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[mirosurabu]

999-in-1
ART GAMES


(reserved for download/play links, screenshots and whatnot)

[mirosurabu]

The premise is courtesy of Sos who's working on a similar game here.

Anyways.

I am (unlikely) going to make a game that has 999 art-games in it.

Not really.

I am (unlikely) going to make an art game generator that makes a random (different) art game each time you start the game.

To do:

1. Get all the assets (Progress: 50% gfx, 0% music)
2. Filter these assets
3. Make sprite filmstrips (Warning: MIGHT BE TEDIOUS!)
4. Convert all of the audio to WAV and make it properly loop if appropriate (Warning: WILL BE TEDIOUS!)
5. Load all WAV music in CS3 and export the SWC
6. Analyze a bunch of "can-be-called art games" I have on my laptop
7. Make a concise definition of ART GAME and design game rules around it
8. Make the generator
9. Release the game

Let's do it.

[Sos]

3. Make sprite filmstrips (Warning: MIGHT BE TEDIOUS!)
4. Convert all of the audio to WAV and make it properly loop if appropriate (Warning: WILL BE TEDIOUS!)

ad 3: This is a suicide mission, I am going to avoid that by making an database creation tool, so I can have the DB point to an actual position of the tile / sprite in a file rather than rearanging this. I suggest you make a tool the will do that for you as well.

ad 4 : you DO realise, that this is HUUUUUUUUUGE even compressed, don't you? And converting it all to WAV will steal your CPU for hours and eat up half of your hard drive.

And the title makes me think of chinese "999-in-one block games" handhelds

[mirosurabu]

The 4 because I am going to make in Flash. Converting it to WAV first is in order to make it loop properly. But given the way I am starting to think about "art games" I think it doesn't really matter if it loops properly or not.

But I will have to convert all the music to mp3 anyways. :/

As for the 3, I have no idea yet. Both solutions seem tedious.

[kinnas]

hahaha, I am excited for this! 

[TheDustin]

*strokes chin* Color me intrigued.

[mirosurabu]

The designated genre is too broad to narrow it down to simple formula. As an option, I can choose a couple of different existing art games and just randomize their content. Sounds simple but it's hard to find an art game whose content can be procedurally generated.

One can change the assets, that's for sure, but it would still be that same art game.

Thinking.

[Perrin]

I'll be impressed if you can pull this off because fundamentally I don't see how it can work.

I always figured art games were about finding a cool or interesting way to express a concept or an idea, and I'm not sure that's something you can reduce to a mathematical formula.

Best of luck anyways. ^_^

[mirosurabu]

Yes, that's my concern.

Sometimes initial hype is so strong that it overshadows rational.

[Perrin]

Well I guess no harm in shooting for the moon, even if you fail it will be an interesting experience.

Because I think if you'd picked just about any other genre, like RPGs or something it would actually be much more trivial to pick genre tropes and break them down into some random lists to choose from. [random hero] travels through [random lanscape] fighting [random enemies] encounter [random plottwist] but ultimately defeats [random boss].

Once again... best of luck. ^_^

[Noyb]

Interesting. Are you planning on making legitimate art games, or skewing on the side of vagueness and letting the player read more than what is there?

The designated genre is too broad to narrow it down to simple formula. As an option, I can choose a couple of different existing art games and just randomize their content. Sounds simple but it's hard to find an art game whose content can be procedurally generated.

One can change the assets, that's for sure, but it would still be that same art game.

Thinking.

My thesis in Apophenia was that once an art game reaches a certain level of abstraction, the title and any extra details (color, sounds, images) would drastically change its meaning even if the core game mechanics remained very similar. So I created a game which generates an artgame using a player-entered title as the random seed. Essentially, I took the mechanics from the Marriage (one player character, one NPC, and a swarm of small objects), randomized their behaviors from a limited subset, gave them random interactions based around growth and decay, and imposed an arbitrary end condition which is not explicitly a win or loss. Don't think I succeeded, but you might find it interesting.

[ETG]

You should keep track of how many times the game is played, and after the 999th play, have it delete itself. Or maybe just have the 1000+ play be a credit roll.

[moi]

I'll be impressed if you can pull this off because fundamentally I don't see how it can work.

I always figured art games were about finding a cool or interesting way to express a concept or an idea, and I'm not sure that's something you can reduce to a mathematical formula.

Best of luck anyways. ^_^

He said "999-in-1 art games"
 So basically he has to make 1 art game and pretend there are 999 interpretations.
Voila.

[Zaratustra]

Just pop up 4 or 5 vaguely poetic randomly generated phrases and then game over.

[mirosurabu]

I just came up with basic rule system.

Basically an art game is a game about a [protagonist] who goes from left side of the map to the right side of the map and meets [things] and [people] on his way which make him think about [vague]. If there is an end then the game just goes black with eventual score displayed. If there is no end then the player keeps thinking about how to solve the puzzle.

The protagonist can move left and right, in some cases the protagonist can move only to the right (Heart) and in some cases the protagonist can go up and down (Passage). The speed at which the protagonist moves is sometimes constant, sometimes variable and sometimes depends on the player input.

Possible control schemes:
- left and right arrow keys
- just right keys, doesn't go back
- key bashing (Pieta)
- reflex minigame
- no interaction whatsoever

There is no game over.

Sometimes the game has an end.
Sometimes the end presents you with the score.

There are no "how-to-play" screens whatsoever.

Game screens:

1. AUTHOR SCREEN
2. TITLE (optional)
3. ACTUAL GAME
4. END (optional)

[TheDustin]

I'll reserve judgment till I get my hands on it, but that seems like an oversimplification of the genre.  The good 'art' games have the game mechanics tie directly into their message; the only way I could see this work is if you have a solid 'art game' that randomly changes the aesthetics but maintains the same message. Best of luck with this, however. 

[mirosurabu]

I agree with you but this is going to be more of a joke than anything else anyways. (:

[TheDustin]

  Then by all means go to town with this one. Parody art games are fun, Lurk's Life was gangbusters.

[moi]

RONG!
An art game is a pseudo game (doesn't need to be actually a functional working game) that is frequently interrupted by stupid text who tries to give moral lessons and a sad ending.

[TheDustin]

You're doing it wrong. You're thinking of Rohrer's stuff, the Nickelback of Art Games. Increpare is the Pixies of art games, his are actually good. Also, Mr. Lavelle is criminally unknown, which makes the allegory all the more fitting.