Well holy mackerel, 2012 has hit and we’re already 12.5% of the way through. I’ve hit the ground running and am chugging away at my projects. I thought it might be a good time to tell everyone what I’m up to.
Hey guys, I’m not dead, just busy with non-video-game-related stuff. Things will be back to normal soon, and when that I’ll post a bunch of reviews to games I’ve played recently, and unveil some exciting new stuff for The Day After. Thanks for your patience!
At the risk of eliciting cries of “Oh ya mug!” I’ve made a change to my projects. Whereas before I was steaming away on Kung Fu Chronicles (aka Kung Fu Legends aka that-Kung-fu-game-you’re-making), I’ve shifted projects and priorities around. I’ve discussed before some of the game engine stuff I had been working on. As a proof of the ontological argument (or Omnipotence paradox), I had created parts of my game engine that were so awesome and featureful that even I had no idea how to use them. 
So I was stuck.
I have also mentioned before that I was working on a board game called The Day After. Brief synopsis: You’re part of a band of survivors after a weird cataclysmic event, and should co-operate so that you all get to rescue… but is co-operation always in your best self-interest? The idea of The Day After was to make something in the vague genre that Arkham Horror lives in, but do it better. My main criticism with Arkham Horror is that with all the tokens, characters and special rules, it’d be better realized as a video game. Anyway, I’ve done most of the alpha design for The Day After, but was finding it slow to put things onto even prototype cards and get it all working as a cheap-ass board game to foist upon my unsuspecting friends. I wasn’t sure about a bunch of rules, or any of the numbers, amongst other concerns. Prototyping it for quick trial play was taking longer and a lot more work than I expected.
Late last year when I was brainstorming ideas, I tripped over the idea of testing some of the game elements by programming a dumb Monte Carlo simulation of the rules and run millions of test games to see what needed balancing. It was a great idea, but I realised to properly simulate it, I needed to put in certain AI routines. For example, to be rescued you need to achieve some goal (eg, restore power), signal the rescue (eg, with a radio) and get to the rescue spot. To get virtual characters to jump through these hoops they needed some basic planning or pathfinding, which sounded like too much work for just testing.
Anyway, I was talking about these issues with my mate Alex who floated the idea of programming it up as a game for prototyping, focussing on having debug capabilities to rewind games, tweak numbers and continue. Due to the way he phrased it I had the brilliant idea to make The Day After into an actual video game. It was a simpler project than Kung Fu Chronicles, but would provide me with a simple framework for testing out game engine ideas. I think I’m okay at general game design, but my game engine design experience is almost non-existent. By programming something simple, I could bootstrap my way up to smashing the block I had with Kung Fu Chronicles. Plus it could serve as a nice fundraiser for my other projects. I still would like to turn it into a physical board game, but that can be later along when the rules are more refined. Plus I can give the video game a board game aesthetic (like Dangerous High School Girls In Trouble!) which simplifies and unifies graphic design.
I’m doing much better with this as my primary project. Already I have a better events system, game loop and general approach to objects. When my girlfriend goes on holiday for a while I’m going all-out on my projects. Hopefully I can get The Day After and my long-suffering novel Breathe into much better states. I’ll keep you guys posted on how it goes.
Work on my projects has been quiet lately, not because I haven’t been doing anything, but more because I have. I’ve got a good foundation down for the game/simulation side of Kung Fu Chronicles in terms of game objects and the supporting framework. I’m now in a weird position in that I’m really happy with that framework but don’t have the experience with such a thing to dive right in, even though I designed it. I tend to learn by iterated imitation until I feel confident I’ve mastered it. But since the game engine is so new to me and so specialized to the task it needs to do, I’m a little hesitant. Dumb, I know, but that’s how it is.
I’ve been a little entranced with Kingdom of Loathing recently, and had an idea for a cyberpunk, conspiracy-theory-laden browser-based game. The chief gimmick was that you’re a hacker and your base measure of power is your aggregate MIPS across all your computers, electronic devices and “borrowed” machines. I even had a good name for it (Synaptic) with a few hooks and ideas. But I need another game project like I need a punch in the groin. I wrote down all my ideas and I might revisit them in a few years’ time.
