"Keys" by Ryan Trawick, and the emerging shape of post-mod culture and walking simulators

Keys is a newly released single player Source mod, made mostly by Ryan Trawick, that is freely available to anyone with a Steam account.

... Which is made possible by Valve's generous licensing of their Source SDK 2013 Base. This is kind of a big shift in policy for Valve. Historically, mods have been locked to their parent platforms so that they could drive-up sales of triple-A retail (e.g. people buying Arma to play the original Day Z, or Warcraft 3 to play the original DOTA), but something here has changed. Perhaps Valve has decided they have enough money, or perhaps they realized Steam is already a powerful platform to lock-in people anyway. So now, Source 1 is kind of transitioning into more of a middleware platform like Unity or Unreal, though most people outside of the TF2 / CS:GO communities have generally moved on already.

What are Source mods in a "post-mod" age, where they're not even modding a retail game anymore, and they're freely distributed and shared? Can we even still call these things "mods", or have they transcended that type of framing?

Game engine review roundup

Unreal Engine 4. Very good high-end support, integrated vertex-painter, great for making 3D shooty games in huge landscapes. But it's very heavy and assumes you're making a 3D shooty game in a huge landscape, and it feels very bloated if you're not. 7/10.

Unity 4. Good medium-weight engine, with very few game genre assumptions. But that flexibility turns into tedium when you have to re-implement NPC AI / basic movement / damage systems / camera controls / etc. for the hundredth time. Very bad stock controller and GUI support. 7/10.

CryEngine 3. Very good high-end support that assumes you're making a 3D shooty drivey game in a huge landscape surrounded by water. Fantastic foliage and rock placement tools that are useless when that's not what your game's about. 7/10.

Source 1. The 2000-era engine that has aged the best, with its smart bets on image-based rendering and lightmapping. Physics feel tuned so well that Titanfall used the engine pretty much for that. However, has a horribly bad 3D asset pipeline that forces artists to learn an obscure "Quake C" syntax from the early 90s in order to import art -- which, in a 3D engine, is totally inexcusable. 7/10.

Twine. Best-in-class text support, exports seamlessly to all platforms, very little technical friction and learning curve. Very diverse and helpful user community. But text markup scheme feels patched-together and inconsistent, requires users to learn Javascript (?!) for more advanced features. No built-in 3D or multiplayer support. 7/10.

Nostrum and "strategic retreat" into conversation analysis

So I was reading some of the Versu design papers and suddenly it hit me: they're doing a lot of the procedural narrative stuff that I want to do, and yet, their magnitude of systems complexity and authoring was still way too much for what I needed (or could feasibly engineer) for Nostrum.

I am now issuing a "strategic retreat" to all departments and agencies here at Radiator: we're going to leave "strong" procedural narrative alone, and pursue a different model for NPC simulation.

For this new approach, I'm digging up another old idea I had: to think of conversation as the exchange of information. For this, I'm leaning heavily on "conversation analysis" theory from linguistics...

Someplace Else source files (for Black Mesa Source) + "Majestical" env texture set

A year and a half ago, I was working on a Source re-mastering of Adam Foster's classic "Someplace Else" to plug into Black Mesa Source. The appeal of modding a mod to remake a mod was intoxicating. Unfortunately I haven't really touched Hammer since then though, so I think I'm now forced to admit that I probably won't get around to finishing it.

I am open-sourcing the map file and textures I made for it in hopes that maybe someone more motivated can pick it up. If you're interested in finishing what I started, here are some design notes:

Noserudake 2 and the language of development

Noserudake 2 is a fantastic Unity browser game where you balance things on a platform. It is also the sequel to Noserudake 1, and the Japanese developer's changes between installments are telling.

They gave the player direct control over rotating the dais, they enabled real-time shadows and textured the dais to give more depth cues, and the physics objects have been well-tuned to be more forgiving and have more weight and heft. Also, the slapstick shift between level 4 and level 5 is pretty brilliant, a joke through level design that transcends language barriers. But one of the most glaring new changes in Noserudake 2 is that the developer has added English translations alongside all the in-game Japanese text. The developer is clearly conscious that they also have a Western anglophone audience following their work. But why are they accommodating us?

I'm nicer in person, honest

There's a profile of Harry Lee / Lost Levels in Polygon, and I'm quoted heavily, but kinda as more of the crass anti-corporate provocateur foil to Harry's deeper philosophical positions.

