What do you do when your novel idea could be a great game?

[LifeContinuesOn]

I recently started wring a book called PySaR, After I got a spike of inspiration watching a movie. Anyhow, I found that it could be a sort of RPG adventure game after I started to develop the idea. I want to like build a board or something to use as a reference, but I have no clue of where I can even prototype a board.

What do I do?

 

[NotaNuffian]

Start a kickstarter and employ help.

Or con people like Mighty no. 9.

 

[Aaky]

Start a kickstarter and employ help.

Or con people like Mighty no. 9.

can you elaborate on Mighty no.9?

 

[BenJepheneT]

can you elaborate on Mighty no.9?

 

[ArcadiaBlade]

I wrote a novel where people develops powers and are guided by returnees which will aid you in battling monsters and aliens. Its an MMORPG where you pick from 3 traits(Superpowers, Cultivation or Magic) with each having advantages and disadvantages.

Magic and cultivation is kinda the same but its combat effectiveness differ from one another. Such that cultivation are better at melee combat but magic if you want to focus on range array of skills.

Superpower differs from the two as the early stages, you kinda are broken in the early game but you'll have a harder time leveling up than the other two and even be left on the long run.

Then, there's also a trait to be a normal human which is while the most trash class among the 4, it doesn't have any disadvantage when fighting monsters who can disable skills. Yup, there are monsters that would disable one of the classes which presents coop gameplay on the roster. If you wanna play solo, the best option would be the normal class.

I didn't plan this through but i was writing my novel and felt like it could actually turn out to be a good gane if done right.

The story would be that the moment people suddenly disappearing one after another, humans then awaken special abilities all around the world and can channel their powers to be able to cast magic, levitate objects or even cultivate.

But then, monsters came out of the rift and attack the world as each time they attack, they grow stronger.

At the end, the humans began to lose ground and almost ended the human race when people who had disappeared, returned with greater abilities than normal and turned out to be returnees who was sent back to the world to aid humans.

You pick 4 different classes with different skills and abilities as each differ except one.

Being a normal human.

While he/she doesn't contain any abilities, they possess strong willpower and can fight monsters evenly with the aid of their special weapons to channel different abilities and skillsets in battle.

Superpowers, fly through the sky, levitate with your mind or even shapeshift. Anything is possible but at a cost being harder to strengthen yourself and take on harder test to prove that you have unlimited potential.

Cultivation, channel the spirit within and fly with a sword. Conquer the world with your godly powers and face the tribulations from the heavens above. The only limit is to face countless foes by yourself.

Magic, cast a blackhole or even use the elements within the world to bend to your will, only your imagination is the limit. While you are weak in combat, what is to say when you can easily wipe your enemies before they can come closer?

 

[someonesomeguy]

the bottleneck on making games is not cool ideas but actual programming. Doing all this won't even be easy in rpg maker much less an mmorpg

 

[LifeContinuesOn]

the bottleneck on making games is not cool ideas but actual programming. Doing all this won't even be easy in rpg maker much less an mmorpg

Well I was considering making a board game rather then a Videogame

 

[someonesomeguy]

Well I was considering making a board game rather then a Videogame

there will probably be some program online for making board games. like unity for board games.

maybe first try it with paper and see if it is fun

 

[Zavha0mnic]

I recently started wring a book called PySaR, After I got a spike of inspiration watching a movie. Anyhow, I found that it could be a sort of RPG adventure game after I started to develop the idea. I want to like build a board or something to use as a reference, but I have no clue of where I can even prototype a board.

What do I do?

Ok but now I have an idea for a game where an immortal protagonist who isn’t compatible with the system of the world so they lack the fast gains that a system would normally provide. They do however, have unlimited tries. Like a video game.
I have one novel I can barely keep up on stop trying to make me add another!

 

[High-in-the-skys]

Just a rough idea you can follow if you want
Stage 1
Step 1 - Materialize you're ideas
Know what type of game you will be creating, the game logics etc. Research how you will make the game and how you will make it possible. Paper are cheap to write anyways, it's a good place to start.

Step 2 - Apply
This part is where you will create a working model of you're game no matter how rough it is, as long as the ideas show. You will apply what you researched and know to the game and create a prototype.

Step 3 - Cooperate with others
This will be the time where you will show you're work to others. If you found someone to help you (whether beta-testing, art stuff or something), show you're work to them. Maybe if you found a community for it, you can ask for help there. Asking for too much help is bad so as not asking at all just know what happened to YandereDev.

Step 4 - Feedback
What did the people thought you're lacking? Perhaps you should take note of that. Be open-minded.

After you did this go to stage 2, same steps as the last but bigger.
Stage 2
Ex. Stage1- research how you will spread the game
Stage 2 - maybe kickstarter will work?
Stage 3-You gained some ppl who want to test the prototype
Stage4- they said ur game is sh*t

You can stop at this stage but if you want to create you're game, go to stage 3 and research how you're game become less sh*tty.

