Ludipe's Forum Posts

  • I'm not interested in forming this team anymore. I'll email the users who PMed me in case they wanna join my project for Ludum Dare October Challenge.

    Regards

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  • > I'll be the project director

    No , this won't work

    Everyone wants to be the director , but does one really have the experience needed ?

    How much game did you make , publish ? Design documents you wrote ?

    No one likes directors , everyone hates BAD directors

    I've worked as a director many times, during game jams and regular events; and I have written design documents each time. I also have experience managing teams in stuff not related to games.

    I don't think being the director is something fun, you have to write lots of e-mails, asign tasks and make sure everyone completes them (it's a pain in the ass). I just said I'll be the project director because I feel I can do it, things doesn't work when there's not a director from the beginning.

    I rarely work solo, right now I'm working in two different projects with two different teams; I never had a complain from the rest of the team and I've worked several times with some of those people. I just thought it'd be nice to have a team formed by users of this forum.

    If some people want to post just saying it won't work or think that I'm just some immature kid who "had an idea and wants to have a team to make that wonderful game for him" so be it. If someone liked the idea from the first post feel free to reply or send me a PM.

  • Honestly, everyone wants to be the game designer. If you want experience try offering to work with a team or you'll just end up working on your own.

    I don't think everyone wants to be the game designer, maybe they want to be the guy with the original idea but game designing (example: level designing) is pretty hard and requires a lot of work. I'm not saying I'll choose an idea and let the others do the work, I'm just saying I'll help with the main features of the game but I'll focus on serious game designing (not just the original idea).

    I've been working in games for a couple of years and I really like being a game designer, I read articles, books, make prototypes and all that; I'm not one of those guys "who just have the idea".

    And I didn't say experience is required, but I'd appreciate if they had something to show (even if it's a game they made in a couple of hours).

  • Hi,

    I have always liked the idea of working with a team. This kind of projects tend to disappear and it's hard to get them working. I'm here to try to create a lasting team to develop a few games.

    The idea is to have a small group of people with different skills working on a project together. I'll be the project director, that means I'll give tasks to everyone to keep things organized, but stuff like the game we'll develop, the name of the team and all that will be decided by the whole team.

    Once the team is formed we'll have a meeting (over skype or similar) and each one will propose a few ideas. We'll vote and start the development. I'll write the design document and email news and tasks to everyone each week.

    I am a game designer, I love reading about game designing theory and those abstract concepts, but I can do some coding and basic art (I also own a construct license); and, as said before, I'll be taking the role of director. I'd like to create a couple of small games and then, who knows? we'll see if we can get this team working.

    If interested post introductions, skills, previous projects and e-mail.

  • I found a video in which this topic is discussed. It's from Jonathan Blow, so it's very interesting, he really knows about game designing.

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  • How did you design the destructible terrain like that?

    I tried two methods (both worked):

    1.- Dirt is solid and it has a collision polygon which is a box. When you dig (down key + dig key) it changes the animation to the destroyed one, which has no collision polygon.

    2.- Two layers, an upper one with the dirt tiles and a lower one with the destroyed tiles. When you dig (down key + dig key) you destroy the dirt tile, so all what remains is the destroyed one.

  • my conclusion: gameplay and story have different meanings by different persons, both matter even distant of eachother. i think your effort will be more well spent toward how you want ppl to feel while playing your game, happy? sad? angry? want to make a question to the player? want to make it have a good time while playing? want so surprise then? or just want then to stressout?

    no matter what you choose to make, will always be ppl who will love your work and ppl who will hate it.

    I agree with that. Take Fez as an example, the main goal of its creator was to create a relaxing experience. Gameplay contributes to that, you have to take it slow and explore stuff but you aren't afraid of dying from time to time. In this game the graphic design is really important because it has a key role in creating this relaxing experience.

    So, as valdarko says, the main thing is how both, story and gameplay, fit together and how the player feels while playing the game.

    Some games try to communicate feelings focusing on the story while others prefer to use gameplay to do so. But in the end gameplay must be a bit more important, a game with no story can still comunicate feelings, a game with no gameplay is also able to communicate feelings, but it'll feel more like a movie, take "To the moon" as an example.

  • <img src="http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/4513/kpv.gif" border="0" />

    Added digging animations, hud, energy, hunger and physics (needs to be adjusted). I'll keep working on this after two weeks.

    (This is a prototype so everything is just a placeholder)

  • Yeah, I thought about adding more foxes but I'm still designing their behavior, you have to keep their AI simple because it's really hard to do even a quick AI.

    P.D.: I'm also thinking about being able to find a mate and having little foxes around, but that's a bit too complex, I'm sticking with easier mechanics first.

  • I added some physics today and discovered that I was spending too much time playing basketball and football with apples in a cave I just digged. It's pretty fun.

  • That's a good idea, it's another thing the player can do to get food.

    P.D.: It's not that I want a very simple combat, it's just that I want to avoid stressful situations. There'll be some danger but not too much.