My board game The Day After is coming along nicely. If you weren’t sure what this was about, it’s a board game about a city recently struck with a terrible catastrophe. People have gone insane and are killing each other left, right and center. You are part of a band of Survivors who need to survive in the city until rescue comes. Survivors have their own hidden agendas, so survival isn’t just about combat – it’s about compromise.
Early in development The Day After felt like a sack of misshapen cogs and sprockets, but now the different components are slotting together and everything feels much tighter. I still need to iterate the card design to get the right balance of information on cards and rules. I’m finding the different mechanics work best when a hard strategy has a soft counter (kinda how they balanced Team Fortress 2). For example, the base goal for a team is to be rescued. This requires certain tasks to be fulfilled in a coordinated manner, and you need all the people you can get. But some characters can have success conditions if they set up shelter, skip the rescue and try to live out the apocalypse. Both have their risks, but there’s a strong asymmetry in how you try to achieve them.
Another one that I really like but I’m having a little trouble getting perfect is The Truth. The apocalypse didn’t just happen. Perhaps an enemy superpower launched a bioweapon into the city. Perhaps a meteorite hit and brought an alien virus. Perhaps it’s a government conspiracy gone awry. If you’re the Hacker character, you have to try to uncover The Truth. If you’re the Spy character, you have to try your best to suppress The Truth getting out… using any means necessary.
I’m pretty sure that I’ll try to get the game printed and published through The Game Crafter. While they suck for international shipping, they are pretty awesome for everything else. By the way, if you or someone you know is a good artist and would like to make some money doing some artwork for the game, let me know.
Ever since I started this blog I’ve been concerned about the intended audience. I’ve got posts on hardcore maths, and lots of posts on games and hardcore game design. While there is some overlap, I got to the point where I thought it’d work best if I split the blog in two. This blog remains the lion’s share of the posts – all my news, thoughts and descriptions of my creative projects, primarily Kung Fu Legends.
If you’d like to follow the mathematical stuff, shimmy on over to mathblog.brettwitty.net. I’ve ported the old articles (comments and all) over there.
And because I want to test out this funky new poll plugin:
What do you think of the blog refactoring?
Total Voters: 3
Loading ...Currently my old stomping grounds – Brisbane – is being massively flooded. When I say massive, imagine the entirety of Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma were flooded. Or for those in Europe, close to all of France and Spain. About 50,000 homes across the state are without power and about 20,000 homes will be destroyed by the floods.
Brisbane is a place close to my heart. I spent many years there for university and made great, lifelong friends there. It’s the location of my novel, Breathe. Such a shame to see it being swept out into the Pacific Ocean.
So please, if you can, donate some cash to the flood relief appeal. It’d be greatly appreciated.
Welcome to the new year! Hope you all had a great Christmas and New Years’ period. I did, and got a bunch of new gadgets (including a Kinect – woo!)
2010 was the first calendar year for this blog and I think I’ve done okay. There’s been a reasonable amount of traffic (and not just my friends/family/those I can bully into reading). I started up at the very end of March and get about 160 views a month. My server isn’t melting from the traffic, but it’s better than tumbleweeds The busiest month was August with 224 views. Strangely enough, April was busier (on average per day) but I think the stats program is screwy. Google Analytics provided some neat stats including:
I’ve managed to get back into coding this year, as well as tabletop RPGs, which is neat. I’ve also played waaaaaay too much Team Fortress 2.
Anyway, here’s to an interesting, productive and creative 2011! Thanks for all the comments and eyeballs!
This blog is now set up to be mobile-savvy. It works nicely on my Android phone. Let me know if you have another form of phone that it doesn’t work well for and I’ll look into it.
I’ve been beavering away at my projects lately with not a lot of interesting news thus far. Nevertheless I’ve taken a bit of time on the side to write up a tutorial for using the debugger in TADS 3 Workbench. TADS 3 is an interactive fiction programming language that I’m quite proficient at, and a bunch of people wanted guidance on using the debugger, so here we are.
As a project update, Kung Fu Legends has moved into some deep design phase for the underlying simulation. The Day After is still waiting on action cards. Breathe still tickles the back of my brain. And my other projects sit on the backburner, as always.
