Game A vs. Game B

Okay, it's time to reveal part of My Secret Plan. Since the last day of GD2 I've been thinking hard about what I want to do for GD3 & 4. I ended up narrowing it down to two mutually exclusive (because I can't combine them into one project) major ideas I've been mulling over. Ideas which I want to do regardless of whether I can do them for college credit or not. Depending on what Prof Morrison does, I may have to postpone both projects and do an unknown "C" game, but here's A and B:

Game A is a procedurally generated first-person shooter I've mentioned briefly before. I would basically be borrowing the models from FPS Creator, but instead of using the FPSC program, I'd be loading them into my own C++ program via the Dark GDK.

Advantages:

• 3D Roguelike with extremely innovative design.
• I'll be taking Comp Sci I concurrently with GD3, so I'll be learning the next "level" of C++ as I'm making the FPP.
• This is the game I'm making the GM prototype for, so I'm already getting a handle on the essential algorithms I'll need to translate into C++.
• It's territory on the "frontier". Games in the genre have been made before, but not a whole lot. DoomRL is the closest gameplay-wise and Hellgate: London is the closest graphics-wise.
• It's tremendously interesting from a programming perspective. Not just because it would be my first major C++ project outside of a programming class that's not a text-based game, but because the game would be based on procedurally-generated content.
• The FPS Creator modular floors, walls, and room features are perfect for this project. I just need to figure out the algorithms I need to tell Microsoft Visual Studio to make the environments.
• FPS Creator itself can serve to test some of the things I want to try out in the game.
• The source code for FPS Creator is freely available. Although it's in DB Pro and not C++, it's still a head start.
• Since the tech side will definitely be the most interesting part of the project for me, anyone else I work with will have plenty of freedom to figure out the story and some of the design aspects.
• Beyond the class, this would get attention from Indie news sites for being innovative and interesting.
• Possible logical destination: the IGF and/or Indiecade.

Disadvantages:

• Unless I give up on the idea of procedural content generation (which is the whole point of Game A), I can't use FPS Creator itself for the main part of the project.
• The timing of it is such that I'll be far beyond the rest of the class in required tech knowlege, so no one else in the class will be able to help out on the tech side.
• It's riskier because although I can look at the advice and experience of Roguelike developers and Dark GDK developers, nothing quite like this has been attempted before. Especially if I manage to add in some of my wilder and more esoteric ideas like dynamic terrain alteration (digging tunnels, etc.).
• I'd really like to include some really risky stuff like procedurally generated plots, but that would rely on either really good HL2 style companion/NPC AI or complicated RPG elements. (The actual algorithms for the plots would be relatively simple fetch-quest/"Kill Monster Z for me" type stuff, but would require some amount of verbal character interaction which I'd need to have in place first. Easy in a text-based Roguelike, not so simple in a FPS.)
• Short of procedural plots, I'd like to shoot for procedural puzzles. Puzzles wouldn't require any non-peaceful character interaction and I have a few ideas for implementing it, but there's even less precedent for procedural puzzles than for procedural plots.

Game B is a Source Engine First Person Shooter set in the Half Life universe. It's essentially a compilation of various ideas I've had while playing HL2 and other Source engine games, which then evolved into a distinct setting. It's comprised of one huge level: a mysterious island surrounded by a Combine force field. There's action and puzzles, but the emphasis is on exploration, survival, and discovering the island's dark secrets in order to finally escape (the whole island was owned by Aperture Science at one point, and yes, there are plans for portal-based puzzles). Inspired by Myst, The Prisoner, Lost, the Half Life universe, and every story I've read or watched that was set on an island.

