Christopher Totten's Blog - Excerpts from An Architectural Approach to Level Design. The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company. In the past few years, I have noticed a fascination in the game industry with architecture as a field that could be potentially helpful to the way we design. As a game developer with two degrees in architecture I have likewise seen the connections between the two fields. As an undergraduate architecture student I began making small video games with friends – creating art with the design software I used for classes. On the suggestion of some of my studio-mates, I began utilizing what I learned about game design in my class projects. I felt that architecture, like games, had a symbiotic relationship with its users and that well designed game levels had much in common with the work of architects like Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, I.M.
Pei, and others. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 1. 2. Tuts+ Game Development Tutorials. Tomas sala's Blog - Making textureless 3D work, a how-to/making of guide. Making textureless 3D work, a how-to/making of guide. The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company. Introduction After requests from other devs for my shadercode, I've decided to share both the shader files as well as make a how-to guide, for creating textureless 3D assets, and shading them inside Unity3D.
One of ways I decided to challenge myself when starting Oberon’s Court was to create a visual style that does not use any textures. First of all, it looks beautiful. Secondly, it’s very efficient, taking away the need to unwrap and texture a model removes a significant chunk from the development process. This post is a how-to on approaching this style. In this first post I’ll write about the general setup, and going through the process step by step. A quick note for the eager, regarding the shader code: Lets get started! The final style. The Big List Of Game Design. Book Recommendations: Game Design Books: Articles about Gameplay Mechanics Discussions Rules For Games: Do & Don’t Platformer Design Videos How To Not Suck At Game Design Genre Game Polish User Interface Design Video Game User Interface Design: Diegesis Theory (DevMag) Difficulty Game Design Documents Game Design Concepts (Ian Schreiber) What Is Game Design Concepts?
Game Balance Concepts (Ian Schreiber) Game Length Character Design Level Design VGMaps (huge amount of screenshots of entire levels from hundreds of games. Artificial Intelligence Prototyping Sandbox & Open World Design Popularity Game Accessibility Free Books Uncategorized Articles Game Development Sites. Swap Adjacent Gems to Make Sets of Three: A History of Matching Tile Games. A History of Matching Tile Games Jesper Juul Juul, Jesper. "Swap Adjacent Gems to Make Sets of Three: A History of Matching Tile Games". Artifact journal. Volume 2, 2007. London: Routledge. This article aims to write the history of a video game genre.
Figure 1. My interest here is in how matching tile games have developed during the past 21 years, in how new design and innovation has happened, and in the relation between game design and player experiences. Matching tile games are today mostly sold via the distribution channel of casual, downloadable games, a channel that puts conflicting pressures on game developers: Innovate enough to differentiate, but make the game sufficiently like other games that players find it easy to pick up and play1.
Video game history is everywhere, in the development of games, in the selling of games, in the consumption of games. A popular genre with no vocal proponents Q. In fact, figure 2 shows the instructions of the game. Fear of Failing? The Many Meanings of Difficulty in Video Games. Jesper Juul www.jesperjuul.net From Mark J. P. Wolf & Bernard Perron (eds.): The Video Game Theory Reader 2. New York: Routledge 2009. pp. 237-252. Winning isn’t everything It is quite simple: When you play a game, you want to win.
Question 1: What is the role of failure in video games? The simplest theory of failure states that failing serves as a contrast to winning, that failure thereby makes winning all the more enjoyable. Question 2: Do players prefer games where they do not feel responsible for failing? This study strongly indicates that this is not the case. Failure and Punishment Failure can be described as being unsuccessful at some task in a game, and punishment is what happens to the player as a result. Energy punishment: Loss of energy, bringing the player closer to life punishment. Losing energy brings the player closer to losing a life, and losing a life often leads to some type of setback.
Figure 1 : Big City Adventure: San Francisco - a timer gradually runs out. The Ludologist | My name is Jesper Juul, and I am a ludologist [Noun. Video Game Researcher]. This is my blog on game research and other important things. These are some comments from my keynote at Rutger’s Extending Play conference in 2016, co-presenting with Shaka McGlotten. Hasn’t our sense of play suddenly become quite dark? There is a change in our primary conceptions of playing, and game-playing. In Brian Sutton-Smith’s Ambiguity of play, he lists 7 common rhetorics of play, meaning 7 common ways in which play is framed. When the field of game studies began, we probably used four quite positive rhetorics of play: Rhetoric of play as progress.Rhetoric of play as fate.Rhetoric of play as power.Rhetoric of play as identity.Rhetoric of play as the imaginary.Rhetoric of the self.Rhetoric of play as frivolous.
