This weekend (after collectively enjoying Iron Man 2 – it’s research somehow, I promise), we sat down and forbade ourselves from playing Street Fighter IV until we’d spent some time thinking about the nitty gritty of the game’s combat systems – the moment to moment gameplay and feel.
It’s difficult to get on the right track, particularly when trying to brainstorm a particular element of the game – we had a few false starts as we went off on random tangents, having ideas about what to do in different parts. But fortunately we kept refocusing, and kept attempting to approach the task in a different way.
We finally scored a hit on the “First Five Minutes” approach, which I have to credit to Dan (my boss at my day job). It’s a great approach where you simply say: “Okay, we begin where the player starts in the game. Lets write out, moment by moment, everything we want that player to experience in the first five minutes of play.” It ends up feeling a bit like playing a pen-and-paper roleplaying game, where you’re making up the rules as you go.
Once we made it on track we were blazing ahead, and we came up with some great stuff – I’ve scanned a couple of the less spoilery pages of my (terribly scrawled) notes below to give you guys a sneak peek at what we’re looking to implement. After a mere hour or so, we had set up concrete ideas for each of the workmen’s strengths and weaknesses, and had created a clear mental picture of how we want it to play out – a picture I’m now in the process of breaking down to figuring out how to get there code-wise, system by system.
No, that isn't ancient Vedic Sanscrit, it's just my handwriting. Man. I wish I could write Vedic Sanscrit.
This week will be focused on getting as much of that moment-to-moment gameplay in as possible, with the eventual goal of being able to play, dynamically and in real time, the scene that we’ve constructed. I’ll let you know how it goes!
- Jason
