Preparing Your New Game
From MechaSource Wiki
Before beginning to program your game, there are many key features you need to consider. Do not limit yourself! However, there has to be a certain connection between all your ideas, and the final product - your game. Let us briefly go through some of the things that would be wise of you to consider.
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[edit] The Concept
There are several things you need to consider when beginning your game, and you might be in a huge stream of ideas. The concept is the most important of all. You may already have an idea in your head - will it be a shooter? A platform game? A puzzle game? A strategy game? Once you've got the basic concept down, you can start moving on to details. There are two kinds of games, in which the concept needs huge consideration.
Singleplayer Game: Here you need to consider how easy it is for the user to get the concept and use it to his advantage.
Multiplayer Game: If it's a 'player vs player', or PvP, you need to make sure that the game is balanced. Usually you give each time an advantage over the other, but these should be equally fair, so that one team doesn't end up repeatly beating the other. If it is a cooperative game, then you have to take the singleplayer concept guidelines into consideration. Try to make it so both players have to work together at least once to achieve a goal, such as climb on the other player's head and jumping off to get to a high ledge.
[edit] The Graphics
The graphics and aesthetic appeal of a game are some of the most necessary components to keep in mind when designing your game. First, you need to decide whether you’re going to make your own graphics for your game, have someone make the graphics for you or use premade graphics. Using premade graphics typically implies that you will be creating a fangame. A fangame is basically a re-creation of an already existing game, using copyrighted characters. Even if you create your own graphics but still use copyrighted characters, it will still be a fangame. These are totally legal, so long as you do not sell them. However, being more original and making a totally new and fresh game can be both very enjoying to play as well as create.
So now you’ve decided what type of games with what types of graphics you want to use. Now what? If you’ve decided to create a fangame and not make your own graphics, you have to choose some that mesh and complement each other. The easiest way to do this is to stick to using graphics from just one game. However, your options will be fairly limited doing this. You can instead modify graphics from one game to fit your chosen style. To adapt sprites to other styles, try to sue the same colours, shading techniques and outlines. An alternative to this is to create all the graphics from scratch, which, if you’re good at it, is definitely more pleasing to the eyes.
If you’ve decided to make a game completely your own with an original concept, characters that are completely your own and custom graphics, you will probably be in for more work. First, you must decide on a main character, the villain, enemies, levels, and a story line. Sketching your ideas down is usually a good way to start. Once you’ve done all this and are ready to move on to the computer and work on the graphics you must make a few decisions. You really need to choose a style for your sprites. Sprites are all the graphics on a screen, from the player to the enemies to the terrain. There are many different styles to choose from, or you can make one up. First, decide on a colour scheme to use. There should be enough contrast between the colours so you can notice it, but not so much that it burns your eyes. Depending on the size of your sprite, you will need different amounts of shades for each colour. Making your sprites look like your drawings will take time, but the more you practice, the better they will become.
If you have the patience, designing graphics is one of the funnest section in creating a game simply because of how open it is.
[edit] The Gameplay
Once you have your idea's down and graphics ready ( Keep in mind though that you can start the programming section before you do the graphics ) you're ready to start figuring out the gameplay and programming. Gameplay is the most important part of any game. While some would argue graphics are better than gameplay, or vice versa, you always need to make sure that your game is playable and easy to learn ( But hard to master if you want to go down that road ). There are many aspects of Gameplay that you need to take into consideration. Making sure that the game doesn't get to hard to fast or stays easy the whole game is called a Learning Curve. A Learning Curve is how fast or slow a game grows in difficulty, whether it be a slope or a cliff. It's best to start out at ground level to teach the basics, then slowly increase the difficulty more and more as the game progresses and the player gets more skilled at the game. You'll also need to keep players interested. Try not to show off all your games features early in the game, but add features as the game goes on. This makes the game more interesting to play because you never know what kind of feature the next level will contain, and may be your motivation to continue.
