Grumpy Gamer

DECEMBER 31, 2018

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Brand Game Development

DECEMBER 17, 2018

Creating board games takes an enormous amount of time and effort. The simple fact is that there are a lot of distinct tasks that have to be handled to turn a game from an idea into reality. This is why I urge each new board game designer to share the workload , delegating tasks to a team instead of doing them all alone. When it comes to delegation, it helps to define some roles.

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Game Designer Game Design Development Games 130

The GameDev Guru

APRIL 10, 2018

I decided to do some research and write an upcoming experimental Unity feature: Scriptable Rendering Pipelines. Why?

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Render Writing Feature 100

Jon Shafer

DECEMBER 30, 2018

Welcome to the third pre-launch weekly AtG update! Every Sunday afternoon a new article will go up, and each week will have its own theme. This past week our theme was economics, and you can also follow along with future (or past) daily updates on Twitter. You can also check out previous weekly updates on the AtG … Continue reading AtG Weekly Update #3 – Economics.

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Lost Garden

DECEMBER 28, 2018

For this year’s Project Horseshoe, an annual game designer think tank, our workgroup investigated small-scale MMOs. You can read the other reports here: [link] Our group consisted of: Alexander Youngblood, Game Designer at ArenaNet Amy Jo Kim, Chief Executive Officer at Shufflebrain Crystin Cox, Principal Program Manager at Microsoft Daniel Cook, Chief Creative Officer at […].

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Game Designer Game Design Games 52

Mircosoft Game Dev

DECEMBER 21, 2018

We released Godot 3.1 alpha 3 last week, and it's now time for another alpha build, 3.1 alpha 4. We plan to have a last alpha build within one week, and then we should be ready to move into the beta stage, where we only merge critical bug fixes until the branch is stable enough for the final release. Contrarily to our 3.0.x maintenance releases , which include only thoroughly reviewed and backwards-compatible bug fixes, the 3.1 version includes all the new features (and subsequent bugs!

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Alpha Dev Bug Feature 52

Tom Francis

DECEMBER 18, 2018

After dad died, trying to be useful, we looked through his office. ‘Office’ is underselling it – there was so much equipment that it could equally qualify as a workshop or even a lab. It had the special kind of ordely chaos of a place filled with a thousand incredibly specific things, meticulously organised by type, when you don’t know any of the types.

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Clipping Code Rigging Build 52

The Astronauts

NOVEMBER 16, 2018

Introduction and index of this series is here. Someone at work posted a “Web Development With Assembly” meme as a joke, and I pulled off a “well, actually” card pointing to WebAssembly. At that point I just had to make my toy path tracer work there. So here it is: aras-p.info/files/toypathtracer Porting to WebAssembly The “porting” process was super easy, I was quite impressed how painless it was.

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Development 52

Game Writing Blog

NOVEMBER 12, 2018

Very sad news about one of our profound inspirations as writers, @ TheRealStanLee. His book “Origins of Marvel Comics,” in which he describes how his creative process begins by asking “What If?” was one of the first books on storytelling we ever read. # Excelsior.

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Sirlin

OCTOBER 4, 2018

We just put a new feature in Fantasy Strike that’s notable because it’s never been done before. There are now visual effects on every hit that show if you recover first, or if your opponent does. The bigger the magnitude of the effects, the longer you (or your opponent) has to act before the other player. The concept of who recovers first after a move hits or is blocked is called “frame advantage” in fighting games.

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Fighting Fantasy Games Concepts 52

Grumpy Gamer

DECEMBER 30, 2018

Ron Gilbert's often incoherent and bitter ramblings about the Game Industry

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Games 130

Brand Game Development

DECEMBER 10, 2018

Over the last couple of weeks of Behind the Scenes: Lessons from a Kickstarter Board Game Publisher , I’ve talked about some of the strange goings-on I’ve noticed in the board game industry. I’ve talked about why People are Weird, Markets are Weirder…Especially with Board Games and Why Board Game Publishers Like Some Games and Don’t Like Others.

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Media Point and Click Games Engine 130

The GameDev Guru

APRIL 1, 2018

After working six months on the remake of Diamond Dash with Unity I can say that I learned quite a lot from the engineers at Wooga on top…

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Engine Engineering Games 100

Jon Shafer

DECEMBER 23, 2018

Welcome to the second pre-launch weekly AtG update! Every Sunday afternoon a new article will go up, and each week will have its own theme. This past week our theme was the clans, and you can also follow along with future (or past) daily updates on Twitter. You can also check out previous weekly updates … Continue reading Weekly AtG Update #2 – Clans.

