Postcards from TikTokland: week 1

A week ago I threatened to make some TikToks. I set a personal goal to make one TikTok a day, just simple basic daily vlog stuff of whatever I was already doing.

And now it's been a week and I've done it. I now have a modest following and a TikTok profile page (@radiatoryang) with a full grid of videos. I feel a lot more capable with the video editing tool now, and sometimes I even have a little fun when making videos.

Here's a recap / post mortem of my first 7 videos and what I've learned from making them...

A foray into TikTok / notes on social media aesthetics

So I've finally done it. I've made a TikTok account (@radiatoryang). Forgive me.

I still prefer text over video, and I certainly don't intend to "pivot to video"... but it was feeling increasingly foolish to lack the video skills / cultural context of virtually everyone under 30 in the entire world.

Now I'm not a total stranger to making video. I used to do weekly level design streams called "Level With Me" on Twitch, where I gained a decent sized following with regular viewers and even some paid subscribers, but the lockdown-era gauntlet of remote teaching marathons quickly burned me out and irrevocably soured me on what used to be a fun hobby.

For this foray into TikTok crafting, I'm approaching it somewhat slowly and methodically...

"After School" - from LAN Party (2024)

photo of a random 2000s era US cybercafe

(This personal essay was written for LAN Party, a nice photo book about LAN gaming culture curated / edited by merritt k, along with many more essays like this one. You should buy the book and give it nice reviews. For this blog post version, I've made a few edits and added some pictures / links.)

After School

Sometimes on Fridays after school, a bunch of us would meet up to play video games.

We went to a cybercafé called CyberLab, which sounds like the generic yet clearly evil corporation in an 80s action movie. But no fancy cyber word reflected the reality of this place: a dingy room filled with surplus office furniture and overheating computers. It was probably more than a little smelly. Yet it was ours.

Upcoming game dev events in Australia and New Zealand, June - August 2025

Down here in the other hemisphere, Australians and New Zealanders are approaching winter... which means it's time to leave the beach and attend some game developer events. 

I'll be participating in a few public events this season:

• June 7-8, 2025: Frosty Games Fest @ online. We'll be premiering some Tryhard gameplay footage at this upcoming fresh new exciting Australia / New Zealand themed online games festival, featuring demos and trailers from AU / NZ designers and studios. If you're a streamer / video creator / journalist, fill out the form on their website for access.
• July 19, 2025: Wireframe @ Auckland, New Zealand. I'll be giving a short level design talk at the local game development conference here in New Zealand's largest city. You can check out the Wireframe speaker schedule here. There's also a planned games showcase for locals to submit their games. Join the Auckland Makes Games discord for info and updates.
• July 31 - August 2, 2025: Freeplay / Angles @ Melbourne, Australia. I'll (probably) be around at Australia's longest running indie games festival. Last time I was in Melbourne in 2018, I got the opportunity to make a gay AFL-themed alt ctrl game, and this year I have even more to say about sports games and sexuality. Speaker applications for 15-30 minute talks are still open, the submission deadline is June 3, 2025.

Lastly, if you're interested in keeping up-to-date with the Australia / New Zealand game dev community, sign up for the Indie Dev Digest newsletter by Meredith Hall. She also maintains a list of ANZ games events and a list of ANZ game funding initiatives too.

Space is not a wall: toward a less architectural level design

(This post is adapted from my micro talk "Teaching and Rethinking Level Design" at the GDC 2025 Educators Soapbox session. That's why it mentions "students" in the slide above.)

People want to do level design. They grow up playing games like Minecraft, Roblox, Fortnite — all 3D games with 3D worlds. And to create 3D worlds, supposedly you need this thing called “level design.” Then when you search YouTube, you'll be told that level design is about implanting secret lines that "guide the player" into walking down hallways. Such is the power of ARCHITECTURE! 

But this is not how architecture works, nor how level design works. Imaginary invisible shapes cannot mind control players, and even if they could, no one needs to be mind controlled to walk down a hallway. 

No one plays games like this, but why do we think we do? What's going on here?

Tryhard dev log - Cutscene and Game Scripting with Yarn Spinner v3.0 beta

In our upcoming game Tryhard, we have cutscenes and dialogue and level scripting like many other RPGs. This dev log is about how we’re implementing some of that stuff in the game. 

(Note that I'm writing this post mostly for fellow Unity game devs, but even if you don't happen to be a dev, maybe you'll appreciate this technical behind-the-scenes look anyway? Just let all the game dev words and lingo wash over you like a summer rain.)

We’re using the free open-source dialogue system plugin Yarn Spinner v3.0 beta 2 as our main scripting and story plugin. I’ve written about Yarn in the past and I'm finding this fresh new version 3 to be a great upgrade with useful features, even while in beta. For more info on these features, see the Yarn Spinner docs "Coming in v3" page.

Here’s how we’re using some new YS3 features for some cutscene and scripting stuff in Tryhard:

Yep I'm at GDC 2025 (links / presskit / dance card)

Yep I'm attending GDC 2025. (For better or worse, I've made too many commitments to cancel.)

The best way to contact me is to @ me on BlueSky or email me ( yang.robert.w [AT] gmail ). You can also probably just find me lounging in the Yerba Buena Gardens on most non-rainy noon-afternoons.

