
Friday, October 30, 2009
Scripting

Thursday, October 29, 2009
Free Unity

I won't make a judgment call on the software, but this kind of move just makes me happy, and I wanted to share. This news after setting up this blog free, a domain and emails for free, and a private website for free. I know the world isn't made of rainbows but now and then people seem to do their damnedest to make me feel like it. Did the call to arms just get louder?
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Awesome-Slash-Boring


Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Time Flies

I've always been curious about events in life that dilate time, and there a few examples that stand out, though all are anecdotal. The first was taking a three-month leave of absence from work in '94 or '95 to return to my homeland, Hawaii, and decide whether to stay there or return to work in Utah. I had no other goals, and it felt like I was there for more like a year. (I decided to come back and try the game-thing, if you were curious.)

Finally, I've noticed that when I decide to travel to a location (on foot or by wheels) along a route I've never taken before, time also seems to dilate.
I presume the reason is because your mind wanders to details (many things) instead of staying locked on a goal (one, or a few things). And wow did last year fly by. This year has been, too. I described the sensation once as being like "the scroll bar on a browser window," because grabbing the bar and scrolling from top to bottom happens swiftly, but the amount of detail there, if you stop to take a look, is staggering. I wonder if there are any books on the subject, or simply other takes.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Indie 3D Engine
I'm looking into various 3D game engines right now, starting with Unity. It looks interesting; I'd like an engine that lets me best take advantage of a game (not engine) programming skill set to rapidly prototype game controls, AI, and simple game logic using primitives. I see the prospect of moving from prototype to demo as a separate endeavor that needn't necessarily use the same engine, so platform is less of a concern, despite wanting to prototype with a controller in mind.
Any ideas or links would be helpful. Feel free to leave comments or throw some suggestions out to erlanter via gmail. Thanks!
Friday, October 23, 2009
Fairy Bottle

Thursday, October 22, 2009
Bakshi

Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Nerds and Geeks
I've always been comfortable with the term "geek" and uncomfortable with "nerd," but know people who feel oppositely.
When I think of the term geek, I think of it in two types. First, favorably, someone who is unusually enthusiastic about a particular subject; e.g., a carpentry geek, a food geek, or a racing geek. Second, stereotypically, someone who is unusually enthusiastic about fantasy or sci-fi, and is willing to look past all of the implausible elements of their passion and meet a lacking presentation or premise halfway so they enjoy themselves. Neither says anything about the individual's social skills; the most well-spoken attractive person in the world might also have this enthusiasm or passion.
When I think of the term nerd, I think Revenge of the Nerds. Nerd, to me, says less about one's interests and more about their social ability; that they are socially awkward physically, conversationally, or both.
Someone might be a geek, nerd, or both, but when I hear "geek," it comes with little-to-no negative connotation, whereas "nerd" seems negative. Other takes?


Someone might be a geek, nerd, or both, but when I hear "geek," it comes with little-to-no negative connotation, whereas "nerd" seems negative. Other takes?
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
LittleBot Comic
Monday, October 19, 2009
Batman: Arkham Asylum



So some toolbox (i.e., potentially bad) thoughts:
- To reduce competition between stalking and combat
- Make clearer tools for changing combat scenarios to stalking scenarios, and vice versa.
- For players that enjoy stalking more than combat
- A clearer device for getting a group of melee thugs to disperse and wander, allowing you to stalk them
- A flashbang that gives you a cleaner way to get back into stealth mode without getting shot (balance with long timer?)
- For players that enjoy combat more than stalking create clearer tools for handling guns with thugs
- Dodging leaves you invulnerable to gunfire (long enough to dodge again)
- Batarangs disable thugs with guns (they might already do this without my knowing; I noticed Batarangs prioritizing giants over normal thugs)
- Blend the experience bonus feedback between stalking and combat clearly
- If combat feedback needs improvement
- And the problem is with the challenge...
- Remove combo ruining...
- When "blue" thugs hurt you with electricity
- When "red" thugs blocks your attacks
- Or make it so you can dodge out of a committed attack (correct your mistake)
- Give more leeway (if possible, it often isn't) to counter
- And the problem is experience then separate thug-beating specialty from experience gain
- Experience gain is flat (stalk or fight, x dead thugs = y experience)
- Tie high combos and technique challenges to special in-game rewards, such as bonus Riddler content
- This puts challenge objectives into the main gameplay
- Challenge gameplay was brilliant because it taught you cool things about the game, but only once you unlocked challenges, and without main-path gameplay relevance

Monday, October 12, 2009
Vacation!
Friday, October 9, 2009
Information Age


Thursday, October 8, 2009
Everything Bad is Good for You


I'll start with a definition of art. Everyone has a different definition, and mine is broad. Art is something created with the purpose of influencing another's emotions. It could be a movie, a song, a building, a conversation with your friend, a cake, a striptease, and yes, even a game. I like a broad definition because I can comprehend the "artistry" involved in those things.



