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Game design articles and discussion

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Fidget
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Game design articles and discussion

Post by Fidget »

i said id do it so im gonna do it

Some people on these here forums play games, far-fetched as it seems. Some o' yez even create them. Excellent!
Here's someplace to share articles and insights about things to consider when designing, programming, and distrubuting your precious pew-pew-pew,
analyzing bits of games already out there, what might go through your mind when playing them, and alllll that.
Go forth, and dump your interesting webpages, how you'd fix a flawed game, your insights in the creation process!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Casey Muratori - The Nebraska Problem
What I mainly took from this is that you should often ask yourself why you're doing something in the way you're doing it.
In this case, he spends a very very long time tinkering with randomly-generated fields of grass tufts, trying in vain to get them to cover maximum ground with minimum CPU... before realizing at the end that all that's needed was a uniform cover with a bit of tweaking.


Martin Jonasson and Petri Purho - Is Your Game 'Juicy' Enough? [video]
Amusing ways to make your game feel more visually interesting and satisfying to play. Give it a watch!


The Anatomy of Games
Generally speaking, this could be a good site to keep an eye on...


Action Button - Fez
Eeehhh this guy is complaing about Fez and some other stuff, but first mentions ways in which Super Mario Bros 3 and World would hide secrets and tantalize the player (which interests me more). Dropping through white blocks? Flying above levels? Seeing future levels from atop a mountain? Classic ghost houses?
Though I don't know if I agree with the opinions, the moments that are brought up display designing processes that are worth taking into account.


talkhaus itself has a topic on a more specific subject: things to not do when designing a SMBX level.


And the big one-
Tom Francis - What Makes Games Good
A bold statement! What he says here is that the appeal of games, instead of being qualified by Graphics, Sound, Longevity, etc. should be considered on the (rather subjective) merits of:
Challenge. Not just difficulty, but how much the player enjoys what they're being asked to do.
Feel. Having the little elements of the game feel right or satisfying. Whether that's the pop of a gun or the tinkle of coins.
Freedom. Not just freedom, but giving the player meaningful or interesting options.
Place. Whether it's somewhere you'd want to live in, somewhere you want to learn more about, or somewhere you just like looking at.
Promise. Anticipation, knowing that there is a thing that will happen, gameplaywise or storywise or otherwise.
Fantasy. Somewhat tied into Place, this is the appeal of playing as the character you're playing as.
-Then he analyzes a few popular games (Just Cause 2, World of Warcraft, Witcher, Minecraft) for examples, and says how he tried to make his own game, Gunpoint, fulfill these as best as possible.
Last edited by Fidget 9 years ago, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Game design articles and maybe discussion

Post by Bwarch »

Fez was annoying because I never knew when a puzzle was self contained within its own room and when it had some other hint or thing I had to get somewhere else.

And like. I found out about the existence of the time clock McGuffins and that killed it a bit for me.
There's a clock located in Fez, it gives you goodies on a certain time on a certain minute, a certain hour, a certain day and a certain WEEK. I got the one where it gave me something on the minute and I assumed we were done BUT NO...
Maybe it's not required but like, the sheer fact of having that puzzle made me really question everything else he was doing. And I'm so stumped on so many areas and it's frustrating. There's this glowing locked door that has driven me nuts.

I WANTED to like the game so much, I dig the atmosphere and music and once I found out about the bigger puzzles things started getting cool. But they're just so abstract and hard to solve.

P.S. Really happy with this thread and I look forward to seeing what kinds of conversations it spawns~
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Re: Game design articles and maybe discussion

Post by CM30 »

If you want some more game design stuff, here's some resources I'd recommend.

Sirlin's website:

http://www.sirlin.net/

It's mostly about fighting games and tournament play, but he does also write about things like what makes a 2D platformer great.

Game Design Companion: A Critical Analysis of Wario Land 4

http://danielprimed.com/warioland4/

Game designer Daniel Johnson breaks down Wario Land 4 level by level/boss by boss/mechanic by mechanic to explain why the game is such a fantastic example of a 2D platformer (as well as various areas where it could have been improved). He also runs a blog about games with more game design articles (like some on Wario Land Shake It and Mario & Luigi Bowser's Inside Story) here:

http://danielprimed.com

and is currently working with me on analysising the setup of Mario & Luigi Dream Team for the 3DS.

