Hi Kim, Well, you are right that developing a game requires several different talents/skills when creating a game from start to finish. First, and foremost the developer has to have an active imagination and have fairly decent creative writing skills. Second, there are a number of technical skills such as learning a programming language as well as learning a variety of APIs for handling input, sound, music, speech output, whatever. A developer may need to know various programming techniques such as artificial intelligence which can cover several books in and of itself. If a developer wishes to add something like 3d graphics then that would involve some fairly decent math and physics skills in order to render the graphics on screen correctly. So programming games certainly rrequires skills from both a programming and non-programming nature just to produce a game of any real quality. As to your questions I'll answer them in a question and answer format below.
Question: I'm very curious to know how developers go about making a game, particularly those games for those folks who enjoy role playing? If one is blind and doing the developing, I'm wondering what is done to give the world verisimilitude? Answer: Well, by verisimilitude I assume you mean seem realistic/probable its like any other roll playing game. A game developer would build in stat checks, rolls, using a common rule set like d20 to figure out if an action succeeded or failed in game. However, in a computer program all stat checks would be handled internally foregoing any need to pull out your own dice and do your own rolls and calculations. Question: How is developing a RPG similar to and different from writing a novel or short story? Answer: Well, as far as the non-technical part goes they are very similar. Before a developer starts programming a game like an rpg he or she will need to write the back story for each major campaign or adventure and write up the descriptions of everyone and everything in the game. A lot of this initial writing will become the majority of the text you would include in your rpg game. For instance, consider the following text. "You are standing in the small sea-side town of Southport. As you stand there gazing at the small village you can detect the salty sent of the sea not far away. There are a number of people passing in and out of the buildings along this street. What would you like to do? Visit the SouthPort In Visit the Local Taverin Visit the Docks Travel Somewhere Else" You'd be surprised how much time you can save by having all these textual descriptions of people, places, and things written up in advance before doing the actual coding. So in that respect its kind of like writing a short story, but its all from a second person point of view. However, unlike doing creative writing there is the technical side to creating an rpg game. There is quite a bit of coding involved here, and of course you will need something like the Dungeons and Dragons handbooks to actually create a realistic enough system for handling stat checks and things like that. Since the DND guides are fairly standard I'd use those as an example for doing combat, skill checks, and other rpg elements that requires a dice throw. As it happens I'm working on a rpg game myself, one based on the DC Universe, and I'm using the Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 handbooks to kind of help with the stat checks, building custom classes, and things like that I need to make the game somewhat realistic.For instance, since the Flash can move at the speed of light I obviously set his dexterity to 18 the maximum allowable in DND. That would give him an extra 4 points to any dice roll requiring speed/agility.I also created a custom class called Speadster which gives him an extra 2 points to a dice roll for speed as that's his unique special power. See how the DND rule handbooks can help with creating a custom rpg? HTH --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected]. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to [email protected].
