Gathered extensive reference and started modeling this on Thursday. For visualization and relative-scale purposes I laid out the scene in Maya, and baked out a couple ambient occlusion renders of the scene. All unique assets are in-engine and layout is in progress. Estimating that texturing will be done by the 21st.
Steps for a basic combat experience -
Give players an immediate read of the space
How do you optimize across multiple platforms?
Optimizing for WinXP is bad because it’s worse than phones right now
More people at the roundtable compared to two years ago. The room was too full!
Education -> Need TA students to solve real-world problems
How do you institutionally encourage this behavior?
Tech Artists are Force Multipliers, Firefighters, and Preemptive Firefighters
They MUST work alongside artists, be embedded with them (works well at Volition)
TAs need people and managerial skills
How do you test tech artists right out of school?
Games are innovating faster because teams are smaller and more agile than film
We’re seeing a lot Cinderella success stories int he strategy gaming realm, lots of one-man projects rocking the show
What Needs to Change
Soren Johnsons on League of Legends: “The facebook game for people who like games”
Everyone learned humility in the face of Facebook games
Players are interested in interesting decisions and the consequences thereof
“Co-op CompStomp”
Key Issue -> Accessibility
Will AI get better?
iPad and iPhone aren’t stealing because they serve different purposes and different audiences
It’s really all about getting everything looking juuuuust right
Photoreal is just as much an art direction decision as any other style, and there’s a lot of room to play around in that
Photoreal requires a lot of creativity, it’s not easy, very difficult to achieve
“cinematic photoreal” -> beautiful and visually distinct images
-Every film has its own unique look, and you can pick out a shot from films even if you have no contextual information at all
Photoreal can be achieved through proper application and use of:
“No dicks, no douchebags, no drama” ~ Gearbox
Gearbox encourages culture of critique through anonymous peer reviews of both person and work
Encourage mindset of “How good is that other guy, and how do I figure out what he knows?”
Have “Training Days” -> Everyone teaches something
Show and Tell days -> Art Councils in different fields that discuss techniques to better each other.
Cooking Show-type tutorials
Focus on gameplay
Puzzle Design Principles in Limbo
Went to GDC this year, had a lot of fun. Met a lot of great people, expanded my knowledge base even more.
Advice
Conference Observations
Food and Drink
San Francisco
College
This was a game created as part of the Ringling Game Design Club’s game jams. It was based on a world we created in one of the club’s world jams. In a world where a large island is surrounded by a giant wall of falling water, and a steam geyser dominates the center of the only known mass of land. Steam is both a source of power, and danger, in this harsh terrain. Nomadic societies travel the land in search of steam beds to power their lives, and all vie to control the Mother Geyser.
To this end, a group consisting of myself, Eli Allen, Garrett Stephens, Clay, and Tony Sladky developed a game we simply call “Geyser”, that would be played in this world. And so I present -
For 2 to 4 Players
Supplies -
Blocked-in game board
At the start of the game, place one of your tokens onto one starting square. Then, each player rolls 1 die. The person with the highest roll starts the game. Play proceeds to left of the starting player.
The goal of the game is to reach the Mother Geyser, and hold it through the end of a round.
A round consists of all players taking one turn.
In each player’s turn they will move one piece one square in any orthogonal direction. Diagonal moves are not allowed.
If a player lands on a geyser, they may place a new token on the board in any permissible square around that geyser. You may not place this new token on a square occupied by another player.
When a player claims a geyser, they must leave at least one piece on that geyser at all times.
Two tokens from the same player may occupy the same square at the same time.
You may “battle” with another player by moving your token into a square they occupy. In this event, each player rolls one 6-sided die and adds the number of geysers they control. Whoever has the highest number wins, and the loser removes that token from the board. The winning player now occupies the contested square.
In the event of a tie, the attacking player has the option to retreat to the square he previously occupied, and his turn is over. The attacking player also has the option to try the attack again until one side loses, or the attacking player chooses to retreat.
At the end of the first round, the player who started the game rolls two 6-sided die. Add the two numbers together, and this determines which “ring” of geysers fires off, destroying any tokens occupying that geyser. For example, if a player occupies a 6/8, and the roll is two 4s, he must remove the token he has placed on that geyser. This is known as the Geyser Firing Phase.
After the geysers have fired off, the player who went first passes the dice to his left and that person will roll for the next Geyser Firing Phase. After he has rolled, he will pass the dice to his left and so on until the game is over.
In order to move into the Mother Geyser, a player must control at least three normal geysers.
If a player has one token occupying the Mother Geyser after the Geyser Firing Phase, that player is declared the winner.
Comments are always appreciated.
This has been cross-posted to the Ringling Game Design Club blog.
Geyser – The Game by Matthew Oztalay, Tony Sladky, Eli Allen, Garrett Stephens is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at oztalay.com.
I awoke this morning and felt the world around me had changed. The grass outside my current mining operation was a little darker, the trees a more lush green.
Since we last spoke I moved out. Took a boat trip to a new area, new caves to explore and all that. I’ve begun constructing a series of waypoint and destination towers, and found a rather efficient way of lighting them with falling lava.
I’m still in awe of the way water and lava flows in this world, seemingly for infinity.
I found a book. In it were passages that spoke of a gate to another world. I thought to myself that perhaps this world was home and I could finally return. I followed it’s instructions, a doorway of Obsidian four across, and five tall. With a special incantation, and a spark from my flint and steel, a shimmering violet mass filled the gate. I stood in it for a moment to inspect its strange liquid properties when suddenly I was taken not to my home but a strange Netherworld, terrible and awesome in the same breath. The searing heat sent me scurrying back to the unfamiliar gelatin, hoping it would return me to the place I must now call home.
How wrong I was.
I write this now by the faint violet glow of the shimmering abomination. That obsidian monument to all my hopes and dreams. All I know is that I am underground. Perhaps this portal was here all along, perhaps it was created by some evil magicks of the Netherworld. This matters not to me.
Perhaps if I were to slay myself, I could be returned to the surface, as often happens in the strange place. I dare not return to the Nether for fear that my death there would have undesirable or permanent effects. I wonder what lay in the blackness surrounding me, that great Mystery. Maybe one way leads to a shaft deep enough that I might shatter my bones and return to the surface? That may be the only option left open to me.
Damn my curiosity.
Resume 