Eh, there was always something flash-in-the-pan-ish about the romantic idea of huge Indie Games. However, I don't see independent game development going away. I mean, nothing truly ever does.

Reading "The Man In the High Castle" at the moment. I'm a bit in. Third thing I've read form PDK so far and possibly my favorite of those 3.

Finally got around to playing Planescape: Torment. Didn't play much into it so I can't make any real tangible assessments but I really like the story and atmosphere so far.

And just a headsup to all you musicians, I'm really a windows guy to the bone, but I have used opensource software on the side all along, like Audacity and various VSTs. I have recently installed the Linux Ubuntu Studio OS on a Sony VAIO laptop(~5 years old), which is made for creative people, featuring all you will need for audio production etc., for free. If you're pining for an althernative to Windows or OSX, then check it out.. Or just check it out if you're curious anyway.

I haven't used Ubuntu Studio for a long time. But, to be honest, before you're sold on it I'd highly suggest checking out KXSTudio which, from my personal experience, is much better. Of course, it's been awhile since I've used either.

Only 14 views, seems a cruel injustice.

Eternal Darkness on N64. Because all but two of your characters get slaughtered at the end of their level. The first level character gets possessed by an ancient evil turning into the main villian for the rest of the game. Insanity effects make you see horrible things, your character being slaughtered, and even convince you your memory card was formatted when you went to save

Eternal Darkness was on the N64?

A narrative is nothing more than something you put in a game in order to enhance people's playing experience, and give value to their actions in game. It should come along organically in the process of assembling ideas for a game. So, asking the marketing effect of tacking a story/narrative on is completely pointless.

With that said, it doesn't seem very easy on a technical level to do this, and I wouldn't make it my biggest priority

Why do you said that it doesn't seem very easy?

Because seeing an artistic representation of a human face creates an entirely different effect than actually seeing one. Of course, there are psychological effects of seeing certain shapes, and how people humanize them. However, distinctive human features require a higher level of detail.

Honestly, I think there are probably some more impressionist tricks that are much easier to pull off, and have a much greater effect.

Why not use this to subvert expectations? If it creates a sense of prejudice in the player, manipulation of that prejudice in a way that makes the player confront his or her own.

With that said, it doesn't seem very easy on a technical level to do this, and I wouldn't make it my biggest priority. Unless, of course, you have an idea of how it can really be done well enough to be a good focal point of the whole experience.

Hmmm... I once had an ill-fated project called "Obama's Americant 2016: Tea Party Shooter" which was in somewhat the same vein, but this looks to kind of take the racial elements to a blase extreme that I couldn't even fathom (Kind of gives me perspective on why people were so disturbed by the idea. Which I didn't really understand at the time. Even though I wanted to play up the ludicrousness of an armed militia taking America back, and not the racial element so much. Focusing on the over-the-top elements of their own romantic delusion which involves denial of that aspect entirely, anyway).

The problem I ran into, of course, was the concept that by the time I'd be finished with it the whole topic would be entirely irrelevant. It's probably smart that you're keeping it somewhat simple(Just hope not to the extent of hindering the quality). I am bothered by the feeling that there's nothing more to this than "Trump shoots Mexicans and Muslims". I mean, there's probably some angles you can look at it than that. Some material that transcends simple extremity for the sake of extremity. Satire can be a great thing, but carrying it in this way often crosses the line between parody and endorsement. You're very liable to get people who play it for all the wrong reasons (And if that's not a problem than that's the end of discussion for me).

That being said, I honestly have no interest in trying this out the way it's presented, personally, and could understand how somebody would just see this as a cheap topical attention/potential cash grab. Unless, of course, there's a dimension of it that I'm missing out on entirely.

I know people are going to hate me for this, but I've always been a fan of the excessively pretentious convoluted wankage of Xenogears. I mean, even if it is kind of fit snuggly within the confines of derivative RPG archetypes and storytelling formulas. However, I think it does quite a bit more than can be expected of a game of that type, especially for the time it came out.

It's strange at start, but very deep later on 

Good choice.

I know some teach like ok now type this and we'll get to that later

I hated that a lot when I first started learning, and am still not convinced it's the best way to teach. You will notice, however, the further you get into tutorials, and such, this happens less.

