The Basic Design Process (part 1/2)

When I am designing I follow a process similar to this:

1. Identify a key area to work on.
2. Discuss that area.
3. Divide it into proportionately valuable pieces – 3-5 of them.
4. Repeat for each piece until satisfied.

That may sound confusing but it is super easy to understand once you see it in action. What this process produces is a weighted distribution of ideas. Here is an example, that is artificially shortened for clarity.

Half-Life 2

• excellent shooter, attention to detail
• cinematic action, pushes you along a set path but gives you the sense of freedom
• balanced sequences: tight hallways, then zombies, then darkness, then fast zombies, then soliders, then open spaces, then platforming sections, then cars, then boats etc. all of these things pace each other
• tight gun mechanics, justification for using several firearms in a single fight
• personality in the enemies. they approach cautiously, are surprised, can be flustered, flush you out with grenades, ambush and so on

Ok, that’s enough. Imagine a 2-way split, instead of the typical 3-5:

1. “Cinematic action”
2. Shooting mechanics

I have color coded corresponding items. We can then recurse – repeat – the process for each item. Normally I’d do much more work than what is presented here.

I am telling you this because I’ve started this process for the top-level division, “play, create, share.” So far I’ve only done the discussion, not the divisions – except for “play.” I’ll post each one. Here we are so far:

• Play – Discussion
• Create – Discussion (part 1/2)
• Create – Discussion (part 2/2)
• Share – Discussion

After that I’ll post part 2 of this article. It will walk through how I turn, what I call, “treeified” content into an actual design – treeified means discussed and divided. That article will link to my corresponding designs for the discussions I’m posting next. You’ll get to see everything.

Kung Fu Panda and Creating the new Bible

The goal is not just to produce some game. Imagine watching a movie. It is good. Now you go to read the Bible – yes the actual bible. Screw if you’re not religious. You know what the bible is. These two things – the movie and the bible – exist to communicate something. A group of people sat and decided what was important, and codified it, one in writing, the other in moving pictures (with sound).

We create so that we have a record of what we did, what we knew. We also do it for the babes, and the immortality. Though most importantly we do it for ourselves. The act of creation is one that gives us power. It connects us with our own ideas. When you kiss a girl, or open a door, you are acting from a place of purpose… maybe not a strong purpose, but a purpose. You act on what you believe, and by acting what you believe becomes stronger. Want to succeed? Succeed. You’ll feel far better doing it than thinking about it. Ask anyone.

I want to create something that can be told over and over: the perfect story, one that never tires, that communicates the truth that we have observed. One story to communicate all truth, that is the impossible dream. We can’t achieve that. What we can achieve is something that as closely represents what we believe as possible. How do we know what we believe? When we express it we should feel better. When we share it, consume it, what we believe should flare up in us and make our contributions stronger. When you are in the moment, acting on what you know is true, it is obvious. You feel alive.

I just watched Kung Fu Panda 2. It’s a decent movie with mediocre writing in some parts and levity in others. Gary Oldman is fantastic as the evil guy. Jack Black is funny. Angelina Jolie is Angelina Jolie, and Jackie Chan is cute.

Kung Fu is expressive. I love it. I like eastern spiritualism and combat. I don’t even remember what I wanted to write about… something about collaboration, competing with the media monsters out there, creating something of such high quality that I won’t feel angry consuming it. The only thing that matters is that I create with a group. That’s you. That’s everyone. I wonder what it is that keeps us apart, as people? A lack of understanding is obvious. The inability to express ourselves, to know who we are.

This game is a statement about ourselves to the world, to ourselves. Its structure is such that it will bend to our will. I’ve done everything I can to find what separates a vision from a product, from realization. Games are important for reasons more than their interactivity. They are generated, from software, and as such can be iterated on. We can perfect them, and we can abstract out the role of any given contributor.

What does this mean? That any human who has an idea can make a contribution, and have it realized in the game. That is what this game is, a tool to build a team of collaborators, out of everyone that plays it, and facilitate their cooperation towards the extension of itself. What we are doing now is just the beginning. Pour in ideas and see what happens: that’s the plan.

Pick your favourite 3 movies. If you had to leave only 1 mark on the world, and it was through only 3 movies, what movies would you choose? How do those movies make you feel? Take what’s in your mind and put it in the game. Our project exists so that any collaborator can do this – is helped to do this – while the finished product remains as polished and cohesive as the best titles out there – even out doing them.

Capture reality and put it in the game. Build tools so that nothing stands in the way of this process, so that it is clean. That is the purpose of this project.

Feeling Connected to Your Audience

The coolest thing about this stuff is how weirdly motivated I feel now. “Connected,” that’s how I feel. Everything feels richer, I care more about indie news and shit. Why? Because it immediately feeds into my idea for the game, which seems so much more real now.

One of the major concepts behind my game is that the iteration cycle is motivating. A player does something then learns from it. I think the first thing I wanted to change about games, ever, was the following: I don’t want games to be too easy, or shallow. I want depth and challenge, depth and challenge, all the time! Rare a game provides you with this, and continuously provides you with it.

