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clyde

Inspirational Curiousities

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Trying to make games has drastically changed how I enjoy them. I thought it might be fun to have a thread where we can find little inspirational curiosities. This can be things you discover in your own games or just games that other people have made that do a particular thing that's interesting. 

 

I thought the fractal paths in this game were interesting. I was disappointed to find out that they have a limit. I had no interest in playing the game, I just wanted to go deeper into the broccoli.

 

http://bunnyherolabs.com/giantbroccoli/

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I guess I'll share something, I just find textures and models from old games very lovely.

 

This is a texture sheet I ripped from Soldier of Fortune (2000), I didn't manage to rip a mesh so I made one by myself using the original texturemap.

Anyway, I played this game when it was new and I was a kid and it was amazing. Just the act of ripping assets from game and looking at them is endlessly pleasing and fascinating.

You observe the thought process, the creative choices of the original creator is there to be found.

 

Obviously, I can't just share ripped assets from a game, so here's a screengrab.

sof_glock.png

 

I agree a bout the broccoli, the actual game objectives was overshadowed by the pretty broccoli and walking into it was intoxicating for a while.

 

edit: Here's the original SOF Glock model ingame if you're interested.

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That's awesome CEJ. I often think about how great the monastic tradition of copying religious texts must have been so that the scribe could feel sympathy with the thought-process of writing the verses. It seems like you are doing something similar here.

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Lately, I've been considering the dual pistols in Super Crate Box. For those who haven't played the game, (you should by the way, it's free) it's an arcade-style platformer in which you survive continuously spawning waves of enemies whilst trying to collect crates. Collecting a crate is how you score points, but it will also switch out your current weapon for another random weapon, forcing you to adapt. Now, the dual pistols are immediately singled out by any experienced player as the worst weapon in the game BY FAR. The disc gun is incredibly easy to kill yourself with if you use it wrongly, and the flamethrower can completely wreck the timing of your jumps, yet the dual pistols are far more annoying to receive after collecting a crate.

 

They're just shit, basically.

 

They do fuck all damage. The shotgun will kill a larger enemy in 2 close-range shots.

Revolver - 2 shots.

Disc gun - 2 shots.

Rocket launcher - 1 shot.

Grenade launcher - 1 shot.

Laser rifle - 1 shot.

Dual pistols - 8 fucking shots.

 

After a while of playing, I grew to loath them. I thought they were rubbish, broken, imbalanced. Dying any other way felt justified, but the dual pistols just made me feel impotent. I could be incredibly effective with all the other weapons, but I would find myself in scenarios with the dual pistols that were just impossible to survive. It wasn't until about 150 hours of gameplay (I like crate box) that I started to realize what an effect this particular weapon has on the game as a whole, even when you aren't using it. And then they did feel justified.

 

A big part of Super Crate Box is the simple tactics of using each different weapon effectively, but if it weren't for the dual pistols, you'd never have to think beyond the weapon you currently have equipped. They force you to fear them. To respect them. They force you to consider, every time you go to pick up a crate: "What if the next weapon I get is those fucking bullshit pistols?". The moment I realized this, I became a much better player. Finally I understood how the mere possibility of getting the dual pistols changes the way you play with every other weapon in the game - all the time. So, you learn to do what's logical, really. Before picking up a crate, make sure the playing field isn't too populated by enemies. Don't let yourself get into a situation you can't get out of.

 

This effectively makes every weapon in the game harder to use, except for the dual pistols. Which leads me to their true advantage. Say, for instance, the crate has spawned behind a sequence of enemies. If I have any weapon other than the dual pistols, I will be thinking about killing the enemies in front of me to get to the crate. However, with the dual pistols my strategy now changes completely. I instead look for gaps between the enemies - can I dodge past them to get to the crate? Because in Super Crate Box, you can't pick up the same weapon twice in a row.

 

These are the kind of things I love about this game. I don't even know if they designed stuff like that on purpose, but I think it's elegant.

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Buzz Buzz in Earthbound really hit me. There's just something rad about a little two pixel sprite embodying a powerful time travelling being. Even if he did die by being slapped. :3 The accompanying music also helped.

I think this probably subconsciously informs a lot of the choices I make while working on my game. I find myself thinking about it often.

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this made me wish I knew how to do shader programming

 

I am certainly no expert but it's really not that bad! Like with a lot of things, I've found that just typing along with tutorials along with occasional glancing-at-reference is a pretty good start. I'm a ways from writing my own, actually useful shaders, but I am no longer terrified by CG code.