Critical Gaming

http://critical-gaming.squarespace.com/blog/

A blog and game design website run by Richard Terrell. Talks about game design in the Mario series mostly, although also does some long form analysis pieces based around entire games.

If you need more resources, the sidebars on all three sites mentioned above have a whole ton more game design websites there.
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Re: Game design articles and maybe discussion

Post by Fidget »

I'd been thinking for a while about why I prefer Super Mario Galaxy 1 to its sequel. Until recently I could only describe it as being "too gamey."

Firstly...
--The first Galaxy has far-away places, full of spectacle and with a lot to offer, and for the most part felt like actual locations that happened to be laid out like obstacle courses in space.
--Then Galaxy 2 has levels consisting of one or two stars, and which felt mostly unnatural and more like obstacle courses floating in space than actual locations.

That sense of a sterile, clean, designed environment in the second, compared to the first game's romping through strange worlds (which may have clunkier level design here and there), dampens the pleasure for me. Is linearity is a big part of that? How linear is too linear?

Secondly...
--The first game has a home, the Star Observatory, from which you observe the galaxies before choosing to visit them. This has an adventurous feel to it. A lot of people complained about it, I think mainly because it took an unbearable minute or two to get to a level, but it never bothered me. (Didn't Mario 64 have a similar setup?)
--In comparison, the second game has the Faceship, which doesn't feel very homey, and besides that most of the time is spent on the extremely game-like map screen, where the levels are clearly labelled right in front of you.

Again, more like a game that needs to be beat, and less like heading out to see interesting places.

Is it possible to be too tightly-designed? I say... Probably. Toss in some flow-breakers, some 'dirt,' make the experience less like it's been put down specifically for this playthrough.
Of course, sometimes a 'clean' experience is what's best for a game. But Mario's been suffering too much from that recently.
... Probably.
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Re: Game design articles and maybe discussion

Post by Doctor Shemp »

I don't think Mario's been suffering from a "too clean" experience so much as a retread of the same clean experience again and again. If you look at the NSMB games, there's about the same level of differentiation between them as there is between the many mid- to high-tier SMW hacks: the levels are different and one powerup or so is different too. That may be acceptable for hacks, since they're really for massive fans of the original, but it's not really that acceptable for commercially released games and it just comes across to the average person as stagnation or a half-arsed work ethic. The same applies to 3D World compared to 3D Land. I mean look at the differences between the games:
SMB: Huge differences from Mario Bros.
SMB2 Japan: Stagnation from SMB. Good thing it didn't get an export.
SMB2 USA: Radically different to SMB.
SMB3: Improved on SMB in every single aspect, from control to graphics to music, as well as free vertical scrolling, a semi-linear world map and a raft of new powerups, enemies and bosses.
SMW: The spin jump, Yoshi, two new powerups and secret exits.
SM64: 3D meant a radical overhaul of the gameplay.
SMS: FLUDD added brand new gameplay aspects.
SMG: Gravity added brand new gameplay aspects.
SMG2: Yoshi, new powerups, and smaller, more focussed levels with one or two goals rather than larger levels with many goals.
SM3DL: Even smaller and more focussed levels with only one goal. Hybrid gameplay with 2D-style mechanics in a 3D environment.
SM3DW: A new powerup, better graphics and co-op play.

And on the other front:
NSMB: Many gameplay aspects stripped out of SMW but some added in.
NSMBW: Yoshi, a new powerup, better graphics and co-op play.
NSMB2: Lots of coins.
NSMBU: A new powerup and better graphics.

The changes are clearly getting smaller and smaller. I wouldn't be surprised if the next Mario is 3D World but even less marginally different.
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Re: Game design articles and maybe discussion

Post by Unaniem »

One other major thing that jars me about the NSMB series is that the design has started to feel horribly bland on a general scale, and not just simply because Nintendo is too afraid of actually thinking up entirely new games or explore different genres.