I have science to thank again. Not just because it improves our ability to police wrongdoing, but because it makes the proliferation of art that much more possible. The art that a single channel can generate to change my mind or opinion might be small -- and artists tend to tell and retell the same human stories ad nauseum -- but the number of channels that a wide variety of artists can use to deliver a more custom way of telling that story, and moving me, is now staggering.


Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Musical Toy
Despite my love of technology, I'm not always an early adapter. But lately I've been fascinated by Lala. It may be garbage and someone will explain why I should feel guilty for posting this, but my first impressions are happy:
- I can buy DRM-free MP3s there cheaper than Amazon and iTunes.
- I can sample any song or album in its collection (in its entirety), once, for free.
- I can "upload" my entire music collection (4000+ songs) and stream it through any connected computer (including, presumably, the iPhone).
- I can embed and share most music or music playlists wherever I want, regardless of whether I own it, with anyone.
- I have the option of buying a web-only (no MP3, but unlimited online access) version of any song for 10 cents (albums are roughly a dollar), and I can buy the MP3 later for cost minus 10 cents.
I just needed to get some marketing tool out of my system. :P I'm headed for the shower... but first, some music!
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Skip It Good
The other day, Kotaku linked to a BBC program called Gameswipe that did a feature describing the history of games and where things are at now, and commended them for presenting a rather good view of the state of games. I haven't finished watching it myself, but I've enjoyed what I've seen thus far. One part in particular stood out to me, where comedian Dara O' Briain rags on games for barring content from unskilled players:
Play How You Want
This is a topic near and dear to my heart, as those who know me from work may attest. On previous games, I've tossed out the idea that from the beginning of the game, the player could go to any part of the game and start playing from there, not unlike picking a chapter in a DVD and hitting play. I always enjoyed sharing the idea, partly because the most common initial reaction was so negative. And not because we would have to figure out under the hood how to equip players with items they may not have otherwise earned, and how we handle optional rewards as players jump through the world (though this turned out to be a somewhat simple design challenge, at least for a narrative game). But rather because of concerns that we would ruin the player's sense of accomplishment or skip past our work.
Ruining Accomplishment
This is a noble but I think misguided concern because I believe that if the player has the ability to excise only the part of the game that limits or frustrates him, he won't choose the option to skip past everything. In Candyland, I could move my piece to the end of the board and say, "I win," but that's not why I play Candyland. But if I land on a chute, and landing on a chute makes me want to quit the game, then making an ad hoc rule to be able to stay on chutes lets me enjoy the game instead of stop playing it. That's a good thing.
At the heart of this is "let the player play how they want." That was a very freeing thought presented to me at a GDC, where the speaker (I wish I remember whom) described a concern the designers had about a cheat code being put into the game, and there was a point where he had to ask himself, "why do I care how they have fun with my game?" He just wanted them to have fun with his game. If they were having fun, then great!
That thought has helped me out of many design traps. A lot of design progress can be solved just by thinking about what's fun for players instead of what seems fun for the designer. I think an example of this exists in the move from coin-ops to consoles. Common wisdom was that death and limited continues were good, and it was a bit mind-busting to imagine that someone could just continue limitlessly and just get through the entire game. But coin-ops were made to get you to feed quarters in it, not let you have free experience with their games. Take out that premise with a $50 game you already bought, and you should be operating on a different paradigm. I feel like not giving the players the ability to get past frustrating content is a relic. If a player is faced with the option of quitting your game forever or skipping that content... good god, give them a way through it.
Presentation
And to be fair, the thought can go awry. Clearly part of this is in presentation. If he has a "skip gun" that he can fire at any obstacle in a shooter to instantly kill it, selectable like any other weapon, he might keep choosing it and decide the game is boring, since "skipping content" was integrated into the game itself. The key part in all this is that players are always able to have fun.
Walkthroughs
The other idea that bore out of this line of thinking was to keep players in their seats by offering them a way not only to skip a section that gave them excruciating trouble, but also giving them help along the way. A lot of times a game makes us willing to get up, walk to our computer, look up an FAQ, print it out (or memorize what you need), go back and execute. And it seemed nice to instead just offer them a video relevant to whatever section they're playing, where they can watch a perfect playthrough and just go back to the game and duplicate it.
Play How You Want
