where your game ideas come from?

[ketmar]

where your game ideas come from? or, rather, how can one think out something that can be playable and fun? ;-)

i am asking because i can code (my Z80 skills are little bit rusty, tho), but i absolutely don't know how to turn my engine into playable game. if i try to write the engine first, then i don't know how to make it fun to play. and if i try to invent something fun... well, that's where it all ends.

of course, copycats of other games aren't counting. but even if i take some existing game, and try to "improve" it, the only outcome is the whole thing becomes a boring crap, too bad even for crap game compo.

i know that this is a question like "how do you breathe?" but maybe somebody could tell me something new? except "keep trying", because i keep trying for 20+ years, and still failing. ;-) i know that there is some magic secret, but nobody wants to tell me about it!

[catmeows]

Make game you want to play.

[ketmar]

Make game you want to play.

tried that. the huge problem is that i don't know what kind of game i'd want to play until i see and play it. ;-) this is the part of the problem here: to make something i want to play, i have to build a mental image of it first. i.e. invent a game idea. and that brings us to point zero. ;-)

[AndyC]

There is a great YouTube channel called Game Makers Toolkit which digs into game design features, why they are there and how they make a game more (or less) fun to play. Well worth watching a few.

[MatGubbins]

Use the ideas and game play/style from the games that you do like and try to combine them into something you would want to play and program - remember, it's your game and you can do what you want with it. Take as long as you want, release it, get feed back, rewrite some of it, improve it, add more bits, release an update or two.It's yours to do as you wish.
The main thing is to enjoy what you are programming, take a break for a week or two if things get you down and if that little routine refuses to work after 4 hours of frustrating bug hunting - go for a walk, return to the code and take a second look and find that bug. Good luck and happy bug hunting programming

[Joefish]

It has to be fun so it has to be something you want to play.

Think of games you like on more advanced (or even simpler) platforms, what made them fun, and how you could re-create the core of that gameplay within the Spectrum's capabilities, even if it looks nothing like the original.

Or games you enjoyed up to a point, and fix what spoiled it for you. Did they get too hard too soon, or too easy, or did they keep switching styles and you wanted one part of it to last longer? You could base a whole series of games on the mechanics from just one level of something like Mario Galaxy that you'd otherwise never see again.

Maybe expand a one-off minigame or 'bonus round' into a whole game. Take your favourite 'Game and Watch' LCD game and flesh out the mechanics into a full-on platform game.

Then steal a load of features from loads of other games. Just think of all the different add-on weapons you've seen in shoot-em-ups; which ones would you put in your own game? Could they work for a run'n'gun platform guy instead? And how could you make it all work with just one fire button?

Or do you just need to pick a style that suits a scroll and sprite routine you've written? Pick a genre, cherry-pick the best bits of the games that fit, and remix them into your own.

[catmeows]

Interesting. I have so many ideas that I could employ a small team

[Dr beep]

Ideas come on the flow...
Some are my own version of a game, others are boardgames with AI by the computer.
I had some ideas by combining games, like Snake with Pacman become Snakeman where you had to eat a pacman screen without byting your growing tail.
SNAKEBINGO, get the numbers of the bingocard but avoid other numbers, wrong number tail grows more. Each new screen more numbers. Also higher score when taken in order.
Some games I had the idea while driving. i saw a broken tyre and immediately had the idea for
MAX VERSTAPPEN FORMULA ONE PITSTOP SIMULATOR
Streetlight gave me the idea for Highwayman.
And I still have an idea for a game when the radio stopped transmitting when I entered another country.

[ketmar]

thank you all for trying to help! i want to note once more that my question is not a joke, it is dead serious. i mean, you can make jokes, of course, but i'm not trolling. yet i may become a little defensive (in the vein of "been there, tried that"). don't take it personally, please, its me angering to myself for being unable to do simple things other people can.

[mention]AndyC[/mention], thanks, found it. ooooh. so much videos... why can't they simply do one: "how to become a rockstar game developer in simple steps"?! ;-) so much interesting things to watch!

also, while i love videos on game design theory and practice... i can usually tell what is wrong with already written game... if it is not my game. if it is mine, it is either absolute crap, or a flawless masterpiece. a kind of mind block, and i can't cheat myself by pretending that it is not my game. i guess testers may help here, but it is yet another can of worms...