Even in Super Luigi U, which you could potentially see as the latest 'instalment', the levels (from what I've seen_ just follow the basic Mario platformer formula: "Level start -> run to the right -> dodge a bunch of generic enemies and jump over pits -> collect coins that fly in out of thin air -> goal". Maybe there's a P-switch somewhere which doesn't do anything but make two million coins appear, and depending on what world you're in the pits can get either filled up with acid or lava.

Now the series does have something going for it: there are a lot of weird enemy types and gimmicky stuff thrown in sometimes; like the giant Manta Rays, the lava waves, the weird plant things in the forest world which step around using the plunger feet or maybe some platforms that you have to carefully walk on because they're affected by [whatever liquid the pits are filled up with] physics.

Nintendo however loses again in my opinion on this aspect, mainly because, while they have all the gimmicky stuff out there, they refuse to do anything with it beyond just their basic premise. The Manta Rays or Para-beetles are extremely scarce in the games, and when they're used it is simply "here they are go jump on them". The skeleton-coasters likewise don't really do much besides just "wow I hope you have good reflexes because you might have to jump over a lava-geyser once or so!", and that's one of the strongest gimmicks the game has!

When I saw that MarioU's starworld had one level that was nothing but a simple P-switch run, and that was supposedly one of the most gimmicky things they could come up with (it being in the bonus world and such), I was severely disappointed to say the least.

Another part where I feel the games lock themselves in for the worse is the composition of the levels: it is nearly always "move to the right or upwards with the camera either only moving horizontal or only vertical" with maybe a couple side rooms here and there which are filled with a star coin or just some boring regular coins or whatever. They lock themselves out of making a level that can be simply everywhere it wants, where you move up and down and left and right at the same time and where you don't know where the level is going to take you next, instead of just knowing that you're either just going up in a tower filled with dry bones until you reach a door or going right killing off nothing but goombas until you reach a flag post.

Theme wise the game is stuck in itself too. Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation explained this perfectly, saying that the formula for Mario games is simply "grasslands desert ice-world jungle forest mountains fire-world boss". This is made worse when the sub-themes found within those worlds are one of three: 1) the world's theme and just that (Ex: Desert); 2) A generic castle or a fortress (maybe it has some water or ice-physics but is besides that still just nearly a copy of every other dungeon in the game); or 3) A cave and that's just about it. The themed levels themselves do not experiment with gimmicks that could still apply to their theme. What about the gimmicks that gets used now and then in games rao plays, like having quicksand falling in the foreground obscure what the player can see and whatnot. Or let's go further out there! Make all the enemies silhouettes with a black background and a bunch of pillars to still be able to indicate where they are, have an environmental hazard follow the player around that isn't just a lakitu or boring lava wall that goes at a snail's pace through an even more boringly designed level, have the level fall slowly apart as the boss of the stage is destroying it trying everything to get rid of you, apply those quirky enemies I mentioned before in a clever way (one part of the level has a cage full of para-beetles you have to destroy in order to have them insert themselves as bridge for you to cross a larger gap later on in the level) (or the plant things are walking on the walls of a tower at really high speeds), do something totally unexpected that isn't just Bowser being turned giant for the millionth time! Have gigantic snakes hide in the walls which shoot out as you get near them, have the player press a variety of switches in order to change the level's layout, suddenly introduce a Shump section that doesn't suck or something for no reason other than to be interesting, just do something out of the ordinary!!

When I talk to friends about how much I despise how horribly bland the NSMB series is despite them having so much room for interesting gameplay, I actually really like bringing up Talkhaus-made projects (or just some of the weird things I've seen rao play): where people do interesting stuff and silly stuff just for the sake of doing so, instead of sitting down like a chicken in a box thinking that coming out to look at the sunlight for once is deadly. ASMT and AS/2MBXT may not have always been designed very well in a gameplay sense, but the ideas that get brought up there and in stuff like MaGLX ARE at the very least something that isn't bad because it's boring or bland, which I already find to be a step forward when it comes to game design.