This is not surprising. We emphasized learning (play as progress), playing with identity, we emphasized the positive creations of the imaginary, and we emphasized the me-time of playing (the self). But now it seems we are in a darker place. We no longer talk about smart mobs, just mobs. GDC Vault. Social Media Promotions and the Law: What You Need to Know. Are you thinking of using social media contests? Do you understand how the law could impact your activities? Keep reading to learn more… Why Legalities? One of the best ways to grow your business is to give stuff away. Whether your business is a small enterprise, a website or blog, or a large multinational company, hosting giveaways is sure to increase traffic, awareness and potential new readers or customers.
Sponsoring or hosting a giveaway comes with rules and regulations that many don’t know or understand. Really, what could be so hard about telling people you’ll give away something if they sign up for your newsletter or leave a comment or like your page or follow you on social media? Remember the days when you had to buy things to enter a giveaway—and the stuff never arrived, or if it did, it wasn’t worth a fraction of what you paid? Research shows that more than half of all adults in the U.S. enter at least one sweepstakes every year. What are the three types of giveaways or promotions?
Get Lucky - Mario Paint Composer - Daft Punk. The understated genius of the Spelunky Daily Challenge. Despite the fact that Derek Yu's Spelunky was released for Xbox 360 last year (while the original version has been available for PC many moons now), the game is seeing something of a resurgence of late. This is, of course, partially down to the fact that the exclusivity on the Xbox version has finally run out, and Yu has now fired out versions for both PC and PlayStation consoles. But there's a little more to it than that. The latest PC edition of the game comes with a new mode called the Daily Challenge.
Each day a randomly-generated adeventure is offered to every player, and you're asked to see how far you can get. The twist is that every single player is carefully tumbling and whipping their way through the very same set of levels as everyone else. Here's the thing about Spelunky's Daily Challenge mode -- despite the fact that you're essentially playing the very same game you've been playing for hours beforehand, it still feels like a very different experience. Paul Tozour's Blog - Decision Modeling and Optimization in Game Design, Part 6: Parametric Design. The spreadsheet for this article can be downloaded here: link Introduction In the previous articles in this series, we introduced the concepts behind decision modeling and optimization and explained how they can be helpful in framing and optimizing a surprising number of design decisions.
We also discussed their limitations, and we showed a number of examples of how they can be used to find optimal player strategies in certain cases and to help optimize design decisions directly (see links above). In this installment, we're going to slow down a bit, and simplify. We're also going to get much more practical, and how how you can use a very simple decision model to frame certain kinds of parametric design problems. Designing Towers Imagine for a moment that you want to design a tower defense game. Obviously, you could just go and come up with a bunch of ideas for towers, and then just pick the best out of that group. But that's not a very disciplined approach, is it? Let's take a step back.
Nerdy Illustrations on Behance. The importance of selling your vision. — What I Learned Building… McDonald’s Theory — What I Learned Building… I use a trick with co-workers when we’re trying to decide where to eat for lunch and no one has any ideas. I recommend McDonald’s. An interesting thing happens. Everyone unanimously agrees that we can’t possibly go to McDonald’s, and better lunch suggestions emerge.
Magic! It’s as if we’ve broken the ice with the worst possible idea, and now that the discussion has started, people suddenly get very creative. This is a technique I use a lot at work. Anne Lamott advocates “shitty first drafts,” Nike tells us to “Just Do It,” and I recommend McDonald’s just to get people so grossed out they come up with a better idea. The next time you have an idea rolling around in your head, find the courage to quiet your inner critic just long enough to get a piece of paper and a pen, then just start sketching it.
No. The same goes for groups of people at work. It takes a crazy kind of courage, of focus, of foolhardy perseverance to quiet all those doubts long enough to move forward. Motivate. Play. | A blog of theory and practice regarding motivation, other aspects of cognition, and games. GameFly: Member Homepage. Can You Run It?