Designing/planning games

[Me]

Hello everyone! I am new to writing/planning games and I was wondering if
anyone could tell me how I should go about it. I read in the TADS manual
about it but that isn't very clear. I get mapping but how do I go about the
rest? If someone could send me a sample or something to that extent I would
appreciate it greatly. Thank you very much.

[sg...@my-deja.com]

In article <38fb...@usenet.rollanet.org>,

How to plan out a game is a bit of a mystery to me too. There's few
documents around about the process. The 'right way' to do it is, I
think, mainly up to the individual's preference and way of thinking.
I'd say that the most important thing is to do some planning before you
start coding.

There's a few articles about planning games in the "info" directory at
the IF Archive. <ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/info/>.

I'm thinking especially of _The Craft of Adventure_ by Graham Nelson
and _Whizzard's Guide to Text Adventure Authorship_ by Gerry Kevin
Wilson.

(_Craft_ is available in several formats and _Whizzard's Guide_ has two
supplements as well as the main document so see the directory index
file <ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/info/Index> to fathom out which files
to download.)

Some of the IF authoring system manuals discuss the process of
designing a game - eg: the TADS manual which you seen. There's also a
simple approach outlined in chapter 7 of the Alan manual
<http://w1.132.telia.com/~u13207378/alan/manual/construction.html#pgfId=
144> and there's a chapter in the Inform Designers Manual
<ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/programming/inform6/manuals/>

Take a look at the rec.arts.int-fiction "FAQ" for a few other links
about game design - see "Part 5". The FAQ was posted to the group
recently or you can find it at <http://www.davidglasser.net/raiffaq/>

One other interesting thing I saw once about game planning was in the
documentation for the TADS "adaptive hint system" library contribution
<ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/programming/tads/examples/adhint.zip> It
describes mapping games in terms of puzzles instead of geography. That
discussion is of course related to the technical aspects of
implementing a hint system but the concept of mapping a game's puzzles
or plot structure rather than just the physical layout of a game's
world can be helpful.

I'm not sure if this answers what you were asking in your post. My
other interpretation was that you were interested in example TADS
source code for games. If that's the case, take a look at the TADS
programming examples directory at the IF Archive. There's a directory
of game source code under that - <ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-
archive/programming/tads/examples/games>

I hope atleast some of the above is helpful.

Regards,
SteveG.

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