It's not just a case of Nintendo simply making the same game over and over again, it's that Nintendo could potentially make another game in the NSMB engine without it actually being the most bland shit ever.
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Re: Game design articles and maybe discussion

Post by Fidget »

Nintendo tried to do exactly that (shove in a bunch of things just because they're interesting) with 3D World. (I realize Unaniem is talking about NSMB in particular, which is notorious. I'm looking at Mario as a whole) They got some praise for that, and it's a good step. BUT

Something still seemed like it was missing from the overall experience. Could it be what Shemp said (being a retread with small changes), skin-deep 'innovation'?
personally i'm gonna cling to my 'cleanliness' statement for the moment. there's not that much 'weight' to anything that happens in the games.

It could be split into a few differn't bits: Environment (what I'm complaining about), Core gameplay (what Shemp is complaining about), Level-by-level differences (what Unaniem is complaining about).
Or, perhaps, Francis's Place, Challenge, and Promise. Uh... Maybe.

--------------------------------------------------------------

On Bwarch's Fez mention, I believe I heard somewhere that Fish tried to mimic the original Legend of Zelda's concept: Get the players to talk to each other to talk about whatever they may have stumbled across. Does it work in that regard? I know I couldn't even be arsed to look up the solutions. If here was a good way to indicate if a puzze is self-contained or not-stupid, that would be nice. Would that take away too much mystery?
But as a world, hell yeah it is fascinating and fun to explore.
... Probably.
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Re: Game design articles and maybe discussion

Post by Bwarch »

Aaaaaaaaaaaa.

The most horrible part is I can TOTALLY respect that notion. So many games lack any kind of secrets, so I can really respect Fish making a game that is literally nothing but secrets and hard to figure out stuff.

It's just not fun to play because I consider games to be good if they're self contained. If I have to ask somebody what the heck, or look something up, the game is doing something wrong in its conveyance. (Minecraft being an exception, kinda. That I consider a good game but you have to look up so much stuff to know all the mechanics and things.)

So I've been stubborn and I haven't looked up solutions or asked people about them. I suppose in that case it's a difference of opinion between creator and player.

(Phil Fish WOULD like Zelda 1's freaking silliness with barely telling the player a thing...)
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Re: Game design articles and maybe discussion

Post by CM30 »

To be fair, people forget that originally, there were actually quite a lot of cookie cutter Super Mario Bros titles in the NES days. For example:

Image

Along with:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0HQOKmAPRA

But yeah, I'll add more to this in a short while. The New Super Mario Bros games are too similar, but they're not exactly the first time Nintendo's fell into this trap.
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Re: Game design articles and maybe discussion

Post by Unaniem »

What are the last two games in that roster?
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Re: Game design articles and maybe discussion

Post by CM30 »

Unaniem wrote:What are the last two games in that roster?
All Night Nippon Super Mario Bros and VS Mario Bros. Wiki articles for them:

http://www.mariowiki.com/All_Night_Nipp ... Mario_Bros.

http://www.mariowiki.com/Vs._Super_Mario_Bros.

They're basically kind of like DLC type games for the original, and were only released in Japan. The former is honestly the most greedy thing Nintendo's ever made, being a blatant attempt to cash in on a radio show in the former of a Super Mario Bros 1.5 type game.

As for a lack of interesting secrets and things to find in games... that's actually what's bugging me about a lot of modern ROM hacks and fan games too. Too linear, often completely lacking in bonus rooms, hidden content, items and fun optional areas. It's why Ice Man's recent SMW hack (Mario's Journey through Time and Space) is so mediocre in some sense, because there's literally zero replayability or things to find. You just go forward, dodge fancy (but often broken) custom sprites and eventually reach a goal, there's not even a single secret exit.

Of course, I can't mention some hacks here without bringing up Super Sig World 1 to... 30 I think. It's pretty much what would happen if Nintendo made New Super Mario Bros games on a yearly basis, the same ideas over and over again to an even worse degree than New Super Mario Bros. Oh wait, did I say yearly? I meant quarterly. The guy releases more rehashes than EA and Activision combined.

