Further Classification: Casual Genres

Launcher

A game in which you start in one position and move linearly in a direction (or towards a goal) while some amount of stats consistently drain. (e.g. Fuel for a rocket.)
Examples: Burrito Bison, Learn to Fly, Kitty Cannon
Easily Paired With: Incremental, Platformer, Racing
Favorite Example: Burrito Bison Revenge

Incremental

A game which focuses on increasing a value via extremely simple activity. (Clicking, waiting, moving the mouse.)

Examples: Cookie Clicker, Clicker Heroes, Swarm Simulator

Easily Paired With: Launcher, Sim

Favorite Example: Clicker Heroes

Further Classification: Roguelites?

And once again, we come to my examination of game genres and classification. This time, I have a brief opinion on the term "roguelite".

Roguelite is a weird term. It seems to be taking "roguelike" meaning "like the game Rogue" but then appending "lite" onto it, like "lite butter", meaning "barely even butter". I don't really get the point in doing this, however.

Further Classification: My Steam organization

Further classification seems to be an ongoing series about how I mentally, digitally, and physically organize games. In this installment, I talk about Steam.


This is my Steam games list. You can't see the games, because it's minimized. When expanded, you can't fit it all on one screen. This is because I have, quite simply, far too many games. Many of the games are currently hidden, because I didn't like them or care about them. At the bottom are "Games" which is shorthand for "Haven't Even Touched Yet."

Further Classification: Thematic vs Mechanical Genre

Further classification seems to be an ongoing series about how I mentally, digitally, and physically organize games. In this installment, I talk the differences between themes and mechanics when talking about game genres.

I'm gonna try to quickly summarize something that I think we all understand, but maybe never really consider. The difference between a game's dynamics and its themes. A game's mechanical genre is what we generally talk about: Shooter, Platformer, Puzzle, etc. A game's thematic genre is a little more rare/undiscussed. Things like horror, science fiction, and fantasy are all pulp genres of fiction, and they can apply to games too.

Further Classification: Game difficulty levels

Further classification seems to be an ongoing series about how I mentally, digitally, and physically organize games. In this installment, I just list some game difficulties.

Further Classification: Some game genre definitions that I use

Further classification seems to be an ongoing series about how I mentally, digitally, and physically organize games. In this installment, I talk about some game genre titles that I find really interesting.

Wiil U stop with the bad controller ideas?

This year's E3 had a lot of stuff that didn't really interest me, but one thing really stood out: The Wii U is not a good idea.

UNNAMED RANDOM DEVLOG

Tonight I finished the backbone of an IF I'm working on, called [CURRENTLY, NOTHING]. For those of you who don't know what an IF (Interactive Fiction) is, wikipedia has a good summary. You can go look it up.

Anyways the point of all this is that I thought I should make a small devlog of sorts, going over what I've developed so far and talking about how things work.

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From the player perspective:


ATTRIBUTES
Unlike a normal adventure game which sets which objects that can be used together, this game runs by matching attributes instead. So instead of saying "if used item is object" you say "if used item posesses attributes of etc".

The entire point of this is to try and make a more natural and logical puzzle-solving process. If you've got a stick, a broom, a crowbar, whatever, as long as it has an attribute like "long", it can solve the puzzle. One might argue this makes things too easy. No, this makes things fair.

INTEGRITY
A lot of adventure games have a set "death point" of an object. After using a stick in the proper location, it "breaks". It's an excuse to declutter one's inventory. But in this game, an object breaks once its integrity hits or drops below zero. Actions all use a certain amount of integrity. For example, jimmying open a door may require an integrity of 20. A stick may have an integrity of 10. If you try to open the door, the stick will break, but the door will not open since the object didn't have enough integrity. Yet if you try something like a crowbar (integrity of 100s), the door will break open, and the crowbar will be only slightly damaged.

I won't list the chart here, as it makes things too easy. The game never gives exacts, just tells you how strong something feels. This makes things more challenging, as if you use the wrong item somewhere you may not be able to do something later.

From the developer's perspective:

EXIT DIRECTIONS
5 3 0
  8
6   1
  9
7 4 2

So each room has an array of chars. There are 9 spots in total, and each either has an x or an o. The numbers are weird and out of order because java uses columns then rows, instead of rows then columns.

NW N  NE
   UP
W     E
   DN
SW S  SE

x = No exit
o = Open exit

This can be expanded further when things such as doors become necessary. Then we can include locks with symbols like k.

