Computer Games Design for Beginners

A Crash course in Game Design and Development

Class size: 15
Tar­get Group: 19–25 Year Old’s

When: Sat­ur­day 15th May 11am –4pm
Where:  Hack­ney Wick Com­mu­nity Centre, The Old Baths 80 East­way Hackney, London,  E9 5JH

Tutors:

Alan Son — Hyper­Stream
Angela Briv­ett — Change Com­mu­nity Project

Com­puter Games Design for Begin­ners is aimed at all games enthu­si­asts who want to learn how to cre­ate their own con­cepts, char­ac­ters, story and all other ele­ments of the com­puter game from scratch. This one day Taster ses­sion is aimed at those who not only want to play com­puter games but who also want to expe­ri­ence the mak­ing of these games. The Change Com­mu­nity project has cre­ated a work­shop that will help you begin to cre­ate your own gam­ing experience.

Key Objec­tive

Gain an under­stand­ing of the game design and the devel­op­ment process.

Mate­r­ial to cover

  1. What is a game?
  2. A short his­tory of the video games industry
  3. What makes a game fun?
  4. Com­po­nents of a typ­i­cal game
  5. Overview of the video games design process
  6. Sto­ry­boards and Brain­storm­ing — Mindmaps
  7. Fun­da­men­tals of a game design document
  8. Tech­nol­ogy required to build a mod­ern video game
  9. Build­ing a 3d game asset with Sketchup
  10. Intro­duc­tion to game devel­op­ment and pro­gram­ming — Unity Game Engine
  11. Jobs avail­able in the Games Industry
  12. Fur­ther edu­ca­tion needed to become a game designer

What is a game?

A game is a struc­tured activ­ity, usu­ally under­taken for enjoy­ment and some­times used as an edu­ca­tional tool.

Think…

  • What was the last game you played?
  • What is your favourite video game?
  • Why did you like it?
  • What made that game fun?

His­tory of the Video Games industry


Ele­ments of a typ­i­cal game

After you have asked these ques­tions it is eas­ier to start think­ing about the ele­ments that your game may include.  For exam­ple, if you were to build a First Per­son Shooter you may include ele­ments such as:

  • Weapons
  • Health
  • Rapid fire
  • Bad guys
  • Sound FX
  • Mis­sions
  • Points sys­tem
  • Sto­ry­line
  • Music
  • etc…

Activ­ity:

  • Write down some of the games you played recently
  • Write down top 10 favourite video games

Think…

  • What is it about your num­ber one game you enjoyed most and why?

Overview of the video games design process

1. Core Team

A group of peo­ple whom come up with the gen­eral con­cept of the game. Numer­ous meet­ings will occur in which the group brain­storms about the game; fig­ur­ing out not only how it will look, but also how it will work. The core team is in charge of the pro­duc­tion sched­ule as well, which describes the tasks each per­son is assigned and when they most do them.

2. Game Breakdown

Every detail, task, job, and dead­line about the video game is bro­ken down into com­po­nents and then added to a bul­letin board. This board acts as the nerve cen­ter through­out the games production.

3. Artis­tic Concept

Artists sketch out the games char­ac­ters & back­grounds with a very basic level of detail. These sketches are what the graph­ics artists use to cre­ate the char­ac­ters and back­grounds in 3D on the computer.

4. Devel­op­ment Team

This team uses the lat­est in com­puter ani­ma­tion tech­nol­ogy to bring life to all of the game’s ele­ments; adding col­ors, tex­tures, shad­ing, and even move­ment. This team uses the 3d char­ac­ters and back­grounds cre­ated by the graph­ics team.

5. Pro­gram­ming & Engineering

This is the bread & but­ter of the game devel­op­ment stage; because with­out this part, there would be no game. Suf­fice it to say, the pro­gram­mers & engi­neers make the game work. Their cod­ing is what holds the game together and allows the player to actu­ally play the game.

