Some dogmas I perpetuate

• When the player does a thing, there should be some possible reason why or situation when they would NOT do that thing. Unless you specifically want it to not matter because ____.
• When the player does a sequence of things, there should be a reason why they did it in that sequence vs. a different sequence. Unless you specifically want it to not matter because ____.
• Things should feel embodied / have "feel" and feedback to them, according to how important they are to understanding what's happening. Unless you specifically want players to not notice it sometimes because ____.
• Your game should occasionally be a little boring, or occasionally be a little exciting. This is called pacing.
• Make the smallest possible game you can make. You can always make it bigger later. Each prototype / iteration is a different game.
• Don't implement most suggestions that people give you. Think more about why they made those suggestions. Also, don't be upset when a dev ignores your suggestion, you're not the one making their game.
• Don't plan too far in advance. Your plan is going to change anyway.
• When tuning, double a value or halve it or increase / decrease by magnitude of 10 or randomize it.
• How you talk about your game affects what your game actually is.

"Get Better Soon" dev diary #3, skin and light iterations

This is a development diary series for "Get Better Soon", a commissioned game I'm making for Different Games 2014. If you want to see it and play it, then come hangout at Different Games next weekend in NYC!

Kris Hammes is finishing up the character. The 3D model geometry is basically "done" so now I'm just waiting for the last texture tweaks like chest hair. In the meantime, I've rigged the model with a standard "HumanIK" skeleton in Maya (so that I can easily re-target animations in Mecanim) and I've configured the shader so I can start figuring out how to implement these characters into the game.

Second time's the charm; procedural NPC dialogue in Nostrum

Last time I tried some type of "procedural narrative" thing, my hubris got the better of me -- naming the system after one of the most famous and influential writers of all-time was, perhaps, just a little arrogant.

Despite my attempt to scope it properly, that system suffered greatly from trying to do too much stuff... It was so much stuff that it was difficult for me to write anything with it. So with the procedurally generated NPCs in Nostrum, I'm developing a much simpler system which will hopefully work better, to solve a smaller problem...

The basis is still the same: Elan Ruskin's GDC 2012 presentation on AI-driven dynamic dialogue in Left 4 Dead 2.