Most Significant Digit

This blog has moved

2010-03-07T00:55:00.000-08:00

Blogger is stopping its FTP publishing option, and it was time for a new website anyway. I've merged this blog with my portfolio. It's all at http://selenetan.com. This blogspot URL will stay up, but I won't be updating it anymore. My NaNoWriMo blogs have also moved over to Blogspot: http://selenetan.com/nanowrimo04 (Etudes for the Left Mind) --> http://etudesfortheleftmind.blogspot.com http://

Simple Sudoku and Modes of Thinking

2010-02-17T13:34:00.000-08:00

A while back, I found Simple Sudoku, a freeware Sudoku puzzle maker/solver. It generates puzzles for you to solve, and also has a lot of features to make it easier to solve them. After playing way too much Sudoku in it, I realized why it makes things so much easier. On the surface, Sudoku is all about logical deduction--the 9 in this square means you can eliminate 9's elsewhere in the row and

Prototype: Sideliner

2010-02-14T13:06:00.000-08:00

One thing I noticed about the Ludum Dare Flash entries was that most of them were done with flixel. For the competition, I decided not to use it because I didn't want to learn a new library in the same 48 hours I had to make a game. Anyway, I've finally gotten around to trying flixel out. I cast around a bit for a game idea that I thought would suit flixel's strengths. It's a game with 3 tracks

SEEK*TOR update

2010-01-31T21:38:00.000-08:00

SEEK*TOR, my Ludum Dare 16 entry, now has a proper page on my website. I also took the opportunity to add a few niceties: a preloader, an instructions screen in the game, and the mute button reads "MUTE" and "UNMUTE" as appropriate.

Fixed bugs in SEEK*TOR

2009-12-19T20:57:00.000-08:00

I finally tracked down the bug in SEEK*TOR that sometimes makes the red enemy square (and some of the ally turrets) unclickable. While I was at it, I squashed a few more bugs I found along the way. Play SEEK*TOR v 1.2 Changes in this version: Fixes bug where the upper-left turret is unclickable Fixes bug where sometimes the red enemy square is unclickable Fixes bug where on very high levels,

Post-Mortem: SEEK*TOR

2009-12-14T19:12:00.000-08:00

So this was my first Ludum Dare. I did the Global Game Jam back in February, so I had some idea of what to expect, although the GGJ was teams rather than solo. One thing I do regret is not interacting more with the community–IRC, Twitter, etc. I could have used more feedback than I got, instead of relying almost entirely on my husband’s comments. Friday night I spent brainstorming ideas and

Finished my first Ludum Dare!

2009-12-13T19:28:00.000-08:00

Sweet, I managed to complete my first Ludum Dare! I was thinking of learning Push Button Engine for it, but after going through a couple of tutorials I decided I’d go for straight-up Actionscript instead. PBE has some neat features, but I need more time to get my head around its component-based programming model. Anyway, SEEK*TOR is a game where you’re trying to locate the enemy by firing

Git on Dreamhost

2009-10-13T17:43:00.000-07:00

Though my website is hosted on Dreamhost, these days I mostly use them for version control hosting. So I was very happy when they set up git on their servers.Casper Fabricius' Keeping git repositories on Dreamhost using SSH has some instructions and a handy script for automating the process. Thing is, I tend to create the folders and files for a project before I set up the git repository.

Scrambling Words for Maximum Fun

2009-09-02T22:07:00.000-07:00

A while back I worked on an online Flash version of the game show Don't Forget the Lyrics. It's a game show where contestants get up and sing along to some music until the music stops dead and they have to fill in the rest of the line. They have three lifelines (a la Who Wants to be a Millionaire) they can use: show the first three words, turn the question into a multiple-choice question, or get

Information Access in Avalon Code

2009-05-26T23:27:00.000-07:00

Recently I've been playing a DS RPG called Avalon Code. It's an action RPG where the world is about to end, and you're the Chosen One who's been granted the Book of Prophecy to populate the new world. It's your duty to use the Book to gather information about all the things that will be in the new world by "code scanning" them, which you do by hitting them with the Book of Prophecy. (Apparently

Replayability in Video Games

2009-04-13T22:02:00.000-07:00

"Replayability" is one of the features that video game boxes trumpet, often with the word "endless" tacked on the front. It's considered to be fundamentally opposed to "story" -- games that brag about their stories, like those in the Final Fantasy series, aren't replayable. Games like Tetris, are.The most common way I've seen to make a game with story "replayable" is to limit the amount of

Ada Lovelace Day: Emily Short

2009-03-24T17:41:00.000-07:00

Today is Ada Lovelace Day, and I'd like to spotlight Emily Short, who's best-known in the interactive fiction (IF) community. She was involved in the development of Inform 7, a sophisticated tool/system for creating IF, has written several works herself, and created a handy guide to IF for newbies or people who want to explore. She also has a column, Homer in Silicon, in GameSetWatch where she

Arenas of Challenge

2006-10-28T03:17:00.000-07:00

I've been following this thread on a guy's first time running a D&D campaign. Somewhere along the way, (around page 2) a discussion about character creation (and especially power selection) as a "valid" arena of challenge got brought up.What's a "valid arena of challenge"? Well, an arena of challenge is a context where success or failure is socially important to the people involved. Chess can be

Down with "Roleplaying"!

