I was curious how everyone goes about their game designing? Before you answer, I'm referring to the actual mental aspect. For example, before my pencil ever touches paper, or my mouse clicks on anything on the screen, I have to have music. The music I listen to directs what I create.
Many times, when I'm desinging a particular boss battle that I need the player to feel as though the world's fate rests on his shoulders, I'll design while listening to Oculus ex Inferni by Symphony X, or something to that degree (the groups Immediate Music and X-Ray Dog both have quite a few songs of this caliber).Some people have to look at images similar to what they want to design, or maybe something else goes on in a creator's mind to get the gears turning in our minds. I was simply curious how everyone comes to think up what we do. [=)]
When I come up with a game idea I have to give it a name before I make any of it.
When I've got an idea for a game, I write everything to do with the characters: their backgrounds, the months leading up to the events in the game, the histories of their people and so on. Then I write down a beginning and an end and think, "What could have happened to get from here to here in this amount of time?"
So, yeah.I overplan, because anything less than that for me means the project will crash and burn after I get a new idea.It begins with me wanting to figure out what a specific kind of game-play feels like, and ends after I stop learning about new things. I think that I have 30-40 small game-play engines scattered throughout all of my gamemaker work.
I usually start with demo sprites and sounds, make the game-play engine, make a demo level, tweak the game-play engine and add some stuff (enemies, materials, …) then stop. I love to listen to music while doing anything, although I've recently been listening to random science lectures from youtube.