Getting Ideas

Making a level without having ideas is like going on a road trip with no destination. Before you can set out on your creating journey, you need some idea of what you'll make, a roadmap for how to get there, and the ability to adjust your work as people point out better paths to take. "You need to have ideas" may seem obvious, but there are some caveats.

If you're a new creator, you may have many level ideas but lack the skill to create them. You may think this guide isn't necessary then, but not all ideas are created equal. Consider the following questions:

• How tangible are your ideas?

• How many ways can you generate them?

• How many ideas can you remember?

Even though ideas seem simple to make, there's some science to consider if you want to be productive about it. Most ideas can be categorized as either tangible or intangible - the more tangible an idea is, the more easily you can describe it with your five main senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. Tangible ideas are much easier to execute than intangible ones, saving you time on the execution side.

If we use the road trip example again, tangibility is how specific your destination is. If your destination is "Asia" then you have an idea, but nobody can help you execute that – where in Asia are you going? If you go with "Hokkaido" or "Guangzhou" instead, you can actually plan which flights to take.

In our case, many creators enter the GDCS Discord and say something like "I need help". This gives us a vague idea of what you need, but nothing else; help with what? If you give us a specific idea like "I need help making cumulonimbus clouds", we can actually help more easily.

Granted, not all ideas start out as tangible ones; sometimes an idea just pops into your head in a vague form. Your job is to make these ideas as tangible and specific as possible, so after generating ideas in the sections below, revise them to be more specific. In other words, take things like your imagination, vision, & dreams and describe them using words, pictures, & objects.

Tangibility aside, it's much easier to make a good idea by starting with an idea at all. There are many ways to produce ideas ranging from easy to difficult ones, but we'll only cover four methods here. Have a go at each if you haven't used or heard of them before.

Let's start with the most common way: thinking until an idea pops into your head. In writing, people joke that "ideas are made by looking at a piece of paper until a nerve forms in your head", the same way a nerve forms in my head when outlining this lesson. (The same way a nerve forms in my head when proofreading this lesson :D)

Brainstorming is also a common method of getting ideas; you join up with others and collectively make as many ideas as possible. For social extroverts, this method will be easy; introverts, this may take a bit more deliberate effort. Regardless, this method is the most popular due to its social aspect.

For engaging brainstorms, we recommend you try to ask better questions rather than finding better answers. Why? Because questions give less pressure to take sides or stick to a specific point of view. You aren’t committing to anything just yet, just throwing ideas on a wall and seeing what sticks.

The types of questions matter when brainstorming. You want to ask more open-ended questions (who, what, where, when, why, how) than closed questions (yes or no, agree or disagree). That doesn't mean closed questions are bad; in fact, they're excellent for clarifying things. Just make sure your questions don’t become closed-ended until you've fully explored your idea. Here's something you can try using our feedback channels: Rather than asking "Is this part good/bad?", you can instead ask "What can I do to improve this part?"

Open-ended questions typically encourage more diverse answers and lead to more ideas to consider. However, watch out for “killer” phrases, like “Yeah, that'll never work,” or “That's not worth my time.” They can turn your brainstorms into brain puddles.

While on the subject of questions, this method is the most convenient, because it gives you a question checklist that lets you tweak ideas until you find something you like.

This method is most associated with divergent thinking, and probably one of the more fun examples. Created by Alex Osborne and Bob Eberle in 1991, SCAMPER is an acronym for seven small sets of actions you can do to ideas. In the context of GD levels, here are some ways it could apply:

• Substitute - What if you replace it?

• Combine - What if you take two or more types of levels and combine them?

• Adapt - What old mechanics can you use? Where can you use them? How will this mechanic change?

• Modify - What if you make a level about something more significant or something less? Perhaps there's something else?

• Put To Another Use - How else can you use existing mechanics?

• Eliminate - What elements can you remove from the level? How will it work then? 

• Rearrange - What if you take what everyone else has done, and did the opposite?

Finally, it's time for the most difficult method. You may be well into Grade 2 before you first attempt this. It is similar to concentration, but it is more… academic. Ramsey theorized the following statement: "If you take large amounts of information and start looking at it closely and meticulously, you can find new information or hidden links that weren't initially visible."

With the Ramsey method, you study large amounts of information to find connections between them, which can be turned into ideas. You're essentially a data analyst studying countless sources to find unseen connections, no matter how small. This is like placing every single object in the editor and comparing them side by side to study their shapes, details, object properties, and composition.

This method depends on two factors: How much information you collect, and the effort you put into studying it.

There are other miscellaneous methods like Questions Burst, What Ifs, and the Six Thinking Hats, but you can explore them on your own time. Plus, they're more like a part of brainstorming instead of standalone methods.

Ultimately, the methods described here focus on the number of ideas, rather than quality; getting as many of them as possible, regardless of how absurd and random they are. But once you have ideas, you need to remember them. People often say things like "I had a level idea, but I forgot it when I went to build"; you don't want to do that, as it wastes time and effort.

Let's be honest: most of our memories are unreliable. Humans evolved to memorize important information and remove anything else. This is great for building consistent habits, but if your brain doesn't consider your ideas as important, you're likely to lose them.

To combat this, store ideas outside of your head. Have a place like a notebook, journaling app, or even a Google Docs/personal Discord server to store your ideas in. When you need to get new ideas, you can recall them and start modifying them as necessary.

On that note, you've finished learning about the first step of making a level. But once you have a destination in mind, you still need a roadmap to get there. To evaluate what makes ideas good in practice, "Planning a Level" will be your next stop.