Good ideas so far, thanks for those. The random-walk approach definitely makes it easier to tweak the shape of the terrain.

Any ideas for how to use a random-walk when the world is built in chunks as-needed? Getting the edges of the chunks to line up seems difficult.

Just curious about how you came up with that though? I haven't used too much math like this previously in my games. Do you find these algorithms and then change them to fit your needs or do you actually figure out the math yourself? Sorry if that's a stupid question.

You mentioned you're still in school. My school had a course called Physics with Calculus. It was teaching all the math and equations behind physics. Super-helpful for making simulations, because then you know what equations to use.

Hmm, I was planning on using a function so I could tweak the parameters to generate different flavors of terrain. But maybe I'm over-thinking it and I should just hand-craft a library of short, repeating sections.

For some terrain generation, I need a periodic function that is binary (either "high" or "low") and has varying wavelength (so some high sections are longer than others). In other words, I want a square wave that is "stretched" in some areas and "squashed" in others.

A square wave is fairly straight forward using something like sine + logistic:
   1 / (1+e^-((sin(x/10) + .*30))

(http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+%2F+%281%2Be^%28sin%28x%2F10%29*30%29%29+x+from+-150+to+150)

However, I'm at a loss about how to vary the wavelength. I've been trying to add a displacement value to X before passing it into sin() which sort of works, but leaves some weird artifacts sometimes. In places it is no longer a square wave...I assume because the displacement is happening right at the "shoulder" and stretching out the values there.

I'm wondering if anyone has experience with other approaches?

I don't know what your programming skills are like, so what I'm about to say may not apply to you...

<opinion>
For a 3-level prototype like this, a 30mb download is a bit much. If you're good at programming, it would not take very long to rewrite this into something like, say, flash. I think this would make it easier for you to get feedback from people on the core game mechanics and the puzzle design. It would make it easier to get playtesters, which in turn will make your game better. Then when you have a bunch of awesome levels and it is really fun to play, you could port it back to XNA for the xbox. Honestly you might even consider keeping the flash version too at that point, as it would provide a way to get more users.
</opinion>

However, that only makes sense if you know you can port it to something else (and back) quickly. Only you know whether you can do that.

Otherwise I wouldn't worry too much about it. For a game like this, the hard thing is going to be making it fun and challenging. I wouldn't spend much time worrying about the tech you use to build it.

And I guess I didn't say it above but it is worth mentioning: I think you have a pretty good thing going here and I would focus on getting more levels in to the game at this point. I wouldn't worry about anything else until you have maybe 10 good levels?

I think you can break Sim City down the same way. Even though the game doesn't give you a goal specifically, I think most players start with a goal of increasing the population to some level. So they build some houses. Then people want jobs so they zone some commercial land. Then the traffic is bad so they build more roads. Then crime is bad so they build a police station. I think most early games go something like this...it is all fairly straightforward.

In the end game, it gets more complicated, as the negative pressures (crime, pollution, etc.) seem to grow faster than your population. Eventually the player hits a point where they can't get any more population by doing simple things like building more buildings, more police, etc. Instead they have to find ways to be more efficient (maybe zoning patterns that don't require as many miles of roads, or carefully using high-value land like waterfronts). This is still pretty similar to expert-level play in other games, though. In World of Goo, for example, players might replay a level several times trying different ways to suck up the maximum number of balls.

The machinations wiki link is helpful, thanks for sending that.

Personally, if this was my game, I switch to spending 100% of my time adding more content (more levels). The art, sound, and music all work really well together to create a specific mood in the world, but there's not really anything to do in the world yet.

They are interesting because they are optimization problems. It is fun to try to find the optimal/best solution to a problem.

Did Chromanoid's question ever get answered? Are we talking about business management games, like Roller Coaster Tycoon? Or time management games like Diner Dash?  I'm going to guess that since the friend reportedly likes Victoria 2, that we're talking about  business management. Simulated economies, simulated politics, statecraft, etc.

I don't know how to design this kind of game either, though I've tried. I picked apart Mind Control's OASIS game (a vast, vast simplification of the RTS genre...simplified to the point that it becomes almost a puzzle game instead). I understand how Oasis works, but I'm lost when it comes to creating a similar game from scratch.

I know that for super mario 64, for example, they made an obstacle course level and just played around to see what was fun. What's the equivalent for a game like, say, civilization?

A barely-working prototype of a physics puzzler can be fun. I haven't found a way to make a barely-working virtual economy that's fun. Any hints?

