5 ms·
Nintendo releases original Zelda design docs
- gallerdude 10y agoEven as a programmer, I appreciate having the vision of the game first and figuring out how to program it second.
- jfroma 10y agoAgree! I think in this case these drawing have a lot of implementation details. It is actually the pattern table, the palette etc.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- bluedino 10y agoAre there larger scans of those sheets anywhere? Possibly a blank?
- plasticbugs 10y agoBG Planning Sheet linked from Nintendo Europe: https://cdn02.nintendo-europe.com/media/downloads/games_8/wiiu_supermariomaker_1/Super_Mario_Bros_sheets.pdf https://cdn02.nintendo-europe.com/media/downloads/games_8/wi...
- ldjb 10y agoFor anyone curious about the few bits of Japanese on those sheets... On the BG Planning Sheet, 年 月 日 mean Year Month Day -- for indicating the date. 時 分 are Hour Minutes -- for indicating the time. デザイナー means Designer and プログラマー means Programmer. Oddly, the last page seems to be a mirror image, and it's quite difficult to read the text. However, it appears to be for designing an individual sprite. There is a field labelled キャラクター (Character) along with Date and Memo fields.
- stevehb 10y agoI think the last page is for Ditto machines. I remember them being used for schools back in the 80s when all the copies came out in purple ink.
- deepsun 10y agoBut don't forget that today it's often faster to program it first without a plan, and rewrite it a few times later; than to draw such nice design plans and iterate on them before writing actual code. Also, in some cases, writing actual code reveals some unforeseen problems in design.
- thesimpsons1022 10y agobut what makes the game more fun? from what i've seen, most people agree that Nintendo games are some of the most fun consistently and yet they use this process. Meanwhile there have been many disasters like no mans sky that have been built iteratively.
- setr 10y agoNo man's sky would have been a bad game by either development practice; it's failure primarily stems from a misunderstanding of game design The game was fundamentally shallow
- Volt 10y agoMake no mistake though—Nintendo doesn't use that process exclusively. They also experiment, prototype, and refine. http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/wiiu/splatoon/0/0 http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/wiiu/splatoon/0/0
- 10y ago
- Waterluvian 10y ago"As a surgeon I appreciate planning the operation before cutting the person open." Your comment seems trivially true to me. How can one possibly begin the second without the first? And yet people try it all the time!
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- raldi 10y agoIt's not a great analogy, because surgery is not a inherently creative process the way game development is. Plenty of games are created by jumping right in and starting to code, and then seeing where that takes you. For example, the throwaway game that inspired Portal. Of course, eventually you do have to take periodic breaks to review things and plan the next phase.
- lostgame 10y agoIf this was the case we also wouldn't have these things called 'test units' which ensure the code does, uh, what it was planned to do. ;)
- duiker101 10y agoPlenty great games came from exploring a a game mechanic more than from a level design. There are really a lot of games where the look of something can really mean nothing at all. In today's industry an overlook like this might be useful in level design but I can't really see it having a big impact on the actual development of the gameplay as long as you know what actions the player can perform you don't need to know where they are going to be placed or what they will look like.
- brenschluss 10y ago
- georgeecollins 10y agoI understand the sentiment but the best game I ever made was done in exactly the opposite way. So I don't know if it is the best way, unless maybe you are making a sequel. Chris Taylor used to say the "game is the design document." There is obviously a lot of problems with that approach. But I have also seen terrible results from teams who plan on paper and neglect the reality of the work product.
- CaptSpify 10y agoCan we have the url point to https://www.nintendo.co.uk/News/2016/December/Take-a-look-behind-the-scenes-with-design-documents-from-The-Legend-of-Zelda--1169414.html https://www.nintendo.co.uk/News/2016/December/Take-a-look-be... (the original) instead? I didn't see gamasutra adding anything worthwhile
- dang 10y agoSure, we changed to that from http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/288293/Nintendo_digs_up_original_The_Legend_of_Zelda_design_docs.php http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/288293/Nintendo_digs_up_o.... Thanks!
