DotBrighton Slides
I had a really good time presenting my work and talking about generative and procedural game design at DotBrighton yesterday, and, as promised I’ve uploaded the slides from the talk here as a pdf. If you have got any questions of suggestions based on the content of the talk or the slides then please leave [...]
DotBrighton Talk
If anyone is around in Brighton on the 25th Jan, Im going to be doing a talk at DotBrighton. Its probably going to be generally about using procedural and generative methods in making games. (Unity based for the most part). The blurb is below.. Procedural / Generative / Modular – grow yourself a game (Unity) [...]
Dark Souls
Ok, So I know that many people have been writing about Dark Souls recently, and Im not sure I can add too much to the excellent article Skyrim and Dark Souls by Rich Stanton, but I have just finished my first playthrough (I doubt i will have time for NG+) and wanted to record a [...]
DIGRA paper online
The paper I delivered at DIGRA 5 in Hilversum, NL is now available online through their digital library. Direct link to the paper here. Pattern Recognition: Gameplay as negotiating procedural form Abstract: This paper will examine the relationship of pattern recognition and Gestalt principles to procedural form in gameplay. It will identify key features of [...]
The landscape is the story
In the process of producing my current procedural terrain/world engine I’ve been examining a number of key games that focus on atmospheric terrain as a key design feature. I am a firm believer in notion of landscape as antagonist or exposition. I am generally dismayed at the poor quality of storytelling in most AAA games. [...]
World of Love Talk
The talk I gave last summer for the ‘World of Love’ independent games day at Channel 4 is now available courtesy of the organisers Mudlark. You can check it out on vimeo here. It was a great event and they are curently lining up another one for this year. My talk as usual straddled the [...]
Indie games as art? context sensitive
In summer I attended the World of Love conference in London at Channel 4. The following day I took part in the associated gamejam. My talk on Friday was roughly about the indie development model as an example for student productions, but also the importance of visual style and context as a framework for extending [...]
A little on Monster Hunter
So, Ive been playing Monster Hunter Tri on the Wii. Its the only game that has really had me ‘playing it offline’ since WoW. When I end up with a little downtime during work I find myself checking gear combinations, video strategy and crafting charts on the web. Like WoW it has a progressive gearing [...]
Case Study – Love
Love is the project of one man development team Quel Solaar. After a career in graphics programming Eskil Steenberg decided to design and build his own “not so massively multiplayer mmo”. Love is an ambitious project and an extensive undertaking (especially) for one developer, the usage of procedural and emergent systems is a key element [...]