clyde

I put this together in a couple of hours this morning. WASD and controller should work. Press "R" to restart if you get stuck or fall off. The frog is drawn by Simbiotiqu. https://s3.amazonaws.com/odds-and-ends/2015+Wizard+Jam/buildAgain.html I'm going to try and do more of these little projects to give y'all an idea of what type of things can be done quickly in Unity. There are certain standard assets and scripts that make things like this very easy to accomplish when you know where things are. Also, I didn't limit how much... exponential growth can occur, so it will eventually crash after a while (I think).

I'll need some place-holder art-assets for my pu-pu platter of demos. If any of y'all have image-files or sounds that might inspire further developments, give me some links. .png and .mp3 are preferred, but not required. Scribbles and fart-noises are fine.

I still feel that I haven't managed to communicate what is simple to implement. Again, it's difficult to do because it varies from game-engine and programmer. I am considering making a couple of Unity-builds that take very little time in hopes that folks who aren't familiar with Unity can get an idea of what aspects of a game can be taken for granted because Unity does them for you. It's like trying to explain what a musical step-sequencer does and doesn't do to someone who hasn't used one before. The things that the application does for you make some types of music easier to make and some types remain difficult. I think it would be fun to make a pu-pu platter of Unity-structures for people to sample from for ideas.

Thanks for getting more specific Patrick. Reading the description, it seems like this is a good opportunity to give folks an idea of what would be involved on the game-engine side of a project like this. I would say that I'm an intermediate game-programmer who works pretty much exclusively in Unity. There are many, many ways to do any one thing in programming and having only been doing it for a year, I'm aware of only a small subset of the tools and techniques available. Other more experienced programmers have many more tools and techniques that I may not be aware of. Also, Unity is set-up in such a way that some specific things are very easy while other things take much more effort; use of physical forces, basic 2D and 3D movement, lighting, 3D camera-perspectives, audio-integration are all things that can be done very easily. There are even ready-made first-person and third-person controllers that you can just drop into a gameworld and start walking around in minutes (if the world has physics applied). So even though 3D exploration is more complex than a match-three game, when working in Unity a 3D exploration game is much easier to program than a match-three game because much of the 3D-explorer work is already done for you. I mention my skill-level and the tendencies of Unity because I don't want this to sound like a conclusive opinion, this is just where I'm coming from with my current ability and tools; someone else might be familiar with some match-three tool that makes all this effortless. Still, it's totally possible, I just want to break down the different things you mentioned by how much time and effort they would take. That way folks who have little experience in Unity can get an idea of how to evaluate and prioritize features. As an additional disclaimer, there are people here who probably know of tools and techniques within Unity that would greatly reduce the amount of effort; my opinion on this is not conclusive at all. This demonstrates how to build a match-three game in Unity. I'm not posting it to say "If you want it, then make it." I'm constantly reminded that we all have limited time for getting good at shit, and every time we decide to learn something new, we are giving up time for another activity. I'm posting that series because it can provide a sense of what level of detail needs to be put into a system for a game like this when using Unity. As a bonus, it is an excellent tutorial for beginners, so maybe someone will see it and realize that game-programming is an activity they would like to replace smoking cigarettes with. An conceptual break-down of this project would be more like this: -Create a grid of gameObjects and assign colors to them. -Create a system for selecting gems and displaying that those gems are selected. -Create a system that allows gems to determine if the two selections are valid (typically this means that they are side by side, but they still have to be able to get a list of all available neighbors). -Create a system for switching places when two valid selections are made. -Create a system that instantiates new gems and drops them into the board. -Create a system that checks for whether or not a match is made. -Create a system that checks to see if the board has filled up. Now let's consider the goal of matching colors in a specific order rather than checking neighbors to see if they are the same color as themselves. The ideal order would probably be a randomized two dimensional array (also know as a grid), this is not very hard to make. The way we make this is to create a loop for assigning all of the x values on a grid and then put a loop that assignis