- richardboegli 10y agoBy manually changing it you've overridden the dupe post check. I posted this Nintendo article 5 days ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13240858 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13240858 https://www.nintendo.co.uk/News/2016/December/Take-a-look-behind-the-scenes-with-design-documents-from-The-Legend-of-Zelda--1169414.html https://www.nintendo.co.uk/News/2016/December/Take-a-look-be... It can be seen in the search: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=https:%2F%2Fwww.nintendo.co.uk%2FNews%2F2016%2FDecember%2FTake-a-look-behind-the-scenes-with-design-documents-from-The-Legend-of-Zelda--1169414.html&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=https:%2F%2Fwww.nintendo.co.uk...
- dang 10y agoBy HN's standards it doesn't count as a dupe, because the previous submission didn't get attention. See the bit about reposts in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html. In other words, even if the nintendo.co.uk URL had been the submitted one, HN's software would have happily let it through. This is by design. It gives good stories multiple cracks at the bat, in the hope of compensating for the randomness of the lottery on /newest. We do have a few tricks to try to reward the original submission of a good story, and eventually we intend to work on more sophisticated dupe detection that will reward the original submitter more. In the meantime, there's still a fair bit of randomness. But if an account submits lots of good stories, it evens out.
- buzzybee 10y agoDon't be deceived: the reason why these plans look nice is because of the team structure of the Zelda project. The design team spent a lot of time drawing up polished graphics and layouts and then "threw it over the fence" for implementation, in waterfall fashion. This is still a common practice within Japanese teams, as evidenced by, for example, Mighty No. 9's documentary, where you can witness an entire level constructed in Microsoft Excel. [0] The separation of roles is not a definite downside if the game design is already well-understood, and American teams have flirted with big up-front design on occasion, but tend to lean towards making sure everyone stays hands-on and can test and iterate independently. One of the stories about Zelda that appears in interviews is that the second quest is the result of a miscommunication about how much space was available: They could have had a single quest that was twice as big. The main direct advantage of drawing everything out is that you can quickly explore different types of setups(relative scales, positioning, iconography, etc.) and do a few passes of testing on it before committing it to code, for the same reasons that one might do wireframing and mockups for application UI. [0] https://youtu.be/Ri4bV3Z186Q?t=249 https://youtu.be/Ri4bV3Z186Q?t=249
- ldjb 10y agoDo also check out, if you haven't already, this Iwata Asks interview from 2009, which contains further insight into the development of the original Zelda, and more design documents: https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Iwata-Asks/Iwata-Asks-The-Legend-of-Zelda-Spirit-Tracks/Iwata-Asks-Zelda-Handheld-History-/Bonus-1-Ancient-Documents-from-1985/Bonus-1-Ancient-Documents-from-1985-233949.html https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Iwata-Asks/Iwata-Asks-The-Legend-... (Be sure to click the Next button at the bottom of that page for the second part.)
- elihu 10y agoIt seems kind of obvious that Nintendo would have Official Game Asset Graph Paper, but it's pretty cool to actually see it.
- tantalor 10y agoVery disappointing. Uploading a few sketches to a blog is hardly what I'd call "releasing original design doc". Where's the rest of it? What about the story? Boss mechanics? Weapons? Enemies? Dungeons?
- georgeecollins 10y agoI once took an English class where we read screenplays that were printed in a book. One of them was of the great movie "Chinatown." The professor --- who had never worked in film-- said: "See, the screenwriter really comes up with everything. See how he thinks of every scene, every bit of dialog, that the actors and the directors follow." Later I read a book about the making of Chinatown and learned that the script was some huge thing that Robert Town and Roman Polanski rewrote every day while they were making the movie. The version in the text book was the correct script in the order of the final cut. Anyone who takes a class in video game design or development should be wary of those who haven't really done it.
- dragonwriter 10y agoThe professor may not have worked in film, but probably was still aware of the process (which, at the level of description you provide, is pretty much common to all film.) The professor remains correct that all those things are the role and responsibility of the screenwriter (and will, in fact, be reflected in an intended-as-final screenplay before the inevitable revisions that occur during shooting and the changes to the final result that occur in editing, etc., that end up getting reflected in a.ouhlished script.) In an English (even screenwriting) class that isn't a class on filmmaking process, the details that you object to be omitted are generally irrelevant to the focus.