But back to New Super Mario Bros and modern Mario games for a minute. I definitely see how less and less interesting they've become, and I do agree that part of it comes from a lack of willingness to try new things instead of remaking Super Mario Bros 3 with shinier graphics... but I also thought Galaxy 2 was better than the original (partly down to the boss battles, the really good soundtrack and quite a few higher quality levels) and that to a degree, I have to wonder whether it's fair to accept massive revolutionary changes now. Yes they should add more interesting level themes and gimmicks, but come on, a lot of the big improvements in the older games merely came from the fact they were released in the olden days where games and technology were improving rapidly. There really isn't much else left to do in the 2D platformer with its mechanics to be honest, to the point the last truly 'interesting' one was probably Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze (due to its more cinematic feel and mixing 2D/3D gameplay together really well):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSxDAyit9ak

And for 3D ones... same kind of deal. Oh sure, Galaxy came across as somewhat innovative (even though the concept had already been done in quite a few 3D games by then, albeit on a per level basis), but I don't think we're going to get a Nintendo 64 to Gamecube/Wii era jump there again.
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Re: Game Design Articles and Discussion

Post by Bwarch »

Honestly in terms of game design the thing that made me really think outside the box and start considering things in a more technical sense was Sequelitis.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=ELFebTfu2MPF4

It's vulgar and it has jokes and whatnot to spice things up, but the core points really grabbed me.

I don't really have anything else to say beyond that I guess, I'll let the work speak for itself and let people form their own opinions.
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Re: Game Design Articles and Discussion

Post by devil†zukin »

@CM30 i fixed the wiki urls in your post i hope you dont mind (the last . was getting left off)

also cash in? I thought it was just a prize in a contest run by that radio show.. unless that contest was the cash in
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Re: Game Design Articles and Discussion

Post by devil†zukin »

as for some relevant content, here are the game design documents for metal gear solid 2 and grand theft auto

Metal Gear Solid Grand Game Plan Translation

Race & Chase Game Design

and as a bonus, as it's slightly off topic and a lot more technical, a look into the Final Fantasy VII game engine + some history:
"Gears" A look inside the final fantasy VII game engine

I also found a site with other game design documents, the most interesting of which are grim fandango & the witcher (although that has been taken down, but if anybody can find a copy of it, i'd love a look at it)

gamepitches game design documents
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Re: Game Design Articles and Discussion

Post by Ishntknew »

I think Super Mario 3D World was fantastic. It completely proved to me that Nintendo is still capable of making great games. That, along with Fire Emblem Awakening and A Link Between Worlds has me thinking that Nintendo has realized they were doing something wrong and are beginning to try harder to put some soul into their games (and maybe respect their players' intelligence a bit more?) again.

These two articles about The Legend of Zelda and Super Metroid respectively are quite interesting, I think:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6 ... level_.php

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/HugoBill ... etroid.php

Analysis of the classics, two of the most genre-defining exploration-based games.
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Re: Game Design Articles and Discussion

Post by docopoper »

Wait, have you guys not seen Extra Credits? Well if you're into game design - prepare to binge watch some super entertaining and informative videos:

"Perfect Imbalance" - go watch this to get a sample:



All episodes playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... 00461BB187
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Re: Game design articles and discussion

Post by Fidget »

Extra Credits is good, I'd totally forgotten about them! Thank you for mentioning.

--------------------------------------------

I was recently asked to make music for an unfinished project and mainly to 'make it sound like this placeholder music.' Frustrated, I wanted to get people's thoughts on the process, and so briefly discussed game music creation with a couple members of Pink Rose Garden. Summarized:
"*Developers using placeholder music while intending it to be replaced seems like a potentially bad idea. Bias can form, in the developer or the composer, when they hear a song and say 'I want the game to sound like this.' That restricts what can be satisfactorily done, and can make it harder for a project to get a 'custom-tailored' sound.

*On the other hand, it's difficult to work in a silent void. So, ideally the music would be made first, right? Though that leaves the 'working in a vaccuum' from the other side. [and personally, I'd be cautious about creating content for something I can't see].

