Levels to Look Out For (October)

"Levels to Look Out For" are work in progress / recently released maps around the modding community. I like them, and you should like them too.

 > lun3dm5, by Matt "Lunaran" Breit and Andrew "KungFuSquirrel" Weldon
A classic Quake 3 Arena floater developed as a side project by an adorable environment artist-level designer duo that used to work at Raven Software but now at Lightbox Interactive. Inspired by the brutalist sci-fi paintings of Peter Gric, who apparently really likes concrete and ambient occlusion. The detail blocks are procedurally generated by a magical Python script / Maya thingmajig that will someday gain sentience and replace all game developers.

> Call of the Fireflies, by Clément "Corwin" Melendez
An atmospheric puzzle-based journey in Crysis. The visual mood is excellent -- I can practically hear the sound of silence, simply from looking at these screenshots. Unfortunately I can't vouch for the gameplay at all because I'll never own a copy of Crysis, but Corwin is doing a lot of testing so I'm sure it'll be just lovely.

The Philosophy of Game Design (part 1)

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_273/8159-The-Philosophy-of-Game-Design-part-1

The 1st part (of 4) of my "philosophy of game design" series is now up on The Escapist. I only started to get into philosophy a few months ago, so please excuse me if I make all kinds of horrible mistakes in my argumentation. My main mentor here was a neo-Aristotelian rabbi in a "philosophy of education" context that I tried to stretch over to a philosophy of game design.

Publishing is always really weird and scary for me.

Plus, the complexity of the philosophy on offer here is probably "wildly inaccurate junior high textbook" level at best. If you're really interested in the nuances of the subject, you should go read Wikipedia so you know what the hell Heidegger might be saying -- and then go read the actual texts and decide for yourself.

And now that I've exposed my vulnerability and emotional insecurity, proceed to kick my ass in the article comments. Thanks.

Visions From the Future

"Byzantine Perspective," an exclusive exhibition of both ancient and modern artists from Istanbul, presented by the New Urban Museum of Brooklyn; runs from November 1st to February 28th. To get there by NYC Subway, just take the K Train to the 6th Ave station.

Apparently HL2 Mods About Gay Divorce are "Hot Shit"

http://www.news.sjsu.edu/22440/learn-to-play-art-exhibit-brings-video-games-as-art-to-cupertino

Marek Kapolka, president of San Jose State’s game development club and a senior sculpture and experimental media major, helped set up the exhibit and comb through the submissions the exhibit received.

One game that stuck out to him was “Radiator 1-2, Handle with Care,” by Robert Yang, because of the game’s use of gameplay mechanics to communicate it’s meaning.

Kapolka said he thinks the game is “hot shit.”

Thanks for the shout out, Marek. You're simply adorable.

Mod Auteurs: Brendon "Blender81" Chung (part 3, The Puppy Years)

"The Puppy Years" was Brendon Chung's last single player mod for Half-Life 1, released in August 2004. (Previously: Part 1 and Part 2 and the lost but found Droptank Oscar)

(Critical bug in current release: the "slow motion" effect is broken; I imagine he used a version of the host_timescale hack by using mp_timelimit as a toggleable variable. However, the mp_timelimit value does not properly transfer into host_timescale. Every time you will want to use slow motion, you will have to go into the console and type something like host_timescale 0.0001 -- or, alternatively, bind it to a key via bind y "host_timescale 0.0001" or something like that.)

In some ways, it's the most disappointing. It has a great premise (a super-charged stealth spy baby that can climb walls / slow time) and has a great feel to it and Brendon is resourceful as ever with the hacks he uses... but unlike "Bugstompers," the narrative is really lacking here.

(spoiler alert is in effect!)

In fact, there's not much plot at all: you spawn. You do a fun tutorial. You get sent on a mission. Then you come back and everything goes to shit. (In some ways, this is a precursor to Gravity Bone in terms of playing with FPS single player structure; you expect a second mission, you expect the game to go one way -- but then it doesn't.)

Compare this against Bugstompers, which has a really great narrative / character moment in the middle. In the Puppy Years, there aren't any well-defined characters other than the player character. Which gets a little boring. Who's my enemy? What, exactly, is happening? You never really know.

But still, there's a genuine innovation here...

The Business End: Guns in the FPS (part 1)

First person shooters are about (1) moving, and (2) looking.

Currently, moving is very meaningful in almost every context: you dodge bullets, you dodge rockets, enemies react to your new position, games like Thief 3 and Mirror's Edge attempt a "body awareness" system to contextualize movement, etc.

But looking? Comparatively, not meaningful at all.

Stare at someone in real-life for a few seconds and they'll get uneasy. Stare at someone's cleavage in a game? They stare back or they don't care. People stare at each other in-game all the time. It's nothing special. Few NPCs will ask you why you're staring at their daughter like that.

So, how do you make the "act of looking" into something meaningful? Well, you can make whatever you look at -- you can make it explode.

And thus, the gun...

5 in 5: "Dalloway Floorplan" (digital)

"5 projects in 5 days" is part of my coursework at Parsons. The complete rules are here, but my own additional design constraints are (a) gotta be a game, (b) gotta be made in less than 3 hours.

The next volume of Radiator ("Next? You haven't even finished the first!") will be an experiment of sorts in production: I'm going to use essentially the same level for all three episodes. This is great in that I only have to design and build and detail a single map!... And this sucks because I have to account for 3 different kinds of gameplay in the same space -- a heist, a mass murder, and a party. (If you want to spoil the gist of these ideas for yourself, see: heist, mass murder and party.)

5 in 5: "Mono in New York simulator" (digital, HL2 map)

"5 projects in 5 days" is part of my coursework at Parsons. The complete rules are here, but my own additional design constraints are (a) gotta be a game, (b) gotta be made in less than 3 hours.

"Mono in New York simulator" is a map using the first person shooter engine of Half-Life 2 that shows you what it's like to have mono (or mono-like symptoms, at least) in New York.

The gameplay consists of you being confined to your bed as your health slowly drains away. You can stare at the ceiling, the walls, or the floor, but not through the window. There is only one ending.

(No download offered out of mercy.)