Saturday 22 December 2012

Achievements


I hope you get an achievement for this epic body pile.

As a lot of players are noticing, most achievements or trophies are being integrated as static waypoints instead of contextual rewards for players that explore & exploit the game's systems.

And at the end of the day, a good player is like a hacker, he's in a constant search to master the game by finding the subtle weaknesses in a targeted system, this should be rewarded for it's what true gaming is all about.

Wednesday 28 November 2012

Conflicts in Game Design

Interesting talk by Jonathan Blow, he seems to isolate why traditional narrative structures & mediums, like film, tend to clash with gameplay.

Basically the author of a novel or a film has total control of pacing & the context in which the story is told but video games are an interactive medium were the player can input randomness into the narrative context & break the authors original intent, which causes loss of emotional impact.

In itself, it is not an issue, for most players are lazy and will let themselves be guided by the level design & story but if you don't have a linear approach to your design then you must embrace the interactivity and let the player create meaning.

The player is an actor not a viewer in narrative gameplay.

Friday 13 January 2012

My Perforce init.d script

-------------
#!/bin/sh -e
export P4JOURNAL=/var/log/perforce/journal
export P4LOG=/var/log/perforce/p4err
export P4ROOT=/var/perforce_depot
export P4PORT=1666

PATH="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin"
. /lib/lsb/init-functions

p4start="p4d -d"
p4stop="p4 admin stop"
p4user=perforce

case "$1" in
start)
log_action_begin_msg "Starting Perforce Server"
daemon -u $p4user $p4start;
;;
stop)
log_action_begin_msg "Stopping Perforce Server"
p4Pid=$(pidof /usr/local/bin/p4d);
kill -9 $p4Pid;
;;

restart)
stop
start
;;

*)
echo "Usage: /etc/init.d/perforce (start|stop|restart)"
exit 1
;;

esac
exit 0
--------------