Implementing real-world real-time stamina / energy cooldown timers in Unity C#

In Hurt Me Plenty, I implemented "real-world" cooldown timers, which persist even if the player restarts the program. The cooldown period elapses in "real world" time, not in game time.

This resembles stamina delays in many popular free-to-play games, but it also connects with the design tradition of using real world system clocks to dictate game logic -- maybe certain Pokemon emerge at real world night, or you witness events that correspond with real world holidays, or perhaps you can even kill a boss NPC by setting your console's system clock forward by a week.

Much like the implementations referenced above, mine is quite weak and vulnerable to circumvention and cheating: I simply save a system timestamp in the game's PlayerPrefs, and then check that saved timestamp upon loading the game. If the difference between the current system time and the saved timestamp is less than zero, then the time has fully elapsed and the game continues.

Level With Me, vol. 1 re-release (v1.1)

I have updated my old experimental Portal 2 mod "Level With Me" to work with current versions of Portal 2. This mostly involved repackaging a menu file and rebuilding the sound cache. Assuming you have Portal 2 installed, you can download and play this collaborative interview / playable journalism project at the itch.io page.

• Remember to feel free to stop playing the first chapter at any time.
• Previous posts / notes are here.
• Interview subjects were: Dan Pinchbeck (The Chinese Room), Jack Monahan (Stellar Jockeys), Brendon Chung (Blendo Games), Magnar Jenssen (Avalanche Studios / Valve), Davey Wreden (Galactic Cafe), Ed Key (Twisted Tree Games), Richard Perrin (Locked Door Puzzle)

TECHNICAL SOURCE ENGINE NERD NOTES: It was fun trying to figure out how to update everything; Valve updated every Source game to use .VPK v2, except Portal 2, so it was pretty much impossible to find the old VPK.exe compile utility. Luckily, I had a hunch that Alien Swarm hadn't been updated since forever, and I turned out to be correct. (For anyone who googles for this post, you can grab the one from the Alien Swarm SDK, or download the old v1 VPK.exe here. Make sure you place it in a \bin\ folder with a tier0.dll, and then you can just drag-and-drop folders onto it or a shortcut, etc.)

Lighting theory for 3D games, part 2: a formal approach to light design, and light as depth

Here's how I generally, theoretically, approach lighting in my games and game worlds. Part 2 is about light and function, mostly for level design.

In part 1, I talked about how different light sources have different connotations to the viewer, and these meanings are culturally constructed. In New York City today, an antique Edison bulb connotes trendy bourgeois expense, but 50 years ago it might've been merely eccentric, and 150 years ago it would've been a thrilling phenomenological novelty.

But people rarely intellectualize lighting this way, in, like, your own bedroom. In your daily middle class Western life you don't usually agonize over the existential quandaries of electricity, you just flip the light switch without looking. When in familiar places, we experience light as a resource or tool and take it for granted. So much of our everyday relationship with light concerns its functionality and what it enables us to do.

#altgames is the no-fault divorce that indie games needs

I'm cautious. I've been watching #altgames from a distance. Quite a few years ago, Jim Rossignol said I was supposed to be part of an "alt mod" scene, but by then I was tapering off most of my work as a modder so I'm not sure if such a community ever really materialized anyway. I generally don't like labels with "alt" in them since the alt-ernative can be said to be anything, but I do like what TJ Thomas said at Indiecade East, and I like a lot of games that are "altgames", and I think much of my work shares whatever those altgames sensibilities are... so there's probably some kind of consensus, we just have to keep articulating it?

In my GDC 2015 diary, I confessed I felt disconnected from fellow indies who were concerned with running small businesses and contract negotiations. No one wants a civil war over what "indie" really means, or a witch hunt over who is authentically "indie" or whatever. We all have different relationships with games and that's okay as long as you're not promoting hate speech or something. At the same time, it's ridiculous to pretend that I'm not bored out of my mind during countless GDC conversation(s) lingering on advertising revenues and Indie Fund deals and sales figures, and then people get visibly annoyed with me when I don't say anything and check my phone instead. Where is the way out?

This morning, Zoe Quinn's altgames manifesto at Offworld really crystallized this for me:

#altgames can be the no-fault divorce that we need where we don't blame each other, where we even stay friends with contemporary indie games. We can still have dinner parties and share custody of the kids! However, we also have very different goals and concerns, so let's try not being married anymore, and maybe we'll all be happier for it.

FAQ:

"Local Level Design" at Different Games 2015, April 3-4 in Brooklyn, New York

"American Corinthian" via
Paolo Pedercini

In about 3 weeks at Different Games 2015 in Brooklyn, I'll be speaking about "local level design", a practice of level design that I setup in opposition to industrial AAA level design methods and procedural level design. Local level design is level design concerned with player community, sustainability, and context; it rejects a top-down formalism that demands game levels exist as territories with strategic affordances orchestrated by an architect, and it sidesteps a technological imperative to engineer and articulate a fixed grammar that a game engine must understand. Instead, local level design is highly conceptual, to the extent that few people actually play these levels at all.

If you'll be around the New York City area in the beginning of April, come hangout at Different Games, and perhaps see me talk! Or if you can't, but still want to support the conference, then know that they do accept donations.

Details and stuff (but no schedule yet) are at their website. See you there maybe!