To all you modders out there!

[rtjhbfvsrry]

Oh, I'm sorry. I'll start prefacing all my posts with "Note: This is my opinion". Would you feel better if I went back and edited my post by adding a little "IMO" after "you are wrong", despite it being patently obvious by nature of me being the one who posted it?

I see now where you misunderstand me now, though. I watched the videos again to see exactly what they're saying, and they still support my point - you say they don't because you misunderstood my point. What I'm saying is not "tack it on at the end, after your game is done". What I'm saying is that you need to have your basic gameplay designed, not implemented. Not your puzzles, not your enemies, not other obstacles, not the exact mechanics of how quickly something moves, but you do need to have designed what actions your player can do and how they experience things (gameplay) before you can start creating your narrative, because your narrative is a thing your player will experience through the gameplay. You can design these things before you ever have an engine, before you even TOUCH a computer (I've written about a million design documents and game pitches that never got to that stage), but you need to design these things before you make a narrative. I'm not saying you need to have your game completed before you put in a story, that would be ridiculous, but you cannot design a narrative if you do not know how this narrative will be experienced. Hence, designing your gameplay comes first. Always.

You can still design your narrative before you build the actual game, and it's smart to do it before you start putting in puzzles, or designing levels. Obstacles and areas are not core gameplay - like the narrative they are things the player experiences and they are intertwined and nothing is worse than a random puzzle that has nothing to do with the plot in a game which is story driven. But you have to know what you can do in your gameplay before you start designing what you will put in it.

Funderbunk: why do you seem to have a bone to pick with everyone here? I know sometimes I get into stupid arguments at times, but not nearly as often.

I mean I can be a cynical bastard at times, but I don't outright show it most of the time.

Having a bone to pick implies that I have a problem with the person, and I don't know Robosprog well enough to have a problem with him (though I'm a bit concerned that me saying he's wrong equates to insulting). I disagree with him because I think he's wrong (see, I learned) and that's all this is about. I apologize if this seems like a vendetta (although I'm not sure how it would because I don't remember argueing with Robosprog before), I'm just very confident in my opinions and I'm a bit of jerk, really. I've explained this before.

Yes, I realize that I broke my own "I will not acknowledge you bla". Go away, smartass.