MAP
The map class basically is what contains all the rooms. So you have rooms inside maps. I guess you could say that they're like a bigger room. So you would have a house map, and a street map, and a cave map, etc.

Map is arranged as follows:

0 - - -> 10
| + + +
| + + +
| + + +
v
10

Down, then right.

PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE
I'm writing everything in Java, and so far only have a console interface. So it will be fairly portable. Huzzah!

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I'll post more updates as real progress is made. It will probably be rather slow, but I think this will turn out to be very interesting indeed. [edit: There has been little progress, and do not expect any news to be coming. The project is temporarily abandoned. - Future Shade]

Pre-Mortem of Multiple Games

Okay, so I've only completed one game before. I have a bunch though that failed, for a variety of different reasons, and thought I'd showcase stuff from a few of them to give a glimpse of some of the stuff that died long ago and may one day, like a phoenix, rise from the ashes. Don't hold up any hopes though.

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(2007) Chris Herring - Private Investigator: Case 2

Oh damn, this was a good one. I was actually working on this for a long time until I ran into a problem with not being able to portray characters. It was actually the second game in a series, but I lost the first game (which had actually been completed, might redo that one some time). So this would've been his second case, and this one was about a serial killer who was pretending to be a ghost. Sorta like Scooby-Doo but more noir.

It was going to be a first-person adventure game, and I was using SketchUp to create all the locales. My issue though was that, at the time I didn't have any actors for doing FMVs, and my drawing skills were atrocious. (More so, at least.) I'd show some more pictures, but there's nothing really interesting.

(2008) Droid


Now, this one was pretty neat. This was a science-fiction third-person adventure game. The story was that humanity had expanded far into space, and that scientists had done this to escape persecution. You played the game from the perspective of Probe Delta-4, a probe in the first line of robots being programmed with AI, and very experimental emotions.

The game actually had an emotions system, where the game's world would "warp" somewhat with your emotions, since they overloaded you so much. Other robots had been experimented with as well, but got stuck in perpetual emotional stages. One robot was even suicidal. The entire ship was run by MOTHER, which stands for Multi-stringed Operating Terminal of Health, Engineering, and Research. I'll be damned if I know what a Multi-stringed Operating Terminal is.

I was working on it with a guy I knew from the AGS forums, but he randomly disappeared. He was doing all the coding, and I just haven't had the urge to pick it up again since.

(2005-2008) Leh Quest

This was another first-person adventure game I was working on. The premise is simple: A magical talking dog (talking dog, not anthropomorphic dog. See: The Chronicles of Narnia vs. The Wind in the Willows.) appears suddenly in your room, kidnapping you for you are apparently the saviour of another dimension, and you must go discover the secret of a magical substance called "Leh".

Yes, it's about as surreal as it sounds. I wish I had some pictures to show, but they're not on my computer. I'll see if I can find some, if you guys want.

It was actually an FMV game though, and my brother and I did a lot of video recordings done out in the nearby woods for when you entered this alternate dimension. There was also a mix of computer-rendered graphics, plus the somewhat odd use of stuffed animals for most characters.

I'd say the best description I could make of it would be a fairy tale for nerds. I would've loved to play something like that as a kid...

Our main development issues were my brother's college work not leaving much time open for working, and my personal disinterest after a while. That being said, we did some surprisingly high-quality work on parts of it, and I wouldn't mind doing something with this again, now that I know more people and could get some really good actors.

(2008) Darkstone Castle

This was going to be my entry for the Commonplace Book Competiton over on TIGSource. It was gonna be a platforming run and gun with a creepy storyline in Lovecraftian manner. What happened? I bit off WAY more than I could chew, and failed completely in finishing it. All I have is this screenshot of a hobo with a shotgun running at a gargoyle. I believe no further explanation is necessary.

(2007-2008) The Mars Initiative

This is what originally brought together me, my programmer in Droid, and my internet-pal Cinfa together. It was a sci-fi adventure game (seeing a pattern?) in which humanity as a last hope was trying to colonize Mars, and then intrigue happens. I would explain more, but recently Cinfa has been expressing passive interest in working on it again, and so I wouldn't want to spoil anything.

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There are a bunch of others that I've worked on too, but I don't want to overload you guys all at once. Besides, I need posting material for this blog.

Stay fiesty guys.