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What is simplicity?

A topic by Littleman27 created Aug 02, 2022 Views: 458 Replies: 8
Viewing posts 1 to 3
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Hi,

The way I would describe my problem is that I am struggling with the concept of simplicity and what it really means to start small. How small is too small? and How big is too big? On top of that, I have about 3 days in the week that I can actually work on my projects which makes them take longer.

To elaborate more on what I mean by struggling with simplicity... I tend to think of a "small" idea in a 3D world. Something I would consider to be a "Basic and  simple concept." However, as planning and later development start to unfold I realize that there are a lot of in-between things that need to be completed in order to make this "simple" and "small" idea come to life. For example, my latest project started out as a project to teach me how to make a visually appealing game, and then once I got to a point in that phase I decided I wanted to make it into a "fun" game that is about "NPC's coming to a garden, making an order of food or a flower and I (the player) have to grow plants and vegetables to fulfill their orders". Something similar to "Overcooked." Because in my mind that seems like a "simple" concept.

I could go into detail about the unexpected challenges that I'm facing with it now, but to keep this short, I'm 5 months into the project (not including the time I stopped to work on another project) and I have roughly planned out 4 more months of development before I feel like it can be considered out of the "prototype" phase. Or in other words when all of the basic mechanics and visuals are in place and I just need to continue to expand it with more variety and potentially a few new features. And although I'm trying my best to incorporate fun and feedback into the design and development phase I don't know If it will be "fun" because it will be my first time making something with the goal of being "fun" and "first times" are not always expected to pan out, which I am fine with except for the fact that I anticipate that this project will take me 9 months before anyone is even actually playing it.

I generally refrain from attempting 2D games because I personally don't play a lot of them and I enjoy the visual appeal and immersion of a 3D game. But I'm not necessarily opposed to the idea if I were able to think of an idea that could become a "fun" game. So I guess the overall curiosity of why I made this post is to get your opinion on what a small game blueprint would look like that incorporates "fun" and won't take months to develop. When you start to expand on that idea, when do you tell yourself "no that's too big." And what would be considered "enough" to now start inviting people to play your game? Because in my case I don't expect people to want to walk around a small garden, look at a few trees and encourage their friends to do the same.

Honestly, I feel this only touches the surface of the challenge I'm trying to overcome but maybe we can talk about it in the thread or I can make another post once I figure out how to write about those other parts of the challenge. But nonetheless, I'm curious to read your feedback.

Thank you.

If you're looking at 3D, have you considered playing around with the tutorials on Unity learn? You make small prototypes during the courses which gives you insight into the software and gaming fundamentals.

It does sound like you're aiming to make a time management game. They are particularly complex in terms of how many things must work together and work separately at the same time.  It's a difficult game for a starter game.  Games like point and click adventure games - where people simply walk around and click things - or games with simple game play like Sokoban / space invaders are easier to make the first time round. 

 There's nothing wrong with making a complex game first, but you need a lot of motivation to keep going because as you say, it will take months before you can play it - and with starter games - there's normally many bugs which specifically are things that you did not foresee happening, and therefore did not provide code to cope with it due to a lack of experience. 

When I started I set myself a goal of creating 10 small games - at least 30 minutes each, each one had different game play and graphics features,  before attempting a full length game to gain the knowledge on coding and game play.  That way I was creating a playable game much faster which kept me motivated. It also meant that I had  own examples of most features that I was going to put into a larger game.

Tip: Play a lot of games in the genre you're writing. That is the best way to know if what you're doing is fun or tedious.  Avoid the aspects of those other games that you find annoying, and keep the aspects that you find fun.

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Thank you, these tips help a lot. I think my biggest takeaway was to play games in the genre I want to make games. Honestly, I'm not sure what you would call the genre of games that I have in my head, but I would like to figure out how to make adventure games, so maybe I will start there.

You mentioned that you made 10 small playable games. I would also love to do that, but what do you consider "small" and "playable?"
Also when you say that these games were 30 minutes each I imagine your referring to playtime and that is something I have been puzzled about recently. Because unless it's a story game I don't know how to judge how long the game would be played for. Perhaps not knowing my genre contributes to that confusion but if your games are not solely story games then, how do you determine the length of their playtime?

