Charlie Cleveland (@flayra)

Prototyping games through narrative

When creating something complex and new, it’s extremely helpful to be able to visualize it in some way before committing to creating it. Film-makers use storyboards, authors use treatments, and programmers use prototypes. The picture you see here on the right are ideas Cory Strader (the lead artist on NS) had for what the NS aliens would look like and brings back memories for me.

This begs the question: what can game designers use, that’s even cheaper than a prototype? The best thing I’ve found is writing a story. Because this narrative is linear and gameplay will tend to be non-linear means it’s not a perfect fit, but it can be be a very quick way of describing a player’s specific experience with your game.

Before creating Natural Selection, I tried to visualize the world through a story. What is the technology like? What does the player see when entering the game? What’s the overall feel? What are the themes?

While the game didn’t end up turning out exactly like the story, I feel like it definitely exists in the same universe as the game, and because it only took a couple hours, was definitely worth the effort. It also had the benefit of getting others excited about the game, which is especially important when you’re trying to motivate a team to work for free, or need to enlist the help of investors or publishers.

The writing quality isn’t what matters (thank goodness), but the ideas are crucial. Note that I also tried to be true to the medium, and only portrayed characters saying things that players might actually be likely to type in-game. Of particular interest may be how some of the core game dynamics are portrayed, including joining servers, respawning, commander resource allocation, etc. There are also some user-interface ideas in there as well.

I hope you enjoy it find it useful.

As the marines spawn in the game, they appear inside individual bunks in their drop vessel. These bunks each have an exit that leads to a main hallway, which in turn leads to the deployment area. The deployment area has weapons lockers, a chapel and a prominent exit door. Each marine must touch the weapons locker to get their standard issue rifle and grenades. As players are joining and the teams are being balanced, players don’t see magically-appearing marines, they see them running out of their bunks.

The speaker is telling everyone the estimated time of impact. After ten or fifteen seconds of spawning in and suiting up, the lights go out and red lights come on. This preps the marines for the low-light environment they are about to enter. The floor then lights up showing the a modified version of command hierarchy. The commander is in the center, the squad leaders circle him, and the grunts surround their squad leaders. Each player’s name shows up on the ground at each spot and the commander’s voice (controlled by mod in this case) yells “Get in your positions, people!”. While a player is in his designated position, his adrenaline rises. Suddenly the screen shakes and there is a loud crunch. The ship’s engines cut and a drilling, grinding noise is heard as the deployment claw prepares the receiving ship for entry. “Let’s play this by the book, and we’ll all get through this.” . The doors slowly open. “Now move out!” The marines file in ones or twos into the infested spacecraft.

We all came out of the breach and fanned out while everyone left the landing pod. As I left the landing pod, my machine gun armed automatically. There is a safety-only rule inside the pod. I scanned the doorways quickly as my eyes adjusted. I heard gunfire behind me and I turned to see a little smoke rising from a far doorway. From within it, emerged a long, low gurgling sound.

My squad leader motioned for us to move up towards it. Our group of three move in a semi-circle to cover the door. I heard my fellow teammates start moving, presumably to guard the other doors. My gun-mounted light flicked on to illuminate the doorway. Supposedly, the aliens couldn’t see this kind of light, though could they hear it come on? Let’s hope they haven’t learned to interpret our hand signals or voice commands either. The doorway was empty.

Just then, gunfire broke out behind us. I turned just in time to see a man-sized repto-insect gliding down from the ceiling. They didn’t see it until it was too close. It landed next to one guy and promptly cut his throat open. The other marines in his squad were firing like crazy. It started cutting into the guy standing next to him…why were they so close? What was the first thing they told us?! Perhaps he deserved to…just then I was suddenly being pulled backwards. It was very dreamlike, because I couldn’t yell or move and I was being pulled into something soft and squishy. I watched my squad’s backs as they continued firing on the glider, oblivious to my departure. Everything became gray and I was being transported somewhere…

We killed the glider but not before he took out two marines. I turned to face the doorway…where had Gurney gone? I didn’t see his body and he wasn’t showing up on my team locator. My squad advanced quickly through the doorway to find ourselves staring at two St. Bernard-sized reptiles with faceted eyes. One of them yawned white milky acid on my ‘mate Higgins and I started firing at it. The other one sprang forward and bit me.

