[TheoryCraft] Planning ahead vs. Creating stuff on the fly

[Surf Solar]

I want to know how you fare more comfortably through developing your games.

I personally discovered, that I totally suck at creating some thoughts, ideas or concepts direclty out of the blue, to the paper. I can stare at an empty document for days if I want to develop, say, a location in an RPG, and nothing but random textlines comes out. I suck at planning ahead. I know perfectly well how my vision of XY looks in my head, but I am unable to express this in a cohesive manner, in text format.

However, when I look at some random things, it can come from everywhere, be it architecture, stories, music etc. I immedieately got "the spark" to do thing XY immedieately and this works very very good for me. I sometimes open Photoshop, 3dsMax,the Dialogue Editor etc. randomly to try and just practise and out of a random thought something great comes out. Ideas fly just to me and always something nice comes out I could never come to if just staring at a blank state of paper.

This is always the usual workflow I do. But it sucks. Why does it suck you ask? Let me tell you:

1) "Going with the flow" works very well if you are alone doing a game. You can directly input your thoughts and experiment with it, without waiting for scripter/artist XY to do it. It is a very intuitive flow. But if you are unable to express to others what you thought might be cool, it becomes a problem. How do you tell person XY to make thing ABC like you imagined when you cant write documents?

2) The flow allows you to experiment. But it also opens the gap for "creative blocks" when you try the usual flow of "something cool gonna happen when I open program XY" which may cause your project to halt. From my experience, this comes in "waves" - sometimes I open a program I am currently working to make more art assets for example and after experimenting a bit I get some cool thing - but without clear documentation it also means I might stare at empty projects and can't proceed because of creative blocks.

3) Going more with "the flow of impressions" allows for more creative impressions and influences, as in you watch some cool movie and somehow found some influence you think could be good to take as an idea. It is much more flexible as in you can gain experience and directly input your stuff without relying on rewriting existing documents and such. It sucks, again as you need to tell your other designers of your change in mind/new idea.


It all boils down to how good you can handle working in a team, how good you are at concentrating your thoughts and visions into documents and such.

I dont know if I am the only one, but maybe someone feels the same here and wants to share some experiences? The problem is, some people I would really like to have in the team asked me if they could help, I want that too, but there are no documents available for them to jump in "thanks" to reasons above.

Now, I have gotten already used a bit to it, but I still feel a bit awkward working in a team of people who want to know "what to do next"? As I usually work more intuitive and go with stuff I create on the fly mixed with my influences this can become a huge problem as I am totally awkard creating flowcharts, design docs etc....

I know of people with a totally different mindest. They create stuff by planning ahead and first write everything on paper etc for example. How do you fare?

 

[Jaesun]

Heh. I've honestly wondered this as well. In specific to the modding stuff I do in FRUA, I do it all on the fly. I SHOULD technically plan ahead, but I'm more of a "In the Moment" kind of guy.

 

[Destroid]

Pretty much all the creative projects I've worked on (tabletop/pnp games, most recently a DF mod) have been collaborative with one other person, and I have found the system I have gravitated towards is talking stuff out for a while brainstorming and jotting down anything that seems like a cool idea, then going back through and picking some stuff to start working on. I've never created detailed design documents, but then I've never tried to create something complicated enough to really warrant that.

 

[DakaSha]

I'm able to do both and before I could code i would have huge barely readable documents on "planned" games.
thats hwo i should be doing it but now that i can code im much to impatient and tend to do things on the fly.

Its stupid. (not that i finish anything anyways)

 

[Redlands]

It depends on what I'm doing wrt development, and what it's for.

I usually don't start programming a game until I've got several substantial design ideas in place: if I can see, even roughly, how the game is going to work, in all its various pieces, then I'll proceed to the next stage of doing proper planning. Otherwise I'll usually just let ideas simmer until I'm done with them. Even if it takes fifteen years - which for one idea, it has - to get to where I can feel justifiably happy with the game and how it works.

