Anna Anthropy posted a list of her games’ goals in response to a challenge by Andi “Jumpman” McClure. Seemed like something worth doing for my own games. So below are the stated player character or plot goals in my games. I’m not including LORE, since goals depend entirely on the individual group playing it.
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Hi! My work on Ossuary is wrapping up, and I’m currently in a planning and evaluation mode. It’s a good time to announce my availability for contract and commission work! If you’re interested in hiring me, contact me at gregory.weir@gmail.com.
Do you have a digital game in development with fun mechanics but want a story to go along with it? Is your core gameplay solid but you’re struggling to create interesting puzzles, challenges, and situations? Do you just need some help producing enough content to complete your game? You can hire a writer and designer with an established record and experience doing game design, puzzle design, and critically-acclaimed game writing. I’m also experienced in programming and have a decent understanding of visual art, so I can communicate well with the rest of your team.
My portfolio includes interesting, tricky puzzles, mental challenges integrated with strong story, and pure environmental storytelling. Upon request, I can show you a complete but unreleased dialogue-based adventure game or testimonials from previous contract employers.
Do you want a digital game for a special event, to promote a cause, or on a certain topic? Do you want someone who can provide a strong creative vision? Do you value meaning, narrative, and aesthetic choices instead of the flashiest technology? You can commission a custom game from me. I’m happy to work with you to determine the scope, design, and costs that are appropriate to your requirements.
For an example of my work, see “Passing the Ball,” commissioned by the organizers of the GDC Online professional convention to promote the charity WebWiseKids.
Do you like one of my games? Would you like to see a game a lot like it? I can modify an existing game of mine with new content or replace elements of the game with something of your choosing. I’m not selling my creative soul here; I’m happy to work with you to make a modified version that satisfies my standards. This option is likely to be a lot cheaper than a fully custom commission!
Because of my obligations to my sponsors, some distribution options may be unavailable for certain modifications. At the very least I’ll be able to make a downloadable version of your mod that can be played offline. We’ll discuss pricing based on distribution options and the degree of the changes you want made.
If you want to hire me, please e-mail me at gregory.weir@gmail.com. You’re welcome to discuss this post in the comments, but I’d prefer to discuss any actual projects in private!
Welcome to the Academy! This is where the members of the Hemlock Fellowship practice the virtue of Prudence. Prudence is all about knowing enough about the world to properly judge between right and wrong. The Academy is on the cutting edge of understanding morality. Our Academy has proved through research and study that the moral precepts passed down by our forebearers are held up by cold scientific fact! Isn’t that impressive?
Ossuary is in testing. Soon you will become trapped in the place of bones.
Captured with FRAPS. Edited with Blender.
I’m working on a full release of my tabletop roleplaying game LORE, which I released as a beta in 2009. The game will be extensively updated with clarifications, rebalancing, enhancements, and a far-better “conflict” system that provides a unified rule set for combats, debates, and other interesting situations. There’s one problem with the LORE beta that’s more visible than any of these.
The LORE beta is ugly.
I laid it out in OpenOffice.org, which is a word processor, not a document layout application. There’s a standard solution for the terminally technical author who wants to produce beautiful documents: LaTeX, hereafter referred to as “Latex.” Unfortunately, as great as Latex is at providing low-effort, decent layout for things like academic articles, it’s really awkward and frustrating if you need to do the kind of complex page layouts that a roleplaying sourcebook demands.
My alternative? ConTeXt. Or, for my sanity, “Context.” Context is based on TeX like Latex is, but it’s focused more on general purpose typography and page layout than Latex, which mostly tries to keep those concerns out of the user’s way. Despite its frustratingly limited documentation, Context has proved far better-suited to my project. I’ll explain in more detail below.
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Jonas Kyratzes’s new game, The Sea Will Claim Everything, is now on sale as an individual product. This is an amazing work, and you should get it the next time you have $10 to spend on a game.
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I’ve found myself longing to play in a Live-Action Roleplaying Game that focuses on courtly intrigue. What I mean by this is the social sparring, witty repartee, and backroom dealing that happens among aristocrats in the movie Ridicule or among university professors jockeying for tenure. I’ve experienced some of this when playing Vampire: The Requiem using the Mind’s Eye Theatre rules, but that game has a major problem for me. Characters can kill each other with strange powers, so someone playing the political game has to also worry that the person they’re verbally sparring with can decapitate them with a swipe.
I’m working on the rules, but I want to design in the open so that I can get feedback and suggestions. Here are my base concepts for the game:
My idea so far is a combination of concepts from the card game Whist, the TV show Survivor, and the mancala game Oware.
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For some time now I’ve been working on a project called Namatjira. It’s a game that Melissa Avery-Weir and I have been designing and working on for years now, but we’ve only recently gotten serious about it. The following shots are pre-alpha; the final product may look different.
