I’ve been thinking about this for a couple of minutes. I think it would be quite cool for this site to be an ‘idea repository’, that is, a categorised list of techniques, cool things and ideas that are implemented or should be implemented in games.
The old saying in game development is “Ideas are dime a dozen” well here they could be free.
I realy enjoy thinking up and discussing the ‘best’ (most intuitive) control method to use in a certain situation. I think it would be cool to have an almost step by step collection of ‘if you want this in your game you could do it like this’. This would incorporate how to do inventory systems, what control method to use on consoles and how to organise game gui’s to make it easy for the player. All this would of course be a work in progress with multiple methods where opinions differ.
This would require some type of forum system which I would setup or code where submissions for new sections and ideas would be heard, comments and suggestions on existing ideas would be discussed and news of new features and techniques in games could be published.
Does this already exist on another site? Would this be a useful thing to do? Would you help? What should it be called? Would this require a new domain (and let this degenerate into my personal blog)?
Addendum: This could also include links and resources; modern weapon lists, science fiction books to read and articles from other sites. All relating to game ideas though (nothing specifically about programming - plenty of sites about those things already).
Addendum 2: I could include a way to provide a certain license with each submitted idea, probably along the creative commons road. Something like ‘If you use this idea from reading it here it would be nice to provide recognition’. I don’t think you can stop someone from using an idea though.
Interesting thought. Sounds like some sort of wiki would be appropriate. Problem is, before you can speak with real authority about what ideas work well in games you have to have tried them. The most valuable thing, to me at least, is the lessons learned from attempting to implement an idea. Was it perfect? If not, what adjustments were needed? Was it a flop? There are things which look great on paper, but don’t work well in practice.
Mock ups or whatever to try out each idea would give you a huge amount of credibility. Unfortunately, they’re hard work. Just a mini mod to an existing game like unreal would be enough, but that’s still an investement. And perhaps it wasn’t your intent to give people proven ideas they can use, but to let them try what sounds good to them. I don’t know. The way you said “I think it would be cool to have an almost step by step collection of ‘if you want this in your game you could do it like this’.” made me think of a repository of small scale, tested ideas with notes on how they work, their good and bad points, etc. Such a thing could be very useful, and also very difficult to create.
I must admit, though, I’ve never really designed a game. Not on paper anyhow. The very few games I have made, I just made it up as I went along. It’s always seemed pretty obvious what a game needs when you can play it, although they were all very simple.
I wasn’t implying that the ideas would come from me only. I don’t think I’m the authority on any subject, just that I have views and interest in certain subjects. The website would be taking ideas and what works from existing games, game post-mortems and what I would like to call the ‘collective understanding’. This is where ‘most’ people found something easy / hard to pick up. It’s often apparent when something is intuitive and I’d like to catalogue what it was and why it was intuative.
I guess I don’t really mean best, probably something more like ‘this worked well here’ or ‘lots of people found this good’. I’d like to think that we would be aiming for the best way to do something in a certain situation and that there may be multiple ideal methods but what we currently have isn’t there yet.
I think your description is great, that it would be a repository of ideas with the discussion and argument over why it’s good and what bad points it has. Perhaps with links to games that implement it and how they were received; what worked well what didn’t. It would also be nice if / when someone implements the idea that they comment on how it went, what they might change.
It would be cool if it was the ‘nuts and bolts’ of game design / development. How to take an idea and put it into a game, or how to flesh out an idea. Things like continuity, common science fiction themes, control schemes, world war 2 weapons, etc.
I guess there are three things: speculative ideas, concrete ideas and development resources. Over time the speculative ideas (wouldn’t it be cool if) might turn into concrete ideas (we did it this way) and continue to be expanded and discussed. Some things would just be feature lists, but may be expanded later - like deformable terrain. It could expand into implementation details if it hasn’t been covered before, or have links to the existing details.
I would really enjoy working on something like this, and I think it could really benefit the community. If you know what is out there, and what has been done before and how you have more options. It changes from ‘how am I going to do this’ to ‘which way should I do this’ or I think I can do it better - and (hopefully) add it to the repository. This would be the groundwork and making games would be easier.
It would definitely be difficult to create if they all had to be rigourously tested and perfected, but I think it wouldn’t be that difficult to setup a wiki and have the concepts under constant alteration and improvement.
Something similar to Bad Game Designer, No Twinkie! (free reg required) but including ‘Good Game Designer, Pat on the Back’ concepts as well.