A big thanks to our special guest writer Steve who's taken a look at the future of gaming. Enjoy!
Hello. With the world economy currently getting its head flushed in a toilet thanks to those bullies "Credit Crunch", "Sub-Prime" and "Collapse in World Trade", and the growing threat this poses to our gaming future, I thought I might suggest some possible alternatives that we may need to fall back on during the period that commentators will likely dub, "the lost years of gaming". By all means, smile and nod, but what will you do for fun when society as you know it has imploded, your only gaming challenge is avoiding the rape gangs, and you have to fight your former friends in mortal combat for breakfast in a can? So please join me as we look into the future with a list that should go some tiny way to preparing you for the dark age of gaming to come, and perhaps some eventualities you dared not contemplate.
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Published on 26th March 2009 by Colm | Comments Off
Unfortunately we're not over in San Francisco right now for the 2009 Game Developers Conference which is happening all this week – maybe next year! However we have been following the coverage – there's been some excellent talks, many of which you can enjoy even if you weren't there. Here's my pick of the most interesting ones so far:
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No matter how smart the AI, it's not the same as a human opponent!
As we design our first game we've been forced to look at the differences between how a single player game is played compared to a multiplayer (PvP) one. The goals of the player are often opposing, the rewards for playing are different, and how the player deals with setbacks is different. Since we are building a single player tactics game now but will later be expanding on it to deliver a multiplayer, PvP version this means we have to walk a difficult tightrope. We want the single player game to work and we want the gameplay to transition later on.
The Single Player Tactical Game
Our short term goal is to build a simple tactical turn-based game where you start with a team of rookies, and fight battles against the computer to progress. You can earn new skills for your units, and money to expand the team or buy better equipment in between battles. We also want to keep it as simple as possible so we can get a fully working game published and 'done'. Read More »
Flex is a free development framework from Adobe that can compile your work into both Flash movies (which run on any browser), or into AIR desktop applications that can run on any operating system. With Flash being almost universal on browsers it has always been a great way to deploy interactive or rich media applications online; Flex makes it much easier to do this, especially if – like us – you are from a programming rather than a design background (the traditional creators of Flash content). Flex has a lot of built-in components to help make what they call RIAs (Rich Internet Applications), which are basically spruced up web applications delivered via Flash. Here's a great example of a sweet-looking app built with Flex, twittervision 3D which shows live Twitter tweets on a 3D globe. Very nicey.
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Itsa Money!
We want to build up this part-time game development gig into a successful business, so we have to think about how to make this profitable from the beginning! Here's how we are going to monetise the games we are working on – if you are a game developer (or thinking of becoming one) this should be very helpful to you too!
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Gambrinous is something we are running in our free time, so we were paying for all business setup costs out of our own pockets. Our budget didn't stretch to traditional design agencies, so we were forced to seek out an alternative route of getting design work done. We eventually decided to try a CrowdSourcing site called crowdSPRING.
The concept is quite simple. You post a project on the site with a brief and a set budget, and based on that information, designers will contribute designs which you can rate and provide feedback on. Ultimately, you pick one clear winner and they are awarded the full budget. It is possible to add second and third place prizes, but we decided against this.
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Wile E. Coyote, Super Genius
Despite being a Super Genius he never seemed to think his plans quite through. Here's hoping our bomb hits the target even if we sail on over the cliff edge!
1. The Game
We're going to make a turn-based tactics game, focused on multiplayer and with persistant units to allow more long-term growth and strategy.
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2001: A Gambrinous Odyssey
Two programmers with no game development experience, no designer, no pile of funding, no fancy offices, and only what free time we find outside our full time jobs.
We are going to make a game company and talk all about it here. Let's just step through a few of the things you can expect:
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