Posts by Taylor

Inde development:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/1962…t_to_expect.php

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/1765…with_indies.php

So, an indie developer can release straight onto the Playstation 4 store and can even opt out of Sony giving them feedback. However, it's not totally open like the Vita Store and XBLIG and you will need to win Sony over first for a license and development kit. It actually sounds like a reasonable middle ground between a closed system and gamepad massages.

Weird, posting Gamasutra articles feels a bit like linking Kotaku these days.

A few of the games on there I already own on other platforms, like Bioshock, but then I realised CARDS, GUYS. CARDS. DIAGONAL LIGHT BLUE LINE: CARDS. ARE YOU EXCITED FOR CARDS? YES YOU ARE. BECAUSE:

WHAT DO CARDS MAKE? BADGES.

WHAT DO BADGES DO? LEVEL YOUR PROFILE.

WHAT DOES LEVELLING YOUR PROFILE DO? GET YOU MORE CARDS.

They're like achievements only instead of ostensibly representing player skill they represent luck, game-time and marketplace trading. GAMERS LOVE THOSE. You might be thinking these are pointless slot machines attempting to funnel people into the marketplace while being dressed up deceptively as a community activity. Well, how very dare you?! Did I tell you there are foil cards? VIRTUAL SHINIES. That's even better than item drops in DotA2 where they just change text colour of something to increase its value ten-fold. HOLY YAYNESS.

Haha, oh man. I am actually tempted.

I'm trying to make a "full" game out of Metritron atm, though...

Maybe this could be part of another FPS. You play through the level but afterwards you have to clean up your mess before you can continue. Of course you could skip this with micro transactions...

Also later levels will be set in a ketchup factory, blood bank and slaughterhouse.

Make it multiplayer and don't let people communicate through traditional means. It'll be like Dark Souls Journey with mops.

Hopefully this'll bring a little influx of players and the tutorial matches won't be people with 200 wins calling everyone noobs.

Not that I'm bitter or anything.

In fifteen years time are we going to be rebooting all the reboots?

I think the main wall with modern stuff was people expect total conversions?

I hated finding leaks and following the leak worm that coiled itself around your level freaked me the fuck out.

Sounds like a tough break. I imagine studio politics in a flat structure are going to run riot.

Journey was funded by Sony but it's an indie game because it's arts.

All the Final Fantasy Tactics games after the first (albeit best by far) are based in the Final Fantasy 12 universe, but you don’t really get to explore it in the same sense. I thought Final Fantasy 12 was pretty cool but if you used the Gambit system well you can automate so efficiently it almost looks like FF13 (just kidding, of course, FF12 isn't a single corridor for 99% of the game).

So, I made another game in 48 hours but this time for Molyjam 2013. It was based on this quote from Peter Molyneux: "We've got tons of graphs and data coming in, and looking at that is the most inspirational thing I have seen as a game designer, ever."

Molyjam Page (with download and stuff): http://www.molyjam.com/games/58

I'm sticking to my philosophy that if you can’t draw, and you've got to make something in 48 hours, you should keep adding boxes until it looks good or you can’t see. I'm not sure which one I accomplished.

Apparently FF8 had a PC release. And you could easily emulate both of them now.

Also, I remembered this

trololololol

Why do they gather up the press just to say "Kinect is a bit shit, eh? Oh well, we've spent a lot of time on advertisement delivery"?

Uh-oh, looks like I'm going to be that guy.

I did enjoy FF8 although I liked FF6-7 and FF10 a lot more. There was just a lot of silly things like how the magic system made it optimal to never cast any spells, I broke my square button boosting summons, and there was that kind of needless plot twist that makes no sense. Yeah, you know the one I mean. Why was that a thing?

Also, towards the end of the game you seal off a lot of content because of reasons and I don't like it when the end-game isn't a point where you can go and complete all important side-quests you may have missed. Although Omega Weapon was cool, so it wasn’t as weak as FF9’s end-game where you worked towards fighting a badly textured marble. Get hype.

I did write a bit on how FF9 is literally two Hitlers but let's just say I wasn't a fan and, in general, final bosses:

Quote

should be mentioned at some point in a sixty hour game, rather than showing up randomly while you're floating through space to say, actually, it's funny you're here because I was just about to end all life in the universe.

It has aged in places, I mean even in its own generation the comical square characters were out-dated, although I believe the PC version has mods that let you swap them for the high-poly combat models. Mechanics and story wise it's easily one of the best and it's usually FF6 and FF7 are tied for "best final fantasy" by sane people.

It's definitely worth picking up if you're interested, especially if you've only been exposed to modern final fantasy and want to see what it was like before it was poop. The materia system is probably the best magic system they've done and it's really fun to play around with.

Quote from dux

Am I the only one here who doesn't care at all for FF?

So brave!

It's about how the Portal 2 style egg-hunt teaser was designed, how it was definitely solved within sixteen minutes of their predicted time, and a bunch of unpredicted side-effects from people getting answers wrong. Hard to tl;dr, just go through it if you find that interesting. It is nice for there to be something worth reading on gamasutra for a change.

I think it's exclusively a League thing. I don't think in Warcraft (and therefore DotA and DotA2) it's possible to lock the camera, and you wouldn't really want to because controlling more than one unit would be rather awkward (League's solution to this is limiting you to one extra unit you order with alt, which has no active abilities and rubber bands if it gets too far).

Quote from Erratic

I've only played a handful of games of League but is it uncommon practice to play the mini map or is there just no advantage to it?

Sorry, I don't really follow

By default League locks the camera onto your character and you can't scroll around. Ideally you want to unlock it and position it so you can see more of the 'danger area'. I know people who play with it locked and complain when they're top-side because they can't see people below them.

Well, everyone is finding League stale right now (it's a meta-conforming, gap-closing bruiser with no resource!) so it’s a good time to try and jump to something else. I think everyone appreciates that DotA is the deeper and richer game, but you need to go through that comp-stomping initiation process.

To be honest, even with Leagues shorter skill ranges it’s better to have the camera unlocked and biased towards where the action is. Getting used to controlling your character in the side of the screen is a pain, though. I've been forcing myself to play characters like Enchantress so learn the jungle and micromanagement. Fortunately, I have no subjected people I don’t know to this yet.