~9 minute read8 Tips and Tricks from Game Designers
Who are the wizards behind the best-selling computer games? How do they do it? K-POWER asked eight game designers to reveal their secret techniques. Turns out magic has nothing to do with game design.
Designers insist that anyone, including you, can become a computer game designer. The designers agree that imagination is the most important requirement. And to put your great idea in motion, you'll have to work hard at developing the program and still harder at debugging it. (Getting to know assembly language doesn't hurt.) Now a few words from the wizards themselves.
RANDY "JUMPMAN" GLOVER
Randy Glover sits down with graph paper as soon as he gets an idea for a game. He thinks of what objects will be seen in the game and from what view. The 29-year-old designer of Epyx's Jumpman also keeps in mind the limitations of the machine he's working on.
"Sometimes you run into things you thought you could do but just can't. Other times you're able to pull off things you thought you couldn't do."
But before you do anything, you have to get to know your machine, advises Randy. He says a lot of people try to design games without understanding the machine they're working on. He also recommends studying math to help with the complicated machine codes. His other advice: Avoid graphics when you first enter the world of game design. "Understand the logic of games first. Start with simple things, like tic-tac-toe or checkers."
As a staff designer Randy says he gets ideas for games in two ways. One is an idea that he personally likes. He may like a certain style of play and find that there isn't a game that really takes advantage of it. Or he may have a number of pieces of ideas that he can string together as an original idea.
Sometimes, though, the company outlines what kind of a game it wants and what elements should be in it. The designer then has to try to make it work. Randy says this may seem to restrict his "creative license" but usually the result is a better and more popular game.
FERNANDO "ASTRO CHASE" HERRERA
Coming up with a juicy game idea is difficult, admits Fernando Herrera, but there are possibilities everywhere. "Anything you see can be related to a possible game. Look around and collect ideas and then mentally put some spice in them. Think of absurd ideas ... let your imagination go wild."
Fernando was the first winner of the Atari Star Award for an educational program called My First Alphabet. The 40-year-old programmer (now with First Star Software) is always on the lookout for marketable ideas and says that you should be too! It's all right to use an existing playing concept only if you can do it differently and better.
"I believe programming is more of an art than a science," says Fernando. This programmer began using computers only a few years ago. "In any art, it's important to learn some technique to develop the skills related to the art, but imagination is the most important thing for any artist."
Fernando also says the best programs are the ones that can be played without knowing anything about a computer. "Make the interaction [between computer and player] natural, so you press the right key or move the joystick without even thinking."
CHRIS "DANCIN' FEATS" CHANCE
Chris Chance says all his games come to him in the shower, and usually right out of the blue. "Every time I look at a situation," he says, "and try to put a game to it, it always seems a little bit dull. I just try to be bizarre, so that nothing like that has ever been done before."
Chris is a 24-year-old freelance programmer and the designer of Softsync's Dancin' Feats. He spent two years programming for Atari prior to this. All of his computer knowledge was picked up at home.
The toughest and most boring part of game design for Chris is the last five percent of the game. "You can work for three months and get 90 percent of the game, and then you'll have to work another three months just to do that last little bit, just to tie all those loose ends together. I think that's the point at which a lot of people just give up."
Even if your first game doesn't turn out the way you'd like, Chris says, it can give you ideas for other games. He recommends studying as many other games as you can. Studying program listings can also help you learn some of the shortcuts and tricks.
Chris has a trick that makes the Atari screen look like the computer isn't hooked up and the TV set is between channels. Enter the following five lines at the beginning of a program and you'll have an interesting background screen:
10 GRAPHICS 7
20 Y=PEEK(560)+5+256*PEEK<561)
30 POKE Y,192MARC "ZORK" BLANK
Marc Blank says the first step in writing an adventure game is coming up with a good story. He identifies three elements in a good adventure game: story, puzzle, and character. The story and characters must have quality, and the puzzle should be fair, but hard. "If it's too easy, it won't be interesting," says Marc. "A good adventure game should be challenging, not obvious ... something you think about in the shower."
"I don't think a single game ends up the way it was first conceived," Marc says. His advice for adventure-game writers is to first come up with a good story and then define the game environment. Marc uses a map to help him keep it straight.
"The most important and yet most intangible aspect of a good adventure game is based on involvement," he added. "The rewards are different than those of a regular arcade game. In an adventure game, you must have a personal stake. More effort may be required but you get more out of it."
