Speed Game Methodologies
From WorkCDN
After our previous Speed Game competition (pyweek6) I started writing a list of notes of things that I thought we could improve.
Sam's doing a great job of writing up a document on and actual game development methodology, so I didn't want to overlap with him too much. Instead I wanted to suggest things that could be done between and just prior to competitions that could help increase the quality of our output, as well as our chances of success. Hopefully this page can become a repository over time of game ideas, mechanics, and design patters to give teams the extra boost when starting a competition.
Contents |
Things to work on between games
Summary
Here are the basic areas I was thinking of:
- Create standard patterns for common game components / engines.
- For example:
- Cutscene engine pattern
- Menu system
- Create tools to help build configuration files more quickly (and to validate them according to afore-mentioned patterns).
- For example:
- Create dialog and settings for a cutscene
- Manage parameter sets for location data
- Level configuration creator for a 2D side scroller
- Create a list of standard game types (both full and mini-games) and write up design document templates for them.
- For example:
- Match 3 game
- Tower defense
- Top-down shooter
- Basic RPG
- Create a list of basic game mechanics / game ideas that we think would be fun to incorporate into a game
- For example:
- Open-solution gameplay
- Centrally tracked (internet) high scores
- Hunted-to-hunter reversal
- Prepare a suite of standard libraries to quickly obtain and use if the need arises
- Yes, coding from complete scratch is nobler, but some things aren't just worth re-inventing.
- Obviously, this only works if the competition allows libraries, so figure out which ones would be allowed and useful ahead of time.
- For example:
- Network libraries
- XML parser
- File handling
- Similarly, prepare lists of locations for obtaining content that is legally verifiable as publically available and royalty free.
- Free font sites (again, legally verifiable)
- Music sites
- Art sites
Standard Component Patterns
Configuration Tools
I'm not fully sure if these would be worth the effort, but at least having some simple tools in place, like an XML validater, would be good.
