I vote for "The Apple and the Wormhole" or more simply, "Apple & Wormhole"

Looks fun!

aldo: it's a solid foundation for sure, but yeah more juice would help. Looking forward to how it ends up if it's already this clean

marquet: is this multiplayer? I'd love to do co-op online in a game that looked like that. (Castle Crashers, online singleplayer style)

I forgot the best and oldest source of non-violent, non-explosive, non-aggressive juice on the internet:

Orisinal.com

If you want to see beauty, calm, and serenity in juice, this is the place to go. I've always loved these games, and they definitely have that juice or polish that brings their peaceful worlds to life.

Wow, this looks fantastic. Can't wait to see where this goes!

Jherin: that's not mechanim is it? Does it have bone structures? I thought it just transitioned between ready made animations.

I used Smooth Moves and had a few issues with it before, but if Unity has built in 2d bone animations, I'd love to play with that.

So I read your last two posts. I mean, you're bagging on a huge genre of games here from a completely unknown blog - I'm not sure what you expected, but I don't think that's going to get you any attention. Instead, it just looks ranty.

Your points about flow, decision, and engagement are fine, but they aren't anything new. I feel like I've read better articles on the subject elsewhere.

Nor am I sure where the article is going or why it's taking me there. I disagree with your statement that RTSes suck, and your arguments are falling apart halfway through the article by your own hand?

Try to think of what the reader/audience can get out of the article by reading it. By the end of the article, you're starting to make good points - a modern, competitive RTS doesn't allow you the time to take in the fun of watching your victory. But doesn't that apply to any competitive game? Who's watching Falco's animations in a Brawl tournament, or the sprites coloring in a Street Fighter competition?

There might be something interesting there instead, talking about how games lose their art when they become a competition. You cannot admire the beauty of that which you must fight for victory.

Or your other point, "The players focus naturally changes from the micro to the macro, but the game doesn’t facilitate that shift." That's good, I'd like to read more of that. Actually, the whole second half of that paragraph comes out really strong.

So it took me seven paragraphs to get to anything interesting to read. *That* sounds like a reason people would not read the blog.

Just post the good stuff. You should be writing things that you yourself would find interesting to read, that might be in demand or you're looking for yourself, and that makes a solid argument or presentation of information.

I'm going to break down your last paragraph because it's pretty weak, and I'd like to see it improve since you have some good basic ideas on game design so far:

"Obviously RTS games are very successful and must be doing heaps of things right.  Lots of players love them.  But I think its despite of the micro-management and player-focus resource management elements, and they could be made even better by eliminating these aspects from the overall gameplay."

"Obviously" is not a good word to use with any audience, it eliminates anyone (rudely) who disagrees.
"must be doing heaps of things write" again exaggerates more than it needs to (a problem I myself have as well in writing)
"Lots of players love them" doesn't seem very useful as a sentence.
"But I think its despite of the" is not English. "in spite of" would work, and "it's" which really should be "it is" to sound stronger as an argument (less casual, more formal == more convincing). In addition: statements with "I" sound less convincing in an argument. Declare your statements, "make it so!"
"could be made even better" can be a stronger phrase as "can be stronger"

Use interesting verbs, avoid contractions, avoid "I" statements, and cut down to the content that's strongest.
"Real Time Strategy games do plenty of things right, but that is in spite of their micro-management elements, not due to them. Eliminating these aspects would greatly improve gameplay, and allow the player time to watch the victory of their actions unfold."

(and yes, I could probably get rid of that "greatly" there, but I decided to throw it in for better sentence pacing ;P And yeah, you would probably want a third sentence in their for a more solidly paced conclusion)

Hope that helps!

Quoting a PM from Rilem who concluded, "it's all the same to me" (sorry Rilem, your secret is now public!)

I'm really into learning about juiciness lately. I've already seen/played:

Cactus IGS 2009



Vlambeer's 30 Tricks

Plus I've been watching/playing Lion King SNES, Smash Bros Wii U, Kirby Super Star Ultra, Towerfall, and even Rilem's own Booster Bunny:



I've read the first half of the incredibly long In Praise of Sticky Friction, and I intend to read the follow up Regarding the Perfect Situational Compound Videofriction.

But ultimately, all these articles are both talking about the same thing, and talking about very different things. The unifying factor: feedback. Everything is telling the player what's going on. In the case of juiciness, it's often excessive feedback. In the case of friction, it's actually part of the character design and defines how that figure works or is made. At least, that's what I'm getting out of it so far.

Game feel seems to be entirely different - something about controls. I have Steve Swink's book on it, but haven't read enough yet to entirely understand it compared to the others, just that it's very much based in direct manipulation and responsiveness to our commands.

So how would you describe these categories as the same? How are they different? Should they all be one word, or is it good to have unique words for all of them?

Physics has established itself as a unique, mathematically based medium, so I'm just going to leave it alone here.

Rilem: I don't know what it is, but I'm hearing SNES (Kirby) rock wall crumbling sound effects when I see that collision/explosion. I love it, it's really juicy. Is there any camera shake in there, or is it just the explosion animation?

acatalept: That's a mobile game? That looks fantastic.

gambrinous: I LOVE those word bubble animations. Looks great!

truth

An old co-worker, no worries. Another World is great though, so I'll make your life easy:



Alright, no more non-GIF posts out of me for now...

christopf: If I didn't know better, I'd say your last name started with "Fed"... but I don't the industry is quite that small...
Regardless, looks cool! Reminds me of Another World's color scheme, and that's not a bad thing.

koffeinvampir: Awesome, thank you! Your post pushed me to read the Unity page on lightmapping and I now know what bounce is. I've wanted this effect for a long time, but never known how to describe it ("soft" and "soft shadows" were the closest I could get, when it's actually light catching colors or pushing/reflecting them...). So this really high bounce effect is bigger than the bounce of one in the Unity demo? (like, ten? What's big for bounce?) And there's no chance of creating bounce with objects that move in real time, is there? (That gets into ray tracing I'm guessing?)

