Monday 24 November 2008
Super Mario Galaxy - Music
One of the things that inspired me to make a platform game with interactive music was this small bonus level from Super Mario Galaxy on Wii. As Mario collects the notes a note in the music track is played, I may do something similar in my game.
Friday 21 November 2008
Why games are fun
When a game designer (or student) first starts trying to define why games are “fun” they have trouble even conceptualizing it beyond “I know it when I see it.” Then they encounter Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow and/or Koster’s Theory of Fun and have this huge epiphany: Eureka, all fun comes from learning a new skill! Then after awhile, they enter another stage of questioning this: wait a minute, if all fun comes from skill mastery, why aren’t students driven by the promise of fun to get straight A’s in all their classes (even the poorly taught ones), since that involves mastery of the material? Why is sex fun (by some standards), and yet doesn’t involve mastery (ahem, again by some standards)? At any rate, you could think of this as three stages of evolution of a game designer, and different designers are going to be in different stages, and when they encounter one another there will be chaos when they start discussing the nature of “fun.”
Tuesday 18 November 2008
My Game has a name
Plectrum
The little plastic thing you use to play music on a guitar.
I think it has a nice sound to it.
Plectrums could be the rings/coins substitute that you collect along the level.
Johnathan Blow Keynote
Johnathan Blow is creator of Xbox live arcade time altering 2d side scroller Braid, which personally I think is one of the best games of this generation.
He did a keynote at Australian gaming event Free Play 2007. In it he talked about prototyping and how should always be prototyping but dont worry about polish or looking fancy just concentrate on the core gameplay then you can see if it works or not, this was very inspiring as I was getting to cought up in the coding side of things and wanting to have the best prossible engine. I now realise that its the idea and gameplay that matters.
You can see the talk on youtube its 80 minutes long
heres the second part where he talks about prototyping
He did a keynote at Australian gaming event Free Play 2007. In it he talked about prototyping and how should always be prototyping but dont worry about polish or looking fancy just concentrate on the core gameplay then you can see if it works or not, this was very inspiring as I was getting to cought up in the coding side of things and wanting to have the best prossible engine. I now realise that its the idea and gameplay that matters.
You can see the talk on youtube its 80 minutes long
heres the second part where he talks about prototyping
I have a new direction
Im going to contiue using the basic art based flash engine I have, insetead of using complex physics. I saw a talked by braid creater johnathan blow who talked about prototyping and how you shouldnt get cought up in the most complex physics or using the very best newest engine.
I was going to use box 2d, lll get more in depth about that later. I got a bit excited about it before realising how complex it is to edit and add code to it.
I need to look more about gameplay than code.
im going to look a theory of fun and mihaly csikszentmihalyi who is an expert of flow.
My father knows a bit about sports psychology (sports being games albeit athletic as apose to electronic) so im going to talk to him about that.
aparently there is a creative sound and music person who is looking to be involved in aking dynamic music for games, so im going to get in contact with him.
Im going to contiue using the basic art based flash engine I have, insetead of using complex physics. I saw a talked by braid creater johnathan blow who talked about prototyping and how you shouldnt get cought up in the most complex physics or using the very best newest engine.
I was going to use box 2d, lll get more in depth about that later. I got a bit excited about it before realising how complex it is to edit and add code to it.
I need to look more about gameplay than code.
im going to look a theory of fun and mihaly csikszentmihalyi who is an expert of flow.
My father knows a bit about sports psychology (sports being games albeit athletic as apose to electronic) so im going to talk to him about that.
aparently there is a creative sound and music person who is looking to be involved in aking dynamic music for games, so im going to get in contact with him.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)