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Brainstorm a list of ideas for your game and choose your favorite. Learn a process for sketching and sharing with teammates.
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The best way to find a great game idea is to brainstorm with
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your teammates and focus on an idea that everyone seems to gravitate toward.
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When brainstorming ideas, try to imagine what type of users you'd like to attract.
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For this course, we wanna attract those casual gamers who are waiting
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around for a bus or killing time on the train into work.
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So we need something simple and easy to pick up for a quick fix.
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We came up with an idea for a casual defender
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type game about a cat in space over a group chat.
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Coming up with the idea is the easy part.
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We usually start with the type of game we want to create or an idea for a
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game mechanic, and then think of ways to
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differentiate ourselves from games that are already out there.
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The hard part is communicating the idea to your team.
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Gather feedback and iterating on that concept
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until everyone is on the same page.
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So with just a few simple tools, pencil, markers,
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and dotted grid paper, a compelling sketch can be created
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to share our idea with teammates or simply better understand
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it ourselves if we're working alone like a crazy person.
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I like using dotted grid paper because it helps me
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think about the sizes of different elements while I'm sketching.
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I use the light blue pencil to make a messy first sketch and then go back over
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it with a black marker to define my lines and a grey marker to add some shading.
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The first thing I usually do when setting up a sketch to share with others is to
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draw a rectangle that is roughly the scale and
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the screen size the game will be played on.
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This helps our team visualize our idea better.
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Since we're designing an iPhone game, I'll base my rectangle size
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on the smallest iPhone resolution, which is 480 by 320 pixels.
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If we view each square on our dotted grid paper as equaling 16 pixels, we can
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draw out a 30 by 20 rectangle, and that will be perfect for setting up our sketch.
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After I have my rectangle drawn, I usually list out the elements I'll
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need to draw in order to get my point across to my teammates.
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The game we're creating is a casual defender type game,
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which means we want our hero, we'll call him Space Cat,
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at the bottom center of our screen with enemies falling from
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above and some way for the cat to shoot them down.
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We're guessing that we'll need a view of the
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cat's life at the top-left of the screen and also
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a way to keep track of the score the
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user is being awarded for each enemy they shoot down.
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So our screen size is all set up.
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Second step after the set up is quickly
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sketching out the scene with our blue pencil.
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Let's quickly sketch Space Cat at the
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bottom center of our screen on some ground.
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[BLANK_AUDIO].
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Maybe put a little crater next to him to show that he's on some sort of planet.
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Let's draw some sort of gun in Space Cat's hand with a projectile demonstrating
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the main game play mechanic which is shooting at enemies to defend your planet.
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The actual character design doesn't matter a whole lot right now.
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We could draw stick people if we wanted to and still
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be able to explain the idea, but I found it so
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much easier to get teammates on board when they can see
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something that looks similar to what the end product might look like.
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We'll go deeper into character design later.
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All you need to understand right now is why I'm approaching the sketch this way.
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Let's sketch out a couple enemies now.
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Again, these don't have to be what the enemies will ultimately look like.
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You don't wanna invest a whole lot of time in this early stage.
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The goal here is to get a quick sketch to share with your team.
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Now let's sketch out what our HUD elements will be, and for those of
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you who aren't familiar with the term HUD, it stands for Heads Up Display.
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Elements in the HUD include what the user needs to know while playing the game.
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We'll need a life meter in the top-left and we'll also put Space Cat's head up
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there next to it to help the user
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understand the meter represents the life they have left.
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In the right-hand corner, we'll just put some random numbers for a score.
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Now that we have a basic blueprint of our sketch, I like to go
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back over it with a black marker to flesh out the sketch a bit.
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Like I said before, it doesn't have to be perfect by any means, but the
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better it looks, the better the reaction and
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feedback from the people you share it with.
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So when we're done tracing the entire scene with our marker,
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we'll finish it off by adding some shading with a gray marker.
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This helps add depth to the sketch without
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a lot of effort, create a stronger resemblance
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to what a finished game might look like, and help sell your idea to your team
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