If you're press / journalist / podcaster / creator / TikToker / YouTuber / writer etc. and you need content to feed the Machine -- contact me (see above) and I'm happy to talk about whatever to help you:

• General video game opinions / GDC gossip.
• For 2-3 years I've been contributing level design to Big Hops (check us out at Day of the Devs) and I've learned a lot about making 3D platformer levels
• But for a demo / better sense of the game, contact the director Chris Wade ( chris [AT] luckshotgames.com ). A lot of the dev team will be hanging around GDC too.
• I'm also speaking at GDC about the difficulty of teaching level design and writing The Level Design Book, now a top search result and community resource used in multiple schools and studios.
• I'm also here as part of a New Zealand government trade group, with generous support from NZ CODE. It's funny to be part of a "foreign" delegation "visiting" my home country. I can talk about what NZ is doing at GDC, the local NZ game industry, or explain NZ in general (is it really like Lord of the Rings?)
• I'm here pitching our upcoming game Tryhard, a tactics RPG about managing an underdog rugby club.
• If you fund / publish games and Tryhard seems interesting / you just want to connect in general, email me ( yang.robert.w [AT] gmail ) and we can probably figure out a last minute meeting or demo too.

Below, my event schedule / dance card for the week:

Tryhard devlog - about the setting, game world, and worldbuilding

Now that we’ve announced our upcoming game Tryhard (... WISHLIST ON STEAM?) I can talk more openly about our design and development process for it.

Today's post is about the game's setting, world, and worldbuilding.

Like many RPGs, Tryhard has an explorable 3D town hub where you can talk to NPCs, visit shops, and randomly barge into homes to steal things. These RPG towns usually exist in a magical fantasyland of make-believe, but Tryhard's town is based on an actual real-life magical fantasyland of make-believe called Auckland, New Zealand! 

Specifically, you live your RPG life in a unique IRL neighborhood known as Karangahape Road (pronounced like "ka-rawng-ah-hawp-ey").

Radiator University, Spring 2025 course catalog

Welcome back to Radiator University! Although it's been 7 years since we last offered any courses, we wish to assure you that we're absolutely open for business and/or scholarship, thanks to a fresh funding injection from Hegemony Capital, which will never compromise our academic mission in any way. 

Here's a sample of our new course offerings for the upcoming Spring 2025 semester:

AG 3532 - FOLIAGE AND TERROR
What is the reality of a forest, and how do we reconcile this with the virtual plantations infesting video games? While studying forest ecologies, we will survey various digital foliage tools such as SpeedTree and TreeIt. Students will then work in groups to "plant" virtual forests; with each week, the virtual forest must undergo 10 years of simulated growth. Then in partnership with Landwirtschaftliche Rentenbank, students will spend the second half of the semester in Austria training as industrial arborists while studying the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke. Even as arborist-poets, can we ever truly know the whole of the forest, across all time and space, virtual and material? As Rilke would say - every tree is terrifying. (2 credits)
($30000 USD lab fee, 50% deposit required upon enrollment. Work Study students ineligible. Prerequisites: Advanced Austrian German or equivalent.)

The year of the blog? + how to easily put a Bluesky feed widget on your website

V Buckenham has declared that this is the year of the blog. I suppose I shall answer the call. It must be so.

I used to blog with shocking regularity -- at my peak (or my lowest point?) I was writing 2-3 posts a week. I can't imagine doing that now. But maybe I can commit to a 2-3 posts "every now and then"?

***

As long as we're strolling down memory lane: my most loyal readers may recall this blog used to have comments and a personal Twitter feed in the sidebar. I'm not bringing comments back, but I've gone ahead and added a personal Bluesky feed widget that displays a few of my most recent posts in the sidebar -- just like it's 2010. (If you're reading this on mobile, you'll have to switch to the desktop version to see the sidebar.)

Figuring out how to add a Bluesky feed widget was surprisingly complicated to figure out, but then very simple to execute. Useless google searches would have you believe that you have to sign-up for a weird widget scam service with a fake free plan, and the official Bluesky website only offers tools for embedding an individual post as a widget.

But if you can paste HTML, then you too can have a free and easy Bluesky feed widget on your website or Blogger or Wordpress or whatever. Here's my very authoritative guide:

New game announcement: "Tryhard" + "A Sportslike Manifesto"

Tryhard is an upcoming sports RPG about managing an underdog rugby club in New Zealand.

We're still quite early in development. But for now, it'd really help us if you wishlisted the game on Steam or idled in the Discord, mostly so we can show those stats to convince rich people to give us money to finish making the game.

If you're interested in why we're making this game / what's going on...

"What's on your bookshelf" at Rock Paper Shotgun

Just a brief update here -- I recently had the honor of participating in Rock Paper Shotgun's "what's on your bookshelf" interview series.

It's one of my favorite gaming journalism things happening at the moment, full of interesting book recs and observations from smart people like Alice Bell, Josh Sawyer, and Xalavier Nelson Jr. Check out the full series listing here.

The implication is that I too am also a Smart One. And indeed filling out the questionnaire made me realize I mostly read non-fiction these days. I suspect an English literature degree turned me into a snob. I'm so disconnected from modern popular book culture (e.g. BookTok) where some game devs like Holly Gramazio are making new careers as authors writing fun books that people actually read. I'm jealous! I want to read and write fun things too!

re: the unannounced rugby project, it remains unannounced. It's intended to be a more commercial game, and in business-land apparently you're supposed to be careful about when you start talking about something. All I'll say is -- I've been interested in horniness and sports for a while, and embracing sport is probably one of the next big "trends" in queer culture. Hopefully this game won't miss the peak.