[mention]MatGubbins[/mention] eh... that's exactly what i tried with my latest effort. Firefly-like flying and shooting combined with Rex-like walking parts. i wanted to use slightly modified Firefly rendering engine, and the whole thing was dedicated to Joffa. so far only parts of the engine survived, because prototyped thing was either boring as sh*t, or "cheap Firefly with limited flying and useless walking segments". i didn't tried to make something original, but the result wasn't even fun. (sigh)


[mention]Joefish[/mention] eh... it always turning into overengineered boring tech-demos. if i leave the basics intact, the result is a copycat game, only worser than the original. and if i'll start modifying it... the result is half-finished MegaEngine, and no game. ;-) i guess this is because i have to learn how to stop... but i'm adding features not because i can, but because i am trying to turn my boring mess into something fun. this is prolly connected to my inability to recognize fun things ahead of time.


eh... now you can see what i meant by "being a little defeinsive", i guess. and i rewrote parts of this reply several times! ;-)

i think that the only realistic way is to find someone who love the same games as i do, and can make everything except the coding. now, there is a slight problem: in different times of a day i love different games... ;-)

[presh]

if i try to write the engine first, then i don't know how to make it fun to play. and if i try to invent something fun... well, that's where it all ends.

I had the same problem, I suppose. I'd not touched the Speccy for about 20 years, but had the urge to create something. The main impetus was to create an engine for a horizontally-scrolling platformer, primarily because I'd half-assed the idea all those years ago but never really got my head around writing sprites to the bizarrely-arranged display area.

I kinda knew I wanted to make a platform shooter, something like Ghouls 'N Ghosts but had no real idea what I wanted to put into it. So I started by making a generic sprite drawing routine and throwing together a simple space shooter using HiSoft BASIC & using that to unit test the various Z80 routines. It served a purpose but wasn't what I wanted to make, or play, at all.

It was only when I started fiddling around in SevenuP and came up with a graphic for a gun-toting dude that the sparks of inspiration started to fly. None of them were particularly coherent, but many of the classic Speccy games were... weird, to say the least! (think Joffa titles like Cobra and Pud Pud) - so I haven't let that faze me

So now I have a bloke with a gun, shooting a incoherent collection of hellish monsters and industrial machinery with a variety of weapons & power-ups. It's not quite the Ghouls 'N Ghosts clone I originally had in mind, but I'm glad of that because otherwise I'd have stumbled upon Invasion of the Zombie Monsters at some point during development and had a big cry... it's way better than what I hope to achieve!

It's still not finished, and I'm at that point where I want to add more enemy types etc but am pretty much out of memory but the point is, I guess, that it only got to this point by actually throwing some paint on the canvas in the first place, then fiddling about with it and adding more stuff when I was getting bored of it. It's been working out ok for me, though your mileage may vary of course.

[ketmar]

thank you all once more! reading this thread gave me a nice idea. dunno if it will ever become a game, but hey, it is at least something! i'll take the obscure action platformer (DOS) game i love, and will try to recreate it on Speccy. originally it was at 18.2 FPS, so i can aim at 16 FPS, and maybe replace scrolling with 2/3 flipscreen (to avoid it being monochrome). 3 frames is a plenty of time (lol, the famous last words! ;-), so it looks like something doable. it wasn't ported to Speccy before, it is fun to play (at least for me), and i don't have to design it myself. looks like a perfect plan! ;-)

[andydansby]

I’ve got 2 games I have out there. First one Xelda was started as an experiment on how to use the Mojon Twins MK2 engine and the scripting engine. I wanted to have as many screens and logic puzzles but I felt limited on the enemy logic. I could get enemies to move in straight lines, horizontally, vertically or diagonally. I could also get enemies to Straight towards the player. I wanted some AI.
This led to my other game “F’n Balls”. I created my AI and was fairly happy with that AI.
“F’n Balls” again started as an experiment and not as a game. I got to play around with an AI and also some basic physics in regards to bouncing off walls and angle vectors.

