Ideas about design

Making a game is actually more than making a game, even if that sounds contradictory. Being a programmer, I know that the trick often is not in the algorithm or the user interface, but in finding out what to make exactly anyway. In games that's even more than in the day job, because there's nothing much creative about calculating interest or about making a secure connection. It just has to be correct.

Games, on the other hand, those are different, because they need to be compelling. The game I have right now, it might be mostly bug free for now, barring stuff I didn't implement yet, but that does by no means make it a good game yet.

When the forest guy sees me, it'll say "HELLOOOOO" on the console and that's intended. But it's not fun. It does not trigger me to go and get seen or to avoid that. In my posts on AI I discussed this before.  The guy needs to do something related to the seeing to make it stand out and that is not finished yet.

What is he supposed to do then? Well, I don't know exactly yet. Zombies will mindlessly attack and kill or get killed, that's easy. Quest givers will ask for attention and give a quest. But there must be something to distinguish between different characters and settings to make them be their own thing. That's design.

I don't have much experience with that, even though I consider myself a so-called idea guy in some sense. Problem is those ideas flash by and need to be caught and processed. The processing takes time and effort and that's fine, but it takes the pace of the project and that feels strange.

No problem though. With all this rambling and ranting going on, one needs to remember that sometimes inspiration lies right before your eyes. Just ideas waiting to pop up. The church in the town I work in, it has a weird tilting tower, they found a Roman boat in the park near my house, the busses at the station always get in each other's way, a couple of weeks ago, me and my wife visited a castle with nice gardens. I found a website with example medieval city planning ideas.

All of them possible games to be made or ideas to make games better and more actually mine. Assets are all nice and shiny, but these things make a difference. Now back to work and stop the crap!