For me it was about making a game from start to finish, and adding in a new feature every time. So it would have a start screen, basic menu,  a final level, a win screen and a way to restart. The first few games I wrote did not have a save, but they were short enough that someone could play it through in a single session. They had at least 10 levels, and it takes about 2-3 minutes to complete a level and two to three difficulty settings so that there was replay ability.  Every game was a little longer, had more options etc.   

With an adventure game - work on how many scenes, or how many interactions, so consider each scene a level, and how long the player is going to walk around for i.e. how big the scene is and how much dialogue there is.  It's also something you learn with experience - you need to first create a playable scene and then time yourself - if it's taking you 10 seconds or 10 minutes, there's a problem.  (the first is too short - put more obstacles in the way, the latter is too long - players will get bored, have more scene changes.)  

My criteria for free games is that it should not take someone longer to find, download and install the game than to play it. And it should be a game they can replay to make it worth their while i.e. it will be different next time because of random elements. (That's a little harder to do in adventure games.)

My personal criteria for the the paid games I develop is that it should be at least 5 hours of game play (which includes reading the stories - those that have them in) - to justify the price. (That's more or less the benchmark for casual games - I read a lot of forums / reviews to get a feel for what people liked / disliked - and below that benchmark people often ask for their money back - longer than that adds more value, you can charge more or they feel that they are getting good value for money - this is at the $2.99 - $6.99 price point.) 

You can find good quality adventure games here (free) that will give you an idea. 

Thank you, I appreciate those kinds of guidelines to work within. I feel that keeping in mind the time frame of longer than 10 seconds and shorter than 10 minutes will definitely help when trying to figure out which game idea will be ideal for me to put my time into. And thank you for the link as well. Something else I am gleaning from these discussions is that it may be beneficial for me to spend more time in the forums. I generally watch a lot of YouTube videos, Unity documentation, and other articles but I imagine the forums are where I will learn about the "real world" challenges and lessons that people are learning.

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I don't know anything about Overcooked or working in 3D, but if you want to finish a game in under a month, you probably need to have the basic gameplay prototyped in a week or two.  Some genres are just more complicated to program than others.  Browsing some game jam entries might give you an idea of the type of games that people make very quickly.  

I work (I think) relatively slowly, and all of the finished games in my profile took 1-2 weeks to develop, except MM0, which took two months.  This one was far more complex than the others, but is still fairly bare-bones by RPG standards.  For that one, implementing the rules, mechanics, and GUI took about half the time, and the content and some basic polish and playtesting took the other half.  I still spent a lot of time after the initial jam period adding more features, polish, and fixes.  If I had to do it again in half the time, I would probably slash the RPG mechanics to the bare minimum to create a more arcadey experience.

Thank you, these are helpful tips. I hadn't considered that "Some genres are just more complicated to program than others." I usually only thought about the game objective itself and perhaps that is why the unexpected things slowed me down.

If you don't mind me asking, I'm curious about my next questions because it's nice to get some experience in knowing the way that other people work on their projects. When you spent 1-2 weeks developing your games, How many days do you think you worked on it in a week, and for about how many hours per day?  One of the reasons I am curious is because I generally only have time during the weekend to work on my games and I feel that may be slowing down my progress.

I also appreciate your suggestion to look at the games that are published in game jams. That is something else I hadn't considered. I generally just browse that section and get lost because I don't know what to look for, but I'll try again :)

Something else that interests me is that you said you made an RPG game in two months. I don't generally play RPG games so forgive me if I'm way off... But when I think of RPG games I imagine them including Inventories, characters, missions, maps, maybe some animals, a storyline, interactions, music, rewards, save points, etc... And while all of these things can be cut down — for example maybe the game only has 1 map instead of 5 — It is not much different from what I'm trying to achieve. Perhaps I'm just slower lol, but what do you think helped you to efficiently develop those aspects of the game? and Also what did your "bare-bones" game include or not include that made the initial development phase quicker? 

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If you don't mind me asking, I'm curious about my next questions because it's nice to get some experience in knowing the way that other people work on their projects. When you spent 1-2 weeks developing your games, How many days do you think you worked on it in a week, and for about how many hours per day?  One of the reasons I am curious is because I generally only have time during the weekend to work on my games and I feel that may be slowing down my progress.

