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Well, here I am, having started yet another game and then halting it before it gets off the ground. It's not motivation, nor lack of capabilities, but lack of a thorough long enough plot and storyline to develop into a game. I seem to have the hardest time coming up with a plotline that I can put down as a foundation to lay characters on and develop a game from. Being a character artist I can come up with millions of characters, hundreds of great little missions and interesting items to obtain. But I seriously need help fleshing out a strong enough story for the player to follow where he can meet all the characters and collect all the items. Once I can get ahold of a good solid plot and storyline to follow (A good beginning through to an ending) then I can create one heck of game. I have pages and pages of concept art, but no story. Anyone have ideas as to where I can get help in that field? Or is it possible someone has a fantasy-based story idea that they want someone to develop into a traditional animated, work of art, coldstone game? Granted if I did get a story from someone I would give full credit to them, however I do not want a fantasy world of "elves and orcs", I want something creative with original ideas. Well, I'll stop pleading, and see what you all have to say.
------------------ Beware the surf guitar weilding, voodoo vexing, hoodoo powers of the Modern Tiki GodŠ
Story telling is an art in and of itself. I think this is where the game has to start. Without a good story, the game is just another shoot-em-up. When I wrote Damsels in Distress , I knew the basic outline of the story but I had not fleshed out the characters or pinned down details of the plot. I went with where the story took me. In the sequel on which I'm still working, I'm trying to get the whole story down in text before I do too much of the action, maps, and dialogue. It's not coming easily. I've been stuck for a while now.
Graphics and Coldstone are just the tools you use to present your RPG. You have to decide if you are going to do the whole game or only use your talents to present someone else's story. There are story tellers who have little or no graphic ability who have made pleas on this forum for help with drawing characters. Your situation seems to be just the reverse. Perhaps you can get together somehow. But then, who's game is it? It would seem to me that the game is the work of the story teller and the graphic artist gets the line in the credits department.
If you want it to be your game, write. Write some more. Tear it all up (or hit delete) and start over. Show your work to family and friends. Get input and suggestions. Go back and write it again. If you are still in school, show it to a teacher you respect. You are not writing the "great novel" here but still prepare yourself for rejections. You will know when your story is right. Good luck. A really good game is worth all the hard work that has to go into it. ~RD
------------------ My Doctor said I was having too much wine, women, and song - so I gave up singing because 2 out of 3 is not so bad. The (url="http://"http://www.evula.org/rduck/")Kingdom of Garendall(/url) sectional map is easily printed from gif format pages. (url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/cgi-bin/vftp/dl-redirect.pl/damsels.sit?path=pog/addons&file;=damselsV1.1.sit")Damsels in Distress(/url) - A plugin for PoG. (url="http://"http://www.evula.org/rduck/RD-DEL.jpg")RD-DEL(/url)
Well a good story for a game is hard to think of...
I thought about it for a minute and here is the first idea that poped into my head. How about a game where you have moved away from your home to strike it big in the city. To complete the game you must work hard to make it big, lots of money a big appartment and stuff. The problem in the game will be that you must eat or lose the game. Over a peroid of time your helth will start to drop realy slowly, until you starve. Just like in real life you get hungry and need to eat. To buy food you must have money, to get money you must work. There could be many diffrent jobs some good some bad and some against the law. Chose a path and see if you can make it.
What do you think?
I have always been able to think up a storyline very quickly. I already have the sequil and threequill to GOE planed in my mind.
------------------ I forgot to add, if any one reading this and uses this idea it would be nice if you put storyline by Efeion in your credits. Or something like that... Thanks
------------------ Magnum gloriam Efeionae est! The forest is calling,how will you answer? (url="http://"http://www.goe.vze.com")www.goe.vze.com(/url)
(This message has been edited by Efeion (edited 06-19-2004).)
I come up with a basic story for a game. I then think of how it can go. I then scrap it and change it slightly. I had a game called Saylent going which was a Myst like game. When I first started to make it it was just you were on that island for no reason and had to do pointless tasks. I then changed it and came up with a good plot. Your friend has vanished you have to go to his island to find out why blah blah blah.
Basically. I when I finally come up with a story that I like I know I will stick with it. I don't know how but I just know. And then, after the basic story, I then add to the story based on the game. Instead of going "This is the story I am gonna make the game stick to it", I go "Wow, that feature would be good in the game, how do I change the story to fit it in"
If you want you can email me your story so far and I can give you some pointers on how to make it better and bulk it out.
------------------ Pilky (url="http://"http://www.mcubedsw.com")M cubed homepage(/url) (url="http://"http://www.mcubedsw.com/network")M cubed Network(/url)
(This message has been edited by Pilky (edited 06-20-2004).)
This is the bit where I make statements that people disagree with... ah well. It's all good.
A game's story is the most important part of the game. I would go so far as to say that the story is the only essential part of the game.
Now, this is where the graphics artists & gameplay people jump out of the bushes. Bear with me a bit first, then feel free.
