Go play Scarygirl, sucka!

The game’s finally out, been playing it for the last few days. Awesome stuff! I got into making Flash games to create experiences like this game so it’s major inspiration for me. It’s 16 levels with a built in save system, so you can come back and finish it anytime.

Check it out at Scarygirl.com!

Game by Touch My Pixel.

• Produced by Artisans. Everyone on staff at Naughty Dog actually has a role in making the game. No-one only does management. NO PRODUCERS (sounds like heaven to me). The people with responsibility are creatives that are making the game.
• Disciplined leads should know how long tasks should take to be completed because they do the same work themselves.
• Give people responsibility. Trust the members of the team to have good judgment and make the right decisions.
• Face-to-Face communication. Less disruptive than e-mail. Builds teamwork/camaraderie.
• Short meetings. Keep them brief to get the message across and to stay productive.
• Cross-functional team.
• Allocate work to those who are passionate about it. That’s where the magic comes from.
• Do-acracy — individuals choose tasks for themselves.
• Never get personal w/criticism. Don’t get bent out of shape.
• Micromanagement is usually the enemy of excellence.
• Waterfall development process from software development doesn’t necessarily apply to game development.
• Games are like painting. Before painting you make sketches, research, rough in charcoal, etc. before even touching a brush.
• “Method” – Mark Cerny lecture w/ Michael John (link currently broken )
• Pre-production.
  • The time to innovate. Push limits to “capture lightning”.
  • Process of managed chaos.
  • Initiated by a core group of seniors.
  • Drake’s pre-production team size ~15. Led by Amy Henig, Bob Rafei.
• Publishable – first playable. I believe he mentioned this to highlight how important it was to get the first couple stages running so they define what the game would be.
• Macro game design.
  • Designing the game by looking at the big picture — as if looking at a map of an entire country. You only see major cities and major landmarks.
• Game macro spreadsheet. Richard showed examples of the macro spreadsheets from Uncharted. Which were Excel documents that laid out the details of each level, divided into segments. The game mechanics that were to be introduced and explored, the ideas and feelings that were meant to get across for the section of the game.
• Micro design. He referenced Wallace and Gromit: The Wrong Trousers by comparing it to laying down track, while you’re on the train.
• Solid pre-production saves a screwed production.
• Get it in the game quickly. Getting on w/making the game is the best way to make it.
• Don’t wait for tools, convoluted approaches. Build barebones and expand. He told a story of how they wasted a lot of time building convoluted tools that needed to be remade anyway. In the end they used barebones, ugly tools that did what they needed to do — get the job done.
• Fail early, fail often.
• Iteration. If you’re aiming for excellence, you better iterate.
• 30% usability, 70% iteration. On the importance of usability vs. iteration time with tools. It’s more important for you to be able to iterate game changes faster than it is to have prettier tools.
• Driven by frequent deadlines. Major deadline every 4-6 weeks. Once you get into the mindset of slipping, it’s hard to get back.
• Hard Work. He told the story of Walt Disney always telling artists to “Plus it!” — no matter how good it was it could always be better. I’ve been reading The Illusion of Life, which details the history of Disney animation. An incredibly inspiring read.
• Motion capture was used mainly for the nuance detail in the animation, which is the hardest to animate.
• Levels are fundamentally expressions of game mechanics.
• “Easy to learn, difficult to master.” — a good game.
• Check out a Jeremy Yates lecture on Uncharted from GDC 2008.

All in all, this talk inspired the hell out of me. If you’re in the Los Angeles area, it’s worth signing up for Gnomon’s newsletter. They have these kinds of events on a monthly basis, great for networking and inspiration.

I found an inspiring forum post by kreso, the Croatian creator of the Bubble Struggle Flash games. He made a thread asking if anybody wanted to buy his sites that generated $10k a month. Many posters weren’t taking him seriously but he stuck to his claims , adding that about half was generated Mochiads and the other by CPX advertisements.

In the end, he found a deal and left an informative post about the story of his game. How , when he was a kid, he sometimes stole his parents money to play the original at an arcade. How he wanted to make a Flash game more compelling than the lame Flash games running rampant. How he sold the game to Miniclip for only $750 way back when, after initially offering $250. Good stuff.

Check it out here:

http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthread.php?p=189080#post189080

An excerpt…

First hours spent on creating Bubble Struggle 1 were actually practicing programming. I created a box that was moving left and right on keypress. Amazing! Then I added bubbles. Wow! Then the harpoon (shot) etc… After I realized that I have all the basic elements of a game I noticed something about internet and got an idea!