(Which is obviously just a writerly device because hey, I work for NYU, considered by some to be one of the most destructive forces against public education and local communities ever imagined. I'm a fucking sellout! Though I guess I was asking to be cast that way, especially when I gave that soundbite that the Ken Levine talk was boring. But it's okay if it was boring, because the purpose of booking Ken Levine was to sell tickets and introduce people to basic questions in procedural narrative. Does that make it a good talk? Roger Ebert would've said yes, because it did what it was trying to do; I would say no, because we should always make higher demands of discourse.)

(Anyway.) I think I'm okay with playing that role in the article, because it gets the point across that there's more than one agenda and Lost Levels isn't one particular thing. I just wish more agendas got more represented in the article: like Harry tweeted, Mattie Brice, Toni Pizza, and Ian Snyder, are Lost Levels co-facilitators who deserve credit for their valuable work, and it's as much their stories (and everyone who came to the event!) as ours.

Also, I think much of my criticism on GDC in the piece (e.g. it's expensive and the expensive talks are rarely good) orbited around one main point that got only paraphrased briefly in it:

Spring 2014 quarterly progress report

A progress report on "small" projects:

"Intimate, Infinite" is 80% done, and it's for the Series pageant at makega.me. It will be done soon. I've kinda surprised myself with how much I'm putting into it, so I think I'll sell it for pay-what-you-want.

"Vaquero" is about 50% done, and it's for the Space Cowboy Game Jam. It will probably be done soon.

"Peon" is about 50% done, and it'll be a larger project for most of June, alongside prepping Nostrum for exhibition at GaymerX2.

Notes on discontinuity and interiors in open world games

To enter a different level in Thief 4, you frequently have to mash [E] to pry open glowing windows (or lift fallen wood beams) as the game "seamlessly" loads the next level in the background. You will see this screen a lot.

An "open world" is a marketing tool / level design structure where the game world is gradually loaded or "streamed" as you explore it, so that it seems like one large long continuous level. In many respects, this continuity is an illusion; the game developers built the world in chunks and the game engine thinks of the world as chunks, but players experience the chunks as they're stitched together. It's an immersionist fantasy -- of no loading screens or progress bars, of seamless transitions between worlds.

But as I mindlessly mashed the [E] button on my keyboard for the 30th time to enter a different level in Thief 4, I realized that (a) this is a really bad attempt at hiding load screens, and (b) I tolerated the (brief but just as frequent) loading screens in Skyrim much better because those are honest about what they're doing. A loading screen unambiguously signals discontinuity to the player, a break between parts of the world. An open world overworld can only exist if there's an underworld beneath it, and I argue that it's okay (or better) if you clearly mark the borders because it's okay if we stop interacting with a game for a second.

When do open worlds choose to be discontinuous with a menu, loading screen, or lobby? When does one wait to "enter" an interior, to voluntarily break the flow of play?

DECK (Doom Engine Creator's Kit) needs artists and sound designers.

JP LeBreton has recently announced the "DECK" (Doom Engine Creator's Kit) project, an open-source public-domain all-in-one bundle of Doom technology: a game engine + editor + game assets + tutorials, all integrated together and easily accessible. It's intended to empower people to easily make cool lo-fi 3D first person games and it sounds really cool...

... but it needs help. It needs some Doom-style character sprites, some Doom-style environment textures / decoration sprites, and a lot of audio design. Pitch in and help build free indie game tools!

Here's my contribution so far, some painterly-ish pseudo-photo "medieval manor" textures:

It was kind of fun to work at low resolution without having to worry about shaders or 3D meshes or UVs or whatever. I recommend it.

"SERIES" is the first MakeGa.me pageant theme!

"We make game, do you make game? MakeGame is a place for you to show some similar-minded folk what you're working on. Get feedback, discuss design problems, share inspirations. Every couple months we host a pageant. A month-long 'slow-jam' where we all make games to explore a chosen theme. Welcome!"

MakeGa.me is a new game development forum from the ashes of the former Super Friendship Club. A lot of the original guiding principles remain: to learn from each other and help each other make great work. To help motivate each other, there are monthly "game pageants" -- a game jam-like that de-emphasizes winning or losing. Ian Snyder's organizing the first one, focusing on the idea of a "series"...

"Instructions: Make a two or more small games all revolving around one central theme or idea that when taken together form one cohesive whole. Make the games good. For examples of this in other media, you might look to Thirty-Six Views of Mt. Fuji36 or Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird30 or [if you have other examples or items of inspiration, reply below!]

