Nuno Silva

The Beginning of a Game - Game Design

How many of you, developers, once though: I really liked to develop a game.

The answer is simple: Most of you.

But beginning a game requires a lot of work. It requires a good idea that must be worked until exhaustion in order to develop a good starting base. This is the begging of the Game design.

Game design is the most important part of making a game. Is the Design that will define the success of a game. The game can be programmed by the best programmer in the world. That doesn’t mean the game will have success.

So what is game Design? Is a process that defines all the concept, rules, way of work of a game.

So, in the beggining of this phase, a lot of things must be done. The original idea must be polished by all the elements of the team. All the ideas must be putted above the table and discussed. Another thing that also helps a lot is to study similar games. And similar games are not necessarily games of the same type. Means games of the same market:

Example: You want to create a game for the Web, so one of the things you must do is explore all the games you can find (wikipedia is a wonderful starting point) of the same market (Web games in general).

And why? Because the type of game is not what matters. What matters are the concepts.

A good example are the GameForge games. Correct me if i’m wrong but games like Bitefight and DarkPirates aren’t exactly the same? User interface apart , the engine looks exactly the same: a place to shop, things you can buy to upgrade you character(Bitefight)/Ship(DarkPirates), find enemies to attack,etc. These two games are a good examples of similar concepts with different background stories.

If a good study of the market is a essential to start the design of a game, a brainstorm also is.

Only imaging new ideas, discussing them in several different perspectives, sometimes with people outside of the game development area (friends, family) can make your game unique, or at least different enough to attract different kind people to play it.

For example, in the current version of Orion’s Belt, the concept that separates Orion’s Belt for the other web games in the market is the Board game. It’s the “thing” that separates Orion’s Belt from all the other Massive multi Player web games in the web.

Of Course, because all members of team the have grew and news ideas have appeared and, in the last 4 years, we managed to build a good community that is always getting new idea. So, in Orion’s Belt 2 we will have concepts that are new in MMPOG (Browser based) and will make the game even more attractive to new players.

So, the ideas that you need to retain of this post are:

• Choose the subject of the game
• Explore the market for that type of game
• Gather the ideas that you think that are most relevant for your game
• Explore other types of games. All you can think of. There is always a concept, a feature, a new idea that you can use in your game
• Discuss all the ideas that you have with your team, your friends, your family.
• And the gold rule: Sometimes the times what you like is not necessarily what can provide good form of entertainment.

UPDATE: there was a problem with my wordpress and comments were shut down. I already took care of the problem. you can now comment this post

I’m happy

At the end of my second day of full time development of the new version of Orion’s Belt, there is only one thing that i can say: I’m happy

My part is the battle (here is a shot for you that don’t know what the hell i am talking about). In some few words, the battle is no more than a chess like board game, with 8 different units on each side. Each one of them has it’s own attack, defense, range, special abilities and bonus.

In this 3rd version we decided not to change anything in terms of gameplay. The great optimizations will be in the Battle Core and in the Design. Why you ask? Because we consider that we have a pretty mature game, with a very strategic gameplay that our few (but very addicted) players love.

In the engine and in the design are our flaws.

The Engine is not extensible enough and all the Orion’s Belt Core is going to change. So, this is a good chance to upgrade all the code (meaning rewrite 90% of what we made in the past). Rewriting the code means:

• making the battle independent of everything else. If tomorrow we want to build a stand alone application with all this code, it will be possible (at least more possible than with the current version).
• making futures addictions to the core (like new units, new unit powers, new ultimate weapons) very easy to make. In our current version doing all of this is a synonym of making a lot of spaghetti code. In the new version we will simple extend some classes (one for each feature) and the engine will automatically use them.
• full support for 4 players in a single board.
• support for battles against an AI Agent.
• and much, much more

All of this using .NET 2.0 (the use of generics will boost the Battle Core performance).

The new design will also help a lot. We want to make the battle page one of the most cool pages of the new Orion’s Belt version (never forgetting that this page must be cool and usable at the same time). Must be something that the players see and say: WOOOOOOOO.

And who is the guy that going to make this happen? Marco Vale.

Visit his site: it’s worth the time spent

And it’s Official…

.. Orion’s Belt 2.0 started it’s development…

Tests with Photoshop

Although i am a programmer, i always had some interest for design. Yesterday i was making some tests with photoshop, and this was the final result:

Yes, it needs some work, but for a first try i think it is very acceptable

UPDATE:

Here is thefirst official wallpaper of Orion’s Belt:

here is the link for the 1024×768 version (there was a problem and i lost the 1600×1200. maybe next time). Enjoy

Blog Update

I added recently a new section to my blog (on the right) named projects with the list of all projects that i am currently working in.

The projects aren’t all mine. Pedro and Tiago are also part of them. And, in some of them, we have persons who insert all the content in the website (like Astroligia and 4Pilares).

Currently there are only 7 projects (because the other are under development):

• Orion’s Belt - a massive Multiplayer Browser based Game
• ziYU - it’s like our virtual company, where all the ideas come from.
• Sms - This website started has a prof of concept of a project we made. Here you can find Sms messages for all the occasions (Portuguese only).
• Centro e Cópias - is the website of my mother’s print store (Portuguese only).
• Bird Zone - This is a website where you can find a lot of information about birds.
• Astrologia - Everything you need to know about astrology (Portuguese only).
• 4Pilares - A webSite with a lot of information about child education (Portuguese only).

Centro de Copias, Bird Zone, Astrologia and 4 Pilares are still under construction. A lot of content is being added at the moment. Soon they will be at 100%.

Sms will soon be upgraded with a new design and new features.

The 2nd Version of Orion’s Belt will begin it’s development in january 2008. If everything goes well, in july, all of you can test (if you want of course) a new and improved version. We promise not to disappoint!

Orion’s Belt Tasks

Orion’s Belt 2.0 is being prepared. And, this time we are trying to plan the several steps of the overall development process. Not only who is doing what but, the several things that we will need when we start to development.

We splitted the development
in tree parts:

• The Resource Management
• The Battle
• The Tournaments

All the Resource management will be developed by Pre. The Resource managment will be completely new. The biggest change will be the the way buildings are construted. They will depend of time and will have levels. OB 2.0 will also have an a new innovation. There will be a graphical interface here the all the builds can be management. It will be a mixture of advance wars map and Travian map.

The battles are assigned to me. The engine will be basically the same but i’ll add some stuff so it can me mos extensible in the future. The boards will also have new backgrounds and new ships and attacks will appear. I will also be responsible by all the fleet stuff: universe movement, planet attack, universe representation, etc.

Finally Tiago will be responsible by the other type of competition in Orion’s Belt: The Tournaments. We will have several new types of tournament, the interface and representation will change, we will have Leaders, teams, tournaments with prizes, etc. Basically we will do try to do another game for the ones that love battles in Orion’s Belt.