Erkki

hahaha! Awesome! I'm watching the movie right now and I don't see how the aliens are all peaceful-like.

Ok, so I got this and tried to play a bit today. I just keep getting killed by other players. I don't even hear them ask or say anything before. Does the voice chat need to be turned on from a menu or something? I also don't have a microphone so maybe that automatically turns it off? My first game I just couldn't find any resources. Found some small towns with no enterable houses. My 4rth playthrough was an inadvertent re-enactment of Dear Esther. I spawned in the water very close to the shore, but there was an island behind me and I decided to swim there instead. What's cool is that as in real life, the distances are much longer than they seem when you're swimming, so it took me a while. I wanted to rest on some rocks midway to the island, but I broke my leg on them instead. Some kind of sand clock showed up (I think it was a minute) and I have no idea what that was about but I waited it out. I discovered that I was now near some rocks in the middle of the sea and couldn't walk with my broken leg. So I crawled the rest of the way to the island, under water. I could hardly see and it was a miracle that I managed to not get lost. Interestingly, I didn't drown -- it took me 5 minutes or more to crawl to the island. In hopes to find *just something* to help me, I decided to keep on crawling and climb to the top of the hill that formed the island. It took another 5 or more minutes and I found a tower on top. Surprisingly, I could easily climb the tower, despite my broken leg. Even more surprisingly I found no loot there whatsoever. And then I jumped.

Interesting discussion. I'm working on a board game, have no idea how to publish it yet, but Indiegogo (not Kickstarter as I'm not in the US) is probably an option. I'm not familiar with Indiegogo yet, but if I did a Kickstarter, I also wouldn't want the burden of shipping a whole lot of rewards. A T-Shirt would be likely if I'd have a really cool design, but I wouldn't want to come up with a lot of middle reward tiers, unless the ideas for those somehow came to me naturally.

I've been reworking the cards. Had mechanics for buying cards at one point, but that seemed kind of a distraction from the core game. Just tested with the new cards (by myself*), and they seem much better. You start with a High Priest card, each of which has abilities that can be used with the cost of power-up tokens (sacrificing disciples). If you get killed the first time, a lesser Priest replaces the High Priest (player chooses one that is left, or I might do it with flipping the card). If the Priest gets killed, you are eliminated. This is the middle ground I came up with between complete elimination and playing for points -- playing for points seems more boring than the elimination variant, but elimination after a single mistake might be tough for new players. I also didn't want to add another concept like "lives" as in Robo Rally or lives as power-ups like in Bomberman. I think the variant with these cards on the hex board might be the best variant of the game. Tomorrow, I hope I can test it with some new players. Of course, it is perhaps not as fast and hectic as Bomberman. I've yet to test the variant that is closest to Bomberman. * damn, but testing the game by myself is fucking tiring. One game takes me a couple of hours whereas with multiple play testers it would be 30-60 minutes (usually around 30, but with the hex board and 6 players I suspect it will be close to 60). It doesn't help that I usually test late at night. (right now it's 5:45 in the morning)

Yeah, it's fascinating all right. Especially that if they somehow get their security right, indeed only one player will see what's inside. Will he or she share? Not interesting in purchasing or playing this, though. PS. Love the thread title.

Depends on the context.

By Huitzilopochtli's atlatl!

Nice story, but some people (on page 12-13 or so on that thread) are saying it's fake. I'm not a Minecraft expert, but it does seem kind of fake-ish to me. Especially with the factions, and the merchants guild who was somehow never attacked, but had to keep paying one "dick-ass griefer" guy (since the other was defending home probably) so he wouldn't grief. Doesn't make much sense to me.

Post your crazy (or not) game ideas here! I'll start I just found this from a few months ago That was supposed to be a rethinking of my prototype from a couple of years ago that I never finished:

Getting ready to start wider play testing, I've improved the graphics. Square Board Hex Board Player Sheet Also, here's a photo of the square board almost set up with some new tokens I made.

Dang, that 8-slot bag looks much better than the black one (that I carry almost all the time).

That was cool! I didn't pay much attention to the chat, but someone said something like this happening is rare. What do others think? Or actually, what kind of stuff usually happens then? I really want this game now, but can't afford before next month.

The game seems to have a Phaedrus mode: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/08/17/make-a-hit-see-hitmans-new-contracts-mode-in-action/ Exciting!

The Noun Project is cool! I've found most of the symbols I needed for my board game prototype there.

I have a slightly funny anectode about listening to this episode. I really wanted to go bicycling today, but stayed at work quite late -- by the time I got home, it was getting dark. I downloaded An Angry God with Downcast (thanks, Doug!) and went on that ride anyway. I live near a forest that has a nice lit track for recreational sports, and recently they built a nice light traffic road that goes straight from my house to that forest. It's all pretty well lit. So I was completing my second lap in the forest and it was getting pretty late and outside of the lit track it was totally dark already. On the podcast you started talking about FTL, and about the sensors that go out and leave your screen black. Right that minute, the lights on the forest track suddenly turned off and I was cycling 20km/h in complete darkness! (my bike doesn't have any lights) Of course, I pressed the brakes immediately and slowed down. Thankfully I was pretty close to exiting the forest onto the lit light traffic road. I guess they turn the lights off there before midnight and redirect that power to some other place

That thing doesn't even seem to be an interesting simulation. Set some policy sliders and whatch what their effect over 60 years is? Who imagines policies staying put for 60 years?

I just fabricatedheard rumors that Half-Life 3 is going to be announced at PAX<insert next game convention after Gamescom>.

Nice stereo gag!

Somebody set up us the dark days. Interview and cinematic Wot you think? Sounds interesting to me, but as I've said before I'm not really much of an MMO player. [edit] oh, and there's a preview at Eurogamer

Yeah, same here. Please keep putting them out on irregular days

Really cool! I actually thought it was something along those lines from the hints you've given before, but didn't guess exactly. What do you mean "work project" -- is it not just fun and games? Good luck!

Ran into a fucking hard balancing problem / design bug with the hex board. All solutions seem inelegant. If anyone wants to rattle their brains and help, I posted about the problem on the Board Game Designers Forum.

I've been working on and off on games for years. Now it's been a few years where I haven't done anything. I started in high school ( ) after learning BASIC and Pascal and even completed a couple of bullshit games. Once I worked on a Deus Ex mod, but then I started learning Java in order to find a good job and the project stopped. My problem generally was having too many ideas and not enough persistence to take one of them to its conclusion. Anyway, in the game ideas thread I posted a video of my last prototype -- I think that was my most promising project, but then I had a creators block with that one and later got some new ideas, of course. But now I'm trying to make a board game(or perhaps several) instead, and I actually find that I'm 5 times more productive with that than I was with creating video games! I recommend that everyone who wants to make games try their hand at board games!

I suspect jammbra13 is a spammer, but I actually do not mind sharing more. I've been working on this constantly, tweaking this way and that. Current main goal is to get the main game mode (with elimination) working really well on the square board. I found a few problems with the hex board which I also need to solve. But the main elimination variant doesn't seem to work for all players. Working on a couple of alternative variants, but first I want the main game mode to be really polished. If anyone wants to look at and comment on the new rules (PDF), I would appreciate it!

Psychonauts is not probably even in my Top 5 games, but the level design surely is one of the best.