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Forums - General Discussion - Anyone interested in making an RPG?

FJ-Warez on 20 February 2008

Ok one last bump, if there is going to be such a project, somebody take the lead... and put some order... If not, well, this is the second VG Chartz videogame to die before comes out...



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Legend11 on 20 February 2008

I'm interested in working on this as well either with the coding or story writing.



crumas2 on 20 February 2008
rendo said:
My thoughts are roughly this.

We'll need 2-3 story writers, these guys/gals would determine the story of the game, main mission, enemies, side quests, dialogue, and pretty much the core ideas behind the game. These people would need to have a powerful, unique imagination to decide practically everything about the game.

We'd need a few "map builders" and these guys would be responsible for creating the landscapes, a general idea of what the world looks like, buildings, pretty much everything you'd see. Could also maybe have them do character design as well. These guys/gals would have to work with the story writers to make everything mesh together.

Finally there'd be a few of the "programmers" and these are the guys who take all the information, such as dialogue and quests and what not and make them happen in the game.

The flow of development would be something like this.

1. StoryLine developed and agreed upon.
2. Setting is developed and agreed upon.
3. Writers begin working on the story/plot with as much detail as possible.
4. While 3 is going on, mappers are creating the areas that were agreed upon in 2.
5. Maps are all finished.
6. "Programmers" add in NPCs and the like and add dialogue from writers and other related information.
7. Finished Product? I dunno :P

Flow is important, so this would be a project where everyone has to be mature, calm and have the time to do their part. Everything should tie in in the end. Like say the world is an ice world caused by some natural disaster, we can't really have turbans or light clothed NPCs or characters, or desert areas.

Everything should be democratic so any ideas or plans should be agreed upon by the group and not by whoever is doing whatever role in the project.

At least that's how I think it should go if we ever decide to do this.

Sounds like a good plan (I manage a software development team for a living) except for one thing... I recommend staying away from decision by committee.  It's the bane of the software development world.  You would likely want to be the "tech lead", gather input from all parties, then make a decision.  If everyone agrees, great.  If not, then you have to make the call to decide direction.

 

Having a good 50,000-foot plan that everyone can agree on will help you build your team, but the devil's in the details and you really need a team-lead to make the calls when it comes time to execute.

 

Just my $.02. 



sc94597 on 20 February 2008

Oh could I test for glitches. We should have a whole group do that so nobody cheats.



rendo on 22 February 2008

I'm still up for it. Don't really have the time to be the "man in charge" so if someone else wants to step up and do that, then by all means. The whole point is to work as a team to speed up the process, so whoever wants to be in charge.... I'll still help, just can't be a critical part of the team due to real life restraints.



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supermariogalaxy on 23 February 2008

I wanna bunp this thread/be a part of it!!! I could handle the basic characters/weapons...



 

twesterm on 23 February 2008
crumas2 said:
rendo said:
My thoughts are roughly this.

We'll need 2-3 story writers, these guys/gals would determine the story of the game, main mission, enemies, side quests, dialogue, and pretty much the core ideas behind the game. These people would need to have a powerful, unique imagination to decide practically everything about the game.

We'd need a few "map builders" and these guys would be responsible for creating the landscapes, a general idea of what the world looks like, buildings, pretty much everything you'd see. Could also maybe have them do character design as well. These guys/gals would have to work with the story writers to make everything mesh together.

Finally there'd be a few of the "programmers" and these are the guys who take all the information, such as dialogue and quests and what not and make them happen in the game.

The flow of development would be something like this.

1. StoryLine developed and agreed upon.
2. Setting is developed and agreed upon.
3. Writers begin working on the story/plot with as much detail as possible.
4. While 3 is going on, mappers are creating the areas that were agreed upon in 2.
5. Maps are all finished.
6. "Programmers" add in NPCs and the like and add dialogue from writers and other related information.
7. Finished Product? I dunno :P

Flow is important, so this would be a project where everyone has to be mature, calm and have the time to do their part. Everything should tie in in the end. Like say the world is an ice world caused by some natural disaster, we can't really have turbans or light clothed NPCs or characters, or desert areas.

Everything should be democratic so any ideas or plans should be agreed upon by the group and not by whoever is doing whatever role in the project.

At least that's how I think it should go if we ever decide to do this.

Sounds like a good plan (I manage a software development team for a living) except for one thing... I recommend staying away from decision by committee. It's the bane of the software development world. You would likely want to be the "tech lead", gather input from all parties, then make a decision. If everyone agrees, great. If not, then you have to make the call to decide direction.

 

Having a good 50,000-foot plan that everyone can agree on will help you build your team, but the devil's in the details and you really need a team-lead to make the calls when it comes time to execute.

 

Just my $.02.


 %100 agree (completely missed that the first read through).

I know people will hate it, but there absolutely must be a chain of command in who has creative say in what.  There will be arguments and there must be someone who has the final say.

Since this wouldn't be a company you can't really do a traditional ladder, but I imagine it would go something like this for a project like this:

  • Lowest say
    • designers (level, game)
    • artists
    • programmers
    • sound
  • Next up
    • lead designers (level)
    • lead artist
    • lead programmer
  • Next Up
    • producer (would mainly keep people on schedule here, more of a project manager)
    • creative director
  • Highest
    • game designer

This is a bit formal for a for fun project but whatever the case, it's best to think this through and decide who has what say, who reports to who, and who has final say.  This should all be figured out before anything is done on the actual game.

Also, there's lots of way to make the priority ladder here, this was just off the top of my head.

Oh, and one more thing and I'll shutup for a while.  When in the early stages of the game DOCUMENT EVERYTHING.  The planning stage is by far the most important and make sure you plan every level, every mechanic, art style, everything.

There should be documents

  • High Concept Document
    • Just a very high level description of the game.  What's the base story, what's the theme, who is it for, what type of gameplay, ect.  Everything here is very high level and light on details.
    • Make this document before any others.
  • Game Design Document (GDD)
    • contains the level design documents for each level (or map I suppose in an RPG's case)
    • contains the story (might want to make this a seperate document too and then include it in the GDD) .
    • Contains all the gameplay
    • Contains high level descriptions of the game
  • Assett and Development Plan
    • Complete list of all art assetts for the game
    • Complete list of all sound assetts for the game
    • Complete list of all animations needed
  • Technical Design Document (TDD)
    • contains a writeup for all the systems of the game
  • Level Design Document (LDD)
    • Each level gets its own document
    • Contains all events, battles, conversations, maps, everything that goes on in that particular level
    • Should be able to give this to anyone and they should know how to build the level (assuming they're competent with the tools).
Once again, that's probably a bit formal again, but if you want to actually finish this thing making all those documents will greatly increase your chances of finishing and making a much smoother experience.

 

SeriousWB on 23 February 2008

I'll be your project motivation executive manager for £15,000 per annum



supermariogalaxy on 23 February 2008

^ And the weapons/characters....



 

twesterm on 23 February 2008

Weapons and characters would be placed in the GDD except where it actually talks about the art and that would be placed in the Asset and Dev Plan (and I'm even talking about a condensed one of those too). I suppose there should also be some sort of style guide but I'm really not an artist so I forget those things sometimes. :-p

And yes, I forgot music. That would probably be placed in the GDD too and get mentioned in the LDD's.

-edit-

And once again, what I have up there is extremely formal and I don't think we would need anything that formal.  We would just need to make sure to have a chain of command and a decent Game Design Document and decent Level Design Documents.

Planning makes everything better!