I''ve been thinking and you''re right LilBuddyWizer, prototyping isn''t going to help with a the cockpit for a flight simulator. I''m sorry if I seemed rather dismissive .

You''re right I have been having a few preconceived ideas stuck in my head. Mainly various ideas for RPG''s, puzzle games and various strategy games, not very many more dynamic games. Anyway I do think that prototypes of some small and self contained game structures could be set up and tested using a simple programming language. Interfaces and A.I. handling and other procedures that do not rely on real time calculations are the main things that I can think of. And the idea of using game editors that already exist could be extremely cool, if you''re developing a game that shares a similar user interface and want to quickly test an idea. Of course there''s always a learning curve associated with any tool but I wouldn''t shy away from learning a tool if it could really make my life easier and I think it could broaden the mind a little by having a wide range of languages at my disposal for developing a game idea.

I am not advocating the creation of a prototype as a beall and endall and you have demonstrated examples were it would be difficult to produce such a prototype, but in some cases I feel it would be useful just to flesh out ideas that a designer is uncertain about by seeing a primitive working example of that idea.

Thanks for the heads up.

Nick.

I don''t think there''s a single instance where I''d want to use some sort of game prototyping kit. You obviously wouldn''t want such a kit for real time 3D graphics, and the couple of instances you''ve come up with in this last post are also bad.

For frontend and HUDs, there''s no better prototyping tool than your run of the mill paint program. For menu and game flow, you draw a flowchart. For controls, you play some games similar to yours, make a list of the actions you need to support, then put your hands on your keyboard or controller and hash out what makes sense. You can write a simple AI or Physics demo very quickly and tweak it, which would be the prefered method because these elements will be specific to your game.

When developing a game you get all the major elements working in some elementary fashion regardless if they are working absolutely the way you want. Once every thing is there, then you begin tuning, so you actually have a good idea of what works and what doesn''t fairly early into development. Games take a long time to make, but 3 quarters of that time is spent tuning, generating content, and debugging. If you plan thoroughly ahead of time and be objective about your design, you''ll have a good idea of what works, and what doesn''t before you even write a single line of code.

Games are a wholely different animal than business apps, thats why you don''t see rapid prototyping tools. Most games however do begin as prototypes, and any decent programmer can get something up and running and playable to some extent in a matter of a few weeks.

Oh, and you can make simple 3d graphics in Direct X and C++. You don''t need a fully lit, textured, animated model and scene to test physics or AU routines you write. I''m sorry if I''m being harsh here, but it sounds like you''re asking for Magic Good Game Maker 1.0. I''m sorry it takes work to make a game. This isn''t as simple as a business application.

OK, OK. I''m convinced, no more prototypes.
I''m back to paper and pencil and more games playing.

Thanks everyone for helping me out on this, it''s probably saved me a lot of time.

Nick.

A prototype need not be a waste of time. You should only put in as much effort as is needed to test out the gameplay. You could even use qbasic or something equivalent to test a lot of gameplay mechanics. These are not hard to learn, and most protoypes (or should at least) use crude graphics as they are not in any way meant to make it to production. In fact, flashy graphics may actually detract from the ability to separate gameplay from the look of the game. I wouldn''t be so hasty to throw out prototypes as a waste of time. This may be true if you over develop them to the point of having a almost production game and then starting over, but this is not the point of a prototype to begin with.