Side note: I really need to come up with a good tag system, this is getting silly.Something that I've always wanted to do is make a role playing computer game, in a similar vein to the Final Fantasies.
Why? A few reasons:
- I've played games all my life. Making one just seems awesome.
- The technical challenge of creating a full fledged game from scratch is alluring. How do you handle the basic actions in a game? Opening and managing your inventory? Running combat? Leveling up characters? All of that requires a lot of (hopefully) smart design to put together.
- I always play games and feel, "wow, I wish they had done this game mechanic a little differently." Or, "man, this ability is really overpowered, you can ruin the challenge of the game by just abusing this." See reflect magic in the FF line of games, or psychic types in the original Pokemon Red/Blues (longggg time ago), or small guns in Fallout 3. There are tons of examples of not just "effective" strategies but "killer" ones. Strategies that are so strong they counter virtually everything and make the rest of the choices in the game pointless. I hate that, and making my own game allows me control over fixing those things.
- Speaking of game mechanics, I love looking at them. When I was younger I'd read manuals of games I didn't even own, just to see how they worked and figured out strategies. I could do that for hours without ever playing the game. I'd pick up a book on a board game or pen and paper RPG that I had never and would never play, just to see the rules and devise one possible effective strategy. Building my own rules is a natural extension of that urge.
- Face it, I'm a sucker for telling stories. Ever since I was a kid I've loved to let my imagination run wild. Making a game is just one way to do that.
A problem I've faced for a long time is getting an engine working. It's a ton of work and it's not easy. I've scrapped and rebuilt engines at least eight or nine times, each time improving on them. However, I've reached the point where I have a mostly working game engine, and now I need to put in actual content.
This is where I stalled up until recently. Why? I spent so much time thinking about the game mechanics that I didn't think about the plot. Now, typing up a story into very small chunks scattered throughout your in game world defined in Java objects is very tedious. That kept me from really approaching this seriously.
My solution? Combine my love for writing with my love for coding. What was that? You didn't know I love writing? Well, now you do. :)
I've been writing the story as it plays out in my head separately, as a stand alone story. As it develops, I adjust and edit it like I would any piece of writing. When I feel like it is complete, I transfer it into terms my game engine can understand.
Come to think of it, this is almost definitely the way real games are built, but I came up with this idea completely on my own and thus take all credit!
...yea.
Sephiroth, courtesy of deviantart.
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