Starts on May 1st, finishes on May 31st. You're welcome to enter any media you prefer, games or not. Disobey any instructions, or follow them rigorously. If you haven't made games before, and aren't sure where to start on the technical side of things, just ask : there're plenty of people here who can give guidance."

Full briefing is here. Looking forward to seeing you all over at MakeGa.me!

Get Better Soon, dev diary #4: conceptualizing input in virtual reality.

This is a development diary series for "Get Better Soon", an NEA-funded gay club VR simulator game I'm making for Different Games. You can check out previous dev diaries here.

Virtual reality is weird and terrible for a lot of reasons: "simulator sickness" is the frequent sensation of nausea that attacks many players, simply from trying to exist inside virtual reality. (There are lot of complex reasons why that happens.) There's something fascinating about that -- a reality where existence makes you want to throw-up. A lot of that bizarre beauty is going to get smoothed-over and destroyed as the technology improves, which is unfortunate.

One of the more upsetting developments in VR progress is the specific user flow and use-cases that the two biggest VR influencers (Valve and Oculus) are prescribing for VR games. They imagine every VR user is going to be seated in front of their computer, with a positional tracking camera on a desk in front of them. The idea is to seat the player so they always know which way is "forward" by their dead reckoning, which simplifies how head tracking will combine with controller or mouse input. That way, it matters less whether you're blindfolded with a screen strapped to your face.

I think this is kind of a conceptually lazy way of solving the "input" problem.

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.

This is what I'm working on, March 2014

What are you working on? This is what I'm working on:

"Get Better Soon" is a VR-powered gay clubbing simulator haiku. Imagine a universe where EA invests heavily in sexualizing men using the latest in DirectX technologies... throbbing, pounding, pulsing bodies -- a perpetual shower. Nothing in the voice of the cicada intimates how soon it will die. A commission for Different Games, made possible with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.

"Charity" is a procedurally-aided Thief-like set in Ciudad, a vast 13th century Moorish boomtown slowly sinking into the ground. You're a "placer", a freelance thug, an alchemist -- you beat people up and turn blood into money. Will you side with the environmentalist royals, the all-consuming corporation, or the industrial workers of the world? Underground we fought the earth together. Inspired heavily by the high-profile failure of Thief 4.

"Nostrum" is a VR-ish roguelikelikelike life simulator about just war theory. You're a freelance pilot based in the Mediterranean Sea circa 1936... well, you would be, if the Fascists would just quit killing your business with all these silly airspace regulations. Over several years you will befriend several islands' worth of alligators, corgis, giraffes, zebras, and more -- and then watch their homes burn. It's Animal Crossing meets Animal Farm, and you're just the small business owner caught in the middle? The first video game ever made about World War II.

"Radiator" is... I don't even know anymore.

GDC 2014 Dance Card

Are you in San Francisco next week? Here's some stuff you could do:

• Critical Proximity, a free mini-conference where game critics mingle and grouse... productively? There's a pretty diverse lineup of speakers here -- non-critics, critical bloggers, academics, developer-critics -- and, uh, Ian Bogost?
• Unwinnable Party, a bunch of games people invade High Tide, a (very) divey bar in the Tenderloin. As far as dive bars go, it's a pretty good dive bar, though.
• Agency Launch, basically an excuse to hangout with people (or play Netrunner?) while sipping somewhat pricey drinks in the "Death Star bar" (you'll understand) overlooking downtown San Francisco.
• The gay game industry group is hosting a night at The Stud bar, which is probably one of the more inclusive gay bars in the city. The first 100 drinks are on them.
• The annual Wild Rumpus party at Public Works, one of the few times when people actually dance. Good game curation too, and within a few blocks of burrito mecca down Mission St. (or hipster mecca on Valencia St.)
• Lost Levels is a free picnic unconference where anyone can give a talk or run a session. Bring a lunch and hangout!
• TIGSource regulars usually invade the local Denny's (on Thursday or Friday night?) for a mini art / work jam. I strongly recommend a "Moons Over My Hammy" sandwich or an Oreo milkshake.

Course catalog at Radiator University, Fall 2014

If I had a university, these are some of the courses I'd run:

PE822 -- CS:GO SPORTIFICATION INTENSIVE (2 units, Detroit campus)
In 1999, Counter-Strike changed the face of multiplayer shooters -- sci-fi gothic fantasy died and "realistic" squad maneuvers became the dominant discourse. The series then languished until 2012, when Counter-Strike: Global Offensive triggered a renaissance in player and level design theory. In this studio intensive course, we will critique this development history and "sportification" of the series while iterating on small levels designed for public and competitive play. (PREREQUISITES: Sculpture I, War Crimes seminar, Basketball II or higher.)

