My good friend James works for Planet Moon, and they just finished a cool new iPhone game. It’s called Booty Blocks and it’s very cute. It’s a block stacking puzzle, but with a twist… you can continue to move the blocks after you’ve placed them, including using the iPhone’s tilt sensor to shake the whole stack. Great stuff. Congrats to the team!
This image shows the Google “auto completion” results when typing the phrase “how to”. The idea of auto completion is that the computer will complete the phrase you are most likely searching for based on what other people are searching for. In a round-about way, it tells you a little bit about what other people are thinking… or at least what Google thinks they are thinking! 
Some results, like writing a resume or cooking a turkey, I’d expect given the economy and the season. But others, such as knitting, surprised me. I always find it fascinating to see what the world is pondering.
Brenda Brathwaite recently posted an excellent article on creating a game design doc. Her best advice:
Before you start writing, consider is your audience. Many new designers write documents as if they’re being written for gamers instead of a programmer who’s tired, annoyed and up at 3 a.m. coding your combat system…
So true! Even if you’re just writing implementation notes for yourself, this is an important thing to keep in mind. When there are a lot of complicated rules going on, it’s easy to get bogged down with loose ends when programming the implementation. Unfortunately, this sometimes means important details get overlooked. A careful and detailed list of requirements without a lot of extra hype cluttering it up is invaluable as a checklist when the going gets rough. It will help prevent anything from being missed.
Writing the right amount of detail is a fine art. You need enough detail to make sure everything important is explicitly defined, but not so much that the document becomes so overwhelming that you–or your team–will be tempted to just skim over it when you refer back to it later. Personally, I’m a big fan of writing design docs in html help file format, mainly because most of the editors force you to create drill-down type topics instead of writing the document linearly. Incidentally, many of the editors will also let you save to PDF or other file formats… it’s not the file format that’s important, as much as the concept of writing hierarchically instead of linearly.
Hierarchical format is very helpful when implementing because it allows you to keep track of the big picture with fewer minutiae details in the way while blocking out the architecture, yet you can focus in on the important-yet-tiny things when you implement the specifics. If you have the discipline to do it, keywording individual topics is also immensely valuable as the document grows in size. When programming large systems so many components end up more interrelated than people realize, and good keywords are another tool that help find everything important when you’re coding it up.
The Women in Games International (WIGI) “Celebrity eBay Auction” has started. The auction includes lots of games and game-related books and merchandise, many of the items signed by the developers. Proceeds go to support Women in Games International.
Like many math and science-related fields, only 3% of engineers \ programmers in the game industry are female. Women in Games International’s goal is to help encourage more women to enter the industry.
A couple of interesting items from the list:
IGDA Women in Games and Women in Games International is hosting an industry mixer at the VGXPO video games expo in Philadelphia, and my company is helping sponsor. Cool! The mixer will be Saturday, November 22 and will have food, drink and door prizes… plus, of course, hopefully lots of opportunities to chat with other people in the games industry.
Going to be in town for the show? You can read more and RSVP the event here.
This video is very funny, but it’s also another great example of why it’s important to avoid the game design problem of “death by save file”.
Joel Spolsky (Joel on Software) has a new article in Inc. magazine on the things that can go wrong with commissions and incentive sales plans. The article is ok–interesting, although there is a lot of ground not covered–but it does make me think of a funny story.
Many years ago when I was still in college, I had a PC with a trimline cabinet that was only a few inches tall. As a consequence, it only had three expansion slots. The slots were on a riser board mounted parallel with the mother board, and even that was a pretty tight fit. Now this was back in the day when computers didn’t have video or sound on the mother board, and many didn’t have sound cards at all. Many had only a PC speaker which for the most part produced only one noise: “beep”. I oh-so-wanted a sound card. But I couldn’t install one because my slots were already full with the video card, network adapter and something else I couldn’t remove that eludes me at the moment. I was stuck with no sound card because I had nowhere to put it.
Then, a miracle happened. The hole-in-the-wall computer parts store where I used to shop got a “two in one” card that had a sound card and a video card on the same board! This store sold mainly used and import goods, so most of the items in there were one-offs. Very excited and concerned I might not run across another one, I bought it right away.
Naturally, I got the board home and installed it only to discover the hardware was faulty. Disappointed as I was, I ran a full set of diagnostics to confirm it really was broken. Indeed, it was damaged, so I returned it to the store who kindly refunded my money without any hassle.
A few weeks later, my brother bought me a surprise gift! He knew how badly I wanted a sound card, and he had found a two-in-one sound and video card at the parts store so he bought it right away for me. I laughed. It was the exact same faulty board I had returned to the store just a short time before, the same crumpled box and everything. I returned it to the store, who again gave me a full refund.
Not long later, my dad bought me an early Christmas present. It was the same board again! The exact same board. This was getting downright silly.
I brought the board back to the store and spoke with the salesman. “Doug,” I said, “You keep selling me this board over and over again. You know it’s broken. You know I’m just going to return it again. Why do you keep selling it to me?” The salesman looked at me, leaned closer and said, “Yeah, Lis, I know it’s broken and I know you’re going to return it. But you see: I get a commission on the sale every time.”
Groan. Never would have thought of that one.
From upsilandre: (Be sure to wait for the “inside view”!)
According to the description, the level uses:
- 610 magnetic switches
- 500 Wires
- 430 pistons
- 70 emitters
…and then some!
The Designer’s Notebook: Bad Game Designer, No Twinkie! IX by Ernest Adams is up over at Gamasutra. If you haven’t read the column before, it’s a checklist of bad design choices that will frustrate the heck out of your players. If you missed any of the last eight episodes, you can find a database of all the points here.