I work full-time but don't have many demands on my time outside of that.  Most of these were made for game jams, so I worked more intensely on them then I otherwise would have, probably a couple hours a night on weeknights and more on the weekends.  They would probably have taken 3-4 weekends to complete if I were only working on them then.  I also can't keep up a jam pace of development indefinitely, so this time frame doesn't necessarily scale up for larger games.  Note that these aren't extensively-polished games with full option menus and such; they were made quickly to a minimal standard, and I moved on after finishing them.

Something else that interests me is that you said you made an RPG game in two months. I don't generally play RPG games so forgive me if I'm way off... But when I think of RPG games I imagine them including Inventories, characters, missions, maps, maybe some animals, a storyline, interactions, music, rewards, save points, etc... And while all of these things can be cut down — for example maybe the game only has 1 map instead of 5 — It is not much different from what I'm trying to achieve. Perhaps I'm just slower lol, but what do you think helped you to efficiently develop those aspects of the game? and Also what did your "bare-bones" game include or not include that made the initial development phase quicker? 

The game is a traditional dungeon crawl, so I asked myself, what does a dungeon crawl really need and what can I do without?  Thinking about what worked in the classic games was helpful here.  Graphics are low-resolution, largely iconographic, and all flat images / sprites that I could draw fairly quickly.  You control five characters, but they are predefined, not custom.  Combat is turn-based against up to ten enemies at once.  Stats and skills are very simple and balance is hand-tailored to this scenario; it is not a full-fledged and fully-scalable system.  There is basic equipment and inventory, but only static NPC interaction, no shop feature, and no "side quests" as such.  The game world is small - five dungeon levels, each a 12x12 grid, and your objective is to explore them all and overcome the challenges presented in each, ending with a final boss.  The game being built on a grid made it easy to rapidly snap dungeon geometry and events into place.  There are save/load and automap features.  I wrote a post-mortem where I talk about some of these decisions and fitting the work into the allotted time frame.

Turn-based combat in particular appears straightforward, and it some ways it is, but it also demands a lot of menu programming and a strictly-controlled cadence of play and visual feedback.  This can be considerably more time-consuming to implement than, say, moving a fireball across the screen each frame and checking for collisions (unless maybe you're working from scratch and haven't implemented a collision API at all yet).

If your objective is just to tinker and play with code, then it doesn't really matter how you spend your time, but if your objective is to ship the game, the key is really to nail down your scope early and try not to get sidetracked adding stuff that might be cool, but isn't really important.  You can always add that stuff in the sequel.  As hobbyists, it is crucial to not let ourselves get carried away, because we can only do one thing at a time.

Also, know when good enough is good enough.  That goes for both game design and code architecture.  Don't spend time significantly refactoring code unless doing so will really save you time later.  Otherwise, save it for the next game.  It is much easier to declare a feature complete if you know when to stop.  I learn better practices and techniques with each game I complete, and since my next game is also an RPG, it is built directly on the framework I created for the last one.  I can now make something bigger and better, with new features, improved workflow, and enhanced playability, while also having shipped a complete game in the mean time.  Shipping is good for motivation.

I find it helpful to design things on paper first.  Whether it is a complex algorithm, a dungeon map, a statistical formula, a monster's behavior script, a gameplay feature or whatever else, I get my clipboard and sit in my bedroom for a while to work it out.  This eliminates the distraction of the IDE and level editor and lets me focus entirely on creating or problem-solving.  Then when I come back to the computer, it is much easier to implement the design I have settled on.

That's an interesting point, that building the smaller RPGs has helped you to make larger RPGs since you have already constructed those components. I remember in a Unity convention video on YouTube a guy was talking about prototyping and how for his company they made prototyping quicker by having a library of tools and components that they could just pop in to get things working quickly. That is something I've considered doing but I see now how easier it will be to do that if I focus on my specific genre — whatever that will turn out to be.

I can certainly say that I  am guilty of not knowing when to stop my projects. That is something I can work on. For example, my garden game was never meant to be a full game it was just purely to teach me a few principles of visual design/art which I already benefited from.