Hardest part of game design?

[Rhizu]

To make a long story short a friend let me mess around on his steam account with rpg maker for a bit. After completing Godspeak's helpful tutorial along with some youtube videos I think I want to try my hand at game design.

But since I can only mess around with the program for a few hours I want to work on some things to help me get better while I save up for my own copy. I have some questions I'd like to ask but if you have another wisdom to share I'm all ears.

What can I learn to help me get better along the way? Is there any part of designing a game that i should really forces on for now? Any programs I need or ones to make my life better?

And like i said any tricks of the trade you can share I'm all for.

I Should add in for contexts sake that i've only messed around with rpg maker for the last three days

[Bagool]

I have a couple points that might help.

The first is start small, and expand things as you hit your goals. Planning a bunch with an impossible goal to reach is a big pitfall for a lot of creators, as well as planning too much without actually working on anything, I was a victim of that for a while.

Always try new things, how you get better is by trying something you've never done before, failing, and trying again.

Game making is also a very multifaceted task, it requires a lot of effort in not only programming, but storytelling, writing, art, organization, sound design, and much more. Instead of focusing on just one at a time to get better at, work on them all at the same time. It might seem really inconvenient and ineffective, but it's the best way to stay on task and round out your skills.

[Godspeak]

Bagool pretty much hit this one on the nose, but I'd like to add something else.

Be okay with sucking for a while.

The biggest problem I had when I was starting out was that the stuff I was making was not the stuff that was in my head. It was tough to keep going in the beginning when I felt like my work just wasn't translating properly between my brain and the screen. This is a fact of life for game designers. You will never make something as good as what you imagine, but you get a little bit closer each time you do something. It's just like with playing a sport or learning an instrument, you can read as many tutorials as you want and study up as much as you can, but it's practice that makes you better.

Start small. Make something that takes 10 minutes to play, but make it as good as you can. Then polish. Then make something that takes 20 minutes, and so on.

Programs I use:

• Audacity - sound editing
• RPG Maker - of course
• Aseprite - pixel art and image editing

[VikingSpanko]

I'll add something as well, as a creator who haven't released anything yet:

* you're never happy, and you're never done! By this I mean, I'm making a small and short Twine game. It's almost done. It's been almost done for two weeks! I think there comes a time when you just need to release, accept it's not exactly what you had in mind, and take in the (hopefully constructive) criticism.

* don't plan a release date. It won't get done in time, certainly on your first project.

* don't make your dream project. I have a project a would love to make. Story, design, setting, everything is exactly what I would want to play, but I don't have the skills to do it justice yet. You need to make smaller, more manageable projects first, even if you don't love them.

* You will start over... repeatedly. Making your first project, you'll feel that progress is slow and the content crap. I started over probably four times, writing different concepts. I wish now that I had finished the short stories and released them. Maybe then players would see the progress made and given encouraging comments, rather than me having four failed and unreleased concept pieces? Besides, I think all of us would love more games to play, even short ones.

* Don't tell anyone. I love that you would like to make a game, but don't promise one before you know you can complete it. And don't tell anyone before you're able to release a demo, at least.


...but what do I know? I haven't even released my first game! This might be as good a time as any to ignore all my advice and say I'll definitely release my first game this Sunday. I'm very excited and nervous about it!

Good luck Rhizu in making your first game!

[CM_Zero]

Starting small is really the best advice for a beginner I think. I can only echo what previous posts have said in this regard.


I also find it helpful to plan out what you want to do in a text-file or some similar document beforehand. Put what you want to do into text first and write out some details. Summarize the setting, the gameplay, what scenes you want to have in the story. I find it helps me to work along a concept sheet like that when I'm working on my games.



Also don't add new stuff on a whim until the core of your game works. If you suddenly get an idea for a cool new scene or feature, just write it down in your document and come back to it later. That works better to both stay focused on the task at hand and also not to forget anything you could add on later.



