Spenny

Here's the thing about programming, when you first start out the programming the conceptual nature is completely intertwined with the syntax, javascript is programming and programming is javascript. The first time you make a jump from one language to another it might very well feel like you're learning programming all over again, but you'll soon start realizing that an if in one language works the same way as an if in another. Being able to divorce the conceptual ideas of programming from the syntax of programming is an important step for anybody learning to code. I know your goals aren't necessarily becoming the best coder in the world, but hopefully there's some comfort there and you can appreciate your time is not wasted. Also you can use Javascript in Unity.

I definitely had the same feeling with Costume Quest. After the first area I felt I had "solved" combat and from then on the fun of it was seeing the new costumes and powers. But those grew stale after I had seen them a few times. I think I played the game in a single sitting, and it was certainly charming and the overworld puzzles and games were great, but hopefully the sequel does some iteration on the combat to not let it dry up so fast.

I'm pretty good at 2048 Numberwang.

Well I went as far as to run the corrupted sample through a spectrogram to look for hidden pictures, but given the talk in 151 I'm losing hope in the ARG theory.

BitBucket will give you private repos for free. I have not used it though, only heard of it. SourceTree is the software I use for using git. Apparently the people who make that also make Bit Bucket. I just found that out as I was copying links.

I attended the same AI microtalks that Tom Francis did, and I thought it was funny how the take away he got from it was something I found completely obvious, as it had come up in a game I had worked on. I find it interesting how the knowledge of how to make games can really be drilled down to fine points like this, and in that fine grain they are either completely enlightening (i.e. deserving a whole 6 minutes of talk at GDC) or completely obvious and a waste of time. It's a very binary point of knowledge. I'm going to watch the sniper rifle talk over lunch. Also the corrupted audio story is a total ruse!

If you'll allow me, I have a suggestion for this thread, and that would be instead of linking to outlets, link to specific articles. I think that would first help with actually engaging with the previously listed outlets. I have heard Tim Bissell is good but when you give me a link to his entire body of work, where do I start? Sell me on the outlet by hooking me with the first hit. Secondly it seems the previous thread got derailed as people were arguing over opinions, and not debating ideas. If I link a single article directly, the discussion should naturally direct to debate over the presented ideas in the article. In my short time on these forums I've witnessed amazing debate over potentially highly inflammatory content (the recent Loadout thread [nsfw] comes to mind), why should this thread be any exception? As this is an idea I'm proposing, I will lead by example. Playing Politics: video games for Politics, Activism, and Advocacy by Ian Bogost If you have never read Bogost before I think this article is a great place to start understanding what the guy is about. In that article Bogost analyzes some games which he believes are able to inform knowledge of historical events through simulation of them. He then goes on to explain how the same ideas can be used to instead inform a political stance. I think the article starts out pretty dense and dull, but the idea of Procedural Rhetoric he is building up to makes it well worth the read.

I personally think that the idea of social propagation of knowledge it a completely unexplored narrative idea in games. I've often dreamed of game design that might specifically facilitate that idea.

Levine gave a talk at GDC about what he is trying to do, and it doesn't sound very good, but that's probably because it's half baked at this point. I think the snarky tl;dr of it would be it's Dragon Age but with more characters. The system he talked about names "Star" characters in the world. These star characters have a set of "Passions", issues they care about, that sum up to form their overall opinion of you. Performing actions in the world affects the stars' passions. He stressed that the opinions were zero sum, so if an action of yours made x number of stars happier, x number of stars would dislike you more too. He then suggested that over multiple games the different passions could be interchanged leading to new narratives. Nothing wrong so far right? I think you might understand the Dragon Age comparison. But at it's current state there seem to be big holes in the design. First big problem we find is that a star's opinion of you will effect the resources they give to you. The more they like you the more of an advantage you have in the game. Doesn't this then make the narrative extremely artificial, as your interactions with the story are in pursuit of game success, as opposed to having the narrative resolve in a way you like? Also because it is reflected as a mechanic in game terms, their needs to be transparency to the consequences of your actions, doesn't that cheapen the narrative further? What about characters with internal conflicts? If a star cares about religion and peace, and as a player you are a church building murderer, their opinion balances to neutral, instead of biting into the much juicier narrative device of internal conflict. Finally, how in this world is everyone so aware of your actions? If small things you do change opinions, why is the news of you doing that small thing immediately propagated across the world? These issues were actually brought to light by the Q&A, and Ken didn't really have answers, saying the idea is still in development. Hopefully this gives you an idea of what he is talking about, and I can clarify anything I've said if needed.

Yeah, thanks for listening to me rant about why I dislike my job and not remember your names. Also I said coaxmetal is beautiful, because he has games in his head wether he knows it or not.

PowerVR announces "Wizard" raytracing GPU

I'm going to make the call, this is happening. The Idle Thumbs GDC 2014 Meetup will occur at 9pm Thursday March 20th at Dear Mom, 2700 16th Street. SF CA Congrats Nick etc. If our friend Drewcifer reads this maybe he could edit the first post and title to reflect that information. I will try to be there for nine, my name is Spencer and you can see what I look like here. I will try to do something that suggests I am there for the thumbs, with what I brought with me that probably means writing wizards on a post-it note and sticking it to myself. If you have an Idle Thumbs shirt maybe you should wear it. I don't have a shirt but I do have post-it notes. Hopefully we get a good little crew out. Look forward to meeting ya'll tomorrow!

That's every Q&A ever.

Sooo..... I don't have any parties Thursday night, so if the call where made to go to Dear Mom around 9, that would work super well. The bar seems far away enough from the moscone centre that I couldn't imagine a drift of developers making their way there. I have to imagine that meeting there would be fine.

At GDC Sean definitely confirmed that Firewatch will feature a necklace made of fingers and also ghosts, definitely.

It's probably a good idea to kill all the enemy things. I noticed a strategy where by people in Stryders would just dash all over the place getting trample kills, or maybe that was just me getting trampled a few times and not really a focused strategy.

Origin: SpennyDubz

My Field Lattice Generators disagree.

Blender for modelling. GIMP for texturing. I'm not sure there are many other options based on those requirements clyde, some options open up if you're a student, but to my knowledge Blender and GIMP is the only worthwhile free option.

Can I just chime in and say that downloading 50 gigs really sucks. Can I chime in and say that it is even worse when Origin's time left calculations are off by orders of magnitude.

I suppose I should check my inability to write coherently against my ability to sound completely self absorbed, but fuck that I'm awesome.

I will be there and would be cool to meet.

Am I correct in saying that with Unity types which are components are passed as reference and others are passed by value?

FreeSound.org will let you filter by license type, Creative Commons 0 is fully free with no credit required. OpenGameArt.org has game art of all types and also lets you filter by license type.

I really like using singletons, but what you suggest does look like a better solution for the problem.