Nachimir

:tup: On a sidenote, Bruce Everiss: Things aren't really looking that way...

For anything already in 3D, it's just a camera hack, surely? No special assets, just an extra camera horizontally displaced.

Well, at first. Most things trickle down to the individual, things we can do alone our ancestors found unthinkable. I think you're right though, in that it'll be exclusively within reach of states and commerce for a long time. Was the thread title an intentional reference to Gil Scott-Heron?

Solid maths skill is a massive plus, though not without the ability to program. It *is* something you can self teach, though difficult. Also, bear in mind that academic AI bears only some relation to game AI. Simulating a mind is nothing like the kind of role-specific performances you'd be creating within the budgets and aims of a game.

Iteration is a good approach. Running X48 (student teams of four infest a PC lab and code for about 28 hours straight to make the best game they can from scratch with XNA), we had much higher quality end results this year, in part because more of the teams were iterating rather than trying to finish a massive design to a deadline. One team had a prototype up and running in 12 hours or so, and used the remaining time just to refine it.

Developers that think like that are rare, but increasing. Video games are deeply odd when it comes to education, at least here in the UK. University level education ("Higher education", often abbreviated to HE) is not really supposed to be biased toward vocational training, i.e. tools. FE (further education) is usually vocational training delivered after compulsory schooling, from 18 - 20. Often, those courses aren't deep enough or long enough to teach people up to the standard required to work in a studio, so the buck gets passed to universities. In turn, developers moan about graduates not being fully formed game developers, to which HE institutes sometimes offer a wary "Fuck you, we're not worker drone production lines". A lot of crap media courses from the 90s over here rebranded as "game design" to increase enrollment (which worked for them), and thousands of graduates from those programmes cannot get jobs in the industry. They generally realise this during their final year, because their education is giving them no practical game development skills. Noone hires on the basis of "What do you do?" "I have ideas". The best programmes seem to be a compromise, with elements of game design, but graduates who know C++ or an art package or two, and have perhaps experimented a bit with engines. Would Telltale really hire people with no development experience or training?

What PiratePoo said about simplicity; way too many mod teams and new indies burn out on overly ambitious and complex projects. No matter how awful ideas are, people can develop almost fanatical devotion to them, especially when they're working for noone but themselves. My advice is to prototype lots of small things as quickly as possible, and only expand on the best. Show them to people you know won't soften their feedback too. In terms of studio process, you'll find a different methodology at nearly every one. There's definite advancement in game designers being able to articulate what they do, but it's still somewhat vague and flexible.

Best audio is not necessarily the same as best music.

Yeah, there are quite a few banks over here that have implemented little calculator-like PIN generators that you put your credit card into.

Happy Birthday, and yes, that is really excellent :tup:

They also enter the building very regularly, almost uniformly.

I felt very much the same about the second one. Part of it was the ambition of attempting systems for everything, like interior decoration and gestures, etc., that weren't that great. I thought also that it got very, very caught up in its own fiction, and while it was great to, for instance, , all of the lore and explanations and plot just seemed to detract from the pleasant fantasy world that the first let me project stuff onto. Maybe I'm just looking back on the first with less intact memories of it though?

We've used them for event newpapers instead of event programmes, and it's a really lovely idea. As you might expect it's not outstandingly cheap and you have to get a fairly sizeable print run, but they're certainly a bunch of good guys and trying to keep the price as low as they can

Heh The Divine Right of Kings leads through aeons, all the way to... Peter Molyneux. Black and White could have followed a similar progression.

Speaking of which, a controversial amendment got stripped out of the digital economy bill today, and will be replaced by something worse.

I wore contacts for the first time in the cinema, and the bloom effects played havoc with them. A lot of people have problems with 3D, and for many, the effect just isn't very pronounced. I thought the film was ok, but the magical methods there were to solve every problem destroyed any sense of drama it had for me; it was more like a series of cameos for well known characters and voices. The bit where it really broke was On the side, none of the distorted human characters creeped me out like I thought they would after seeing the trailer.

Wrong.

^ In just two words, a long term overview of the progression of many franchises. When it comes to Molyneuxs output, I seem to have set an unconscious expectation of monumental shit sandwiches, meaning that whatever arrives is generally acceptable.

Traveling alone can be harsh, especially as it's not just being alone, but also a dislocated routine too; there's nothing familiar. My advice: eat well, take a break, go see something interesting and start making plans for when you get back. Finding a few friends to chat with online can help too.

The organisers very intentionally moved away from big platform keynotes this year and are trying to push it back to developers. "Press" passes are also harder to get I think. Also, of course Gamasutra do the most coverage, since they and GDC are both owned and run by Think Services.

I got this. I play it for a short while, then get really annoyed at the action flag control system. For instance, not being able to cancel a defend flag because a robot is wandering right underneath it, and takes priority. Meanwhile, while all my robots milled around that flag with their thumbs up their arses, my base was being demolished. It's okay, but it's RTS lite and has some big flaws :/

Wired ran an article on Bungie doing this for Halo 3; getting an outsider to use something is a great way of understanding it (similarly to attempting to write accurately about something being a good way to learn about it). Making games work for TV/video spectating is also a really tricky problem, which noone seems to have solved yet. FPS leagues keep getting on TV, but die on their arse because the cameras don't convey drama in the same way, FPS arenas can't be focused on in the same way as an open pitch can call your attention to one spot or let it spread out to see the entire game. Something like Dawn of War's replay system seems to work better, where you get control of the camera and it replays the game exactly using the engine.

:tup: Rodi Absolutely. The first time I really noticed the hyper-focus you mention was watching a housemate play Resistance, in that I was noticing all kinds of subtle stuff about the art style I hadn't seen at all when playing it. The sports thing too; my brother and I used to take turns spectating/playing MoH games (death = switch seats). We shared plenty of incredible moments that we probably wouldn't have remembered if there was noone there to comment. I once popped through a door and pulled off two exceptionally lucky rapid silenced headshots on a pair of seated guards, causing my brother to ask "David. If there's ever a war... can I be on your side?" Another thing I've realised being in a 50% gamer household where people spectate is that games have a definite visual language that I take for granted. Most of us can grok a game very quickly by watching it, but to one housemate and most of my family when they visit, they're just visual nonsense.

(I'm no closer to making the big decision, and still can't reveal it publicly. Suffice to say, there are all kinds of personal and professional motives intersecting on it, and a large unhealthy dose of vagueness). However, I spent today at Mallory Park watching mates of mates race motorbikes. I thought it might get pretty boring, but the races were all about ten minutes long, the sound of all those engines got me pretty keyed up, and taking these kind of photos for the first time ever was interesting.

brilliant Wow, thanks for the context. That's fascinating, and something I expect will happen more with older bits of media from our own cultures too.