• Provide a ridiculous amount of things to bomb, which will in turn provide for replayability.
• At least two types of critters with distinct behaviors.
• At least one type of static target.
• At least one type of goals, likely of the “remove 5 blue critters and 10 red critters from play” variety.
• At least two types of bombs with distinct behaviors.
• If possible, try to introduce the concept of sub-goals with possibly path looping behavior for one of the sub-goals.
• Possibly show a score of some sort, though that is not as important as showing the goal state.
• Alter mouselook so that wherever you look is where the aiming reticle is painted.

This should be enough to show the game play and prove out the fun of the play.

Permalink | No comment

• Critters are easily-identifiable by use of simple primary colors.
• Bombs are easily-identifiable by use of simple primary colors.
• Provide a ridiculous amount of things to bomb, which will in turn provide for replayability.
• Critter that must be hit by timing your shot. Good example would be a critter that opens and closes a shield, and can only be hit by a bomb when the shield is open.
• Getting through a level should be relatively easy. However, getting through a level and achieving more difficult goals provides replayability.
• Goals include simple score for high score lists, bombing a certain number of a particular type of critter, using a smaller number of bombs to achieve the level goal.
• Critters that must be hit multiple times in order to be fully removed from play. These critters could also start out very large in size on the playing field and get reduced in size upon each subsequent hit by a bomb. Or they could have a health bar to show current health and any damage taken.
• Critters that are removed from play - just pop.
• Critters that explode in an area of effect when removed from play, and also remove other critters or affect environment in that are of effect.
• Critters that pop out of the ground (wack-a-mole).
• Bombs that cause damage over time in the area of effect.
• Critter generators that can or cannot be destroyed depending on what goals you set for the player on the level.
• Critters that break into multiple smaller critters when hit by a bomb.
• Critters that carry something and drops it when hit by bomb.
• Goal of preventing critters from getting somewhere.
• Activate triggers on field of play with bombs.
• Buildings that can be bombed instead of just critters. Critter generator would be one example.
• Bomb that slows enemies. Could be used in conjuction with other bomb types to make sure you strategically take out a larger number than normally possible.
• Bomb that flips over enemies, immobilizing them temporarily.
• Bombs that freeze or burn.
• Critters that invulnerable to certain types of bombs.
• Bombs that act like rain/snow when dropped - constant bombing effect instead of missile-based effect.
• Bombs that repel/attract the critters.
• Critters that always are in groups versus being a single entity.
• Bombs that become turrets when dropped. Last for a short period of time shooting at critters in the area.
• Goal of protecting something on field of play for a certain period of time. Have player hovering in place for a period of time before moving forward on path again.
• Different speeds for moving on path depending on level design. This includes stopping in place and looping the same path or sub-path multiple times.
• Multiplayer cooperative play possible with multiple paths. Can have AI run the other players possibly, also.
• Have sub-goals to the level, and sub-paths. If you fail at a particular goal, you could restart at that goal instead of restarting entire level.
• Could have mandatory goals and optional goals in the level. Optional goals will affect achievements possible to score in a level.

Permalink | No comment

Permalink | No comment

So, now I will be updating my design wiki more regularly with either a quick one or two line description (which likely will mean more to me than anyone else) or a more fully-fleshed-out design doc like I was already putting together for a few of my ideas.

Permalink | No comment

I am in the process of researching for a game I plan on starting back up called (for now) Explorers (though Age of Exploration sounds like a good final title). In the process of getting this game ready for development, I’ve been thinking back on my experiences working with remote teams.

I mentioned earlier that I started up a Wiki to contain my game design thoughts, but I think the real benefit of using a Wiki is found when collaborating with remote team members, especially when working on a title such as Explorers. The scope of the game, while small compared to AAA titles, is still larger than what I have for Bethellowed. It will take some time to finish, especially as I am currently working part-time, and it will take a remote team who is willing to work on such a project, slowly, but surely getting it to completion.