KL72 -- MAKER MAKER (3 units)
Tools like FPS Creator or RPGMaker bring new blood into development communities while manifesting structural critiques of game genres. If something is difficult to do in RPGMaker, can it be said that RPGs should generally not implement that feature? How do the workflows and "grains" of our tools affect our abilities to make things? This course argues that making a new generation of "maker" tools, grounded firmly in new genres, is imperative for articulating a new praxis of game development. (PREREQUISITES: at least 1 linguistic determinism seminar.)

R20A -- COLLAB WORKSHOP, "PERVASIVE ARGS" (2 units, Montana campus)
The "magic circle" refers to the idea that many games clearly demarcate the boundaries between players and those not playing -- e.g. you must be playing a game in order to score a goal, otherwise you're just some person kicking a ball on a grass field. Taking cues from David Fincher's thriller "The Game" (1997), we will act as "puppetmasters" to construct elaborate "alternate reality games" that surround / swallow our players' lives, blurring the line between playing and living. (PREREQUISITES: Metalworking II, Improv Studio 201, and/or equivalent professional experience)

E100 -- ENGLISH 1
Writing expository, analytical, and argumentative essays; developing critical reading and research skills. Review of sentence structure and grammar.

"Get Better Soon", dev diary 2: character art and production value.

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 sign-up to attend Different Games in April in NYC (for free!)

Bodies, much like video games, are routinely commodified -- there are "cheap"-looking and "expensive"-looking bodies. Society devalues and discriminates against certain body types, while affording privileges to other body types. We read video games in much the same way, based on the shape of the game's body... the packaging and production values, and/or "paratext", of a game. Production values are a relatively quantifiable way to impress people and convince them to pay $60 USD for a set of mechanics that have remained virtually unchanged for decades.

What if "queer games" weren't popularly characterized by the do-it-yourself gumption of personal stories, expressed predominantly through webpage text, by artists with few resources? What if Electronic Arts directed their next-gen AAAAA commando-developer divisions to build big budget romantic comedies about time-travelling transgender witches who critique Foucault?...

Sophie Houlden teaches you what 3D normals / "normal maps" are... with lots of pictures!

In case you're wondering, I paint the normals myself, that's a thing you can do when you know how they work ;) pic.twitter.com/FAi6EHe9EP
— SLENDER WOMAN (@S0phieH) March 2, 2014

The indie developer Sophie Houlden has posted a great visual explanation of what "normals" are, within a 3D video game art context. Full explanation is after the jump:

#lostlevels 2014

Me and my fellow co-organizers have announced another incarnation of Lost Levels this year, happening on March 20th in San Francisco. Lost Levels is a casual community-led "unconference"-style picnic that we put together because we think large conferences are good at some things but bad at other things -- maybe Lost Levels could help with those other things? We believe in "radical inclusion", which we try to implement by being completely free with an open submission process.

This year, we are anticipating more people, so we've gone to the effort of acquiring an event permit. (Our venue requires us to get a permit for gatherings larger than 25 people.) We're getting the permit to protect everyone and minimize possible conflict. However, the permit is expensive; combined with the event insurance costs, we are spending more than $3000 on fees alone. If you can afford it, please consider donating.

None of us have much money, so any assistance is appreciated. However, I want to be clear -- we will run Lost Levels no matter how much we raise because we run Lost Levels for you, not for us.

If you'll be around San Francisco, we'd love to see you there -- and we'd love it even more if you gave a short talk or ran a short discussion group or did a small performance. Please sign-up to attend or submit session proposals! (We are especially fond of the weird, the unusual, and the silly.)

A first-time IGF judge with IGF submission advice... and why the IGF doesn't matter?

This was my first year being an Independent Game Festival judge. As an IGF entrant in the past, I found myself confused and frustrated with the judging process. I've realized that a lot of the frustration came from not knowing how the process worked.

(If you're still frustrated with the IGF, though, that's fine. Say so! That's how it gets better.)

"Game Educators Rant" at GDC 2014

At this year's GDC in San Francisco, I'm going to be delivering a rant as part of the "Game Educators Rant" session.

I'm still working out the script and details, but it's generally going to expand on what I've said before -- that game development has a sociopolitical dimension, and developers should actively recognize it and work in this dimension.

It should be an interesting session overall, considering that my esteemed colleague Sarah Schoemann will be delivering a rant opposite mine, arguing against the essentialism of learning code and technical development. Bring it on!