I started playing Grand Theft Auto IV a few days ago. I uninstalled it today. Steam says I spent 16 hours playing, out of its assuredly fifty-plus hours of content. Many of those hours were spent paused while I was doing something else.
Nico Bellic was drawn to America by his cousin’s stories of wealth and comfort. A life without killing or pain, where things were easy and nothing hurt.
The main characters and relationships in the game are endearing in a dark way. The graphics were quite nice, especially when compared to the previous game in the series, GTA: San Andreas, which my wife is playing right now. The amount of detail in the city and the number of things one can do are amazing.
In reality, life in Liberty City was a struggle. It was the same cycle of steal, kill, flee as before, except in an unfamiliar place where everything is harder and everyone is a stranger. No respect and no opportunities. And always the need for money.
But the game isn’t interesting. The gameplay is the same as previous games, with clumsier driving and walking and slightly better shooting. The missions are more restrictive than ever. In GTA III, you could cleverly solve missions by blocking an escape route with a car or planting a bomb in a target’s truck. In most of GTAIV‘s missions, you must use this car and go here, and then the guy will escape in a cutscene that removes any obstacles, and then you must chase him across the city and he’s impossible to catch and then he flees on foot and you confront him in another cutscene. And if you screw up at any point, you need to start the mission over because we don’t have any checkpoints.
Nico slowly learned something about America. America had a vision of itself: rich, easy, luxurious. And it forced you to pursue that vision. Everyone pursued that vision. Even if you wanted to do something else, be someone else, you couldn’t. You needed money. And you had certain talents that were valued, even when you weren’t valued as a person.
This is one of those games where the developers have crafted this world and this game that they’re incredibly (and rightfully!) proud of, and then realize with dismay that some grubby player is going to get her grubby fingerprints all over it. So they do their damnedest to make sure the player can’t interfere with their lovely work. Any place that the player could screw up the game with her insistence on cleverness, they stop that shit.
And when you got money, it corrupted you. It hurt you. Money made you crazy, bought you drugs that tear you apart, got you in debt, got everything you love set on fire. You needed the money, but the money ruined you.
In the end, once I moved on to the game’s second safehouse, I gradually lost interest. The mission structure sprawls out and the characters are less interesting, and I became less invested in Nico Bellic’s “I’m a man full of guilt who wants a different life yet I don’t even blink when you tell me to kill folks” routine. I simply realized that I didn’t want to play any more. So I stopped.
And so Nico walked away. Got on a boat, a bus, a plane, and went somewhere else where he didn’t need to kill for money. Nico just stopped.
Are you using Flixel for Flash development? You should be.
Are you using Tweensy for easy programmatic Flash tweening? You should be.
Did you know that when Flixel loses focus and pauses, Tweensy doesn’t automatically pause? You should. It can cause some weird behavior.
I’ve figured out a simple fix that pauses Tweensy when Flixel doesn’t have focus. I just did it, so be aware that there may be some unexpected consequences of this that I don’t know about.
Put the following in your main class that extends FlxGame:
override protected function onFocus(FlashEvent:Event = null):void
{
super.onFocus(FlashEvent);
Tweensy.resume();
}
override protected function onFocusLost(FlashEvent:Event = null):void
{
super.onFocusLost(FlashEvent);
Tweensy.pause();
}
And that’s that. When Flixel pauses due to lost focus, Tweensy will as well, and when Flixel resumes, so will Tweensy. Just make sure you don’t get the “pause” and “resume” flipped; I did at first, and I couldn’t figure out what the hell was wrong.
I just noticed that I’ve got over 150 games on my list of “Games I’ve Finished.” The list isn’t exactly precise. Sometimes I add smaller games (e.g. “All Roads Lead From Home“) but usually I only add games I’ve paid for or games that are big enough to feel like an accomplishment (e.g. Iji). I’ve surely also forgotten a bunch of games from the list.
I also have “Games I’ve Played” (but not finished) and “Games I Probably Won’t Finish” on that page. Looking at them tells a lot about my game preferences. For example, I’m reluctant to stick with very hard or very long games, especially if they’re older console titles (Super Mario Bros.). And I generally don’t care for “real-time strategy” games. I don’t like having to plan and out-think an opponent while also managing low-level real-time play. I’m lousy enough at strategizing as it is; I don’t need added distractions.
This list also feels very short. It seems like there should be many, many more games on it. I’ve certainly left out a lot of games I’ve played emulated (Final Fantasy VI) and many games that I’ve only played demos of (Rocket Jockey, to pick one totally at random). There are a lot of games out there, and I’ve played a lot of them. But still nowhere near a majority.
