How to Begin

[StrawberrySmiles]

This feels like such a strange topic for me start, considering I've made games before (never finished, but still).


Considering I wish to make at least one RPG in my lifetime, one began to form in my head. Of course.


I have the basic plot, some playable characters, one location, and possibly a bit more. Knowing all this, I still sit here not working on the ACTUAL game. Like, I guess I'm not sure if I start with that one location and make stuff up or not.


Or maybe the fact I have to outline throws me off. o.o


What do you guys do when just starting a game?

 

[mlogan]

I start by making an outline based on the plot of what scenes I will need. For example:

Intro Scene - How do I start the story?

Scene 1 - What is the first big event?

Scene 2 - Where do I want to go next?

From there I determine what settings I will need for each scene and start building maps. Then I start getting into more details - what are the smaller events I need to make these scenes happen? Who will my characters need to interact with? What enemies will be encountered in each area? What other interesting things can I add?

 

[Peridot Gaming]

What worked for me (although admittedly I have not actually finished my first game before dropping it somewhere dark and forgetting about it) is to make a full list of all of the main quests that make up the story.  Breaking these down into each of the relevant quest tasks helps me to identify for each quest: i) the characters that are needed; ii) the locations that are needed; iii) the flow of the storyline.

I would take that quest list and break it down into different chapters that contained however many of the quests that fitted with the story (mainly by duration or locations) then just focus on one chapter at a time.

From chapter list and quests I started looking at each of the locations needed, mapping them, populating them, etc.  I would just focus completely on the main quest storyline until it was complete so effectively the game could be played along the main quests from start to finish which then gives me the overall feel of whether it feels right or needs to be reworked.

I'm on my second game now, although I'm at a similar point with you where I know the outline of the story, locations, and characters, but I'm also just sitting on the forum not actually working on it.  Time for me to buck my ideas up and actually follow my own advice. 

 

[Bastrophian]

Well, i also hope to buckle down and make a playable game at some point...im kind of ADHD though...so theres that i have to contend with. Ideas come easy to me, but actually executing them is hard. I cant really give you any advise about how to flesh out a story, usually i just let the ideas, the twists and turns, come to me as i go along....but when it comes to mapping, it REALLY helps to draw out a general depiction of what your map needs to look like on actually paper, and NEVER make a map any bigger than it has to be. Also, remember, your just one person (unless your actually a member of a team, in which case never mind) its really easy to get daunted when you realize all the work that goes into making a good game, and have your ambition deflated.     

 

[byronclaude]

I am currently experimenting...   I decided to finish entirely the mapping of a whole world...  towns, interiors, and dungeons...  with only a basic quest in mind.  With one town and one dungeon left to map in this entire world...  I can now say that I am more likely to finish this project than any project before that I have started.  All that is left is charactors, cut-scenes, npc's, monsters, and database...   Now that I can focus on these elements without the burden of mapping, I think it is going to yeild true results for the first time ever. 

It is to say:  the world existed before the characters or the quest.

 

[Setheim]

I guess this is a bit like writing a story / novel. Or at least I use the same approach... since I don't usually have the desire to work in order or in a particular chapter all day, I simply work on whatever I want to do on that moment.

In games; If I don't feel like mapping, I just create a very basic rough map to put my events on, or maybe if all I want to do is mapping then I forget about the story and focus on the maps themselves. There are times in which I open RMaker just to open the database, and other times in which I don't want to open it unless it's extremely nessesary. I then connect it all, I like this approach because I'm lazy and stubborn, and if I force myself into doing something I don't feel like doing I may drop the whole thing. 

I hope this helps and best of luck.

Cheers. 

 

[magnaangemon01]

I get an idea for the story and then make the world map(s)

 

[Tai_MT]

Let me be absolutely clear about one thing.  Just one thing.  It's extremely important.

Your intro, no matter what you decide it to be...  It has to capture the mood of your entire game.

Too many people start their games with text crawls (Guilty!) or in the middle of some battle.  Starting your story in these places can be done well...  It's just that it seldom ever is.  Why?  Because it sets the mood for the entire game.  Those first 10 minutes of your game have to set the tone, the setting, and the plot.  I advise you to go through a lot of RPGs that exist...  Just go through a ton of them and set a stop watch to beep you after the 10 minute mark of the intro.  Notice what the intro scenes consist of and how the game is set up in those first 10 minutes.  That intro will set the mood and pacing for the rest of the game.

Two cases in point:  Skyrim starts off on a slow plod full of exposition in which you're discovering that you're basically screwed.  You find out that most people will kill you and ask questions later, but there's maybe a handful of people who genuinely care that you're kind of an innocent bystander or are willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.  When things quickly go to crap, you realize you cannot rely on any of the NPCs to get you out of a scrape.  They'll give you directions or flail about in a sword fight, but you're on your own here.  Those first 10 minutes set up the entire pace of the game as well as the setting and world building.

