Coming up with game ideas, your thoughts on the subject!

[Rabbit 2600]

I'm in love with working in batari basic. It's such a neat language! And I've learned tons thanks to this community =)

I've only had 1 game idea that I'm currently working on where you are a maid cleaning others appartments. I got the idea when I did some cleaning myself, haha.

 

How do you think that the original Atari team came up with their ideas for example Yar's Revenge. Did they have notes in a hat that they pulled up and someone got "fly" and "space" XD

 

What do you think?

[purduecrum]

How about a game based on a song and/or its video from the 1980's?

[Cebus Capucinis]

How about a game based on a song and/or its video from the 1980's?

 

I always thought it would be fun to make some sort of game based around The Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star".

[+atari2600land]

Make a game based on "Alice's Restaurant" by Arlo Guthrie.

[roland p]

How do you think that the original Atari team came up with their ideas for example Yar's Revenge.

 

Yar's Revenge was based on StarCastle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yars'_Revenge

[Synthpopalooza]

Yes, and when Star Castle proved undoable, the characters were changed. Neat part: The invincibility zone your bug hangs out in, is actually created by copying OS data into the playfield and cycling it. Talk about reusable code ...

[Rabbit 2600]

Ah, cool =)

[DanOliver]

Recently I've been reading interviews by other 2600 programmers and where ideas came from and was surprised how many games I thought were 100% original were based so heavily on other games. Kaboom for example is one I always thought was 100% original.

 

At Apollo we did get a lot of mail with ideas. And I think Wabbit was base on those. I remember we got 2 virtually identical Wabbit type game ideas from 2 completely different people. Both letters included a color picture of the game screen and even both drawings looked almost the same. It was scary weird.

 

But in general companies didn't like having ideas submitted. Opens you to lawsuits and bad feelings because people think you ripped off their idea even if you never saw it. So Atari never did anything with submitted ideas as far as I know.

 

It my case people would tell me the game idea. Like at Apollo I was given Demon Attack and told to "make that" and made Space Cavern. I knew they didn't mean steal Demon Attack, they wanted something like it. Call it based on or inspired by. I assume all games are inspired or based on other games. Once you've seen a game it's going to have some influence.

 

My own personal belief is a game is created at the keyboard, at 2 am, day after day, night after night. If the game consumes you it will be pretty much all you think about. You play it over and over in your head at the same time you're programming, eating, in the shower, all the time. That's when ideas come, but they're connected to code you've already written. And the game play comes in fine tweaks to get movement just right, collision detection perfect, scoring not too easy and not too hard. Perfection of course isn't possible but trying to get as close as possible is the goal.

 

To me story lines come as the game is being created. Being tied to an initial idea is a problem. Like Star Castle and Yar's Revenge Couldn't do Star Castle but came up with Yar's Revenge, probably a better game than Star Castle could ever be on the 2600 in those days. Williamson's Star Castle is kick ass but Warshaw may have just seen Yar's Revenge and had to do that. Sometimes game ideas pick programmers.

 

Then you look at cases where programmers had no choice and the results aren't great. Pretty much every movie license.

 

So better to let the game tell you what it wants to be. Like "maid cleaning others appartments" is a start. But as you draw characters and get them on screen you might notice "that doesn't look like a very good maid" and get depressed. But then notice it looks like great penguin. Maybe it becomes a game about a penguin instead.

 

One kernel of an idea I always have is some tech trick. Like Innerspace having explosion sprites generated at runtime in RAM instead of ROM is an idea I had while doing Rescue Terra I. But you can't scrap your current game and start over. So I start designing that trick into the next game in my head as I'm finishing my current game. A tech trick alone can drive the rest of the design.

 

Ideas and concepts are not games. Don't let an idea or concept stop you from doing a great game.

[sodarun]

I'm in love with working in batari basic. It's such a neat language! And I've learned tons thanks to this community =)

I've only had 1 game idea that I'm currently working on where you are a maid cleaning others appartments. I got the idea when I did some cleaning myself, haha.

 

How do you think that the original Atari team came up with their ideas for example Yar's Revenge. Did they have notes in a hat that they pulled up and someone got "fly" and "space" XD

 

What do you think?

 

Are you still looking for idea's Rabbit?

[+Gemintronic]

I'm in love with working in batari basic. It's such a neat language! And I've learned tons thanks to this community =)

I've only had 1 game idea that I'm currently working on where you are a maid cleaning others appartments. I got the idea when I did some cleaning myself, haha.

 

How do you think that the original Atari team came up with their ideas for example Yar's Revenge. Did they have notes in a hat that they pulled up and someone got "fly" and "space" XD

 

What do you think?

 

It seems like most of them found nifty tricks and used them as a base for the rest of the game. In batari BASIC we can do the same thing. For instance, you could discover that a single sprite can wrap around to the other side of the screen and *look* like two. You could then design a game where you control two laser cannons on opposite sides of the screen. Even though it appears like you used two sprites you've actually got one free for enemies. Let your imagination go from there