Three Goblin Art
❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
Product Placement
I'd rather be in outer space 🛸
YOU ARE THE REASON
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Claire Keane
occasionally subtle
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Janaina Medeiros
we're not kids anymore.
Origami Around
Xuebing Du
pixel skylines
Today's Document
Sweet Seals For You, Always
Game of Thrones Daily
DEAR READER
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
taylor price
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@t2thompson
My latest video on YouTube looks at the AI behind 2007's @halo 3 and how the game managed to have dozens of characters on screen at once without performance drops. #gamedev #GameAI #gamedesign #Halo #aiandgames #AI https://www.instagram.com/p/BpRgVXejNoH/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=4z515zxo585u
The new and improved AI and Games #patreon is live! Get new rewards including exclusive videos, early access, laptop stickers, coffee mugs and t-shirts by supporting the show! Plus new 'Arbiter' patrons who sign up before October 1st will receive a signed postcard of this awesome artwork by @harmil_art. Get cracking! #gamedev #gameAI #AlienIsolation #aiandgames #AI #Halo #batman #gameart #patreoncreator #crowdfunding #crowdfund #youtube #youtuber https://www.instagram.com/p/Bn6SWRUD3K5/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=12kkul9mzphum
Our in-game store managers: Costume Cathy, Power-Up Pascal & Buff Bob. #indiedev #KeepRunning #screenshotsaturday #indiegame #gamedev
We're on the road to @norwichgamingfestival! Be sure to come and play Sure Footing single and multiplayer modes from June 1st-3rd. Chat with the devs and see our making-of talk this Friday at 2pm (at The Forum, Norwich)
If you're heading to #egxrezzed later this month be sure to pop by and try Sure Footing. We're stocking up on the all important swag! Don't forget to vote for Sure Footing on Steam Greenlight. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=869746175 #indiedev #gamedev #KeepRunning #egx #steamgreenlight
Sure Footing v0.93.5 is now live on itch.io. Includes new control options, 2 new power-ups, bug fixes and a revamped UI. Play the game in first-access read the full patch notes at http://tableflipgames.itch.io/sure-footing #gamedev #KeepRunning #SureFooting #indiedev #madewithunity
We got our own Xmas present in the form of feedback from @get_tuda_choppa's family. Everyone had fun, but it did lead to some pretty intense competition. #screenshotsaturday #indiedev #gaming
Merry Xmas to our fans celebrating the festive season. We pushed a small update to Sure Footing for December that fixed a bunch of bugs, some balance tweaks and new power-ups. Wishing you all a fun and safe holiday from the team at Table Flip Games. http://itch.io/t/52844/patch-notes-sure-footing-v0933-is-here-for-the-holidays
A wonderful first day at the Metamakers Institute in Falmouth. Good people. Good chat. Good times. (at Falmouth Cornwall UK)
Keep running!
WE ARE LIVE!
Be amongst the first to get your hands on Sure Footing and the colorful world of Computra!
There was a time... Sure Footing was just a tiny little prototype
Once upon a time, Sure Footing was just a little sparkle in Tommy Thompson’s eye, and today we will tell you the story how it became the colorful fun game to play that it is known for today, just now making its first steps into the big world.
Sure Footing began as Tommy’s (now lead designer of Sure Footing and co-director of Table Flip Games) small side-project belonging to his ongoing research activity. In his “day-job” Tommy is an AI researcher with a growing interest in procedural generation, so he began playing around with some rudimentary forms of level generation in a variety of projects.
After a while, he started to zoom in on a prototype of an infinite runner video game. The idea being to focus on an area that is relatively small in scope and easy to prototype quickly - to learn whether his research ideas made sense and were practical. The prototype slowly took shape to adopt - in a crude fashion - the level generation and player metrics that Sure Footing is built around now.
However, there were a number of problems with the first working versions: it wasn’t particularly fun to play and Tommy will be the first to say it was really pretty ugly.
Judge for yourself: it ain’t pretty ;-)
After a few weeks of working on the prototype in his spare time (a side-project for when he got bored with his other side-project), it was a basic playable game.
It happened one fine afternoon that Tommy was sitting working on the prototype while waiting for Matt Syrett (now lead artist of Sure Footing and co-director of Table Flip Games) who he had befriended recently. Matt, nosey as always and keen to see what Tommy was playing around with, shifted from intrigued to disgusted in a second once he laid eyes on the graphics Sure Footing was using by then (programmer art! ;-) ). Matt might have called it hideous, but historians might never be sure which disgusted sounds he made while staring at the basic Unity object shapes, the primitive particle systems and the lack of any real UI models or feedback.
“So? It’s working, though!” Tommy replied, puffed up that all his hard work was smacked down so quickly. (Oh the wonderful beginnings of this friendship)
This went on for quite some time (bystanders might have gathered to see if the two will start throwing gadgets at each other).
After some time, understanding sunk in and Matt’s disgust turned into laughter as he saw how little care had been given to the art and aesthetic of the game. After all - for Tommy it was just a research project, at most Tommy and maybe a handful of his academic peers would ever play it. What did it matter if it looked a little ugly?
“You think you can do any better?” Tommy joked to Matt, which was, of course, rhetorical: Matt is a video game artist after all.
What followed was a discussion that could only now be considered the first Sure Footing design meeting. Discussion of an art style slowly took form and very quickly the idea of the opening sector of Cacheville began to take shape.
Coincidentally (FATE, we clearly know now it was FATE!) Matt was required to build art assets for a project as he completed his MA. Tommy’s project might just fit the bill.
There was just one hurdle left: Matt’s specialism is environment and prop art and he didn’t feel too comfortable working on character designs.
“Well, why don’t we just keep the player like some kind of cube? Just put a smiley face on it or something?” Tommy joked. The argument was made to keep the game in a blocky aesthetic to evoke an environment steeped in the digital world.
Fast forward a few hours and Matt had put together a first rough concept for the player and platform designs. The initial character design looks like an anthropomorphised cube, or voxel, or - from the right angle - a pixel.
“Heh, he’s like a wee pixel.” Tommy joked.
“I liked it, Pixel… Pixel Pete!” Matt declared: settling on a name for the character.
The issue that we created, but also did our best to address later on was that we had actually engendered a cube. Sure, he is kinda cute'n'all, but it means that we created a male character. This had a huge impact as we began to design the rest of our characters, but we’ll talk about that in more detail another time.
Matt steamed ahead for his university assignment and built the prototype versions of the market street, Pixel Pete, some platform designs and the backdrops of the Cacheville sector in preparation for a presentation at Sheffield Hallam. Tommy would try to build the prototype code to work around Matt’s assets. This wasn’t the first time they’d worked together, but it was the first time with Unity3D, with which both just had started out.
The presentation build was far from complete and the PCG system didn’t even work properly for the presentation. But the presentation proved to be successful as the platforming sequence could be played through to completion (Matt also got his MA in the end). Even if y'know, it wasn’t very good.
There was still a long way to go from here: starting with the first fully playable build.
But there’s a story or two to tell there as well. We’ll cover that next time!
Our latest video looks at the design of the AI system implemented in Creative Assembly’s Alien: Isolation. We learn how it moves around the world, how it hunts the player and how the creature learns throughout the main campaign experience.
We take a look at the director AI behind the Far Cry series.