There are these key moments when you’re playing Half-Life or CS, or Mario, or whatever, and you just zone in. Everything is open to you and you think on 12 different levels simultaneously. You think about your own life, about the world around you, and you conclude that it is awesome and that you rule. That is the zone. You are in it, and I hate it when I can’t go back to it because I have to pay attention to some particular thing, or I’m tired of some repeated element, or action I have to perform, or music track etc. Depth and challenge: these two things combined let you get in the zone and stay there, and then go magical. Fuck, yes.

So the game, it is a thing. In it players grow. The whole game world exists to help players grow. That is how it is constructed. It is like a personal tutor, and its mission: get you fucking good at this game. … Then on top of that we get the stuff that lets a player express.

How does this connect with the iteration cycle, with connecting to other people? I’ll show you later. Peace for now, brothers. God speed. … what?

ps.

Content that inspired me in the last few hours, related to this post:

from Kyle Pulver: http://kpulv.com/90/Lyle_in_Cube_Sector_Any__Speedrun/

Playing games makes you cool.

from TIGTumblr: http://tigsource.tumblr.com/

God I love Cave Story.

from Derek Yu: http://makegames.tumblr.com/post/44181247500/making-it-in-indie-games-starter-guide
Hah. Felt that one? Sometimes it’s scary being this way. What do we have that gives us our identity? Our self-confidence? Interesting.

Why does this content matter? You’ll see. At some point we’ll all share in a collaboration process that takes our inspiration and merges it into a continuous stream, from which a design and game will emerge. I’ll show you how.

One more. I’m watching a talk by Jon Blow, about things he was naive about as a programmer before he started Braid – his first big (finished) personal project: http://www.myplick.com/view/7CRyJCWLM71/CSUA-talk. I haven’t thought about game programming for a year about. I was too focused on either design or other programming. I forgot how exciting it is.

the Great Experiment

I have been working full time for 3 years now, and hard-core for another 3 part-time before that, on my dream game project. This project is special for many reasons, not least of which is the incredible-ness of the design, but also for what it can do for collaboration. This project – this game – is what I designed to answer a  very particular question, not about what games can do, but about what technology can do to bring people together and get them to cooperate. I don’t mean in a hold-hands-and-sing kind of way, I mean in a constant party, family reliance, love-and-hate kind of way.

Imagine the greatest social environments you have ever been a part of. What were your goals as a group? What kept you together, even if it was only for 5 minutes? What nature did your goals have that produced the experience you enjoyed so much? This game is here to answer these questions – to help answer them, then be the answer for anyone who wishes to learn from it. The game is what I came up with after a life-time of searching for the one solution to my problems: how do I get all these fucking people to love one another, and pay attention to me.

Pursuit of truth, of flow, of the correct pattern for perfect self-expression. That is what this game is for, to help you with that pursuit, to let you share it with others. What does that mean for the design? A whole shit-ton, a whole metric fuck-wad of research and design theory and programming and dream-like cooperation between individuals. What does that mean for right now? What have I done so far? A whole shit-ton. A whole metric fuck-wad of research and … you get the idea. Right now the design and research phase has come to a close, as much as it can before the actually building can begin. Know where we start to build? Right with brick number one – wherever that goes – using you and me as collaborators. I build, you watch. That’s the system that will make this work, plus my brilliance, and you know all of my work leading up to this point.

There are two important concepts you have to understand to understand what my process will be.

1. The game is at the apex of iterative development. I mean way, way far beyond anything else that exists in game development, movie development, anything anywhere that has even a smidgen of public access to it.
2. The whole game is structured by an AI. All of the game’s content is procedurally generated – the degree of which does vary. Collaborators put their ideas into the system and those ideas are swept away by it, to be properly integrated with everything else, included in a polished product/prototype.

The first point depends on a system of development that I have invented, but to any experienced developer should come as a logical extension of the systems already used in the industry. I am just taking the benefits of iterative development and ratcheting them up as far as they will go. The second point depends on technology, and is way more complicated to understand if you don’t program AIs for a living. The two points depend on one another, but thankfully the second point is infinitely easy to take advantage of – without having any understanding of its internals – and the first one can be learned one step at a time. There is nothing large to digest here, not all at once. Every step in your learning, if such learning is to take place, will be natural.

The best way to continue is just to do so. I will on some, yet-to-be-decided, system of regular intervals produce updates for you to read on three things:

1. What the game has become.
2. What the design justifications were to make the changes to the game that were made.
3. Who contributed (collaborated on) what.

At the beginning I will be the only collaborator, and all of you will be readers and commentators. Your collaborations will be apparent through how we communicate. If any idea you provide sparks a process that ends in a design change – and thus a game change – then I will include it in my update as a collaboration, with proper formatting, explanation and credit.

Of course as I start to make money, and the collaborations of some individuals become significant, profits will be shared in some reasonable way. There will be a path from stranger to full-time collaborator – from lurker, to poster, to full-time employee – that will be explained and obvious to everyone, so that if someone wishes to traverse that path he/she may, pending his/her ability (of course).

Work will be done in Unity for easy distribution. The game will be heavily metrics driven. The AI will not go in until a later stage. We’ll begin with the basics. Core mechanics, aesthetics, a beginning/middle/end: these are what we’ll start with. I look forward to whatever will come of this, and meeting and interacting with whoever comes my way. Thank you for reading. This process will be an adventure.

Your random internet guy, from the internet… sincerely,

Graham Luke.