[Enter the Story]

This is kind of like the game writing thread, but very different. Does anyone know of any models for abstracting puzzle design?

What I mean is, I am spending far too much time in recompiling and testing and finding minor bugs in puzzles. Most of my puzzles are the straightforward "talk to" or "combine" type, but even here it can take forever to think of every possible thing the user might do, then code all the parts of even the simplest transaction, then test it and make sure it works, then discover there was some other angle I hadn't thought of. I know I could just make the game more linear, but I believe in freedom. And freedom means compelxity and complexity means bugs and bugs mean bug fixes and bug fixes mean more bugs...

... so I need a template for standard events. Something that says "these are the possible inputs, these are the possible events, and these are the possible outputs." Something that will identify exactly what elements are involved so I can debug the logic of the game in confidence, at the paper stage, without drawing some terrifyingly complex disagram with thousands of lines.

Does such a template already exist? Or am I asking for the moon?

[After a brisk nap]

This is more about storytelling, but it shows how you can keep track of actions in a flow chart to avoid dead ends and such:

http://www.igda.org/writing/InteractiveStorytelling.htm

To keep track of all possible interactions, I would simply use a few matrices in a spreadsheet application, and link the cells to nodes in the flowchart

Inventory x Inventory for all possible item combinations
Inventory x Verbs for all possible actions on the items
Hotspots x Verbs for all possible actions in the world
Hotspots x Inventory for all possible uses of items in the world

You could color-code them to show which ones are "on the critical path" and which ones don't change the game-state.

For dialog puzzles, it depends on what system you're using. Flowcharts might come in handy again.

I'm not sure an all-purpose template is possible. If your design is well defined and your code is well organized, it shouldn't be too difficult to keep track of the important bits.

[Enter the Story]

Thanks for the link.

Originally Posted by After a brisk nap

If your design is well defined and your code is well organized, it shouldn't be too difficult to keep track of the important bits.

That's the hard part! Though in my defense, I am planning ahead for a very large game. The first release will have 30 puzzles each with 10 elements. Every few months I will release a new story into the same gaming world, which consists of several thousand locations and hundreds of characters, objects, etc. Eventually, since the game is designed to be non-linear, it will be possible for a single character and a single scene to be involved in literally dozens (perhaps hundreds) of events at the same time. The potential for confusion is almost infinite. Hence my need to standardize the code!

As for flow charts, I tend to make notes on pieces of paper, then months later when those decisions become critical I can't find which envelope I scribbled on the back of. I think I may have to create a disciplined folder structure where every folder of code has an accompanying folder of diagrams.

Meanwhile I've worked out a template that IN THEORY will do what I want, ensuring that all loose ends are tied up and testing takes less time. And it's quite long. But if it works it should make developing much quicker and more fun. If anyone wants I'll post it here, though it is quite long.

[jacog]

What works for me with the game we are doing is to keep all that flow logic in a data file separate from the game code and then just parsing the data. Can email you a sample but ours might be too simple for what you need to do.

[Enter the Story]

Originally Posted by jacog

What works for me with the game we are doing is to keep all that flow logic in a data file separate from the game code and then just parsing the data. Can email you a sample but ours might be too simple for what you need to do.

That would be helpful, thanks! my addy is tolworthy at hotmail dot com.

My current plan is to do something similar. Most events will be defined in a standard way and fill a peudo-database. Then whenever a room is entered or a conversation is started, a "puzzle" function simply interrogates the database to to see if any boxes can be ticked. Even if my game is different from yours, I would certainly benefit from your greater experience. Thanks.