A clear concept need to be defined along with the intended level of quality that the game has to fulfill for narrative, game and play.
There are many ways to get ideas. These range from getting a revelation while walking down the street or doing the dishes, to working structured with tools and methods in collaborative sessions. I like to capture as many ideas, tell as many people about them as possible, and formulate the ideas so your peers can easily understand them. Continue reading
I has been some time since I reflected closer on ways to simplify game production. This article is the kickstart to set of articles on my views on it. Since my graduation I’ve seen different software productions, mainly from a quality- and process oriented perspective. I’ve also experimented with different game development processes in smaller teams. This experience has given me some new takes on some of the initial ideas that I studied at the university.
Click to try…
Click the image to play MDR…
Medium Distance Relationship is what my team and I named our contribution to Nordic Game Jam 2011.
edit:I came up with the interesting rolling control mechanism, which I experimented a bit on later in my prototype “THE FLOOR IS LAVA!!!”.
The mechanic in MDR is simply to balance the distance to NPC agents running around after you. When they’re in your vicinity, you suck their life energy: good. If they are too close to you for too long, they die: bad.
The music was nicked from Kevin MacLeod at incompetech.com. Really awesome stuff for the likes of us.
Right now I am totally exhausted after having designed and coded in audio in the NGJ game Inglorious Skater.
There has been a lot of very interesting and funny games here at the Nordic flagship of IGDA’s Global Game Jam in Copenhagen.
There where a number of games submitted this year of which twelve went to through the first voting round:
There where also four juror industry / research representatives that had to pick their favourites (one of them got picked twice, I think… correct me if I’m wrong)
Finally the People’s Award went to the game Only One Can Ride The Donkey.
The theme of the Global Game Jam was deception and the local constraints for GMT+1 (based on timezones) was that the games had to incorporate the words monkey, donkey, or key (I’m afraid the art of subtlety has been lost; if I hear of a game including any of those within the next year, my head is going to pop).
I’ve noticed a few using XNA or GameMaker, a bit more using Flash but by far, the majority of the games here where created with Unity.
For a few months I have been working at Unity Technologies as QA Specialist, handling the publicly submitted bugs reports. I am very proud (even lucky as I have just graduated) of being a part of one of the worlds leading teams in game development.
Our issue tracker, FogBugz, is not feature loaded, but the FogBugz XML API has quite a few possibilities to it.
I am learning Perl to get an easy and versatile tool to work the API with. Once I am on top of that, I will look into how the API can be used to fill in some missing features of FogBugz. Then, in a near future when I have tweaked FogBugz to meet the needs of Unity Technologies, I will put my interests and experience into extending the product itself to make life even more easy for game developers.
Back on the blog.
Some 3d doodle guys from the DADIU projects I did have started a small game company called Sapling.
Another programmer and I are going to help them create some code that make their great graphics come to life.
For now we are doing a pilot project called Zumbi-e: a zombie shooter with some RTS/Puzzle elements in it.
The cycles to achieve simple game design
If you would like to read my master thesis, go ahead and get it here. Otherwise, read on and get an overview of my thoughts behind Simple Game Design through Polish, Appeal & Measures.
With a vantage point in the term Game Polish, I have proposed a simple method for designing games independently from any specific production methodologies.
The study was made in the spring of 2009 through correspondences with members of the International IGDA Game Design SIG and other forums dedicated to game development.
The main cornerstones of the study is Polish, Appeal, and Measures – all elaborated in the report.
Simple Game Design through Polish, Appeal & Measures. This method proposed in my master thesis, explain how to make a game or on what to focus designing it.
While doing my MSc in Medialogy, I took part in two productions at DADIU (Danish Academy for Digital Interactive Entertainment).
My second production was Exodroid and was made in Unity using C#. This production took place in March 2009 while I was writing my master thesis, so these projects are highly interconnected.
As game programmer on this project, I gained experience using C# with Unity. Furthermore, I took an active part in developing the design and the production itself.
I participated in the project while writing my master thesis, therefore much of the discussion and conclusion is somewhat related to this project.
In January 2009 I attended Global Game Jam with the game Dusk of Ninja And Brush.
The game was made in Unity3D using C#. My contribution was a little programming, part in the game design and virtually most of the sound design and implementation.
Go check out the game at the Global Game Jam website. There are tons of other experimental games there as well.
Check out Computerworld’s report on Global Game Jam (in Danish).
See you next year!