all the y values inside of the x-value loop. It sounds hard but it's not. Displaying that grid as small, non-selectable, non-movable gems would also be pretty easy since we can use most of the stuff we made for the playable grid. Since the grid are the same size (assumably) it also wouldn't be very hard to iterate through all the gems in one grid to check and see if they match gems of similar placements in the second grid, especially because the x/y values would assumably be the same. So when one grid checks to see if the gem at position (5,8) is the same color as the gem in the second grid, it will be checking for (5,8) there too so not much logic is needed for the check. This is super easy. I could just make a integer-value that increases by 1 everytime a match is made. I would tell it to check to see if it has reached the maximum-value that I have assigned it each time it adds one to its own value and if it reaches the max (or goes over) the completed-board part of the script could run. There are a couple of necessary systems here: -We have to keep track of the order in which we match the gems. Not too hard, just an array of values that we populate each time a match is made. -Draw a goblin and probably a stage of some sort. -Create an amount of goblin dance-moves (as many as we have colors? ) This step could be infinitely complex or stupidly simple. For instance, a dance move could be a 2D sprite rotating or rising up or shaking or changing size; those would require very little time and effort to write, but we would be writing a new system for each of those moves. Alternatively, if you are talking about a goblin doing teh lawn-mower or the sprinkler, then that would be a matter of firing off a sequence of animated sprites which is not difficult at all for the programmer, but can greatly increase the number of goblins that need to be drawn. -Impliment the reading of the array and firing off of the dance moves in such a way that they don't all happen at the same time or interupt each other. The easiest way to do this is probably to use coroutines. I can do it, but I rarely use them so it would take me a while to figure out how to use them again, they have particular syntax which is not intuitive for me. The basic idea is that using a coroutine, you can tell the methods to wait until another method has completed. -The fantasy judges would need to be drawn. I might come back to breakdown that part later. Either way, I think this might be a useful post for understanding what takes time in Unity and what doesn't. I'm not trying to say it's a worthwhile idea or not a worthwhile idea, I just want to point out where the labor goes because time spent doing one thing can be spent doing something else and if you know what takes more time while conceptualizing the game, then you can evaluate cost/benefit more accurately. I hope this inspires y'all rather than discouraging you. Like I said, some things can be done in Unity incredibly quickly, and folks using other game-engines can do other things much faster (or slower). Personally, seeing how fast a walking-mechanic in a crudely drawn 2D environment is inspires me. The same could be said for randomizing sounds, objects, colors, lights, and applying physics to anything. A lot can be done very easily and everything can be done if enough time and effort is put into it.

How do you imagine the falling blocks? -Is it 2d? -Are there matches? -What happens when they match?

For the week of March 23rd, 2015 we will be playing: Controid by thecatamites You can play the game in your browser here for free. You can download the single game from here for free Or you can buy the entire collection of 50 games from here.

Björk is releasing a virtual-reality music video. I don't know how you can get it or what platforms it is available for though.

Froggy: Backstage Q and A Y'all, I played this on a whim this morning and it has led me on a path I've been exploring all day. If you enjoy ARG-style shit, you should really check this out and poke around.

Someone pointed me to this article by Patricia Hernandez that includes an interesting developer bio. http://kotaku.com/why-five-nights-at-freddys-is-so-popular-explained-1684275687

Social Interaction Trainer

I drive to work and I detest cars. I have felt for a long time that I have to choose between having a job decent job and having a car because the only jobs within walking distance are not preferable. There is no public transportation within 15 miles of mountain from me. I live in rural United States.

This article about a hex-based strategy-game reminded me of this thread. http://killscreendaily.com/articles/sature/?utm_content=buffer29cda&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Someone made a Netrunner fangame in Twine. You play as a shaper house-sitting for Mac after Weyland tears your apartment down. It includes draws and runs. I stopped after an hour of playing having scored two agendas. http://www.nagnazul.com/whyirun/whyirun.html I don't think that the text-form really benefits the gameplay if you are used to the fast pace of Netrunner itself, but it was pretty cool to see how someone expands the flavor-text and experiments with the slower pace of a descriptive narrative.