2006-08-23T18:44:00.000-07:00

Did the title get your attention?A couple of months ago, I was talking with someone (I'm sorry, I forgot who) on the #indierpgs IRC channel who mentioned how much he dislikes the imprecise way people use certain terms, such as "roleplaying". And I'm definitely coming around to his point of view.After all, what do people mean when they say they "roleplayed" a character? It could mean acting

Me, Myers-Briggs, and Gaming

2006-05-01T04:47:00.000-07:00

So, over at Brand's blog, there's a discussion of Myers-Briggs types and gaming. It's neat stuff, and I'm a sucker for personality typing, so I decided to play.In high school, I tested as a pretty clear INTP. Now, though there are times when I feel more like the descriptions of INFPs, in addition to the times when I feel INFP is way too touch-feely for me. So I guess I'm more like INtP, or INxP,

The Three Big Questions and Computer Games

2005-09-29T09:31:00.000-07:00

I've been hanging out at The Forge, and one of the members has lately started some discussion of the "Three Big Questions" that get asked when people post their designs. The questions are:What is your game about?What do the characters do?What do the players do?One of the problems with a lot of new designs is that the answers to those questions are fuzzy. Often, descriptions of game setting are

.hack//infection -- Why am I still playing CRPGs?

2005-02-25T15:21:00.000-08:00

Recently I felt like I needed to play a CRPG. The only one around at the time was my suitemate's copy of .hack//infection (she has the rest of the .hack games too), so I started playing it. It was okay for a while, but then got boring.It's an action RPG; the combat is okay but nothing really special. You can also get levels. I'm sort of annoyed or disappointed that the only way to acquire new

Grandia II, or Why do I even like RPGs?

2005-01-10T14:47:00.000-08:00

I just finished Grandia II, and I'm not still not entirely sure why I bothered. The gameplay is probably more compelling than the gameplay in, say, Final Fantasy VII, and the storyline's of about equal quality. I think I liked the FFVII characters better; most of the Grandia II characters just annoyed me. In any case, I feel like the only reason I finished the game was because I was bored.The

NaNoWriMo again

2004-10-21T04:38:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm doing NaNoWriMo again, and this time I've set up a separate blog for the thing. I'll post my writing there and keep track of the wordcount. This also means that I'm unlikely to post anything here during November.

"We Do it Because it's Old-School" -- A Rant

2004-10-21T01:59:00.000-07:00

Something that I keep running into while browsing the many amateur games on the web is the belief that because something is "old-school", it must be better. I don't mean the rants that complain about how no-one makes good games anymore. What I mean is the way that bad design decisions keep cropping up, and are defended because they're "old-school".One of my pet peeves is the maze-like pseudo-3d

"Social Contract" and Player Expectations

2004-07-26T18:36:00.000-07:00

I've been doing a lot of reading at The Forge and at the IGDA forums. In the IGDA Game Design forum, there are a lot of people talking about making deeper, more "expressive" games with artistic merit. One point that keeps cropping up is that in making a game about how useless it is to fight Fate, the game will need to make player choices useless. When this point is made, the poster argues that

Movement and Space (in CRPGs)

2004-03-17T03:27:00.000-08:00

I think the reason I'm having such a hard time quantifying difficulty in RPGs is because the problem is essentially the same as the problem of what makes games difficult in general. Action games have the easy way out of adjusting time, because they're essentially just challenging your reflexes. So I'm going to put the question aside for now, and concentrate on the issue of movement and the need

Difficulty in RPGs

2004-03-01T02:26:00.000-08:00

I started this post on March 1, honest! I just decided to stick the links up first since they were easier to do. I haven't come up with any particularly good insights into making RPGs easier or harder, but I think the biggest difference comes from resources. If you can get through most combats pretty much intact, then the game will be easy. If, on the other hand, every combat risks party death

Game Difficulty

2004-02-12T03:02:00.000-08:00

I once participated in an online discussion where several old-school gamers were complaining about how easy console RPGs are, especially nowadays. (There was also some mention of game difficulty in general, but the focus was on console RPGs.) I ended up writing a short rant defending easy games. Essentially, I dislike tedium, and I have a much lower threshold for it than, well, almost everyone

The Art of Computer Game Design

2004-02-02T01:40:00.000-08:00

When I read this, I was amazed at how insightful and relevant it was. It's a must-read if you want to design games. It's even free, so what are you waiting for? I feel like I should be more detailed about the book, or about what it made me think, but I'm having trouble expressing myself clearly. There are now two attempts at a more in-depth analysis or review sitting in my blog account, marked

