Rapid Ideation is the act of creating a quick prototype with a focus on exploring if a concept could be viable, the focus would not be on a final product but a product that is built quickly with whatever is to hand. For game developers like myself, this can be incredibly fun as we get to explore what is possible and look at new ways to create.
This week I have done a lot of prototyping, the different multiplayer round types for Otterman have been coming along rapidly and each one has prototypes of their own before the final one begins production. Plus I have been teaching my brother Unreal Engine through a prototype platformer game.
Focusing on the platformer game, as I had to teach what was going on, I had to make sure what I was doing was easy to understand. This did mean that I didn’t choose the most efficient code but the most simple for someone with little knowledge of game programming. I looked at the components of the game and broke it down to camera, player, environment, and looked at each area separately. By the end of the day, we had a character running around, with a system in place to interact with the environment (hopefully one that was fully understood and could be reused in other places) and a camera that followed the player in a nice way based on traditional side-scrolling platformer cameras. I feel I benefited from breaking down how the game works for someone else as everyone I know is skilled enough to know how games could work at a glance, myself included. When I can solve most problems myself, the only way to improve further is to be able to explain it clearly to someone else.
At work, I prototype early so that I can explore and lock down systems and structures to follow. So when I am prototyping, I am still thinking about if it will fit for the final product, and after all, if I went in without that forethought I may have to replace large sections of game code later down the line. I think this just comes from experience but even in a small prototype, good system development can make game development much faster, although, during the prototype phase, I am much more likely to put things together any way I can due to the shorter development time.
I am also a fan of paper prototyping if a game design suits it, and have used it a few times. I find it’s much quicker than creating a full-on game and I often try out games before however only really works well with games that are turn-based. I have used paper prototyping for real-time games but I don’t feel its as beneficial as just making a quick game build. As a side note: paper prototyping multiplayer games like card games or social/party games can be a lot of fun for everybody.
One tool I like to use for prototyping is the Unreal Engine’s Blueprint system. It’s very quick to get what you want and a lot of presets already exist, so if you want a character, just create a BP and add what you want, the character movement component can be quickly set up how you want. Plus there are some useful components like collision components so you can quickly respond to overlaps. After learning a bit of Unreal, you will find it very easy to create simple or even more complex mechanics in a reasonable time, and because you can see the node’s flow, it’s easy to debug as well. when you do come to converting it all to C++, it’s pretty easy as the blueprint nodes are the same functions you would call in C++.
So how will I use prototyping going forwards? Well, I already use prototyping a lot so have already become pretty good at it, for me, its all about how you use the skills and tools you already have to solve the problem you face, so adding more tools is always useful, learning new software as I learn about it will be important, as well as learning new techniques in my existing software skillset. With that in mind, I will need to also keep my tools sharp and so practicing regularly will be a great help and I need to make sure I stay up to date on any updates to the software I use.
Next week will be the first game jam of my masters degree, I have a few plans for it. I want to try to make a digital card game, I have some theories to explore on how I may be able to create the flow of a card game, and given my experience is all in real-time games, a turn-based game will be a refreshing change. I also know that a card game can be adapted through story and by changing the cards to any theme so it won’t matter too much what the theme is. The focus for me will be to focus on the mechanics for this jam as that’s the main thing I want to explore, I also think that knowing how a card game could work will also help me in future game development as I will have more experience in a different type of game to pull from.