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9:15am - Well if you look at the start times of the last few days you might notice a pattern. I seem to be pushing myself further and further through the night and into the day. I don't feel tired at all right now. I even got out of bed after reading with no effort, to get some snacks to fill my belly.
I spent several hours reading more of Sid Meier's Memoir! and it's been great fun. It's wild reading about what the grown ups were doing when I was in school. I'm at the point where he starts up Firaxis now, but I've taken a break from reading to do other things, like write this.
Some of what he said resonated with what I've been doing lately, because he's a game designer and I've been designing games. One of the points he made was about his less successful Covert Action game. He realized what was wrong with it just after releasing it, and has forever reminded himself of that with the idea of the Covert Action rule. The idea is that one good game is better than two great games. Which is a bit difficult to swallow, but I think it might be true. There's a lot of minigames I was looking at for my Space Game idea, and lots of opportunities for the player to go their own way, but really, that's just making a lot of different games instead of one good one.
Pirates!, Infinite Space and Star Control II all had their own sets of minigames, and I was trying to put together something from the best of them, but dodging around the idea of the core gameplay. I think I knew it at the time, but didn't want to think about it clearly. I said something about how I didn't have a strong idea for the combat system, for example.
Anyways one thing I kept thinking about outside of what I was writing was that the space game was already way too big. I mean, it's clearly way bigger than the other two, to me, so why even bother listing it if I'm aiming to make the shortest one? The reason is because in the back of my mind I was always sharpening the axe, ready to chop off features to make it fit.
Making realistic 'objects in space' style flight is almost pointless when I'm not giving the player control over it, and only letting them automatically generate paths to their next destination.
For that matter, I'm not sure anything I described up to this point is even a real game, just ingredients for mini games I might include. I'm not sure they relate to the fantasy of a space adventure either.
So the whole space game idea is up in the air again, like usual. Let's look at the other two.
It's been eating at me every time I talk about it, but while I love the idea of a Zeldalike Roguelike Dungeon Crawling Action Adventure game, I don't actually play many games like that. I never got very far in Binding of Issac and I don't think I played Enter the Gungeon more than once. Unexplored seems so cool but I felt pretty intimidated by it after a few playthroughs. The game most like the one I'm thinking about that I've played is actually one I played more than any of those, but still not very far, and that's Moonlighter.
Moonlighter as far as I know doesn't have any key item puzzles. I'm not sure it even had keys, actually. It's mostly an action game. But it's combat is proof of concept for the sort of game I want to make.
Still, like I said, I hardly play those sorts of games.
The same goes for RPGs nowadays. I used to play RPGs all the time, but I've been hard pressed to finish any for years and I don't have any I'm currently playing actively.
The sort of game I like is simulators. Games like Sid Meier's Pirates! yes, but also things like OpenTTD, Cities: Skylines, Tropico 6 and Factorio. Mindustry is a game I like quite a bit, though I've gotten burned out on it and haven't played in a while. It's a mix of factorio like simulation and tower defense. Great game.
So why don't I make a simulator? Well, they're pretty complex games to make, and that means that it'd take a lot longer than the others I've mentioned. That's what I say, but I keep getting poked in the head with the memory that Sockpop games made SokoLoco and it's pretty little and yet I bought it twice, since they had a deluxe version that was a seperate purchase. I checked and it's part of their project to release two games a month. There's more than one of them working, but geez!
I suppose the problems are A: I don't have an idea for a small simulation and B: I don't know how to sell a tiny game.
12:06pm - Ack it's noon. I got lost in researching indie game law and canadian small business law. I've gotta go to sleep.
I spent several hours reading more of Sid Meier's Memoir! and it's been great fun. It's wild reading about what the grown ups were doing when I was in school. I'm at the point where he starts up Firaxis now, but I've taken a break from reading to do other things, like write this.
Some of what he said resonated with what I've been doing lately, because he's a game designer and I've been designing games. One of the points he made was about his less successful Covert Action game. He realized what was wrong with it just after releasing it, and has forever reminded himself of that with the idea of the Covert Action rule. The idea is that one good game is better than two great games. Which is a bit difficult to swallow, but I think it might be true. There's a lot of minigames I was looking at for my Space Game idea, and lots of opportunities for the player to go their own way, but really, that's just making a lot of different games instead of one good one.
Pirates!, Infinite Space and Star Control II all had their own sets of minigames, and I was trying to put together something from the best of them, but dodging around the idea of the core gameplay. I think I knew it at the time, but didn't want to think about it clearly. I said something about how I didn't have a strong idea for the combat system, for example.
Anyways one thing I kept thinking about outside of what I was writing was that the space game was already way too big. I mean, it's clearly way bigger than the other two, to me, so why even bother listing it if I'm aiming to make the shortest one? The reason is because in the back of my mind I was always sharpening the axe, ready to chop off features to make it fit.
Making realistic 'objects in space' style flight is almost pointless when I'm not giving the player control over it, and only letting them automatically generate paths to their next destination.
For that matter, I'm not sure anything I described up to this point is even a real game, just ingredients for mini games I might include. I'm not sure they relate to the fantasy of a space adventure either.
So the whole space game idea is up in the air again, like usual. Let's look at the other two.
It's been eating at me every time I talk about it, but while I love the idea of a Zeldalike Roguelike Dungeon Crawling Action Adventure game, I don't actually play many games like that. I never got very far in Binding of Issac and I don't think I played Enter the Gungeon more than once. Unexplored seems so cool but I felt pretty intimidated by it after a few playthroughs. The game most like the one I'm thinking about that I've played is actually one I played more than any of those, but still not very far, and that's Moonlighter.
Moonlighter as far as I know doesn't have any key item puzzles. I'm not sure it even had keys, actually. It's mostly an action game. But it's combat is proof of concept for the sort of game I want to make.
Still, like I said, I hardly play those sorts of games.
The same goes for RPGs nowadays. I used to play RPGs all the time, but I've been hard pressed to finish any for years and I don't have any I'm currently playing actively.
The sort of game I like is simulators. Games like Sid Meier's Pirates! yes, but also things like OpenTTD, Cities: Skylines, Tropico 6 and Factorio. Mindustry is a game I like quite a bit, though I've gotten burned out on it and haven't played in a while. It's a mix of factorio like simulation and tower defense. Great game.
So why don't I make a simulator? Well, they're pretty complex games to make, and that means that it'd take a lot longer than the others I've mentioned. That's what I say, but I keep getting poked in the head with the memory that Sockpop games made SokoLoco and it's pretty little and yet I bought it twice, since they had a deluxe version that was a seperate purchase. I checked and it's part of their project to release two games a month. There's more than one of them working, but geez!
I suppose the problems are A: I don't have an idea for a small simulation and B: I don't know how to sell a tiny game.
12:06pm - Ack it's noon. I got lost in researching indie game law and canadian small business law. I've gotta go to sleep.
