Scenario Processing

[BainIhrno]

I was wondering something. This goes to all scenario designers, esp. senior designers.

 

When you design a scenario, what do you find to be the hardest part of making it? I have six choices, with an explanation of why they all could be.

 

The choices are...

 

Planning it out - possibly because you have to start forming ideas from your own head, which can be hard.

 

Starting it - because you know you have a long road, anything could go wrong, and you're kind of setting it up.

 

Middle - because it's easy to run into designer's block, and you have to do the most work.

 

Finishing it - easy to get excited and forget about it.

 

Alpha testing - because it generally comes out very buggy, and you have to fix lots of bugs, and you can't play the scenario smoothly - it's almost like playing through a scenario released without bugs fixed.

 

Beta testing - you have to accept loads of criticism with little or no things said in the scenario's favor, along with more stuff to fix.

 

I'm only doing this to get a general idea on what most people find hard. You also may have a different reason than what's listed above.

[*i]

I think your break down of work is a little flawed because often designers do not progress linearly; in other words, they don't do towns one at a time as the game would be played.

 

I would say the hardest part to do would be all the little details, the needed dialogue but ultimately of little impact like the shopkeepers and random townspeople. Doing intermediary dungeons that have a point, but are there not having a very central role to your plot. It's times like these that are the least rewarded and least motivated.

 

The testing phases are perhaps the most rewarding as people are finally playing your work. The most exciting parts are the plot development and fleshing out the key points. Everything else is just a lot of work.

[Donald Hebb]

The most annoying part is the dialogue-- aka, ending details.

 

The most lethal part is the middle-- it's far too easy for something big to crop up in the real world that will obliterate your odds of finishing a scenario.

 

The outright hardest part tends to be in the middle-- aka, pushing the envelope with coding. (And you will see just which part I'm talking about in my next scenario.)

[Kelandon]

(I'm answering mostly from my experience with BoA, but I suppose it's not all that different.)

 

I find that the hardest part of working on a scenario is whatever part I happen to be working on at the moment.

 

That said, I find the third quarter of creating the first version to be the hardest. After 50% of the first version has been made, I've already put in a lot of work, but there's so much work left to do that I feel daunted. After I get more than 75% or so of a first version done, I feel fairly confident that I can finish, so it gets easier.

[Drakefyre]

I agree with pretty much everything said

 

The hardest time is the third quarter. In the middle something IRL can pop up and distract. At this point, you start getting into the dialogue of people you don't really care about.

 

Coding has never been a problem for me - making innovative sequences is fun, even though most of you have never seen them

[BainIhrno]

Maybe I should have been a little more detailed and thorough in the choices. Oh well.

 

That being said, I'll go with the middle. For the reasons everyone else stated.

[Donald Hebb]

Quote:

Originally written by Drakefyre:
Coding has never been a problem for me - making innovative sequences is fun, even though most of you have never seen them

I didn't say it wasn't fun, just that it isn't easy.

[Drakefyre]

For me, fun and ease are directly correlated. Maybe not ease of doing, but ease of completion.

[*i]

Quote:

Originally written by Drakefyre:
For me, fun and ease are directly correlated. Maybe not ease of doing, but ease of completion.

Why do I find this statement ironic when we consider your scenario design record?

[Jewels]

Real life makes the middle the hardest. Finding motivation to keep working when there is SO MUCH left to do. Especially if you didn't plan well. Coding is fun, alpha testing is motivated(cause you get to see if your coding works), and finishing is easy(when the middle is already done).

 

...

[Kelandon]

I've changed my mind. I really hate beta testing. That's my least favorite part.

[ben4808]

I just can't get myself to actually work on a scenario for long periods of time. Now that we don't have our old computer set up, my turns are limited to about an hour at a time, alternating between me and my two brothers.

[*i]

Quote:

Originally written by Kelandon:
I've changed my mind. I really hate beta testing. That's my least favorite part.

That's nice, but that wasn't the question.

Would you say that beta testing is the hardest part?

[Kelandon]

As far as I'm concerned, least favorite = hardest.

[*i]

Fine, I'll use "most difficult" instead of the more ambiguous "hard". Care to explain why it's the most difficult other than "I don't like it therefore it's hard".

[Lilith]

Really, very little about scenario design is objectively hard in the sense that you can try as hard as possible to do it and still fail. Therefore it's motivating yourself to try that's the hard part.

[Milu]

The hardest part for me has generally been when about 2/3 or 3/4 of the first version is done. At that stage my scenarios often seem to suck too much, because they are too bare and empty yet.

[Drakefyre]

Quote:

Originally written by *i:

Quote:

Originally written by Drakefyre:
For me, fun and ease are directly correlated. Maybe not ease of doing, but ease of completion.

Why do I find this statement ironic when we consider your scenario design record?