To keep a remote team motivated is tough, plain and simple. You want everyone to feel to some extent that this game is theirs, and the best way you can do that is make sure that the progress of the game is well-communicated to all of the team. This is where a Wiki really comes in handy. I can show the latest design notes to everyone quickly and easily. I can allow other team members to update the Wiki pages as needed with concept art, sound effects, and music. I am no longer necessarily needed as an intermediary to pass on this stuff, and even if it doesn’t end up in the final game it doesn’t change the fact that seeing progress is definitely inspiring.

Another pair of useful tools is Skype and a webcam. Text discussions suck. They are slow, and it’s too easy to miscommunicate. Voice discussions are decidedly better, there is no doubt, but when you are not face-to-face with your teammates it is still tough to feel that you “know” them. That’s where the webcam comes in.

Skype is a great voice-over-internet solution, and it now includes the ability to have a free one-to-one video conference with a teammate. The audio is top-notch, and allows telephone-like conversations, unlike TeamSpeak and its ilk, where truly you need to take turns speaking to be heard well. There is a limit to five people on an audio conference, but that’s not a huge problem.

I sparked up Skype recently and tested its videoconferencing and it works well. It automatically recognized my webcam and it was as simple as pushing a button to start the videoconference. You can turn the video off and on at will, all without dropping the audio connection. Although the audio is almost immediate during a call, the video does have a short delay. It’s noticeable, as expected, but really is not that bad.

Being able to gesture and show facial expressions to your teammates goes a long way towards showing who you truly are, and I look forward to using it as I develop Explorers. Even if I’m the only one with a webcam, it will still help, though I’d certainly push everyone to get one if they planned on sticking around for the entire development process. It’s just too valuable to get “face time” with each other.

A scenario I could see where using both the Wiki and the videoconferencing simultaneously is the following:

I call Collaborator Jim up on Skype. We both bring up the Wiki for the game. As we are brainstorming on the design, I edit the appropriate pages on the Wiki, while Jim refreshes the Wiki on his side to check out what I’m writing, help suggest corrections, and possibly edit other portions of the Wiki in parallel. Going back and forth like this seems like it could be more immediate than me taking notes during a call and then writing up a web page or document and forwarding it to Jim and vice versa.

I’m still on the lookout for better tools for remote collaboration, but these two definitely have me stoked to start building a new team.

Permalink | No comment

The second issue of the IGDA Casual Games Quarterly is online now. I didn’t catch the first one during my recent hiatus, but I did find a couple of interesting bits in this one. First is some demo and price point testing iWin performed. Basically they say that (a) people are willing to spend $30 for a casual game (especially if the consumer is already willing to spend $25 for the game) and (b) shipping your game with a sixty-minute demo might not be the best route to take.

With regards to (a), I think their data is a bit skewed because they used a very well-known IP for the game they tested with (Family Feud). It’s tough to say for certain, but it would certainly be interesting if someone else could perform the same sort of testing with a popular game on one of the casual game portals and publish the results.

On (b), I think that this is a very obvious conclusion, one which you don’t really have to make a study to draw. I have seen many examples where sticking to a sixty-minute demo might not make any sense at all. The guys at Bravetree did it differently with Think Tanks, for instance, relying more on nag screens and other restrictions to impress upon the potential buyer that it would be worth it if they’d simply fork out the cash for the game.

Overall, this first article was interesting, but there was something a little annoying about it in the most general sense. It does seem at times that there are companies and people out there making all sorts of “discoveries” about game publishing on the net that actually were discovered quite a long time ago by veterans such as Thomas Warfield. Still, it’s a nice article and the more information you have at your fingertips the better.

The second tidbit in the quarterly I found mildly interesting was the stats that James Smith of Reflexive has been collecting on the RealArcade top 10 lists. James frequents the forums at Indie Gamer and is a wealth of information for indie game devs. Again, the more info you have the better, and it’s nice of James to share.