Advantages:

• 3D FPS with game mechanics most PC gamers are familiar with.
• The entire Source SDK is free to anyone who owns a Source engine game on the PC made by Valve.
• It would look great. The FPS Creator, and therefore Game A, looks good, but this would look great.
• The current design document is based on semi-modular (in the sense that most of them can be cut if necccesary) areas around the island and a fairly straightforward plot. Unlike Game A, the designers can feel free to add in a lot of specific detail to specific areas.
• Using the Source Engine means a heck of a lot easier job on the tech side of things. Not just the mechanics of moving and shooting, but also lots of neat AI-related things as well as the excellent Faceposer application for NPCs.
• There's a ton of art resources available in the Source SDK for making Source Engine mods with. Even more than I got with the FPS Creator Bonanza.
• The Half Life universe is a nice, established, flexible setting.
• There haven't been any "sandbox" games in the Half Life universe so far, nor many Source engine games where you have to explore a large area and are able to backtrack.
• Beyond the class, this would open up potential opportunities like getting attention from mod sites, and act as an awesome resume-enhancer for anyone who wants to work for Valve specifically.
• Possible logical destination: publishing the game worldwide on Steam.

Disadvantages:

• Some of the things I want to do, such as a very simple conversation system for a handful of freindly NPCs, and a simple inventory system for storing widgets for puzzle-solving, I have no idea if it's possible without access to the source code. Which I certainly don't have.
• While Game A involves telling C++ how to put levels together in an interesting way, this project would require a large island to be constructed by hand. This may actually be an advantage, but I don't know if it is yet or not. I currently have less experience using the Source SDK tools than I do with C++ (though when my new laptop arrives, I'll finally have the option to try out the Source SDK tools again). Because of the above point, I'd probably need at least one other person helping me with the mapping aspect.
• It would impose stricter limitations on the rest of the team in terms of what things look like, sticking to Half Life canon (unless we decide not to), etc.
• We hopefully, maybe could add in some custom models, but that's another area I have zero experience with so far.
• It would require the rest of the team to stop being consoletards and get into PC gaming.

Mutual Advantages:

• Both of these are innovative designs (in different ways) that are likely to get attention if marketed right.
• Both of these are definitely games I would like to spend a whole year developing.
• Both are deliberately designed to have flexibility for the rest of the team to add in their own ideas.

Mutual Disadvantage:

• As I mentioned before, both of these are completely my invention and neither may fit even a little bit with Prof. Morrison's plans for September. This is part of the reason I'm revealing them now: to get them, in this form, out on the web now in case this is as far as I'm able to take them. Some modification would be necessary regardless (no game follows it's design document to the letter), but I might need to put them to the side entirely. Or maybe I'll come up with a better Game C before the semester starts.

What will probably be the deciding factor between them, if both are choices, is how many other students in the class will be working with me and how many will be working on the other project being discussed for GD4. If I end up working with 1-3 other people, or just myself, I'll probably advocate going for Game A. More than that, and I'll advocate going for Game B.

Quick last note: I'll be editing in a bunch of links later. I know there's a bunch of jargon and unexplained acronyms. The links will explain everything.

Math Class & Other Craziness

This week I started a new class, one which is four days a week and finishes in just four more weeks. So it's basically cramming a lot of new and semi-familiar math concepts into my brain in a short period of time. I wish I had taken it as a regular Spring/Fall semester class, but it's a prereq for Computer Science I and I really wanted to take CS1 this fall.

Meanwhile, Gordon Babcock, my biological father who is guilty of Count Olaf level evil, has proceeded to reach a new low in despicableness. Hopefully I won't be forced to move out of state for financial reasons (because the rest of my family may be) before I'm done the Game Design program... But that may happen.

In one sense, the asshole can keep his fucking money*, because he'll rot in Hell forever and it's not like we can do worse to him than that. On the other hand, Mark's medication is expensive, and someone needs to pay for it. Better for someone who can afford to pay for it, to do so, right? Especially when he's the father? Too bad Gordon Babcock doesn't seem to have a soul, or at least a conscience. Too bad the New Jersey courts are too damn corrupt to uphold justice in the case of a rich computer architect vs. his family that he's obviously driving into poverty. (In the past, I assumed our judge was just stupid, but yesterday it became obvious that it's much, much worse than stupidity.)

So anyway, the bottom line is that I'm going to have to concentrate a lot on studying over the next few weeks so updates will be sporadic. I do want to eventually get around to writing a bunch more on E3 and the folks I met there, but math class takes priority.

*This is a polite way of expressing what I really think, which would probably be unwise to publish on this weblog.

