The thing about having a mechanic where the player can shoot themselves -- I can see it being fun mechanically in the abstract, but I think when you connect it back to its meaning in the world, that my character just randomly shot himself during a battle, it's potentially just going to come off as stupid and obnoxious?  I mean it sounds like the sort of frustrating thing where people will tend to blame the game for it happening, because it will risk feeling more like a bug than a feature.  It might work a bit better if you could find a funny way to acknowledge the weirdness of the mechanic, in the dialog perhaps ...
(of course, maybe I'm just wrong and it's fine!  feel free to ignore me, I am just musing)

Mm.. It definitely runs that risk. It is definitely not a random thing per se, e.g., it has it's own (slightly muffled) sound effect and is also something you can only do with the handgun. However I do think letting the player know that they shot themselves via some text is not a bad idea. In testing, players didn't have a hard time understanding what had happened, however early cuts had it that if you clicked your gun you would shoot yourself; now, it doesn't count if you shoot your gun. For various reasons (basically, that your guns sticks out and tracks the mouse as you spin around) it was obnoxiously easy to shoot your gun. Now it's fairly hard, but some enemies does latch onto you and it can be really satisfying to carefully pick them off without shooting yourself!

Anyhow =) We shall see! I try to make things as clear/balanced/interesting as I can and see how they shake out in user testing...

EDIT: I should add that I'm very much not averse to throwing things out when they aren't working, so if it really is an issue I will ditch it!

Happy Birthday One Day Late Mr. Eres...

Hooray, looking forward to igf trailer & such

Is the wobbly sound effect in the video meant to indicate that the shots are being blocked?  If so it seems to come a bit out of sync with the shots ... I worry a bit that their weakness / when they are vulnerable or not isn't communicated that clearly by the visual&audio cues, though it's hard to say for sure.

Also not sure it's a good thing you can shoot yourself accidentally during battles ...

This might be true, re: whether the "tells" are enough. I am worried that these guys are going to be just too hard in general, but only user testing will show these kind of things.

The later you go in the game the less polished things are. Right now I'm filling in some major-ish holes in the very late game and trying to punch a hole through to where the game is winnable (albeit still pretty incomplete towards the end.) Being able to shoot yourself in battle is actually important and fun, there are enemies which tend to cluster around you making it hard to shoot them without shooting yourself as well.

Battles tend to be on a pretty steep "control curve" which is something less common in my limited game-playing experience. Like, if you make a major mistake it can be really hard to recover. However it's also incredibly exciting when you do, much more than a typical health metered game because it tends to be more stateful. I.e. as a player you are either in some form of your attack mode (move, shoot, run, position, etc.) or you are in panic-escape-at-all-costs mode, which in practice is really exciting. The game does not punish very much for death (much closer to VVVVVV than to LTTP, for example) so the trick is just tuning it for that balance. Across such a big game that is especially challenging...

Thanks!

My point is, games like Ultima VII, Deus Ex, System Shock, etc. were popular back then and widely loved by the press and the gaming community. These days, most of the games that are considered the "cream of the crop" by the mainstream are dumb, shallow and mediocre, while intelligent and deep games are mostly relegated to a niche status.
...

Mr. Sinclair you have excellent taste in games! I don't know why or whether or not newer games are really dumbed down but I just had an idea: maybe you just really like Warren Spector! Let's see how Epic Mickey turns out, nevermind all this CivV crap... =) 

I love games where you can manipulate things intricately. That's what I love. To look inside a desk drawer and find crap that should be inside a desk drawer. If it works, at least partly, so much the better.

But that might just not be a mainstream taste! This isn't new, for instance even amazing oldschool console games like Zelda: LTTP or Chrono Trigger are simpler than the games you mentioned.

Anyhow I really do think the issue is maybe more taste than anything, and smaller studios (indie ones) can continue to cater to this type of gameplay. Why worry about the major studios, they will always have another Wii Sports and there's nothing wrong with that!

Cheers everybody...

@petra your idea sounds cool. You are smart to think about an art style where you don't end up painting yourself into a corner. I sometimes think going with NO shading can be smart, since you just focus on shapes and color. Could work well for this since you've got a lot of different forms for your shapeshifter.

Anyways this is becoming a really awesome thread...

I think this publicity stunt was a resounding success. Seriously I had barely heard of GoG before and now I think I'm going to pick up some games on it... Meh!

This looks simply awesome. Is it more a strategy game or a hybrid or what, though?

My vote is actuall for Ultima VI, which is maybe my favorite game of all time. Ultima VII is also fantastic but I think VI is larger, more interesting, and more cohesive. Both are great however and are in many ways similar. I don't know about Ultima IV or V as I haven't played them.

What made Ultima VI so interesting to me was just the sheer scale of it. You really cannot imagine how large and full of things the world is, quests often have you trekking to distant islands to search for things based on very specific clues, and there are just so many secret passages/dungeons hidden in interesting places that every time you visit a place you can find something new.

Ultima VII is basically a "zoomed in" Ultima VI and in some ways has a better object system (it's on a true isometric 3D grid, whereas U6 is on a 2D grid drawn isometrically.) But in zooming in they lost a lof the sense of scale of U6.

Man I love that game! Okay I'm done my geekout freakout...

Gameplay Quickie #1 - Mop Bandits

Here is a nicely commented miniboss battle. I'm going to enter into IGF at which point I will have a proper trailer and proper site.

