Poplicant

Well after a gruelling week long think tank I have come up with what will be the name of the game: Chronomicles: Hailstone I went over hundreds of iterations of names. I wanted up to five things from the game title: Describe some/most the game setting Describe some/most of the gameplay Be recognizable/individual Have room for expansions/mods/DLC Have a reference to my previously used handles somewhere/somehow Previously used handles: Poplicant, 9 Moons, humans, HS I think Poplicant is not fitting for this game, and should be used either for a future game or the dev-name. 9 moons ran risks of encountering some copyright infringements.  (spoiler alert) Humans is already a character and not particularly exciting as a title word. So that left me with trying to use the HS acronym. After looking up a long list of words starting with H and S I decided to go with Hailstone. It reminds me of game titles like Heavy Rain and Risk of Rain. (spoiler alert) It also fits w...

I waited a little longer this time. Wow has a lot happened in the last 6 years. I'm married, own a house, FINALLY almost finished my degree (doing honours this year)... And I am the furthest into GameDev I have ever been. Can't write much of an update right now (leaving tomorrow on a trip), but I plan to write more updates here. I thought about making a new Blog and deleting all these old posts, but I think it is important to never forget your past. People do change (and hopefully improve) over time. If you are embarrassed by who you once were, that is good, because it means you have improved. Some things that haven't changed, still have mild insomnia (although I cope with it better) and still love gaming (although I enjoy it more than "'pwning noobs" and see more value to it than before). That is all from me, have a great day :)

The first thing I want to talk about is my approach to game design. I have gone on record as saying that game design is more of an art form than a science and as such there is no such thing as good/bad design. When you design a game you have set goals in mind and you design your game around those goals, each game will have different goals in mind, therefore the design elements will be naturally different. Not only that, but gamers themselves have wildly differing tastes in games so there is no wrong/right way. Many game designers and even more players seem to struggle with this concept, in their incredibly subjective opinion there is only their own 'right' way for 'good' game design. When discussing the pros and cons and various design elements it is important to understand that design implementation is cause and effect. As an example, it is a well known phenomenon that the more time a player spends unable to execute the actions they desire within a game, the more their...

With the intent of starting a game design blog I happened across my old blogs. My first reaction was "wow cool" followed closely by "wow I've matured" and ending with "Have I though?" ... I think a lot has changed, I have a new, lovelier partner (Fiancee at time of writing), I've quit university, become a manager and quit being a manager. There is also a lot that hasn't changed, I still have insomnia, I think it's actually gotten worse, I still care very strongly about games and I still fall back into forums sometimes. But all that is currently meaningless as my new intention, something I've been working on in my head for awhile now, is to start a game design blog! Without further ado...

I discovered an interesting thing last night. No matter what ideas or opinions you have, there will ALWAYS be someone who strongly opposes them, and then there will be people who see it as a 50% divide between you and the guy that disagrees with you and hence randomly choose a side based on little more than the flavor of the comment. So you will have effectively created a heated argument on both sides that well end up having little to nothing to do with your original concept. I don't really know why I bother since even if everyone magically agreed there would be no great outcome since no one actually cares about forums. Which brings me to my next point. Forums are damn addictive. Once you've made a certain level of commitment to anything, you feel obliged to continue that level of commitment, and sometimes even increase it. This factor, combined with the fact that giving your ideas and opinions on things can be about as irresistible as your favorite food type (say pizza, chocol...

Well today I passed my chemistry Key Competency, mostly because I studied, but partly because I got lucky. I got lucky because I didn't make any stupid mistakes for once, yay! Also today I won on the SC2 Forums. How do you "win" at forums you ask? Well, in my mind, you make a valid point, some wanker tells you your point is stupid and that they know what they're talking about, then someone tells you your right, then someone who knows what their talking about tells the guy that told you that you don't know what your talking about that they don't know what they are talking about. Then the guy who started it all asks you to be friends and you go to the movies and eat popcorn, or make custom maps together, which ever comes first lol. I've been thinking a lot too (that's what happens when you can't sleep, you think), and I reckon I have a problem. My problem is that the only thing I like doing in my spare time (after spending time with my wonderful GF) ...

Firstly, insomnia: I can't sleep when ever I want, I can't just lay down in bed and 20 minutes later there's all these little Z's floating out from my head and fading away. If I lay in bed, I lay there for about 2 hours and slowly go insane, I'm usually better off doing something for an hour or 2 and then trying to sleep, unfortunately it ends up being more like 3-4 hours and then I'm exhausted, which is good for insomnia, bad for the next morning when I have uni! Also whats with people not understanding, or even really caring, about other peoples problems. Someone goes to me "oh, I have a broken leg" I go "wow I'm sorry, that sucks" someone goes to me "oh, I have trouble learning new concepts" I go "yeh, that would suck, new concepts are important" but if I make the foolish mistake of telling people I have trouble sleeping "XOMG YOU COMPLAIN ABOUT NOTHING, JUST GO TO SLEEP WHEN YOU NEED TO!" gee thanks pal. ...