Welcome to the Indie FPS.

Indie platformers spawned sub-genres like the sudden-death one button jumpers, masocore and explore-'em-ups among countless others. The indie RTS spawned tower defense. Most of these indie efforts have non-photorealistic visuals that focus on distilling their commercialized parents' core mechanics into a delicious syrup: run and jump, build stuff that kills other stuff to survive, etc.

Continuing that proposed template, what sub-genre is the indie FPS working on?

Today in 2011, mainstream commercial efforts still focus on arcade man-shooting with photorealistic graphics in military contexts. They are descendents of one vision of first person gaming, the lineage of Wolfenstein 3D (1992).

But back in 1994, video games were confronted with a very different vision of what first person games could be....

Pilsner: Pre-Thesis

"Pilsner" is what my masters' thesis project will likely be, (it's going into full production starting this summer) but maybe I'll completely change my mind in the coming months, who knows. It's pretty ambitious in trying to solve, like, 5 big game design problems all at once.

The pitch is the same as before: "a multiplayer browser-FPS where Jersey Shore meets paramilitary squad tactics."

More specifically, if you happen to be "in the know," it's Rainbow Six + Spy Party + Words with Friends + Wikipedia.

Here's the full 6 page end-of-the-semester brief, if you're curious enough to read it... or just mine the references for your own papers. Just keep in mind the intended audience, my professor -- an experienced designer who doesn't really play video games:

First Person Films: "Charlie Bit My Finger" and "Smack My B*tch Up"

A more recent addition to the "First Person Films" post... described by the creator as a "Left 4 Dead" short film, essentially one extended POV shot. Enjoy.



Ah, vulnerable children in survival horror contexts never gets old, eh?

And as a bonus, here's Prodigy's "Smack My B*tch Up," a (NSFW) first person music video that came to mind when watching the above. I remember watching this on MTV back when they still played music videos...



Look at what the first person mode can do! And look at how narrowly we use it in games! Loooook!

Now in the pipeline...

I'm playing with the Unofficial Portal 2 SDK.
UPDATE: huh, well whaddaya know, the real SDK is now up.

"The Meat Pack." Incredibly hard Portal 2 levels coming to a \sourcemods\ folder near you, this summer.

May 12th, 2011: "No Quarter" at NYU Game Center

http://gamecenter.nyu.edu/2011/02/announcing-2nd-annual-no-quarter-exhibition-of-games

Terry Cavanagh's game is the only one I know anything about -- it's a Unity game that accomplishes the amazing feat of not really looking like a Unity game (or any other game, for that matter) with a really neat depth / dithering / colorspace effect.

See you there and say hello to me, because I'm probably too shy to approach you if I only know you from the internets. Maybe I'll even share one of the twenty brioche sandwiches I snagged from the table.

Ludum Dare 20: Condom Corps, or "It's dangerous to go alone... take this condom, bro."

My first Ludum Dare, and I actually finished it! (Kinda.) Maybe I'll polish it some more and sell it to NYC Public Health?...

 PLAY NOW: Unity Web (compo) | Unity Web (jam)

*** If you are judging, please play the COMPO version. [Link to entry on ludumdare.com]
*** If you are NOT judging, play the JAM version in its (legally) photosourced splendor. The two builds are identical except for the enhanced background graphics in the JAM version.

>>> BASICALLY
It’s a Match3 First Person Sniper for sex education.
“It’s dangerous to go alone… take this condom, bro.”

>>> HOW TO PLAY

• Mouse1 = fire
• Mouse2 = zoom in
• Mousewheel = change ammotype

1) Stare at a dude’s package. Decide what size of condom he needs.
2) Shoot the condom into his hand.
3) Match adjacent colors to create chain-climaxes for mega points.
4) Shoot well-fitting condoms to maintain a “fit streak” multiplier for your score.
5) GET HIGH SCORE!!!

Source code is here. (.unitypackage)

Ludum Dare 20: Dev Log 1

I'm making a game for the "make a video game in 48 hours" challenge, Ludum Dare, even though I have a final project to do for school. (They never said I was the smartest.) Cross-posted from http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2011/04/30/condom-sniper-update-2/

Unity3D Webplayer test build:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19887116/Condom1/index.html

Skybox art is kinda done, mostly photosourced from Unity standard assets / NASA / CGtextures / Creative Commons on Flickr. Still need to turn off fog for the moon, hmm. All full bright textures for performance reasons; I’m going to be using a lot of point lights in the actual game area, so I want to save my GPU stuff for where it counts.

Mouselook is clamped because you’re mostly just going to be sniping within that rectangle in front of you, delivering condoms to the city’s horniest / most desperate.

Looking to implement the actual mechanics and building generation tomorrow night. I don’t foresee many problems, but we’ll see…

NYC Game Scenesters: Erik Wolpaw talk next Thursday

ATTENTION! If you're in the NYC area, you should RSVP for this talk with Erik Wolpaw on Thursday -- like, right now. You definitely won't be able to stroll in, and even if you do, you'll miss out on free croissant sandwiches.

It's open to the public. Go.

"The format for the evening will be a brief guided play-through of Portal 2 with Erik, followed by an interview and general discussion moderated by Game Center Interim Director Frank Lantz. The audience is encouraged to join the discussion. Please bring questions about Portal, game writing, criticism, narrative and the overall subject of games in general."

And the NYU croissant sandwich things are pretty awesome. Get there early if you expect any otherwise I'm going to eat them all.