#game developer's conference

[wishbonegame]

So let’s talk about the v3 beta! Since this is a pretty big update, I’m going to do a couple different posts about it over the next few days instead of just one big info dump under a cut.

First off, check out our revamped prairie tiles! The old ones were... well, they were okay, but the desert was pretty stereotypical. Very plain cacti, rocks, etc. It did the job, but some areas were a bit hard to tell apart, according to our testers. Also, I found myself feeling wistful every time I saw pictures of the actual Mojave desert and was reminded of how incredibly beautiful the real-world inspiration for this area was. Coding-wise, this is pretty much the last opportunity to make changes before implementation of another feature in the next version makes a revamp exponentially more difficulty, so... I went for it! Big ol’ revamp!

In the new prairie, you’ll find a much wider and more realistic variety of plant sprites. Banana yucca, Joshua trees, agave, and plenty of small scrubs make the prairie a more interesting and vivid place. Many plants only grow in certain areas. While these plants can’t be harvested, they certainly do look nice!

Speaking of harvestable plants, I’ve cranked up the spawn rate for just about everything. Animals, plant, fish... these rates will probably be adjusted further in future drafts, though! I thiiink they may be too high right now. :P

The random outlaws that wander the prairie have also been tweaked slightly. Hostile ones move quickly and have an angry emote over their head every now and then.

Another thing that has changed are the location names. Through most of development thus far, I’ve been writing dialog that referred to different areas of the map with vague, general descriptions (’the prairie’, ‘the canyon’, etc). That’s no longer the case! Now each area of the map has its own name--like Cactus Flower Flats and Devil’s Gulch! Between this and the revamped prairie, we aim to make the area surrounding Wishbone feel more fleshed out and realistic. The map has even been updated to include place names for easier navigation! Looks nice, doesn’t it?

[blinding-awesomeness]

Final Fantasy XV Conversational Chemistry Chart

[lastpaladingame-blog]

The army of darkness is getting closer and closer….

[churchinthedarkness]

This past week at the Game Developer's Conference we brought our new demo to the ID@Xbox showcase event.  This was our first time showing the game on Xbox One and the Microsoft team were super prepared and pulled the event off without a hitch.  Thanks to them and also all the cool developer's we met!

If you're at PAX East this coming week, you can come see that very same demo in the PAX Rising space.

[harmonicstupidity]

Below is just my perspective, don’t take it as a masters’ thesis. 

I’ve studied music at Uni. There are many different aspects to learn which can also be also applicable to video game study. There’s the history, the theory (mainly the structure of it all), and considering many ways to create your own. 

None of what’s written above should ever be said to an aspiring composer. It should never be said to artists in general. I find it additionally insulting that this kind of rhetoric would fit right at home with the same kind of people who say “If we want video games to be taken seriously as an art form(...)”

Hey, guys. The problem might just lie with you. 

Right. There’s a ramble. Peace. 

[richardrouse3]

Rules of the Game returns for GDC 2025! We're Thursday at 3:30, Room 2002, West Hall.

Come see what game design rules will be shared by Chandana Ekanayake, Carla Engelbrecht, Noah Falstein, Harvey Smith, and Alisha Thayer!

[hardcoregamer]

GDC Summer Announced, Takes Place in August

Back in February, the company opted to postpone GDC 2020 over concerns about the COVID-19 coronavirus. Since then, we’ve been waiting to hear what happens next. Today, we now know that the plans is GDC Summer.

Check it!

https://hardcoregamer.com/2020/03/19/gdc-summer-announced-takes-place-in-august/369690/

[anikiiyomi-blog]

GDC 2k18 DIARIES: Part 3!