Game Design and the Arts

2003-12-15T18:18:00.000-08:00

I just realized that I can add an option for a "title" field to posts, so I'm going to do that now. This might not help given that I tend to, well, ramble, as the blog name suggests. In any case, I'm slightly irked at the way that various schools (colleges and whatnot) seem to class game design in with, well the school of (graphic) design. (A lot of schools don't mention the "graphic" part, but

Facade and Beats

2003-12-15T03:07:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I'm lazy. I'll admit, one thing that contributed was that I'd written up a really long post (probably 500 words or so) and then accidentally clicked the refresh button and lost all of it and didn't feel like typing it up again because by then I felt the entire post was kind of stupid. Maybe some day I'll try to talk about the same issues again, except more intelligently. Anyway, I (

More on Choice; Info-dumps

2003-11-18T05:13:00.000-08:00

Well, I think I found a point for my last entry: games are more interesting when you can't win using just one strategy. That's the key to interesting combats; it shouldn't always be viable to hold down the "Okay" button and keep making normal, physical attacks at the nearest enemy until it dies. It's also the key to an interesting game in general. Lufia II, for example, tended to require a lot

Payoff Matrices and Choice

2003-11-17T05:20:00.000-08:00

Okay, I've been horribly lazy about both this blog and NaNoWriMo. That project I last mentioned didn't help, and then the week after that involved 2 midterms and another mini-project (actually, it was a homework assignment, but I turned it into a project because I do things like that...) and an assignment I should have done much, much earlier. In any case. Games and game design. I've recently

2003-11-04T06:40:00.000-08:00

I thought a project was due on Thursday instead of Tomorrow/Today. Therefore, no new entry. Sorry. Maybe later I'll do an edit or a retroactive post or something like that.

2003-11-03T05:21:00.000-08:00

Sometimes you get stuck for ideas for characters or adventures or plots or what-not. That's where random generators come in. I would caution against using the output of a generator straight-out, but they can be a good way to give your creativity a kick-start. Random name generators are probably the most common type, and they vary a great deal in quality. My favorite name generator for a while

2003-11-02T06:13:00.000-08:00

You know, it comes to mind that NaNoWriMo and this blog are not working together very well. In any case, the treat for today is The Nine-Act Structure Homepage. It contains a description of a particular structure for movies and games - the Nine-Act Structure. The author goes quite in-depth about what he means and why his way is the best. The Nine-Act Structure revolves around a "two-goal" format

2003-11-01T00:03:00.000-08:00

Sloperama Lots and lots of advice on getting into the computer game business from someone who's been in it since before the Game and Watch days. Okay, this is a really really sad excuse for a game design blog entry, but I forgot and stuff and I need to get to sleep because I have a tabletop RPG session at 9 am. >_< Errrr... Medieval Demographics Made Easy It's a very cool site describing

2003-10-30T17:18:00.000-08:00

Comments are up now, thanks to HaloScan! More coherent stuff about plots... The Snowflake Method is a way of producing a "design document" for a novel. It's an interesting way to look at things, and it highlights an important method of developing ideas. Also, I have NaNoWriMo on the brain. In fact, I'll probably have it on the brain for all of next month, too. When you're working on the world

2003-10-30T06:13:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I didn't get around to posting a more coherent post. Oops. I did get a bit more done conceptually for NaNoWriMo; my story now has a one-sentence blurb! (And also a vague idea of plot and such-like.) Plot in games is an interesting beast. On the one hand, people seem to want deep, complex plots (frequenly involving saving the world). On the other hand, people don't seem to want to be

2003-10-29T06:49:00.000-08:00

Oh, a little addendum or something... I count days by my waking and sleeping periods. My sleep schedule is extremely irregular, so if the dates don't look like I've been posting once a day, I feel like I have.

2003-10-29T06:47:00.000-08:00

Well, I've been silly and stayed up waaaaay too late looking at websites and reading stuff for NaNoWriMo, which I'll be participating in. Sometime soon I'm going to use a third-party service to add a commenting feature to this blog, but for now, you can e-mail me with comments. Game thoughts... I've mostly been thinking about the plot of my novel for NaNoWriMo, and the characters involved. It

2003-10-27T21:40:00.000-08:00

Well, since I seem to be thinking about weapons, there's the matter of making every character only able to use one weapon. This is used in the later (PS) Final Fantasy Games, Chrono Trigger, and a gazillion other CRPGs. I don't see terribly much point to this other than laziness, especially for combat-centered characters. (Casters can be kind-of excused because presumably they've been spending

2003-10-27T01:28:00.000-08:00

Yay, I have a blog now... Hopefully this will get updated frequently. I certainly think about games often enough. Something that I've been wanting to mention about the amateur CRPGs I've seen developed... There's a fairly easy change that will make the game more interesting: change the available weapons and equipment. The problem with a lot of games (even commercial games fall prey to this - FF7