@Craigp@mastodon.social avatar

Craigp

@Craigp@mastodon.social

Green energy day job, game dev / design talks & tutorials at night.

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFL6-QAPmuin1iXUY1MEe0g

He/him

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Craigp, to random
@Craigp@mastodon.social avatar

Ohhhhhhhhh. He stole Scarlett's voice because he saw a movie where she voiced a hot AI assistant.

Nearly all this nonsense is like that. That's the level of genius we're dealing with. The whole thing is driven by an absurd obsession with fiction.

joethephish, to random
@joethephish@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

Woah, I stumbled across one of my ANCIENT prototypes for A Highland Song!

This prototype had 2 purposes:

  • a cheap box to let @joningold start writing content
  • to help evaluate the wider game flow / strategy layer

Was it successful? Arguably, no. But why not?

🧵1/9

video/mp4

Craigp,
@Craigp@mastodon.social avatar

@joethephish I dunno about useful, but when I'm burned out, I can still make them even if I can't get into 'proper' game dev.

Craigp, to random
@Craigp@mastodon.social avatar

When VCs drive a company out of business, rather than saying the company "is going out of business", we should say the company "was vivisected".

Unity is being vivisected, for example.

BaldSavant, to random
@BaldSavant@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

AI continues to not do anything anyone has asked for, and cannot help with anything I want in my OS.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/everything-we-saw-at-microsofts-ai-event-copilot-plus-pcs-recall-surface

Craigp,
@Craigp@mastodon.social avatar

@BaldSavant i like the idea that it remembers your app usage. The one kind of software with bad memory? Interesting choice.

Craigp, to random
@Craigp@mastodon.social avatar

One thing that always surprises me is how Steam insists on autoplaying but muting any livestreams of the game you're perusing on their shop page.

I think it's interesting that they believe a random snippet of a muted livestream is better than the carefully chosen trailers and marketing they're displacing to show you the stream.

How bad is marketing that they believe their best sales pitch is "here's a random muted livestream instead".

Danc, to random
@Danc@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

One of the things that saddens me is digging into the latest 'hit' merge games and realizing that they've evolved into slightly disguised digital gambling games.

Pay money (energy) to roll dice (click generators) make number go up (progression track). All innovation gets closer to this loop.

Whatever was interesting about Triple Town has been surgically removed in order to focus everything on feeding the money god.

Craigp,
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@Danc Yup. I remember that's when I started following you - when I realized Triple Town was decent.

Both in terms of actually good and in terms of not being scummy.

Craigp, to random
@Craigp@mastodon.social avatar

Trying to debug a firmware issue that only happens in the field and cannot be replicated at all in any local testing under any circumstances even though it's literally the exact same setup.

Sighhhhhhhhhh

Craigp, to random
@Craigp@mastodon.social avatar

The stove guy is fixing the leaky stove he installed and it sounds like a very rough surgery.

Dunno if you've ever had the joy of a gas leak, but they have a tool that sounds exactly like a movie heart monitor. Beep beep beep beeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

Craigp,
@Craigp@mastodon.social avatar

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Gonna have a miiiiigraaaaaaaine

Craigp,
@Craigp@mastodon.social avatar

@sinbad Mine was less mysterious. They installed a new stove and it was broken. So now I have a new new stove.

SirTapTap, to gaming
@SirTapTap@mastodon.social avatar

Is there anything in more absolutely satisfying than atomizing an "invincible" enemy with rocket exhaust?

See: Half Life, Dead Space

It's overpowered, it's unconventional, anything involving space is cool, it leaves nothing left.

Craigp,
@Craigp@mastodon.social avatar

@SirTapTap Aliens!

Craigp, to random
@Craigp@mastodon.social avatar

I was thinking a bit more about mass LARPs, like in Jenny Nicholson's new extended Wagnerian longplay of the Star Wars Hotel.

One thing that sticks out to me is how trashy the gameplay is on the apps. Which is to be expected - obviously you can't have play which requires too much thought or precision, because guests HAVE to be able to complete it eventually no matter how drunk, feeble, or confused they are.

