Happion Labs GameDevBlog

Open Letter to Richard Garriott

Dear Richard,

You've been my first game developer hero ever since I took that class in adventure-game-making-on-the-Apple-II from you at Computer Camp in Tahoe while you were working on Ultima 2. I know it's easy to say stupid things in a live interview - but it's also easy to apologize. According to PC gamer, you did say you were better than virtually everyone else you've met--You may not have been trying to toot your own horn but you did. You surely did.--and you did say other people suck. There's almost no context where that isn't asshole behavior. So, yeah, how about that apology.

Maybe it would look something like this: "Dear Shigeru Miyamoto, Raph Koster, Ed Del Castillo, Sid Meier, Warren Spector, Chris Crawford (and you can go on naming names as long as you want here), and everyone else I've met who is a solid designer that I'm unfortunately forgetting right now, I apologize - I didn't mean to say that you weren't in the same league as I am. Also, for all those game designers who are toiling away in the trenches unnoticed, the ones whom I claimed 'suck' - I'm sorry for that too. You don't suck. You have possibly made some sucky design choices, and you can do better, but so can I. Let's all do better."

I think that's what I would do.

Sincerely,

Jamie

Texturing Video Tutorials by Paul Whitehead

Paul, my Energy Hook partner-in-crime, has been teaching texturing at Digipen and, while teaching, has made several tutorial videos:

• Making a tiling texture out of a nonuniform brick wall.
• Making a normal map out of tree bark. (Should be good for any photo where it's hard to tell shadows from natural color.)
• Layered textures and multiple UV sets. (The favorite.)

Only Tom Chick Can Prevent Ratings Inflation

Say what you will about Tom Chick. I believe the guy has integrity. If he doesn't like something everybody else likes, he says so. (And as I understand it, he didn't even get a review copy of the latest X-Com - I guess they were afraid of him - but he gushes over it anyway.) Some people might call that 'being wrong' but it's crazy to think that everyone's going to have the same opinions about a work of art - reviews should be all over the map. With apologies to friends at 343, I dig it. And I miss Shoot Club.

There's been some talk lately about how game reviewing is broken - for various reasons reviewers aren't usually willing to give games less than 7/10. Because the dev is their buddy, because they're low-paid, because the publishers buy advertising space on their blogs, because they got a free copy of the game, and so on. And I agree, it's kinda broken, although maybe not such a big deal - you just have to renormalize.

Anyhow, guys like Tom Chick and Yahtzee Croshaw show that you can really dis on games and, if you know your stuff, get rewarded for it with lots of clicks. (You've got to know your stuff though - there's a reviewer some of my indie friends like to disparage who pretty clearly never plays the games he rips on. He's probably going to have trouble keep a job.) This anti-Halo review may even be the beginning of a new revolution, as a new school of journalists realize they can get eyeballs by being harsh. And maybe we can look forward to a day where videogames ratings have a mean in the fifties, like movies.

Side note: five or so years ago a younger me used to love almost all the games that got 90+ on gamerankings. These days, not so much; these days, 90+ usually means "highly polished retread"...

What Is/Are Your Favorite Twin Stick Shooter(s)?

(Or, on PC, mouse-and-keyboard shooters that act like twin stick shooters.)

Any platform.

GO!

 

Where's the Indie Game Forum For Me?

What's a good forum about playing indie computer games?

I've been enjoying http://story-games.com for my tabletop roleplaying discussion. It's pretty great, though some complain that it's gotten too crowded of late. Anyhow, it has a couple neat features:

• The moderator has to approve you before you start posting. Although he approves just about everybody, that simple step culls a lot of crap posts.
• It's specifically not about designing games; it's about playing them. So people talk strategy, favorite games, post play reports, what games they're looking forward to, ask 'I'm looking for a game like X, what is there?'
• It has a narrow focus - it's not about roleplaying games in general, it's specifically about playing-for-story.

