Levels to Look Out For, June 2012: "Future of the FPS"

I don't normally theme these posts around anything, but these three indie FPS experiments share so much DNA that it's impossible to ignore. They're all very grounded in digital / virtual / "futuristic" aesthetics, but they're confident to sometimes let that futurism be incredibly alien. Also, I'd hazard a guess that few of these designers have worked on many FPS games in the AAA manshoot tradition, but these "outsiders" are the future of the FPS.

(Coincidental but shameless plug: if you pick up a recent issue of PC Gamer UK, there's a "Future of the FPS" feature I wrote, though I guess it's already inaccurate now, seeing as I've neglected two of these beauties...)

Dirac by "Orihaus"

Descriptions offered so far seem intentionally cryptic and foggy -- a multiplayer co-op wandering survival sim (?!) with an emphasis on atmosphere over gameplay, set in a stark Mordor-Tron world, with a little help from Structure Synth. What grabs me most is how the forms are so mechanical yet still incredibly abstract and inscrutable. You always see generic sci-fi corridors with gubbins and doodads embedded in the walls, and they're always encoded as "electrical panel" or "fuel pipes" or something. They're obsessed with being knowable because supposedly that's good design; I think Dirac shows how nice just a shape can be. (Unfortunately I missed the last multiplayer playtest, but there's another open test coming up on May 20th at 8 PM EST, just meet in #merveilles IRC on esper.net. Check the TIGSource thread for the most recent schedule.)

Souvenir and abstraction.

I was the main artist on Souvenir and did the bulk of environmental modeling / level design / art effects. The cypress tree and archway were one of the very first things I made.

Back in September, we realized that if there were any limits on what Souvenir would look like, it would probably reflect my own personal limits as a novice 3D hard surface modeler, as well as my partners Ben and Mohini who weren't incredibly experienced artists either. (Know thyself!... and judge others, I suppose, too.)

We needed an art style that would emphasize simpler forms with very little surface detail, and we made a very early decision to pursue a papercraft / untextured color direction. Otherwise, the UV mapping required would be time-consuming and cost prohibitive and wouldn't really look good anyway because I'm not a great painter. There were also huge performance gains in using just one small palette texture for virtually every environment mesh in the game; that means Unity can batch all the polys efficiently and reduce overall draw calls.

Our early experiments with the mechanic indicated that falling / shifting over long distances felt good... Which meant that our final game world had to be huge, and that most of the world would be experienced from afar as silhouettes and shapes. (Again, our mechanics suggested that investing in surface detail was pointless.)

Souvenir prototype (build 08) is public!

You can play an early version (and by early, I mean still really unpolished, buggy, and unfinished) of our collaborative thesis at Parsons: "Souvenir." It's basically VVVVVV + Proteus + Dear Esther + a bit of Portal. For some of the thinking behind the design, read "Against Puzzles?"

Here are some bugs / glitches / issues we already know about:

"What were the main trends of GDC 2012?"

So I checked my spam folder and found out I'm signed up for this thing called Quora, which wanted me to answer the question, "What were the main trends of GDC 2012"... which I found compelling because lately I've been wondering, who writes game developer history? Who decides "what happened" and where? What goes in the Wikipedia entry?

Here's how I answered, with a heavy indie bias. I invite competing accounts in comments or on the Quora thing if you happen to have a Quora thing:

What were the main trends of GDC 2012? 
Like, what were people talking about? What was on their minds?

Wot I Think: "Indie"

Context: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/05/03/why-indie-has-become-a-bad-word/

The mild Socialist streak in me says:

• Don't let EA co-opt a word. Don't let EA set a dangerous precedent, the moment when this golden age ends.
• Nothing is inevitable. Fight back. Define indie ourselves by performing it.

The linguist / English lit student in me says:

• Indie will mean whatever it will mean. Linguistic prescription, toward more use or less use, is pointless.
• Words do not have to have stable meanings to be useful / important. "Occupy" = "we're pissed off about something" + _____. In the same way, "Indie" = "there should be more kinds of games" + _____.

The indie game dev in me says:

• I'm indie because I say I'm indie. Now leave me alone so I can make some games; why don't you make yourself useful and go gossip about the new Call of Duty guns DLC trailer or something.
• I DON'T CARE. STOP BEING BORING. TALK ABOUT SOMETHING INTERESTING.

Ode to Neil / Jed "Wunderboy" Jedrzejewski

The Source modder community has always been a bit apocalyptic, but still its community leaders generally kept things going. Jed has been one of the most selfless and important mod tool developers out there since 2002: his updated Half-Life 1 model viewer with alpha texture support, his collaboration with Nem on VTFEdit / VTFLib, his early work on 3DS Max plugins, and the VTF Thumbnails plugins... all his tools were utterly indispensable.

On April 8th, he announced his "retirement" from the mod community, citing real-life stuff / general disenchantment with modding / the stagnation of his own Source mod, Ham & Jam.

I won't chastise Valve. Given what we now know from their employee handbook, you'd do the same too: you'd work on Half-Life 3 or Portal 5 or something new entirely, with all of your friends, instead of fixing an outdated SDK for an old engine branch that a handful of ungrateful fans use. Would you rather do fulfilling work or thankless work?

Anyway. Thanks for everything, Jed.

What makes "good" writing on level design?

Liz Ryerson recently did a great write-up of level 5-5 from Wolfenstein 3D (and makes a good case for the surrealism of 4-3) and it occurred to me that there's a pattern to this type of writing -- it's usually very specific, talks only about a single level (but contextualizes it within the whole game), and makes ample use of screenshots to help the reader understand the layout.

Writing about level design is incredibly important because we often run through levels so fast and understand "the language of games" so intuitively that it can be difficult to verbalize and explain. In playing levels, they exist more as tools to express our intentionality, not as objects to be studied and examined. The reality of it is that it would take a long time, or sometimes it's very difficult, to gain the type of fluency in platformers or Wolf3D that the best levels require.

But this is how we do research -- we make games and play the ones we can. Articles and essays are the best way to learn about levels that you haven't played / can't play.

Here are two authors of "level criticism canon" that, in my mind, show us how to do it...

CFP: Critical Information 2012 @ SVA / watch me talk briefly about Handle with Care.

I know a few grad students (you poor souls) read this blog, so I thought I'd share a CFP for a grad student conference I participated in last year -- Critical Information is pretty small, but the intimacy helps you engage the people with the people actually sitting there.

The rooms were small, which meant every talk was a "packed" house. Unfortunately I had to leave after I presented, so I didn't see any of the other panels, but I'd say SVA is a pretty cool place -- and they're clearly somewhat video game / new media friendly. If you'll be in the NYC area / or can travel there somewhat easily, consider submitting your project or research. (Also, the small size means less competition.)

Some people were asking about a video? Here's a highlights reel they put together of my group's session. (Note to self: next time, shave.) Also, see if you can pinpoint the exact moment in the Q&A when I enraged an entire room full of gender studies scholars... or, uh, hopefully they edited it out?