Jason Bakker

I think this is perhaps one of the most important points to be borne out of this incident - that many, many males go through a period in their lives where they are horrifyingly close to the position that Elliot was in. For me it was all through my teen years, and it was focused around an "othering" of girls and women, to the point where I literally could barely speak to a woman or girl outside my family. And significantly for me, the only thing that brought me out of that situation was luck - meeting a girl my age who managed to push through that bullshit and actually make a connection with me. It points to systemic problems in the way boys are raised and how they are taught (both explicitly and through action) to see women; and then after that, there being no systems in place to handle that situation or even diagnose it as a problem. Society views it as acceptable, and it just perpetuates indefinitely unless luck or some sort of self-awareness kicks in. The fact that Elliot's situation was both incredibly sad (for his views of women and race, not his lack of "success") and shouldn't be a part of so many men's lives is a perfect example of how feminism positively affects men as well as women, by trying to create awareness, and break down these barriers and negative cycles and behaviors.

Sorry to pick a line out of your post (which I generally agree with), but I don't think that this is true unfortunately. Publishers as a company care about money, which is why they care about review scores. If they deem that the money gained from splitting important content out of the game into DLC would be greater than what's lost from review scores, most would probably do it. Really exploitative free-to-play mobile games are a good example of this - they are often given lower scores in reviews, but publishers don't reduce the exploitation because (they believe) they will make more money from it than they'll lose from a lower review score. That said, you're probably right in that core pieces aren't usually taken out and offered separately. This very consumerist approach to AAA releases by publishers definitely makes me care about them less. If it's a game with a purportedly serious tone, it's really hard for me to take it seriously when I know I could have gotten a gimmicky toy or piece of "equipment" for a few dollars more with the purchase.

I'm wondering whether feels good while playing is being incorrectly conflated with rewarding in this discussion. I see all of my time playing Demons' Souls as rewarding regardless of how I felt while playing. The achievement I felt at finally getting good at that game was directly related to the previous phase, where playing felt fruitless and I thought I wasn't getting any better.

I think this is actually a really good approach, and I've been swaying ever so slowly towards it. One thing that's made me more relaxed about whether I'm receptive or not has been reducing the hyperbole in my spoken opinion about a particular game/novel/film. If I talked in terms of things sucking or being terrible or being the best thing ever I'd feel pressure to make sure that my opinion about a particular work had solidified, and I'd really given it its due. But I've since realised that my opinion about something doesn't need to be set in stone after experiencing it - it's totally valid to have an opinion about a work that changes over time, or that perhaps comes out of not being receptive to it at the time. But the hyperbole was contributing to me feeling that I needed my opinions to be "true" and final. I don't think there's anything wrong with hyperbolic expression of opinions in general - it's just that for me personally, reducing the hyperbole meant that I gave myself more freedom to experience things regardless of my perception of my own state, and to form and change opinions.

This always weirds me out when I feel it in a game, because I wonder - am I simply used to being handheld, and that's why now that I'm left to explore the world myself I'm having trouble enjoying it? Or is it just that this game's free exploration has been done in such a way that it doesn't really work for me? I know it kinda heads into the silly area of playing a game "correctly" or not, but that doesn't stop me thinking about it.

Agreed. I have a fantasy where the smaller titles end up being successful enough that large studios all end up doing a Double Fine and funding their employees' sweet game ideas. Smaller releases probably are already successful enough for that to make fiscal sense, except for the fact that it would require significant cultural and hierarchical upheaval, and large studios are resistant to change.

That truly is the Citizen visceral incredible gamer gamer visceral of video games.

Hitman GO sounds pretty cool. I'm pleasantly surprised to hear it doesn't have a bunch of gamey animations for the characters. Regarding the discussion about why games add unnecessary animations in the first place, I think a lot of it probably comes down to budgeting. From a budget standpoint in a traditional studio setup (which'll have 1-3 teams with similar makeups, each of which contains animators) character animations theoretically add value to the product, and if you'd otherwise have animators that you're paying wages to sitting on their hands, it makes way more sense fiscally to have them adding value and "polish" to the game. By having numerous smaller teams with more diverse makeups Double Fine minimizes that issue, and it makes sense then that they were more predisposed to make a game like Stacking. My guess is that Hitman GO must've come out of a skunkworks-style team a bit similar to the Henry Hatsworth team at EA; a group of devs splintering out of one of the larger teams, which would have been able to pick and choose which elements of a traditional team they wanted (or maybe they didn't even have the choice to grab animators off whatever project the larger team was working on, and had to work around the constraint). The employee role + budget conundrum is one that I think severely impacts innovation in larger studios. When you have large teams with groups of people who have predefined roles that need to have work to do, the projects that are decided on necessarily need to utilize as many members of those teams as possible; and in the planning phase you need to focus not on what individuals in that group *can* do (which you don't know), but what they have previously done (which you do know).

Right! Sweet. I'm going to have to play around with UE4 a bit at some point now that the licensing is more indie friendly.

How've you been finding Unreal?

If you fixed the issue (so that there was only one class with that name), it may have just been Unity getting confused. It basically builds its own versions of your files and keeps them in memory. Because of some ordering issue, it may not have realised to remove its version of the old class that was in that file. When stuff like this happens, try going into Unity and selecting all of your source files, then right click and select 'Re-import'. If that doesn't work, try 'Re-import All'. And if that doesn't work, you probably do have two classes named the same thing in your project.