I'd like to find a forum for indie computer games that does the same or similar things. (TIGSource and IndieDB seem like they're mostly for game makers.) I'd like a forum where players of World of Goo, Journey, Desktop Dungeons, Lugaru, N, Cave Story, Braid, and the like (btw, what is the like? what binds these games together in my mind?) congregate and talk about play.

Anything like that out there? 

What could be Ouya's Killer App?

I'm cautiously optimistic about the Ouya. I'd love to be able to put Energy Hook on the big screen in my livingroom without having to jump through endless TCR or being tied to XNA. 

I think the 'killer app' thing is something of a myth - people say that GTA3 sold the PS2, for example, but at the time I checked the data there were 20 times as many PS2's out there as GTA3's. People go a little crazy and they just buy the shiny new console even if they don't know what they're going to play on it. The amount of funding the Ouya kickstarter has already raised is kind of proof of that - people don't even know what they're going to be playing on this thing and already they're lining up to buy one.

But me, there's some game I want to play that makes me buy a console. With the Xbox 360 it was Chromehounds (and what a disappointment that was - my 360 ended up being a Geometry Wars server for the longest time) ... with the PS2 it was Ico ... 

What about you? Is there a game that's currently available on Mac or PC - or coming soon - but not on one of your consoles that would make you say, "Yeah, I'll drop $100 so I can play that on the big screen."

Auro

 Man, I think I'm addicted to Kickstarter. I might need to start budgeting myself.

One thing I backed recently that I have high hopes for is Auro - it's by Keith Burgun, the guy who designed 100 Rogues, which was my go-to roguelike on the iphone - and possibly my favorite roguelike ever. It was highly tactical - even though you're only playing one character, you have access to a lot of powers that can move you and the enemies around the board in interesting ways, which added a level of depth on top of (under?) the usual roguelike resource-management game. Also, it wasn't too long! It's the only roguelike I've ever managed to finish - because it had a reasonable length, I was able to play it multiple times with the different character classes. And the paladin's 'ask god for help' power was hilarious.

Anyhow, it looks like everything I loved about 100 Rogues is coming to Auro and then some. And it's a hex map this time. +1.

I love turn-based games in general. I get to savor the play in a way that I can't with realtime. And I have time to think. But the retail games industry has always said 'turn-based is dead' - even though Civilization has always been such a hit. Good thing we have indie games.

Keith is asking for hardly anything to make this game - he's already hit his goal of a mere $7500 - but, come on, what's that going to buy them? After shwag and overhead and taxes? Maybe a month of dev time for one person if they're in a place where cost of living is low? I'm hoping he raises a lot more.

 

Oh, It's One Of *Those* Days

Been trying to record some footage of the swinging game prototype and it's one thing after another.  The windowed build isn't recording ... my cool debug info doesn't show up in the deployment build ... Bandicam is sucking down too much cpu, making it too slow ... our other computer is fast enough, but refuses to acknowledge the gamepad ...

I'm running out of Saturday. Oh well, nothing for it but to keep plugging along. See if I can get it recording at a decent speed on the gamepad-happy laptop, or maybe get that half-assed mouse support working? 

 

 

Ads?!

As you can probably see (unless you're running an adblocker or looking at this through an rss feed), I broke down and put adsense on the blog. Hey, if it monetizes as well as sixty second shooter, free money.  Should pay for what I'm spending on typepad and then some.

 

 

Did I mention I'm teaching at DigiPen now?

I'm teaching a class this semester, a "Technology for Designers" class - it's a survey of various technological topics (graphics, AI, physics, etc) to give them a good overview on topics they might not go into too much detail with in the rest of their curriculum.

A lot of smart people in that class - they've already taught me some stuff, including some cool Excel tricks.

Already more work than I expected, but seems like it might be a good way to bring in a little extra cash while I continue to foolishly pursue the white whale of indie game development.

Or maybe it's the worst of both worlds: not making enough to support the family, and at the same time taking time away from my indie game development. Hmm....

Whatever. Teaching seems to run in my family, so giving this a shot.