write something from a bunch of vague suggestions in JIRA sucks. At least this apparently is not limited to more corporate-based application development. 
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Aug 22, 2019 16:40
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BarbarianElephant posted:I wish GDDs existed, because trying to write something from a bunch of vague suggestions in JIRA sucks. This is the only reality I know
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Aug 22, 2019 16:40
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gdds are pointless cause you will never see what dumb rear end flaws your opus design has until you toss it into the lake to see if it floats e: although you should always have a "general concept/idea" doc
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Aug 22, 2019 16:47
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limaCAT posted:Wait wait wait wait wait wait a moment. So It’s not uncommon to have a feature requirements document. But a full GDD that’s more than a vision doc? 
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Aug 22, 2019 16:51
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Without design documents how do designers communicate their intentions and wishes to developers and artists?
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Aug 22, 2019 17:21
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limaCAT posted:Without design documents how do designers communicate their intentions and wishes to developers and artists? Slack, mostly.
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Aug 22, 2019 17:28
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limaCAT posted:Without design documents how do designers communicate their intentions and wishes to developers and artists? Slack, email(for that one programmer who refuses to use Slack), JIRA task descriptions, cryptic post-its...
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Aug 22, 2019 17:34
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Turns out that "game designer that isn't also a programmer or artist" doesn't really exist. Nobody gets paid to be the idea guy unless they're already famous as a game developer and/or they sucker people on Kickstarter to fund their salary.
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Aug 22, 2019 17:34
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Repeat after me: "I am not Hideo Kojima".
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Aug 22, 2019 17:37
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limaCAT posted:Without design documents how do designers communicate their intentions and wishes to developers and artists? Telepathy
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Aug 22, 2019 17:46
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KillHour posted:Turns out that "game designer that isn't also a programmer or artist" doesn't really exist. Third option: you can be an idea guy if your ideas are backed by a billion dollars of wealth and can afford to pay people to implement what you want.
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Aug 22, 2019 17:58
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xzzy posted:Third option: you can be an idea guy if your ideas are backed by a billion dollars of wealth and can afford to pay people to implement what you want. I figured if this was an option, they would have just done that.
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Aug 22, 2019 18:02
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limaCAT posted:Without design documents how do designers communicate their intentions and wishes to developers and artists? They point at an existing title.
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Aug 22, 2019 18:30
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I think one of the reasons design docs like that have gone by the wayside is that the current development focus for most games is on rapid iterative prototyping. A design doc might give you ideas or point you in a direction, but it quickly becomes useless as you change everything over and over really quickly, the doc just can't keep up. A bigger more official design doc only makes sense with a large team working on it where different teams may not be communicating directly, so you've got people dedicated to the doc and procedures in place for when to make changes and revisions. In which case someone new to the industry or a fresh hire isnt going to be making the decisions, that will come down from on high and you'd just be the person implementing other peoples ideas. ShichiNoBushi posted:That document was written as my final capstone project for my degree I'd be fascinated to know what degree you got and from where? It just seems bizarre to me that a design doc was your final project. I honestly feel kind of bad for people that get or are in the process of getting game focused degrees because as far as I can tell they are basically scams. The industry doesn't seem to care about them or they have no importance at least, they are generally worse than just a regular CompSci degree, and CompSci degrees are a dime a dozen at this point as well. Last tech job I worked was basic support, and out of 10 or so new hires I think 8 had CompSci degrees and 2 of those 8 had their masters. For basic internet turn it off and on again support positions. The markets just completely flooded. And as has already been covered, a design doc is basically a half step above just an idea. In an industry thats drowning in people trying to break in, ideas just aren't worth anything alone. Even a really good prototype isn't really enough in most cases unless you already have industry contacts because no ones going to see the prototype then anyways. It's why so many indie seminars and talks are focused on Visibility ie: marketing, community building, pitching, crowd funding etc. Even if you build something, just getting eyes on it is a monumental task.
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Aug 22, 2019 19:40
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limaCAT posted:Without design documents how do designers communicate their intentions and wishes to developers and artists? using their words
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Aug 22, 2019 21:21
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I have seen detailed design documents a few times. But never for the entire game, mostly for systems where the details are incredibly important and the team needs to be on the same page. Core mechanics like the details of consumables, where lots of other decisions depend on those incredibly subtle details. Otherwise, design is a living, evolving thing, and is mostly communicated through grayboxes, prototypes, and lots of chewing gum and chicken wire.
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Aug 22, 2019 21:23
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You see them a lot with lore, where it's important to not have different sets of designers write contradictory exposition. But yeah, gameplay on a page is worth nothing.
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Aug 22, 2019 21:40
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I'm doing a Bachelor of Software Engineering for games and that GDD would have failed our first year, first semester paper on game design. Sorry bout it.
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Aug 23, 2019 01:53
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Sedgr posted:I'd be fascinated to know what degree you got and from where? It just seems bizarre to me that a design doc was your final project. I went to The University of Texas at Dallas and majored in Arts and Technology focusing on game development. It wasn't a school like Full Sail if that was what you were expecting. I initially majored in Comp. Sci. so I'm a bit familiar with programming but transferred after I found out that ATEC was closer to what I wanted to study.