This probably isn't it, but it's still worth mentioning so that people working with Unity are aware of it. There's a toggle on the Console window labeled 'Collapse' - if you have it enabled, identical Debug prints that you're sending to the console will not be displayed twice - they'll collapse under one entry with a number on the left to indicate how many times that text has been sent to the console. I believe that option defaults to enabled, so in situations similar to Chris's, I've been tripped up by it, thinking that a piece of code is only firing once when it's actually going off multiple times.

Thanks Dosed! Don't stress about not being knowledgeable about game development, just take it one step at a time and ask questions about whatever you're confused about. Also, I'm an amateur at art, animation and sound, and I do consider myself an amateur in the context of the games that I'm making at the moment, but on the programming and design side I have worked professionally in game dev in the past. So don't think that you need to be making stuff that's as complex to create as SUCKER in order to keep up. You don't actually need to be hitting any kind of bar or "keeping up" - the point of this group is to try to learn, to challenge yourself and to have fun! Whatever you make, it's going to be awesome because you made it.

Lork - if this helps, on projects that I've worked on that've used NGUI, the main camera (not the NGUI one) had a UICamera script attached that had its Event Type set to World. In the Event Mask component of both the UICamera that's attached to your world camera, and the UICamera that's attached to your NGUI camera, you can toggle on and off which layers each camera renders.

I've been using git for version control with my Unity projects. You can set up a private git repository on bitbucket for free, and then create a .gitignore file in your project's root folder like this one. I then use the free program SourceTree to do the pushing (uploading) and pulling (downloading) of your unity project to and from the repository. If you haven't worked with version control before it takes a bit of getting used to, and you might need to read up on the core concepts of how to use git, but I'd highly recommend getting version control going for any project.

This is incredible, thanks so much for playing it! All of this makes me feel heaps better about the game; the thoughts and reactions (even the more mixed/negative ones) are along the lines of what I hoped to get; way more so than I expected. Murdoc: Totally agree. Have added some text to the bottom of the page that should hopefully clarify things a little bit. singing_pigs: Were you playing keyboard+mouse or with a controller? (My guess is controller?) I have this weird thing where my brain really quickly forgets or gets confused about what it's used to, so I just went with whatever felt okay. I want to go back and add options at some point, but I want to figure out a way to do so that doesn't introduce any HUD elements on to the screen. (I guess if you hit start/enter, that could probably just bring up a quick options screen.) SUCKER is single-player only unfortunately. It would be awesome if it secretly connected everyone across the world, but I think in that case I probably would have had to put in AI anyway, just in case only one person ever played it at once. Thanks a heap for the moment-by-moment impressions and the video as well; it's super cool to get a window into the player's mind as they're playing. A few of the moments in both clyde and rexor's playthroughs are almost scary in how they match up to what I hoped the player to feel at those times. If you're curious, one thing that doesn't seem to work at all communication-wise is the light on the back of the head. What it was meant to indicate is the octopodean creature's energy: - when it's bright, the creature has a bunch of energy. - when it's bright and pulsing, the energy is being drained. - when it's red and flashing intermittently, the creature is out of energy. I've got some other ideas for how to communicate that without resorting to HUD elements. Look forward to trying out some of your games and hopefully giving feedback that's as useful as all this!

Hey clyde! Yeah, I set it up so that Esc quits the game at any point. I might get rid of that in the next version, since Alt+F4 works fine.

I have no idea actually! I know that the quest writing process is partially underway, and there are some pretty cool plans for quest content, but I'm not sure how deep it's going to get into interpersonal relationships. I have a feeling it's more focused on the journey of the hero as they rise to power in the kingdom, and the relationships between heroes is more a direct player-to-player interaction. So I guess you could RP it if nothing else!

Arg, I totally dropped the ball on this. Crashed at 4am that night, then forgot that I ever wrote a post here. I'll make a new thread as per clyde's suggestion! 1 INT. ED' ROOM - LATE NIGHT 1 Ed sits in front of his computer. He is a snappily dressed gamer, and looks as if he hasn't moved from his post in command of the flickering terminal for some time. He's typing furiously, and it is clearly evident from his posture and unwavering gaze that he is notifying members of an online forum that a post has been updated with a link to a newly created topic. ED Here it is!

Thanks a bunch guys! Armello has some super talented and hard-working artists on board; the KS really reflects this I think.

Just as a non-related aside, I think BigJKO is an extremely perceptive, discerning and good-looking person.

Hey, I worked on Armello as well! Hallo Gav In the KS pitch video, my funny lookin' face is at 1:27. It's a pretty awesome project by a great team. But at the end of the day, the best thing about it is the player inventory and stats UI. It's really a marvel of engineering.

Thanks for asking! You're basically drifting around an underwater environment and trying to make friends. I'm hitting the deadline on this game-a-week game tonight, so am just putting some finishing touches on it now. Also hope to make it a bit less confusing... Your game looks very cool by the way! I like the line style, especially things like the trees and the detail on those stumps.

So I'm doing this thing at the moment where I'm going to try to make a game (or at least something) each week. I'll show you guys whatever I end up with at the end of this week... the idea is kinda conceptual, so I may not pull it off, but whatever. I've been putting up vines of bits and pieces as I develop; this is what it looked like yesterday.

Public Domain Jam sounds awesome. I'll definitely be participating in some form or another!