On "Sudden Death" by Cecile Richard, nat_pussy, and isyourguy

As a fellow gay Australian Rules Football gamemaker, I am honor bound to write about Sudden Death by Cecile Richard and nat_pussy with help from isyourguy -- a 30-45 minute "romantic sports fiction" interactive fiction / visual novel about an underdog Aussie footy team doing crimes and gayness. Yet beyond matters of honor and gayness, there's still plenty more to recommend about it.

Sudden Death was originally released for Domino Club, an occasional month-long game jam with anonymous submissions. Eventually you're allowed to out yourself -- turns out the now-revealed Cecile Richard and nat_pussy have made lots of Bitsy and Twine-like works already, and all that experimental queer storytelling experience shines through here.

SPOILER WARNING: vague spoilers, nothing specific.

Design review: Botany Manor as a quiet dark detective game

Botany Manor is a 3 hour first person puzzle game about growing plants while exploring a big beautiful fancy house that smells like British Bake-Off.

The main design inspiration here is obviously Gone Home, with a central family-based ambient narrative, household duck homages, and gradually unlocked doors. Many would also compare this to The Witness' soft visual style and sprawling sunny gardens. 

But when you actually play this, it turns out neither of those are useful comparisons. Gone Home anchors its story focus with voice acting, narration, simpler puzzles, and wry realism. The Witness fully commits to hundreds of puzzles at the scope of an open world game. Neither of these really get at the player experience in Botany Manor.

Instead, I think Botany Manor is most usefully compared to The Case of the Golden Idol / Return of Obra Dinn.

SPOILER WARNING: this post spoils the game's overall design structure / puzzle patterns, and spoils the general story and ending.

new Quake map: "Taught By Thirst" for Remix Jam

Taught By Thirst is a new Mesoamerican themed single player Quake map that I made for Remix Jam, a 3 week community level design event where we all adapted multiplayer maps from other games for Quake. 

The definition of "remix" was kept loose on purpose, and anyway some of the fun is in figuring out where the map came from... although that's not the case with mine: I clearly adapted de_aztec by Chris "narby" Auty from Counter-Strike.

In this post I will talk about my inspiration and intent. I also explain what happens in the level. If you want, play it before reading this post. This is your last SPOILER WARNING.

new jam game: Where's the beef

I released a quick little jam game about 2 weeks ago, but I realized I never posted it here, so here it is:

"Where's the beef is a silly little beef-finding web browser game made in zero hours for 0h game jam 2023 (http://www.0hgame.eu/) where we make games in "zero hours" when daylight savings time switches over (in Europe)"

"15 levels of beef finding; literally photorealistic graphics; can YOU find the beef???"

For all the zoomers / teens reading this -- "where's the beef?" was a popular catchphrase in a Wendy's ad campaign back in the 1980s...

Design review of Against The Storm, by Eremite Games

Against the Storm by Eremite Games (Steam page, official site) is a popular 2.5D town-building run-based RTS with a Warcraft 3 inspired aesthetic and a deckbuilding meta-game progression.

You spend an hour building a base while fulfilling randomized mini-goals for victory points. When you have enough victory points, you leave that base behind, and restart on a new map to build a new base to unlock more buildings and resource types and perks to add to your shuffled deck of possible choices. This all ties into an overarching "world map" meta to unlock more bonuses.

It's well-made and I can see why it's popular, but design-wise, I feel it's overburdened with too much stuff...

Design review of Redfall by Arkane Studios Austin

I completed the main campaign in Redfall (official site, Steam, also on Game Pass), a 4 player co-op open world shooter by Arkane Austin, who's mostly known for detailed single player story-filled action games. The reviews and player reaction haven't been positive, but as an Arkane fan I felt compelled to play it for myself and take it on its own merits.

Overall I feel it's an OK game that's basically playable, despite the bugs and aggressive texture streaming and general unfinished feeling. If Microsoft had given them another 6-12 months to truly polish everything, then it maybe would've been a more solid OK game. 

Anyway I didn't mind the incompleteness so much because I was playing less for fun, and more "for work", as a first person game developer. In this sense, playing a 75% finished game is more useful than playing a 100% finished game. You get to see more of the big broad strokes before they got quite resolved, the intent vs. the execution. 

So this post will focus on my read of the general game design and player experience.

SPOILER WARNING: lots of general systems spoilers and gameplay screenshots, some story spoilers

The joys of the anti-farm sim: "Before the Green Moon" by turnfollow

SPOILER ALERT: This post SPOILS what happens in Before The Green Moon. I strongly recommend playing it first.

Before The Green Moon (on Itch and Steam) is a post-apocalyptic indie Harvest Moon / Stardew Valley / Animal Crossing inspired farm life sim about scraping by, in a decaying rural truckstop town with bored depressed locals you gradually befriend (or ignore).

I was surprised Turnfollow was working in this big systemic genre space, since I mostly know them for their very good linear story games Little Party and Wide Ocean Big Jacket. But you can see the "seeds" of this game (ha ha) in their wartime gardening game A Good Gardener so maybe it's not so unexpected...

From the beginning, you're given an ultimate end goal: earn enough company scrip to buy a ticket to the moon. Instead of a raccoon banker oppressing you with a mortgage, it's a faceless Moon Company exploiting every poor soul left on this post-apocalyptic Earth. Brilliantly, the already astronomical price of the moon ticket actually increases during the game. Imagine if Animal Crossing had the bravery to charge interest on the home loan!

Well, Before The Green Moon is brave, brave enough even to suggest that farming isn't exactly a picturesque Hallmark movie. Instead, you're stuck in this abandoned GameCube game and you need to somehow earn enough to buy a moonshot out of this dump. How are you gonna do it?

