Game Design Blog

[whatimakerules]

Fish from _Nuclear Throne_

Media: Cross-Stitching

Time: 2 weeks (elapsed) 10h (actual)

Part of a blanket I’m making

[whatimakerules]

Been getting somewhere on #unity! Pics when I have something not-embarassing to show!

[whatimakerules]

Hmm.. vector or hand?

I am debating whether I should sketch and then vectorize, or hand-draw + ink and then color

These ones are hand-drawn

These have been vectorized

This is an in-game image

[piecomic]

[piecomic]

[discovergames-blog]

Often, I find free games that are good, but for whatever reason do not warrant a full review. They may be too short or too prone to spoilers to review separately, but are still interesting and worth a playthrough. Today’s picks are similar in that they are all available on Steam and all feature...

[whatimakerules]

MMO? not

I had such a wacky idea last night

Somebody should make an MMO where everybody is a cell in a huge body.  Yes, it's a crazy and dopey idea that probably nobody would want to play, but the reason it came to me is how it would fit with the way in an MMO:

whatever you do, there are a million other people doing it

whatever you do, it requires re-doing a second later

wherever you go, it is clogged with millions of other people

It feels a lot like being one cell in a million others

I've often wondered why more MMOs don't employ the same strategy as some clever ones, which filter the world you are in to show you only some of the players.   CHON, for example, auto-joins you with party members, or friends on the same server.   

I'd like to see the following filter:

Your party members, and friends

A random smattering of people in or around your own level

A few people at high level

A few people at a lower level

Srsly, just imagine beating off Hepatitis-C (go Rick and Marty!)

[whatimakerules]

How MMOs Trend

Last night I did some research how MMOs trend, and I found something really fascinating.

Most MMOs have a huge spike of interest at launch and then gradually trickle down, and down, and down, and down.  (see image)

Shown are the most popular MMOs, and every MMO I checked showed the same trend.

Shown in green is the general interest in MMOs.  I include this as a basis for comparison, as if MMOs were stocks, and the general interest was the market.  Interest has been in decline, in general, but does not match the overall trend.

The one marked in red is Star Trek Online, which is an MMO I don't care for but somehow maintains its popularity.

[whatimakerules]

Major Setback

As some of you know, since I got back into Hunters' Moon, the installer hasn't been working.

Yesterday I made some attempts to restore the installer, but I hit what appears to be a major snag.  It seems like OpenAL is not supported on 64-bit systems, at least, the OpenAL dll that goes with joal.jar isn't.. and won't be

Though I'm a bit confused.. Minecraft and many other games use OpenAL don't they?

I don't seem to be able to package the game from Java such that it will install on other people's systems and .. that's kind of critical

[whatimakerules]

Progress

What I did

missions 1 through 3, including trader

coded effect of all moonbase-trader items except for degrade

bunch of little errors in mission text, etc.

added little helper notice on end of trader mission to "return to base"

Still to do:

plan/decide shield degrade?

bug on mission 3 - does not end properly

[whatimakerules]

Progress Abounds

Yesterday I 

plotted what level-ups are available at which base

determines price for each, based on missions (5 ea for green)

added powerups to save file: they are saved and restored

added display -5 + powerup (eg "strafe")

strafe levelup added

trader interface completed

Still to do:

Rest of moonbase powerups

Rest of bases

[whatimakerules]

I fixed the save games bug!

[whatimakerules]

Programming Languages

I'm interested in CoffeScript

and I am falling hard for C# with Mono for game development.  I'm dying to set something up and try some code, but so far, can't get the env. set up

[whatimakerules]

heart C#

I’ve recently become enamored of C# when a friend told me that C# can be used very easily with Mono. 

I’ve been wanting to make a sandbox game in a minecraft-like vein, so I feel I’d need full C and not Java for its speed, but I am very worried about finding a decent networking layer for multi-player, as networking in C has historically been very poor.

C# with Mono, or Unity, or XNA gives access to .NET for networking, and Mono and Unity are specifically aimed at game developers.  The friend who recommended this said it would be easy, and his coding skills are a bit lower than mine. 

For what I’d like to build, I want to have access down to the level of drawing polygons, i.e. I’d like to be down at the OpenGL level.  Higher-level things like particle-engines, imposed scenegraphs and other such things will annoy and impede me rather than help me.

Do you have any opinions, or recommendations about this?

Some stuff to know:

Mono – an open-source verion of XNA

XNA – Xbox Game Development Kit

Unity – built on Mono

Note: Costs associated with development are not a problem.  Free and open-source are not constraints.

[whatimakerules]

Facebook's Mobile Game Publishing:why you should care

In November of last year representatives from dozens of EMEA game developers attended Facebook’s Gaming Summit for Marketers at their Dublin HQ. Featuring presentations, talks and a pretty good closing party at the Guinness Factory, the entire day seemed to have one single message: Go mobile, or ...

[whatimakerules]

Saves...

There's a bug in the way the game returns from a save that I have to find..

[whatimakerules]

Reached a goal

I was having a discussion with @Lutris and we talked about being watchdogs for each other.  In my mind I set a goal to complete the entire new mission(s) structure writing by end of that week.  I tried to hire lil Aleksa to do it, but in the end I did it (still, I think him trying helped a lot.)

Point is.. I DID re-write the entire missions structure that week =)