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Greenheart Games

AUGUST 30, 2018

It’s been five whole years since Game Dev Tycoon released on Steam. Time for a brief illustrated trip through the game’s history. Back in 2011, my brother Daniel and I (we are both software developers) decided that we wanted to try to make a game. After days of brainstorming and discussions, we settled on the idea of making a game dev simulator.

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Simulation Dev Prototyping Technology 52

Mircosoft Game Dev

DECEMBER 18, 2018

Last month we announced the GodotCon 2019 in Brussels (4-5 Feb 2019), as well as a contributors-focused Godot Sprint (31 Jan & 1 Feb 2019) and our stand at the FOSDEM 2019 (2-3 Feb 2019). We have a few updates since then: We found a venue for GodotCon and the Godot Sprint: it will be at the Ludus Académie , like last year (Quai du Commerce, 48, 1000 Brussels).

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Engine Engineering Demo Feature 52

Tom Francis

JULY 30, 2018

I love Deus Ex, System Shock 2, and Dishonored 2, and the name for these games is dumb: they’re ‘immersive sims’ If you asked me what I liked about them, my answer would be a phrase almost as dumb: ’emergent gameplay!’ I always used to think of these as virtually the same thing, but of course they’re not. Immersive sims usually have a whole list of traits, things like: Multiple solutions: you can overcome most problems in more than one way – the minimum

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Sandbox Writing Development Fighting 52

Sunday Sundae

DECEMBER 7, 2018

Do you like to drive really really fast? Then the latest F1 2018 game is for you! I've been busy playing this for a while and am ready to share my experience with you all. The post Review: F1 2018 appeared first on Sunday Sundae.

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Games 52

The Astronauts

AUGUST 3, 2018

I just did a “hey kids, let me tell you about demoscene” event at work, where I talked about and and showed some demos I think were influential over the years, roughly sorted chronologically. Here’s that list, in case you also want to see some demoscene things. There’s a whole bunch of excellent demo productions I did not show (due to time constraints); and I mostly focused on Windows/PC demos.

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Game Writing Blog

SEPTEMBER 26, 2018

Telltale Games died because it stopped moving forward : Pour one out for Telltale. We praise their work in “Slay the Dragon,” and we hate to see a story-game-focused company fold like this, but we found Kuchera’s to be a fair assessment.

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Games 52

Grumpy Gamer

DECEMBER 20, 2018

Interesting tidbit. Last quarter, Thimbleweed Park did 3x as well on Switch than Steam and overall has done better than Steam. It's hard to tell if we did really well on Switch are just badly on Stream. Probably a little of both. Steam sales were never where I thought they should be. The Apple number is a little misleading due to the Mac App Store and iOS being lumped together.

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Console 130

Grumpy Gamer

DECEMBER 19, 2018

Interesting tidbit. Last quarter, Thimbleweed Park did 3x as well on Switch than Steam and overall has done better than Steam. It’s hard to tell if we did really well on Switch are just badly on Stream. Probably a little of both. Steam sales were never where I thought they should be. The Apple number is a little misleading due to the Mac App Store and iOS being lumped together.

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Console 130

Grumpy Gamer

DECEMBER 7, 2018

Ten Great Adventure-Game Puzzles P.S. I’m not linking this just because I’m mentioned three times. Really. I’m not.

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Puzzle Games 130

Grumpy Gamer

DECEMBER 4, 2018

It's missing the pulley in the middle. Archie McPhee's is only a 5 minute drive from me, so I might head down there and protest. I'll need signs. Someone call the local TV station.

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Localization 130

Grumpy Gamer

DECEMBER 3, 2018

It’s missing the pulley in the middle. Archie McPhee’s is only a 5 minute drive from me, so I might head down there and protest. I’ll need signs. Someone call the local TV station.

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Localization 130

Brand Game Development

DECEMBER 3, 2018

It’s no secret that board game publishers like to reduce risks. Most publishers have a system in place to help them filter marketable game ideas from unmarketable game ideas. Explained this way, it sounds innocuous. It looks like a true meritocracy where the best ideas are the ones taken to the market. Yet the process, so heavy on rejection, has left many game designers heartbroken.

