5. Prototyping

Tasks

What is a prototype?

Video games can be complex and have many interconnecting elements.

The prototype is the very first thing you make. It’s the first build of your game – a rough draft version that you can use as an initial test of your game ideas. It doesn’t have to be your whole game – it can just be a small part of the game to check your game mechanics.

A prototype can help to answer these questions:

• Do the different game elements (sound and images) and game mechanics work together as you expected or planned?

• Are there any obvious issues or problems that you can identify early in the development process?

In your prototype you’ll begin to combine game elements, game mechanics and coding to turn your idea into a playable game. Most of these elements will probably still be under development – you may only have some of your graphic or audio elements completed. That’s okay for the prototype – you can use free assets or draft elements you’ve made, to hold the place of your images or sounds if you need to.

The purpose of a prototype is to check that your game ideas are feasible. Further refinement and improvement can come later, once you see that you’re on the right track. The idea of the prototype is to avoid spending a lot of time developing detailed elements only to find that they don’t actually work in your game.

Some general prototyping principles

• Don’t start your prototype without a clear idea of what your game is and how you want it to work.

• Start with the core game mechanics first, before moving on to finalised visual and audio elements.

• Record your prototyping experiences in your GDD: what worked, what didn’t – you can learn from these.

• Don’t spend too much time on the prototype – this should just be a test of your ideas.

Starting your prototype

There are many different ways you might start building the prototype of your game.

Here’s one possible approach, focusing on a multi-level game:

1. Create a level
2. Add some visual elements to your level – the game character that the player controls, some enemies, and other background features
3. Code in the game mechanics that allows these elements to interact – set up your game character’s movements, create events between your game character and the other game elements
4. Add some initial sound effects or other audio elements
5. Refine the events in your level to make your game play as you want

Once you have successfully created a prototype for a small part of your game, you can then continue to add more elements, more events and more features. You can keep adding more details and elements as you develop them to complete your game.

Keep recording your work and your decisions within the GDD

As with everything you do in the development of your game, you should make sure to keep a record of your prototyping progress in your GDD.

You could focus particularly on the problems you discover along the way. Some things you could think about and record are:

• What is the problem?

• What happens when you try to make this work?

• Did you find a solution or make a compromise?

• What steps did you take to fix it?

• How is your game different now?

Sharing ideas and solutions

As you build your prototype, you’ll discover problems that need solutions. Keep an open dialogue with other game development teams if you can – it’s a great way to help you diagnose and fix those problems. And, you might find some of the solutions you’ve come up with can be useful for other teams.

If you can, you should share ideas and solutions to problems through in-person discussions in your class. You can also share ideas and solutions online. Here is one example of an online tool that you might find useful to use with other teams:

• Mural
  Collaborative whiteboard tool.