*So is it possible to allow the game to influence the music and vice versa at once? Bit of concept music while the game is in concept, then flesh them out at the same time, maybe? How hard would it be to be in-sync in that way?

It's not as much of a problem on 'shallow' or simpler games, like Mega Man, it's less important to make sure the music is really fitting and envoking the right mood, (though it's still no small task to make it foot-tapping).
In 'deep' or atmospheric games, the situation is more important and delicate, and takes more effort on the details (but perhaps less on the base melody.)
"
*Is it okay to use placeholder music, and the developer keeps and open mind or the composer deals with expectations? Is there a "professional" technique for which comes first that is typically used?

----------------------------------------------

I'd been thinking about this after playing Solatorobo:

Can a good story excuse, or take the place of, mediocre gameplay? (I know vice-versa is true, nobody enjoys Super Mario World for the plot development.)
Do good characters make up for poor writing?
Is there a connection between plot development and environment development?
... Probably.
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Re: Game design articles and discussion

Post by Rixithechao »

Fidget wrote:I was recently asked to make music for an unfinished project and mainly to 'make it sound like this placeholder music.' Frustrated, I wanted to get people's thoughts on the process, and so briefly discussed game music creation with a couple members of Pink Rose Garden. Summarized:
"*Developers using placeholder music while intending it to be replaced seems like a potentially bad idea. Bias can form, in the developer or the composer, when they hear a song and say 'I want the game to sound like this.' That restricts what can be satisfactorily done, and can make it harder for a project to get a 'custom-tailored' sound.

*On the other hand, it's difficult to work in a silent void. So, ideally the music would be made first, right? Though that leaves the 'working in a vaccuum' from the other side. [and personally, I'd be cautious about creating content for something I can't see].

*So is it possible to allow the game to influence the music and vice versa at once? Bit of concept music while the game is in concept, then flesh them out at the same time, maybe? How hard would it be to be in-sync in that way?

It's not as much of a problem on 'shallow' or simpler games, like Mega Man, it's less important to make sure the music is really fitting and envoking the right mood, (though it's still no small task to make it foot-tapping).
In 'deep' or atmospheric games, the situation is more important and delicate, and takes more effort on the details (but perhaps less on the base melody.)
"
*Is it okay to use placeholder music, and the developer keeps and open mind or the composer deals with expectations? Is there a "professional" technique for which comes first that is typically used?
Forgive me for asking, but would that project be, by any chance, a school project? Specifically a music-themed brawler? Because our lead mentioned he was turned down by several composers, and he's been using a lot of reference music... I guess that's a bit of a stretch, not much to go by. Regardless, I should probably show him this post.

-----------

So, on topic, I've got a list of indie dev resources on my site. I just added a couple things I noticed hadn't been mentioned here yet.
Delightful Adventure Enhanced is out now!

Image

There's an official ASMT Discord server! Check it out to discuss Demo games and follow their development! thread, invite link

(Entry requires verification, either with a connected Youtube/Twitter/Twitch/etc account or manually by the server staff.)


Itch.io (albums and eventually games), Youtube (dofur pass and I guess other videos)
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Re: Game design articles and discussion

Post by Fidget »

Rockythechao wrote: Forgive me for asking, but would that project be, by any chance, a school project? Specifically a music-themed brawler? Because our lead mentioned he was turned down by several composers, and he's been using a lot of reference music... I guess that's a bit of a stretch, not much to go by. Regardless, I should probably show him this post.
-----------
So, on topic, I've got a list of indie dev resources on my site. I just added a couple things I noticed hadn't been mentioned here yet.
Nah, it was someone from a small MLP-based gamdev group I'm part of. It seemed like something that could pop up in a lot of similar audio-design situations.
Thanks for your resource list link! I've sent it to a friend's-friend who wanted to begin developing. PixProspector is good, but a little overwhelming.

-------------------------------------

Another article drop
Evaluating game mechanics for depth. Page 4 seems to be the most helpful.

And somebody's technique for "smart" cameras in platformers, for maximum usefulness and un-dizziness.
... Probably.
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