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Games Retail Game Designer Game Design 130

Brand Game Development

NOVEMBER 19, 2018

For the last few years, we’ve been living through a glorious age: the Great Board Game Renaissance. In a world aglow with smartphones, tablets, and those annoying billboards that change every five seconds on the side of the road, analog gaming has become a welcome retreat for millions. I wouldn’t have expected history to unfold like that when I was a kid, but here we are.

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Games Art Media Game Designer 130

Grumpy Gamer

NOVEMBER 14, 2018

I think the game I'm looking forward to the most next year is Classic World of Warcraft. I spent a good chunk of my waking life playing WoW when it first came out. I even started a Monkey Island themed guild that sported over hundred members, most of which never got above level 12. But it was good times.

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Writing Games 130

Grumpy Gamer

NOVEMBER 13, 2018

I think the game I’m looking forward to the most next year is Classic World of Warcraft. I spent a good chunk of my waking life playing WoW when it first came out. I even started a Monkey Island themed guild that sported over hundred members, most of which never got above level 12. But it was good times.

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Writing Games 130

Grumpy Gamer

NOVEMBER 1, 2018

Doing testing on closures. This also makes my head hurt. What do you think this will print? local t = { bar = 100 f = function() { print(this.bar) } } t2 <- { bar = 200 } t2.f <- t.f local r = { bar = 1000 function do_call(f) { f() } } r.do_call(t2.f) Now with Answers Well, not answers in the definitive truth of the universe way… If you compile and run this code in Squirrel , the answer is 1000.

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Grumpy Gamer

OCTOBER 28, 2018

…in my compiler makes my head hurt. i = 1 ? 2 : 3 Assert(i == 2) i = !1 ? 2 : 3 Assert(i == 3) i = !1 ? 2 : 3 ? 4 : 5 Assert(i == 4) i = !1 ? 2 ? 3 : 4 : 5 ? 6 : 7 Assert(i == 6) i = 1 ? 2 ? 3 : 4 : 5 ? 6 : 7 Assert(i == 3) i = 1 ? !2 ? 3 : 4 : 5 ? 6 : 7 Assert(i == 4) i = 1 ? 0 ? 3 : 4 : 5 ? 6 : 7 Assert(i == 4) i = 1 ? !2 ? 3 ? 4 : 5 : 6 : 7 ?

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Grumpy Gamer

OCTOBER 24, 2018

I have a scary Halloween story to tell you… I was running into a bug in my new compiler where large ints where loosing precision. After tracing through my compiler’s C++ code for about an hour trying to catch the spot, I came to this function: int intConstValue() { return _type == kFloat ? _float : _int; } It took me a bit of starring and then it hit.

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Brand Game Development

OCTOBER 22, 2018

Kickstarter is big, flashy, and exciting. New creators tend to see it as the one big goal to achieve before reaching success. Everything would be just right if you could just hit that goal… Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators. That’s just not the case. The truth is that unless a Kickstarter is a total blockbuster, you won’t raise enough to print the game, pay your living expenses, and buy plane tickets

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Advertising Build Games Point and Click 130

Grumpy Gamer

OCTOBER 14, 2018

Much like the Vulcan Pon farr, every seven years I am compelled to write a compiler.

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Writing 130

Grumpy Gamer

OCTOBER 11, 2018

I’m looking for a good bug database for games and it’s been a struggle. We used FogBugz on Thimbleweed Park, and it was OK, but a little clunky and not very “modern” Like a lot of commercial bug databases, they added lots of trendy project management features that distracted from it just being a good bug database. I’m sure some people like this stuff, but I just want a simple modern bug database.

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Brand Game Development

OCTOBER 1, 2018

Kickstarter campaigns are rapidly becoming the primary means of sales for many board game creators. Even alone, Kickstarter campaigns can be very lucrative, but there is potential to do more afterward. Even if you can’t get your game into physical stores, you can always set up shop online, whether through Amazon or through your own site. Need help on your board game?

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Point and Click Games Code Editing 130

Brand Game Development

SEPTEMBER 24, 2018

You’ve spent months, if not years, leading up to your Kickstarter campaign. You’ve spent tons of time and effort on brainstorming, developing, testing, marketing, networking, and campaigning. When your Kickstarter successfully funded, it seemed like the apotheosis of your board game career. But with great money, comes great responsibility… Need help on your board game?

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