It's not hard to believe, since they stop being fun

[Ash Lael]

Testing, whether alpha or beta, is way fun for me. Planning is way fun. Actually making the thing kinda sucks.

 

In my experience, scenario death happens in the first 25% of design work. So far, if I get past that point, I have always finished the scenario.

[DesertPlah]

Hardest can sometimes be (when you're a college student who is currently addicted to other games) beginning. Planning can be easy enough, I do that in my head or in doodles (hence the simplicity of all of my released scenarios…all one of them). I find it hard to find the time.

 

Also hard emotionally is when you've put a lot of work into one scenario that's just bound to be the next FS, and Windows pulls some gay crap about putting your files (actual files, not shortcuts, for some gay-odd reason) on your taskbar, only to have you naively delete them, thinking that they're shortcuts, thereby deleting half of the games on your harddrive and all your BoE work. Ever. Because your old computer had the files from way back when cut off them.

 

I think there's a topic or something or other from that time where I lost all motivation for BoE.

 

EDIT: BTW, does anybody know if BoE works with Linux?

 

EDIT2: And who came up with the brilliant idea of new titles? [/sarcasm] …sorry, I should shut up. I'm having a bad week and I let it bleed into here.

[Grain of Salt]

The hardest part is clearly resisting the urge to play Halo compulsively in the middle of development.

 

I have so far failed. Maybe I'll stop when I beat the campaign.

[Thralni]

The hardest part for me, was the alpha-testing. I know that probably sound weird, but I outright dreaded every moment of it. The coding and designing of towns merely got boring, but not hard. Frustrating, yus, but hard, no.

[nikki.]

All based upon BoA designing:

 

Working/Ending.

 

The bit where you load up Crimson Editor and the BOA Editor, and look at it, and realise that you have a few dialogue nodes to do, and one or two special encounters to do before its finally finished, when suddenly your mouse slips and lands on the AOL icon, or you inadvertantly phone a friend and arrange to go out, or, which is worse, you close all open windows and load up another game.

 

I could finish my scenario. I could do it soon. But if real life isn't stopping me when I actually do want to design, I tend to put it off.

[Pyrulen]

The hardest part for me is spending hours making detailed towns and dungeons, then finding that my plot is abysmal and unoriginal. As far as making up storylines go, I'm terrible.

 

I suppose at first I wanted a framework around which I could learn how to code. Actually doing the scenario can be boring, but it's certainly easier.

[The Almighty Doer of Stuff]

Lucky for you, we have lots of good articles about plotwriting (mostly at the Lyceum, see my signature) and a bunch of designers who like to help people with their plots. I was terrible at writing plots when I first came here too. Now I've gotten all the way to mediocre, due to the help of the community. So don't get discouraged.

[Donald Hebb]

Quote:

Originally written by Mc 'mini' Thralni:
The hardest part for me, was the alpha-testing.

Alpha-testing only sucks if your scenario does.

(In all actuality, I agree with Thralni that alpha-testing can be incredibly difficult if you have complex bits of coding to do. I usually alpha-test these bits in particular immediately after I've made them to avoid incredible pains down the road.)

[Dintiradan]

By TM:

Quote:

(In all actuality, I agree with Thralni that alpha-testing can be incredibly difficult if you have complex bits of coding to do. I usually alpha-test these bits in particular immediately after I've made them to avoid incredible pains down the road.)

I agree. Incremental testing is the name of the game. It cannot be stressed enough, for anything computer related.

 

As for the question: I'm no expert, but I'd say the 'smaller' details such as dialog are the 'hardest', and most important. It's annoying to seemingly waste time on pidly details, but the dialog and other messages to the player are the most important for establishing the scenario's plot and atmosphere.

 

(This is what I am repeating to myself as I write state after state after state...)

 

EDIT: Apparently, HTML has only been enabled in the BoA forum. Back to 20 dashes...

 

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But I'm betting your presence will negate rational thought within a 20-foot radius anyway.

- Roy (OotS)

[Grain of Salt]

Not that I'm an ultra-experienced designer, but I like designing dialouge. Whenever I get bored by a particularly tedious bit of code or town design I write some colorful dialogue.

 

It's like writing a really, really short story. I come up with interesting pasts and present them. When I can't think of any stories, I use humor. I had a terrificly sarcastic bartender in a truly horrible scenario called The Arena, and a magnificently insane person named Mad Ned in a version of the scenario I'm working on now that I ditched. Oh well.

 

And yes, incremental alpha testing is vital. Otherwise I would be depressed to the point of giving up by the sheer volume of fatal bugs .

[stu_pidd_cow]

I find the start the easiest as ideas are flowing through your head like water in a fire hydrant. I think the middle is hardest as you begin to loose faith that it will be good and you'll complete it. Once you get past that barrier, you feel invincible!