6. Test­ing

This is the final and most cru­cial part of the devel­op­ment process. This phase is to see if every­thing is work­ing prop­erly and as it should be. Testers will check for bugs and glitches and try to find poten­tial problems.

The game testers won’t merely be play­ing the game and see­ing if prob­lems will find them — it’s the other way around, as THEY will be the ones search­ing for the prob­lems. The testers will do every­thing and any­thing pos­si­ble in the game to ensure there is no abnor­mal sit­u­a­tions or cir­cum­stances; walk­ing through walls, dis­ap­pear­ing, enemy AI prob­lems, cin­e­matic errors, you name it. If the testers miss ANYTHING, it could mean dis­as­trous con­se­quences — in the form of profit loss — for the com­pany releas­ing the game.

Activ­ity:

  • Get into a Team.
  • Choose a leader or some­one to present ideas.
  • Come up with some game concepts
  • Vote on idea to take for­ward to next stage.

Cre­ative think­ing with mindmaps

When try­ing to come up with an idea for a game it can some­times be dif­fi­cult to know where to start. Hav­ing the right tools to get going can help quickly get ideas down and pro­mote cre­ative thinking.

Mindmaps

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map

Visu­al­is­ing ideas

Activ­ity:

  1. Use either pens and paper or online mindmap tool such as mind42.com develop game concept.
  2. Sto­ry­board the flow of the game
  3. Sketch out game envi­ron­ment and levels
  4. Sketch out game characters
  5. Sketch key other key ele­ments if important
  6. Present your ideas

Key ques­tions to ask when design­ing a game

  • What is the objec­tive of the game?
  • Who is the tar­get audience?

Fun­da­men­tals of a game design document

http://gamedesign.wikicomplete.info/game-design-document-template

Activ­ity 1hr:

  1. Reg­is­ter for Google Docs. Share game design doc­u­ment with each other.
  2. Cre­ate your game design doc­u­ment from template.

Soft­ware and skills needed to build a game

Build­ing a game can be a com­plex affair. As a devel­oper you will require knowl­edge in 2D and 3d Graph­ics includ­ing  appli­ca­tions such as Sketchup, 3dsmax and Pho­to­shop. How­ever these pro­grams can be pro­hi­tivly expen­sive when it comes to learn­ing. Look out for trial and edu­ca­tional ver­sions. Some ven­dors will offer dis­counts to stu­dents. Anouther way of avoid­ing or reduc­ing the cost is to use alter­na­tive free or Open Source appli­ca­tions such as:

If you want to get seri­ous about build­ing a pro­fes­sional game, then a game engine will help in that endeavour.

In the old days of game devel­op­ment you would of had to code from scratch. Thank­fully much of the hard work has been done and many com­mon ele­ments have now been com­piled in to what we now call the game engine. A game engine is sim­ply a soft­ware appli­ca­tion that allows the designer / devel­oper to build their game with­out hav­ing to dive into code for sim­ple changes. It does not excuse the need to learn programming, although can lessen the ini­tial learn­ing curve to get started build­ing a game.

Game Engines for Learning

  • Unity
  • Quest 3D

Tuto­ri­als

Unity

. Game Engines, 2D Image Edit­ing Pro­grams, 3D Pro­grams. (Hand­out of places to down­load free open source alternatives)

Intro­duc­tion to game devel­op­ment and programming

  1. Plan your project using Piv­otal­Tracker agile project man­age­ment tool
  2. Break­down of video game
  3. Unity Game Devel­op­ment Tool Introduction

Resources and Links

Fur­ther Edu­ca­tion and Courses

http://www.train2game.com/

Game Design Tutorials

http://www.dezinerfolio.com/2008/02/06/20-free-tutorials-to-create-your-own-flash-game

http://www.3dbuzz.com

http://www.videocopilot.net/

Mind­tools

http://ictmindtools.net/

http://mind42.com/

Plan­ning and Documenting

http://docs.google.com

http://www.pivotaltracker.com/dashboard

Learn­ing Links

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_ATFQXhMaM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoPvzMUYeXU

© Copyright Hyperstream Interactive