Game Design Classes? 24
Scott 'dolo' Leonard asks: "A while back, you might remember, I taught about 200 people in an IRC level design course, where students would complete a number of assignments for grading and grow with the course to meet their personal goals. Right now I am in the process of working up a proposal for my local college to get a game design course approved for Fall 2002. This course would hammer out the fundamentals of designing a game, what works and what doesn't. Before I begin, I was hoping that the community might have some input as to what they would want in a course of this nature."
"Basically, this would be an IRC class where students would walk away with something tangible regarding game design, and approaches therein. Obviously we would focus on the aspects of games today, and different types of games, but we would also have to look at a regiment of building smart games that impact the bottom line of a company positively.
Send all input to sleonard@planetquake.com and I will post any and all comments to Dteam, where applicable. Please contact me if you have any comments."
Ummm.... (Score:2)
Umm... doesn't this kinda defeat the purpose of an Ask Slashdot? You know, where we all get to do the communal comment thing and learn from one another and, if we've all been really good, make s'mores at the end of the night?
As so: I'd honestly love to see a course that deals with that elusive first hurdle -- getting startup funding. Where to start looking, how much proof-of-concept is needed, etc. Seems like we've all got ideas for that one perfect game (just like everyone claims to have that one great novel in them) but no concept of how much soul-selling is involved in even thinking of getting it to market.
That is to say, a course less about coding and more about coinage. (A sad reality, but a true one.)
Re:Ummm.... (Score:1)
realgone, you're right. I think that it should be mantatory for people to interact with the responses so that the community can get a better idea of what they are asking for and what works.
I am on a mailing list, where it is considered rude to not tell everybody what idea worked and what didn't. In this case, it would tell us who is out to just get karma because of submissions, and who has a genuine question.
Note to
Re:Ummm.... (Score:1)
This isn't about karma or anything like that, at all... just want to know what you think.
Scott 'dolo' Leonard
Dteam. Games & More.
Re:Ummm.... (Score:1)
I should have pointed out, though, that I myself don't know much about this. It's jsut that I wanted to bring this idea to people's attention.
I'm glad that you do want to monitor this entire discussion. It tells me that I misjudged you.
I hope things work out well.
Re:Ummm.... (Score:1)
Scott 'dolo' Leonard
Dteam. Games & More.
Cross-Platform and Portability (Score:3, Insightful)
Teach them to use cross-platform toolkits (SDL, Crystalspace) and APIs (OpenGL, OpenAL) whenever possible. Companies don't put out Mac games because they're too lazy, or they don't want to spend money having someone else port it (and in-house developers are too busy fixing known release bugs). If you can tell your employer 'the game is ready to go gold, and we can ship Windows, Mac, and Linux versions immediately', they'll know that, even if they don't release right away, it's easy to do sooner rather than later, and if they DO release them at the same time, people will love you. I refuse to buy The Sims because they don't care about Mac users (we're two expansion packs behind so far, and I don't know if we'll ever get them), but if a company shows that they actually care about Mac users, rather than 'hey, these apple things, can they play games too?', I'll look more favourably upon them. Maybe I won't get this game, but I'll consider it, or the next one, more seriously.
Teach them to code well, not fast. Putting out a good game eventually is better than putting out a crappy game now. That being said, don't be Daikatana (putting out a crappy game eventually isn't the way to go). Teach them that bugs at release and patches a few months down the road are going to translate into people buying it from the bargain bin in six months, after fifteen patches, and that bad code, even if they're told 'write bad code, but make it fast', may be the boss' fault at release, but it's the programmers' fault when the company has to cut jobs. If you need another month to test, tell them that the game is unstable and corrupts important files (well, that's getting borderline). Besides, if nothing else, 'finishing' a game, having it lambasted with bad reviews, and then having to spend the next year patching bugs under pressure is not as fulfilling as being done when you're done.
Other points about games that are worth mentioning. If there's any way to make a game expandable and provide something different even over time (Half-Life mods, Escape Velocity plugins, Warcraft Maps, UT online play, Fallout open-ended play, Everquest expansions), it will improve your bottom line substantially. Half-Life and assorted add-ons are still selling for $30-$50 (depending on the store and the valuation of your country's particular dollar on the currency exchanges). This is a design decision, of course, but if they've got input, they should suggest it. Multiplayer is a quick-and-dirty solution, but look into other options. Even today, I'm scouring the city for Fallout 2, because it's such a fun game, and my friends still LAN party with UT. Not only will it increase sales at launch-time, money will keep trickling in long after the final patch goes live and the code is archived to a CVS server in the basement.
This is just the ideas I can think of right now. I'm sure other people can add more, but this is what I like.
--Dan
Re:Cross-Platform and Portability (Score:1)
Fresh and tasty Debian packages of WineX 2.0 (which supports Max Payne FLAWLESSLY) are available for the price of a $5 (1 month subscription). If I were you, I'd sign up for the 6 month plan. I did (it just ran out), and I have not been disapointed. If you do sign up, hook me up with the 'refer-a-friend' thing and reference 'ramses0' if you think about it.
--Robert
Re:Cross-Platform and Portability (Score:2)
As much as I'd love to help you, I find that installing Linux to play Windows games under Wine on a P120 with 80 megs of ram makes little to no sense.
--Dan
hit up walmart (Score:1)
Re:hit up walmart (Score:1)
Septerra Core though.... I need to find that puppy. Haven't been to the e-tron at Wal-Mart here yet, I don't think. I'll have to go back and look closer.