The other case in point is Final Fantasy 6.  We're given visuals of places we've yet to see and are about to see... people we haven't yet met... we're told about the War of the Magi and given an ominous prediction about the fate of the world....  Then we're told that we're controlling a slave with extraordinary power who lacks the ability to disobey.  We're told we're looking for Espers and it's left a mystery to us what they are, why we need them, and why we're attacking a town to get one instead of buying one.  After entering the mines, we see something happen between our main character and a frozen esper and then we're in a house.  We're told to escape to a rebellion because they will help us, though they may want our power in return.  We learn about the state of the world based upon how the villagers react to us, based upon having to escape, based upon being attacked, we learn that we were basically working for really bad guys, but we don't know who our character is or how she came by powers nobody else has.  Those ten minutes set up the themes of the game that will carry on until nearly the end of the game and culminate in our main character having to make a decision about what to actually do with her life and how to use her powers.

Whatever your intro is, it will reflect upon the rest of your game, so you need to be careful about how you do it.  It needs to set up the basics to get us going and set the mood for the rest of the game.  Battle without deep explanation or purpose is just battle and doesn't set the mood for anything.  Scrolling text is just an information dump if it isn't set up with some kind of flair as if it were some kind of really important and specific legend/prophecy.  Let's look at Star Wars for a moment...  You can ignore all the opening crawls in movies four, five, and six.  You can likely ignore them in the first three as well.  The scrolling text in those movies serves no purpose because the ten minutes after those crawls sets up absolutely everything we need to know about the movies we're watching.  In that way, the text crawl is really fantastically stupid and out of place (which might be why it ended up being so iconic... since it's such a slow crawl and the characters explain the plot to us in the next ten minutes, so it's useless).  You need to avoid text dumps like that as well.

Think about the mood and themes you want to portray in your game.  That's how your intro should be.

 

[nio kasgami]

I look my envirronement and after I left my imagination float

after I catch the idea I imagine the story 

I alway begin to create the start of the story and the end

I can meditate on a story a long time I am this type of people 

Generally for create sub-devvelloped story take me 2 week aprox 

after I begin to imagine how will be my gameplay my universe and all ;3

after art

after script

after......urg mapping

and other stuff ;3

 

[Matseb2611]

Do you mean how to start working on the game or how to make a proper intro to your game?

If you mean the former:

Normally I'd suggest to plan first, have the basic skeleton of the plot and all the main characters figured out. Decide on which locations will be visited and why, and how all this is relevant to the main plot. It also helps to know what fundamental aspects of the gameplay will be - what sort of battle system are you going to use, will there be any puzzles, any game mechanic that will play a crucial role in the story, and so on.

Don't spend too long on the planning stage. It's easy to get caught up in the ideas stage and to never start the project, always thinking as though you're not ready. Just remember that having ideas and bouncing them about is not making a start. Some of the things that I do in the very beginning before I even begin mapping and eventing the story are deciding on and making/editing if necessary the sprites and faces of the main characters, as well as sorting out the database. However, database can be very tedious, so some things in it I don't get round to until much later. For example, there's not much point making an entire list of enemies at the start. I tend to create the enemy entries as I go along, one area at a time. Looking through art and listening to music you're planning on using in the game is recommended as well, because these things give you inspiration and can even bring in some new ideas out of the blue.

Now if you mean on how to make an intro to the game, my personal recommendation is to start it with an important scene. Don't go into details of the backstory at the start, because most players won't care about it. They haven't gotten attached to the game yet. Starting it off on a very slow and happy note is also not going to interest many people. The first 15-20 minutes should provide a hook. This is the stage that the main conflict of the story should become apparent and we should get familiarised with at least one main character. Start it with a BANG! Action, fighting, disaster.

 

[StrawberrySmiles]

Planning seems to be necessary.

I like the idea of making as many maps as you think is needed (or all, if you know all locations) and then do the rest later. I love mapping, so that's definitely an option for me. :3 The only thing I dread is putting all of my tilesets together. Even with my resources organized, I always think there's something else I require or missed. XD

 

[mlogan]

If you like mapping, then it's a great place to start. Like I said, I would just do it in an orderly manner - write down all the places you know you will need, with the expectation what it will evolve over time.

Lists also really help me when I'm unfocused on where to start.

And as for the tilesets - getting set up to the best you can right now, but yeah, if you are anything like me, you will be constantly messing with it. For me, it's just a part of the process.

 

[whitesphere]

Normally, I start with an idea I like, like "What if the world had 6 months to live?"

Then I start by world-building, again by answering questions to myself, such as:

* Is this present/past or future?

* Is magic a factor?  If so, how big a factor?   And how does magic itself work?

* What happened to GET the world to this state, on a high level?  This is the world's backstory.

Then I ask what kind of characters will be in the party:

* Where did they come from in the world?  How did it affect their outlook?

* Why exactly are they involved in this game?    People don't normally go "Oh, an epic quest I can venture on for years!  Count me in!" , leaving their entire life behind, without having a good reason, even if it is "I'm so bored I just want something to do." 

* What personality qualities do they have?

And what types of classes.  Sometimes these are "hard-wired" to specific characters, sometimes the player can choose the class.

