00:00 last time on developing i picked my game
00:03 engine unity and i started to learn how
00:06 to use it but now it's time to reveal
00:09 the idea for my game and well get
00:12 started with making it
00:14 but where does one begin when
00:17 developing a game and i think this is a
00:20 vitally important question because
00:23 as you are about to see if you take the
00:26 wrong direction when you start
00:28 developing a game it can be
00:31 disastrous for the project
00:44 okay so let me start with the idea for
00:47 the game i am going to make and brace
00:50 yourself because this is crazy a 2d
00:53 side-scrolling platform game yes i know
00:56 every indie developer starts by making a
00:58 side-scrolling platformer but i think i
01:00 have some good reasons i love the genre
01:04 platformers are relatively easy to make
01:06 in the grand scheme of things it's not a
01:09 mmo at least and i've made loads of
01:11 videos about platformer level design and
01:14 character design which should prove
01:16 helpful now this is also going to be a
01:20 brace yourself again platformer with a
01:22 unique twist the idea is that the
01:25 character in my platformer is magnetic
01:29 which means they will repel away from
01:31 some platforms and attract to others and
01:34 you can change your polarity with a
01:37 button press the idea actually came from
01:40 this game the legend of zelda oracle of
01:42 seasons in this game you have a magnetic
01:44 glove power-up which allows link to
01:47 repel from some surfaces and attract
01:49 towards others you can also use it to
01:51 pick up large metal balls for puzzle
01:53 solving and use it to fight enemies it's
01:56 a really cool mechanic but it does feel
01:59 somewhat limited by the genre the top
02:02 down camera perspective and of course
02:04 the limited technology of the game boy
02:06 so i thought what if i were to borrow
02:10 that game idea and put it in a different
02:13 genre a fast-paced 2d platformer
02:16 something akin to celeste or super meat
02:19 boy a game where you have to master the
02:21 magnetism for speed and fluidity and
02:26 so that is the idea and the question now
02:28 is where do i begin with it do i just
02:31 jump into unity and start coding do i
02:34 jump into photoshop and start making
02:36 some artwork for it do i start thinking
02:38 about the storyline or the characters
02:43 i'm going to level with you this is not
02:46 the first game i've ever tried to make
02:48 ever since i was a little kid i've come
02:50 up with ideas for games and at various
02:52 points in my life i have tried to make
02:54 those games in different tools and
03:00 finish those games and i think the
03:03 reason is the same every single time i
03:06 start in the wrong manner let me show
03:10 you so i got this uh folder from my
03:13 parents house and it is full of notes
03:17 and sketches and ideas for a game i was
03:20 going to make a few years before i
03:22 started game makers toolkit that is
03:24 actually just a a mouse map for
03:26 starcraft ghost that game never came out
03:28 did it that might be that might be worth
03:30 something actually but then the but then
03:31 the ebay pile so this game was going to
03:33 be called uh carter's curse it was about
03:36 famed archaeologist howard carter the
03:39 dude who discovered tutankhamen's tomb
03:41 and in my game at least he would also
03:43 awaken an ancient egyptian curse meaning
03:46 he'd have to fight zombies and mummies
03:48 and ancient egyptian gods i i remember
03:52 spending hours and hours drawing all of
03:58 anyway so how would you go about
04:00 fighting these enemies the answer
04:02 playing p-cross puzzles p-cross is this
04:05 logic-based grid-based puzzle game a bit
04:08 like sudoku nintendo's made loads of
04:10 p-cross games i was really inspired by
04:12 games like bookworm adventures where you
04:14 have a puzzle at the bottom of the
04:16 screen and completing the puzzle does
04:18 damage to enemies in a little fight
04:20 scene at the top of the screen and so my
04:22 idea was kind of the same you'd have a
04:24 p-cross grid at the bottom of the screen
04:26 and howard carter would be fighting
04:27 monsters at the top of the screen so i
04:30 jumped into development i was making the
04:32 game in an app for ipad called kodia
04:35 which lets you make ios games on your
04:38 ipad i'd actually previously used it for
04:40 a very standard pcross app for ios so i
04:44 knew i could probably code it but i
04:45 wanted the graphics to be amazing so i
04:48 jumped into photoshop and just started
04:50 making loads of sprites and animation
04:52 frames i actually have a dropbox folder
04:54 that is full of sprites and animations i
04:58 made loads of different characters i
05:00 made finishing moves for howard carter i
05:02 made an introductory cutscene i made
05:05 menus with big juicy buttons to press i
05:08 really got into it but then i
05:12 realized something something
05:14 quite important something
05:19 to the project the game wasn't any good
05:22 it was really bad it wasn't fun at all
05:26 and the more i coded it and the more i
05:28 developed it the more i realized what
05:30 the problem was pcross just doesn't have
05:33 enough depth for this type of game you