@Deadpan Would it be alright to mention this on a podcast and instruct them to email you with the subject line "Game Crit Club" if they are interested?

I really like Ship Happens too. edit: possible epilepsy warning on this one, I don't know much about epilepsy. and Are ones I saw recently and enjoyed.

All of these moments in that video where the words and the visuals provide a sense of awareness and intention is a cheap thrill for me. I surprised that there isn't a single eclipse animation in that game, but I know there isn't because whoever made that video would have used it.

David Grenzowski @david_is_neato is doing a stream this evening. I enjoy their dj/game dev thing. http://www.twitch.tv/soalsoalsoal

I'm surprised that the free DLC has had no effect on the population for the PC. It is still a nice move though because I like being able to play Capture the Flag on the weekends and sometimes during the evenings. In other news, I've started using the Large Machine Gun with arc-mines and Icepick. Staying on the edge of the map and unloading full LMG magazines while my army and mines protect my back is a fun, novel way to play the game. It's really more of a support/aggro role that requires another teammate to run around with a smart-pistol to take out all the minions, but it's fun. Also, also I'm 10 doomed titans with my railgun away from Gen 4. I never thought it would happen, but I'll probably be regenerating this weekend.

Little Party Be careful with this one, the camera and the billboarding made me feel nauseous or how ever you spell it.

I think that the uplifting aspect is the successful humor that seems to come from a benevolent voice. I usually hate satire. I really hate satire. I often find myself feeling that a piece of satire glorifies the thing it (might be) trying to make absurd or undesirable through hyperbole. Maybe thecatamites just happens to speak my language, but I feel like their satire is worthwhile. Lump Max is a great example of this. The suggestions that the mucaloids are possibly sentient are subtle enough that I would think the satire might not get picked up on but once the mucaloids are offering the protagonist a ham I'm simultaneously laughing and confirming that the protagonist is not a hero. The juxtaposition of insulting the gift, the semblance of culture in the formations of the victims, the realization that this is a village, and also that the slaughter is involuntary rather than skill-based and produces minimal feedback; all of this lets the narrative be funny without being fun. As a player, I don't feel that I am in control of the character, the gameplay feels more like I'm trying to plug a leak than that I am taking out enemies. Then when I go back and play again, knowing that the protagonist is just a dangerous douchebag, every screen conveys that arrogance.

I've been thinking about this again. I still have a mixture of curiosity/reluctance, largely because I feel like I just can't commit to another weekly thing like this right now, but I want to. I would be interested enough to show up sometimes, but not every week. Also, I think that this is a great idea, I imagine that others would be interested in this if they knew about it. If you become certain that you are going to form this club, please tell me and give me the details. I'd like to mention it on our podcast.

I'm interested if the criticism is about free, small games. I can't invest the time to study criticism of long games and responding to criticism about games I haven't played feels awkward and criticism about criticism tends to be ineffectually due to reliance on generality.

I still don't understand the JSON thing and how or if it relates to making a text document and a parser that populates dialogue arrays at runtime (I still haven't written a text-parser and it seems like a completely different thing much like programming shaders does). I looked it up a few different times months ago, bit kept getting stuck. Now I've written a system in one MonoDevelop script that populates a array of "page" class that is then advanced during the game (think visual novel). I doubt I'll go back and redo it now that I have something working, but I'm still interested in how writing branching dialogue can be handled more efficiently, but still in a Ren'py-esque workflow. If you have anything to say about that, then I would certainly read it.

This is pretty much exactly how I feel about the "altgames" thing. http://www.blog.radiator.debacle.us/2015/03/altgames-is-no-fault-divorce-that-indie.html?m=1