Please don't bring the indiegamer dev forum here. That's the place to grief about piracy and to mindlessly hate everyone that tries to take a realistic approach to it. Their adamant hatred and demonisation of piracy over focusing on the customers that matters and making games was what made me leave that place in disgust.

Sympathies on breaking your teeth on the harshness of reality, now focus on love and get back to making games and discussing experimental design in the creative forum already.

Seriously, everyone, take all asshat ideas about destructive, restrictive and alienating DRM to the fanatics over at the indiegamer forum or to EA, where there is an ready audience for it.

So the real problem here is that in demo mode you get to play say a tenth of the game while the download contains 100% of the contents? So a solution would be that the additional 90% will be downloaded when an accepted code is entered. Then you would pay less bandwidth for demo downloads and could change the key generation algorithm whenever you notice undue traffic.

Ok, Mr. Thread Jacker, you've won. Please let the normal discussion resume now.

Lol, thanks Pompi Don't worry, MonsterKing is a part-time troll part-time illiterate. Don't expect reflective attempts to actually understand that he replies to.

</internet_abuse></counter_trolling>

Checked out the web site, went to the Goo Ball Madness page. The first thing that struck me, literally, was the accusatory and bitter headline "Attention Pirates". This did not make me feel good and will alienate legit customers.

As Rob said, the overwhelming majority of pirates wouldn't have bought the game anyway and focusing on them will be counter-productive. You need to make certain the people that are interested enough to actually visit your page feel welcome and appreciated.

and the fun killer: math skills requried.

Where do you have this rumor from?

There is practically no game in existance which requires math skills higher than what you do in high-school, some solid basics in linear algebra and a bit of analysis fully suffice to create likely everything you have ever seen.

You think the math of all games in existence could have been done by 15 y/o at 9th year in school? Racing simulators consider the friction to different surfaces to each of the four tyres with shifting weight distribution from angular momentum and rotational forces from engine torque. Flight simulators consider air pressure changes with altitude, wing angle of attack and flap depression. Try having a high school kid make a portal-based FPS engine from scratch. Etc etc.

You think everyone knows linear algebra and geometrical transforms, or even derivation and integration? For even a basic realistic physical simulation and you'll need university maths, and that is a show-stopper for most hobbyist and small dev teams. If you don't know maths it is insane going for something inherently relying on heavy on it.

[Derek Smart]

if you want a degree in game design ask me for i am the greatest game designer known to man

the only damned true thing printed on al gores internets in the last 8 minutes

Matthew,

Thank you for your concern, we are currently working on this issue.

Yours truly,
Al Gore

Wow, can we invoke people by talking about them? Ok, this thread has too little Derek Smart in it! *waits*

> Examine hearts to the bottom left. Juggle them.

Make a roguelike too simple and you'll get the entire cadre of roguelike fans to gang up on you to tell you that and why it isn't a roguelike.

[RPG:]

To much feelings and not enough cold analysis and systematising above. Requires rectification.

Ranking of difficulty to make games of different types depending on the demands of game mechanics, how difficult the game engines will be to program (entity complexity, edge cases, scope of interactions, etc), and the amount of game assets that will need to be made (tilesets, gfx, audios, sfx, levels, etc). As always roguelikes is a special case, and the fun killer: math skills requried.

Insanely difficultRPG:
Mechanics complexity: high
Programming model complexity: very high
Assets demand: very high
Math skill required: low-to-mid.

Strategy:
Mechanics complexity: high
Programming model complexity: high
Assets demand: high
Math skill required: low-to-mid (mid-to-high for physics and 3D weapon/terrain interactions)

FPS, 3PA:
Mechanics complexity: mid-to-high
Programming model complexity: mid-to-high
Assets demand: high
Math skill required: high-to-very high.

DifficultRoguelikes:
Mechanics complexity: very high
Programming model complexity: very high
Assets demand: none
Math skill required: low-to-mid.

Racing games:
Mechanics complexity: mid (very high for advanced physics)
Programming model complexity: mid
Assets demand: mid-to-high
Math skill required: mid-to-very high.

Not too dauntingPuzzle games (highly varying depending on type of puzzles):
Mechanics complexity: usually low-to-mid
Programming model complexity: usually low-to-mid
Assets demand: mid
Math skill required: varies: low for match-3's; very high for physics puzzles.

Platformers (including Contra-style shmups):
Mechanics complexity: mid
Programming model complexity: low
Assets demand: mid
Math skill required: low (high if with realistic physics).

Point-and-click adventures:
Mechanics complexity: low
Programming model complexity: low
Assets demand: mid-to-high
Math skill required: very low.

Easy peasyShoot'em-ups and old-school arcades (Xenon, Arkanoid):
Mechanics complexity: low
Programming model complexity: low
Assets demand: low
Math skill required: very low.

Text adventures:
Mechanics complexity: very low
Programming model complexity: low (but depending on parser capabilities)
Assets demand: none
Math skill required: virtually none.

Edit: more genres and divided into sections by difficulty

The reactions in this thread are a bit too strong, I think. I saw Deza's post as a good-natured desire to make a community Christmas present

Then again, the problem is in the name, "Indie Christmas Bundle", because we have too many bundles and the indie community is in a reactive mode. It should be called something like the "A Christmas Present Bundle of Joy", and then it would have been a bit pleasantly ironic nudgenudgeknowwhatimean, fun and in the season spirit.

There's something fishy about the indices you've provided: why are 20-39 and 30-49 twice as large as the intervals 0-9, 10-19 and 50-59? And by what you write all the indices are on the left side.

The only good things that ever came out of Germany are Rammstein, Ritter Sport, and 25% of my ancestry.

And half of modern philosophers, mathematicians, physicists and chemists worth a damn.

More like 80% of all significant philosophy and social theory between the Ancient Greek and WWII comes from Germany.

You're right, dammit! What should I do?? I don't have anything to combat the ice elemental with. Hell, I can't even get near the thing. If Dudamel didn't get himself into these messes, this would all be over a lot sooner.

Be careful, because there are people here that wants to mess with your mind! They give you instructions or "advice", but WHATEVER YOU DO, DON'T OBEY OR BELIEVE THEM OR YOU WILL LOSE YOUR IDENTITY!

> Make lewd gestures