What I noticed was this: all of flash games on internet are either a) short in duration (you can finish the whole game within 5-10 minutes) or b) so boring that you don’t want to play it more than 5-10 minutes.

My idea was – what if I would create a game that is a) long in duration b)had a new, different chalenge on every level.

I knew that this ment more programming for me, but as I was just learning and enjoying progamming this was actually a plus. A sidenote: code in my game is disastrous. I just kept adding code for each new level because it was so different than all the others. But I succedded!

If you somehow haven’t played this game before, it’s basically a clone of Buster Bros. It’s a great game and I’ve been wanting to 1-up him by making a game like it myself.

This is one of those “one in a million” success stories that you read about in articles like Gamasutra’s Where’s the Cash for Flash? but it’s definitely encouraging everytime I hear someone having success doing what they genuinely enjoy. Kind of an unfortunate contrast to news that Xbox Live Community Games has yet to yield much success for its developers.

Oh well, let’s make some more games!

My co-worker then went to go on about strategy games like Settlers of Catan and M.U.L.E. , which take this kind of gathering concept and create a goal that you can compete with others for. Instead of just building up “bling“. I’d heard of M.U.L.E. before but never knew anything about it. Apparently it’s a 4 player turn-based strategy game for 80s computers. I decided to look up on it and learned about the designer Dani Bunton Berry. A designer, apparently way ahead of her time. Unfortunately, she died in 1998 while working on an online version of M.U.L.E.

I ended up finding her website still intact with a GDC speech from 1997 on multiplayer game design. What is surprising to me is how relevant it still is, over 10 years later. Halo 3 covers most of these bullet points very well… The “pacing needs variety” part reminds me of the time in the lobby between games — usually “good game” or trash-talking time. The “Legends must grow” element was a big feature of Halo 3, which automatically records game matches to your hard drive and allowing you to upload them online and allow others to spectate a past match. The “Leave room for ads” part has grown increasingly relevant as now I’ve begun experimenting with in-game advertising. Dreadful.

So here’s the listo…

Good Multi-player Design Elements

Excerpt from a Lecture for the 1997 Computer Game Developers Conference, Copyright 1997, by Dani Bunten Berry

Here comes my annual punch list of things to consider when designing multi-player games updated and expanded from last year based on what we’ve learned:

