Here’s a little exercise for you to do.

• Calculate the amount of games you’ve bought and played less than twice in your Steam library (for example, I have 8)
• That’s it. That’s your customer score, now proceed to check from the following “chart” to see how good customer you are

Score 0: cheapskate
You are either a very cheap or pulling on some other shenanigans. Shame on you.

Score 1-2: poor start (you’ve bought 1 or 2 games that you haven’t really played yet)
You are not a very good customer. You should try improve your rating by buying loads of more games. After all, game developers need money. And you certainly have some (since you have time to buy games that you don’t play), so go ahead tiger and buy some games.

Score 3-5: good!
Now we are onto something. Clearly you are not only buying games, but you are also not consuming them. That’s a good sign: it means less support & maintenance for game developers. We are all proud of you. Keep up the good work.

Score 6-10: amazing!
Whoa. You certainly like bargain deals, don’t you? Awesome job. Keep on buying games, and don’t forget to visit the game developer’s own sites every now and then. After all, they all are eager to get your money. In fact, I know just the perfect game for you to buy right now – and don’t worry if you bought it earlier, the more licenses you get the better.

Score 11+: whoa!!
Either you are cheating, loaded or something… but this result is amazing. If the rest of the planet would act like you, game devs would not be bitching so much. The world needs more people like you: the people who buy games like you – without touching them. You have earned the collectors badge. Keep on buying. After all, game development is not about money. It’s about the money in your pockets.

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I did some quick research on dialogue & storytelling systems and listed some links too (check comments on that previous blog post).

I started thinking that currently the “choose which line to say” leads to some sort of immersion break and the conversation might not flow optimally. I started thinking that since “micromanaging” is generally a bad thing in game projects, and since “pick the words you say” is somewhat about “micromanaging the conversation”, could the be better approach?

In project work, the approach is “result oriented”. Instead of telling coders how the name the functions and where to move the mouse, you tell ‘em what you want (and perhaps give some restrictions that affect how to do it).

How would a dialogue system work if it was like this? Instead of choosing line A, which leads to choise B which leads to choice C which leads to situation N, you’d simply choose that “I want to get to N”. Then, depending your skills/tone/attributes/actions-you-done/state-of-world you might watch different dialogue, have automatic responses, and get to situation N.

I think this is slightly difficult to describe, and right now this is merely an idea, and I don’t know if some or many games are already using something like this.

I just feel that since sometimes the purpose of dialogue is to get from situation N to situation M, then perhaps it might provide more smooth and (perhaps even more immersive flow of discussion) when you need to select what you plan to do. If for example you are working on to complete Quest X (and need to get information regarding that), your discussions will be different when you are focusing on “Just fooling around”.

This system won’t solve the issue of “how much content needs to be written”, but is perhaps just a different take on commonly used dialogue tree.

What you think?

After getting feedback about my mini game thing with even no name (people thanking “intro”), I got curious about building a somewhat dynamic story. I asked some help (thanks vruz and black_golem for helpful pointers) and after tens of skimmed articles, book reviews, blog posts, discussion threads and more, I’m thinking that procedural storytelling is something that game devs desperately want to work – but that there’s no breakthroughs in how to build them.

After my search is over (aka, most likely within few hours – at least for now), and if I have some sensible links to share, I shall give some resources to check. Meanwhile, it was interesting notion that storytelling & dialogue gets tricky when player character is discussing with human characters in the game. The dialogue just breaks the illusion at some point. One guy pointed out that interaction with a dog was much more natural. I started pondering that interactive dialogue could indeed work better if there’s no common language or if language is limited. For example, I could imagine that a game that takes place in caveman era might very well pull procedural stories & dialogues well together: there’s just few words to use (as everybody knows that cavemen used words such as “big”, “pointy”, “thing”). Similarly, “dialogue” between a player character and an alien might work, because you don’t get stuck on using English.

Just some food for thought.

My quick research hints to me that procedural/interactive storytelling/dialogue is still something that will evolve a lot, and that it just might change quite a bit on how future games will work.

P.S. And random does not equal procedural.

I still need to categorize and clean up my writings, but for the last few days my mind is been on doing the design for The Infected. Good news are that this board/card game type of game might work just fine.

I’ve streamlined the design. I’ve put some stuff out. I’ve fixed some issues I know this thing had. It’s simple as hell, but not simpler (Einstein logic). And expandable.

Maybe.

Now the heavy duty of writing is ahead of me.

You know. It’s the difference between “writing code” and “documenting it”. We all know which one is the fun part.

Bad news is I have no clue* on how to sell it. (Since it’s “realtime” browser based game).

* by “no clue” I mean that I have one idea which is somewhere in the middle ground of physical and non-physical world. (Aka selling game both as a physical card game via a publisher, but also so that purchasers get access to online server. If I manage to make it so that it stays online due heavy AJAX-calls)

I’ve been talking with one fellow newbie game developer who is eager to “start the actual work” (aka “coding”). I tried to hint him that “designing what to code” is as much as real work as “actual coding”. There’s nothing wrong to plan the work a bit, and then work the plan.

I haven’t coded much during the couple of weeks, but I have been working on design. Sometimes – depends on the game – there is no point trying to keep on coding… if you have no idea what to code. Sure, you can try just start putting something somewhere, but that can be bit like running blindfolded.

What you think? Is coding only “real work” there is in game development? What about design or everything else?

My precious back is killing me, yet I keep ignoring the obvious:

1. Get a proper chair and table. These are a must thing to have for every game developer. If chair costs less than 500 euros it’s not proper. Somehow I’ve convinced me that “those chairs feel more valuable than my back”, which is not true.
2. Back exercise. Just simple exercise where you stand, lean forward-down (try catch your toes) and then “pull” up using your back muscles will do wonders. (Consult a real pro when doing any exercises, I’m just rand(1,6000000000) blogger who writes stuff online. Anyway, the point is: it’s good to do bit of back exercise. And if you train your back, train your tummy too).
3. Regular breaks. Like, not “every 16 hours”. The period between “going to sleep” and “waking up and going to computer” is a break indeed, but I’m talking about having couple of minute breaks every 45 minutes (or every hour or something). This would be good. I know it, I keep ignoring it.

   And now my back is in pain, and some nerves are causing some minor pain in the right leg.

   I know I could do better. Heck, I know that I could even wrote an AI that could work better:
   
while (chair == "shitty")
- buyBetterChair()
while (working)
- work()
- if (timer == 45 mins)
-- takeBreak(2 mins)
-- resetTimer()
for i=1 to 3
- doBackExercise(easy)
- doTummyExercise(easy)
- waitOneMinute()


   I have like million billion neurons in my brain, but I keep performing worse than my AI.

   Talk about non-artificial intelligence.

My dwarf game combat system is different from what you could expect. You don’t attack simultaneously. You don’t attack several times in a row. You have just 1 hitpoint (one hit by a monster and you are dead meat). It’s turn based, and actions don’t occur the moment you plan the action.

This system is coming much from the board gaming world, and so far it looks like it’s perhaps difficult to grasp.

Player feedback always gives me surprises but I didn’t expect this many comments regarding for example “hey, how many hitpoints I’ve got left?”. I guess people are “used to” seeing certain things when it comes to combat.

I do keep in mind that the game is now very difficult and probably gets all your dwarves killed… so adding bit of helpers (that help make the game more tactical if possible) might be good (before considering re-doing the combat system)

…well, I wait and see what more feedback the game gets – and then work more on it.