Back From A Week in Germany

Found myself in Cologne once again, a volunteer at GDC Europe 2013 with a trade visitor pass to Gamescom which  I made full use of.

Some things were different this year, like my stay at a hostel or the fact that I had no shifts on Wednesday. Other things were similar, like the foot and back pain and the lack of meals.

Parties were better this year, in general, both from the networking aspect and from the free drinks / swag / comfort in room aspects. GDCE sessions a bit more boring than last year, and I had fallen asleep in practically each one I attended, the only exception being one of the sessions I was scanning for (a familiar role from GDC Online,) not that it was super interesting, it was more because I had been working and later had to sit on the floor.
Met some friends from last year, made a few new ones from the volunteers.
Grabbed more freebies than last year, regretting I hadn't brought a bigger bag and being forced to leave stuff behind.
Only scored a couple of VIP passes, one for Square Enix the other for Bethesda (given to my by a fellow volunteer who didn't have the time to use it) and didn't get to fully use them. Wasn't all that interested in checking all Squenix had to offer (I think RPG demos don't work well in a trade show environment, they require a slow build up and can be text heavy, being in German certainly doesn't help.)
Experienced the Oculus Rift, playing a demo of CCP's Valkyrie, played Forza 5 on the XBOX One, but didn't think the long lines for the PS4 were worth it. That'll have to wait for next year which I'm already planning for and thinking of improving. I'll probably spend Wednesday at the entertainment area if possible.

Still in the process of following up on all the leads I gathered. I had 25 business cards to work with, I thought I needed to save them for solid leads, ended up coming back home with a few, so there's some fear I may have missed some chances, but there's no helping it now.

Back in my daily grind of not knowing when I work my minimum wage shifts, falling even further behind in my app development class, and wondering if I'll finally give in and sign up as a freelancer.
On the positive side, it didn't seem that long ago that I thought it was going to be a long time before I get another holiday yet here we are celebrating the Jewish new year, and I've been back to board game night. Played 3 new games this week, and enjoyed them all: Summoner Wars, Battlestar Galactica (won as a Cylon sleeper agent,) and Courtier (won my second game.)

As far as game design ideas that sprung from these shows, there is nothing defined: just thinking how bad game pads are for finer control in FPSs, and how one might come up with truly innovative gameplay.

Job Agency: Focusing the idea

As I was walking on the beach, thinking about my latest game idea, as I often do, I came upon an interesting theme which informed some of my game mechanics.

The idea is that players would take the role of recruiting agencies, competing to place new recruits into a limited number of available spots, promote employees to higher positions, block other players, collect money and more.

Since the cards to do all these things would be shuffled into a deck and drawn randomly, individual pieces may move in unpredictable ways, and hopefully make things fun.

The Deck That Plays Itself

Another game night behind me, and some new ideas coming from my experiences.
Among the games I played were the familiar Dominion, father of all deckbuilders, and my first play of Troyes, a game with an "automatic" neutral player.

Thinking of these "artificial intelligence" systems in which a set of rules is designed into the game to dictate the movement of neutral pieces for the players to deal with, gave me an idea.

My idea is to create a game in which players need to create their own AI systems, hoping to achieve their goals in the most efficient matter, similar to the PC game Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom, in which players could build building and hire adventurers, which would then go adventuring without direct player interaction, though the player could set rewards to entice his adventurers to go to certain locations.

The way I see my game working is in 2 phases.
In half the game, players would acquire cards. I have a few ideas floating around on this, from playing cards for their monetary value to purchase cards that are worth more, to bidding on cards using money chips gained during the second phase of the game, to placing workers to acquire certain cards, create certain combos and block other players.

In the second half, players would shuffle their purchased cards, and flip cards over one at a time in turns, moving their piece or pieces according to whatever is indicated on the card. In a well thought out deck, the instructions on the cards would work well together to get more money to help the player develop his economic engine even further until some set goal is reached, such as a turn number, monetary goal or something else.

I have some more thinking to do about theme. Fantasy was the obvious choice, but I like to explore less familiar, and writing this post made me think of an idea - perhaps playing as parents sending children on errands.

I also need to think about how the instruction system would work: one idea is to have a grid and have turn left twice and go straight one square instructions, while another idea would be to have instructions based on landmarks, such as going towards the nearest enemy or a location on the map.

Racing with Shapes

A game idea popped into my head as I was driving home after the regularly scheduled game night, though it had little to do with the games I actually played.