--Dan
Re:hit up walmart (Score:1)
The game didn't play right for my tastes. You might very well enjoy it, but I had a hard time with it. Maybe I am outside their target market, but it seemed like Septerra Core was very niche. I ran into some bugs too, which never helps my opinion of a game.
Overall, the game's graphics engine is old, and you will most likely enjoy the story -- if you can find it. Objectively, Septerra Core lacked impeccability.
Scott 'dolo' Leonard
Dteam. Games & More.
try www.gameinstitute.com (Score:3, Informative)
Hope this helps.
-Vic
Re:try www.gameinstitute.com (Score:2, Informative)
Thanks for that link!
Scott 'dolo' Leonard
Dteam. Games & More.
Hrmm... (Score:2)
1) Graphics and concept design
This is totally out of my realm. I imagine there are all sorts of software packages to learn and various gaming "styles" out there to learn.
2) Gaming engine design
This is what I would consider the actual programming. For this, I have to imagine that the biggest requirement is a strong physics background. Granted, there are many APIs out there for game design, but to my knowledge, they don't offer much world physics which is the key in gaming design.
I would recommend developing a physics for game designers lecture (I actually saw a book on this at B&N recently). Another area would be artifical intellegence. The only thing I really worked with here was QuakeC but that was a long time ago. I would imagine that a good lecture here on the limitations of gaming AI would be of great use.
Re:Hrmm... (Score:1)
Splitting game design into concept design and engine development is indeed a wise decision. Fundamentals of game design reside mostly in concept, since it is concept that is almost timeless, as if it were limestone, layered with sediments and dreams. Concept goes on, and builds with time, yet it never completely overwrites what was once there. Layer upon layer of game concept cloud our games today. Games in future might still rest on some tenets developed today. Games a thousand years ago help establish video games today. What are some games that were not around back then? Where is the next new thing?
Engine design is more of a history lesson, than a design lesson. Some day we might have video games without engines, or without engines as we know them today. Spending time working on engines is a great way to get into the industry, yet the half-life of that kind of knowledge is short (pardon the pun). The industry is always pushing for new design, better graphics... etc. Well much of the design in games today has never really evolved beyond predecessors. Street fighter becomes Virtua Fighter 4. The Grand Theft Auto experience has roots in crime games, dating back to TI 99/4A adventure games written in Extended Basic.
Television and film each have impacted video games (not the other way around). GTA3 is a lot like Crime story, except you get to be the bad guy. That Max Payne look-alike also looks like the actor from Crime Story! So he's a look-alike's look-alike! Yikes! How far off am I?
Design might not have to be new, but wouldn't it be cool if it was new and playable and fun? The best way to be new is by finding new paradigms or refining old ones. The Quake game paradigm can't be refined much more, except with new engines and more glitz, newer characters, richer stories. All that is coming to game design with our without my course, so I hope to zoom in on the concepts that exist and trying to find new concepts, if that is at all possible. Students won't lose any marks for refining old game types (quake style, golf... etc), yet they can expect lots of questions on tests relating to the fundamental principles of game design, which are largely common sense.
Scott 'dolo' Leonard
Dteam. Games & More.
Thanks (Score:1)
I would like to thank those who have shown an interest so far in this process.
So far I have prepared a site [gamespy.com] to notify students of their marks, hand out assignments and post notes and news. This entire course is expected to be online via IRC. During the whole time, I expect to be accessible to the students on a one on one level as much as possible. My goal is to keep the price down and class size down (per section). 20 students per section is a goal that sounds effective.
Course content will focus on the archetypes intrinsic to all games and zoom in on the games that are successful (board and you control a paddle that whacks a ball back and forth because everybody loves tennis and ping pong, right?" See the agreement? Every game there is comes down to this principle and I am going to develop these ideas for the course in such a way as to get the students thinking. One assignment involves creating necessary elements for a new game, never before created. If I can find the game a student hands in, they get zero! (within reason)
Why level design? If there is any form of design in game design, it starts with the levels and entities that occupy them. The rules and other such things all come secondary to the form and function of the environment. Instead of level design, if I chose game programming as a medium for a game design course, I could propound things like the necessity of using Pointers until I'm blue in the face, while next year someone could optimize a third party driver, that actually rewires the way data is handled on the heap so all that work we did was for nothing, or worse off - has to be reworked entirely. In reality, the engines are always changing, and the companies making games are adapting short lifespan techniques to obtain the desired look and feel they want. I understand we might be all using database driven operating systems soon, so that has to impact game design in a good way. What we do today we won't do tomorrow - except for that common denominator called level design. Until someone figures out how to come up with algorithm based games that write their own levels (in a true sense, not abstractly), you can expect to find level design as the front runner to any form of game development - even though the programmers might claim that their entity work is more important. It's really the same thing, now isn't it?
Even now, the industry is leaning toward how a game looks often more than how it plays. Only a handful of games are balanced enough to look good and play good.
What this means to our course, is that it's best to understand game design from a level designer's perspective before getting bogged down in the rapidly changing elements in game programming, models, art or sound.
Level design transfers between all games without much of a difference. 3d or 2d, there are principles delivered in level design that are not so fundamental in other arts.
Students of the course [gamespy.com], in all likelihood, could focus on any game, and are all expected to bring discussion to the table as a portion of their grade.
Assignments and tests can come from the perspective of any number of games, provided the points are proven by the student.
Three major assignments and two online tests are also anticipated. The tests can be written in such a manner to prevent cheating, too.
I expect this to be a fun course with lots to offer anyone who wants to get into the industry and stay.
Scott 'dolo' Leonard
Dteam. Games & More.
http://dynamic3.gamespy.com/~dteam/ [gamespy.com]