As I posted on Twitter a few days ago, the game that I worked on before I started up Teotl Studios to work on The Ball full time just got announced by EA: Syndicate.
And related to that, I thought this was quite a nice parody.
That aside, I recently read through a couple of game design books for my course at Future Games.
Game Design Workshop by Tracy Fullerton and Rules of Play by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman
I thought these two were too academical and very tiring to read. I gave up a few dozen pages into both books. My students experienced the same..
A Theory of Fun by Raph Koster
Great tiny little book. Very easy and fast to read and gives some interesting insights..
Level Up by Scott Rogers
Was ok. I read through it entirely which means something in itself, and it was interesting at times but I did feel like it stuck to the basics a bit too much and I did not feel like I got much out of this book. Perhaps better fit for people starting out with game development..
The Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell
This was by far the best book out of the bunch for me. It goes quite deep into certain subjects, gave me a lot of insights and perspectives into various topics, and it managed all in a non-academical way. Even though its subjects were a bit “heavy” at times, it was quite easy to read through. I can recommend this book.
Spending the month in the Philippines at the moment of all places. Vacation. Great place. The climate is a bit too warm perhaps but life feels free and relaxing here. Flying back next weekend, and then I will begin teaching my regular yearly courses at Future Games until February.
My friend Teddy and his colleagues over at Quixel have released the nDo 2 beta! I can highly recommend it. It allows you to paint and modify normal maps directly in Photoshop, and as I never really got into all that Zbrush and Mudbox stuff this is really the missing piece of tech I had been looking for for a long time. Go check it out.
I came across a couple of interesting articles, books, and a program:
Dave’s Mapper – A top down map generator. Can’t really use it for anything serious, but it may give you some inspiration when you try to come up with a floorplan. It is actually remarkably UT’ish/Quake’ish what it generates :) Modular Environments in UDK – A tutorial from my friend Thiago Klafke on creating modular meshes for use in the UDK (or other engines if you wish). Motivating Players in Open World Games - An article on game and level design in open world games from someone from Bethesda. Spacescape – Free star texture generator.
Also I just bought a couple of books, two most notable ones are:
Also have two game design books to still go through, and a book on castles. I figured since games are usually about assault/defend, lets read some in-depth info on castle design.
Long time no update again, there goes my promise of updating more regularly :) It is quite hard to find the time with all the other things I am doing.
I made some changes to the site. I removed a directory with images that were normally no longer used (I hope) and I fixed a few broken images and bits of text that messed up when it got ported over to WordPress. I also moved all large images back from the secondary host to the host the website itself is on too, after someone complained he could not see the externally referenced images. They should also load faster now. Let me know if some images ported over incorrectly.
I am currently working on some mobile Unreal Engine projects. I am working on a small kismet only mobile game that will be used for a new video for Eat3D, and we are porting over The Ball. We got it running at 30-40 FPS all the way through the first 3 levels actually, so that is really promising and these mobile devices are getting really powerful lately. More on that later when things solidify a bit more. Will also be traveling a lot later this year for a long vacation, and I will be back to teaching at Future Games in fall, until late winter 2012.
Quite a few stories popping up lately about excessive crunch and other such scandals. First we had the LA Noir Credit scandal and the stories about management and excessive crunch, now horror stories about Gameloft in New Zealand surfaced. It is really disgraceful, criminal even as far as I am concerned. I read a story of a a guy who was made to work 16 hours every day for almost half a year long while having a 3 month old baby at home… That shows just how incredibly immature the industry still is. Meanwhile the IGDA which is suppose to represent and defend our interests as developers has proven yet again that it really does not care for its members and is unable to stand up for us. This is just one out of many scandals that they have failed to respond to (Tim Langdellanyone? – and check out his amusing performance in court too), making me wonder exactly what its purpose really is…
There seems to be growing awareness of the excessive crunch problem though, even among junior developers, and each and every one of these stories that surfaces will further our cause, but there is more to be done. We need an increased awareness and opposition. Excessive crunch without a solid and fair compensation package is absolutely unacceptable!
A website dedicated to the topic popped up a few days ago: I Love Crunch
I finally found time again to write a new tutorial, on Eastern of all days. The new tutorial is about Texture Optimization and talks about lowering the memory footprint of your 2D assets in the UE3/UDK. I intend to finally go over the 3 material tutorials whenever I find time again, as those are desperately in need of an update.
I also wrote up a post mortem on the things we did for the Portal 2 ARG/Potato Sack. There is quite a big section in it about the level we did.
Now that I finally have near unlimited bandwidth and diskspace on this server I was thinking if I could perhaps extend my site somehow. If anyone has ideas let me know via mail, Facebook, Twitter, IRC, whatever!
Sorry, long time since the last update. There goes my idea of updating regularly :) I also still got those interviews around I have still yet to post. Too many other things to do. I have recently held two talks on UDK at Stockholm University, and I have also held one at Nacka Highschool, south Stockholm. Two fellow Dutchmen, both from the Renegade X team, have also spent a few days at my place to get some more in-depth knowledge on Unreal. Furthermore my website has known some problems over the past two weeks but those have now all been resolved. The site has moved servers, and I now finally have unlimited bandwidth available!