But how can you make that interesting?

Well, I think this is a missed opportunity.

Craigp,
@Craigp@mastodon.social avatar

See, I'd make the simple games an excuse to get the players engaging with the physical space, rather than trying to make it fun.

For example, if the player fires up a hacking minigame to "rewire" the security system, maybe it's just a simple game about bridging gaps on a grid.

BUT

The actual pieces used to bridge those gaps can be collected from the world around you. And then used up in the game!

Scan the crates in the repair bay for some. "Collect" some from some broken droids. All digital.

Craigp,
@Craigp@mastodon.social avatar

The idea being there's no one solution to it, but instead if the player collects enough junk, there will be some combination of shapes that works out.

This can be backed up by the progression.

If you scan those broken droids early on, it'll just say "broken droids. Seems sad."

But then after you "learn" tech stuff by interacting with specific characters, scanning the droids nets you splicer parts for minigames.

Or memory fragments if you learned from the historians-

Stuff like that.

Craigp,
@Craigp@mastodon.social avatar

The gameplay is still really crap. But now the point is that it gets you looking around the world.

Which is, frankly, the freaking point.

Craigp, to random
@Craigp@mastodon.social avatar

The bakery near my place was closed for a privite event today. Which I'm fine with, but what a day to do it. Sundays are their busiest day, always absolutely slammed.

I hope it was a profitable event, and not an emergency.

Craigp, to random
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I pity anyone whose Mastodon client doesn't auto-hide hashtag blobs.

Craigp, to random
@Craigp@mastodon.social avatar

Wow, the SilentSunday hashtag is amazing these days. It's good to see specific hashtags start popping, they're a great "soft" community tool.

Craigp, to random
@Craigp@mastodon.social avatar

Holy shit I slept through the 4 AM curse. Huzzah.

Craigp, to random
@Craigp@mastodon.social avatar

Watching the new Jenny Nicholson movie, and it's a million hours long, so I'll have to split it between days.

But it's really got me thinking about how you design a mass LARP for visitors that takes several days.

A visitor isn't a dedicated LARPer. So how much can they be trusted to get into a role? How much activity can they do?

Obviously they can't be allowed to change the progression of the wider story - there's simply too many visitors so it needs to be mass produced. So what play?

Craigp,
@Craigp@mastodon.social avatar

You also can't really encourage anything that depends on two guests working in tandem in any significant way.

Even if it is for something completely optional, you just can't risk some asshole getting super upset that a random kid didn't successfully complete a gimmick quest with him.

It's a really interesting, delicate set of design constraints.

Craigp,
@Craigp@mastodon.social avatar

I just realized I called her YouTube video a "movie". That was instinctual. It's FUCKING LONG. Actually longer than any movie.

She took a page from HBomberGuy, I guess.

Craigp,
@Craigp@mastodon.social avatar

I think if I was going to run a two day long Star Wars LARP for people, I would largely make it about self-driven semi-group events. That's my instinct.

For example, a lot of folks probably want to be Jedi. So you'd have several rotating events where visitors can learn about the Force or whatever, and essentially earn stamps.

The key is creating a throughline, and I think that's where having actors matters.

Craigp,
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See, people are going to have different schedules, and in many cases friends and families are going to be stuck together at different times in different configurations.

So I think the basic idea is that you have these fun events that serve to introduce you to in-world characters and opportunities, but you also bring some stuff with you. Documents you stole, force powers you learned, that kind of thing.

AFTER the event (or during a break), you act on that stuff to advance your personal line.

Craigp,
@Craigp@mastodon.social avatar

But that can't require an actor. The actors can help to facilitate, but it has to be something that can be done more or less on your own.

Maybe something like a minigame on a console, or scanning a code on some paperwork, or tricking a defense screen or something. Using a magic force power.

It has to be largely done solo because the actors are BUSY.

Craigp,
@Craigp@mastodon.social avatar

I like the idea of clear, obvious indicators that visitors carry around. This would tell actors instantly what to expect.

For example, carrying around a specific tool, wearing a specific obvious badge, maybe even a sash or belt or hat.

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