Just to clarify things a bit… Yes I am no longer working with Void Star but we parted ways very amicably. Void Star is moving forward at a brisk pace and is working on some really awesome stuff. Can’t wait to see what Drew comes up with.
So today was the first day of my new job. So far so good, but man am I beat. I didn’t eat dinner untill 9:00 and that gave me a huge headache. But I feel refreshed because I am going to be doing something new and exciting and learning a bunch of cool new things. I like new things…
I really believe that a good sound effect is at the root of making a video game satisfying. In shooters it’s the sound of the gun. In driving games its the roar of the engine and the sounds of the road. In puzzle games it’s the sound of blocks clearing. In side scrollers its the sound of collecting something. Every game that I can think of that I enjoy has a good sound effect at the heart of it. I think allot of game developers forget to do that right. Almost all games that I don’t like have poor sound effects. I don’t think its the only rewarding thing about games, but I think its the most important. Popcap really understands this more than anybody.
Apparently the latest issue of Game Informer has a piece about the Oddworld Game that we were working on just before Oddworld put a hold on games development. Brings back allot of memories. We were using a revised version of the Stranger engine which at that point we were very very good with. I think somewhere I have a few screen-shots of the actual game in progress. I will have to hunt those down.
http://www.2old2play.com/Blog/Permalink/3939/33868
Ahh memories…
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It’s funny seeing the picture of the boat/jetski… We were in the process of making a fun level involving that thing when the brakes were put on.
Game Designers… I will stop playing your game the second there is a Quick-time-event. Why do you think its fun to make me slam buttons like a fool only to have me fail halfway through the sequence. Then making me restart from the beginning… SUCK IT.
Recently our voidstar and project 2 website was hacked and some java script was inserted into it. So we ended up having to wipe everything and are working to get things up and running again. But we did lose lots of blog stuff so im not sure what teh new stuff will look like. Urrrg. Stoopid internets.
The older I get the more I want to design games that have constructive goals instead of destructive ones. I guess it’s the same reason I now enjoy vegtables that I hated when I was a child. OLDNESS! whooo!
flower the downloadable PSN game came out today… I ended up purchasing it and I have to say it’s quite interesting. It is one of those things that skirts the line between game and experience. The game portion of flower has you collecting petals that allow you to spread green life to the dead parts of the level. The rest is pretty much the experience of flying around the nice looking environment while listening to some very relaxing new-age music. Part of me want’s to make things like this. But I know what would happen… I would start feeling pressure to have to more gamey things put into it and it would loose some of the “experience” part of it.
CrazyBump is freaking rad. I broke down and purchased it today… It’s expensive but worth it I tink.
Last night I had the pleasure of attending the Childs Play Auction and Dinner. All together they managed to raise 200,000 dollars for sick kids, bravo! Never before have I seen that many game developers dressed so nicely, a polar opposite of GDC. The evening started with drinking, socializing, and bidding on silent auction pieces. Mostly artwork donated by various game companies. After that was dinner and a live auction. Good stuffs. And thank you to Casey of Molly Rocket for setting up the evening for us.
PS. The iPhone camera is freaking terrible.
Both Drew and I are big into getting aspects of a treasure hunt into our next game… Crackdown did a fantastic job of giving you that sense of seeing a goal but not allowing you to get there untill your character can jump just a little bit higher. There is nothing quite like that feeling of unlocking a skill and using it to get a treasure that you saw ages ago but could not get. The longer you have to wait to get a treasure the more exciting it is when you finally get to have it. There is a point of course where it takes too long and you forget about it. But finding just the right balance is key to making the system work.
I have been debating with myself about which is better… Health potions that the player can use at any time or health pickups that are dropped by enemies.
My current thinking is that I like potions over pickups. My reasoning is this. Potions give the player full control over when and where they can heal themselves. Health pickups leave the player at the mercy of the random loot algorithm. Any time you are at the mercy of the AI that can lead to miss-balanced games.
I can’t say much at all but Drew and I are working on some really sweet stuff right now. Our next project is very different from Poker Smash. Our engine has seen some massive upgrades and the things we can do now are much more advanced than what we could do before. When I can actually talk about the project I will post some more details.
A set of Gamerpics and two more Tables came out last night. This was a little out of the blue for us… Not much warning… Harumph.
So Braid has come out on XBLA. It’s a great game. It also appears to be stirring up some controversy over its price (1200 p). The fact that people are bent out of shape over $15 dollars makes me ill. Here is why. This is entertainment, pure and simple. People act like it’s a crime against them personally. This is not food or shelter people, it’s just for fun. And besides in a world where its $12 for a one-time movie viewing or a large coffee that costs 5 bucks you have no base to argue that $15 dollars is too much to pay for a quality piece of gaming. Seriously eat some fucking leftovers for a night and you have probably saved yourself enough money to purchase it.
Ultimately this is Microsoft’s fault. Before XBLA came along the price point for smaller games was around $20 on the PC. What they did with XBLA is undercut the market and on top of that they trained us all to expect quality entertainment for $5. On the surface this may seem like a win for the consumer. But it is a complete disaster because that price point is not maintainable. Once XBLA got popular Microsoft went… Oh! This is a nice surprise but now that it is up and running we have to take a bigger cut of the pie because we are not making any profit. This of course damages small developers immensely and the only recourse is to raise the price of the game. Microsoft giveth and taketh away. So they set themselves up for the backlash from the gaming community. Which really points out the fact that they were taken by surprise by the success of XBLA. They will be forever picking up the pieces. Meanwhile gamers will be getting angry cause their faucet of ultra cheap gaming is being closed off and developers are upset because they have to do that in order to survive. No-one wants to alienate the gamer base.
But then again it’s mostly the 2,000 people who spent all day bitching on forums that post this stuff. And it sends a false image of what the populace actually thinks.
Anyways braid is worth every dollar. And don’t be surprised to see more and more games costing that much and more in the future.
So my dev-kit red-ringed last nite… It was totally gone. So in a desparate attempt to keep it working I wrapped it in my comforter and let it run for about 30 minutes… It got very very hot of course. I let it cool and tried to fire it up. Holey Crap! It worked, and it’s still working. I can’t believe that actually works. Unbelieveable.
I just finished writing a decorator painter for the level tools. Now we can spray down grass and pebbles and shit into the level. We got the engine reading it in and putting stuff down. Pretty sweet.
Ran into a stupid issue where Maya puts scientific notation into some of its floats….. 8.5372651e-005 ARRG so annoying. It was easy to strip out but that kinda of thing is silly. It makes interfacing with stuff frustrating when all of a sudden there is that kind of number.
Since our next game is bigger and more involved, I have been turning Maya into a proper level editor. Good thing I have done this so many times or it would be a scary task.
I am super excited about our next project. We are currently in the process of upgrading our engine and laying out the initial design and characters. There is a ton to do but I am super stoked.