05:37 can't really have tactics or strategy
05:39 you can't change what you're doing
05:41 depending on which enemy you're fighting
05:44 and ultimately it was immaterial that
05:46 you were fighting enemies you could
05:48 ignore that entire top part of the game
05:50 and the game would still work because
05:52 all you're doing is just playing p-cross
05:54 puzzles so it meant that i didn't have
05:55 the ability to make the game more
05:57 difficult or more interesting depending
05:59 on which enemy you were fighting and it
06:01 meant the player was just doing the same
06:02 thing over and over again i had made a
06:05 game that was shallow and repetitive and
06:09 dull and maybe i could have fixed it but
06:11 i was so far got at that point and so
06:14 demoralized that i just kind of scrapped
06:18 so what was my mistake well with many
06:22 many years of hindsight it's been almost
06:25 a decade now it's pretty obvious to me
06:27 what happened and it's this when you're
06:29 making a game there's a bunch of
06:32 different things you have to create the
06:33 main ones being the music the art the
06:37 game design the story and the code and
06:40 now it's easy to think of them as being
06:44 they're not in a lot of cases the game
06:46 design is not equal but instead it is
06:49 the foundation upon which all the other
06:51 parts sit and so if you get that bit
06:55 the whole thing falls apart i mean you
06:58 can fix the bugs and you can redraw the
07:00 graphics but if the gameplay is
07:02 fundamentally flawed well the whole
07:04 project can sometimes be unsalvageable
07:07 and this is pretty much what happened to
07:09 me i spent so much time on the art and
07:12 animation that by the time i finally got
07:14 around to the gameplay i realized that
07:16 the whole thing was flawed i had
07:18 basically built a house on really shaky
07:21 foundations and then i was surprised and
07:23 upset when my toilet fell through the
07:26 floor embarrassingly this is not the
07:28 only time this has happened to me i
07:29 wanted to make a film noir
07:31 point-and-click adventure game with a
07:33 unique procedural generation clue system
07:35 but i spent so much time on the story
07:37 and researching the time period that i
07:39 never got around to actually designing
07:41 that system and i wanted to make a
07:43 fast-paced modern twist on the mobile
07:46 game snake but i got bogged down in bug
07:49 fixing and trying to get the movement
07:50 code perfect that i never found out if
07:53 that game was any fun before i got bored
07:57 so every time i've tried to design my
07:59 own game i've put other elements like
08:02 story and graphics ahead of the gameplay
08:07 well i think it comes down to making two
08:10 very wrong assumptions assumption one is
08:14 that the game always felt kind of cool
08:17 in my head so i just kind of assumed
08:19 that the game would be fun
08:22 obviously that was wrong and assumption
08:25 two is that i'm not able to find out if
08:28 the game is fun until i've built the
08:31 game i have to just kind of keep making
08:33 the game and at some point i'll realize
08:36 if it's any good right
08:39 wrong again and this is all very
08:41 cringe-worthy to say because
08:43 now the answers are so obvious but they
08:47 weren't obvious then it's only since
08:49 doing game makers toolkit since
08:50 researching game development since
08:52 interviewing dozens and dozens of game
08:55 designers that i now know how most
08:57 successful games start you see game
09:00 designers have loads of ideas all the
09:03 time and i'm sure they all seem
09:04 amazingly fun in their heads but the
09:07 best game designers know that their
09:09 brains are horrible smelly liars the
09:12 only way to know if a game idea is good
09:16 is to build it to test it but instead of
09:19 having to build the entire game
09:21 designers just have to build a
09:24 prototype a prototype is just this small
09:27 scrappy test bed for an idea just
09:30 designed to see if the idea is fun or
09:33 not these prototypes are usually
09:35 incredibly ugly with just unfinished art
09:38 or basic shapes or sprites stolen from
09:41 other games they're often buggy and
09:44 broken and they have nothing in them but
09:46 the bare minimum features needed to test
09:49 that mechanic they are a just functional
09:52 enough version of the game idea built as
09:54 quickly as possible with the only
09:56 purpose being to see if that game idea
10:00 is it fun or interesting is it worth
10:04 pursuing is it a strong foundation upon
10:07 which to build the rest of the game and
10:10 that's what i'm gonna do this time i'm
10:12 gonna get it right i'm gonna focus
10:14 exclusively on making the prototype and
10:16 i am going to be extremely disciplined
10:19 and not do anything other than just test
10:22 this game idea so in terms of art i'm
10:24 just going to pull stuff off google
10:26 images there's going to be no music
10:28 there's no story i'm not going to think
10:30 about the name of the game or the name
10:32 of the characters i'm not gonna start
10:34 designing an app icon for a game that
10:36 hasn't even been built yet mark you
10:38 idiot the code will definitely be buggy
10:41 and broken because i'm still just
