Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
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Your list of gameplay modes and your plans for them.
Be sure to pay special
attention to the challenges and actions you plan to offer the player in each mode
and any user interface feedback and control mechanisms you have specified.
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The general outline of the story you want to tell,
if any. If it's a branching or
foldback story, look at the structure that you made for it. Take note of the circum-
stances that cause it to branch. You will convert these into conditions.
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The names of any characters
you planned for your story. Unless these charac-
ters only appear in narrative events, they will certainly be entities in the core
mechanics.
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Your general plans for each level in the game.
Unless the level designers are
already at work, you won't have specific details, but you will know what kinds of
things you wanted to include in each level.
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The progression of the levels
that you want to provide, if the levels progress in
a sequence. Note whether any information carries over from level to level; you will
create entities to store the data.
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Any victory or loss conditions
that you expect to use (or that you anticipate
the level designers will want to establish).
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Any non-gameplay actions
that you may wish to include, such as moving the
virtual camera, pausing or saving the game, and other forms of creative play.
Certain nouns and verbs in this material may not apply to the core mechanics. If
a noun describes a passive landscape feature that acts as a challenge or something
purely cosmetic, you can cross it off your list. If a verb describes an activity unre-
lated to gameplay, such as setting the volume level of the sound effects, you can
cross that off, too.
List Your Entities and Resources
Once you have your list of nouns, decide whether each represents a resource, an
independent entity, an attribute of another entity—or perhaps none of the above,
in which case, you can cross those off the list. Now you have a list of resources and
entities. For each item on your list, consider these questions:
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Does the noun describe a resource—some item or substance that changes in a
general way throughout the game? Or does it describe an entity, a particular value,
or quantity?
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If the noun describes an entity, is the entity simple or compound? If simple, is it
symbolic or numeric? If symbolic, what states can it take? If numeric, what is the
range of numbers? What will its initial symbolic or numeric value be? These initial
data form a critical part of the core mechanics that you will tune throughout the
development process. Write them down in your document or in a spreadsheet.