This is a topic near and dear to my heart, as those who know me from work may attest. On previous games, I've tossed out the idea that from the beginning of the game, the player could go to any part of the game and start playing from there, not unlike picking a chapter in a DVD and hitting play. I always enjoyed sharing the idea, partly because the most common initial reaction was so negative. And not because we would have to figure out under the hood how to equip players with items they may not have otherwise earned, and how we handle optional rewards as players jump through the world (though this turned out to be a somewhat simple design challenge, at least for a narrative game). But rather because of concerns that we would ruin the player's sense of accomplishment or skip past our work.
Ruining Accomplishment
This is a noble but I think misguided concern because I believe that if the player has the ability to excise only the part of the game that limits or frustrates him, he won't choose the option to skip past everything. In Candyland, I could move my piece to the end of the board and say, "I win," but that's not why I play Candyland. But if I land on a chute, and landing on a chute makes me want to quit the game, then making an ad hoc rule to be able to stay on chutes lets me enjoy the game instead of stop playing it. That's a good thing.
At the heart of this is "let the player play how they want." That was a very freeing thought presented to me at a GDC, where the speaker (I wish I remember whom) described a concern the designers had about a cheat code being put into the game, and there was a point where he had to ask himself, "why do I care how they have fun with my game?" He just wanted them to have fun with his game. If they were having fun, then great!
That thought has helped me out of many design traps. A lot of design progress can be solved just by thinking about what's fun for players instead of what seems fun for the designer. I think an example of this exists in the move from coin-ops to consoles. Common wisdom was that death and limited continues were good, and it was a bit mind-busting to imagine that someone could just continue limitlessly and just get through the entire game. But coin-ops were made to get you to feed quarters in it, not let you have free experience with their games. Take out that premise with a $50 game you already bought, and you should be operating on a different paradigm. I feel like not giving the players the ability to get past frustrating content is a relic. If a player is faced with the option of quitting your game forever or skipping that content... good god, give them a way through it.
Presentation
And to be fair, the thought can go awry. Clearly part of this is in presentation. If he has a "skip gun" that he can fire at any obstacle in a shooter to instantly kill it, selectable like any other weapon, he might keep choosing it and decide the game is boring, since "skipping content" was integrated into the game itself. The key part in all this is that players are always able to have fun.
Walkthroughs
The other idea that bore out of this line of thinking was to keep players in their seats by offering them a way not only to skip a section that gave them excruciating trouble, but also giving them help along the way. A lot of times a game makes us willing to get up, walk to our computer, look up an FAQ, print it out (or memorize what you need), go back and execute. And it seemed nice to instead just offer them a video relevant to whatever section they're playing, where they can watch a perfect playthrough and just go back to the game and duplicate it.
Feedback
Interestingly, run all of this past non-game developers got positive feedback. A good friend took the idea back to his dinner table and asked his family how they felt about it and found that they all had a different reason for liking it. His oldest boy, the hardcore completionist, just asked whether he could still play through it normally and collect everything in order. He was content as long as he could. The middle boy, the aspiring gamer, asked if it meant he could get past that part he normally has to ask (swallow his pride and) his brother to help him through, and he was pleased to learn that he could, in fact, do that. The youngest boy, who plays games for the "cool parts," like funny movies, asked if he could just go to those parts over and over and just do the stuff he likes. He was happy to learn he could. Finally, his wife asked if that meant she could kind of browse the game and see what kind of content was in it her kids were playing. Yup. Good stuff.
Skipping Content
The last concern about skipping the blood, sweat, and tears we put into the product is much easier to brush aside. The concern should be about whether people are having fun with the blood, sweat, and tears, we put into it. Two other ways to illustrate how bizarre a thought this: first, do authors care that you can access the last chapter of their book? Do film makers care that you can skip to the last part of their movie? You can do either, but it's more fun to go from the start and make your way through it. If you have trouble reading a boring chapter or viewing a gory scene, you can always skip past it. If your implementation of skipping doesn't ruin the experience (re: Presentation) then you're giving the player tools to enjoy what they bought. Second, how weird is it that designers would rather have you buy their game, take the disc out of its container, and smash it on the curb than play through it the way you please?
Too Late?
A year or so after exploring these ideas, Kotaku broke a news story about a patent Miyamoto filed for essentially the same features. A cool addition, however, was the ability to jump into the "playback" of a section and re-take control. I also learned that other games -- I think Alone in the Dark (and I'm sure, others) -- had the feature to skip to any chapter you want from the beginning of the game. I guess I'm only so cool. I just hope it means more people can I enjoy the experiences we toil away to bring them.
Monday, October 5, 2009
Excited for... Monday??