Just remember that programming is an extremely broad topic. It's something you can do for a decade, and still learn something new. I wouldn't quite recommend the top-down way of learning just because it's what I tried first, and it didn't pan out(albeit, it might work for some people).

Just find your own pace, I say. You're probably going to get nowhere if you jump in head first(at least, you won't get anywhere very soon). I can fully sympathize with the frustration of being told to do something without any indication of why. However, it just happens to be the preferred method of teaching at the moment. The real trick is figuring out all the little pieces. Once you got that down, you'll probably have a good understanding of how to put them together.

If you're looking for other ideas too- instead of/in addition to a 3D environment- I had an idea that I would be interested in seeing.

Basically, what if the goal of a game was to make puzzles UNSOLVABLE? If the player were to get new abilities over the course of the game, it would give them new ways to *break* the puzzles, but also new ways to *fix* them, and they would have to figure out how to account for that. For example, in simple block-pushing puzzles this could be as easy as pushing blocks into corners- but even that becomes drastically more complicated if you have a way to pull them as well. I have no idea how feasible it would be check whether a puzzle is unsolvable, or whether it would be possible to teach a player to think about puzzles backwards, but it's an idea I would really like to see at least attempted.

Hmmm... Never even thought of that. I suppose that's much in the line of the philosophy of emergent gameplay. It's actually very much the kind of thing that I'm going for. The idea, more or less, that there's puzzles that cannot be solved immediately, or can be solved by completely open ended means, so the player can go back to seems somewhat intriguing. As I think of it more, I think I want to do sort of a thing where the player is just dropped into the world given some basic mechanics with instructions, and kind of has to interpret the world for him or herself. Discovery at one's own discretion.

As for the graphics, it's probably the one thing I actually know what I'm going to do(at least, from a technical point of view. Certain aesthetic details will, of course, be hammered out later). I'm still in the early stages of coding the basic engine, but I have a good idea of how it'll work. It's really just a handful of deceptively simple 2d tricks that I don't think have been fully implemented quite the way I have put them together(Albeit, it will use a lot of scaling tricks to give the illusion of depth). It'll be 3d gameplay, though, in the sense that it will acknowledge all 3 dimensions. So, I guess it's technically going to be 2.5D but not in the way that Doom is, or anything.

Well, as of now, I have a pretty significant project going. Something that's well too far in it's infancy to announce, or expect any time soon, but something I am very serious about completing. I originally wanted to simply make the whole thing, and release it entirely free on principle. However, considering the amount of time I'm going to have to spend on it, I'm thinking that'll be an immensely stupid decision. I mean, if it ends up being as good as I want it to be, then it's going to be worth money, so I might as well try to sell it.

With that said, I don't want to give up the idea of releasing the source for it. Not so much that I expect it to be something to brag about, but I feel there are some advantages to this.

1) It more or less immortalizes a game. If it's popular enough, once the source is handed over to the greater community, it allows them to maintain it in ways beyond what I have the time for. I mean, the limit on platforms it can be released on is only limited to how much effort they are willing to put into porting it. Something far too difficult to maintain just on my own time.

2) It allows access by programmers other than myself, programmers who are often much better than me, to spot my own bugs, and other design flaws. It allows suggestions of various improvements that could benefit my game in the long run.

3) It may inspire people to come up with their own ideas, or give them ways they can do similar ideas better. Maybe even open up the door for mods, and various other extensions. I mean, that could also be an amazing tactic to foster creative relationships with talented like-minded developers.

With that said, I am fully aware of the risks involved in doing such in terms of content protection(even though I'm not so naive I don't realize that if somebody really wants your code, they're going to get it anyway), but I'm thinking that the pros outweigh the cons. Plus, I'm a huge fan of the egalitarian aspects of open source software.

However, I just have confidence my content, the real selling point, will be worthy of some sort of compensation. That's why I'm curious about this model. Not to get ahead of myself, I still expect that this project will probably take 3-5 years(and that might be generous) at the very least to complete considering the absolute scope of it. I also haven't looked too much in the details of copyright/licensing to see how it works entirely(something I plan on doing much closer to release). I just thought I'd throw this out there, and see what people think of the idea.