Category Archives: Blogs

The Obsolescence of Lives

Blogs, Digital Games, , , ,

I twitted that “restarting a long multi-screen level on death” and “limited lives” are examples of retro mechanics that should stay dead. I thought that I would expand a bit on what I meant.

In part, this is a corollary to my past writings on challenge and punishment. In my definition, challenge is when a task is difficult to accomplish because it requires a high amount of skill, ability, or experience. Punishment is when failing a task imposes a burden on the player, usually in the form of lost time.
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Eidos and Monaco

Blogs,

“The most unsettling thing about it,” said Monaco, “is that if you have Eidos simulate our own world, it means it’s simulating another Eidos. It doesn’t take much thought to realize that there is an endless chain of nearly-identical Eidos-frames, stretching into infinity. The chances that we are in the original, ‘real’ frame are infinitesimal. We have simulated ourselves into fictionality.”

Saving Professor Booster: Choice and Agency in Cave Story

Blogs, Digital Games, , , ,

Cave Story is a classic of the indie games movement. It single-handedly showed many people that a single developer could make a game with dated graphics that was as good as AAA commercial games. This was already clear to some, but Cave Story‘s prominence means that it has heavily inspired much of the work done by the modern indie games culture. There are a lot of things that Cave Story does well; its handling of mood and narrative structure are great, as well as its balancing of humor and pathos. One thing it does badly at, however, is providing the player with effective choice and agency.
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Bizarre Variable Naming Issue With iPhone Packager for Flash

Blogs, Digital Games, , , , , ,

I posted the other night about my difficulties with Adobe’s iPhone packager for Flash, the program that lets you convert a Flash app into an iPhone app. I’ve managed to track down at least one of the issues that’s been eluding me, but it’s a doozy.

If I name an embedded bitmap resource “sprBatteries,” the app hangs at startup on the iPhone.

I can name it “sprDryCells” or “sprBatteriesX,” and it works fine. I can replace the resource PNG with a PNG I know works elsewhere, but if I name it “sprBatteries,” the app hangs. The app runs fine on my desktop. I believe (although I haven’t done systematic testing to confirm) that it works on the iPhone if I compile it as a simple AS3 app using the Flex compiler instead of compiling it as an AIR app. The resource variable name doesn’t collide with any others in the project.

If you’re not a programmer, let me explain that this behavior is bizarre. Variable names are totally arbitrary. As long as you don’t use any prohibited characters, you can name a variable anything you want. A college friend of mine liked to call his loop iterators “taco.” Many languages/compilers won’t even bother remembering the variable names once the source code is turned into a program. Flash happens to record theirs in the compiled SWF for various reasons, but there’s no sensible reason why “sprBatteries” should be treated differently than “sprBatteriesX.”

I give up on AIR for iPhone unless someone can get me a solution. I’ll see if I can get this running in simple AS3 without any hardware APIs, but it’s unlikely that my final product will contain any accelerometer input (for example). This is frustrating, and I’ve spend a total of over 12 hours fighting with this thing. Adobe hasn’t represented this as a finished product, and rightfully so. In its current form (and assuming I haven’t overlooked something simple), the Packager for iPhone is not ready for use in serious AIR development.

The Nature of a Masterpiece

Blogs, Digital Games

These days, we use the word “masterpiece” to mean “a work that could only be created by a master.” Any especially good painting, game, or poem could be called a masterpiece. Originally, though, the term had a very specific meaning: a masterpiece was the work created by a craftsperson to demonstrate that she was now a master of the craft.

The craft guild educational system started with apprentices. Apprentices worked for and learned from a master. When they were finally able to earn money on their own, they usually became journeymen: craftsfolk who worked and produced good products, but weren’t officially recognized as experts. In order for the guild to recognize a craftperson as a master, she would need to make a masterpiece: a work that demonstrates her skill.

It’s interesting looking at this concept in the context of game development. Terry Cavanagh‘s masterpiece is VVVVVV. His work beforehand was excellent, but 6V demonstrated that he had a mastery of every aspect of the craft: challenge, story, managing the player’s feelings, and creating a unified feel. The concept is a little awkward to apply to teams, but it can be done; Ico was an excellent game, but it’s only with Shadow of the Colossus that Team Ico created a masterpiece.

The way I see it, a masterpiece must be perfect. I don’t mean that it must be without flaw, but it needs to be complete in every way. If there is a big piece missing, or if the work is not expansive enough to fully demonstrate mastery of the form, then it can’t be considered a masterpiece. Masterpieces are dissertations, theses, graduation projects: they are evidence of the creator’s skill and control over the totality of the craft.