Permalink | No comment

After much effort and gnashing of teeth, my buddies Bill and Mike, and my younger brother Mark and I finally were able to get together for a day of serious gaming that didn’t involve a computer screen or television. And it was glorious.

The first game that we dug into was one that Bill, Mark, and I had played once before at Christmas called Ticket to Ride - Europe. The original Ticket to Ride game was a winner of the German Game of the Year award (the Spiel des Jahres), and deservedly so, as this followup game is simply well-designed and terribly fun.

The board is a map of Europe, with a good number of cities represented and potential train routes between the cities. Each route is made up of one to eight train cars and is of a particular color. In order to lay claim to a route, you must play train cards that match the color and number of the train cars that are shown on the route. Once you claim a route, you score the points for that route, and play proceeds to the next player. You can draw ticket cards during play, also, and these cards show routes which you want to lay claim to if at all possible, as the point value shown on the card will count for your total when it comes time to figuring out who won, and will count against your total if you don’t fulfill the route. There are also colorless routes, tunnels, and ferry routes with special rules, along with special train station pieces you can put in play that allow you to use your opponents track to help you fill a ticket card route. All in all, a terrific little game, and terribly inspirational for me personally as I futz around with Duello and Bethellowed.

Now, even though three of the four of us had actually played the game once, that by no means gave us an advantage over Mike. On the contrary, after we reread the rules for the game we quickly found a mistake we had made during the last gaming session which completely changed the game play. In this case the rule read that we must take one of the following four actions during any given turn, when we had read the rule to read you must take as many as possible of the following four actions during any given turn. Er…oops. I had won spectactularly the last time, and managed to lose just as spectactularly this time around. Sonofabitch. I fared much better the second time we played yesterday, however, kicking ass and taking names and winning by a fair margin. No one lays track like I do and I made sure those bastards wouldn’t forget it soon.

After a couple games of Ticket to Ride, we decided to try out a variant of Risk that my wife and I gave to my brother as a gift a couple of years ago called Risk - The Lord of the Rings - Trilogy Edition. Now, it would be easy to hear the title of the game and just dismiss it offhand as another example of “the man” slapping some intellectual property on an existing game and shipping it for a fast buck. However, we found that the game was surprisingly different from the Risk game we had grown up playing, not the least of which was the (in my opinion) considerably more interesting and strategic map that is used for the game. I just found it tougher during my admittedly limited exposure to the game to play conservatively, building up my forces until I could pounce. The addition of sea ports allowing distant forces to attack, along with cards you earn during the game that allow you really mess with your opponents, definitely spiced up the game and gave it new life.

Now, having said that, I have a confession to make. I would rather play a less-confrontational multiplayer game such as Ticket to Ride than Risk, and the reason is pretty simple: When I start getting a head of steam and feel like I’m on the verge of a breakthrough, inevitably two or more of my opponents also realize that I’m about to breakthrough and decide to form a coalition with the express intent of putting me back in my place. I know that it makes sense to do so, but that does not stop me from feeling like I’m being victimized. And yesterday’s marathon Risk game (five hours - wow) was no different.

I had managed to play conservatively for the first few turns while my three opponents managed to tear each other new one’s repeatedly. They were in disarray, and I was slowly, but surely, gathering my forces and pushing northward into elven territory. I was playing as one of the Evil players (note the capital ‘E’ and I didn’t let them forget it the whole game), and nothing we Evil players like more than seeing hobbits and elves on skewers, roasting on an open fire, I can tell you.

Between the three of us, Bill, Mark, and I had managed to pretty much decimate poor Mike’s forces. Mike was caught in the middle of a vicious ground war between Mark and Bill, and I kept picking away at his territories on the peripherary as I built up my power base. Actually, I call what Mark and Bill were engaged in a ground war, but really it was more like a pissing contest between two drunken sailors or something. Bill tore Mark up early in the game, and Mark decided from that moment on that his definition of winning the game was preventing Bill from winning the game. Nice. And so it went…until I woke up and took Mike out of the game in about two turns.

