Design Your Final Product

Before You Start:

Consider that professional game companies have to go through many stages of planning and testing before they even begin to program their game. These stages can include anything from building the story and planning key gameplay mechanics to thinking about market demand and monetization. However, because this is a simplified course, we will be skipping over all but the essentials.

The 2 main things to think about include:

• Story/Events
  • Player
    • What is your player’s goal?
    • What can your player do?
  • Non-Playable Characters (NPCs)
    • Who can your player meet?
  • Enemies
    • Are there monsters/villains that your hero can fight?
    • Is there a special way the player can beat their enemies?
      • Thinking about special mechanics can make your game more interesting to play.
  • Events
    • Events can be anything that can be triggered by your player, this can include your player wandering into a new area and triggering a cutscene or talking to an NPC that will give the player a helpful item, etc.
    • Events can either be forced or optional, making more optional events will make your game feel more ‘open world’ as opposed to linear.
• Setting
  • Tile Map
    • Your game’s map will determine where the player can or cannot explore.
    • Where are your NPCs placed?
    • Are there special items the player can pick up?
      • Think about adding hidden secrets or special areas.
    • Make sure you put restrictions on how far your player can venture, you don’t want them to wander off too far from your story. (Not putting a limit on where they can explore is not only confusing for the player but may also cause bugs in your code.)

Remember to keep what you plan simple, after all you’ll be coding everything yourself from scratch. Maybe limit yourself to 1-2 areas with only a few essential NPCs. Writing out everything that you would like to include can keep you focused and prevent you from going off track.

After planning your game’s general concept, it’s time to put it on paper. Drawing out your tilemap can prevent you from being overambitious. It can also help you organize where you want important events for your story to happen, for example where a cutscene is or where key items are hidden.

Below is an example drawing of a tilemap plan for a Pokemon demo game that has key information like where trainers and important buildings are.

Keep your drawing simple (it doesn’t need to be a Picasso level drawing), just make sure the important stuff is there to remind yourself in the future.

Another thing you should design is all of your game screens. Screens display information that is important to the player, such as the time or menu options. Many of you will have a menu for your player to navigate to different screens. For example, Pokemon’s menu shows the different pokemon with the player, the items the player has collected and other essential features of gameplay.

Below is a list of all the screens needed for the Pokemon demo game mentioned earlier. It shows the most important screens with all the information the player needs along with some variations.

You will probably have to make more screens than you originally planned, but this is only to give you a general idea of what you have to program in the future. These drawings may seem more complex, but simply drawing out rectangles with an appropriate label will help you in the long run.

Video Lesson: