this social network thing I’m doing should be ready soonish. all the stuff works but it looks like a complete mess so I’m currently working on making it look pretty then I should be done!

well, “pretty” might be a stretch, but FINISHED at least

this was my second attempt at 3D modelling! I made a (low detail!) lara croft. it actually didn’t take too long!!!!!

p.s. dat ass

mystery website project update!!!! I’ve been messing around with getting a DIGITALISED design tonight, and I think it looks more or less how I want it to. up until now its all been doodles on paper, and it usually doesn’t translate exactly how I expect from paper to browser, so this stage is pretty important to me and I’m glad its not a complete haphazard mess that I hate. it is quite exciting to see it exist and progress!

the design is hilariously small, I’m working on a 50x50 pixel canvas (like the size of a penny) zoomed in loads. I don’t know what compelled me to do it that way, but it definitely helps a lot to get a more general idea of the main chunks and how they interact with each other, particularly with colours and contrasts. I’ll add detail later, obviously, but as it is it looks pretty neat! its style is more something I’d use for something personal rather than something PUBLIC like this, since its pixelated and playful when I should be aiming for something a lot less intense and more professional! I’ll probably end up leaving it pixelated and ridiculous, I have cravings for dem sweet sweet pixels. IT JUST MAKES EVERYTHING LOOKS SO MUCH COOLER!

although the logo is a really stereotypical logo, I might as well have just googled “logo” or used clipart or something, I don’t know what I was thinking. I ruled out the ideas that included comic sans and a magenta/cyan colourtheme. I think it is for the best.

man, I keep thinking I haven’t really moved forward with this MYSTERY PROJECT WEBSITE THING but I’ve done quite a bit! I’ve got the design more or less ready to start making, all the features are plotted out, and I’m currently learning how to do some of the features that are new to me. adding the fancy shit will come a bit later, but I’m going to start coding the things I know how to do now or tonight, and I’ll learn about and add the bits I don’t know while I’m getting it looking nice and working well. I need to learn a new coding language for some of it though, but luckily I can use basic html for the most part because I’m chaining myself to that tree like a hippy.

ITS OLD BUT IT STILL WORKS, OKAY? I always find some stupid problem with new languages, like they won’t run properly for everyone, and its usually a bitch to make it look the same in different browsers. anyway fuck all that, html is a bullet proof nokia and it does everything I want it to do like play snake and takes photos with 6 pixel resolution and EVERYTHING.

little mini-rant of game design

thatmouseyblog:

okay, so this is kind of obvious, but games nowadays are pretty lazy in design. they teach you things about them in the most obvious ways, without any nuance in how they work. take something like skyrim (a game i love) or call of duty (a game i’m not fond of) for example. skyrim teaches you how to do things in the game and how to get further by text on the screen that tells you everything you need to know. or call of duty’s case, teaches you the controls with one of those stupid diagram things… >.> 

anyway, going back through a lot of games on the super-nintendo and nes systems, watching let’s plays, or just playing them myself, i’ve noticed that in order to play those games well, or even advance through them in some cases, you need to learn through the game being discreet about how it works. the legend of zelda series is a GREAT example of this. in zelda 1, you’re plopped in a world with no sword, three hearts, and a shield. what do you do? well, there’s a little door to the north, so you go in. there’s a sword inside! cool! alright uh, what next? fuck it, let’s just explore around. and there, my friends, is magic. when you stumble upon something (as link would, since he doesn’t have a map) you’re cautious about your surroundings, and it forces you to be careful and smart about your sword attacks, where you go, and generally surviving. solving puzzles in zelda games requires you to understand how the game works. getting through a dungeon even moreso, since you have stronger enemies with more complex patterns to learn. darknuts turn on a square, but if you get to them before they turn, you have a better chance of hitting them without getting hit yourself.

this is why an old-school gamer could go on forever about how to be good at nes or snes games, whereas a new school gamer can learn all about their favourite game, but chances are they had to read about it, or be taught by the really obvious text that a game shoves in your face.

now, i guess this is pretty similar to egoraptor’s megaman sequelitis, but what i’m trying to show is that i miss games like that. i think the last puzzle game that was really intuitive and taught you through experimentation and good design was the portal series, and i mean, we need more games like that that aren’t just puzzlers. when was the last time you played a game that was really rewarding to figure out, get good at, and ultimately complete without the help of obvious text or a walkthrough? 

Fun Is No Longer the Point

tangentialknowledge:

A trend that has been bothering me for a while is that the point of games have gone more and more away from providing a fun experience, this is an issue that should really be addressed by the game industry. 

Realism Doesn’t Equal Good

I am going to apologize in advance to Battlefield 3 fans, I am going to use this game as an example and it is in no why the only example of this in the industry. There are somethings in battlefield that just seem that they were put in there for the wrong reasons, for example the fact that the bullets and rockets in the game are effected by gravity so they drop after a certain distance. It took me a little while to realize why this was happening and why so many of my shots were missing. When I finally realized what was going on, I just had to stop and ask myself why was put in. It doesn’t really add much to gameplay, it does not make the game any more fun, so why did they add it? The best answer I came up with was that it made the game more realistic, but I wonder if someone at Dice asked “Hey, what does this add anything to the players experience?” I think the conversation went more like this:

designer #1: Hey we should make bullets drop

designer #2: Why? How would that add depth to the game?

designer #1: Because it is realistic

There is that word again “realistic”. Well realistic does NOT EQUAL A GOOD GAME, nor does it mean the game is fun. In a lot of cases, it does not even make the game more immersive, going back to the battlefield 3 example, the so called “realism” with the bullet drop pulled me out of the immersion because I thought that the game broke. Another classic example is Transformers, did all those fancy graphics and “realistic” robots make the movie any better, no it still sucked.

We Did This to Ourselves

So why is this happening, why is there this apparent shift from fun and to realism. Well it is our fault. Why, because when people don’t buy Minecraft because of the graphics, it only reaffirms the designers ideas. Graphics rather than aesthetics matter more to these people, and that is the market that the game designers are now marketing towards. So the next time someone sees you playing Minecraft and they say it is stupid solely by looking at the graphics, slap them for me and tell them they are the reason why my games aren’t fun anymore.

well game design (and any creative shit) SHOULD be about pushing limits and trying new things; constantly evolving. its hit and miss, and games these days are way focused on immersion; the recent peak in first person games which put you in the characters shoes - and visuals getting better and better which puts you into the world. a lot of big franchise games like battlefield or call of duty just become rehashes because they’re afraid of trying new things in fear of losing their fanbase - but thats what their fanbase WANT! change! GROWTH! they don’t want to pay £50 for a sequel thats exactly the same as the first game, although call of duty seems to manage it. I guess its something to do with the social dynamic of online multiplayer, but I digress.

realism generally equals immersion - something that looks and acts real is more capable of tricking you into thinking it is real. obviously. but then thats not always true, and its certainly not the only element needed for immersion, although it is the most popularly implemented. actually sometimes I feel its a cop-out for games to be almost purely visual, as if you’re just wandering around this place that looks pretty but theres no real soul to it. I suppose there is a balance you need to meet, and as a designer you should be able to tell whats TOO real so as to be distracting enough to pull you out of the game (like bullet physics, I mean how many players are going to be used to firing real guns?), and whats real enough that it adds something to the gameplay, and hopefully makes players go “man thats cool, i bet i’m the only person to notice that, but so much effort has gone into it”

but yeah, you’re right, realism doesn’t equate to a good game! but it does make it easier to immediately put yourself into the game and feel everything its offering. again, I think you need a balance of having a good concept and story (whether its shown right to you in cutscenes or whatever, or left in the background for you to peak around and find for yourself if you want), having fun/challenging/engaging gameplay, and having it playable to the point where you never feel like you’re playing a game. the real goal shouldn’t be about making it shinier or more real, it should just be about finding new ways to keep players from being broken out of the suspension of disbelief you’re trying to create.

as for minecraft, well that was a risky niche that proved very popular. it was one of the “hits” in the persistent trial and error of indie gamedev, but for every one that gets it right there are a million who get it wrong, or who just aren’t recognised. people bought it, who cares if some people avoid it because its not graphic perfection? let those drooling idiots be roped in by a new shiny gun while you spend your time actually experiencing enjoyment from a game that lasts longer than the initial thrill of buying it.

I do agree that fun isn’t always the point any more, particularly with some of the huge developers. it just seems to be about sticking to what you know to make money, rather than to do what you want (and what you think others will want) to make a good game. but fuck it, there will always be greedy people like that in every creative field, I mean the film industry is notorious for making movies just for money and not producing anything particularly groundbreaking or breathtaking. you just have to try and ignore them and try to support the things that’ll stay fun for longer than the 5 minutes of life they have before becoming obsolete. 

MAN! this Mystery Project I was working on is actually turning out amazingly! considering it was just a neat idea a few days ago, its really taken shape. I fear its something that’ll take me a lot of work though, but I spent tonight getting the design of the website done and honing in all the features, so the important stuff is out of my head. making the website will take a while since there are a few complicated things I’m not quite familiar with, but luckily I actually enjoy coding!

I won’t post designs because I’d rather leave it till its FINISHED, but its a really fun project and I actually think the concept holds some water, so I’m excited to see it to the end.

GO GO GADGET MOTIVATION

I’m going to rant a bit about female characters! my game will have a girl as the main character, and it just so happens that the majority of my creative projects centre around a girl. I don’t purposefully write girls, in fact (and as nauseatingly pretentious this will sound) I often find that my work writes itself and that I have no control over it other than actually uncaging that little creativity ghost that haunts my skull and allowing it to go crazy with a ballpoint pen. regardless, I have my own opinions about writing girls and media that contain female main characters. I feel pretty comfortable writing girls, but they seem to be forbidden territory when it comes to making books and films and games that appeal to people who aren’t female themselves.

firstly I’ll say that being female has nothing to do with how the character grows through the story, or how they react in certain situations, or… anything! I’d say that for the most part, you should be able to keep the script more or less exactly the same but use a male actor instead, and it’ll work just as well. its easy to play on archaic stereotypes when writing girls, which is okay! a character is allowed to be sexy or badass, but I don’t think it should be a main factor of the pitch should ever be based on something like that, i.e. the marketing for something revolves around it being about a sexy girl.

its not about having a strong female character, its just about having a strong character!

so then we come to audience, because thats probably the most important part when you’re doing something commercially. you need a big audience if you want to make back some of the money you put into it, and you want a big audience because you think what you’re making is cool and you want as many people as possible to check it out. so making your main character as much like your typical audience demographic is probably a good idea; a 20-35 year old straight white male is probably the way to go, right? well, it depends. 40% of self proclaimed “gamers” are female, and 50% of who you’re pitching to (the entire world) is twoX, too. heck, if you actually got good at targeting women then maybe it’d bump that up a few notches to make it 50-50.

so theres no real reason to base your choice on your audience samples, but what about empathising with the character? you roped them in by offering them a character they can relate to, but that has to carry on into the game! I’m a guy, and my favourite game as a kid was tomb raider. not because lara croft was badass “despite being a girl”, but because she was badass like indiana jones. and more importantly, just because it was a really decent game. gender didn’t really play any part other than the very rare sexy moments in cutscenes. it didn’t distract from the gameplay or immersion and I never found myself thinking “okay I don’t relate to this game at all because the character is a girl.”

it has to be written in a very genderblind way, which is something recent games (among other things) have got way too conscious about. it feels wooden, because you can tell they’re panicking and overthinking it (and subsequently underthinking the things that matter) trying to meet a brief that no one has any experience in. when they hear it needs a female lead or it needs to be more targeted at a female audience, they immediately look at what else is trending. girls apparently = boobs and sex appeal and pink stuff and being badass but staying nymphomaniacally sexy. and thats it - THATS the plot, because they have focused all their energy on giving this girl the perfect ass that they overlook the important parts. with games with female roles, the hook is the character rather than the actual game; with games targetted at girls, the hook is that its targetted at girls, rather than it being a game girls happen to enjoy more, or the same amount, as guys. it shouldn’t need to TRY to be anything, it should just be what people enjoy it to be.

while it is somewhat empowering for a girl to take on a typically male role and retain her femininity, its still a very medieval approach to designing a strong character. the real key is to realise that men and women both have a rightful place in basically every situation thrown at you in a gameplay environment, and that theres no reason for gender to be shovelled down your gullet. its almost irrelevant unless your game is focusing on a society in which men and women are treated differently. in fact, if executed well, something like that would be respectful, empathetic, and pretty smart! but when the driving force of why this game is different is based on gender its just silly, lazy, and tiresome.

remember all those times when I said something vague like “WORKING ON A NEW MYSTERY PROJECT” yes well this is another post following up on one of those. its a Sweet New Website and service for the whole family to enjoy

!

if I were to categorise it with a level of seriousness i would say its: silly/fun but also borderline useful/actually quite serious