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Recent Notes

note1gt4j8...
Gawain(DarkGriffin) profile picture
@nprofile1q... Dragonruby toolkit does this style as well! And yes, it is very fun to have access to the direct sprite blitting! In dragonruby you make hashes and drop them into the dragonruby engine hash to send them to the screen. The engine does what it should, making that look consistent, without getting in the way of opinionated sprite collisions, etc. I love both dr and pico8 because of how pure data to screen can be without a "game object"
Brianna Townsend · 2w
A couple of small tests of unfinished content has made me realize that people will happily exhaustively explore a space for no other reason than trying to make sure they see everything. It's obvious ...
Gawain(DarkGriffin) profile picture
@nprofile1q... Yes.

See also, Dungeon Encounters. No plot really happens, interactivity/strategy is almost empty, but uncovering every space and fighting each encouter is totally addicting anyway.

If you make a world that rewards exploring, everyone playing will try to find all the things to do. It's really easy for us developers to get stuck in the "playable content" headspace. But if the game is fun to explore/play, the player can be trusted to be motivated themselves!
note16vjh3...
Gawain(DarkGriffin) profile picture
@nprofile1q... I feel ya here! I have been playing my backlog of older stuff (like ps2/3 era old) and wow, the amount of filler hallways or dumb minigames/fetch things is a lot in this era. I get the system couldn't handle much but there are so many empty hallways or like...walking. And of course most plots boil down to "go visit the 5 villages to pick up the things and maybe we made them interesting along the way?" Really neat to see how far we came in using this medium to make story!
Gawain(DarkGriffin) · 2w
It feels a bit like a no win situation. That 5% is very small, but they are also the most didicated to your world, or at least most interested in whatever mechanics/gameplay you made. Enough to trade ...
Gawain(DarkGriffin) profile picture
I think a lot of the answer lies with the speedrun communities, or the endless hunting of more information in puzzle games like blue prince. I'm not sure what the best answer is. I do think it depends on what the game is.

But I see a lot of games where the lore just stops once the player takes control, and starts again when they finish the game. And those ones leave me as a player feeling the most empty when they end, despite how big production the ending cutscene is.
Gawain(DarkGriffin) · 2w
The old skool game design was to lock all that behind ๐Ÿ’ฏ completion. But if only 5% get there, is your plot and world design even going to feel like a thing? Just sharing some open Saturday afterno...
Gawain(DarkGriffin) profile picture
It feels a bit like a no win situation. That 5% is very small, but they are also the most didicated to your world, or at least most interested in whatever mechanics/gameplay you made. Enough to trade going somewhere else for it.

Do you leave them a final big surprise? Do you require getting there?

Or do you and them both know you have gone too deep, handshake on it. Maybe sell them a hat and thanks for memories tshirt?
1
Gawain(DarkGriffin) · 2w
I think a lot of the answer lies with the speedrun communities, or the endless hunting of more information in puzzle games like blue prince. I'm not sure what the best answer is. I do think it depends on what the game is. But I see a lot of games where the lore just stops once the player takes cont...
Gawain(DarkGriffin) · 2w
#indiedev #videogames #gamedev Design thought time! So we know video games, by nature, are not always played through entirely. In fact, check any steam achevement list and you will see a cut off wher...
Gawain(DarkGriffin) profile picture
The old skool game design was to lock all that behind ๐Ÿ’ฏ completion. But if only 5% get there, is your plot and world design even going to feel like a thing?

Just sharing some open Saturday afternoon thoughts.
1
Gawain(DarkGriffin) · 2w
It feels a bit like a no win situation. That 5% is very small, but they are also the most didicated to your world, or at least most interested in whatever mechanics/gameplay you made. Enough to trade going somewhere else for it. Do you leave them a final big surprise? Do you require getting there?...
Gawain(DarkGriffin) profile picture
#indiedev #videogames #gamedev
Design thought time!

So we know video games, by nature, are not always played through entirely. In fact, check any steam achevement list and you will see a cut off where players leave stuff like rpg/platformers early, and only some play to the end.

As a writer or designer, should we front load the big punches/key scenes?

Or is the typical structure of "every thread wraps together in the end, potentially with no resolutions till then for max punch" still valid?
1
Gawain(DarkGriffin) · 2w
The old skool game design was to lock all that behind ๐Ÿ’ฏ completion. But if only 5% get there, is your plot and world design even going to feel like a thing? Just sharing some open Saturday afternoon thoughts.
note152hw8...
Gawain(DarkGriffin) profile picture
@nprofile1q... This does make me wonder... This is presumably audio processing/mixing software, right? How much of the gigs of memory is used by doing this?

How much faster/lighter would the software be if these were video gamey dynamic knobs/dials? Or even 3d knobs rendered using the same graphics space for textured 3d uv maps instead?

It's certainly a special way to do the interface, I suppose. I guess being "exactly the same" was really important for the software users.
1
Gawain(DarkGriffin) · 3w
nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyd968gmewwp6kyqpqc3xy9mjhum4w2rp7pq0ms46q373tdv5el42unuq03xy7j3ttwcfsq8rcl7 I do kinda get what they are trying to emulate, having seen and used some hardware mixers IRL. A lot of feel to using that stuff. But yeah, this seems really silly...