Design

What’s a Good Game?

Posted on by magicrat_larry

I’ve been asking myself the question, what’s a good game.  It’s a hard question to answer.  Most of the time it comes with a reference, like XCom, or Civilization.  The problem is what makes a good game.  To some it must be graphically amazing.  Some people a story must grab them personally.  It is so personal, that no two people are alike.

So for me, I love a tactical game.  It can be real-time, it can be turn based, but I love strategy and besting an opponent.  I hate multiplayer though.  I want to crush an AI that does not tell me how bad my mom is.  The thing is, I think that good games are probably more generic than this.

Can we take every game and say if it is good or not?  The problem is every game is liked by somebody.  So we can at least say there are never any truly bad games to 100% of people.  So what makes a game good?  Have you ever told anyone about a game that you thought was awesome that you only played for 2 minutes and never will play again?

So, at least one characteristic of a good game is that people play it for a long time.  But, then you look at Steam and see that tons of people are playing games for a long time and reviewing them poorly, so why is that?  So if you play something for a long time but hate it was the game bad?  I don’t think it really was.

You put your life into a game, if you play it for hours, it was good.  Even if it strikes you in the end as not being that great, it grabbed you for hours of your short life.  You were giving it a shot, it had enough greatness in it to have you give priceless time.  So I contend that your final thoughts on a game don’t really matter if you played it long enough.  That could be crazy to state, because you could wish you never bought it, but if it made you feel something, isn’t that what a good game does?

What do you think?  What makes a great/good game to you?  Try to not use a reference to describe it.  It’s a challenge to nail down.  That is why I love making games.

The Power of Threading

Posted on by magicrat_larry

I know a lot of people are afraid of threads when programming.  I kinda was for a long time.  They are confusing at times and can get out of hand as well.  The problem is to make a complicated game of any kind you have to learn them.  You don’t have to love them, but you have to get used to them so you can do things that games need, like streaming content, animated loading screens, and much more.

In short threading is powerful, but without planning it will knock you on your butt. 

In the early days of developing Violent Sol Worlds we did not use any threading.  We quickly realized that to do a giant streaming world you would need them.  The issue with plugging threading in is that it has to be planned.  If you do not plan it out, things will get out of hand quick.  The critical issue is design.  When you start your game, make sure you think of it in terms of what has to be running on the main thread and what can happen, out of time, with the main thread.

content loading is fairly easy to have happen in the background

What do I mean about main thread?  That is the main game loop, often times you care about rendering in that loop and player input etc.  The other stuff, like loading content, physics, AI, other strange interesting game-like things, can all be done outside of the main game loop.  I learned having something like content loading is fairly easy to have happen in the background.

How you ask?  You need to plan that out well.  If the game has a list of render entities that get drawn to the screen, you need to code that in a way that things can be added and removed from that list at a random time and not have things blow up.  In this way you can have the main thread put requests out to the loader thread to load in and create entities to draw.  The loader will work on them on its own timeline and eventually just pop them onto the list to be drawn to the screen.

In short threading is powerful, but without planning it will knock you on your butt.  Keep in mind that if planned out from the beginning you will have a powerful tool at your games side.  Often times some of the neatest things are done with threading and allow for a better user experience in your game.  Happy threading everyone!

Hey Look Game Design!

Posted on by magicrat_larry

Going full design, what an interesting transition from prototyping game-play.  We spent a while getting the visual and the game play experience ironed out for Violent Sol Worlds now we have a great understanding of how this game will look, feel, and play.  We now have to turn our attention to the design of a game that will encompass all that we now understand about it.

There seems to be two areas of design so far.  The technical, which Aaron is running straight in to now, and the world, which I think interests me more.  The technical generates things like flow charts and systems behind the scenes that all communicate together for the game loop to function well, and effectively.  It is important to get that correct, especially for Violent Sol Worlds, it is going to be something we have to live with for a long while.  We plan on extending this game over time to be much larger than it is at Alpha build 1.

The world design is interesting to me because it is a lot to do with what you will be seeing, hearing, reading, and interacting with.  I am working on animals now and it is a bit of an experience in itself.  I started with the types of biomes the planet will have, now I am thinking of how to come up with the animals that live within them.