• Build in the “Norm Effect” if at all possible. This is named for the character from “Cheers” who when he enters the bar is greeted by everyone calling his name in unison. Pitiful old IRC chat-rooms can provide some of this effect so surely we can find some way to welcome people into our game environments.
• “Zero sum” is bad. Games where I win and you lose are bad. Worse still is “I win and all the rest of you lose”. Notwithstanding the current cultural obsession with endzone strutting by winners, losers do not enjoy themselves and if you can help take the sting out of it, you should. Alliances, cooperative play, ranked “winners” rather than “A winner” with a bunch of losers are all options.
• Pacing needs variety. Slow periods should follow intense ones and forced “time-outs” can offer opportunities to socialize, catch your breath and anticipate things to come. Remember, the players no longer have a “pause key” as they did in a solo-game.
• Strategies need “wiggle room”. People have different personal styles and when playing against each other it’s great to let them “do it their own way” rather than a single approach that all must follow. If possible you should balance the game such that a strategic planner for instance might not always beat the joystick jockey or the detailed tactical type. A game that allows for diverse people to play diverse ways is always best.
• Legends must grow. Provide ways for players to carry their experiences with them. “Game films” are an excellent (and reasonably cost-effective option) in games where what’s sent between the player’s computers is a stream of “deltas”. Saving that stream and running it back through the game engine provides an opportunity to review what happened during the game. This turns an ephemeral, fast paced experience into a story that can be used to “save face” if the player lost, to learn how to win or just to chronicle their accomplishments. At the very least, try to include ongoing statistics or character attributes outside the environment of a single game execution.
• Court your newbies. Nothing will destroy a player’s interest in your game quicker than being humiliated a few times when they are just trying to figure out what to do. If possible build in inducements for advanced players to help newbies in order to get something to advance further in the game environment — like taking an “apprentice” might be the only path to “master rank”. At the very least try to make starting as safe on player’s egos as you can.
• Allow personalization. Let players define their own icons that the others see or somehow personalize their own game space. A big part of the enjoyment of being with others is expressing yourself. A bunch of player avatars all dressed from the same menu gives me the creeps. Encourage graffiti.
• Keep the features down. When humans play each other there’s this “he thinks that I think that he thinks …” kind of mental gymnastics taking place. This is far more interesting than another unit type or another option to evaluate to almost everyone.
• Include audio/visual subtleties. People are remarkably good at recognizing patterns almost subconsciously and they also find it rewarding. A couple of pixels blinking in the corner of the screen and a small sound effect that allude to a possibility allows a player to feel very astute when they can put it together with an outcome. This can also facilitate the personal playing style mentioned above since some folks are better at it than others.
• Avoid numbers. Almost no one enjoys calculations. (At least no one “normal”). Humans prefer heuristic (rules of thumb) relationships or continuous equations far more. The heuristics feel good when you figure them out and the continuous equations can only be predicted which also seems to scratch an itch in our brains.
• Include spectators. Leave room for “lurkers” to watch games being played and even to effect them in minor ways if possible. A design that includes taking turns, which makes the other players spectators for part of the time, can be interesting if what the player is doing has an effect on them, is interesting to watch and they can tease, taunt and kibitz while watching.
• Facilitate relationships. Allow players to form clubs, clans, groups and facilitate scheduled as well impromptu meetings online. Help strangers mix and friends find each other.
• Use time limits. Whenever possible design your game so it can be played within a fixed time limit. This will allow people to schedule their involvement. A game you can play a couple of times in an evening would be a good design goal. If you can’t end the game at specific times try to at least facilitate a graceful exit opportunity such that a player quits while they are having fun and not after they’re so exhausted they’ll never come back again.
• Include chance. Although most players hate the idea of random events that will destroy their nice safe predictable strategies, nothing keeps a game alive like a wrench in the works. Do not allow players to decide this issue. They don’t know it but we’re offering them an excuse for when they lose (”It was that damn random event that did me in!”) and an opportunity to “beat the odds” when they win.
• Keep the balance. Try to keep the distance between the losers and the winners small enough that the outcome is in doubt as long as possible. You can adjust random events, attrition factors or whatever. They’ll thank you for keeping the games interesting even though you should probably not tell them what you’re doing.
• Include cooperation. Even in basically competitive games you can allow for alliances, collusion or at least less cutthroat behavior. In M.U.L.E. I used an interesting trick that would not allow a “Winner” unless a certain threshold of colony success was reached. In order to win players had to sometimes help each other out so the whole colony would thrive thus making the balance closer and play more interesting.
• Make ‘em stay. Figure out incentives to keep players to stay till the end of a game. It ruins everyone’s fun when players bail out prematurely. At the very least you can publish the percent of the time they bailed.
• Allow handicapping. Let players handicap themselves if they want. Some players are willing to play with one hand behind their back so let them. (The most common use of this will be parents and kids playing together).
• Facilitate special events. “Magical appearances” (scheduled and otherwise) in FRPs are cool. Strategy game tournaments (sanctioned and not) are too.
• Leave room for ads. Banners will be around for a while. You might even want to let Nike outfit your monsters with shoes – for a price. Be creative.

The Full Lecture: Imaginary Playmates in Real-time or Why Online Games Suck

Searching around to see if anybody else had posted this I found another blog that posted this list last month.

This looks like some amazing Flash stuff. I’m wondering how they’re pulling off so much parallax and smooveness. Looking at their blog, it looks like he’s using bitmapData for rendering, using spritesheets and BIT-101’s BigAssCanvas class to work around sprite size limitations.

The trailer definitely increased my expectations. Over 14 levels of goodness. Coming soon to www.scarygirl.com. Just not soon enough!

I just finished the new Sokay.net layout for 2009. It’s all Flash now. I’m using swfAddress for deeplinking into the Flash content. Very nifty. I’m also using my favorite Flash utility tweener for the transitions. I’ve been working on this on and off for the past month. I wanted it to coincide with a widespread release for our latest game, Sammy Samurai.

I’ve also made the previous versions of Sokay.net available.

Sokay.net circa 2004

Sokay.net circa 2007

I think it’s funny how close the 2004 one is to the current one.

Now that that is done with, time to work on more games!

It’s funny to see this because I totally recognized the Scarygirl site. A year ago I had bought some cool vinyl figurines at a music store in Long Beach and I wanted to find out who made them. I ended up finding Scarygirl on that search — I’m not sure if any of my figurines are from that series.

Anyway, the game looks awesome and the guys at Touch My Pixel have a nice blog so check it out for updates on the project.

In the options menu of a game, you expect to find options. What is optional is, by definition, not necessary. So what does it mean when what is otherwise considered an essential part of a game, like it’s action or puzzle elements, is made optional? Developer Crystal Dynamics says that the different types of gameplay are nice as “punctuation,” which is why the player was not offered the power to completely remove them. So if you don’t want to solve a puzzle, just ask Lara and she’ll solve it for you. Unfortunately, turning down one half of the game will not reduce its price to $25.

