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.

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

Cooperation and Engagement

Extremely insightful lecture by Matt Leacock, game designer of the co-op board game, Pandemic.

I especially found interesting how he approaches iteration and he seems very well read in game design theory.
Also, his visualisation of Mihaly Csikszentmihlyi's Flow principal is very well presented.

Learn The Trigonometry Functions

Beyond the Game

I've recently watched Beyond the Game, a documentary about the competitive Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos scene in Asia.
It's very interesting, especially the fact that they compete at a high level and train like professional chess players.

But the difference is that chess is an open game system, the "algorithms" & mechanics of the game are exposed and played in a physical space.
But Warcraft runs in a total virtual plane were the game mechanics are somewhat hidden, I know, as a player, that there's a certain randomization on almost every damage hit but I don't see it being run, I only see the result exposed by the visual feedback layer.

A dice roll in a video game compared to one done with a real dice and thrown by an human hand will always have a certain degree of suspicious development because we don't see the actual process but only the result.

That's why I find it very fascinating that some will want to develop mastery of a video game when at the end, complete understanding of the system & control over it can be subtly manipulated by the makers of the system, especially in the context a lot of competitive gaming do not actually freeze to a specific build of the game but do take into account the developer's patches.

Simple Solution: Reading Twitter Feeds

I was working on a way to feed Twitter messages into an indie game prototype last March. Basically, certain events and unlocks could be triggered by specific commands embedded in subtle Twitter messages.

I was slamming my head against Twitter API and JSON, when it clicked, I could simply read the generated RSS feed and parse out what I need.

In other words, I find that most of the time, it's easier to bypass the official API of the service provider and always check for simple alternatives.

Links:
iPhone SDK: First Steps With JSON Data Using the Twitter API
With Just 3 Lines Of Code Add Twitter/Facebook Into Your iOS App

Use self()

I’m building a database abstract layer in PHP using a Singleton pattern, I based my code the following article.

In the comments, I found that you can self-instantiate a class with “self” instead of calling it by name, very useful if you plan to change the class name over time.

Must re-write code if you change the class name:

self::$m_pInstance = new Database();

No worries with self():

self::$m_pInstance = new self();