RangerSheck Offline

Game Design Principles

07/08/08

A couple months ago, I made the change from being the sole developer and writer for my game and invited some of my players to join me in creating a design team. While all the coding responsibilities still rest on my shoulders, the other designers have been contributing artwork, mission plots, non-player character design, weapon and armor design, area design, and so forth. I quickly realized that while its possible for people to get a sense of what a coders thoughts and motivations are by playing their game, there are still many aspects of a games design that are not so easy to interpret.

When I set up a forum for our team to collaborate in, much of the initial conversation was brainstorming about changes or additions to make to the game. I found myself defending and explaining various methods and components of the current design and what those explanations meant for future design. I realized that while I am open to other ideas, there were certain things that I wasnt likely to budge on. The more I thought about it, the more I began to understand that I had internalized a set of principles that guide the path of development for my game.

Read the rest at Ranger Sheck's blog.

Introducing MoveableMap (a free js library)

03/31/08

I posted this on my other, more tech/web-dev oriented blog, but since its a great tool (or at least example to learn from) for web-based game developers, I figured Id mention it here.

MoveableMap is a javascript library (open source, MIT license) that allows you to turn any block of HTML into a draggable, moveable entity within a viewport. Similar to the draggable behavior of Google Maps, but hopefully very easy to implement.

More information and demos can be found here: MoveableMap

Statistics: What are the real odds?

03/08/08

Ive been thinking a lot about statistics lately, and how they can be used in game design. Weve all seen this problem in any game, particularly indie games (including a lot of browser-based game) a problem with randomness. Sometimes a game doesnt appear to leave enough to chance, and it becomes predictable. Other times a game is too random, to the point of frustrating a player when despite skill or a better hand, fate can easily turn against them.

This article will be the first in a series of probably three articles on statistics and randomness. Today Id like to talk about what it means to consider the odds that an event might happen, given multiple attempts at it. For example: if an event has a 25% chance of occurring, you might expect that given 4 attempts at it, youre pretty much guaranteed success. Given a second thought, we know that not to be exactly true. So what are those odds, anyway?

Read the rest at Ranger Sheck's blog.

Interface Design in a PBBG

09/15/07

Browser-Based Game designers, take note from some of the web-based app designers: the term Look and Feel means more than you think! Win back some of those players you frightened away by seeing your game through their eyes and giving them some familiarity to start with.

Read the rest at: Ranger Sheck's Blog