10:43 learning unity but it should be good
10:46 enough to see if this idea works just a
10:48 sandbox to test out game mechanics and
10:51 see what's fun so let's get started and
10:54 open up unity the first thing i needed
10:57 to do was to have a character who can
10:59 just move left and right and jump so i
11:01 just have it apply forces to the bridged
11:03 body when i hit the right keys this
11:06 already had some problems which wasn't a
11:08 great start but i got there in the end
11:10 then i put a magnet in the scene and
11:12 needed to make it so the character would
11:14 attract towards the magnet now to get
11:17 this working i had to become an expert
11:20 programmer i had to use my galaxy brain
11:23 coding skills so i limbered up my
11:25 fingers and typed in the following line
11:27 of code how do i move a rigid body
11:30 towards another object okay yes i
11:32 googled it found some code and slapped
11:34 it in my project but i did make sure i
11:36 understood how it works it basically
11:38 finds the direction between the
11:40 character and the magnet and applies
11:42 forces to the rigid body in that
11:44 direction i also tweaked the code so
11:46 that it would speed up as you get closer
11:50 then i made it so you could turn off the
11:52 magnet with a button press which had the
11:54 intended effect of keeping the
11:55 character's velocity going sending them
11:58 flying through the air so if i slap a
12:00 platform up here i can attract the
12:02 character towards the magnet then let go
12:04 and jump up here which does feel pretty
12:08 good but it's a little hard to control
12:10 things this code maybe isn't perfect
12:13 things get out of hand pretty easily but
12:15 as i was researching this stuff i
12:17 stumbled upon something really useful in
12:20 unity it's a built-in component called
12:22 the point effector and it's basically
12:25 a magnetic field i don't know how i
12:27 missed this the icon for it is literally
12:29 just a magnet here's how it works you
12:31 give a game object a collider and a
12:34 point effector and then set an attract
12:36 strength and now when a rigid body is in
12:39 the collider it's attracted towards the
12:41 center of the field you can also use
12:43 unity's layer mask system to make it so
12:46 it only attracts certain objects so this
12:49 would certainly make the game a lot
12:50 easier to make so i decided to remake
12:53 the prototype and yes the game feels
12:55 more grounded it's easier for me to
12:57 tweak things and i can do cool stuff
12:59 like if i put the attract point on the
13:01 poles of the magnet this happens which
13:03 looks pretty sweet but when i made this
13:06 second prototype for some reason not
13:08 quite sure why i decided to not use
13:10 mario this time but replace him with a
13:13 picture of a magnet for the main
13:15 character and this kind of gave me
13:19 what if the character is not magnetic
13:23 but there is a magnet in the game world
13:25 and the character can walk over and pick
13:28 up the magnet to achieve this i used
13:31 unity's built-in joint system it's
13:33 another component this allows you to
13:35 connect two rigid bodies together using
13:37 different types of joints like hinges
13:39 and springs so now the character is
13:42 essentially holding the magnet and if
13:44 the magnet is attracted to a piece of
13:46 metal the character goes with it until
13:48 you let go of the magnet and now you can
13:50 walk around again and that gameplay i
13:52 wanted before with using the trajectory
13:54 of the magnet to send your character up
13:56 to a higher platform that can still be
13:58 achieved by just letting go of the
14:00 magnet in mid-air plus it allows for all
14:02 sorts of other things like you can have
14:04 two magnets or or more and you could
14:06 maybe like place the magnet up here then
14:09 get an enemy to chase you turn off the
14:11 magnetism and splat
14:13 oh this is kind of cool actually maybe
14:16 this could work suddenly the game felt
14:19 way more interesting than my original
14:22 idea which i have to admit i was
14:24 starting to get a little bit worried
14:25 about when your character is magnetic
14:27 and being attracted and repelled it's
14:29 very easy to feel a bit
14:31 out of control but having the magnet be
14:33 a separate object means you get times
14:35 where you are completely in control as
14:37 the character and a bit more out of
14:39 control when holding the magnet plus i
14:41 was a bit worried just how many ideas i
14:43 could come up with for a game where the
14:45 character is magnetic but as soon as i
14:47 had it as two separate entities the
14:50 ideas just started flowing plus i really
14:53 like games where you move back and forth
14:55 between two distinct types of gameplay
14:57 like think how mario odyssey changes
14:59 when you do and don't have the hat so in
15:02 my game the character is nimble and can
15:05 jump really high without the magnet and
15:07 slow and leaden when holding the magnet
15:10 but of course that magnet allows for all
15:12 sorts of amazing possibilities now i
15:15 shouldn't be surprised that an even
15:17 better idea emerged during the
15:19 prototyping process as we saw in the
15:21 gmtk episode the games that designed