My ‘mate was screaming from the acid but my squad leader started firing between us and we managed to take it down before it got me. The other one disappeared around the corner where it came. I heard the commander’s orders to regroup and we pulled back into into the main area. I heard a couple soldiers trigger their overwatch indicators, informing us that they were currently guarding the doorways. If they moved or turned from their position, another sound would trigger, so we instantly knew that our flank wasn’t covered anymore.

With the room secured and the doors covered, I told my teammates: “gurney disappeared”. The commander said “the bugs cocooned him. we have to move fast”. My acid-laden ‘mate was so hurt he could barely move. He talked to Sarge and replaced his armor and got a range upgrade for his machine gun. He had to hang back for the rest of the mission if he was going to get through it. Sarge OKed my use of a high-impact shotgun and a couple of gas grenades. I was taking point. One of the other guys was setting up a turret in the center of the room. His HUD automatically showed him the turret’s range, projected into the room. He placed it off to the side so that any enemy being coming through either of those doors wouldn’t know about the turret until it was too late. A couple seconds after he placed it, its red sentry light started blinking and it’s reassuring overwatch sound chimed. Let’s see them try that shit again.

Our landing must have been rougher than I thought, as two marines that had been knocked at on impact just emerged from the pod, ready to fight. They were a little dazed though, so I doubt they will immediately be trusted with the best of our equipment. “let’s find Gurney and that ‘bass”. With the turret covering our back, the remaining seven of us advanced through the doorway Gurney disappeared from.

We advanced in leapfrog fashion, with point men covering the others as they moved up. In combat training we learned how accurate and less tiring it is to fire from a standstill then while moving. We
moved warily into an old space dock. There was a huge loading door, two other entrances and ventilation shafts all over the place. A hard place to defend and one that we could easily be flanked from.

One of the soldiers from the squad that took out the glider got permission to take the welder. His squad went up one of the ladders to a catwalk that led gave access to a ventilation shaft. One of his buddies had a flamethrower and stood next to the welder as he started closing off the first ventilation shaft. The rest of us took up positions around the room, overwatch indicators coming on. Too bad that welder makes so much noise and smoke, it’s practically an alien beacon…at that moment I heard a ‘mate say “alien spotted”.

He was peering over the edge of the space dock, down where all the machinery was. His overwatch kicked in sporadically as it found targets that he may or may not have seen. “Welding complete”. They moved to the second ventilation shaft and started again “Welding initiated”. I heard the sound of overwatch indicators flicking off as two more marines moved up to help the guy shooting down at some lizard. I heard the sound of equipment transferring hands as someone bought a proximity sensor. He deployed it in the center of the room and it turned on, pulsing every second or two.

Looking up to check on the welding progress, I heard the proximity sensor blink, and saw the hunched forms of a couple fly-bats hanging from the ceiling. After the motion sensor blinked, they faded again from sight…they were cloaked somehow. “Behind you!” I yelled at the welder. He didn’t move, he just continued welding. His buddy with the flamethrower turned and looked towards the bats as they launched towards him, fading away after the proximity pulse. He fired at the nothingness and caught one of them on fire. The sensor pulsed again and the other bat was on him, devouring him quickly. “Welding complete” was heard and he turned around, running for the ladder. The sensor pulsed and suddenly everyone was firing at the bat, dropping it to the ground near us. “Move out team!” the commander shouted.

We had to rescue Gurney soon so the aliens didn’t use his lifeforce and mind against us. No one was sure how it worked, but it was widely believed that the aliens could learn about us by…using…the hosts brain somehow. Suddenly, I knew where Gurney was. I can’t explain it, but it was like he was calling me from across the ship. My leader seemed to sense it too. We told our team we thought we knew where he was and that we had to save him.

One marine placed a turret down near the proximity sensor to secure this area for our retreat. We lined up in front of the loading bay doors and the commander smacked the grimy controls on the wall. It slowly opened as six overwatch indicators chimed on. Woe, is the bug that was standing on the other side of that door. We didn’t even see what it was before we started friing or before it’s remains were on the wall in front of us. Half of us advanced while the other half guarded and layed suppressing fire. Higgins tried to stay in the middle of everyone and I tried to take point when I could. I led the team in the direction I thought Gurney was.