I also bought a new camera, finally. My previous camera was seven years old and it started to look really prehistorical (it had a 4 cm diameter lcd screen for example…). New one is a Sony a55. Going to give my photography hobby a new impulse :)
The big news this month however, is our The Ball Portal DLC level:
Over the past month and a half or something we had been working on this Portal/The Ball crossover level. It has about an hour worth of gameplay. Huge props to Valve for letting us officially infringe on their IP! Part of the Potato Sack!
Thanks to our whole team for making this possible!
Programming
Markus Arvidsson
Art
Markus Palviainen
Lukas Arvidsson
Level Design/Environment Art
Sjoerd “Hourences” De Jong
Mario Marquardt
Kevin Cytatzky
Dan “Cardo” Shannon
Marko “Urre” Permanto
Joachim Holmér
Over the past few months I have been teaching at Future Games in central Stockholm, and after a three months of introductory classes the students got to make their first game, using the UDK.
The students had some serious limitations imposed on them:
Five students a team. 3 Artists. 2 Designers. No programmers!These games were done with no or very little UnrealScript and it shows how powerful and artist-friendly the Unreal Engine is!
For many this was the very first game they made. Most of them had no or very little prior experience with game development.
They had only 4 weeks to make these games.
It had to be a vehicle based game.
They were only allowed to use 5 MB worth of 3D data, 10 MB worth of 2D data, and 50 000 triangles per level.
I am really happy with the results. The students did an awesome job and the quality they accomplished surpassed my expectations!
Captured by a creature unknown, you must now find your way through the weird and horrid underground to find your way back home to your family.
Solve mindbending puzzles using very easy controls to navigate your little character.
Use your environment to your advantage by manipulating objects with your powerful tractor beam.
Furious Trucker
By Emil Wikström, Jesper Engström, Jakob Pålinger, Peter Wilhelmsson, Sofie Sundqvist
The truck full of fury is now in your possession! Deliver the cargo through forests, fires and steep cliffs, while you run over hoards of debris scattered around in all chaos.
On a distant planet in a far off galaxy, a crashed spaceship is slowly sinking into a poisonous swamp… Fifteen years after the forced landing, a small maintenance drone has finally generated enough energy to boot up… The human crew is suspended in cryo stasis and the only one who can save them is YOU…
You are Mr González, an intruder in the human world who seeks to rescue his trapped son.
As humans are not particularly fond of flies, stay out of their way while indirectly making them open the doors for you.
Move from room to room in the large human household and interact with the environment to finally save your son.
From the perspective of Mr González, explore the human world in incredible scale and detail.
Experiment with objects and characters to find and solve a multitude of cause and effect puzzles.
Get to know the vivid home and lives of a quirky family in a relaxed and humorous atmosphere.
Annoy, surpise and terrify the humans as you’re rewarded for your mischievousness.
Lanternus – Luminent Descent
By Giuseppe Lacapra, Klara Nordin, Carlos Lundhall, Max Elmberg Sjöholm, Omar Chaouch
In the depths of the ocean lies an acient alien structure, with mysterious powers it has corrupted the surrounding environment.
Take control of a submarine and dive in to the abyss, on a exploration mission! Navigate your submarine through unknow waters equipped with a lantern and a sonar system to detect the lurking dangers of the abyss!
The Not So Flying Carpet
By Bojan Piperac, Fredrik Henriksson, Leo Ringborg, Oskar Thuresson, Rasmus Bremholm
The not so flying carpet is a reaction based racing/platform-jumping game set in a dark, murky forest with an arcade style fast paced gameplay. The wooden ledges are your friends and the swampy ground beneath is your enemy. Navigate the troll through the forest and try to get him to fly for real. Since he cant rely on his carpet (that barely flies) its up to you to keep him safe.
Mailman
By Andreas Häll-Penninger, Ivan Boström, Gustav Holmström, Jennie Persson, Malin Lindgren
Mailman is an adventure game about a man who’s on a quest to deliver a very important package. Something goes wrong and he crash lands with his airplane on a world of islands, and now he has to retrieve his lost package and get back home. To get his package he has to travel through the forsaken temple of this world, and by building a jet pack from his wreckage he now has the ability to navigate through the obstacles in the world.
PC Gamer has awarded my game ,The Ball, Best Action/Adventure of 2010! Thanks a lot! That is cool :)
A masterstroke of minimalism, The Ball was the best gaming vignette of the year. There’s no dialog, sweeping cinematics or tacked-on multiplayer mode to burden The Ball—just a lightweight, focused, gameplay-driven short story. It benefited from this simplicity by giving us a campaign that felt paced and personal. As you kick the multiton marble around with your ancient Mexican gravity gun, it somehow makes the transition from object to character. You develop this subtle but strong relationship with the object—it doesn’t change or communicate, but it takes on the feeling of a pet following you through lava-soaked corridors.
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In other news, after a very calm and relaxing Christmas vacation I am now back at my regular schedule. I updated my first Material tutorial a little, but given my schedule I don’t think I will be able to do any further tutorial updates for at least a month. Basically the only ones left to do are two material tutorials, and one tutorial on triggering materials (outdated – the Kismet actions it refers to were removed a few months ago).