If you don't have all the assets like character art and sounds right away you can work with placeholders for a while. You don't need to stop everything to search for the perfect spanking sound or character portrait the moment you need it. It usually goes better with at least my workflow to just use a placeholder and worry about the final assets later when you have more time and room to breath.



That's about all I can think of for now.

[aka]

I have a few thoughts.

The first, and most important:

1. Find something *other than spanking* that you find compelling about your game. I don't know about anyone else, but spanking scenes I create are a heck of a lot less sexy and engaging for me than are scenes created by other pepople. For me at least, a lot of the sexiness comes from the uncertainty about what's coming next, or being surprised by a scene, or laughing at the humor in it. While you can sometimes surprise yourself, more often than not you've got a scene twisting and twirling in your head long before you ever get to it. So if the only thing about your game that gets you excited about working on it are the spankings, you'll probably grow bored before too long.

I personally get super excited about the gameplay (coming up with different kinds of powers is *fun*), and the characters. I want to see what kinds of wild rilds Juliana and the gang take me on!

2. I'm actually going to disagree with Bagool a little bit. He suggests doing a little bit of everything at once, I'm going to suggest the opposite. Select a small number of aspects of game design and focus on them. For example, ignore sound effects completely and focus on prose. Eschew combat in favor of giving the player choices. Eschew choices in favor of getting combat right. This is a hobby project you'll be able to work on for maybe ten hours a week? You won't have time to do everything. In fact, pretty much every game on here ignores some things and focuses on others:

a. My game focuses primarily on combat and story, with some choices thrown in and a fair amount of customization (at least of the main character). No sound effects, no pictures. Hell, even the UI is a little bit awkward.

b. Bagool's Spanquest focused primarily on sound effects and a large variety of very different kinds of scenes to discover. There was some prose (especially later), but the scenes mostly rely on sound effects. Similarly the scenes themselves tend to be rather linear.

c. CM Zero's Peach Springs doesn't have any story choices at all. The game focuses on artwork, and resource management style gameplay, with some (very good) prose, and *lots* of customization.

d. Zekel's game focuses primarily on artwork and story. There aren't many player choices (most of what choices there are, are flavor), and there isn't really any gameplay other than discovery.

So I would suggest you ask yourself the following questions:

1. What parts of the game are most important to you? Story? Player choices? Compelling gameplay (what kind of gameplay)?

2. What are other games here lacking that you really want to see in a spanking game?

3. If there was *one* thing you absolutely wanted to get right, what is that thing? What does getting that one thing right mean?

[lasglipas]

A lot of things have already been said, so I try not to repeat the points of the others. So, here are my additional thoughts:


1) Try not to aim for perfection for everything at once. Instead, have everything at a minimum level that you find acceptable, and then optimise these things one by one. It might be more work (because you first finish something and then redo it later on) but it keeps you from getting burned out by your game


2) Listen to feedback and include it in your game. Sometimes you lose perspective of what is good game design with your game, so listen to your players! This especially favors games that get periodical update like most of the rpg maker games here, but you can also see that in bigger settings such as steam greenlight etc.


3) Don't be afraid to throw stuff away and/or rebuild, if it just doesn't work or you don't like it. Otherwise you'll be locked with a bad game (or a bad development environment) and that's simply not fun.

[serenaseddu]

Good question.
Let's start from the assumption that the game design itself is complicated, especially if indie. Where to work you are very often alone.

I agree with Bagool when he says that Game making is also a very multifaceted task.

Consider that the game is in fact one of the most difficult programs to produce.

The hardest operations I think are subjective, in my example I think they are animations.

Some animations of Abigail SD took me more than 4-5 hours.

A greeting

[Psyclone]

I would say that the hardest parts initially are the areas you are personally weakest at. For me, that's creating interesting characters and dialogue; writing has never been my forte. The plus side is that the more you work at it, the better you get, and then the hardest parts are no longer as hard; though something may take its place as you venture into new areas.


I would agree with aka on trying to start out small. I've got a few projects that that are just sitting there, because I've no idea where I want to go with them. I started off with some grandiose ideas, and was able to lay some solid foundation, but I didn't think far enough ahead.