SO. THURSDAY. That was pretty dang productive for us! I started out the morning with another animation talk  covering the animation of Moss. The animation was so lively, bouncy, and he used a lot of clever tools to help his entire animation workflow as a one-man army for his indie start up so it was a tremendously inspiring talk. Even he didn’t have too much prowess with python or Mel scripting, but he was able to make tools to really up his workflow by more than 300%! THAT WAS SO COOL and now I got to learn how to do that myself on Maya! :D 

I managed to head to the Expo to get to the rest of the booths I didn’t have the opportunity to visit and talk with the people at them, meet up with some classmates, go to talks, go to some discussions about portfolios, made some more connections, then began our party hopping! We had to wait a while for the ArtStation + Gnomon party but it was SO WORTH IT. We met a lot of charismatic artists that made the evening a fantastic one! They were really kind, considerate, and so talented. I was really in awe of the skill they had. ♥♥ My experience at the Artstation party really reminded me why so many of my classmates love attending GDC: it’s the people you meet along the way. Even being as introverted and socially anxious as I am, I had a blast. Along the way, I won some SWEET Gnomon merch in a raffle so the night was going smoothly.

After that, we dropped off our things at our hotel and headed our way to our graduate Alumni party! This one was more chill and catching up with some people from our class, meeting the new students, and meeting some other alumni while we rested up. We decided to leave around midnight so we would be able to rest up and make it to the portfolio review sessions the next day since ... oh boy, did we know there was going to be a line for both part 1 and 2 of that. 

The FANTASTIC thing about Part 1 of the Portfolio Review talk was that  Claire Hummel was on the panel! She made the entire Historically Accurate Disney Princesses series. It’s a series I have wholeheartedly respected and appreciated ever since I first saw it floating around on Tumblr years ago, and it felt so fulfilling to meet the woman behind it. :’3 FORTUNATELY she didn’t mind me fangirling over her for a bit (she was really sweet! :D). I nervously nyoomed off to the portfolio review line which was ... oh boy. Already long af. Like ... even longer than the Sonic line.

I managed to camp out for a bit with some snacks and my phone for the first hour by myself, then my friend came back to join me, and we waited another hour. By then, we were able to get in for our 10 minute portfolio review with some industry leads and veterans! 

I’m not too sure if it was disheartening or flattering that he disliked my Sonic animations because he wasn’t sure if I once worked with SEGA or not (BOI I WISH). Either way, I’ll solve that by adding some labels that clearly label it as fan animation and reanimation of pixel scenes. Other than that, he echoed similar critiques I received earlier in the week in having to work on my timing to really sell the weight in my pieces, but also suggested my adding more subtle acting choices to give an added layer of personality. Out of all my reel pieces, he liked my Persona 5-inspired animation the most! In my earlier review, the animator from High Voltage liked my Yandere animation the most. So it’s good to see some pieces have their own strengths and appeal. ♥ I still got to take all their notes and really fix those timing issues to make it more appealing and easier to read for the viewers.

After that, I managed to talk to an Ubisoft recruiter who gave me a lot of helpful advice and good feedback! I was honestly surprised that he didn’t just push aside my work because it didn’t fit with Ubisoft’s more realistic aesthetic, and was more concerned with the principles of animation being shown and the acting choices. Overall, it was a productive talk and one that I walked away from with a very good feeling! ♥

Then ... I took it easy again. The nearest party going on that night was about a mile or two away and I really didn’t have it in me to walk all of that. I wear ankle braces just to walk short distances at the mall (nothing serious, but it just stems from some issues when I was young) so it was honestly pretty ... saddening to think about how inaccessible the whole Conference + the parties were to people with actual physical disabilities. Ubering everywhere really adds up after a time and it isn’t practical enough for everyone.

That topic was on my mind a lot in the airport. The last time I was coming home in 2016, I was stopped by TSA because of my braces. The same thing happened again this time around. I ended up holding the line for a while while they searched me, scanned me, then rescanned me, all for braces that didn’t even have metal in them. Their advice was for me to just take them off and set them with my shoes going down the conveyor belt. That’s okay with me, because I can just take them off for five minutes, sit for ten, then be able to keep walking. IDK how the “just take it off” would really work out for people who don’t have that luxury. 

Either way, I’m just drifting off the main topic into a sea of thought. 

So then I came home on a relaxing moonlit flight back home and was reunited with my baby! It felt so GOOD to be home again, though I had a fantastic experience at my first Game Developers’ Conference. I really hope I can attend in the future and connect with even more amazing people. ♥♥