15:23 themselves it's pretty common for new
15:26 ideas to emerge during prototyping take
15:28 a look at the game crypt of the
15:30 necrodancer when that game was
15:32 originally designed it was just supposed
15:33 to be a roguelike with a tight time
15:36 limit in between your turns but as the
15:38 designers made it they realized that it
15:40 would be even more interesting if
15:42 instead of it being on a timer it was
15:44 set to the beat of a song
15:46 so prototypes aren't just a way to test
15:49 and prove the validity of an idea they
15:51 are a way to generate new and even
15:54 better ideas now during this whole stage
15:57 i made another interesting discovery in
15:59 unity this one is called sprite shapes
16:02 and it's generally used to make really
16:04 cool organic level design like you might
16:06 see in the ori games but for my purposes
16:09 i just put on a blank color and this
16:11 allowed me to make level design really
16:13 really fast i could just snap together a
16:16 prototype area by dragging handles
16:18 around like doing something in photoshop
16:20 so i built the prototype again and this
16:22 time i wanted the character to be a
16:24 little bit better to control something
16:26 closer to a real video game character
16:28 now i don't want to get bogged down in
16:30 coding movement and jumps so i
16:32 downloaded a character control script
16:35 off the internet it works really good i
16:37 can focus on tweaking it or remaking it
16:40 or whatever in the future right now i
16:43 don't want to put time into that also in
16:45 this prototype i started looking at some
16:47 more mechanics like being able to throw
16:50 the magnet and then being able to recall
16:52 it back to you like thor and his hammer
16:55 and because the magnet rigid body bumps
16:57 into the character's rigid body it gives
16:59 you this little bit of feedback when you
17:01 catch the magnet it's like free game
17:03 feel it's amazing and then i came up
17:05 with various scenarios that you could
17:08 use the magnet in like throwing it at a
17:10 wall to create a platform maybe
17:12 connecting it to a piston and then
17:14 disconnecting it at the right time to
17:15 send it flying maybe switching its
17:17 polarity to jump between two conveyor
17:19 belts or how about you weigh down this
17:22 platform stand on the top of it and then
17:24 change the magnet's polarity to shoot
17:26 you up in the air whoa this is actually
17:29 pretty cool right this is looking like a
17:33 video game this is pretty fun and this
17:35 really was the point where i felt like
17:37 this game idea certainly has some
17:39 potential it's original i've seen a
17:42 bunch of magnet-based games but nothing
17:44 quite like this it allows for both
17:47 platforming and puzzle based gameplay it
17:50 feels like ideas for this game just flow
17:53 really easily so i can build loads of
17:55 different levels and best of all it's
17:57 just really fun to play i can just jump
17:59 into this scene in unity and pick up a
18:01 controller and it's quite enjoyable that
18:04 is surely a very good sign and so this
18:07 is the power of prototypes you can use
18:10 them to test if a game idea is actually
18:14 any good and if you're really lucky you
18:16 might find that new ideas emerge during
18:19 that prototyping phase now i think you
18:21 do have to have a certain level of
18:23 discipline here you really do have to
18:25 say i'm not going to focus on anything
18:28 extraneous right now just the gameplay
18:30 and i mean it is hard like in this video
18:32 i didn't show you the entire week i
18:34 spent looking at particle effects and
18:37 shaders and ui elements and things like
18:40 that i'd gone right back to that old
18:42 behavior of getting distracted and
18:44 carried away by stuff that just doesn't
18:46 matter right now but luckily i caught it
18:49 in time and scrapped that prototype
18:51 before getting back to the stuff that is
18:53 important and ultimately i think it
18:55 worked out i ended up building something
18:57 that i think is pretty fun that does
19:00 have potential and that i am excited to
19:03 work on my previous games which i tried
19:05 to make when i was much younger were
19:07 built with a sort of blind hope that the
19:10 game would be fun which isn't the most
19:12 confidence inducing way to make a game
19:15 but now it feels like i'm building on a
19:17 really strong foundation and so all
19:20 those other aspects the story the music
19:22 the artwork that can be built with faith
19:25 that the underlying foundation is solid
19:30 i feel like this is the way to start
19:33 making games building a prototype the
19:36 only question is what the hell do i do
19:40 i guess we'll find out next time in the
19:43 next episode of developing thank you so
19:45 much for watching and i hope you'll join
19:47 me on the next episode of this journey
20:14 the idea actually came from this game
20:16 the legend of zelda oracle of seasons
20:20 from this game oops
20:26 it came from this game this game this
20:29 game this game the legend of zelda
20:31 oracle of seasons came from the idea
20:34 actually came from this game the legend
20:36 of zelda oracle of seasons
20:39 that was pretty good