Double Fine PsychOdyssey recaps / viewing guide, episodes 01-17

Last month, game industry documentary makers 2 Player Productions debuted a massive 32-part YouTube game dev doc series Double Fine PsychOdyssey, chronicling the development of Psychonauts 2 from its earliest glimmers of pre-production in 2015 to its final release in 2021. 

I assumed it was mostly for fans but after watching all 32 episodes (on 2x speed, skipping some parts) I've changed my mind and now I think it's essential viewing for all game designers / devs. It shows the everyday work of medium-scale commercial game dev in unprecedented detail: the creative high of successful collaboration as well as the ugly prototypes, grueling bug fixes, and painful miscommunication. There's also a thrill of access, where the camera captures vulnerable moments it wasn't quite supposed to see. The most epic public post-mortem ever.

As a public service, I've written a short text summary and some notes for each episode. This recap post / viewing guide covers only the first half of the series (episodes 01-17) and I'll try to write-up the second half later.

SPOILER WARNING: obviously, these recaps spoil what happens in each episode.

Unity WebGL tips / advice in 2023

I recently released a Unity WebGL game and the process was a bit painful. Here's what I learned...

In summary: 

• I was using built-in pipeline and didn't try URP. (HDRP is definitely out of the question btw)
• Unity WebGL support isn't bad, and WebGL performance is even OK, as long as you treat it like a ~2015 mobile device in terms of capability and performance. Don't throw a lot at it, especially because iOS browsers can't do a lot...
• ... because it's 2023 and iOS WebGL performance is still pretty shitty even with Apple's promised ANGLE WebGL 2.0 support. You should expect to do a lot of mitigations and workarounds just so iPhones and iPads don't explode. Meanwhile, Windows and Android browsers are generally solid and reasonable. (In case you can't tell, I'm pretty annoyed with Apple.)
• Here's what'll happen to you: your WebGL build tests on your desktop browser will work fine and you'll be pleasantly surprised... and then you'll try it on an iPhone and it'll be a mild disaster where you spend a week or two fixing all the various ways it explodes.

(Note: this is current as of Unity 2021.3.11 LTS + iOS 15.)

That Lonesome Valley as cowboy coin crusher

SPOILER WARNING: This post spoils what happens in my new game That Lonesome Valley. If you care about spoilers, play it first. It'll take about 30 minutes.

CONTENT WARNING: This post contains discussion of gay sex acts and some screenshots with obscured pixel art nudity. It's mostly "safe for work" even if the actual game is not.

That Lonesome Valley is a short gay cowboy romance game about walking, sheepherding, and kissing. 

Back in 2019 I made an unfinished prototype for a Gay Western game jam to contemplate the anniversary of influential gay cowboy film Brokeback Mountain (2005). Three years later, I've finally finished it. This final release now has gay sex, smoochin', and other important new features. 

I'm still not quite happy with how it turned out, but at this point I guess I'm just gonna have to live with it. As usual, I've written about what happens in the game, and I detail some of my creative process, intent, inspirations, and what I hope to contribute to gay cowboy discourse...

Indie game capsule reviews: Immortality, Wayward Strand, Cult of the Lamb, Betrayal at Club Low, Atuel

SPOILER WARNING: I keep specific story spoilers vague, but I do have to talk about what happens in the games somehow. So I still kinda spoil the player progression / interactive arc. Sorry.

What are people playing and talking about these days? Well, I don't know anything about that. But here's what I'm playing and what I'm talking about:

• Immortality
• Wayward Strand
• Cult of the Lamb
• Betrayal at Club Low
• Atuel

new Quake map: There's a Certain Slant of Light

These are design notes about my process and intent, and it may spoil what happens in the level.

I made my new single player Quake map "There a Certain Slant of Light" for the Quake Brutalist Jam, a 2 1/2 week long map jam focused around making chunky modernist concrete themed levels.

I actually made most of this level around two years ago. I wasn't really happy with it, so I never released it. Though when I fixed it up for this jam, I ended up keeping most of the layout and geometry. Maybe it wasn't such a bad map after all? 

The two big changes I made were the texturing and the monster placement / player flow...

"Voluntary Attempts to Overcome Necessary Obstacles" at EFA Project Space, Sept 23 - Oct 29, 2022

My gay historical bathroom cruising game "The Tearoom" is part of a new upcoming group exhibition "Voluntary Attempts to Overcome Necessary Obstacles" at the EFA Project Space in New York City, curated by Nicholas O’Brien. 

The show will run for about a month, from September 23rd to October 29th, 2022. Although I won't be there, since I currently live on the opposite side of the planet, I encourage you to check it out. There's a lot of great people and good stuff.

I've copy-and-pasted the exhibition blurb below:

new Quake map: Breakfast Under The Balloons

I made a new single player Quake 1 map called "Breakfast Under The Balloons" for the community map pack Coppertone Summer Jam 2, where mappers were encouraged to make sunny summer-y themed maps using the popular community rebalancing mod Copper.

I like making sunny maps anyway, and the first CTSJ back in 2020 was when I made my first Quake map, so the event has a special place in my heart.

This post details some of my process and intent, and spoils what happens in the map. You may want to play it first if you care about that.

Zugzwang as a pole dance upward unto heaven

This post details my process and intent for making my new release Zugzwang (pronounced in German like /ts'OOK-ts'VAHng/) a tactical sex dungeon roguelike cum ritual game.

I first prototyped it back in 2019, but I didn't really know how to finish it. This marks its true public release, with finished graphics, gameplay, tuning, more sex, and finally an ending.