EDIT: I'll try to post something more upbeat tonight after work.

PC GameGun!

One day I'm going to get around to making an awesome homebrew gadget like this:

FPS Creator Bonanza And Serendipity

I ordered the FPS Creator Bonanza shortly before I left for E3. I've been playing around with it for a little while now, and it's part of the reason I didn't post yesterday.

It's turned out to be quite a good deal.

1: FPS Creator itself is available for free in a few different ways, but all come with strings attached and no physical disc. A physical disc is part of the deal.

2: Also part of the deal is the most vital one: the DVDs. Although FPS Creator is pretty strightforward to use, the tutorial DVDs are very instructive and comprehensive.

3: I haven't gotten around to trying out the extra model sets I downloaded as part of the deal, or the free sample models you can get from the TGC Store, but I assume they're of the same quality as the default models, which are fairly nice.

So far, I only have a couple of complaints. The default sounds aren't great, and there aren't any default scripts for companion characters (I'm not asking for L4D super-AIs, just NPCs that will attack hostile NPCs instead of the player).

The FPS Creators levels are made from "segments", which has it's upsides and it's downsides and deserves a post all it's own. It's particularly interesting because it seems that FPS Creator levels are assembled the same way as the FPS tutorial in Game Maker. Additionally, the Dark GDK can easily handle levels exported from FPS Creator. This means that, theoretically, I could get Visual Studio to do exactly what I'm trying to get Game Maker to do in my current prototype, except it'll look a million times nicer and be proper 3D. Going from theory to a finished result is probably going to be a giant pain, but I do have a whole year to figure it out.

Plus, if it works, I'll have a huge library of 3D models to work with. But we'll see.

Torchlight!

Lest you think I hung around the Indiecade area and moped about the Valve guys being inaccessible the whole time (not true: I only did that for a few hours each day), I better write about one of the many, many other things at E3 that have to do with neither.

So Torchlight was being demoed at E3, waaaaaaay in the back, around a corner so you really had to look around to see it, in West Hall. It's by the former Mythos team, now called Runic Games who seem to be putting their skills making Diablo-like games to work making... a Diablo-like game.

Now here's the thing: I played the Torchlight demo and it's actually pretty fun. Diablo III is definitely aimed at the hardcore crowd, but Torchlight is more of an arcade/casual style variant. It's a bit like how Halo and Half life 2 are both Sci Fi FPSs but otherwise couldn't be more different. It also struck me as a bit like Fate, which isn't surprising since one of the guys also worked on that game as well.

In addition to the fact that it's a neat game to play, there's apparently plans to support modding and map editing in Torchlight (something past Diablos haven't done, and D3 probably won't do either), which I'm certainly happy about.

Pluff Is Amazing

Pluff is an amazing new controller/game combination from Diana Hughes. The controller is a soft, round Tribble-like object that allows you to interact with the on-screen Pluff character.

Nevermind force-feedback, motion-sensing, and analog sticks. This is the sort of special controller that's revolutionary.

It's pretty neat to see it in person, but until she manages to get a major company to mass-market it and makes kazillions in royalties, you'll have to be satisfied with a video:



By the way, that's me in the background. I'm the guy with the glasses and goatee who's looking away from the camera most of the time. I'm talking with one of the Cogs guys, and I think we were talking about Pluff at the time.

If I spot myself in any other E3 videos, I'll let you guys know. ;)

Unskippable: E3 Trailers

This week's Unskippable is pretty good. I particularly liked the comments on FF14:



Now if they'd just do the intro for Left4Dead, or any game from the 1990s, I'd be really happy.

Re: Death to E3!

So a couple days ago I was going to post about Shamus Young's Death To E3 article, but I ended up doing a little venting inspired by something else he had written instead.

So now I'm going to respond to both his Death to E3 article and it's follow-up.

First of all, I need to point out that I had a "green badge" which meant I was allowed to go to the exhibition halls, but not the conference rooms. (Red Badges are for exhibitors, I think it was blue for media, and black badges are for super-ultra-elites that can go anywhere.) So half the stuff you see in the various videos coming out from E3 are places I couldn't go.