It’s fun to play a game to decide on masterpieces for various creators. Frictional Games have Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Jonas Kyratzes has Phenomenon 32, a great example of a perfect masterpiece that still has flaws. Valve has Half-Life 2… or maybe one of the episodes? Or maybe some other game entirely, depending on your opinion. Personally, I don’t think Anna “Auntie Pixelante” Anthropy has made her masterpiece yet, although REDDER comes close.

As for me, I know I haven’t produced a masterpiece yet. I’m still a journeyman. I have been thinking lately about what I could do for a masterpiece, though. I’ve got one tempting idea involving survival in a warzone without weapons.

Do you disagree with any of my choices for masterpieces? Do you want to suggest candidates for other creators? Please comment with your ideas.

Fundraising

Blogs, Digital Games

I’m thinking of doing something to bring in a bit of extra money, as things are a bit tight at the moment. One option is to sell a CD-ROM printed-on-demand containing all of my already-released games. My sponsorship agreements would allow me to do so if the games were “site-locked” to only run on a player’s own computer. I’d also make the games ad-free, of course. I could possibly offer source code, although I’d have to do something to protect my sponsors’ investment; the first thing that comes to mind would be including source code but no assets, so that the games could be examined but not easily compiled.

I could also do the same thing, but not on a physical CD; buyers would just get a DRM-free download containing the games.

Would any of the visitors to this blog be interested in some sort of merchandise along these lines? Any special requests or suggestions? Any ideas as to an appropriate price point?

[EDIT: Trythil raised a question in the comments that I should address. Games wouldn’t be locked to a specific computer; they would just be prohibited from being hosted online. Specifically, some of my sponsorship agreements require advertising to be included in any widely-distributed version, and I don’t want to force paying users to watch ads. I also should have said that I’d personally like to make sure ad-free versions don’t get hosted on portals, as that would mean I wouldn’t make money off of it. Whether you consider this “DRM” is up to you; it probably technically falls under the definition of the word. However, the package would contain no digital restrictions on copying or distribution, which is what most people think of when they say “DRM.” This release would not be offered under a CC or otherwise copyleft license, so ethical restrictions would still apply to certain kinds of copying. I don’t believe in enforcing those restrictions, though.]

Cardstock Dungeons

Blogs, Roleplaying


I play in and run tabletop RPGs. For many games, like White Wolf’s World of Darkness series, all you need for supplies is paper, pencils, and some dice. However, some games call for a more elaborate setup. Since at least its third edition, Dungeons and Dragons, the perennial mainstay of the form, has pretty much required some sort of gridded surface and tokens for use in battle. The combat system depends on knowing how many squares (inches) away two combatants are, and many rules deal with the exact position of characters as compared to enemies and scenery. For years, I’ve used a slightly-misaligned Chessex battlemat and wet-erase markers for the surface and environment layout, with simple wooden disc-shaped tokens labeled in tape for combatants. Lately, however, I’ve found myself yearning for a more visually evocative battlescape, and I think I’ve found it in the form of Fat Dragon Games’s 3D cardstock terrain.
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Looming Released

Blogs, Digital Games, Games Releases, ,

My latest game, Looming, is up at Newgrounds. Looming is a game about… well.

This game is about two lovers named January and September.
No, wait; it’s about a group of people who don’t believe in the sky.
No, it’s about a pantheon of scientific disciplines.
Or maybe it’s about an ancient beast who knew exactly when it was going to die, and how.

It’s about a place. A place called Looming.

Play Looming on Newgrounds.
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One Measure of Bit.Trip Runner

Blogs, Digital Games, , , , , ,

The other night, I picked up Gaijin Games’s Bit.Trip Runner for WiiWare. This game is the best example of pure, brilliant game design that I’ve seen in a good while. This is the game designer as teacher and leader; it’s what Anna Anthropy calls design as sadism:

As a designer and as a domme, I want the person who submits to me to suffer and to struggle but ultimately to endure: I challenge her while simultaneously guiding her through that challenge. The rules of the game and the level design carry that idea.

Runner does this through the gradual layering of new game elements, high challenge with low punishment, and optional bonus goals. Most of all, though, it guides through repetition. This is a game about rhythm, after all. For my favorite example of this, let’s look at a single measure of rhythm from the game, no longer than 2 seconds, that appears everywhere.
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