Week #1 - Story Outline & Game Structure

Published June 12, 2011
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[font="Comic Sans MS"][size="4"]Ok. The first week of this project is now gone.

[size="3"]The minutes from last week's entry: Decided to make a game! Decided on a side scrolling action game. Decided to make one journal entry/week. That about covers it.

So this past week I focused on [size="3"]brainstorming stories and how to fit the story to the games format. I'm not going to post the story (wouldn't want to spoil it for the [size="3"]3 people reading my journal :lol:) But I will say the basic plot summary goes something like this: A young impressionable girl's sweetheart is kidnapped by a group of thugs, and it's up to her to rescue him. Along the way she will learn things about why he was taken and where she can find him. Yeah I know, it sounds pretty [size="3"]lame but I'm trying to keep it simple. Besides it is just a set-up for what everyone likes in a game - A hot chick who kicks ass.

Once I got a basic plot summary done I started to play with how to tell that story through the game. Here is a quick flow chart I made:
LevelStructure.jpg
* I used the trial copy of Smartdraw for this. Not a bad piece of software although I don't really know to make the best use of it yet.
Also note that in my notebook each cutscene and level connect to specific events within the stories plot. But since I don't want to spoil it for you guys I just put label headers. Oh and the Cutscene doesn't mean like some crazy fully animated movie sequence. I was thinking more along the lines of an image and a block of text to explain the progression from one level to the next. The side quests are a chance to acquire new weapons or fighting techniques.

This coming week the plan is to level by level flesh out the design till I'm happy with what I got. Yes it isn't all that interesting at this point but from my experience the more you work things over now the fewer problems you encounter later. That's it for this week.
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Deyja
You might want to try out Gliffy. It's the same thing as Smartdraw, sans water mark.

http://www.gliffy.com/
June 18, 2011 11:42 AM
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