SPOILER ALERT: This post spoils what happens in the game. It also spoils a bit of Bioshock Infinite (2013) because why not.

CONTENT WARNING 1: I mention a suicide from a century ago.

CONTENT WARNING 2: the game is rather explicit, but I've kept the imagery in this post relatively tame, at a semi-NSFW / soft-R rating.

Postcards from Quakeland, 2022

Some random notes and thoughts from Quake modding land, in this cold wintery June of 2022:

• Community Hubs
• Official Mods
• The Future of My Quake Maps

Logjam as mourning wood

Logjam is the latest in my gay sexuality series -- a short small game about a middle aged lumberjack daddy processing wood and other hard things. It's about forestry, masculinity, and history, but on a surface level it's a simple work simulator with a burly stripper and occasional twists.

CONTENT WARNING: Some of the screenshots have some CG nudity in them. It is "NSFW".

SPOILER WARNING: This post spoils what happens in the game. If you care about that, then you should play it first.

Why I still use Unity

There's been some game dev twittering about Unity vs. Unreal lately. Why use Unity when Unreal is better?

The basic consensus is that Unity's advantages have been crumbling for years, and its attempt to challenge Unreal on high-end graphics has meant neglect everywhere else. But if you want high-end then UE5 Nanite / Lumen is light years beyond Unity HDRP anyway? And if you're making the typical aspirational photorealistic action game, you'll probably want UE's gameplay architecture and free photoscan assets too.

Most recently, respected developer Ethan Lee has weighed in. For him it's not about the graphics, it's about source engine access and engineering processes. Being able to pinpoint bugs in the core Unreal Engine code, fix them, and submit patches to Epic is how modern software development works. Comparatively, Unity is closed source, and even if you go to the trouble of filing a bug report you'll still have to wait a year for an official bug fix if you're lucky. This is important during the second half of a game dev cycle, when game making becomes a terrible slog -- when your game randomly crashes on Nintendo Switch for some reason and you have to figure out why but you're already so so tired.

So why on earth would anyone still use Unity? Everyone has their own situation, and here's mine:

new Quake map: The Close And Holy Darkness

This post spoils what happens in my Quake map. If you care about that, play it first.

I made another Quake map -- this one was for a map jam called Retro Jam 7, where we all spent 2 weeks making level design homages to the greatest hits. 

The theme here was "Koohoo" or "The Castle of Koohoo" (2001) by Vondur. The theming felt very fresh for Quake at the time, taking notes (and maybe a few textures) from Unreal. The novel use of greens and blues, as well as the outdoor hub layout, contrasted a lot with the browns and reds of Quake 3 Arena inspired aesthetics popular at the time.

Of course, I figured everyone else in the jam was going to lean on those dark greens and blues, so instead I opted for a rosy morning brown type of mood.

new Quake map: "Heart Like A Bird's Nest"

Heart Like A Bird's Nest is my new Quake map made for the weekend level design jam "Quake Speedmap Snack Pack 2" organized by Fairweather a few weeks ago.

This jam placed specific constraints on submissions, asking designers to map for a "slot" with a specific texture theme and weapon progression. I chose slot 1 which represents the start of a campaign with a "cr8 base" theme (grungy brick / concrete / metal industrial sci-fi) and shotgun / nailgun (+ optional super shotgun / grenade launcher secrets).

I started by blocking out a small arena. The arena has a little observation deck with a little floor hatch to drop down into the fight when the player's ready. I wanted a typical 2010s era play pattern where the player can safely scope out enemy positions and form a basic plan before getting into it. But I also mess with the player's limited information and hide some enemies underneath the observation deck sometimes, in proper Quake fashion.

Darner's Digest, vol. 3: on the Yarn Spinner v2.0 release + a YS primer

Darner's Digest is a series of blog posts about Yarn Spinner, a free open source Unity dialogue tree plugin.

On December 21st, 2021, the Yarn Spinner project finally made its public YS v2.0 for Unity release. 

YS 2.0 has gone through six (6!) preview versions / betas over the last few years, with several debates and redesigns that have finally culminated in this version. If you're familiar with Yarn Spinner already, you should go read the changelog for upgrade notes from v1.0 to v2.0.

But a lot about YS and its ecosystem have changed, so it's probably helpful to recap what's going on.

1. What is Yarn Spinner in 2022?
2. When to use Yarn Spinner
3. How to use Yarn Spinner
4. Current Strengths / Weaknesses
5. The Future

Resolutions, 2022

Well, 2021 was a year, huh? Here's the work in 2022 that I'm looking forward to:

• Release 1+ gay sex games. I have two projects that have been perpetually stuck at ~95% complete, and two that are 50% complete. It's been tricky to find time (and volition) to sit down and finally finish them. But again! 2022 is going to be the year I bet! I mean, it has to be, right??
• "Launch" my level design book project. While the book is already open and public, I haven't been talking about it or publicizing it since there's still so many gaps and missing pages. It's a very unstable book, even though I've somehow written 100,000+ words over the past 2 years. But this year I feel like it's finally going to feel complete enough that I can start recommending it to people.
• I'm going to start streaming again, maybe in a few months. Since my move to New Zealand last year, it's taken me a while to get settled with a more reliable schedule. Now I'm finally on my way to figuring out my routines again.

I also have a few other projects in the works, but those'll get announced later in the year. There's one in particular that's pretty unusual compared to my past work. I've been having a lot of fun making it though.

Good luck everyone, and here's hoping 2022 treats us all a bit better.

new Quake map: "When There Were Wolves"

I made another Quake map, this time in collaboration with fellow mapper @mrtaufner for the 2021 Quake community Xmas Jam. 

