Tales from Zobeide

The biggest bottleneck for city generation right now is time; it takes 80 seconds for 2800 buildings. I guess I can just delay the player and make them watch a lot of loading screens? I'm also hoping a "complete" city will have at least 4000, which will probably be about 1.5 million polys -- but they're among the cheapest type of polygon to render, so it'll hopefully be okay. Draw calls seem under control too; I'm merging entire city blocks as combined meshes. (And I'm testing on an integrated card, so it should be fine.)

Postcard from Antiquity

Currently finishing up a geocentric space RTS, another collab with Eddie Cameron, for the Super Friendship Club "Universe" pageant. (Newer interface demo is playable here.) Come make games with us!

Postcard from Yorda

Started working on an Ico-ish game on a whim, now I have a half-finished monster -- all because I have to prove to Unity's Flash export that I'm not going to let it beat me with it's half-implemented functions and dozens upon dozens of undocumented bugs.

Right now I'm just improvising a giant castle thing, and then I'm going to sprinkle some gameplay in there or something -- I've left some empty spaces for puzzles, whatever those will be. Try out the v0.3 prototype here, which'll probably be the last public prototype since so much of this one is about novelty:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19887116/yorda/03/yorda3.html

(click to walk, double-click to run, or just sit back and let the pathfinding work its magic)

Postcard from Zobeide

Zobeide is going to be a hypertext FPS about the danger of desire. I have a decent interface with Twine working, but the seamless level-sharing has been kind of a technical roadblock, with the Playtomic API randomly deciding to fail sometimes. Now I'm thinking I need to have a generic backup city to load in case it can't reach the servers. Next, I need to model some more buildings and think a bit more about the interaction / aesthetic.

About "Territory"

Territory will be up in about a month or two -- it's an upcoming project that will pair critical essays about video games with short browser games that make arguments.

Part of it stems from my longstanding distaste of games criticism / writing that doesn't readily offer a translation from theory into practice, an opinion that probably isn't popular with most writers (the idea that criticism must be "useful" otherwise it's just whining) so I won't dwell on it.

Perhaps the hypothesis here is that words alone aren't the best way to discuss games. Discussing games is maybe a job best left for games: instead of writing 750 or so words on a game, a reviewer should make a short game about the game. Readers' comments would take the form of mods and new levels, mutations of existing rulesets and graphics to make a new point. (Eventually, some enterprising online pharmacy will code a spambot that will make spam levels and spam games.)

But for that glorious future to happen, I guess we need to think more about how we "read" games. As game designers, we're always deeply concerned with how players behave and think. Territory might help with that.

Truly, some pieces of games writing really shine with an additional layer of interactivity, although there's probably a tendency among those who call themselves gamers to disregard these interactions as "gimmicks," as if every digital interaction must require repetition, time, and mastery. Without those elements, these aren't games...

... Because games have mechanics! "Games aren't X!" But every time you say that, it doubles as an open invitation to the entire world to make a game that is exactly X. Maybe even 2X.

(A related tangent: these days, toddlers learn how to swipe, pinch, and click, before they ever learn how to spell or type words. What do we make of that?)

Anyway. If Territory is successful, I'll open it up to wider participation and start playing matchmaker for games writers / game developers. For now, I've talked to a few people and I'm planning on making small games based on their essays. It's a test run. We'll see how it goes. If it ends up failing, well, let this post be a testament to my completely benevolent and well-meaning intentions.