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Aug 23, 2019 04:10
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Since I was a dick in my last post I'll write something a bit more useful. When I was younger I thought Game Idea Man was an actual job, probably from seeing things like "Sid Meier's Civilization" and assuming he was the guy with the plan and everyone just did what he said, like a god delivering fully formed games from on high to the unwashed masses. I tried a few times to write out game concepts. I tried a few times to learn coding, art, and other things I thought I would need to make just enough of a game that an angel investor would throw money at to see it made reality. Then I met a guy who also wanted to make games, and had ideas, and also knew some code. We talked and decided on a concept, and I wrote a terrible GDD for him to code from. I promised I'd learn to code and then I could help him. At last I was the ideas guy. The project sucked. His code sucked, mine sucked worse. My GDD was guaranteed worse than yours. It was unfun. Nothing got made. He'd choose and design a system at random and show it to me in a whitebox environment. Eventually he got sick of me telling him that you couldn't just buy 20 different plug n play system assets from the Unity Store and Lego your way into a cool game, and said he wanted to work on it alone. I left him to it, and later started going to the University I'm at now. Best decision of my life. Now I have a measure of all the things I don't know. I'm more grounded in reality. I don't have a billion dollars to hire a team to make my game, so I'm learning how to code and design games so I can get a job in industry, and continue to learn. Maybe one day I'll start my own studio and then I can make a zillion bucks off the next Minecraft and become an incel lunatic like Notch, but until then I'll learn and I absorb as much information as I can from people who actually know what they're talking about. You seem somewhere around paragraph 2 of my journey. You can skip several painful steps if you listen to the advice of these guys who are already making games for a living. They could, but probably won't teach you how to code, or do art. They can tell you ten different places where the path begins, but walking that path is up to you. PS. That other ideas guy I met is still an ideas guy.
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Aug 23, 2019 08:18
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jizzy sillage posted:
A lot of times people in such a position are themselves overqualified programmers and act as mentor to people doing the "grunt work" code for them, at least back when everything in game design was essentially uncharted territory (lol at even the notion that someone like Sid Meyer is an ideas man first and programmer second.) If someone like that doesn't know anything about code they are probably a conman like Peter Molyneux, though he probably knows how to program too. The other way is to just be filthy rich and buy everyone with ridiculous salaries to create their horrible ideas, usually with the company going belly up spectacularly after some failures. I think the Idea Man is a carry-over from a different era when things like Unity didn't exist and game design was shrouded in mystique, long before anyone did pixel art outside of sprite edits unless they were paid. On the other hand, of course it's still a far away dream that you could just plug your brain into a computer and protype or even develop with your mind without having any coding knowledge, a cool game would appear just as awesome as you envision, it is at it's heart an impossible ideal of many, but if it ever comes, it certainly won't be within our lifetime. We have to cave man punch the plastic buttons into the primitive glow screen to accomplish the same thing, unfortunately. vvv - Nowadays I guess it could be possible, back then I doubt it, music for 16 bit era games required programming the tracks so that was part of the deal. If you're making a music-game you better be a music guy. You'd still have to at least be competent though. To use an example, Kojima gets brought up a lot, he probably would make competent action films if he could, but he has no patience for the format and gameplay details. Despite his massive success, it shows in most of his games, they aren't actually known for particularly great gameplay, even by fans. I think he looks on his career and life in shame and disappointment, but most people look up to him. If you're a GREAT artist and you have say a successful comic out and you are willing to do all the art, you still wouldn't lead the development because you dont know what you're doing, your programmer would get annoyed explaining everything and why things you're suggesting wouldn't work, or constantly showing you why something cant be done. Dr. Video Games 0112 fucked around with this message at 14:37 on Aug 23, 2019 |
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Aug 23, 2019 08:51
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Dr. Video Games 0112 posted:A lot of times people in such a position are themselves overqualified programmers and act as mentor to people doing the "grunt work" code for them, at least back when everything in game design was essentially uncharted territory (lol at even the notion that someone like Sid Meyer is an ideas man first and programmer second.) If someone like that doesn't know anything about code they are probably a conman like Peter Molyneux, though he probably knows how to program too. The other way is to just be filthy rich and buy everyone with ridiculous salaries to create their horrible ideas, usually with the company going belly up spectacularly after some failures. How likely is it for the "visionary" to be more of an art or modeling person, or a composer or sound technician, or a writer, than a programmer?
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Aug 23, 2019 14:14
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Absurd Alhazred posted:How likely is it for the "visionary" to be more of an art or modeling person, or a composer or sound technician, or a writer, than a programmer? Yoko Taro is more of a writer and clearly makes his mark on the Drakengard/Nier games, so it's clearly possible at least for writers to take the role.
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Aug 23, 2019 15:21
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"Game designer" definitely exists as a job, but it's not generally the "ideas guy" - they do things like designing levels, scripting quests, writing in-game text etc. So i guess normally it's like being a coder but a little higher level. I come from a small team world where there's no such thing.
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Aug 23, 2019 17:38
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