Taufner handled the initial blockout and gameplay, while I did the art pass and tweaks. (With textures by Makkon as usual.) 

The collaboration here was ideal because I didn't feel like doing gameplay stuff, and Taufner didn't want to art pass, so we exchanged duties and took turns working on the level.

Deathloop deconstruction / design thoughts

SPOILER WARNING: this post spoils levels, main quests, and gameplay systems in Deathloop

I guess this post is my contribution to Deathloop discourse. This is similar to my tactics games writeup and Enderal (huge Skyrim mod) writeup where I spoil some interesting game designer / systems design things. I don't discuss much of the game narrative. I assume general game design knowledge but minimal Deathloop-specific knowledge. Perfect for pretending to have played Deathloop if you find yourself talking to a game dev. Not that you should ever talk to a game dev.

Just to warn you, this post is 5700+ words with 3 sections:

• General systems overview
• More specific gameplay stuff -- stealth and level design notes, combat notes, invasion implementation
• Critical path / progression overview with "beat sheet" tables

The Forgotten City (2021) revisited

I've written previously about murder in Skyrim, epic Skyrim fan game Enderal, and a very bushy Skyrim mod called The Forgotten City. Since then, the mod makers have remade it into a UE4 standalone time loop first person RPG called... The Forgotten City (2021). 

From a game dev perspective, it's been fascinating to play. They had to rebuild Skyrim systems in Unreal... but what to cut and what to recreate? In this post, I compare and contrast the original and this modern remake from a dev / design perspective.

DISCLAIMER: I played the original mod and remembered much of it, so a total newcomer's experience would probably be different. Or maybe it wouldn't? Who knows.

SPOILER WARNING: this post spoils much of what happens in The Forgotten City (2021).

new Quake map: Tell Me It's Raining

This post spoils what happens in my Quake map. If you care about that, then you should play it first.

NOTE: there are reports that my map crashes FTE Quake, so make sure you use Quakespasm or vkQuake to play. Sorry about that.

"Tell Me It's Raining" is my fifth released Quake single player map, part of the Alkaline Jam where we all made sci-themed "base" maps with a mod kit called Alkaline.

It uses the Makkon sci-fi themed textures as showcased in the stunning Alkaline start hub map -- a major inspiration for this map and I assume other maps in this pack as well. I was also inspired by the Centre Pompidou's copious colorful piping and vast industrial scaffolding. I wanted big chunky shapes draped in warm colors, continuing my tendency to make big sunny Quake maps.

I generally like how the map turned out, but I think I tried to do too much complicated stuff in this one, and miscalculated how players would react.

"Quake Renaissance" for Rock Paper Shotgun

For Rock Paper Shotgun, I recently wrote a three-part series "Quake Renaissance".

Part 1 is an industry history of Quake's cursed development at id Software, Part 2 is a primer to 25 years of Quake community modding, and lastly Part 3 is a how-to guide for getting into Quake and enjoying its mods.

This series had some goals:

We Dwell in Possibility as queer gardening simulation

all drawings by Eleanor Davis

"We Dwell in Possibility" (WeDIP) is a new queer gardening simulation game about planting bodies and ideas, and watching them grow into a kinetic landscape. You can currently play it in your browser on the Manchester International Festival's (MIF's) "Virtual Factory" website. The game should take about 5-10 minutes to play.

It was made over several months in collaboration with world-famous illustrator (+ co-designer) Eleanor Davis and Manchester-based rockstar musician aya as a commission for MIF. (Also shout-outs to illustrator Sophia Foster-Dimino and sound designer Andy Grier for their incredible work!)

Some people may be familiar with my past work: uncanny CG beefcake sex games that toy with hardcore gamer aesthetics, which only run on laptop / desktop computers. For the longest time, I've wanted to make a gay mobile game, but I was unsure how to get my queer politics past Apple and Google's anti-sexuality censors. It's impossible to get anything on a phone without their long withheld permission... unless... I made a browser game? 

The history of browser games celebrates the open internet that exists beyond Silicon Valley's sterilized closed garden. However, the photorealistic 3D graphics of my past games are too heavy and slow for a mobile browser, so I need to make a 2D game even though I've neglected my 2D visual skills. Fortunately, MIF's support has made my creative collaborations not only possible, but enjoyable.

NOTE: this post "spoils" much of what happens in the game, so proceed at your own risk.

new Quake map: Daughter Drink This Water

My fourth released Quake single player map "Daughter Drink This Water" is now out, as part of a community map jam pack called Sinister625 -- where we all made maps that used only 6 textures, included 2 "surprises" (anything more interesting than monsters spawning), and had only 5 monster types, all in celebration of Quake's 25th anniversary this June.

HOW TO PLAY THE MAP PACK

1. Follow this guide to acquiring Quake and a suitable source port (aka game engine) or try the Quakestarter: The Quake Singleplayer Starter Pack (Windows only). Note that Quakespasm-Spiked is currently regarded as the best engine among single player level designers; avoid DarkPlaces, which hasn't been maintained in years. Also note that it is technically possible to get all the necessary game files legally without buying Quake, but for perceived legal reasons, the community does not distribute everything together in a convenient package.

2. Download and unzip the Sinister625 mod, which will already have all the maps and assets configured. Put the /sinister625/ mod folder in the root of your Quake folder, next to the /id1/ folder.

