Sunday and shareware games
Oct. 3rd, 2005 01:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackOn sunday I relished having a bike, read a lot of Confusion (the second volume in the increasingly accurately named Baroque Cycle trilogy), played a few interesting shareware games, did a lot of washing and up, etc, had a lie in alternating sleeping with drinking lots of water, and did some organising of the cts fresher's fair.
Is there a name for genres that distinguishes between action puzzle games like Tetris, where everything is in the game rules, and action puzzle games like Repton, where the games rules share importance with level design[1].
Anyway, I was playing some old and some new interesting games of the latter sort, which is what I like to write. Though the former has the advantage that it's as fun for the programmer to play as anyone else.
There was also Gish. Chronic Logic made a number of interesting physics-moddelling games, like Bridge Builder/Pontifex, which are great fun to see things modelled well, but a bit lacking in *gameplay*.
Gish is great. You control a blob or tar which is genuinely malleable. You can make it sticky, or firm and heavy, or slick, and everything happens in a truly malleable fashion. In short, they obviously modelled things at a lower level than normal, and much of the control is emergent behaviour. There isn't a "throw" or "pick up" button: you roll over a block, go sticky, roll until it's on top, squish down, and expand.
[1] An early incident. In a history class, the teacher said foo wasn't the only effect, bar was also necessary for the thingy, and in driving this home -- most people would assume foo was the major one -- said the thingy was a sum of foo and bar. I immediately queried -- surely product would make more sense, since if either foo or bar were zero, nothing would happen.
OK, I tend to take metaphors too far. But on the other hand, it is unhelpful to choose metaphors deliberately bad in the way you wish to emphasise. Speaking of which, why is "How high?" considered a good response to "Jump!"? Surely that's way too peedantic? I suppose the message is there on another level -- don't say 'how high' just because Sarge said to say it, just do it, but it seems peverse. I am amused at the vision of having got your paratroopers lined up in the plane, passing over the landing field, and suddenly having a literal reply to "Jump!" :)
Is there a name for genres that distinguishes between action puzzle games like Tetris, where everything is in the game rules, and action puzzle games like Repton, where the games rules share importance with level design[1].
Anyway, I was playing some old and some new interesting games of the latter sort, which is what I like to write. Though the former has the advantage that it's as fun for the programmer to play as anyone else.
There was also Gish. Chronic Logic made a number of interesting physics-moddelling games, like Bridge Builder/Pontifex, which are great fun to see things modelled well, but a bit lacking in *gameplay*.
Gish is great. You control a blob or tar which is genuinely malleable. You can make it sticky, or firm and heavy, or slick, and everything happens in a truly malleable fashion. In short, they obviously modelled things at a lower level than normal, and much of the control is emergent behaviour. There isn't a "throw" or "pick up" button: you roll over a block, go sticky, roll until it's on top, squish down, and expand.
[1] An early incident. In a history class, the teacher said foo wasn't the only effect, bar was also necessary for the thingy, and in driving this home -- most people would assume foo was the major one -- said the thingy was a sum of foo and bar. I immediately queried -- surely product would make more sense, since if either foo or bar were zero, nothing would happen.
OK, I tend to take metaphors too far. But on the other hand, it is unhelpful to choose metaphors deliberately bad in the way you wish to emphasise. Speaking of which, why is "How high?" considered a good response to "Jump!"? Surely that's way too peedantic? I suppose the message is there on another level -- don't say 'how high' just because Sarge said to say it, just do it, but it seems peverse. I am amused at the vision of having got your paratroopers lined up in the plane, passing over the landing field, and suddenly having a literal reply to "Jump!" :)
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Date: 2005-10-03 01:09 pm (UTC)On the other hand, the man did seem helpful. He was rather brusque while giving advice, but seemed to care about getting stuff right, insisted everyone come back for a one-month tune up, gave me a free starwars bell and a couple of allen (sp?) keys, and there was a bit of a manual.
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Date: 2005-10-03 01:10 pm (UTC)they're less likely to fall to bits if you look after them properly, I find...
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Date: 2005-10-03 01:14 pm (UTC)they're less likely to fall to bits if you look after them properly, I find...
Good advice, thanks. I plan to start looking after it by (1) not ploughing it into the ground at 50mph and (2) not riding it drunk, but what else should I do? Just take it to the shop periodically?
no subject
Date: 2005-10-03 01:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-03 01:19 pm (UTC)So I do think you're a very honorable lady, but nothing I said in the previous (now previous but one) post should indicate that :)