Here are some quotes from people working at Valve that Ifound most useful. From the site: http://ping.fm/E9pJs
We start with a statement of the design goals for a small section of the game and try to keep the pure design phase very short, preferring an imperfect prototype to a perfect design. As soon as we have that imperfect prototype, we play-test it to see if it achieves its goals. If the experience is fun even in prototype form we know we’re onto something. If our early play tests yield ideas for ways to improve the prototype, we try a few of those and then test again as soon as possible. So the heart of our design process is very iterative and everyone from the cabal watches every play test to apply their expertise to the game experience
Designing Portal was a very collaborative and iterative process. For instance, to create a map, the entire team would get together in a conference room with a whiteboard and sketch out which gameplay ideas we’d want to use. One of us would quickly get the map up and running in a few days, and then we’d get someone who had never seen it before to play through. Based on our observations from the play test, we’d readdress the map, make any alterations that everyone agrees on, and run another play tester through. Rinse and repeat!
One of the most fun things about designing Portal was watching people play through a level in a completely new way that we hadn’t thought of. Seeing this in many cases gave us the inspiration for a new puzzle or mechanic.
Balancing is an iterative process. We watch many, many play tests, and use automatic systems to gather all the underlying data. We spot balance problems, use the data to come up with solutions, implement the fittest ones, and then run another play test.
One of the most important pieces to class balance is the weaknesses of the classes. We’ve found that it’s much easier to balance a class if it has a significant weakness to counter out its strength. For example, tuning the Scout’s combat strength is easier when we know that an enemy team can cause him a lot of trouble through the use of sentry guns. The Soldier, on the other hand, is one of the hardest balancing acts, because he has no particular weakness.
Stick to these tips MM, they must be good as hell. I know it becouse I know how much I liked Orange box, espetially Portal.
<3 Valve. They do a great job with their games. I’m proud to say I own the Orange Box and Left 4 Dead, although it does seem to impact on my schoolwork… :S
Dammit… that above post is mine, just wasn’t logged in.
God if link dead is as awesome as portal i will bow down to you, mm.
I have been dying to know what goes on in the minds of these game designers, thanks MM!
“<3 Valve. They do a great job with their games. I’m proud to say I own the Orange Box and Left 4 Dead, although it does seem to impact on my schoolwork… :S”
dito, although it doesn’t affect my schoolwork, i don’t learn anything anyways 😀
Solution: Add portals in link dead.
C’mon, you know you want to.
Hi! Wonderful concept, but could this actually operate?