Ok so it has been a week and no one has posted anything. I don't know why. However, a 27mb installer might be why. I almost didn't bother downloading it. (I know this feedback isn't about the game itself, but I'm waiting for the installer anyway...)

Ok, got it installed & played it...

I like the puzzle mechanic. It took me a while to figure out how to make loops so that I could pick crates out in any order. Before I figured that out I thought the game was too hard (I kept having crates fall on the floor).

The text from the boss is hard to read, I think because it is justified and so the spacing is inconsistent.

I never even came close to running out of time, so the time limit isn't needed (at least in the game's current state)

It wasn't clear to me that boxes that went off the edges of the screen cost money. I thought they just came back in the top. Maybe make the conveyor belts hit a wall, instead of looking like they go offscreen? Also, maybe make the boxes explode when they hit the edge?

Overall I think this could be fun. I played the last level several times to try different strategies (good sign that there is some fun in there...)

I love the atmosphere of this game. It is very polished for a game at this early stage (I've never gotten a game to this level of polish, but I'm a programmer so it is easier for me to focus on adding features instead of polish).

Although I like the menu art, I agree with you that it doesn't fit.

Controls feel good. I laughed the first time I launched myself into space.

It wasn't always clear which asteroids I could land on. I tried to jump to one above the "" one, only to fly behind it. I'm working on a game that has the same problem (I want multiple layers for the visual depth, but then it is hard to tell what objects are in the same plane as the player). Let me know if you come up with a good solution?

Not much to comment on how the game plays, since there is so little of it there. I'd work on adding more levels/gameplay next. Looks good so far.

Controls:
You got the y-axis on the mouse backwards Would be helpful to have an option to flip it, otherwise it is super-annoying for anyone used to having mouselook work the other way around.

I over-jumped several of my jumps and fell a long way. I'm thinking there's just a little too much horizontal momentum retained when I stop pressing the keys? i.e. when I stop pressing directional keys, I'm expecting my horizontal motion to stop much faster. Edit: actually I think the problem is that vertical velocity does not depend on how long you hold the key down, making it impossible to do "tiny" jumps.

Would 2D controls be better for this game than first-person 3D? I found it was taking a lot of effort to look at exactly the block I wanted, click in, then jump on it. I'm wondering if what it would play like if you switched to 3rd-person, locked the camera to more of a side-scroller perspective, and changed the controls to more of a platformer style. I'm thinking left/right arrow keys, jump, and a mouse cursor to click on bricks?  I'm not sure about this, but I kept thinking I wanted it while I was playing...


Mechanics:
Why make the player pick up the wand? Why not just start them with it? And why hide the wand behind the blue thing? I didn't even see the want the first time, I picked up the blue thing and started trying to hit the bricks with it before thinking "Wait, this doesn't really look like a wand..."

The core mechanic is neat. However, it becomes boring as soon as you figure out the puzzle: you're just looking for a contiguous path of small bricks. After that, it is just a lot of tedious clicking and jumping. I think you need to have something else going on to make the core puzzle more challenging. Maybe some dynamic things, like bricks that go in/out on their own schedule? (I'm thinking of mario/zelda style platformer puzzles where the platforms are moving, melting away, etc.)  Or if you want a more static, myst-style puzzle, maybe link bricks together? So maybe moving brick A *also* moves brick B?


Aesthetics:
I like the emptiness of the world, the plain white of the wall, and the sound of the wind. Also, I like things set on cliffs. Reminds me vaguely of Myst.

I like the shadows, but sometimes they flicker which is distracting/ruins the illusion. It is also hard to work in the shadowed areas (like underneath the windmill ledge) because it is hard to see.

Hi, my name's Mark.

I got into making games by way of simulations. In school I enjoyed computer graphics classes, and was always putting simple physics engines behind the graphics demos we had to do for class. When I read an article (http://discovermagazine.com/2003/aug/feattech) in Discover about Torsten Reil's work training neural networks to control humanoid actors, I wanted to try doing that to. I ended up getting distracted half-way through learning OGRE and ended up making games instead.

I'm a software engineer, so programming isn't the hard part of making games for me. I find the game design aspects, actually making the game fun, to be much trickier. Also, art is hard, but games without art tend to work out better than games without fun.

This was my first GDC and I didn't quite know what to expect. It was a lot of fun. The Tuesday night meeting at the library was great. Seeing the games other people were working on was good inspiration (thanks for organizing, cellulose).

The IGF & winnitron booths on the expo floor were great too. They were some of the busiest booths on the floor (maybe because they had awesome games instead of boring tech demos???)