World building works.

I have generally struggled making my games past the initial tech challenges because I never know what to do next. I get it running and then I move on to another idea. I enjoy things like building an FPS or platformer because I am good with technical problems.

I have been trying something and this relates to my previous thread about plot, which is I have been going back in time and thinking about what happened before the game. When I do this I get new ideas for the game.

I took it a step further and now I am imagining what the worlds are like, what the alien races came from, and it's helping me name things and even come up with trivia and lore that makes sense.

One example, the trees on the gray alien's planet grow tall and thin and the branches jut straight out in a disk like shape and are narrow vertically.

This would explain, to a degree, why the LGM use saucer and disk shapes in everything, it is a natural thing for them. The animal life on their world can even explain their perspective on flight and engineering, and the abundance of natural resources could explain why they had very little internal conflicts for thousands of years, as opposed to some other races.

All this in turn allows me to envision the present (game play) and instead of no idea I have a dozen ideas of what could go where. If I continue this process and flesh it all out, including characters, plots will emerge naturally.

 

I think it sounds like a good idea to create the world and characters first. That way it might be possible to have the world and character traits affect the gameplay in interesting ways.

 

Start writing all this lore you are creating. Put it all down on paper. You can go back and change things easily but world building has to start somewhere. Define each culture, where they come from, and some key points. Do not dive too deep or you will spend years making lore and have no time to make the game. There are some great books and websites on World Building. Be carefully about defining the geography too much as you may be limited by your choice of terrain building tools. Then it becomes difficult to create the actual terrain to match what is in your head. I know from experience.

 

I noticed that if I just sit and imagine, nothing happens except lasers and explosions. I can see the action. But if I write it down, then it's like new things come out that I never even realized I was thinking. Plus my memory is abysmal, so anything not saved or written might vanish from existence.

 

Yep, that is how it works. I once directed a team of 12 writers and I always told them to write it down. Ideas are great but when you write it down, those ideas stick in your head. Imagining is also great, but when you wake up out of the daze, get your pen.

 

Best advice I ever got about writing came from a songwriters workshop I sat through (went with the wife, I don't have a musical bone in my body)

Use filler. Get the good stuff down, fill in the rest with lalalas. Do that stuff later. just because you don't know how a and b connect doesn't mean you can't write them down.

 

I suggest that you watch some of this guy: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClnWLqdyrQ-hcDYW5kQQ6vQ
It's a very interesting channel. This is my favorite video of his so far:

 

I also just found out that there's a World Building Unity subforum :0
Edit: First thread was created April of this year so I guess it's relatively new.

 

I got myself a Wiki Site for my fantasy world. Wikimedia is a free wiki Shell. Its very easy to write pages an link them together. Realy good when you are about to build a large amount of LORE. A friend of mine made it that you have to sign in with username an password. So its not open on the internet. Its possible that you install the wiki shell only on your PC if you have no server.