Of course, as I mentioned, this is where the inevitable happened, and Mark and Bill decided that they’d put their differences aside long enough to take me out of the game before continuing with their hostilities. Nothing more aggravating than watching your carefully-constructed defenses get taken down in one long, agonizing turn as each of your opponents tear into you with an (in my opinion) undeserved veangance. Luckily, they made the decision to attack me one turn too late in the game to save themselves, as in this variant the One Ring can end the game early by arriving at Mount Doom, and after my turn was over it decided to do just that. Whew. Because if it hadn’t ended the game right then and there, I was done.

All in all, it was a great ten hours or so of gaming, joking, drinking, and eating, and I cannot wait until the next time we can put such a session together. I love video gaming, and with the advent of voice-over-internet utilities such as Skype and TeamSpeak, it certainly makes it easier to get together for a play session with friends in far-distant lands. But nothing beats playing with your friends around a game table - nothing.

Mirrored on GarageGames

Permalink | No comment

Like so many other wannabe game devs out there in the wild, I had tinkered for many years with various software libraries, including some of my own creation, in the hopes of learning how to make those most magical of creations - video games. Prior to becoming aware of GarageGames I was already of the mind that my fellow teammates and I needed to simply latch on to an existing 3D engine and make something, even if it was simply a mod of an existing game such as Unreal or Quake. So we started researching which game would be the easiest to work with and then I found that second blurb:

GarageGames was going to license out the Tribes 2 engine.

I read and reread the announcement, truly with disbelief, I kid you not. I went to GDC that year and sat face-to-face with the GarageGames founders and point-blank asked them the single most important question I had: Do we get source?

The rest is history, of course, because not only did we get source, but we got a full-fledged 3D engine, not just a software library. Gone were thoughts of using Unreal or Quake and making a mod. This was our solution and gawddamned if we weren’t the happiest bunch of wannabe game makers you ever laid your eyes on.

Flash forward, what, five years or so now? GarageGames is inching closer and closer to a goal I remember Jay Moore mentioning many moons ago - being a name known to every household. At least, I think he said something close to that. And now here they are with a title on the Xbox360 and the subject on arguably the most popular game geeks comic around. Not too shabby, and I feel very fortunate to have experienced at least some portion of this with GG.

What will happen in the next five years with GG? Personally, I hope that they reach the next level in terms of distribution, on their own terms, and in their own channel. Even so, there’s no doubt that GarageGames has arrived.

Gratz GG!

Mirrored on Garagegames

Permalink | No comment

Yesterday I found a really interesting band called Mastodon. It’s a little hard for me to describe their sound. It’s sort of a mish-mash of influences, including thrash metal, punk, jazz, and a touch of southern rock thrown in for good measure. I’ve been listening to their album Leviathan over and over again. It is a sort of concept album apparently (best I can tell from the song titles), but in a good way. I find several of their songs of the sort where you just want the song to not end as they just jam away. Lotsa notes at times, and that in this case is a good thing.

Permalink | One comment

I have some code from my Bethellowed prototype that fits in well with the direction of Deullo, but before I start coding up a storm I thought it might be a good idea to write up my design thoughts. In the past I would have created a private blog and started detailing my thoughts, typically with separate entries for topics, and then edited the entries as I got my head around the design. However, I noticed a little link on Jeff’s blog for a free Wiki and thought - hey, now that’s a damned fine idea, I think I’ll check that out, thank you very much.

I’ve been aware of Wiki for a good long while now, but I never bothered to mess with it. I gave sessions at the IndieGamesCon in the past on remote team collaboration, and I have no idea why I excluded Wiki, as it is a great tool for remote teams. It beats forums for sure.

Now I have a nice public location to dump my thoughts on Duello - the MR Love Palace Wiki! Currently it is just a place for me to spew design for the game, but I love brainstorming game design, so if anyone out there has an interest at any time on the game feel free to let me know and I’ll let you access the brainstorming section of the Wiki.

Permalink | One comment