RPGCREATOR'S PROFILE

My game, The final Corridor, has a red flag, but it´s not an RPG epic as much of the games with "Final" in their titles. It´s more of a Metal Gear-clone, but anyway, I don´t see anything wrong with it if they have one of these "red flags" or even "yellow". Could be quite good games.

author=kentona
A wizard did it.

One of many ;) I have plans now, but since this is an experiment we´ll see which one I keep. Wizor is definitive though.

author=Zeuzio
For me, a "make it up as you go" philosophy to story-writing wouldn't work at all. Without a plan for the plot, I would likely resort to creating deus ex machina situations constantly to get the characters out of the situations they find themselves in. Which, of course, is horrible story-telling. Dialogue is a different story(hurr) though.

With dialogue, it'd be pointless to plan it all out because I know that I would revise it greatly when writing it for the actual game. Conversations aren't scripted in real life, so I'd try to translate that to my character's dialogue. That's not really what this topic is about, though. :P

I'm sure a "Write the story as you go" method isn't impossible to pull off, but I know I couldn't do it.

It´s pretty interesting about the dialouge writing as well. I believe I do agree with you on the case that it gives off a better flow when you write that spontaneous and then it´s easy to just edit small parts of it for the sake of characterization. I see it part of the relativeness of this thread actually.

author=LockeZ
With my first game I did exactly that. When I was 60% of the way done with the game I had not even decided who the final boss would be, or whether or not I would add any more main characters later. I did finish the game and upload it, but you won't find that game on RMN (but the story is far from the worst thing about the game).

With my second game I knew ahead of time what the opening, the main themes of the story, the personality of the main characters, the climax, the biggest plot twists, and the ending would be. I kind of let most of the middle stuff flow naturally. I think that as long as you have that much you can probably wing the middle 80% of the game. I didn't decide ahead of time when different characters would join and leave the team or why, or that I would have the hero fight the villain (and lose) at these three particular times, or anything like that. I kind of got more stuff planned in my head as I got going. The problem is that cool stuff I came up with later contradicted stuff I'd already made, or I realized I'd written myself into a corner and needed to fix some plot holes, and as a result there are parts of the game that feel really discordant.

I'm doing more planning this time because I want the game to be better. I do think that the more planning you do, the better the game will be. But you also have to balance that against the amount of time that the planning takes and the likelihood that you'll ever really be satisfied with the plans. I mean, at some point you have to start working on the game. You're gonna change stuff in the end anyway. I'd say do as much planning as you can stomach, but don't feel like you absolutely have to decide all the major stuff ahead of time.

I wasn´t sure of quoting the whole thing, but I agree with you. I had a same problem where I made up the story as I edited the game and then came to a crossing of what my next area would be and what enemies it would include. I had vague ideas at the earlier part of the game, but I realised that I can´t keep on working without some definitive points/marks to follow.

EDIT: Even this is relative to the story of the game since your areas most of the time need to have some point of importance for the story and my areas I had created boiled down to areas I thought would look cool in a game without thinking about how they served the story.

Have you ever created a story for your game as you you went along editing it in the maker and how did that go for you? Is it possible to create a game without a story you already have thought up and is on paper in beforehand?
This is merely a curious thought I have about the importance of a well thought out story and if there are cases (even though I guess they are pretty rare) that a spontane story actually works for a player. To some people, the obvious answer is that a story needs to be there in some sort of form before you begin.

I am working on my project now with a story I thought out first before you ask, so it´s not a question of me being lazy and hoping for a chance to get a better story as I go along. Just want to hear people´s opinions. Is it possible to enjoy a spontaneous story?