You know how DVDs always have a stupid movie that comes with all the cool, special features? It’s like now there’s a DVD where the whole movie is a cool special feature. Say you don’t want to watch the whole movie. You catch the intro, skip to the love scene and then the climax and you’re done. When your friends ask if you saw that movie and they talk about those parts you skipped, how do you respond? And when the teacher asks why your book report on Anne Frank said nothing about World War 2, do you just tell her straight up, “Crystal Dynamics liberated me, baby. I don’t waste time with the contents of stuff. I cut to the chase.” And when artists say this is a butchering of their work and destroys its integrity, you tell them “If it’s good enough for Crystal Dynamics, it’s good enough for Michelangelo’s David. Now cut the dick off that bastard and put it on a pedestal because I’m sick of looking at his giant face.”

Bullshit.

Magnificent.

This is congruent with the everlasting motive behind the Tomb Raider franchise. Ever since Lara’s breasts were first conceived, the game’s bottom line has been clear: Easy money. Tomb Raider was created to leverage cash from our wallets. So Crystal Dynamics has embraced a system they hope will work as a universal lever, to fit snugly into the pockets of players of all shapes and sizes. Every producer of art is dependent on an audience for profit, but when your aim is so broad that you don’t care if half of your game is experienced, you take a step away from respect and toward the business of pleasuring people. Also called servicing them. Customers you may call “Johns.”

Crystal Dynamics isn’t alone in this business.  There are plenty of prostitutues, porn venders, and drug dealers. And sure, you might place a number of other businesses in here too, lots of businesses are perfectly happy sacrificing their dignity for higher profits. The important thing is that those of us watching it are questioning our own motives: Are you in the business of pleasure for business or pleasure? Do you make games for the love of the game?

If Lara’s breasts tell us anything, it’s the answer that Eidos had to that question. They didn’t care about what kind of a game they made, they didn’t aim for dignity, creativity or to express any passion. But they had enough polygons to wrap up titties for teenagers and they got rich doing it.

Magnificent.

Now, with the latest in gaming technologies, the franchise surrenders ever more. The ideals behind Tomb Raider: Underworld take it one step closer to pornography by making its essential design elements “optional” and therefore diminishing their value.

It may appear in this case, as in many others, that having more options couldn’t hurt. That as long as you have the power to play the game with the default settings, it’s nice that you have another choice. In some ways that’s true, but the options communicate the mindset and value system of the developer nonetheless and in this case, I disapprove.

I wonder if they’ll include an option to increase how much you play a completely different game.

I’m releasing the source code for a Papervision3D game I was putting together. This project was meant to be an interactive visual for a party my friend threw last weekend, Friendly Integration. This game was meant to be projected onto a wall and controlled with a DDR pad for each player. There were also plans to have additional panels that could be stepped on that changed the “theme” of the game.

Below is a sketch of my initial idea for the project. I wanted to play with the idea of 2 people interacting with each other. Being side by side with the pads I wanted to give the players the ability to be friendly, or the opposite. I didn’t get to the point of executing these ideas as I barely had enough time available to get the basic engine running.

Conceptual sketch

This turned out to be more fun than I expected and I look forward to continuing development on it. It’s not a priority right now but I learned a lot about Papervision in the 15 hours it took me to put together. I didn’t get to doing a serious art pass on it which is unfortunate because it’ll look a lot cooler with some polish.

My inspiration for this was Bomberman and Poy Poy for PS1. I lifted the bomb artwork from a Bomberman drawing I did a while ago.

And the important part…

Play it here: http://blog.sokay.net/stuff/friendly/friendly_04.html

Download source: friendly_integration_src.zip

Note: This uses the Papervision3d 2.0 Great White code library. There are some fine video tutorials at gotoandlearn.com if you need help getting started with that.

I made these a little over 5 years ago. These are based on a drawing I made — and more like it . The Flash movie was a demo of how I could execute a game cinematic. The Papervision stuff I’m doing right now is looking awfully similar. I started developing a game based on these concepts but I went in a very different direction. It’s one of the projects I’m going to get back to one of the days.

Back then I was still in art school. Basically my free time was spent drawing and working on Thugjacker. I lurked Pixelation all the time. It’s a forum for pixel artists, if you haven’t heard of it. Lots of inspiring work there, a great place to get critiques. Pixel Joint is another good pixel spot.