3. Launch Quakespasm-Spiked (or whatever engine you're using) with the mod directory set to "sinister625"... There are two common ways to do this:

- download a launcher tool like Simple Quake Launcher

- OR create a shortcut with the command line parameter -game sinister625... so the full shortcut target line might read something like "C:/Program Files/.../quakespasm-spiked-win64.exe -game sinister625"

WARNING: the rest of this post are my design notes that spoil what happens in the map...

Open world RPG design notes from Enderal, a big long Skyrim mod

I'm playing a giant Skyrim "total conversion" mod called Enderal. It does a lot of interesting things but also less-than-good things. I'm told it's inspired a bit by the Gothic series, which I've never played, so maybe a lot of my observations are more about Gothic than Enderal? 

Be warned that some of the screenshots are a bit spoilery (e.g. there's a tropical biome!) and my notes are obviously going to spoil some of the game's structure, but all these spoilers are pretty vague and anyway I don't name any names.

Anyway, here's my notes... 

MIF commission "We Dwell in Possibility" coming in July 2021

Manchester International Festival (MIF) just announced my upcoming project "We Dwell in Possibility", a queer gardening crowd simulation in collaboration with illustrator Eleanor Davis, to be released in July 2021. It'll be free and playable in your web browser.

This commission has been interesting because I'm learning and trying a lot of work that I don't usually do, which came about as a cascading chain of design constraints:

• Mobile. My gay games are all well-suited for a mobile format, but tech platforms are increasingly sex-phobic and will block my content from their stores. But if I target a mobile browser, they can't really stop me. (This is the real reason why Apple keeps their iOS browsers so slow and broken: an open internet threatens their control over everything.)
• Not-Unity, in 2D. If I want it to run well in a mobile browser, then it probably has to avoid lots of flashy 3D. I usually work in Unity and don't get me wrong Unity's WebGL build target is a miracle, but still not quite miraculous enough, so that's why I'm learning HaxeFlixel for this project.
• Collaboration. I usually prefer to work solo and in 3D, but my 2D art skills aren't very developed. So what if... this time... I didn't... do the graphics? I've admired Eleanor Davis' work for a while now, and I'm super excited to have her here. Also I secretly hope this is just the first of many video game projects she works on.
• Producers. MIF does something a bit unusual for its commissions -- they provide producers, which is very common for live events and commercial games, but rare in an art games context. For this project, my fantastic producers Shanaz Gulzar and Steph Clarke have been key for figuring out what the heck we're making, and will be instrumental for bringing this to the finish line.

The two takeaways I want to emphasize here are:

(a) even experienced developers / artists are always learning and growing... and according to the artistic-industrial complex, I'm entering a phase known as "mid-career"? oh dear

(b) grants, commissions, and public arts funding are what gives people space and time to do that vital growth... meanwhile, commercial works and solo side projects often force us into our comfort zone, which can act as a ceiling on that growth

Email subscriptions have been migrated to Mailchimp

Some minor housekeeping here: the free blog-to-email (RSS-to-email) service I use, Feedburner, was acquired by Google some moons ago and thus it is now discontinuing various services... such as its core blog-to-email service. 

So I've been forced to move all email subscribers to Mailchimp instead, which offers its own free blog-to-email service that it too will likely arbitrarily discontinue someday.

But until that fateful day, enjoy the slightly more readable emails. I've tried to disable Mailchimp's creepy marketing tracking as much as possible, but sorry in advance for any inconvenience. If you want to unsubscribe, please use the "unsubscribe" link at the bottom of the email. 

Or if you're reading this post on the website (which is the vast majority of you) then you can choose to subscribe and have new blog posts sent to your email inbox instead. Emails will be rare, and I do not use your address for any other purpose / anyway I don't want to have to login to Mailchimp ever again.

Thanks for your attention and have a lovely day / night.

Getting started with HaxeFlixel in 2021

Warning: this is a fairly technical game developer-y post. If you came here for gay sex, I'm sorry.

For an upcoming project commission, I'm making a 2D game with crowd simulation and simple controls that works well on mobile browsers. (Reminder: for iOS, that means WebGL 1.0 and no WASM.) The engine should be able to render and simulate 200+ lightweight game objects -- frame-animated sprites with simple collision, no fancy physics or shaders.

Which game engine should I use to maximize ease of learning and compatibility, and manage hundreds of simple objects on-screen? Here was my thought process:

• Unity WebGL: way too heavy and slow for mobile browsers, and maybe overkill for a no-physics 2D game anyway. (Although the Lil Nas X 3D twerking game runs surprisingly well on iOS's WebGL 1.0, I wonder how much they had to optimize?)
• Unity Project Tiny: as far as I can tell, Project Tiny and its DOTS dependency is still in early development. The random caveats and various in-dev inconsistencies with regular Unity would also be frustrating. And as with many other Unity side projects, its long term future feels really hazy.
• Construct: seems ok, and I think I could've gotten used to the visual block scripting, but overall the pricing and licensing feels weirdly restrictive. I have to pay to use more than 2 JS files? I have to pay to use more than 1 font, or make an animation more than 5 seconds long? These are some really bizarre artificial resource limits.
• Phaser: seems popular enough with decent TypeScript support, but I want the option of building out to a native executable without a weird Electron wrapper or something. Their monetization model (free open source base but you pay for "premium plugins" and tools) is one of the more generous ways to go about this, I get it, but it still feels weird to me and reminds me of Construct.
• Godot: I've wanted to try Godot for ages, but in the end I felt like I didn't have a good sense of what its HTML5 Web export could do + learning enough of the "Godot way" and GDScript would've taken a while. It's also in the middle of a big break between v3.0 and v4.0, and ideally I'd like to wait until like v4.2 to commit to learning it.
• Heaps: promising and some people get great results with it, but maybe still too early in public lifecycle for a total newbie like me, with not enough samples / docs / robust official tutorials to learn from yet. If or when I do try out Heaps, I'll probably try using Deepnight's gameBase project template.

