GRG's Miscellany

What? I participated in my first itch game jam and it was great fun.  I thought I'd write a postmortem for posterity and in case anybody might find it useful. The jam The game Art apps used: GIMP , Pinta , Tiled Sound apps used: Beepbox , Audacity Engine used: Godot How I came to the game jam I used to work as a game programmer and I've always harboured my dream of making my own games.  I'd been to my local game developer meetup , and we'd discussed itch game jams as a motivational tool.  When the Easter holidays came around (I'm a full-time teacher), I decided I would take the plunge.  I chose the 8-bits-to-infinity jam because the constraint of only using two buttons intrigued me. Initial ideas for the game With such a strong limitation as only having two buttons, I decided to start with the mechanics.  Having played Micro-Machines on the PSX back in the day, I remembered playing 4-player with only two controllers.  Each player had hal...

This morning I have attempted to model a low-poly WW2-style twin-engine aeroplane.  I wanted it to be somewhere between a DeHavilland Mosquito and a P-38 Lightning.  It turned out more like a mosquito, and there are plenty of tweaks I'd like to do.  However, it is intended for use in an exploration of a 3D flying shooter idea.  Not sure if it'll be bullet-hell or Starwing-esque, but it'll be a thing.  That's the incredibly specific and in-no-way-flawed plan.

Batman: Arkham Asylum is a great game.  It has made me feel like a brutal martial arts expert, a stealth-killer, an elite techno-hacker - all the things that Batman is.  To my mind, that's what a game is for: it makes you feel like you're another person, in another universe so you can experience their story. However, the game has reached a shelf-point for me.  I hate rage-quitting, but that's what it made me do.  I'm not sure if I'll go back to complete it.  I'll explain why. Two types of battle which work really well: Firstly, fighting off a mob of henchmen, with the combo and counter moves.  It makes me feel like Batman: I feel anxious to avoid being hit, I weigh up the individual opponents and choose which to take out first, I spread my attacks between multiple opponents and choose a variety of special moves to help.  I also like that it slows down time a bit when you need to counter, so you have time to realise it and press the appropriate b...

Safe Area Gorazde by Joe Sacco is a graphic novel which is far from an easy read. It tells the stories of people from the former Yugoslavia, and the atrocities they experienced. It is powerful, compelling, harrowing - but not enjoyable. I still haven't finished it because I simply can't take reading it for more than a short while at a time. I imagined a game designed to express the same harrowing stories. It would put the player into the situation, presenting them with the desperate decisions - trying to harvest fruit under sniper fire, or trying to slip through to the Red Cross post across the river, avoiding the soldiers executing civilians on the bridge. It was tastefully done - not comic - not fun. Developing it would be difficult to get right. Exposing enjoyment in the atrocities would turn the game into a sick joke. Joe Sacco managed to avoid this when producing his book. Graphic novels are all to often dismissed as mere comics, but he showed me they can sens...

I've decided to open my blog with a response to an article which I took exception to. I urge you to read it before continuing, but at the risk of misrepresenting it, I shall summarise here. The article extols the virtues of shared experiences in MMOs, where players use their experience of playing the game to enhance their enjoyment of the social aspects of it. Indeed, I think it shows convincingly that experiences common to sizeable groups of players are quite essential to MMOs. However, it also contrasts shared experiences with algorithmic content as if it's some kind of opposite. Now, the author may be talking about a specific type of algorithmic content, but that's not made clear. It's not shown how algorithmic content supposedly undermines shared experience - it's just asserted that it does. Game flaws which are the result of bad design are attributed to algorithmic content itself, rather than the designers of that content. I think this displays a lac...