Friday, October 2, 2009
Logo!
Notice anything... er... different... about the site? Playing with logos was a nice way to get familiar with Painter again. I haven't done anything in that program (other than scan drawings for the other blog) for so long, and messing around in layers, smiling my way through their horrible text options (Photoshop would have been much nicer for that), constantly messing up "protect transparency," and mushing brush sliders around was like meeting an old buddy again. Ahh.
Not wanting to spend forever on the logo (and so things match), I used some of the colors from the blog in it. I could have spent longer adjusting the blog's colors to match some Grand Vision in my head, but why bother? I'm sure Google's blog designers spent enough time thinking about color schemes, already. :P
So what's with the feather?

So what's with the feather?
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Phoenix Wright
I know I'm late to the table with this one, but I got the first Phoenix Wright for my birthday and thought it would be fun to share some thoughts about the things I play, especially since designers are notorious for designing the last cool thing we played.
For those unfamiliar (like I was) with the style of game, it's essentially what I call a "feedback game," which means it's heavy on fun feedback and light on play mechanics. There are basically two phases to the game: investigation, and a court battle. In investigations, you talk to NPCs (unlocking search objectives or conversations) and examine various environments searching for evidence you can use in court. In court battles, you sift through witness testimonies, press them for information (re: conversation), and try to match pieces of evidence to contradictions in what the NPCs are saying.
But it's brilliant at times. The writing is really great, and there's a lot of it. I was stunned at how much dialog there was -- maybe enough to fit a light kid's novel -- and the characters will really fun. One of the things I couldn't help but be impressed by is how badly you wanted to pin bad guys in the game. They love making the "actual" culprit (rather than the innocent one you're defending) rather obvious, and always devilishly innocent. They'll show how the courts bend to them, how the jury loves them, and they set a trail of getting away with everything they want to, and it just... makes... you... so... ANGRY. Which means -- as it is with a good movie villain -- you are so HAPPY when they go down in flames. You get to watch as their devious shell starts to fade and they get all twitchy and vulnerable in court, until eventually you "get" them and they become enraged, letting it all out and confessing to the crime. It's incredibly satisfying, despite your gameplay involvement being rather thin. But yep, you feel like you get them, and I remember describing the game to Jen by way of the story like, "Ooh! I'm about to finally nail this son of a bitch!" I was into it!
It only fails and frustrates occasionally because of the mind-reading it has to do with the player, and because of some weird arbitrary conditions it sets for evidence. Sometimes I thought the setup for a piece of evidence was vague and I would stumble around randomly matching evidence to statements, which was frustrating. Other times I had perfectly logical reasons for choosing a piece of evidence but it wasn't the the trail of logic the game wanted me to follow. Finally, other times I had to go through particular dialog trees before the evidence I presented would be "correct," and that was irksome to say the least.
But these frustrations (that appeared more towards the latter-half of the game) were completely worth the journey through a really fun game that very often made me feel fully integrated in a really fun story with great characters, and I look forward to playing the next one.
A few tips: if you decide to play it, make sure you press every statement in court, and go through all dialog trees before presenting evidence. Finally, you can save any time you want, so use it. You can always power down and restart if you aren't happy with how you're fairing in court.



But these frustrations (that appeared more towards the latter-half of the game) were completely worth the journey through a really fun game that very often made me feel fully integrated in a really fun story with great characters, and I look forward to playing the next one.
A few tips: if you decide to play it, make sure you press every statement in court, and go through all dialog trees before presenting evidence. Finally, you can save any time you want, so use it. You can always power down and restart if you aren't happy with how you're fairing in court.
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