New Blog for Game dev!

I am starting a new blog, pilgrim dev!

https://pilgrimdev.wordpress.com/

While games and yogurt is more focused on mechanics, looking at the industry, and other musings, pilgrim is meant specifically for the development aspect, detailing struggles and solutions on the path of coding. It is not an easy journey, and I wish to make it easier for anyone who comes after me. That is why I made this new blog

NEW GAME: GOPS!

I am happy to announce the release of a new game: GOPS.

 http://www.kongregate.com/games/mediavitagames/gops

You can play it on kongregate--the website is having some issues with flash online. If you like a thoughtful game of solitaire, you should like this game too.

-George

Xbox 720: Fantasy Features

(This article is pure fantasy and does not presume any knowledge of actual game console)

Microsoft’s new game console has been making quite a stir lately, but nothing has been more talked about than its rumored always-online feature.  It has caused quite some panic, but I am here to tell you not to worry!

You see, when they say always on, they mean ALWAYS on.

Introducing ENRAM, the most cutting edge technology in computer processing!  ENRAM works with the science of quantum entanglement, where pairs of particle influence each other from a distance instantaneously!  Worried about lag when playing your first person shooter?  Well with ENRAM you will have a lag of absolutely zero!  Each Xbox will come with 4 GB of ENRAM that connects them to Microsoft’s special servers.  While your console is simply sending and receiving data, it is their machines that are doing all of the processing.

If you are worried about spotty connectivity, then you should know that ENRAM doesn’t work by standard internet, but the entanglement runs on its own!  Always on means ALWAYS on.  Instead of storing games on your local hard-drive, your Xbox ownership will entitle you to 750 GB of server space for memory storage!  With the technology of ENRAM, you can access your titles on the servers as if they were on your own machine.  And since it is the powerful servers that do all the real processing, you can expect the best graphics you have ever seen—expect every frame of gameplay to be as detailed as any cutscene.

And yes, it can play used games and is backwards compatible.

Support Obsidian's New Game... also, Arakion

Arakion is a game now on Kickstarter that is seeking support.  Here is a picture:

If this looks like something that might interest you go check out there the Kickstarter page:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lavidimus/chris-taylors-arakion

and figure out for yourself if it is something you want to contribute towards.  I am in no way connected to this game save for the fact that I am a backer--it looks like it will be a good game and it would be a shame to see it not reach its potential.

Also on Kickstarter is a new project by Obsidian: Project Eternity.  They want to revisit their days of RPG's (remember Neverwinter Nights?) and want to make something that will be as memorable to us as Baldur's Gate.  Check it out at http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity

-George

The Ouya and the Future

     Reading about the OUYA was something: if it delivers what it promises, it is going to breathe a new life into console gaming.  To think, a system for only 100 dollars that anyone who owned it already had the SDK to make games for the system.

     The fact is barriers to entry into game development seem to get lower every year. There is huge indie support for PC, there is XBLA, and smartphones have opened up huge avenues for people who want to make and distribute games.

     Making it easy to make games is great, it will allow for a larger number of good, worthwhile games out there and we will all have better play experiences because of it.  But there is still the concern of what it means for the indie guy, the small team who wants to just scrape buy and bring out a decent game to the public.  That is to say if the accessibility of game development is able to turn making games into a widespread hobby, the supply could overpower the demand and we might see a lot of indies go under and leave the industry.  We love making games but not everyone can make a living off of it; hopefully we are not pushing ourselves into a boom and bust—we need to know what direction the world is going.

     OUYA is going to be big, but what kind of splash is it going to make? What is this pool that is gaming like today?  Still there seems a sharp divide between the indie and the mainstream—will the OUYA just become a toy for the independents to play and share their own games, withdrawn and resistant to anything considered too mainstream?  That is not the future I want to see; perhaps we will see a more open audience in console gaming, perhaps we will stop seeing so sharp a divide between “AAA” and “indie” and their differences won’t guide or restrict the market.  Why must we differentiate the two so drastically?  Hopefully in this near future there won’t be a need to.

