What books would I suggest? Any book your AP English teacher would suggest. Read the classics. It''ll open your mind to ideas not thrown at you by all of our movies and TV shows.

--Vic--

I would recommend reading books in the same genre your game will be (e.g. fantasy or science fiction) and using the design technique of bricolage (inclusion of unrealted found objects and juxtaposition of incongrous objects). This will always produce a unique mix of tropes. Then after you generate a bunch of interesting stuff, throw out whatever doesn''t fit your theme (i.e. one of the morals of your game. A short game should have two morals, a long game 3 or 4.)

For me this process comes after character creation, but some people like to do the plot and worldbuilding first and the characters afterward.

Some advice from my High School english teacher (which has bode me well):

Write the character. The story will develop depending on how HE/SHE/IT will handle a certain situation.

Makes sense if you think about it too. If you have a killer story, then you''ll focus on developing the story and the reader/player will not get attached to the characters, most likely making the game boring. Your characters should develop, not the story. That''s what makes stories interesting: watching a character or characters develop.

As for reading material, read the classics. Also, I would start watching some Indie films, as they usually got a lot of "off the beaten path" ideas.

Want a F#$@*ed up Indie movie to start? rent "Waking Life". That''ll get you thinkin'' .

-timiscool999
"I like waffles. Especially with syrup." -me

XBox controller v2.0

click for bigger picture

There''s this funny thing that happens when you''ve been writing awhile where nobody''s work but your own comes even close to significantly being influential or important. You have to write very, very much for a long, long time to get there, but the point is that is the story you ought to write, and it will not get stale or lose anything. Ironically, that is the very same method for increasing the chances of a sale.

If you have not sold any writing before, then rewrite your existing stuff over and over until by force of change it becomes something lacking part of all those cliche''s and mediums, and becomes a synthesis of them.

HTH,
Adventuredesign

quote: Original post by adventuredesign
rewrite your existing stuff over and over until by force of change it becomes something lacking part of all those cliche's and mediums, and becomes a synthesis of them.

I agree with this in sentiment, although I would change the word 'rewrite' to 'rethink'. Before it was good enough to invest the work of full scripting and drawing in, the plot and worldbuilding for my graphic novel went through two revisions in which the result was completely unrecognizable from the original. And the first version was much more cliche - it was just a 'kids at star accademy form a team and go on their first mission story'. The three main characters stayed the same through all three versions, but their relationships to each other changed and got more complicated, and I added a character or two with each revision. The final story has six main characters and one minor character who dies dramatically to provide pathos.

Is the final story cliche? I don't think so, and neither do my co-writer or my co-artist, and that's good enough for me. But does the final story contain cliches? Certainly. I used several common tropes: first contact with aliens, main characters captured by a more powerful character who decides to toy with them, master and slave social dynamic, heir to the estate, computerized houses and advanced matter manipulation technology, neglected and jealous lover, human adapting to live among aliens, 'going native', 'assimilating', 'going back to africa', kamikazi and suicidal responses to captivity... Lots and lots of common tropes, but blended in such a way that the work as a whole is unique.

[edited by - sunandshadow on December 1, 2002 1:22:23 PM]

quote: Original post by sabin1
how do you involve the player when you have a game like Morrowind(where you flesh out the character and make him who he/she is),how do you still get the player emotionally charged over their character and have a good story?

I think the key in this situation is to emphasize how the player''s choices affect the story. Going along with this, it is vital to offer the character choices where one is not obvioisly the most strategic. A good character development event should present the player with more than two choices where each choice represents some kind of moral position, or some kind of aesthetic choice (but don''t mix the two). There should not be some good choices and some bad choices, but the game should reward each choice in a different way - selfish choices might result in the character becoming more powerful while altruistic choices result in him/her becoming more popular, for example. I know that it is difficult to create good examples of these situations because you have to mentally emulate how players with different personalities will react to each one - getting feedback from friends with personalities different than your own is essential.

BTW I want to complement you - you''re asking very insightful questions for being primarily a programmer. Might I inquire what type of game you want to do? RPG, adventure, FPS, etc...?

-The Mad PreTeen is driving you MAD!!!-

Take some unusual concept-say,intelligent, talking asteroids, or elves with laser machine guns-and develop the setting from there. Some kind of conflict will probably follow-say, the asteroids are being mined by humans and are begining to attack human ships, or the scifi elves are locked in a blood fued with cyborg orcs,-and your plot will blossom from there.
Good luck!


-phreakibird

-"The enemy is in front of us...the enemy is behind us... the enemy is to the right and the left of us...they can''''t get away this time!"-
-General Douglas Macarthur