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How I Built an RPG In A Week From Scratch With No Budget

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Re: How I Built an RPG In A Week From Scratch With No Budget

#31

Post by unalone »

derefr wrote: post #18

Damn. This is impressive, yes, but when I read "RPG" I was expecting something with a Final Fantasy-sized plot; as a developer who is also a writer, I was intrigued about the idea of developing an interactive story within such a short timespan--something similar to NaNoWriMo, but producing a game design document rather than a book as output.

Think, though: NaNoWriMo gives you a month to develop the story. With game design, that means you'll need at least twice that to produce something of equal length, and that's working with a team.

This was more RPG mechanic rather than RPG. I still find that interesting, though, as the system I used to make RPGs in high school - RM2K, which is still out there - had the mechanics prebuilt and let you focus on detail. This game seemed to be quite the opposite.

Re: How I Built an RPG In A Week From Scratch With No Budget

#33

Post by Tichy »

unalone wrote: post #30
Tichy wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really good to know - one tends to brush over the little accomplishments in life. With regard to the 7 day RPG article, I want to add that participating in the 48h game programming competition was an extreme amount of fun. I thought that it didn't exist anymore, but just found that there was another one in December: http://www.ludumdare.com/

Game hackathons are great. My absolute favorite thing about game design is that it brings together such an incredible variety of people: graphics designers, composers, writers, programmers, interface builders. The best game designers are ones that have some understanding of every aspect of their game, even as they specialize. I'd imagine the same is invaluable to startups.

I only participated in 1,5 48h game programming competitions, but it was really great. Especially with the irc chat going along with it, following real time what the others were doing and getting quick answers to common game programming problems.

Re: How I Built an RPG In A Week From Scratch With No Budget

#34

Post by unalone »

Tichy wrote: post #33
unalone wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Game hackathons are great. My absolute favorite thing about game design is that it brings together such an incredible variety of people: graphics designers, composers, writers, programmers, interface builders. The best game designers are ones that have some understanding of every aspect of their game, even as they specialize. I'd imagine the same is invaluable to startups.

I only participated in 1,5 48h game programming competitions, but it was really great. Especially with the irc chat going along with it, following real time what the others were doing and getting quick answers to common game programming problems.

Was your competition on-site? As in, did people all meet somewhere? Or was it all hosted online?

Re: How I Built an RPG In A Week From Scratch With No Budget

#35

Post by Tichy »

unalone wrote: post #34
Tichy wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only participated in 1,5 48h game programming competitions, but it was really great. Especially with the irc chat going along with it, following real time what the others were doing and getting quick answers to common game programming problems.

Was your competition on-site? As in, did people all meet somewhere? Or was it all hosted online?

All online. The 48h competiton was really informal, no prices to be won either. Except for fun an fame.

Re: How I Built an RPG In A Week From Scratch With No Budget

#36

Post by 11ren »

moder wrote: post #22
kenver wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That reminds me of a story I read about Michelangelo. He stared at the lump of marble that was to become David for a very long time before making the first cut, when asked what he was doing he said "I'm working"

I think the one I've heard goes, the artist is imagining the sculpture beneath that lump of marble, and they explain the actual creation of it as just removing everything else that's not the sculpture.

I saw David in Florence, and I was amazed to see that they also had on display the prototypes for David. There were 3 or 4 or so. From memory, they were all massive blocks of marble, though some just had an arm or leg sticking out. I guess these are called "studies" or drafts. A bit more heavy-weight than a study for a painting.

If he could permit himself to start over several times, I can too.

Re: How I Built an RPG In A Week From Scratch With No Budget

#37

Post by anamax »

tlrobinson wrote: post #24
jws wrote: post #2

"Role Playing Game" or "Rocket Propelled Grenade"? Ah, Role Playing Game. I guess either would have been interesting.

As I'm not much of a gamer, at first I thought he built a rocket propelled grenade. I was surprised he hadn't been visited/silenced by the FBI, etc.

BATFE (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives) is the US agency with jurisdiction.

BATFE used to be part of the Treasury Department (because those items were regulated by tax law) but there have been attempts to move them to the Justice Dept; I don't know if any succeeded.

Re: How I Built an RPG In A Week From Scratch With No Budget

#38

Post by Retric »

snprbob86 wrote: post #16
Shamiq wrote: post #5

Interesting way of defining a week. In terms of real "work" weeks, I get the feeling this would have taken longer than only one. Anyone willing to venture a guess how long given the author only documented productive hours?

I'm more interested in the exclusion of thinking time. He didn't log the time she spent in the shower, but that's when he says some of his best ideas hit him. Personally, I could spend 2 or more hours thinking for every hour of work I do.

That's normal over a work week. I don't like to take my work home with me, but yesterdays hard problem tends to be quickly solved when I show up the next day. Which is one of the reasons I stopped working late unless I really need to.

Re: How I Built an RPG In A Week From Scratch With No Budget

#39

Post by whatusername »

frisco wrote: post #21
briancooley wrote: post #20

I really liked the "Intermission" where he discussed features that he would cut to meet the deadline. I think that's a very important skill and one I would like to improve on for my personal projects.

I agree. Cuts like that are hard, but doing them honestly and really reevaluating what's necessary at least one per dev cycle is really critical. It reminded me of Spolsky talking about how one of the best things they did on Excel 5 was being forced to cut tons of features: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000245.html point 13

Not sure if you sure his aftermath at the bottom (although I do agree that cutting things can be the best approach):

Lesson 9: Cutting features isn't always free

Some of the last-minute changes to Hackenslash really blew the game balance out of whack. The inability of monsters to cast spells, and the lack of need to for the player to 'conserve resources' as he pushes deeper into the dungeon trivialized some of the challenge to the game. If those features were going to stay 'gone,' the game needed another design pass to re-balance it and improve the modified gameplay. In other words, cutting features introduced an additional cost to the development of the game. This made me wonder how many retail games were released in a terrible state because the development team didn't have time to re-visit the game design after features were cut to meet schedule.

Re: How I Built an RPG In A Week From Scratch With No Budget

#40

Post by brlewis »

pg wrote: post #29
yellowbkpk wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like I have that incurable tendency to build stuff, but don't have time to use it. In fact, I'm extremely frustrated with my current job because I can't feed the need. How do others do it?

Joshua Schachter might be a useful example. He built Delicious while working on Wall Street. One of his most useful tricks was to build something every day, however small. I suspect that keeps your brain working in much the same way that running every day keeps your metabolism high.

I can attest to this. Most of OurDoings was built on 35-minute train rides.
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