In the end, I chose to build this particular project with HaxeFlixel. This post details my early impressions, thoughts, confusion, advice, etc. with learning it.

Updates from antipodes, year 2021

Hey all, it's been a while. Here's a brief update on my life --

I've successfully moved to New Zealand and I currently reside in Auckland. I'm currently working as a remote contractor on a secret project under NDA, but I imagine we'll probably announce sometime this year if everything goes well. 

I'm still working on some personal projects:

• I have two gay games that are 95% done, they just need some playtesting and polish, but finding an in-person playtesting group in Auckland has been a bit challenging. Regardless I'll probably be releasing these games this March and April. 
• This will be the year I attempt to finish my bigger long term project -- a sex work deckbuilder game called Macho Cam. That's about 60% done. I need to redo the card system for the 5th time.
• For the long-awaited Radiator 3 release, my plan was to wait for Unity HDRP to get finalized before attempting to port the entire Radiator codebase from Unity 5.6 (I know, I know) to Unity 202x. But maybe I should just stick to the built-in 3D pipeline anyway.
• I've also been contributing a lot to everyone's favorite Unity dialogue system Yarn Spinner and I've been trying to clean up my dialogue tool Merino, all of which might see its official v2.0 public release this year.
• Most of my Quake mapping is on hold, as I dedicate my level design energies to a different engine-agnostic project. More to announce there when it's ready, which will, again, hopefully be this year.

For those who happen to be in New Zealand, I'll be giving a short in-person talk about sex games at Play By Play, which I'm told is a bit like the kiwi equivalent of the Indiecade conference track -- and it's all part of the larger in-person New Zealand Games Festival in Wellington, April 19-25, 2021. I'll be around for most of Play By Play, so feel free to say hello if you see me... Unless the country suddenly plunges into lockdown that week?

Hope everyone is having a tolerable 2021 so far. Good luck out there.

The year of changes - kia ora Aotearoa

Earlier this year I submitted my letter of resignation as assistant arts professor at New York University, so Fall 2020 will be my last semester as full-time faculty at NYU Game Center.

Working at NYU Game Center has been an immense privilege and honestly it's a dream job for any game developer. I will miss my students, colleagues, friends, and mentors. But unfortunately it was impossible to meld a job about constant meetings with a major life change:

I'm leaving New York City and moving to New Zealand.

I realize I have the rare privilege of leaving the US, at a time when most of the world has shut its borders to US citizens. But I don't think of it as an escape -- NYC will recover and stay NYC, probably, and NZ has plenty of its own problems, so let's just put aside the COVID factor and think of it more as a hiatus... I'm taking a hiatus from residing in the US, and seeing what else life has to offer.

This move also means a short (or perhaps longer) hiatus from being a full-time academic. I'll still try to make myself available to students sometimes and maybe I'll even have the pleasure of teaching some classes at a NZ university, but for now, academia likely won't be the main focus of my life. And while I must stress again that I will miss my colleagues and students dearly, I must admit, I'm also looking forward to new possibilities for my professional and creative life:

First, I have a few commercial-oriented games in the works. Look for the releases next year.

Second, starting in January 2021, I'll be available for hire for work around New Zealand (I have a NZ work visa) or remote work from anywhere. 

I'm a generalist 3D designer / developer who's very experienced with Unity, and I'm familiar enough with Unreal to prototype in BP, build levels, and get myself up to speed with minimal supervision. I'm also available as a level designer + scripter + tolerable environment artist / asset mangler for 3D projects of all types. 

My portfolio is here, email me at yang.robert.w(at)gmail(dot)com if you want to talk. Paid gigs / positions only. CV available on request.

In the meantime, kia ora Aotearoa.

new Quake map: "It Will Be Summer Eventually"

My third Quake map is another multi-level arena, a bit similar to my previous map Smell It In The Street. I made it for Speedmap #210 (SM210), a weekend map jam on the Quake Mapping Discord with a theme of "overgrown" by jam runner Naitelveni.

For this map, I think I did a bit better with combat design. The arenas are a bit more open and free than before, and the encounters have a bit more purpose and push. I also make heavy use of Copper v1.11's improved ogre aiming, fiend jumping, and trigger_monsterjump spawnflags.

new Quake map: "Smell It In The Street"

I made another Quake map! This one is called "Smell It In The Street" and it was made for the Doom Tintin map jam, a level design jam centered around using Quake mapping community member Tintin's texture pack that samples from Doom 3 textures.

Some brief level design thoughts follow:

Hard Lads as an important failure

This post “spoils” what happens in my new game Hard Lads. If you care about spoilers, you should play it before reading. It takes about 5 minutes to play once, and maybe 20 minutes to play it to 100%.

In 2015, a phone video of young muscular White British men hitting each other with a chair went viral. Why make a game about this meme now? Some might characterize all my output derisively as "meme games", which is fine, but personally I’ve tried to avoid doing it on purpose. First, my games themselves should strive to be the original meme, and not merely a fan reproduction. Second, many memes are steeped in internet gamer culture, the only circle jerk I want to avoid.

However. I think British Lads Hit Each Other With Chair is one of those classic internet videos that merits special attention. It does so much in a single minute, and it's not about video games at all. So that’s why I made Hard Lads.