(I should be writing my thesis but a man’s gotta let off steam sometimes, right?)

Bayonetta is supposed to have this perfect score combat gameplay, and it IS pretty fun, but the game doesn’t do any efforts to lead the player into the depth. I’m sure there’s audience that takes great pleasure in exploring that depth on its own, but I do think you can be transparent AND deep at the same time, without being prescriptive.

Batman: Arkham Asylum is a good example. (Note I’m not good at Batman’s combat, and probably it’s too easy in comparison and for dedicated gamers.) Anyone played it knows: Batman doesn’t work with big move lists and long combo strings. The complexity comes from how you handle the enemies and varied use of your arsenal. Almost every button is mapped to a combat move, but their actions hardly change depending on the pressing sequence.

In other words, all the information is in the world — and the player can concentrate on judging the situation and (re)act accordingly. Working with this kind of ‘external memory’ is thus a more humane design than the elaborate combos no-one can keep in his mind. Ninja Gaiden has this problem too. Bayonetta is supposed to be the best of this breed — I can only hope that everything clicks when I’m more comfortable with the system.

Don’t get me wrong, so far I’m enjoying it. It’s much less frustrating than Ninja Gaiden. Cheesy cutscenes, nerd-jokes and the sexploitation certainly help reducing it. Also instead of the relatively passive block-n-wait approach of Ninja Gaiden, Bayonetta’s Witch Time (apparently evolved from Viewtiful Joe’s Slow-Mo-Power and feels a bit like SF3’s parries) keeps things more fluent.

Seems I like it better than Ninja Gaiden? Better than the second one, that’s for sure.

Some very dramatic changes happened in the last few days. First, I finally got a new workstation. But then it’s a MacBook. So I Bootcamp’ed it and put Windows 7 on it. And then I decided to throw away most of the crap on my desk, especially my old CRT Monitor. Workspace feels very comfy now.

There are a lot of new impressions to take in. New hardware, new software. Here are some bullet-points of some of the things I notced. First, the bad:

• Lower Resolution: WTF? This MacBook has actually lower resolution than my 5 years old ASUS? I’m going to need that huge external display soon.
• Not as much space as I thought: I got the 500GB hard drive. After Bootcamp 250GB left. After installing all my stuff 90GB. This is melting away rather quickly.
• I hate Apple for the display adapters: Seriously, shame on you, Apple. My girlfriend has the newest MacBook, two display port converters and none of the actually work on my MacBook Pro. What’s so hard about just putting a standard VGA Port on that thing? And why wasn’t at least the adapter included? I have now an expensive piece of hardware that theoretically could run projectors. I just don’t have the physical means to attach it to them.
• Two USB Ports: Wow. Seriously? I could understand that on a MacBook but on a MacBook Pro? Wow. Let’s see, I use a mouse, a tablet and… well there you go. Goodbye external hard drives, USB sticks, printer… Can anyone suggest a spiffy portable USB hub?
• The keyboard is all rong: It’s not that bad as I thought but it’s inconvenient. I’m still looking on the workaround to have the PrintScreen key. On the other hand, I found the key combinations that unlock the forbidden powers of del, pos1, end, page up and page down. So I’m mostly set. If only @ was a little less difficult to produce.
• 64bit is pain: I know that there is a super-good reason for this whole 64bit thing. The user-side experience is that half of the stuff doesn’t work properly. For example the Cisco VPN client required to have proper internet back at where I work. Who can I blame it for now?

But wait, not all is lost. There are lots of good things about this new change.

• This is fast on an entirely new level: Ok, maybe not that fast but at least After Effects in HD works quite fine now. The improvement is profound. Further work on TRAUMA should go much easier now. This alone was worth it actually.
• Surprisingly trouble-free: Surprisingly, the setup and my move from one system to the next was done in less than a workday. There were also hardly any hardware configuration issues. Any little kinks I could solve pretty quickly. I guess this is due to both – the whole Apple thing (Hardware and Software) and Windows 7. I love how all the drivers come from one source (Apple) in one package (Bootcamp).
• Epic Win 7: Well, again maybe not epic but good. It is very different from XP but it looks like I can get used to it. A couple of standard dialogs already surprised me with cool UI details. But I will keep a watchful eye on this one. Especially as Win 7 still takes considerably longer to boot up than Mac OS X.
• I will survive: One of the reasons why I chose a Mac was simply because they are quite sturdy. One of the problems I had with my old Asus was that it started to fall apart structurally. The display hinges broke pretty much by themselves and needed constant touch-up. The plastic got digested by the venom my tentacles produce. From what I can tell the Mac is better suited for the harsh environment I call work. Using metal as material is already quite promising. The fact that many people own EXACTLY THIS model and can help when things go kaput is a big plus too. I’m expecting a lot here.

So that’s it. Work on TRAUMA continues now. I did already a couple of things for it in my new Workspace and it is much easier now. I know there are some people out there curious about how this Mac/Windows experiment will turn out. I will keep you updated

Today I got some tricky shots in for TRAUMA. These were actually the first ones where you can see the face of the main protagonist. So far, she existed only as a voice but I couldn’t get around showing a human face after all. I’m working on the intro sequence which needs to show the condition of a protagonist. As the no-budget indie developer I am, I hired my girlfriend as the actress.

To not to spoil anything, I will only show you a part of her face right now.

The shots were tricky because I needed to somehow convey the meaning of being in a hospital without actually having access to a hospital. I have some friends who actually work at a hospital but they weren’t able to get permissions for me to get into an ICU. So we’ve bought a couple of green bedsheets at IKEA, some bandages (tuns out we didn’t have any at home – yikes!) and I’ve built a completely non-functional Nasal Cannula with some transparent tubes and superglue. Ah, the wonders of the silverscreen.

Yet I could still use a couple of shots to boost the credibility so if you are reading this and know how to get me and my camera for a couple of minutes into a hospital in or around Cologne (without actually having to have an accident), give a shout!

Progress with TRAUMA grinds to a halt whenever I get swamped in work in my dayjob. My girlfriend being sick doesn’t help. It seems like I won’t make it this year after all. But I made a storyboard for the missing parts and I organized a camera and scheduled the shooting. Will try to wrap up most of the project during holidays.

The worst thing is that I get into this self-reinforcing state where I’m frustrated with my lack of progress so I play games to have at least some sense of getting things done… instead of REALLY getting things done. Which brings me to PixelJunk Shooter.

I fell in love with the PixelJunk games long before I even played them. Especially Eden caught my attention. I always thought they were on Xbox. So I was very disappointed when I bought one and realized they were PSN exclusives. I bought Eden when I finally got the PS3 Slim but it got buried in the backlog. It may be because Eden is quite time-consuming.

But now there is PixelJunk Shooter. A slim, cool, fresh, cheap and extremely well-done game. It’s basically a twin-stick shooter in a cave with some remarkable liquid physics. It comes in a cartoony pastel look and with some extraordinary music by High Frequency Bandwidth (which I admit I haven’t heard before but I’ll just continue pretending I know what I’m talking about).

Continue reading “PixelJunk Shooter is Awesome”

This is nothing new. iI’s just something I believe works in 90% of all games out on the market (AAA or small/casual/indie).

0. Create a game with both old (known) and new game design mechanics.

Even if the new mechanics are not perfect, this concept shall help you get people to enjoy your game

nothing is to ugly – if you polish the “fun” part

Continue reading “The “Love” Game Design Concept”