I hope by Stage 10 you're game became a pyramid scam where if someone recommended the game to 10 others, they get a SSR rarity card(this is obviously a jok- wait they're real? No wayyy)

 

[K5Rakitan]

Try to make friends with a game developer. Pay a thousand dollars to attend a b2b event like this:

Game Connection: The Professional Event for the Video Game Industry

Game Connection is the international event where 1,500+ developers, publishers, distributors and service providers come to find new business partners.

www.game-connection.com

And yes, that's where I got my inspiration for the Silicon Valley Game Developers Summit in my fanfic

 

[namio]

I recently started wring a book called PySaR, After I got a spike of inspiration watching a movie. Anyhow, I found that it could be a sort of RPG adventure game after I started to develop the idea. I want to like build a board or something to use as a reference, but I have no clue of where I can even prototype a board.

What do I do?

Do you have any experience in creating a game, or have access to a group with experience willing to develop one with you? If the answer is no, just write the novel.

First thing is, better to do what you are capable of doing instead of chasing a distant, vague dream, and second, if it turns out it can work as a game then you have the rights to develop that game anyway?

A close friend of mine majored in game design and he worked on a couple for college assignments and projects. Even with this small scope it turns out actually creating a game with proper balance can be harder than what first appears, and this is with guidance from people in the industry and a team. This is with him being able to model, already having a laid-out battle system, understanding of how to use required tools and programs and multiple experienced programmers.

Just write your story. If you want to prototype a board, use a board. Printed-on paper and glue works.

Edit: Alternatively, you can jump into Unity/Renpy/whatever engine is accessible to you, spend a week on it, and realize creating a game is much more work than it first seems. I'd know-- I spent two years of my high school trying to turn my novel ideas into visual novels.

 

[Fromage]

You know immortal taoist? Something like that

 

[Deleted member 45782]

I recently started wring a book called PySaR, After I got a spike of inspiration watching a movie. Anyhow, I found that it could be a sort of RPG adventure game after I started to develop the idea. I want to like build a board or something to use as a reference, but I have no clue of where I can even prototype a board.

What do I do?

Are you like planning to do a CYOA game based on your story?
I know there's an app called Kocho that allows you to make your own CYOA game or something like that. They have their own discord too.

 

[MorgueAnna]

Consider visual novels, perhaps. Look into it or interactive fiction and see if there's a good fit for your story. Learn the basics about making games/visual novels, it can be very tricky.

 

[CoffeeFob33]

You could try making it in Tabletop Simulator I guess?
https://kb.tabletopsimulator.com/
That way you wouldn't have to figure out all the minutia of having the actual physical things created like the pawns and board, etc.
You'd still have to figure out the graphic design and or 3D modeling though.

That said, I used to work for a company that's sort of relevant here.
They made an app for creating boardgames and I even worked on a boardgame prototype with AR integration for them.
So I suppose I know of a couple of things you could start looking at.
It's definitely possible to have this stuff created without too much fuss.
Some URLs to look at:
https://cartamundi.com/en/cases/make-my-game-prototype/
https://www.boardgamesmaker.com/customized/custom-board-games.html (not sure if this is any good, but also seemed relevant)
https://www.heroforge.com/

 

[LostLibrarian]

I think about it again and realize, that 99% of "good stories" wouldn't be "good video game stories". In fact most stories would translate to a horrible mess of endless cutscenes, player characters that annoy the player, and often completely disjointed gameplay.

There is a reason why most video game movies are bad. They translate the story of a good game in a pure story format, which doesn't work. And the other way round works just as bad.

I won't say that there aren't one, but I can say that the overwhelming majority of stories would make for a bad game. Often the fleshed out worlds would be cool as background for a game, or certain events might be cool to play through/watch in a rare cutscene.

But I never wrote anything like that and I probably never will because my mindset when writing stories is a completely different one from writing games...

 

[Shard]

Sometimes core features of a world setting would be good for games, but generally, stories are not a good basis for a game. That said, I've taken to trying to work on a game based off a story, though due to mental health issues it isn't going so well.

If you want to try a computer game, I'd recommend Godot engine, it is quite simple to use, and I made more progress in a week with it (including the time for tutorials and documentation) than I did in several months with any other option I tried. In the end though, it all comes down to what works best for you. Spend some time planning things out, figure out what sort of game you want, then try to find the correct medium (maybe board game, maybe pen and paper, maybe video game) and from there start working on how to build it and finding what tools and knowledge you need from there.

Keep in mind that if you go the route of trying to make it yourself, programming requires an extremely logical mindset, and is a lot of work before you get anything visible -- it is quite possible to write 10,000 lines of code without any visible change, depending on how you do things. This is a large part of why I am having trouble, personally. At least with writing, everything you write is visible progress.

 

[BenJepheneT]

It's stupid, but I usually do fight scenes in my bedroom. In which I swing around beating up imaginary bad guys and kick the shit out of imaginary villains. In terms of systems, I don't have any. I'm an action kind of guy, so if I have an idea, I'd physically re-enact it, one schizo Batman Arkham gameplay at a time.

 

[Deleted member 45782]

Consider visual novels, perhaps. Look into it or interactive fiction and see if there's a good fit for your story. Learn the basics about making games/visual novels, it can be very tricky.

Yeah. that reminds me of KOHO aoo. Visual novel/slash cyoa i think.