[Ralf]

Ketmar, doing a not scrolling game with 16 fps (every third) screen is very doable.

My advice is - if you want to do a game then don't plan too much, just start doing it Start drawing graphics,
show us some screens. Maybe you'll finish it, maybe not but you'll have fun, if only for a moment.

[ketmar]

Ketmar, doing a not scrolling game with 16 fps (every third) screen is very doable.

yeah, but the playsim is quite complex (many monsters, and they should be active all the time, and walk around the whole map, with not-so-trivial logic). of course, i can cheat here if needed (nobody will notice if some invisible monsters won't actually move on each game tic ;-), but i'd prefer not to.

also, i considered doing proper scrolling, but it will prolly kill colors. i think i'd better go with partial flip-screen, avoiding monochrome graphics (because i want maps from the original, so i cannot cheat here).

anyway, i will prolly do several prototype engines just to see what plays better.

show us some screens

no wai. each time i showing somebody any WIP, it becomes abandoned project. so either playable demo, or nothing. ;-)

[azesmbog]

i'll take the obscure action platformer (DOS) game i love

Spelunky ? )))

[ketmar]

i'll take the obscure action platformer (DOS) game i love

Spelunky ? :))))

i see what you did here! ;-) and this was the great illustrative example for this topic. i STILL unable to add gameplay there!

[chilledgamer]

I think there is a LOT to be said about carrying a small notepad and pen with you (or getting used to taking very quick notes on your phone).

I have so many ideas for games just when I am driving around stuck in traffic, or I hear a certain song, or see something funny.

So many great ideas that I had in great detail, but I never wrote them down and now the ideas are gone

[Joefish]

That's why I wrote a sprite editor for my DS Lite!

[ketmar]

(sighs) you're all talking about dealing with ideas you have. thank you, but... i have no ideas! that's the problem.

take, for example, Quantum Gardening. i really like it (it is soooo meditative), but i'd never came up with its idea on my own.

(whispering) i hoped you guys will tell me the drugs you're using...

[Heimdall]

(sighs) you're all talking about dealing with ideas you have. thank you, but... i have no ideas! that's the problem.

Can't say I ever had that problem. If anything, I'm on the exact opposite of that "spectrum" ( )

Over the years, as I was discovering new performance features of Atari Jaguar, I kept getting swarmed by the ideas. I keep a journal of all of them.

A modest estimate currently stands at 137 years to implement them all

(whispering) i hoped you guys will tell me the drugs you're using...

Morning coffee + Spotify spins me up just fine
Browsing Pinterest should be illegal. That thing is awful. I implore you, do not open that Pandora Box unless you want new ideas to start doing kung-fu in your noggin.

Alternatively, Red Bull gives me wings such that I often fly away overwhelmed by endorphins.

Can't imagine what it would be like if I introduced actual drugs into my system

[Dr beep]

Although I am mostly coding games on a 1K ZX81 my ideas come spontaneously.

I can give a few examples, ZX Spectrum and ZX81

SNAKEBINGO (ZX Spectrum):
This is a method of coding new games, combine 2 games into a new game. I coded SNAKE and added a BINGO element. You got a bingocard and
you need to take only your bingonummers, bonus for getting right order, penalty on mistakes.

SNAKEMAN (ZX Spectrum), Snake on a Pacman screen, also a combination; can you eat the dots before you bite the tail?

Some gameideas on a ZX81.

1K Hires Pinball
I was walking the dog and I thought about a pinball in 1K... too ridiculous, so I had to try.

Rabbits:
A boardgame based on a boardgame I played on holiday.... coded the AI to play against the computer.

Streethooker
A game that is based solely on the comment given by Villordsutch.

Highwayman
I drove on the highway and thought about repairing broken lights while cars keep driving.... that was the game.

Max Verstappen Formula 1 Pitstop Simulator
Again on the highway I noticed a broken trucktire. It gave me the idea for changing tires during a pitstop.

As you can see... ideas can come without thinking.