BRB

Global Game Jamming @ NYU.

20 Brush Challenge @ MapCore: Vote Now!

"Ludonarrative Dissonance," by Matthew "Lunaran" Breit

The MapCore 20 Brush Challenge (as previously mentioned) has wrapped up and we saw some really awesome turnout (as well as some really talented new users!) submit maps. There are four (4) categories: best overall, coolest visuals, awesomest layout, and most creative brushwork. Guidelines / advice for voting is included in each thread.

Voting is open to the public (though I think you'll need an account) and it's more or less a screenshot contest -- but some of these entries really do deserve to be played, if not simply just to see them in motion, as with Lunaran's "Take On Me"-esque entry pictured above.

Anyway, please have a look and vote! You have 47 hours! (And stick around MapCore too, you might enjoy yourself...)

(Oh, and credit for running everything / being awesome goes to Mr. Weldon)

Can you find the fine line between a reward that encourages players to have fun and an incentive that enslaves them?

Then you should be a "Player Investment Designer," possibly the most evil-sounding game job ever? (via @witnessgame) Let's enslave all our players!

20 Brush Challenge @ MapCore: wrapping up!

This post shall serve as your last reminder to make something awesome for the 20 Brush MapCore compo. You have until this Sunday (January 23rd).

We're seeing lots of new faces / less than regular faces popping up and putting out amazing work, so you owe it to yourself to join our illustrious level design community and revel in the virtual camaraderie of a lifetime. (... But don't go into EOT. Don't don't don't go into EOT.)

Here's some stuff being thrown around in the WIP thread. (Note: I did not make any of these levels)...

Look at all this raw creativity oozing out of your monitor right now. Can you feel it? Can you smell it? Yes, it's urine -- but it's the urine of joy.

So if you know how to use Hammer, Radiant or UnrealEd, just whip up a crazy-looking 20 brush map and throw-in! You won't regret it. And it probably won't take you too long either.

Dark Past (part 2): On level design, hookers, cybernetic architecture, Tony Hawk and all that converges.

Last time, I mentioned a lot of games that we like for their emergence and "cool stuff that happens" -- but the difference is that games like Thief, or "immersive simulations," actually do something with that emergence.

If, in Grand Theft Auto, you beat up a sex worker to get your money back -- an immersive sim approach would have that hooker tell other hookers about you, and no hookers would ever service you again or help you in missions -- unless maybe you stole a nice car and left it in their parking lot as a gift, or ran over a pimp for them, etc. In this way, all your actions "listen" to each other.

A "hooker map" for GTA4. (Apparently they prefer the MET, Times Square, Long Island City...)

... But GTA doesn't do it because that's not what it's going for. (Too much thoughtfulness in my bowl of destructive mayhem.) And that's okay. But an immersive sim, like the Thief series, does it differently.

What I've always loved about Thief was the level design -- and by level design, I mean mainly the floorplans and complexity of the spaces -- not so much the visuals.

Not that the games are ugly or visually boring, but... Thief II, released in 2000, used essentially the same Dark Engine used in Thief I from 1998. Compare this to more powerful engines as those in Unreal Tournament or Quake 3 Arena, which were released months before in 1999... Thief II was already severely behind from the start. Plus, a lot of the models and animations remained untouched from Thief I, which was smart for production but limited its visual novelty.

Fortunately, "immersive sims" aren't "immersive" through their graphical fidelity or photorealism. (see: immersive fallacy) Rather, they're immersive in how they simulate / simplify the complexity of interlocking systems and the beauty of exploiting these systems or getting caught unaware by them.

The Rise of Fantastic Writing on a Tabloid Blog

The gist: a lot of stuff on Kotaku is dumb and poorly written. Truly a revelation.

20 Brush Challenge @ MapCore

The impressive (and rightful) winner of the leveldesign.nl compo, a Q3A CTF map by Corsair.

Most previous-gen FPS engines (i.e. of Quake / Unreal genealogies) extensively used "brushes" -- basic geometric primitives -- to rough out the basic structure of a level. Increasingly, today's game engines are relying less on brushes (even for blocking out levels!) and more on static, pre-fabricated modular props created in a modeling package. To some degree, we're forgetting the power of the brush.

So when I saw this competition at leveldesign.nl, which tasked people with making small MP maps with only 20 brushes, I was excited... but it was too late to enter. Agh! (The best entries remind me of the GeoComp2 maps.)

Instead, I asked around MapCore for interest -- and there seemed to be a lot -- in running our own 20 brush compo. And now we're doing it. It's open to anyone using any FPS game engine that uses brushes / BSP. Rules are here.

I'm giving myself a constraint of building one map per weekend, up until the deadline. It's going alright so far, it's easy to take risks and try crazy stuff I wouldn't normally build:

(That second level is an attempted tribute to the legendary Mexican architect Luis Barragan)

Global Game Jam 2011, January 28-30

If you're in the New York City area (or anywhere, really) -- you should participate in the GGJ 2011. I'll be at this one at NYU, but there are a lot of jam locations so there's bound to be one near you. This'll be my first jam, but it seems like it's gonna be fun.

Don't be intimidated -- the jam rules specifically say that anyone can participate... and if you don't know how to code or use any design tools, you can work with someone who does OR just make a non-digital game with some cardboard and notecards. (I'm kinda trending towards non-digital myself.)

See you there maybe!