Tuesday, March 18, 2014

EleMental PandeMania Title Screen

dpas title 0.0.6
Title screen mockup for EleMental PandeMania, a team project in Experimental Game Design course at Rensselaer. Created in 30 mins using Adobe Photoshop.

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

How to Prototype a Game in Under 7 Days

Great task list for rapid prototyping from the classic gamasutra article: How to Prototype a Game in Under 7 Days
  1. Each game must be made in less than seven days, 
  2. Each game must be made by exactly one person, 
  3. Each game must be based around a common theme i.e. "gravity", "vegetation", "swarms", etc.
Stages:
  1. Setup: Rapid is a State of Mind
    • Embrace the Possibility of Failure - it Encourages Creative Risk Taking
    • Enforce Short Development Cycles
      (More Time != More Quality)
    • Constrain Creativity to Make You Want it Even More
    • Gather a Kickass Team and an Objective Advisor – Mindset is as Important as Talent
    • Develop in Parallel for Maximum Splatter

Thursday, December 19, 2013

To When Adults Were Little Children

Just started rereading The Little Prince and absolutely love Antoine de Saint-ExupĂ©ry's dedication:

TO LEON WERTH

I ask children to forgive me for dedicating this book to a grown-up. I have a serious excuse: this grown-up is the best friend I have in the world. I have another excuse: this grown-up can understand everything, even books for children. I have a third excuse: he lives in France where he is hungry and cold. He needs to be comforted.  If all these excuses are not enough, than I wan to dedicate this book to the child whom this grown-up once was. All grown-ups were children first. (But few of them remember it.) So I correct my dedication:
TO LEON WERTH
WHEN HE WAS A LITTLE BOY

Thursday, December 5, 2013

GDC Vault – Designing Journey

A deeply inspiring presentation by Jenova Chen at GDC 2013 about the design process behind Journey. A highly recommend presentation for game developers... or anyone outside of the industry who wants to learn more about the emotional potential of games as a medium.

Friday, October 4, 2013

Juice It Or Lose It

(a talk by Martin Jonasson & Petri Purho)

Best. Demo. Ever. They have the game online, and source code up on github to boot!



Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Thursday, September 5, 2013

Faced with a scholarly book

‘Our first questions about the value of a book, of a human being, or a musical composition are: Can they walk? Even more, can they dance?’—Nietzsche