Kick Push was really smooth, very inspirational for classy/bond-like gameplay. I'd love to hear that in a game full of glitz and glamour.

Johnny Rocket Fingers: oh man, that style used to be all over Newgrounds and Addicting Games. Kind of this badass rock/DnB with a dark/evil/slimey tone to it, very "cool" sounds. Yeah, that was a lot of fun. I'd love to see a modern, cheesy parody of that genre of games.

rephrased: the shadows on the ground have hard edges, but all the shadows on the models are soft, and even the hard shadows on the ground are still lightly colored.

Raytracing is incredibly expensive, right? So it would more likely be light maps?

Is there ambient lighting? None of the shadows are too dark to see the colors, none look anything like a black or grey, and everything seems to be white or have color (even in the darkness)

All the lighting looks so soft - no hard shadows, nothing grey or black, just white and light or slightly dark blues. How did you pull that off? (It looks great, and I'd love to learn more about it)

FelixArifin: That's cool, I could see something like Jet Set Radio doing well off that.

Audiosprite: I LOST it at that one xD Music for game of the year.

Eigen: I love the acoustic sound, silence almost, it's really powerful. 3:55 in: Man this is good! Lots of energy. Braid had a gorgeous soundtrack, but this tops it for sure.

M4uesviecr: Oh man, I've been hearing a lot of this one by Barry White on the radio lately. What a good song. What kind gameplay could you put that to though? It might work in a game with love gameplay, but... we don't really have any of those. Same idea with the Turkish music: where would it be used? I've only heard this stuff for cultural representation in the past (Age of Empires or in ethnic restaurants). The Indian music however, I can definitely hear in Ocarina of Time. So I suppose Turkish could work for the same thing. (EDIT: Listening to the Heavenly Sword soundtrack, now I understand. Cool stuff!)

My old roommate made a piece that merges something like the Indian/Turkish styles with more modern stuff, like what Felix posted.

Sirhc7000: Daze[7000]

I would love to see a modern RPG using this for exploring an exotic palace or sweet pad (imagine a modern apartment complex's take on an Indian palace).

I agree that our games don't warrant these soundtracks yet, but with works like Journey, at least we're getting close. Hyper polished experiences seem to be the closest to what can call for it.

Loving this stuff so far! Keep it coming! (Below are some more from me)

The Cinematic Orchestra:

(Marty O'Donnell-like stuff, fantastic sweeping/moving orchestrations with piano)

Follow up to Barry White, George Beson:

(next closest thing is Sims music)

This might be turning it into just a "Songs you love" thread, but what the heck, Big 12: Trombone Shorty (next closest might be some of the Jazz in Sonic Unleashed, probably the highlight of that game)

[Please link the songs you are referencing. This thread is for discussion AND listening.]

Please link the songs you are referencing. This thread is for discussion AND listening.

Games have come a long way since Atari's blips and bloops, but there are still a ton of genres we don't come close to having in our medium. I want to hear them! The TIGSource art forums are way better about sharing inspirational content, (GIFs of games being worked on, Badass art styles, Mockups or please say this is going to be a game, etc) but I've not seen something like that on this board. So what genres do you wish you were hearing in games?

I'll start with some Diablo Swing Orchestra:



Funky modern acoustic piece? Yes please.

Second up, by Edith Piaf but sung here by Allison Adams Tucker:



Bioshock and Fallout have done a great job of bringing older music to us in recent years, but rarely do we get a love song as the focus of games like we do in movies. I would love to see a game that was able to touch on this feeling, and I think this song is a perfect example of it. Closest pieces I know to it are the hubs in Sonic Unleashed, which try to sound like their respective countries (the European ones have this feeling to them, music that could be heard in a plaza for a romance language).

Third, time to get a bit off beat, by Alessandro Alessandroni: Preludietto

The closest to this I know of is the surprisingly similar Astral Observatory from Majora's Mask (by far one of my favorite pieces in game music). It's a wonder or mystical style, but the a cappella here really makes it something unique (I love too how Akira uses a cappella-like singing, although at least Samurai Gunn's soundtrack has some similarities to that).

So yeah, any genre, any style, just something fantastic you wish games had. I'm hoping to come out from under my rock here!

Fun and informative stuff. Thanks for the postmortem! Taught me that SAT Collisions were a thing (sounds pretty optimized) and yeah, Components in code are great.

bwaraghsadsa!!



also, OT: @geti, how did you like angelscript for Kag? recommend?

It looks like tiles are being used for the individual parts that burn, and being next to a burning tile makes the current tile catch on fire. Can you change the density/weight of each tile so the trunk takes longer to burn up than the leaves? It would be awesome to see all the leaves burn off before the trunk burnt down (so it catches fire bottom to top, but disappears top to bottom).

Either way, awesome effect! If you're in Unity, you should throw some physics in there for extra tree burning realism

All of the games on the last two pages. Just, all of them. So much style and art, I'm really excited to see what else we'll see this year.