When Brent Does Not Write… He Prototypes
So, what have I been up to recently? Well, I’m well into writing novel #6 and planning novel #7 and planning the remainder of the Lazy Designer series. As well I recently released my open source writing organizer. So, I’ve been busy.
I’ve also resumed playing around with the Unity game engine and am making good progress on a prototype. I have a working conversation system and am in a position to experiment with various character and camera controls. Mostly I am doing this just for experimentation purposes. Having lots of fun with it though, and it is a nice distraction from writing.
p.s.
Just in case anybody thinks I might actually be making a game, here’s an example of a “flash prototype” I did years ago for my kids.
http://yourothermind.com/publish/wp-content/uploads/kidgame1_letters.swf
What I’m doing right now is only marginally more sophisticated than this.
Brent Knowles
Former lead designer at BioWare (Dragon Age: Origins, Neverwinter Nights). Creator of Raiders of the Serpent Sea.
2 Comments
James Paten
…so when is the game coming out? :)
I was wondering this the other day, actually – does writing the Lazy Designer books get your creative juices going again and make you ache to start designing again? Or does it have the exact opposite effect, that you are glad you are out from in the trenches, so to speak?
Brent Knowles
It is more like therapy. I just kind of want to write down all my experiences/thoughts/workflow and hopefully some aspiring designers can make use of that and build something amazing.
I *do* get gameplay ideas while writing the Lazy Designer books though and these go into my notebook. I’m having fun doing prototype work but I still remember the tremendous gap between a prototype and a final game and I’m hesitant to venture into that territory again. Still, I’m at the point now with my Unity prototype that I can start trying out the latest batch of ideas…