 

Here's the two things I've been using:

https://cgcookie.com/unity/cgc-courses/noob-to-pro-shader-writing-for-unity-4-beginner/ (video tuts)

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cg_Programming (reference)

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went to the Harvard art museum on Friday and saw a couple things that made me wanna make stuff

 

...

this inspired this

 

 

I really enjoy how Unity can be used for studies like this. 

 

This little weird IP tie in SNES game is the primary source of design inspiration for what I'm making ATM.

 

...

 

Yep, a Gundam game that has problems but man the premise of the game was sooo cool.

 

You have to watch at least first 3 minutes of it to get why though.

 

I love it when strategic scope modes give high amounts of incentive for dexterous modes. I actually associate this with pinball. On tables like Black Hole, Centaur, and Super League Football, I spend a lot of time setting the table up for moments of heightened significance. It's rare for a pinball table to then allow the results of the dexterous moment to affect back to the strategic scope though. I'm having a hard time thinking of games that do this; they often reset the wins and losses after a dextourous mode so that you don't snowball or get snowballed. 

 

 

 

This is great.

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I love it when strategic scope modes give high amounts of incentive for dexterous modes. I actually associate this with pinball. On tables like Black Hole, Centaur, and Super League Football, I spend a lot of time setting the table up for moments of heightened significance. It's rare for a pinball table to then allow the results of the dexterous moment to affect back to the strategic scope though. I'm having a hard time thinking of games that do this; they often reset the wins and losses after a dextourous mode so that you don't snowball or get snowballed. 

Oh yeah, that game suffers from some of the worst snowballing I've seen because it lets you reap all the benefits gained from battles into strategy directly.  But that core value loop of "I want excel in strategic map cause it'll let me build super units which I can use in real time battle to further my strategic position to..." is so superb, I'm trying hard to capture that feel while mitigating snowballing as much as possible.  My plan is to have asymmetrical warfare where player is pitted against endless enemies so war of attrition is against the player (something that is very hard to program into game AI IMO so why not remove all elements of it from the AI), and the challenge is to achieve certain parameters while surviving against endless wave basically.

 

Interesting comparison with pinball BTW, perhaps I should look into that as well.

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Oh yeah, that game suffers from some of the worst snowballing I've seen because it lets you reap all the benefits gained from battles into strategy directly. But that core value loop of "I want excel in strategic map cause it'll let me build super units which I can use in real time battle to further my strategic position to..." is so superb, I'm trying hard to capture that feel while mitigating snowballing as much as possible. My plan is to have asymmetrical warfare where player is pitted against endless enemies so war of attrition is against the player (something that is very hard to program into game AI IMO so why not remove all elements of it from the AI), and the challenge is to achieve certain parameters while surviving against endless wave basically.

Interesting comparison with pinball BTW, perhaps I should look into that as well.

My recommendation would be to try the Super Football League demo for Zen Pinball 2 on xbox, ps3, or steam (not tablet or phone because nudging is near impossible). The reason I would choose this one is because the table actually expresses what we are talking about through the way the main mode is beaten, whereas in the other two tables I mentioned, it's just the strategy I have developed personally.

In Super Football League you are encouraged to hit certain ramps and orbits in quick succession before moving the ball to the upper-playfield (because it's pinball, even the strategic set-up requires dexterity). The more ramps and or its you hit in a small amount of time, the less pop-targets that block the goal.

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Is this Pinball FX2 you are talking about?  That's what I got on Steam when I typed in Zen Pinball 2.  I see some football themed DLCs, but there are bunch of them.  Are they all same with just team theme being different?

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Is this Pinball FX2 you are talking about?  That's what I got on Steam when I typed in Zen Pinball 2.  I see some football themed DLCs, but there are bunch of them.  Are they all same with just team theme being different?

 

They are all the same. The different DLCs are different skins based on which team you want to play as. There should be a demo for each. If you open up Pinball FX2 and select the football league table, there will be a "play demo" option.

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They are all the same. The different DLCs are different skins based on which team you want to play as. There should be a demo for each. If you open up Pinball FX2 and select the football league table, there will be a "play demo" option.

 

Thanks clyde, going to give this thing a try!

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Is it cool that I just keep posting little design things I find?

Yeah, they're great. I was very surprised at how interesting those labels were.

I've been thinking about stickers recently...Label 228 is a designation for a Priority Mail sticker from the USPS that's a standard in stickering I guess because they have a lot of white space and the post office gives them out for free. It's cool seeing how people work with/around the labels.

https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/label-228

 

edit: more http://camdenoir.blogspot.com/

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