  • BioShock honestly bored me (and hundreds of others based on Internet searches) because fetch quest followed by fetch quest is not exciting, even with enemies to shoot. To this day, I have yet to find someone who says they can play BioShock for more than a few hours at a time (compare this to Mass Effect series and Deus Ex: Human Revolution, where many people were publicly admitting to no-life-ing the game).

    That's because BioShock gameplay is nothing new to you, it's not trying to innovate at all, but that doesn't mean the gameplay is bad; it's just that you've played similar stuff and are bored of watching the same patrons again and again. Imagine playing Bioshock without having played another FPS before, you'd think gameplay was good. That's all I'm saying, the core mechanics are not that bad, it's just that they are not appealing to you.

    Please don't make claims about the gameplay quality of BioShock unless you have actually played the game. No, BioShock would not be what it is without the dressing. The gameplay quality of BioShock is exactly decent, nothing more. The developers basically banked on story and setting, and they succeeded.

    I played Bioshock and got bored soon but, as stated before, even when I found the gameplay to be dull, I'd not say it's bad.

    You're right when you say that Bioshock would not be what it is without the dressing, I didn't denied it. All I'm trying to say is that, from my personal point of view, that's not what we should be doing, even if you sell millions of copies. In my opinion, the core mechanics should be more important than the story, when it's the opposite I just quit the game, even if it has an awesome story and it's being praised by the press.

    Chess is also a game that is centuries of years old, was required to learn for millions of people of many different positions of power and wealth, and is today being integrated in many schools as mandatory learning.

    The success of Chess is only loosely applicable to games we could develop as indies.

    The age or how many people play a game has nothing to do with quality. It's a deep game that requires no dressing because it has a great design behind it. It'd be great even if it was released yesterday and played by just a bunch of people

  • Dull gameplay becomes acceptable if the story is engrossing. This is proven financially.

    BioShock is hailed as one of the greatest FPS games because of its story and engrossing atmosphere. But play the game and you will realize it the gameplay itself adds nothing really new to the FPS genre and that the majority of the game is the player performing 'fetch quests' to gather some items.

    The Last of Us, acclaimed by many as possibly the best PS3 shooter to be released this year, has a very engrossing story. However, when it comes to gameplay, there is nothing it adds to the FPS genre (reminds me of Call of Duty), and many of the fights occur in cut-scenes where you have to press some button within a short amount of time in order to win, which is a criticism that is often acknowledged but passed over because the story is just so good.

    You are confusing innovation with gameplay quality. "Bioshock" and "The last of us" might not be anything new, but they have a fun gameplay, sure, the story helps to avoid noticing how repetitive they are, but that's all. Gameplay is very polished and it'd be fun for Bioshock fans even without the dressing.

    So in "Bioshock" and "The Last of Us" the story helps but there must be a gameplay better than just decent.

    I agree that in those games the dressing is way above the gameplay, that's why I'd prefer to have them as a TV show, book or a movie instead of a game.

    I've played a few games where the story was great but the gameplay was dull, I ended up quitting after a couple of hours(sometimes minutes) and searching for the cinematics in Youtube.

    It's personal preference as to whether a story is needed, but in terms of financial success, a great story with average gameplay will pay off more than great gameplay without a purpose.

    I was speaking about game quality rather than financial success. Sure, if you are focusing on earning money you should really worry about the dressing. But from my point of view those are dirty tricks you can use to cheat the gamer. For example, there are some RPGs where you start with some old clothes and a rusty sword, fighting wolfs, by the end of the game you are a fully equipped-knight fighting dragons; that's ok as long as the gameplay gets deeper, if the core mechanics don't progress at the same pace then you're just using a dirty trick. Smart players will notice this and quit the game. Sure, you'll sell tons of copies, that's what many commercial games do.

    You can choose to learn from most commercial games and make things that look like hollywood blockbusters (which will look awesome and be financial successful) but I'd rather experiment and try to do something I can call quality entertainment; once I've done that I'll worry about marketing and making it more appealing(adding the dressing).

    So basically we differ in the final goal, your point is that financial succes tells us what's right (and what we should do) but I don't feel the same. Everyone has a different point of view of how videogames should be made

    <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

    P.D.: Chess doesn't have a story but it's one of the best games ever made. Its core is so good that it doesn't require any dressing at all.

  • Testing the digging system I made for my fox simulator. Brainstorming here!

    <img src="http://img30.imageshack.us/img30/8049/nzg.gif" border="0">

  • Games don't need stories, unless they need a story.

    I agree with Sulli. I bought "To the moon" a few days ago on Steam, it has a beautiful story,it'll make you cry, the problem is that gameplay couldn't be more boring and gets in the middle. It's a game that should be a short movie, a graphic novel or something similar.

    It's great to have a good story but just if you have a good gameplay to support it. If you have a good idea for a story don't waste it on a game with dull gameplay.

    Graphics, music and stories are great, I love art in games and I've bought a couple of soundtracks but they're useless without a solid core, and that's gameplay; the rest is just a dressing.

    Designing comes first, add the dressing and polish it after.

    Yeah, sometimes indie games forget about the story or it's very minimalist (like in Braid), that's just a design choice, some studios have a "pure" style and want to focus on gameplay.