The 29-year-old vice president of Infocom and designer of the Zork series and Deadline compares an adventure game to a novel, in that it's generally improved with a number of rewrites. It's unlike a novel because the author never has complete control; the person who plays the game is the main character. Getting the players really involved in the action, he says, is super important.
Marc wrote the original Zork in 1977 when he was working in a computer-science lab at MIT. It was written on a mainframe computer and then transferred to the various micros.
MARCIA "MATH MILEAGE" BURROWS
A lot of Marcia Burrows' game ideas come to her in her sleep. She keeps a pen and paper at her bed side to jot them down, and from there she might work out the ideas on graph paper to see if they look good. Then she'll see what it looks like on the screen.
This freelance designer created Math Mileage for CBS Software without even knowing BASIC. She learned FORTRAN and 502 machine language â and sold her first game â before she even owned a computer. Marcia says that game players want a lot more control over what's happening on the screen. She, like the others, thinks that a game has to be challenging but not discouraging. There always should be a way to get a feeling of accomplishment. Marcia also avoids ideas that are too violent or sexist.
If you're interested in designing a game, Marcia recommends that you learn as much as you can about computers â but not only computers. "Even though it's fun to crawl inside a computer and play with its potential, it's really important to look at other aspects of your life as well. That's where ideas for programs will come from."
RICHARD "TRUCKIN'" LEVINE
When Richard Levine comes up with a new game idea, he jots down as many things as he can think of to put into it. His challenge is to see how much he can squeeze into one game.
A computer game should be complex and difficult to master but, at the same time, easy to learn, Richard says. Richard, a game designer at Imagic and designer of Micro Surgeon and Truckin', thinks that sound is very important in game design, too.
"The sound should be exciting and fit with the action. And it musn't be obtrusive or annoying," he told K-POWER.
Richard says you should begin with a game design where you're manipulating only a few characters on the screen. Eventually, you'll have to learn assembly language. He says the more high-level languages you can master, the better. But he advises that you round out your skills in other areas, too.
"You'll have to decide at the outset whether the game will depend on graphics or playability, and set in advance what percentage of memory each will take," says Richard. He's quick to point out that a game often doesn't turn out the way a programmer imagines, simply because there isn't enough memory to pull it off.
And Richard has some advice on debugging. "When I write too fast, I have to spend more time debugging. Take your time writing a game, and do it right the first time."
DAVID "PITFALL" CRANE
Once David Crane gets stuck on an idea, he just starts experimenting with the computer. By creating an interesting picture or a unique way of using the joystick, he sometimes can create a new game concept.
"Just start banging the keys," David says, "and see what happens. Then get intimate with your computer. Get to know as much about it as the person who designed it."
David bounces his ideas off other designers at Activision (he's one of the five founders of the company). Then he sits down at the computer and spends about a day drawing graphics and deciding how he wants the game to look. After that, it's hours and hours of programming in the assembly code. Creating Pitfall took endless hours of hard work.
"BASIC is a good native language for you to master, because the commands are easy to understand. Then you can translate your game into other languages," David says.
But success isn't easy, says the 30-year-old designer of nine games. "The problem is that everyone who has a computer fancies himself a game designer, just as everyone who owns a guitar wants to be a rock star," says David. "There is nothing wrong with that if you remember that success is a long, hard road."
TOM "ASTRO BLITZ" GRINER
When 18-year-old Tom Griner has an idea, he begins with the most unique part of the game he hopes to create. "Sometimes I find that what I've got in mind won't work. Then there's no point in doing any more work on the game."
Graphics are important to Tom, but he points out that good graphics design won't sell a game for very long. Tom, a four-year veteran of computer-game design, kept this in mind when he was designing Black Hole and his newer game, Astro Blitz. Tom is under exclusive contract to HES. But before signing on with them, he wrote five games for Creative Software.
A truly popular game needs to have well-designed game play, he says. Also, players shouldn't have to wait for things to happen, and the movements should be smooth. He also says that the game speed can't be so fast that it's frustrating or so slow that it's boring.
And you'll have to learn assembly language. "Start with something simple that you know how to do in BASIC. Learn how to do it in assembly language, and then use that routine in your BASIC programs. From there you can add more routines."
KEN COACH is a New York freelancer who writes about consumer electronics.
This article appeared in
K-Power
Apr 1984
These historical, out-of-print articles and literary works have been GNUSTOed onto InvisiClues.org for academic and research purposes.