As I was trying to think of an alternate mechanic from the other racing games I know, I came up with an idea to use different shapes to represent how a player moves his vehicle around a track.
There would be several categories, such as tight curves, open corners, s-curves and a straight or two. Each category would have a number of similar curves shapes, each placed in a separate bag.
A player would choose a bag to pull from, perhaps by using some other mechanic, such as a card from his hand, and attempt to place the curve on the track, starting from his vehicle, hoping to make it fit on the track he is racing on. If he cannot, there will be a damage system in place, which may lead to his elimination.
Curves will be double sided, so that a right turn can be flipped to make a left turn.

I'm leaning towards a sci-fi theme, including weapons.

I also think a campaign mode would work well here. Different race tracks would be provided.
After one is complete, players will assess how they did in the races in a variety of ways, such as the number of curves needed to finish, weapon use, damage taken, etc. and use this information to improve driver skills (one example of an improved skill: pull 2 shapes from the bag, choosing the one believed to be a better fit.)
Winning a race will equal points for the season as well as money to allow for even more personalization.

Enjoying Star Control 3

I know this game gets a lot of beef, especially from fans of Star Control 1 and 2. There's no denying that Accolade mistreated Toys for Bob which is a shame. I'd like to see what these guys would have come up with as a sequel.

Maybe we'll see a new Star Control in spirit if not in name yet.

Star Control 3 may not be considered canon by the hardcore fans. It may have problems, such as from sitting around in the same spot waiting for fuel, weak AI on enemy ships, and the Syreen losing all sex appeal, but I'm having a hard time not playing it.

After playing little else outside of social games, I no longer have to worry about waiting an hour or two to regain my energy so I can go back to the game to click on a few more things. Instead I struggle with quitting the game, as I tell myself I'll only go to one last planet before I go to sleep.

I enjoy the story, the voice acting (set my phone notification to "We are the Mycon, we respond,") the funky puppets, and the wining the fights when the computer provides more challenge than just trying to stay as far as possible.

I wonder to myself if I'll ever be able to spin quite a delightful yarn, while thinking of the different directions I could take.
I think when I finish the game, I'll start playing Shadow of the Colossus, which I never got around to, before I check out the Ur-Quan Masters and what the fans have done with the source code.

Entertaining myself at the grandparent's place

As a child my parents would sometime, such as on long holiday breaks, leave my brother and I at the care of our grandparents, with both sets living fairly close to each other, but an hour and a half drive from home.

Neither my maternal or paternal grandparents had computers, so other ways of entertaining myself had to be found.
TV was one such way, but until the mid-90's we only had 2 stations to choose from, which didn't always have child appropriate shows.
A VCR was available, and walking down to the video rental store and picking something out was as much fun as watching what we chose, it seems we have seen all the classic Looney Tunes and Disney cartoons that way.
My maternal grandparents also had some video tapes passed down from the American branch of our extended family, degraded copies of such classics as Chitty Chitty Bang Bang or Alice in Wonderland.
Grandma had some girl magazines from when she was a girl (dad's mom is a holocaust survivor who didn't have much left from her childhood, but she survived them all.) which didn't quite suit my taste, but beggars can't be choosers and they were marginally better than grandpa's gardening magazines - there are only so many ads for sprinkler systems I can look at.

Another hit from that time was going to the supermarket to buy freeze pops and something banned from the US and no longer imported to Israel - Kinder eggs. These things had amazing toys inside (unless you had the bad luck of getting a statue) which were a joy to assemble, and fun to play with for about ten minutes.

When I discovered arcades I found there was one in a nearby shopping center, and would spend countless hours in there, even just to watch demo modes going on. Later I found a few others to haunt, longer to walk too and full of cigarette smoke, but with new games to look at.
I even started getting money to play, even though I hadn't asked for any, probably because my brother got bored just tagging along.

In closing, I think these experiences had a lot of impact on my creativity these days, even if it isn't always obvious exactly how.

Space ship design language

Above is an image from Master of Orion 2, showing one color option for the ships which you can choose.
I am currently working on some of my own ships designs, following the long standing tradition of designing such vehicles with a unified design language.
The benefits of using such a system are as clear as figuring out who is friend or foe.

Thing is, when you look at current and past transportation technology things don't quite work out that way.

Fighter jets look quite different from commercial airliners. Different colors and camouflage patterns are used for the same aircraft even when used by the same people.
I think extraterrestrial intelligence may end up working along similar lines: form will fit function, yet we won't mistake it for anything we've built here on earth, just as they won't mistake our vehicles for their own.

I'll continue to design my ships for the human player, but this is food for thought. Maybe I'll stumble onto something.