I've found it generally helps (for me at least) to break down the game into various classes into a spreadsheet, so I can see what variables and classes I need overall. It doesn't necessarily have to be completely accurate, and I can make up stuff on the fly if it's better/doesn't work the way I thought it did, but at least it serves as a general guideline for what I need.

Actual algorithms and stuff I generally do at the keyboard, mostly because sometimes it's hard to visualize what's happening without actually making the algorithm. Especially in stuff that's somewhat recursive or iterative in nature.

 

[Zed]

on the fly, which is probably why I never finish anything.
I see most stuff I do as practice anyway.

 

[Surf Solar]

Heh, it's surprising to see lots of people with the same problem as me. Never thought that'd be the case.
How would one practise such more theorycraft activities? My mind just blanks out when I am staring at an empty document, while creativity flows just cool when I am actually doing something in the tools. Maybe combining it, writing in the document right while you are doing scripts, maps, graphics etc?

 

[Lexx]

It's much more efficient to plan ahead. You are faster in development, because you know what you want to do and what is needed. Especially for RPGs it's damn important to know your shit before you start. Else shit will end in ugly code and you are more likely to add bugs if you crowbar-in new ideas into existing stuff. Or you never finish anything, because you stop mid-development, as you are out of ideas. Therefore, you've probably wasted a shitload of time for nothing.

When it comes to locations, it's not so harsh, elements can change here and there and it might not end up in total chaos (though, it's easy to forget things. Like, I dunno, adding toilets to buildings). But quests and dialog should be prepared at least up into it's basic shapes.

 

[sea]

I think it is essential to know what you want to build before you build it. I don't mean in broad strokes, but the details. Speaking from a game development standpoint, what locations do you have to create? How does the story go, and what sub-plots are needed? What are the standout ideas you want to include? All of these matter. I don't think you can force creativity, and due to the way our brains work we almost always come up with our best when we're "on a roll", but that doesn't mean you should ever go into something blind.

Sometimes, it's great to be able to say "man, that's awesome, I'll spend an hour or two implementing it", especially for little details and small pieces of content, side-quests etc. However, creating your entire project that way is just not good and will lead to lots of wasted time (case in point: my own work). That time isn't really wasted of course, as you do learn as you work, but it's just not an ideal way to go about things and does not really fly in the "real world", as it leads to feature creep as you constantly expand stuff and remove other things that no longer have a proper place. The mod I'm working on (it's been going slow the last week or two) effectively had to be restarted two or three times over both due to system crashes but also because new ideas necessitated massive changes in content (including the creation of several new quests and large locations, which all took weeks to create). It was good experience to have but there is no way I'm rushing into something like that again.

 

[villain of the story]

Take a look at VB design docs, for instance, they are very precise and to the point.

I think you need to return to things you like, films, music, games, levels, art, whatever, and start deconstructing them and understand the reasons you like them for before turning to development and planning ahead. And then try building them up again in your mind with slight alterations as a brain gymnastic.

 

[CreamyBlood]

I've learned to type it all and/or use pen and paper for notes. I have quite a few design docs for a few games. Lately I've been typing out what the game is, the mechanics, the goals then start filling in details as you go. I bounce ideas off of friends and add them to a list at the bottom, even if it's one word, it might make you remember later.

Sometimes you spend a lot of time working on programming details and forget about something. Look at your docs, or if you get an idea, add it to the docs. When you aren't coding or in the mood, reread them and cross things out or flesh them out.

If you're staring at a screen and don't know what to do you'll see your overwhelming list and can probably pick and choose what you feel like working on at the moment, whether it's AI, graphics, a potential feature, the GUI, whatever. Eventually you can cross things off as you complete them and see that you're making progress.

I do a blend (there should have been a middle option) but I'll say write it out. Even the simplest game is complex and takes a lot of work. I've been scaling back because after two decades of over-ambition I haven't completed a simple space invaders yet. I've found in the last few years that typing it out helps me keep focused.