Excel as a Game Design tool
I have heard that "Excel is to game designers what Microsoft Visual
Studio is to programmers" -- and as a relative newbie, I'd like to learn howso. One common thing in game design is branching and recombining plots (or story elements). I can break up the plot into least-units, and put each unit in a cell. But beyond that, how can Excel help with this? My problem is that sure, I know what I know, but I can't imagine what I don't know. So for example, I know I can color the "key plot element" cells, then sort them by color so I can see all the "key plot element" cells together. But I don't know how to use Excel as a plot-analysis tool. "How will a given design play?" and "where are the stubs in the story?" Should I somehow flag certain cells with a set of keywords, then write a macro which automatically re-orders the cells in an instructive way? Is this the sort of thing that "Excel is to game designers" means? I think maybe I'm missing something simpler. Another problem: inventory being a primary way of solving puzzles, the idea apparently would be to use Excel to track the puzzle-solutions a player may have available (pick-up-able) and ready (in inventory). Can I associate plot points with game-objects which become available at that point? Then, can I pick a plot point and get a list of all the game-objects available at that point? (Corollary: can a plot point remove an item from the list of available objects?) I'm sort of wandering in the dark here. Not sure what questions to ask. Of course I looked all over online, but discovered nothing apparently interesting. If you have any general pointers on this topic, I'd love to hear! |
Excel as a Game Design tool
Excel is good as a tool to visualize what data is in an array. Instead of
storing data in arrays you can put the data into excel. In a game you move from one location to another location and you have objects that you collect as you move from location to location. So you can set up a spread sheet where each row is a location. For example, the columns can be one of the following 1) Ways of leaving a location 2) Next Location you can go to 3) Objects found in a Location 4) Object Required to perform a task 5) Tasks to perform in a location " wrote: I have heard that "Excel is to game designers what Microsoft Visual Studio is to programmers" -- and as a relative newbie, I'd like to learn howso. One common thing in game design is branching and recombining plots (or story elements). I can break up the plot into least-units, and put each unit in a cell. But beyond that, how can Excel help with this? My problem is that sure, I know what I know, but I can't imagine what I don't know. So for example, I know I can color the "key plot element" cells, then sort them by color so I can see all the "key plot element" cells together. But I don't know how to use Excel as a plot-analysis tool. "How will a given design play?" and "where are the stubs in the story?" Should I somehow flag certain cells with a set of keywords, then write a macro which automatically re-orders the cells in an instructive way? Is this the sort of thing that "Excel is to game designers" means? I think maybe I'm missing something simpler. Another problem: inventory being a primary way of solving puzzles, the idea apparently would be to use Excel to track the puzzle-solutions a player may have available (pick-up-able) and ready (in inventory). Can I associate plot points with game-objects which become available at that point? Then, can I pick a plot point and get a list of all the game-objects available at that point? (Corollary: can a plot point remove an item from the list of available objects?) I'm sort of wandering in the dark here. Not sure what questions to ask. Of course I looked all over online, but discovered nothing apparently interesting. If you have any general pointers on this topic, I'd love to hear! |
Excel as a Game Design tool
Joel wrote:
Excel is good as a tool to visualize what data is in an array. Instead of storing data in arrays you can put the data into excel. Understood! However, I feel like I'm still missing something. I was under the impression that it would be useful to harness sorting and perhaps functions, to evaluate a design and discover problems. I don't think it's possible to use sorting with arrays. (I mean, where we have a list of items in a single cell, sorting only really considers the first item, right?) Would the idea then be to write a macro which analyzes somehow the elements of arrays? Again, my apologies for being so vague. My main problem here is that I don't understand the idea, so I'm basically just wandering in the dark. In a game you move from one location to another location and you have objects that you collect as you move from location to location. So you can set up a spread sheet where each row is a location. For example, the columns can be one of the following 1) Ways of leaving a location 2) Next Location you can go to 3) Objects found in a Location 4) Object Required to perform a task 5) Tasks to perform in a location |
Excel as a Game Design tool
With excel you don't have to werite sorts or Finds. the worksheet already
have these features. so if you can put your database into a spreadsheet you can use these features. You can also use worksheet functions to count the number of times an item or event occurs. If you think harder enough you can find good reasons to use Excel. You just seem to be fighting the idea rather than going along with the flow. Start Simple. Find one reson to use Excel, then more ideas will come. " wrote: Joel wrote: Excel is good as a tool to visualize what data is in an array. Instead of storing data in arrays you can put the data into excel. Understood! However, I feel like I'm still missing something. I was under the impression that it would be useful to harness sorting and perhaps functions, to evaluate a design and discover problems. I don't think it's possible to use sorting with arrays. (I mean, where we have a list of items in a single cell, sorting only really considers the first item, right?) Would the idea then be to write a macro which analyzes somehow the elements of arrays? Again, my apologies for being so vague. My main problem here is that I don't understand the idea, so I'm basically just wandering in the dark. In a game you move from one location to another location and you have objects that you collect as you move from location to location. So you can set up a spread sheet where each row is a location. For example, the columns can be one of the following 1) Ways of leaving a location 2) Next Location you can go to 3) Objects found in a Location 4) Object Required to perform a task 5) Tasks to perform in a location |
Excel as a Game Design tool
On Oct 10, 6:13*pm, wrote:
