Tom Francis

NOVEMBER 27, 2015

On the latest two Crate and Crowbar podcasts I talk about what I’ve been up to in these two games, and what I think of them. Here are the bits where I do that, Fallout first!

Games 52

Games 52

Sirlin

NOVEMBER 25, 2015

As this holiday season approaches, it's the time for game sales! Starting today, Yomi is part of the Autumn Steam Sale. It's 34% off , and so is Yomi expansion too. Get it now And there's more! The Sirlin Games tabletop store has some specials. Pandante Deluxe (2nd Edition). $125 -> $99. Puzzle Strike Deluxe Bundle (comes with 3rd Edition base set, strategy guide, randomizer cards, and promo chips) $88 -> $69.

Editing 52

Editing Puzzle Games 52

Mircosoft Game Dev

NOVEMBER 3, 2015

Godot is the newest member of Software Freedom Conservancy! Today we want to publicly announce that Godot has joined Software Freedom Conservancy as a member! Conservancy is now our non-profit corporate home. Conservancy is a non-profit public charity that provides a home to its member projects that develop Free, Libre, and Open Source Software (FLOSS).

Software 40

Software Asset Development Game Development 40

Tom Francis

NOVEMBER 27, 2015

My summary of where we are after the last ship-generation post would be: The Drunk Snake is probably the best algorithm so far, for generating the amount of branching and length of critical path we want while looking fairly pleasing. But! There’s a lot of room for improvement. But! Improvement is getting harder: we don’t have a huge amount of control with these types of algorithms, so we can’t fine-tune things precisely without a big rewrite.

Writing 52

Writing Games Game Developer Game Development 52

Tom Francis

NOVEMBER 25, 2015

Last time I covered how I taught Heat Signature to build ships out of sectors , join those sectors together, lock some of those doors, then place keycards in the right places to ensure they’re all openable. I’d got the algorithm generating layouts like this, which is great: But as I said at the end of the post, there might be a problem with this layout.

Code 52

Code Bug Build Game Developer 52

Tom Francis

NOVEMBER 14, 2015

I haven’t talked about the way I randomly generate spaceships in Heat Signature since this post – before it even had actual art. That’s partly because I’ve barely touched it since then. I showed the game to developer friends and the press in LA and SF a few weeks ago, and got lots of great input and ideas, but the main thing I came away thinking was: the on-board game needs to be more interesting.

Code 52

Code Fighting Feature Build 52

Tom Francis

NOVEMBER 8, 2015

Deus Ex’s appeal is often boiled down to ‘lots of options’, but obviously that doesn’t quite cover it. Right now I’m looking to redesign the ‘sneaking inside spaceships’ part of Heat Signature, so I need more than a vague line about what’s cool about Deus Ex – I need a practical understanding of specifically why it works, and why similar games don’t.

Fighting 52

Fighting Writing Games Feature 52