Then, from a story perspective, this sounds strange, but I write the END first ("The party ends up fighting a powerful world-controlling AI") and work my way backwards until I reach a good beginning ("Two party members run from the Captain of the Guard")

I find this approach easier because, at each step, I can ask myself "How would this happen?" and the answer forms the previous step in the plot.  If I get stuck, I then ask "Could anything else lead up to this?"

By the time I reach the beginning, I have a logical plot laid out.  If I want to introduce plot twists, I can do so by having strange but logical answers to the "How would this happen?" question.

Once I have the plot, I then start planning out the Skills and Equipment I'll need for each Class.  And eventually I create the World Map before I create the first town map.

 

[Matseb2611]

I like the idea of making as many maps as you think is needed (or all, if you know all locations) and then do the rest later. I love mapping, so that's definitely an option for me.

Just be careful that this idea could backfire very badly. If you do your favourite part right away and leave the less favourite parts for later, you'll forever be seeing that huge stack of tasks the project still requires that you hate doing and your project might end up abandoned. One of the important aspects of game-making for me is to balance out favourite bits with less favourite bits. That way there is always something to look forward to. For example I don't really enjoy mapping out the towns/village areas. I even more so hate coming up with NPCs and deciding what they'll say. But at the very least, if I know after this town area I'm going to get working on a fun dungeon and even more fun boss fight, I've got something to look forward to.

 

[bgillisp]

Just be careful that this idea could backfire very badly. If you do your favourite part right away and leave the less favourite parts for later, you'll forever be seeing that huge stack of tasks the project still requires that you hate doing and your project might end up abandoned. One of the important aspects of game-making for me is to balance out favourite bits with less favourite bits. That way there is always something to look forward to. For example I don't really enjoy mapping out the towns/village areas. I even more so hate coming up with NPCs and deciding what they'll say. But at the very least, if I know after this town area I'm going to get working on a fun dungeon and even more fun boss fight, I've got something to look forward to.

Agreed. I read a blog by another developer, and he recommends the same thing. Spread yourself out between the enjoyable and not enjoyable tasks, so as to not have to abandon the game. Or, you could do my approach and dedicate a day or a week to all the not enjoyable tasks and see how many you knock out. Which is, incidentally, what I'm doing right now, spending this week redoing the database, as many of my items/weapons were placeholders while I started the plot. Not fun, but it had to be done sometime, so I figured this week was a good as a time as any.

 

[cabfe]

I started my game with a story. A beginning and an end with as much as possible in-between. In my specific case it was more of adapting my novel into an interactive game but there still was a lot of work. The medium is different and should be used properly.

Then I started working on a prototype to know what can be done, and how much work it'd require. I had a lot of ideas that didn't go into the actual game thanks to that prototype. Sometimes, while experimenting, you can even get new ideas for a puzzle or a special effect.

At that stage, you can still modify your story without big repercusions.

Only after all that did I start mapping the areas I knew would be in the game. I don't believe in the "map a lot before and make a game with it after". The maps should have a purpose and support the story, not the other way around.

The main thing is to have the clearest idea of your game before and during developement.

Avoid dark corners as much as possible as they will drain your creativity and willpower. Set a goal and go for it.

 

[nio kasgami]

Do you mean how to start working on the game or how to make a proper intro to your game?

If you mean the former:

Normally I'd suggest to plan first, have the basic skeleton of the plot and all the main characters figured out. Decide on which locations will be visited and why, and how all this is relevant to the main plot. It also helps to know what fundamental aspects of the gameplay will be - what sort of battle system are you going to use, will there be any puzzles, any game mechanic that will play a crucial role in the story, and so on.

Don't spend too long on the planning stage. It's easy to get caught up in the ideas stage and to never start the project, always thinking as though you're not ready. Just remember that having ideas and bouncing them about is not making a start. Some of the things that I do in the very beginning before I even begin mapping and eventing the story are deciding on and making/editing if necessary the sprites and faces of the main characters, as well as sorting out the database. However, database can be very tedious, so some things in it I don't get round to until much later. For example, there's not much point making an entire list of enemies at the start. I tend to create the enemy entries as I go along, one area at a time. Looking through art and listening to music you're planning on using in the game is recommended as well, because these things give you inspiration and can even bring in some new ideas out of the blue.

Now if you mean on how to make an intro to the game, my personal recommendation is to start it with an important scene. Don't go into details of the backstory at the start, because most players won't care about it. They haven't gotten attached to the game yet. Starting it off on a very slow and happy note is also not going to interest many people. The first 15-20 minutes should provide a hook. This is the stage that the main conflict of the story should become apparent and we should get familiarised with at least one main character. Start it with a BANG! Action, fighting, disaster.

hum for myself I also do a plan a skeleton like you say 

I do some sketch of what I think 

I do some summary for resume myself after I imagine the story 

and yes starting with important scene is primmordial for interest people 

but the intro is not like the most important scene?

also yes I don't spend time in Database 

but I draw often my art first for have a idea of the atmosphere, ambiance of my games 

and when I draw my character I always try to imagine the character and important scene ;3!