     So maybe this new openness will make it more competitive.  We would still see games that are better than ever, but there is the concern that it might make it harder for game development to be a full-time job.  Hopefully, this is not going to be an issue.  Maybe the answer could be found by looking at other industries.  With all of the video editing tools available and youtube have we seen any decline in movies, television, or independent films?  Honestly I don’t know for sure how these things might have been affected, but I think we can all agree youtube has been a good thing.

-GR

Site Update and Things to Come

I just updated my website and added a major revamp to my game Mountain dash.  You can check it all out at www.mediavitagames.com .

Generally speaking, I ofcourse love the game updates, but I always have some misgivings, like what if I changed something that was actually fun and unique?  Oh well, I guess when it comes down to it, no one is going to find any of the hidden depth of a game if they don't stick around long enough to play it.  Luckily, I always have my archived files and ideas on where to go with a new project.

Speaking of new project, I hope to shortly move onto making a fully compiled game for pc.  It will be a big project.  I'll give more news as it comes up, everything is still in the idea stage for now.

Hard Mode Done Right

Typically I skip hard modes.  Sometimes I see the difficulty modifier and I’m like “What is this?”  I want to play the game as it was meant to be played, the way it was envisioned, and I want to be able to tell others that I played it.  I want to play “the game” and nothing else.  I don’t have to make something that is supposed to be enjoyably challenging into some strenuous labor just to stroke my ego.  It seemed all hard modes would accomplish would be making challenges take longer, requiring faster reflexes or more accuracy, requiring carrying more potions, or making you memorize a needless amount of details about game minutiae.  I would rather pass.

Now let me introduce you to two well-known games: Kingdom Hearts and Diablo II.  They are two examples of how hard mode can be done right.  After beating Kingdom Hearts on the Normal mode I decided to start a game on Expert difficulty.  The experience was completely different, even with the game being exactly the same.  Suddenly I wasn’t just slashing baddies—I was watching their moves, taking evasive action, giving different threats priority.  I became more involved in the game and began to see the depth of possible interaction.

Without the difficulty there was no drive to reach these levels, no motive to strive for anything higher.  At lesser difficulties there was no need to develop these skills, and this lead to complacency.

In Diablo II’s Hardcore mode death becomes permanent.  This in turn demands a play style that is categorically different from normal mode.  Where death used to be just an inconvenience suddenly it meant the end; no longer was it an option, no longer was it a risk that could be taken.  That meant instead of building up mana reserves I was giving my necromancer more armor and life.  And by having less mana, I was forced to do other things differently: spamming spells at my enemies would have drained too much mana, I had to find more efficient ways to handle them.  By making the game less forgiving the very nature of the game was changed, the result that I had to adapt and grow. It was a change I think was well done.

That these two games did so well in accomplishing the task of providing a harder difficulty setting I would attribute to two primary factors.  The first is depth.  The two games had enough rules and variation in mechanics that the player could continue to explore and analyze them, whether it was anticipating an enemy’s attack or discovering that poison resistance could be quite useful, Hard mode’s demand for greater attention brought the realization of these details, and thus the ability to respond to them. 

This leads to the second characteristic these games share: good conveyance.  In simple terms this means you need to tell me about how your game works if I’m going to know how to play it well, and conversely, if there is no way for me to really know all of the rules then don’t expect me to utilize them.  Your game can be filled with depth but if your player can’t see how anything affects anything they won’t see any depth.  You can have tons of hidden stats and checks and if the player doesn’t know they exist it will just seem arbitrary.  Derived from this is Intuitiveness: the rules need to make sense in a way that the player sees how they are connected—it will make memorizing the rules much easier and feel more natural.  So depth, conveyance, and sort of intuitiveness, I guess that’s more like 2.5 principles.  With Kingdom Hearts a huge factor was watching the enemies movements, tracking their formations; this lends itself to be visually understood so they player gains knowledge of the rules through the senses.  In Diablo, everything was explained to some degree in text: you could read the stats of an item or spell and then look to see how it affected your character.  Sure, there is much more to these games, but this is just an overview.

In essence these games allowed for meaningful choice and situational analysis, and in their Hard modes there is then the need for the player to do these, an extra effort that was not necessary in the normal modes.  The player does not have to so much react faster, just to figure out how to react smarter.