super joe

Hi, I'm fresh to GM and have just finished Derek's set of 4 tutorials and have found them super useful, now that I've finished them I was wondering if someone could lead me on the right path for more learning.

Any sites, links, videos would be really appreciated.


Sorry if I'm posting in the wrong sub forums and thanks Derek!

It's time to start making stuff. Experiment. And then when you find your knowledge doesn't let you do a thing you want to do, turn to the googles or elsewhere to find out how and thus increase your powers.

Your game looks like the kind of game I'd play. I liked the gameplay shots.

Your video is goddamn awful. 40 seconds of something so dark that it's impossible to make out - a flythrough of something? - until I suddenly break into a nice gameplay shot of a bright, orange desert. Are your textures of your flythrough of whatever it is so bad you really can't expose them to light? Maybe you should ramp your tension up with something else or take a different approach with the video.

Not only that, but you open up with a little logo animation serve that explicitly states the developer name, and then follow up with "camel 101 presents" literally five seconds later. Literally five seconds. I counted. If you want to keep the "camel 101 presents" bit as a nice start to your interspersing-grimdark-tense text blurbs, stick your logo animation at the end or get rid of it altogether. Unless you want to project the feeling that you're a huge uncaring, gamers-are-stupid-attitude publisher/developer that insists on sticking their logo on the front of whatever thing they put out, like EA.

If you ignore the visuals, the video is quite nice. The pacing is good, and the music suits.
If you ignore the visuals of the video.

the current gen was good enough, who the fuck wants more polygon?

The amount of system memory and CPU power will allow the AAA developers to truly develop their characters and stories in ways that just hadn't been possible until now

We can start to really feel the weight of an armored vehicle's door when characters will crawl out of it

I don't know. Does it count if you delete the game a few weeks after finishing?

[using frowning instead of the a menu selection to convey TONE]

Sure, that is neat but it's still not for me. I don't think this new system appeals to anyone on TIGS, at least not from what we have seen so far. Obviously they are saving games from their E3 conference.

The main reason why the 360 was interesting to me was the Live Arcade selection and now it seems like Sony will bring over those developers. The PS3 exclusives have also gotten better and better.

Okay, let me put it differently, it's additive to existing gameplay it does not substract from it, imagine skyrim and using frowning instead of the a menu selection to convey TONE, that's the simplest idea, there is many you can go on with. You can keep the pad, you keep the sofa, and designer can be smart to not go full moron and have punctual additive controls. Also I cannot think of any gamer who like RPG that would not like something that increase ROLE PLAY!

Problem - when gamers are filmed gaming, they usually display a flat affect, or at most, concentration. Nobody wants to smile at their TV to pretend their character is congenial.

The issue is information - heist movies rely on conveying imperfect information to the audience, thus conveying the plot's "twist" when full information is revealed.

To include this in a game you're going to have include a series of tools to camouflage information from the AI while permitting the AI a chance to suss it out. Timing precision isn't a bad way to do this.

The video game that comes closest to this is Hitman, where you could kill your targets in a variety of different ways, each with their own possibilities for failure, which made for quite emergent and interesting play. Even so, Hitman was fairly directed, there were definite "ideal" paths for each level. But the game design would remain the same - your levels should be tight, carefully designed levels, while opening up a large variety of methods to the player to interact with the objectives. If you wanted to make procedural level creation, that wouldn't be impossible, but a lot of testing involved.

I think if you want to use time as a restricting mechanic, you should camouflage it as limited resources. Oxygen's good, or water. The neat thing about camouflaging a time limit in this way is that you can let the player play with it a bit. "What if I just get rid of some colonists and use less resources?" etc, adding strategic depth.

I'm actually pretty okay with this. Recognizing Disney for what it has become today - essentially a merchandising and licensing company that subcontracts their work - I can't think of another publisher that could possibly handle the spectrum of Star Wars games.

Here's my question...why does it have to be one publisher? Or one developer? Why would they go with one big exclusive license? This is what is troubling me about this arrangement.

That was the preamble about recognizing Disney for what it is.

Reasonably fun so far, for an FPS.

It doesn't like my video card, though, I get memory errors after a couple hours of play. Or maybe it's heat, suddenly summer started here, temps of 23'C plus...

I'm actually pretty okay with this. Recognizing Disney for what it has become today - essentially a merchandising and licensing company that subcontracts their work - I can't think of another publisher that could possibly handle the spectrum of Star Wars games. Sony Entertainment, maybe? Certainly not Activision, they've been making nothing but third and first person shooters.

Moreover, I think giving the "little" giant of EA a bigger giant to fucking answer to, instead of just answering to investors and customers, could be a good thing.

I'm still waiting for a new Jedi Knight game. Looks like it won't happen any time soon.

Seriously though, why are there so little Star Wars games about lightsaber duelling, isn't that what the whole setting is about?

Force Unleashed had some good duels.

Seems weird to me.

Meh, I wouldn't mind something like this one or two days a week. I wouldn't make it a -diet-, but I would be interested in a dietary option.

Or simply better to give a free demo that is available forever?

Yes. And actually make it a demo version - offer a vertical slice of gameplay - and for heaven's sake don't include the full game & game assets "locked away by code", because that becomes "locked away by easily cracked code".

I currently use OGG for music. MP3 stutters badly when playing back under SDL_Mixer.

OGG has worked out really sexy for me too.

SO FAR.

Also: Why the hell is it called soylent? That's just gross.

In the book Make Room! Make Room!, which Soylent Green is based on, soylent steaks are made from soya and lentils. They obviously changed that for the film. I guess this guy is more a fan of the book than the film.

And plankton.

I like the idea.

Unfortunately, when 90-95% of the userbase is playing a broken version and there is no explicit message to indicate that that particular version is broken, there's no incentive for them to purchase. "Why would I pay for this broken game?"

Is it 2011?

I'd be interested to see a post/blog from Andy on why it took so long to complete.

I believe at IGF 2010 the game was 90% complete?
Andy then went on to finish the last 90%.

shapeshifted version vs holding-back version

I would settle for pedantic literalist Eres v. the Eres who understands communicating ideas, not words - and occaisionally makes jokes.

I'm thinking about games where you have to force your brain to think twice about processing visual information, either in order to solve puzzles, or to do actiony things.

This tigger's game should qualify. I still haven't finished it myself; the countdown timer scares me to wait until I'm super focused.

Damn you, Demruth.  

Anyway, you can get it on Steam, nowadays.

Yeah so I've played a few levels of this now and my opinion has become
'gam is dum and igf shud feel dum'

Okay Andy, it's time to report to this thread and apologize for your game; it turns people into eva.


I was checking out the Steam foramz, the players are saying the game doesn't get good until after the fifth level.  I have gotten this far, and it doesn't feel quite so rail-like, but I still don't think it's my kind of game.

It is nicely done, though.