I will play and have played almost every game genre under the sun. The games I have enjoyed have been many and varied, depending on mood and interest. But the best games have been those with stories I have enjoyed, stories that are written well, acted well, spoken well and given to the player well.
Essentially, a computer game is (or should be), at it's core, another medium for the expression of a story. The story is what the player is playing for, to find out what happens next. Now, here people jump in and talk about gameplay and character - but those are really elements of the story as well, especially character. The story is especially important in an RPG-style environment - as the RPG is probably the most 'overt' story-telling form of game.
As RD said, "the game is the work of the story teller and the graphic artist gets the line in the credits department." I agree with this wholeheartedly - the game is the story.
Now, writing a story. Writing is about 10% creativity, and about 90% perseverance - especially when you're writing longer works, such as novellas or novels - or indeed, a game script/story, or for that matter a screenplay. First you need the idea - and ideas can come from anywhere, and can be about anything. It doesn't matter where your inspiration comes from - it's where you run with it that matters. That's the creativity part - making a story that is original and interesting, and getting it going, with clear ideas of where it's going to finish - like a skeleton of the final beast.
Now for the perseverance. The hardest part of any story is getting it right. I recently did a writing course at Uni (in fact, I'm changing my major shortly, if all goes well) and as part of that course I had to write a pair of portfolios - one prose fiction, the other a composite script/poetry. The prose fiction piece I wrote was around about a thousand words long - 1073, if I remember correctly. Now, that's only a couple of typed pages, which might not seem like a lot of work to write. In my files, however, I have a stack of pages around sixty thick, comprised of drafts of that story. Each one is scribbled on liberally with red and green pens, in different places, in similar places. I have another fifty odd copies of my original version (which is very different to the final) with workshop feedback from the class. For my script, which was ten pages long, I have over a hundred different printed sheets that have been revised, scrapped, reused, edited and scrapped again. Poetry much the same.
My point? The hardest part of writing a decent story is getting it right - editing it down to the point where you are satisfied. Myself, I'm not satisfied with my work - I'm planning a return to it, especially the script, based on the lecturers feedback and my own revisions. My lecturer herself wrote a novel as a thesis project when she was getting her Ph.D. Seventy five thousand words or so - and she's been trying to get it published for several years now, and has redrafted it (read: rewritten it) no less than nine times. A bit perfectionist? Perhaps - but that's often what it takes to get your story perfect. A dash of creativity, followed by a lot of stubborn perseverance.
What can you do when you're writing down ideas? Well, the most important thing is this - don't ever fall in love with your own work. If you go back and read something and think, 'It doesn't really fit here, but I kinda like it...' then you're going about writing the wrong way. Be fully prepared to rip up whole pages of work - it's better in the long run if you aim for perfection. No matter how much you like a phrase, be brutal with the dead wood.
Other things, almost as important? Feedback, feedback, feedback. Give out a hundred copies to anyone who'll read it for you and comment. Act on their suggestions - especially if they write themselves. Ask them if things work, and if they feel something doesn't work, ask them why. When writing dialogue, get a few friends together and have them read it aloud. See if it sounds like real people talking. If it doesn't, make it sound real. Then edit, edit, edit, and ask for feedback again.
Eventually, of course, you'll run against the wall of "that's enough" or the point where you think it's about right. Then give out a couple of copies to people whose opinion you really trust, and ask them for any small touches they'd add. Put them in if you think they fit... and now, go back, reread your first drafts (Oh yes, keep a copy of everything! ) and see how much better your final feels... hopefully a whole lot. Give yourself a pat on the back... and then?
Write some more.
And, if you really don't feel like writing yourself, and you're looking for a good place to start, you could always drop by places like, say, the (url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/cgi-bin/ubb/forumdisplay.cgi?action=topics&number;=49")Coldstone Chronicles(/url) and see if there's any writers there you think you'd like to work with. Hunt around a bit - never know what might turn up.
Hmm. That was long. Ah well. I'm a writer, what do you expect?
-Andiyar
------------------ "Any good that I may do here, let me do now, for I may not pass this way again"
Wow, I'm very impressed with all the responses, and it's given me some much needed help. I was looking at coming up with a complete story right off the bat instead of brainstorming and compiling all my ideas first. As much as I agree with the story being the backbone of the game, I must disagree that it's the only important part. I look for creative interesting characters that are not only developed through story but also through the look and feel of the character. If a game has uninteresting plain graphics that don't grab my attention in some way, might as well just be a text adventure. While there are many that feel graphics are unimportant, how many wish to sit through an entire adventure game just for the story alone? However myself being a writer as well I do agree at the same time that if the game is just jumping and skipping around aimlessly with no plotline or purpose as to what you're doing, no matter how good the graphics are, I become uninterested too. Perhaps I'm just too picky, but I feel that these days with the millions of games being produced, we kinda need to be picky and selective over what we play and buy. But anyways, thanks again you guys for setting me straight, I'm brainstorming the premise and have a great start for the game, and a few characters for it so far, and I'll be posting when I have some solid information about the game, and this time I'm making a promise to stick to it and see it through to the end.