peng ink

It’s winter break, the perfect time for college game developers to catch up on their projects. Every day consists of me sitting hunched over a computer in the basement, hoping that if I move my fingertips enough a game will be made. Lunchtime hits, I go up. Dinnertime hits, I go up. Nightime hits, I shut down. It’s all a very monotonous cycle.

Recently I’ve been wondering if I should mix things up a bit. What if indie games didn’t have to be made in parents’ basements? Say I walk out that door and sit down on the pavement. BAM, I’m there, making games in the middle of the street. Or say bring my work at McDonalds? BAM, I’m making games, fast food style. After that I’d go to Starbucks and sit next to some aspiring novelist.

“So, what are you writing?”
“An epic story of love torn across time and culture.”
“Wow that sounds horrible. I’m writing a fucking game here!”

And then I’d jump on his table and play air guitar with my laptop.

The results are in. Dreamscape, however, is not. From what I can gather, the gameplay was a bit too traditional (boring) for the IGF (it’s a straight up 2D fighter, no question about it). Either way, it’s probably the most polished game I’ve come out with to date. I’m proud of it, and proud of the team that made it.

Yesterday morning I got the call. This summer I’ll be interning at Electronic Arts Los Angeles as a Technical Designer.

What do you want to be when you grow up? How many people can say that their current employment accurately reflects their childhood aspirations? The amazing combination of events that brought me to this point, successes hidden under the guise of failures, mistakes that opened opportunities, and the all nighters that tied them all together… it’s been quite a ride. But I’m there. The industry barrier is broken.

An entry level design position? Did such a thing exist ten years back? Until two years ago, when a colleague proved me wrong, I didn’t even think it was possible. I expected to break in as a programmer, work my way through the ranks, and finally obtain that coveted “game designer” job title after half a decade at the bottom. Of course, my conception of what a game designer actually does was quite a bit off, but the fact remains, I’m five years early.

For everyone who dreams of breaking the barrier I have this advice: Don’t sit on idle hands, start developing games now. Though my life is consumed by it now, looking back I wish I had started even earlier than I did.

Yes, it’s that time again. Planning on entering the IGF Student Showcase myself next year (production has already begun), I typically use these finalists to gauge the chances of a GCS game making the list. The prospects? Not too bad.

Typical IGF final picks seem to hinge mostly on innovative and deviant gameplay (quite opposite of the rest of the industry), and the Student Showcase is no different. Of course, being around the indie game block a couple times myself, somehow the same “innovative concepts” seem to pop up again and again, great ideas rehashed if you will. But as I always stress, it’s all about implementation.

Requisite favorites list:

And Yet It Moves: mixing the classic world orientation changing gameplay with interesting 2D paper cutout visuals gives this game a real good atmosphere. Also note the ambiance created by beatbox sound-effects. Who knew mouth noises could sound so right?

Invalid Tangram: So close to being a shooter by ABA Games, but still not quite there (it lacks ABA’s magical touch). In any case, puzzle shooter game mechanics are quite clever, and I just can’t say no to these genre pieces.

Gelatin Joe: Namesake’s about where the similarities end, Digipen’s Gelatin Joe takes a gameplay concept and molds a world around it. Though a somewhat impersonal approach to game design for my tastes (can’t really relate to a circle), the puzzles seem quite solid, and the interface is clean and well thought out.

Euclidean Crisis: Requisite math-joke. Focusing more on tech than the other entries, the tablet pen based multiplayer action looks pretty good from the videos. I just hope there’s unit micromanagement involved…

I’ll be interested in seeing how these games turn out before the final presentation in March (feature creep? polish? anything can happen really). Well, back to working on my own future IGF entries (both of ‘em).

My first semester as COO of GCS is over. For the first time, no projects were abandoned, and every project had a build to present at the end of the semester. As much as I’d like to credit myself, it couldn’t have happened without the support from GCS project leaders and my fellow GCS officers.

Anticipation is high for next semester. Currently there are a projected 13 people who are interested in leading a project in Spring 2007. Of course, if each one of these 13 projects gets pitched, it will be absolutely beyond our current capabilities in terms of human resources or even the time we have allotted for each meeting. I’m hoping the numbers die down before the semester begins, but in case they don’t, I’ve already begun preparing for the situations that may arise.

I’ll probably post a couple of my favorites from this semester as soon as the pages materialize. Some really good games were developed this semester, games that I’d actually play in my own free time… (!)