WATCH

I noticed how some super-realistic FPS games implement a 'one shot, one kill' rule, and I would love to make a game where this concept is applied to a swordfighting game. I imagine the setting would be similar to Samurai Champloo - fairly realistic  historical Japan, but not afraid to go a little crazy now and then. As in real life, if you land a direct hit with a sword on someone, you will kill them (unless they have tons of armour or something). Same goes for you, so you need to get very good at dodging and blocking. Enemies will telegraph their attacks, but the better they are, the harder it is to see their telegraphs. The best swordsmen telegraph only by a subtle shift in their stance.

You need to play Bushido blade! Really, this is the most amazing swordfighting game and works reasonably closely to what you are describing.

@Bad Sector I didn't reply just cos I didn't want to be overbumping my own thread but thank you for the link, I do think it's really close to what I'm doing and I did read what you posted. I've been thinking a lot about these little machines/language lately and trying to understand better why it seems to make my life so much easier. Anyhow!

I did another blog post last night, this time it's a (shortish) "Let's Talk" where I just talk a bit about the process of Open and Closed loops. You really need to check out the Kate Beaton video I mention!

About halfway through is a longish gameplay scene of me chasing around and being chased by this mop-weilding bandit. Pretty awesome, they can deflect bullets with their mop.

Onward to Let's Talk Episode 4 - Open and Closed Loops

@sereneworx You can subscribe to their email list, it's called TELETEX or something. However I hadn't seen these screenshots before so I must be outta the loop, tooo...

Mario should just keep getting bigger and bigger.

I was laying on the couch earlier today, thinking just this exactly.

Edit: SMB project page.

That is so awesome. Is this actually being worked on as a game? I saw editor-ish screenshots by removing part of the URL... Totally love the Giana Sisters ref.
Also, i think you forgot to add a pantsless Peach.

And I totally love your LEGO space stuff. Old space LEGO had the greatest designs. Interesting how you mixed the old and new Blacktron.

Wait. Mario is going to have THREE sizes? Each just a bit bigger than the last, but within the same realm of bigness?

BRILLIANT!!!

Heyyy digging up this old topic instead of starting a new one. I know I'm late to the party but I played this last night and was pretty amazed. Obviously the graphics and production are top notch but I think the real joy of this is the surreal feelings you get while playing.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about games' way to take symbols and mash them together in a way that couldn't work in reality but can in a game, and this is a great example. For instance the ability to spin the clock around to get the train to show up, such a cool feeling. It's "just" surrealism on one level but it feels so more convincing because it interacts with you.

Actually I'd love a game (toy?) which was just a model railroad with a clock, where you could move the clock around and see the trains going back and forward. But that's just me.

Okay, just wanted to give this game some love!

That's ok! Just make up for it in awesome games, then... =)

[still]

... says the guy who didn't go to PegJam OR OrcaJam, and who as a result nobody really knows... **SIGH**

Don't feel bad. I went to PegJam and I'm still a nobody. 
Plz vist my sight sew I'm knot a  knowbody enymore! </shamefulplug>

Still it's cool to meet people! I did get to meet some cool dudes at GGJ when it was in Calgary.

ANNNyways nevermind this, your site is great and I've added it to my list. Also I will stalk you if you promise to do the same back... =)

...if a game sells 4+ million copies..

It's good to you know that you have boundaries!

TBH it's totally OK if you only play games that have demos, I just found this particularly sort of a funny line to draw... Like, if a game sells 3.5 million copies, that isn't *quite* enough, but once it cross that 4 million line you know it's good enough to buy! 

Oooh right! The real reason I visited this thread.

Local radio stations will usually have a "community announcements" spot, like, once or twice a day they will just rattle off what's going on in the community. I think that in this spirit it might be appropriate, say once per week, to put on the main page a list of upcoming and/or announced events.

By putting it into a digest format, and limiting it to only EVENTS, I think you avoid some of the obvious problems you would otherwise run into (i.e., if you had a main page post for every event, you'd have to start to pick and choose events which gets complicated.)

You could also limit it to in-the-flesh (jam) events, or at least divide it between fleshy and netty events.

Not sure if this has been put out there before, but I do think that events are such a big part of the community that they warrant a main pager, not just to be buried in the forums.

... says the guy who didn't go to PegJam OR OrcaJam, and who as a result nobody really knows... **SIGH**

I use a screen resolution of 1280*720 with the intaweb window maximised and a Greasemonkey script to increase the width of TIGF to 95% and I honestly find it by far more readable. The whole point of liquid layouts is that it gives the viewer the freedom to change the look of the content by simply resizing the window, which you cannot do with a fixed layout.

Most people don't want to go through the touble of resizing their browser window to see a page in a more narrow vertical form, which is how apparently the majority of people prefer to read, only to have to keep resizing back to read nother page in another tab.

I'm with Melly and agj on this. Actually, I run "tallscreen", as in I have a widescreen monitor and use it tilted vertically. Friends, it is soooo much better for everything to do with reading.

Since my desktop resolution is 1050x1600 if TIGs used a liquid layout it wouldn't probably look much different to me. But I know that before I got the rotating-monitor-stand it was major annoyance to have to read e.g., LiveJournal which has annoyingly long columns.

Personal preferences aside, it is a really well-established usability fact that people have an easier time reading when the vertical line length is shorter. This is because when you scan back to the next line, the further you have to go the more likely you'll get lost. This is I think part of the reason for "double spacing" back in the day, and is the reason that newspapers are oriented into vertical columns. Also the reason that books are laid out as they are.

HOWEVER! Nothing wrong with personal preference either. But... fixing a web layout can be a huge amount of work. I definitely wouldn't volunteer for that one...