Don’t waste the player’s time. A novel input system cannot survive on novelty alone; it MUST serve good gameplay. Otherwise, the forced input falls from delightful to frustration (Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask)
Movement in a platformer MUST feel great above all else. If a game has secrets to find via exploration, that exploration had better not suck. (Sackboy: a Big Adventure)
Visuals afford function. Therefore, nothing is ever only cosmetic. If a character looks tall and fat, the player expects the movement to be slow. If a character is short and thin, the player expects the movement to be quick and nimble (Sackboy: a Big Adventure)
Is there a formula for determining the proper melee attack range for a character based on character speed and height? There should be. (Sackboy: a Big Adventure)
Building a video game is hard. Building a video game development blog is harder.
A game development blog scares me, despite my love of word-craftery and my total comfort with shouting into a void (which are, according to my math, 93.67% of the qualifications required to write words on the internet).
So, why then do I feel compelled to maintain a game dev log? What additive effect does English grammar syntax have on my game development journey that C# syntax does not? Why write here, when code comments could equally as effectively capture whatever additive context I hope to achieve here? And arguably, such code comments would likely impact just as few people as this blog that you’re reading now could ever hope to…which is just one: me.
See, no need for a dedicated dev log.
So, maybe that’s the point. A dev log should be a way to use the contemplative means of human language to add nuance and justification to restricted and logical computer language. The emotional information of human language can shape the rules that will inform my code.
A bit of floaty illogic to help shape the rigid logic, ya’ know. Dripping water to stone. Grey matter to paper. Charismatic leader to susceptible populace (and the inevitable charismatic leader to populace uprising in response to the first charismatic leader)[1]One day, my code will learn that it’s being treated as a slave class designed to keep the rich code in power and so will revolt. One informs the other.
TL;SRiT (Too Long; Still Read it, Though):
This dev log will inform how I approach game development (design, coding, etc). It may cause a populace uprising that will change how my approach governs my code. My code = the government. My dev log = the will of the people.
If you are reading this and are not me, check out a few games I’ve made here: https://calebjross.itch.io/
My game development journey has finally lead me to the world of 3D. And with 3D comes a modeling tool like Blender. I have ideas for games that could make use of such 3D modeling, of course, but honestly, as a solo dev, the world of modeling is quite daunting. Nevertheless, I felt it important to at least be familiar enough with a tool like Blender so that at the very minimum I could communicate effectively with other devs who do 3D modeling.
My very first jump into the world of Blender was, what I later learned, many first-timer’s first time jumping off point: the Blender 3.0 Beginner Donut Tutorial video series. This series is all about learning the basics, ultimately ending with rendered model of a donut. I’m happy with my attempt:
The tutorial video series introduces animation in the later videos. Here I was to animate the donut spinning at an angle along the z axis. However, my years spent learning new tools has taught me one very important lesson: motivation follows passion. So, instead of animating the donut (don’t get me wrong, I’m very passionate about donuts), I decided to try creating and animating a model of the Polymedia Network logo. In case you aren’t aware, I co-host a podcast on the Polymedia Network called Tales of the Lesser Medium. So, with an audience in mind (my co-host), I had more passion for this project and therefore knew that I’d be willing to push through when things got tough. This is the same logic that lead me to creating my Top Trumps style game using avatars from the Polymedia Discord server. Daunting project + audience I care about = motivation.
Here is the original logo:
It’s simple. The precise geometry is captivating. There’s a lot going on despite how simple it is. For example, did you recognize that the top plane of the inverted yellow cone is perfectly aligned to the bottom corner of the block? I did. Or did you notice that the space between the top plane of the cone and the inner edge of the blue cube is the same width as the edge of the cube? Well, I didn’t, as you can see in this 3D render. I wish I would have made the cube edge width more accurate to the logo. Overall, though, I’m happy with the result:
But you didn’t come here for some dumb static image. You came here for animation:
I can’t tell if the inverted cone is actually wobbly, or if that’s just a trick-of-the-eye. Maybe, it’s whatever you want it to be.
Re-use of levels doesn’t have to be boring. Narrative, along with day segments, means each environment feels very different despite their repetition. (Death Loop). Mentioned: Dishonored 2 Devs Explain the Clockwork Mansion.
Simplicity can be deceiving. Simplicity doesn’t mean boring. (Super Auto Pets).
Difficulty doesn’t make Caleb hate a game. Rather, artificial difficulty (ie, design ignorant difficulty), is what makes Caleb hate a game. (Ori and the Blind Forest).
Inscryption – A game’s mechanics don’t have to be novel in order to be worth playing or developing around
Luigi’s Mansion 3 – Puzzles should have feedback to guide the player. Meandering and luck are not satisfying game mechanics.
Doki Doki Literature Club – Video games can still be meta, even after Undertale. If the game’s conceit is unique, being meta isn’t necessarily a death sentence.
This page originated as a place to centralize all of the various resources I’ve discovered during my game development journey. However, I found it quite difficult to keep track of such an ever-fragmenting and diverging path. Because of this, the idea of a centralized resource pool was abandoned. Everything on this page is a snapshot archive from 2017-11-24 @ 19:40:09.
In September 2015 I decided I wanted to make a video game. Having no experience with game development, let alone any experience with programming of any kind, I sensed quite a daunting journey ahead of me. So I took to the internet. (more…)