I have heard that "Excel is to game designers what Microsoft Visual Studio is to programmers" -- and as a relative newbie, I'd like to learn howso. One common thing in game design is branching and recombining plots (or story elements). I can break up the plot into least-units, and put each unit in a cell. But beyond that, how can Excel help with this? My problem is that sure, I know what I know, but I can't imagine what I don't know. So for example, I know I can color the "key plot element" cells, then sort them by color so I can see all the "key plot element" cells together. But I don't know how to use Excel as a plot-analysis tool. "How will a given design play?" and "where are the stubs in the story?" Should I somehow flag certain cells with a set of keywords, then write a macro which automatically re-orders the cells in an instructive way? Is this the sort of thing that "Excel is to game designers" means? I think maybe I'm missing something simpler. Another problem: inventory being a primary way of solving puzzles, the idea apparently would be to use Excel to track the puzzle-solutions a player may have available (pick-up-able) and ready (in inventory). Can I associate plot points with game-objects which become available at that point? Then, can I pick a plot point and get a list of all the game-objects available at that point? (Corollary: can a plot point remove an item from the list of available objects?) I'm sort of wandering in the dark here. Not sure what questions to ask. Of course I looked all over online, but discovered nothing apparently interesting. If you have any general pointers on this topic, I'd love to hear! Broaden your view of game design; it's more than just story writing and puzzle creation. Consider an RPG like Final Fantasy. What are the elements that a game designer must deal with here? * Yes, there's a storyline. As you mention, this is probably better done in plain text, or (in the case of a branching storyline) in a flowchart tool like Visio or even Powerpoint. Excel is of limited use in story writing. However... * Excel is great at making lists. If you want to link your plot points to other game elements (puzzles, dungeons, bosses, locations, items, whatever), you can easily create a matrix in Excel that shows these relationships. But the combat system is where Excel really shines. Think of all the areas where you need lists and formulas to balance the game: * Formulas for combat damage based on player and monster stats. You can create a combat damage calculator in a single cell, which takes data from other cells whose values you set, in order to play around with the numbers in the formula so you can get them to feel right. You can also create combat simulators that assume multiple combat rounds to figure out things like, how much total damage do you expect the player party to take when in combat with a particular set of monsters? Or even, how much damage do you take over an entire dungeon, assuming a certain number of combats? * Likewise, progression of player abilities as they gain level. Calculating how many monsters you need to kill at each point in the game in order to gain a level, and comparing that with how difficult those monsters are to defeat in combat, and how much additional power the player gets on level-up are all things you can do in Excel. * Ditto with items. Each new weapon that you find (or buy) can go into the simulation to figure out how fast you expect the player to go through the game. How does it affect the pacing of a dungeon if you remove the sword in this treasure chest halfway through? What if the sword is still there, but you change its combat power? What if you have the player encounter it earlier or later in the dungeon? There's no substitute for actual playtesting, but a good Excel simulation can give you a pretty good starting point. Then there are the production-oriented uses of Excel: * Create a list of all monsters in the game. And all locations. And all items. And all characters. And so on, each on its own worksheet. For each, give its stats and text description (as necessary). Programmers can take this data directly (it might be easier if you save as CSV) and dump it directly into the game; if your programmers are REALLY good, they'll allow you to change your data in Excel and reload the data at runtime so that you don't even have to exit the game before trying out some new values. * Add columns next to each item for number of polygons allowed in the art, or total amount of game data required. Also add a column for the level where each element is found. Now you have a total memory budget for the game data in each level, which lets the programmers know how much is left over for other things (like, say, music and voice). It also tells you which level(s) are the most memory-intensive, letting you solve problems ahead of time by adding stricter poly budgets for enemies in larger levels. * Add columns next to each item for various stages of completion (art placeholder, art complete, implemented in game, etc.) with a sum/ percentage at the bottom. Next time your producer asks for a task status, you can actually give a percentage complete right from the Excel sheet. During playtesting, you can put all kinds of metrics in Excel to do some quick-and-dirty number crunching: average play session times, number of player defeats, number of random encounters per hour, and so on. This allows you to intelligently tweak some variables if they seem off in reality (and maybe even improve your simulations, if you can figure out where the discrepancy is). Excel is also great for random-number simulations. Suppose you're working on a card game. You can use RAND() to generate random values, and using it together with RANK() and VLOOKUP() you can effectively shuffle a deck and look at a random shuffle. Copy/paste to have your screen FILLED with random shuffles, and (in Windows, at least) you can press F9 to re-shuffle. This can give you a pretty good idea of things like the optimal ratio of basic land to spells in a Magic deck. Generally, Excel is great at helping you to balance a game. If you could use Excel as a *player* to analyze a game and find the optimal strategy, then you can use it as a game designer in exactly the same way to find the exploits and fix them before your players find them. And this is just one example. There are all kinds of others. In a sports game, where you've got tons of stats on each player and each team to begin with, dumping the whole thing into Excel to balance the teams is an obvious design task. In an FPS, you can give the total amount of ammo and weapons given to the player in a level and compare it to how many enemies there are and how much total damage they need to do, assuming that the player misses some percentage of the time when they're shooting with each weapon. In an RTS, you can use this to balance the costs of various unit types to make sure that no single unit is too weak or too cost-effective. In a street-fighting game, you can balance the various strengths, weaknesses and vulnerabilities of individual moves and entire characters with respect to one another. In a sim game, you can balance the various items available for purchase and the skills your Sims need to learn versus the amount of time it all takes. Does that all make more sense? |
Excel as a Game Design tool
Thanks, ai864! That's a great explanation! Totally clears everything
up for me. I really appreciate it! |
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