I’ve been putting this one off a bit, but as the “news” goes, the game I developed for the Experimental Gameplay Project, Block Step, was basically disqualified for technical difficulties. To quote:

Block Step by sifupeng – Programming and art are top notch, and a puzzle game such as this seems like a fresh new use for a dance pad. It was too bad that controller sensitivity/response/whatever made it almost impossible to control what was happening. We would love to play again given a little more time and tuning!

Sadly, I’m fairly sure my controller input parsing was just fine. Which brings me to a single realization: I completely forgot to provide for in-game directions and/or a tutorial. Assuming that the judges read/understood the readme/design doc was a huge mistake on my part, and in any case, basic design fundamentals dictate that users should not have to read any supplementary material to pick up a game.

From there I can only imagine how easily it is to make assumptions about the underlying gameplay mechanics (the easiest one being having to actually match colors rather than simply having blocks of a color drop when stepped on), and quickly writing it off as a technical difficulty when results don’t match expectations.

Upon further playtesting, subjects seem to have similar experiences to that which I’ve predicted based on the “feedback” from the contest.

In the least, I do believe I’ve learned the value of preliminary user testing. So even though I lost, I suppose I didn’t end up completely empty handed after all. Right?

After much inner conflict as to what the game should be (designing for an audience is tricky business), I finally threw together a little design doc and sent it off, complete with in game art. After four days, the judges decided that 15 of the 27 designs were worth pursuing. Although I don’t quite agree with the final selection, it’s probably better to hold off on my own judgement until the final prototypes come out. After all, what it comes down to is how well the game actually plays, right?

As the title implies, I was able to make the top fifteen cut. But this is no time to start celebrating, the REAL battle begins now. Soon, true distinction will be made, between realists and dreamers, between action heroes and idea-men. I wish good luck to all.

If anyone is interested in my submission, click here.

To tell the truth, I had not planned on getting an Xbox 360 until I heard the news.

Suddenly life as a game developer just got a whole lot easier. With everyone running on the same machine, XNA has nearly eliminated any time spent on cross-hardware issues. Also, with more game-specific libraries, more game centered tools, and not to mention the unseen benefits of joining a dev community, it’s without a doubt that the number of indie game developers will grow tremendously.

Of course, the news that C# is to replace C++ as the indie dev’s weapon of choice brings a bit of a tear to my eye (what will I do without my army of pointers?), but I’m sure the adjustment to managed code won’t be too brutal.

But there’s one thing that really catches my eye…

“The game project, including all source and content assets, must be shared with the receiving user. The receiving user then compiles and deploys the game to their Xbox 360.”

Microsoft not only promoting open source, but forcing it? Sure, if everything’s open source, not only does it foster a community of cooperation but it also auto-solves malignant software issues (any that might pop up despite the closed environment anyway), but I still can’t stop help but feel that we’ve entered into some sort of ironic dimensional warp…

Redoctane is holding a game design contest through the Experimental Gameplay Project (Carnegie Mellon ETC plug). The goal is to design a non-dance game to go along with one of their dance pads. Having used and taken apart many-a dance pad the past, I figure why don’t I give it a shot?

A few things about dance pads:

The basic design is very simple. Separate two sheets of conductive material separated by a porous layer of foam. Jump on top, and the two sheets connect.

Any game that is designed for a dance pad must have VERY careful input handling. Because the pad design is so simple, there is much room for misalignment of layers or accidental deflation of foam, not to mention “two left feet syndrome”. Thus, the game must function even with high input error rate.

Aslo, Hadoukens are nearly impossible to do on a pad. Believe me, I’ve tried.

Overall, it’s been a fairly educational experience. Although the quality of each writeup seems to have gotten worse as time went on, I think as I started to pace myself a bit toward the end (three an hour = bad), the quality of the designs improved. Of course, I only posted my top ten, there were a couple in between that weren’t really defined well enough to warrant mentioning (some sort of travelling salesman simulator?).

The whole Nintendo Mirror incident was quite unexpected and leaves me wondering if any more of these products of forced creativity are concurrently being developed. Will I walk into the store tomorrow, and find a DS version of Amoeba Joe sitting on the shelves? Maybe not, but apprently fellow GCS member Gregory Hallenbeck has had his own ideas for an Amoeba style game for awhile now…

After a final review, I’ve decided to set apart the few that I’d like to see developed within the next year. Specifically, Amoeba Joe, Bende Beads, and Spinal Tap. I’d also like to see RPS Advanced made sometime in the future, with development on portable systems (GBA is a no brainer) in mind.

EDIT: I’ve decided that some of the designs are much better illustrated with, well, pictures. In actuality, most of the designs started out being sketched out in image form rather than in written form.