Nothing, when done right, with love and care, is easy.  So getting the creatures correctly placed and balanced with different types that will make sense is a task in itself.  I need a system to think about it and that is what I am coming up with now.  It is an enjoyable phase of development and I can’t wait to continue the journey.

If you have not seen the game I am a part of here are a few links…

Facebook – Like us on facebook

ViolentSol.com – Homepage

IndieDB – Indie Games Community with news, screenshots, and video

Our Game Project – Top down, survival, Action, Shooter with vehicles, crafting, and an AI overlord.

Posted on by magicrat_larry

We are so close to explaining our title and unleashing it on the world.  We have been painstakingly putting together the feature list and starting to commit to what we will develop for the title.  It is fun, but it is a process I cannot wait to be done with.

I wanna tell you that our game vehicles are amazing physics modeled action joys to drive, and our character runs around and shoots laser guns at enemies.  I want to tell you that We will have an AI overlord that will continually keep your game interesting.  I want to tell you that you will be able to do all of this with your friends.  There is so much I want to tell you, but can’t.

NewSplat

Well, the truth is all of this is speculation and rumor, but it would be cool if I could tell you.  What if I could tell you tht you could craft weapons, cars, and possibly even planes?  What if I could tell you about the game and start to get you fired up?  That would be awesome wouldn’t it?

handle barrelgun

I wish I could tell you something about it, but I hope you will stay tuned to hear more from me about it in the future.  I wish I could say building too.

House

Take care.

A Plan to Herd Cats

Posted on by magicrat_larry

I do get frustrated with plans.  They are nice to have, don’t get me wrong, but in my experience if you are going to be successful your plan is simply what will never happen.  You can spend a lot of time coming up with a plan and have everything change by the end.  So what was that plan worth?

The only thing that is of true worth is the planning sessions.  Those times where you and your team are sitting there thinking intently about your project to devise the plan is the true worth.  Seriously, how often do your plans actually work the way they were designed?

If you are honest there, I truly believe, it is 0%.  So your plans never work.  So their worth, after the planning session, is 0.  Should you make plans?  Yes, should you stick to the plans, probably not.  See I really believe that the successful people are not great planners, they are great reactors.  They are wonderful at changing their plans and understanding their projects.

That is what that planning session gives you and your team, a better understanding of your project today, and your mindset for goals in the future.  Having a plan to get to those goals is like herding cats.  It can be fun, but in the end you are just chasing cats.  So change the mindset of your planning sessions to understanding sessions, your plans will fail, but your project doesn’t have to.

Move it Just a Little To the Left, TOO FAR!!!

Posted on by magicrat_larry

Yesterday and today I have been constructing our space settlers house and the area around it.  I’m not sure how many people out there, besides hardcore game developers, know that it is a very tedious process to place everything “correctly”.

In my case I laid it all out perfect using a visual tool called Spriter.  Then I exported chunks of that scene to png files.  Now I am placing those files in world coordinates so they make up the bigger scene.  Not to mentions creation of physics images etc to go with it.  This placement is the “fun” part.  You need to get the hang of how many pixels is something off from the perfect location.

It’s a job I’d rather not do, but it is rewarding to finally be able to walk around the set I am building up.  Seeing the pieces slowing move into place, after try, after try, is kinda cool.  This is yet another thing that should make you ask yourself, do I really want this to be my job?  lol  You gotta love it.

What’s the Evil Plan?

Posted on by magicrat_larry

So yesterday I took the time to really get information written down.  We had a really good conversation about a week ago that, I think, laid down the ground work for how our game will progress, and needed to be in writing.

It is a very positive thing to start doing.  Take the time to write down everything about your title when making a game.  You will not remember everything.  So having the, ever evolving, reference to look at, and code from, is a powerful thing.  It also gives you a chance to see if a new idea matches anything, and where it fits in the design.

Take it to heart, planning is a good thing.  Your project will not be done in 30 days, so plan for the long haul.  If you don’t you will be just like everyone else that never finishes anything.