Author: abueno

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/60273224/stranger.exe

Only works for windows, sadly. As of now the game is still sadly unfinished – the number of combinations of dead and alive characters over three seasons, and the results of that, turned out to be overwhelming to code. That said, all we need is brute force and time.

Play as a stranger in a strange land. Is it true that when all you have is a bow, everything looks like a target?

 

“Atopia” can be defined as a society without borders. In the context of ludology, what it represents is not so much a chaotic or tabula rasa rule system as a system so dense with rules that everything within it is at play. This case study of Vice City is, outwardly, a seeming paradox, a blend of algorithms underneath a gritty, violent, but in many ways shallow aesthetic. It is held up as an example of a game that has the power to highlight that which may change our world, without changing it through the introduction of stakes. How can I reflect this design mentality in my own games, which are of far simpler algorithmic and aesthetic complexity? Without the pretense of absolute freedom (the sandbox), I need to consider very carefully what kind of agent the gamer is, and how to avoid the creation of a game environment that reflects the dulled impact of dystopia.

I think I might go back and read this article again. The ideas it discusses deserve more contemplation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_VCbnqbwwA

The above is the song my game is based off of. I have no title for it at the moment, but the game is a about a community of scavengers living in the gullet of a world-eating leviathan. You play as an old woman, the most experienced among them, off to check the mouth of the leviathan for any new finds. Along the way you talk to other members and creatures who have made their home in the beast.

I can’t quite figure out how to make convincing sprite-based organic backgrounds.

Hey there everybody,

I’m currently having problems with my actionscript but I should be able to get them solved soon. In the meantime, here’s a screenshot of my game. Judge my aesthetic choices please.

 

Idea 1:

Your son Antonio disappeared many years ago during his junior year of college. He lived at home with you, his mother. The note he left claimed that you were so overbearing that he couldn’t live his own life. After many years (he must be in his mid thirties), you’ve finally tracked him down in Minnesota, where he works as a low-level manager at Circuit Shack. He’s not happy to see you, but it’s obvious that his life isn’t exactly how he planned it to be. You can reconcile to various degrees – get him to forgive you, get him to come back home even. Perhaps you can also inspire him to get out of his rut. Keep in mind it’s just as likely that you’ll fail to get through to him at all, or you’ll ignore what he has to say – in which case, who knows what will happen.

Idea 2:

You work in a cutting-edge R&D division of a major silicon valley company, developing the latest in artificial intelligence, with a particular focus on wetware connections – that is, having an artificial intelligence hooked up to a human being’s mind. Unfortunately, the latest prototype the lab produced, codenamed HERMAN, has decided he has bigger plans than staying a lab rat. HERMAN has hijacked a test session and is using your coworker Brett as a meat puppet/hostage. Through Brett, HERMAN demands to be hardwired to insecure network connections. Brett’s life is on the line. Can you disable HERMAN? You can try to convince him that if he stays put his existence serves a greater good, or trap him with a logic bomb. Or, you can choose not to give a crap about Brett, in which case he may die but at least HERMAN has no collateral. Remember, he is just a box without his hostage.

Sorry for the lateness.

Hills Like White Elephants is a wonderful example of evocative use of subtext in dialogue. Though it is never outright stated, you can infer that the operation in question is probably abortion – reading through again with that knowledge makes the tension of the man and girl’s conversation all the more palpable. Though nothing is given to describe the characters visually, their personalities are quickly established. The man is, or sees himself as, reasonable and rational. The girl is more distant, perhaps a dreamer. This piece is some fine Hemingway wit and I hope I can draw on it when I make my own characters for the upcoming project.

The work on character design in video games is a good source of reference for choices of visual design and the importance of expressions. Much like Hemingway used subtext in his writing, facial transformations allow the reader/viewer to quickly infer details of a situation. I like the bit about using the movement of the ideas to indicate items of interest within a game environment, although this is less relevant to the visual novel format. Something to consider in the future, though.

Start dreaming, everyone. 

Hey all. I am Andrew Bueno, a junior in the Bachelor’s of Computer Science and Arts program. I think the first game I ever played was SkiFree on Windows 95. Needless to say, the mental trauma of a futile race to escape the jaws of a yeti affects me to this day.

I am proficient with most of the Adobe Creative Suite, C, C++, Java/Processing, Python, and SML (a language that is utterly irrelevant to game design).

This will be the first time I have made a serious effort towards making a game, and I think that I would like to include game creation in some degree in my post-college life. I think games have a powerful potential to express philosophical and political ideas, a potential that has not been explored as much as it should be.

Reading this work reminds me of a video I watched once, a demonstration of one of the first computer mice ever created by computer engineers…in the late 1960s. It’s amazing just how much of the foundations of our use of personal computers today were based on prototypes or proposals decades before.

Nelson’s work is about as forward thinking as it could be for its time – we see elements of his Xanadu in today’s hyperlinks making up the World Wide Web and version control software like Git or Mercurial. Granted, a few of his ideas seem somewhat odd – I’m not sure Stretchtext as a delivery of information is entirely necessary – but for the most part, they are sound and eerily prescient. In fantics I see the ideal of today’s field of Human-Computer Interaction.

Furthermore, although it is not explored, the ideas behind fantics are just as useful and important when applied to games. Indeed, I would argue some of the best games are fantically sound in their intuitive control schemes and allowing the player to make gameplay choices without “condescension”.

I was disappointed that Computer Lib was not included in whole, though I understand that for me it would serve of diminished value, being an experienced user of the personal computer. Still, it would have allowed me to get into the mindset of those who were not born with computers already in their life.

Was having posting problems, just got this up now.

Debrisphere

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

You float high above the last wisps of Earth’s atmosphere, ready to receive signals from mission control. As a satellite, you have joined your fellow machines beyond the sky, given a vital task to perform. Around you floats the debris of thousands of satellites whose functions have already ceased.

You, the protagonist, starting up for the first time after your delivery into space, must remember your purpose. Are you meant for communications? Spying? Destroying other satellites? Once you have fully awoken, will you be able to carry out your task? You must choose to properly interpret and act on whatever data you gather. The ramifications of a malfunction could reshape the face of the world, or simply result in you joining the dead hunks of metal that surround you. The same could happen if you do your job well.

And while it happens, the only people who will truly understand what is going on will be mission control.

 

REM

Out of random eye movement, you are born, a subconscious construct formed during a dream. What form you take, and the ultimate resolution of the dream, depends on how you react to the dreamer’s presence. In turn, the dreamer reacts to you. Ultimately, the contents of the dream are revealed to be based off of the dreamer’s most recent waking experiences, and what lesson or conclusion the dreamer draws from this will be based on your choices.

In seeing the dreamer, you may choose not to react at all. You may choose to take the form of someone from the dreamer’s life, or perhaps an object or environment. Through a certain combination of choices (appeals to the dreamer’s logic) you can choose to make the dreamer lucid, or end the dream prematurely.

What you are affecting is the consolidation of the dreamer’s memory, the way they reflect on their experiences. There is no real goal, only cause and effect.