"This is not unlike E3, when everyone gathers together under one roof and everybody tries to talk at the same time." , "For every game or company we hear about, we're missing ten others."

This is true to a certain extent. Certainly if you're only reading about The Latest Most Awesome Headline News From E3, you probably saw footage of the God of War III demo on the first day. I actually didn't notice there were playable demos of GoW3 until day three.

Admittedly, I had different priorities from the start, which is why I'm not going to cover any of the "big stuff" on my weblog. But the fact of the matter is that the little guys are there too, and not just in the Indiecade. It's more of a problem with the media folks' priorities rather than E3 itself.

"Don't forget to buy a few bins of giveaway swag and hire some booth babes to hand it out."

There was a lot less of that this year. This was my first E3, but some of my companions had been to the 2006 show and there's photo evidence that this year's swag was not up to the standards of the days of yore. Sure, I entered a raffle for an XB360, got plenty of T shirts, a couple inflatable pool toys, and a code to download Battlefield 1943 on the PS3, but mostly it was promotional material for the games themselves. Most of that promotional material was being handed out by the mid-sized to small companies, so it's easier for me to remember them a week later than all the noise the big guys were making.

"What exactly are you getting for all of that money? Because if all you want is the attention..."

Actually, a lot of serious business deals were also going on behind the scenes. I don't know any of the details, of course, but there were a lot of people taking advantage of the fact that it's a trade show for people in the business. There were lots of meetings behind closed doors, and quite a few guys in business suits who (shockingly) weren't collecting loot or paying attention to the games at all!

"If you go the E3 route it's entirely possible your game will be lost in the noise."

Shamus, the fact of the matter is: there are several other levels to E3 other than what you get to see in videos on G4 or gaming news sites. You really do need to go next year.

Now a few comments on the follow-up article:

"Because Jedi are special. Except, in an MMO, you can simply choose to be a Jedi."

Actually, you're completely forgetting about the playable Sith characters. I think most of the Goldshire-dwellers are going to go for The Awesome Side of the Force and leave the Jedi alone.

"the truth is that Telltale games has a spectacular track record. "

Plus, if you count the five new episodes as separate games, Telltale is about to produce more Monkey Island content than Lucasarts did in the first place! (Well, okay, I doubt any of the Tales will be the same length as Secret, but it's still exciting.)

Trixel!

There's lots to write about, but since Daniel Boutros was the very first guy to email me when i got back from E3, he's up next.

Trixel is like a cross between Q Bert and Portal. Probably some other stuff too, but that's what the levels I played seemed like. It's a pretty addictive puzzle game for the iPhone, and I'm planning on getting a copy myself as soon as Mom stops hogging the iPhone.

Here's a video:



Dan himself is a pretty cool guy and had some helpful tips for playing. Tap the tiles instead of dragging them, for example.

So I Met The Cogs Guys

Not too long ago, during the development of Steam City Chronicles, I saw a video of a puzzle game on the PC called Cogs. Since we were still discussing the subject of exactly what constitutes steampunk at the time, I posted the video to the private forum.

Then, a couple months later, at E3, in the Indiecade area, I met the Cogs guys. It was really pretty neat: their game helped shape the look of our game (though it wasn't the only influence), and I got to meet them there. They're cool guys, and I gave them a copy of SCC.

This is the sort of thing that makes me want to go back to E3 next year. Nevermind the pomp and circumstance, for me E3 is foremost a place for developers to meet other developers and give kudos.

The video:

Those Jerks At Valve

I went to E3 with the assumption that I'd get to meet some guys from Valve, and hopefully give them a copy of my game. It's pretty precious: there's only 100 copies of Steam City Chronicles in the whole world after all, (and due to circumstances beyond my control, that may be all that will ever be produced) so I can't just give it out to everyone I meet. I was also hoping to maybe play some games in progress such as Portal 2 or Half Life Episode 3.

But no.

Valve had a meeting room up on the second floor where media folks could go, but not us mere green-badges. No booth in any of the exhibition halls.

"So, all right." I thought, "I guess I'll run into one of them on the show floor."