This year’s column is particularly good. Points covered are:
- Failure to Explain Victory and Loss Conditions
- Time-Constrained Demos
- Obvious and Cheap Reskins
- Computer Crashed While Saving? Game Over
- Friendly AI Characters That Do More Harm Than Good
- Fake Interactivity
- Bad Gamepad-to-Mouse/Keyboard Conversions
- Setting the Player Up to Fail
- Your Only Save is Immediately Before Your Death
I’m hard-pressed to disagree with much that was said with the exception of time-limited demos. Most of the time, I agree, that time-limited demos are a bad idea. I’d rather have a content-limited demo. If the game cuts me off too soon I can’t tell if I liked it or not. That said, I’ve seen cases where time-limited demos have worked very well. For example, I think PopCap does an excellent job with time-limited demos. I’ve bought several of their games when the demo cut me off and I was eager to play more.
I’ve given some thought as to why some time-limited demos work, and some are just irritating. I think the key difference is not just whether or not the player has had enough time to enjoy the game before the demo runs out, but whether or not the player has had enough time to understand the game before the demo runs out. A casual puzzle game can be understood in a few seconds, and most of the demo is spent finding out if you like it. For an adventure game, you might have to play an hour or more before you understand the mechanics well enough to actually play. If the whole demo is spent learning how to play, you never get enough time to find out if it is fun.
The last point in the article, “Your Only Save is Immediately Before Your Death”, is a really important one. I think we’ve all been bit by this at some time or another; I know I have. You load the game from your save point and die before you have a chance to even do anything. After 10 reloads, you realize you might as well delete the save file. Ernest doesn’t mention it, but this is a critical consideration if your game auto-saves! If you auto-save, be warned that you may have just killed the player permanently if you are not careful.
A new study by Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS) working with Her Majesty’s Inspector of Education and the University of Dundee tested 600 pupils and 32 schools to determine whether Nintendo’s Brain Training games really do improve learning. The answer? Yes! After nine weeks, all students improved their test scores, but students playing the game improved by a further 50 percent than the control group.
Also in the news, companies too are researching whether games can improve your cognitive abilities. From CNN:
Could playing computer games enhance mental agility enough to turn people over 50 into better drivers? Allstate Corp. wants to find out, and if the answer is yes, it might offer insurance discounts to people who play the games
The article goes on to state that the games aren’t specifically driving-related, but rather designed to raise visual awareness and reverse age-related cognitive decline.
“Multithreading is just one damn thing after, before, or simultaneous with another.”
- from “C++ and the Perils of Double-Checked Locking”
Jonathan Rush at pig-brain has an excellent tutorial on building 3D character joints so they animate properly. Building shoulders and elbows that deform properly is something a lot of new artists have difficulty with, and even experienced artists struggle with from time to time–especially when working low-poly!
The SoftImage site has a great case study on the making of MGS4 with lots of wonderful images for those of you interested in some behind-the-scenes pictures of the game design process.
From Kate MacAlpine, a trainee at Cern:
A friend sent me the link to this video, and I have to say, this is the most clear and direct explanation of the difference between linear processing and concurrent processing I’ve ever seen. …That, and it’s just darn cool to watch a 1100 barrel paintball gun get fired.
I worked on EA’s Tiger Woods PGA Tour Golf 2000, as well as the “Play Against the Pros” patch for Tiger ‘99, so this particular game series will always have a place in my heart. Even that aside, this video had me absolutely in tears laughing as EA pwns a “glitch” in the game.
Local developer Crunchtime Games is launching Shred Nebula in just a few more weeks. Check it out on XBLA on September 3rd!
Many times people ask me if it’s possible to create two disconnected shapes from one sculpted prim–without resorting to alpha maps. The answer is yes, you can! It can be a little tricky depending on the shape, but it absolutely can be done. Today I’ll show you how using the AC3D exporter.
Two disconnected shapes made with one sculpted prim.
Well, the Spore Creature Creator has been out a few days now. It’s pretty fun!
I was really curious about the animation system, since that’s been the subject of several tech talks the last few years. I must say it works remarkably well, especially considering the number of bizarre creature shapes that are possible. Great stuff.
Longhorn Bullipede
Antadillo
Zog the Zig-Zag Frog
Eric Gooch of Insomniac has an excellent tutorial on Creating the Lighting for Resistance: Fall of Man. The best part of the tutorial are the “before and after” shots that show how each scene looks lit and unlit. A lot of people underestimate the importance of good lighting, but these pictures really help make it clear. Well worth the read!
Remember growing up with paper and crayons when you were a kid? Remember handing your doodles to your parents to hang on the refrigerator? Ah, fond memories. Kids and art may be timeless, but the methods sure have changed! A true child of the digital age, my little girl just made her first 3D model and asked me if I would post it on my blog. So here it is.
It’s a candlestick. Pretty cool, eh?
Want to know what the Mars lander is up to right this minute? Read the Mars Phoenix twitter. Best part: it’s written in the first person from the pov of the craft!
A new version of the AC3D texture monitor plugin is available! This version adds a “smart update” feature that prevents the same texture from being reloaded multiple times, even if you use the texture multiple times in your scene. The texture monitor now also ignores files who’s “last modified” time stamp has not changed on disk within the last 10 minutes, so textures you haven’t changed don’t get reloaded. This should make load times much faster, especially in large, heavily-textured scenes.
Enjoy!
Read about the texture monitor or download the file here.