No dice.

I ran into guys from NCSoft, Blizzard and a bunch of other companies that have no booths either. Companies that didn't make any big annoucements. But I still found them. I gave out a ton of business cards to lots of folks, but none to the ninjas at Valve. Despite me flying across the country in the hopes of meeting guys from Valve, I didn't see a single one of them the entire time.

To add insult to injury, the demos of Left4Dead 2 that were available to play were XBox 360 only. It's like they knew I can't play FPSs on consoles and were trying to rub it in.

So I'm joining Shamus Young's Boycott HL2Ep3 Group. Until Valve releases HL2Ep3, I won't buy it. Until Valve releases Portal 2, I won't buy it. Until Valve releases Left4Dead 2, I won't buy it. Until Valve releases Half Life: Decay on the PC, I won't buy it.

Unless, of course, there's a good pre-order deal.

That'll show 'em. :(

EDIT: Reading this again, the irony might not be clear. Read the last couple paragraphs carefully if you don't get it.

Update: There's a proper Steam group for the "boycott" now, with some amusing comments. Also, Shamus Young has posted a followup.

Indiecade!

Despite my being somewhat into the indie games "scene", I had not heard of Indiecade before E3. But now they've got my full attention.

Indiecade is an organization that organizes events where indie game makers can come and show off their games. Many of the events take place within larger conventions such as E3 and PAX, but they also have their own show.

Due to time constraints and the fact that I want to write several more posts on the various guys I met there, this one is short. Just click on the link, will you?

I'm Listening

It seems that a lot of folks are responding to me via email! I'll eventually get back to all of you, and I also have drafts of several posts in the works. I ended up not being able to post this morning, so I'll try to write / finish writing two substantive posts tomorrow. There's a lot to write about, and too little time.

I Left My Toothbrush In Los Angeles

So here are the events that happened during E3:

• Each morning, except Friday, we ate at Dinah's, a diner with a great breakfast deal: three pancakes, two eggs, and sausage, bacon or ham, all for $5. The pancakes are especially good.
• Monday afternoon we ate at In-N-Out Burger. Darn tasty burgers & fries, and it was packed. In addition to the normal menu, there's also the Secret Menu which you basically have to know about already from someone telling you or overhearing it there. Grilled Cheese sandwiches are one item on the secret menu, as are "Animal Style fries" which are fries with lettuce, tomato, the burger sauce and everything that goes on the Double Double burgers except patties and buns.
• On Monday night, we were walking on Venice Beach an a bum pulled the old "I bet I can tell you exactly where you got your shoes, down to the state, city, and street" swindle (answer: on your feet). Apparently no one else was wise to the trick, but I kept my mouth shut because he was very entertaining. He put on a great show, with some terffic improvisation, and we were all quite happy to him a dollar each. I suspect he may have been a professional actor once.
• Also on monday night, we played a drinking game called "king of the cup" which involves a pack of cards, balancing the cards on the cup as they're drawn, twelve standard rules, and making a new rule if you draw a king. The challenge is to remember and respond to all the rules as you get more inebriated. If the stack of cards falls off the cup, you have to chug your beer.
• Tuesday afternoon, I left my toothbrush wrapped up in a washcloth (because that's how I pack it) on the sink. The staff mistook my washcloth for one of theirs, and my toothbrush was gone. Oh well, not their fault.
• Tuesday night we ate at Home Town Buffet, which is an exact carbon copy of Old Country Buffet. Might be some kind of rebranding thing.
• Wednesday night four of us ate at China One Buffet. It was a very good Chinese buffet and I felt sorry for them that there was hardly anyone else that night to enjoy it. So if you're in Los Angeles, check it out.
• Thursday night we went to Video Games Live. It was great: they had Ralph Baer live on the big screen via Skype, some great piano playing by the Video Game Pianist, a good mix of orchestral and rock music, a fantastic medly of Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross music, and a really nice encore with One Winged Angel and a Castlevania medly.
• Friday was spent flying home to NJ.

Oh, you wanted to know about events that actually happened at E3? Well I'll write about those soon too.