Blogger ate the second half of my template, hence the sudden design change. Additionally, this whole keeping my information on their servers thing is not really working out for me. Last night I was unable to publish a minor template change. Even when I can publish, it takes forever. This blog is not that big, it shouldn’t be so slow to publish.

The solution, of course, is to move away from Blogger. I have started setting up Wordpress (hosted locally), but it’s going to take me a while to get it set up just right. Another advantage to using WP is that it will enable me to more easily integrate the blog with the rest of my site.

Strictly speaking, you could say this game isn’t so much a game idea as it’s a mod idea. It is a multiplayer only mod, which pits two players against each other head-to-head. The first phase of the game has the players preparing the level for their opponent. They are presented with a map from a FPS that contains nothing but a start and an end point. Each player gets the same empty map, which they then fill with obstacles (units, traps, etc.). When each player has finished setting up their map, they must navigate the map created by their opponent (standard FPS gameplay). The first player to the end wins. (Alternatively, victory could go to the first player to clear the entire map, the player with the most points at the end, or even the player who survives the longest.)

I often have an idea for a game that keeps coming back to me over and over again. I’ve decided to start writing these down to train myself on how to articulate gameplay ideas.

To that end I am starting a new recurring feature on this blog: Game Idea of the Week. Okay, sure, it’s not a very catchy name, but it gets the idea across in five words. Starting today, my goal is to write down at least one game idea every week. The description will probably be no longer than a paragraph; but if I really like one of the ideas I may flesh it out to a full page or more.

Without further ado: The Wild. The Wild is a game that takes its inspiration from the lost-in-Alaska-after-my-plane-crashed-into-an-icy-lake genre. The player takes control of a small party of survivors who must attempt to make their way home from the crash site. The terrain is randomly generated, yielding a different game each time. The player is presented with a map once, at the beginning of the game, but they have to work from memory while playing. The characters’ equipment consists of whatever the player salvages from the rapidly sinking plane in an action mini-game at the beginning. Gameplay is from a top-down or isometric viewpoint and falls into the RPG genre. (i.e. characters gain experience to increase skills, etc.)

The player is primarily concerned with trying to keep the characters alive and must balance activities like hunting for food, gathering firewood, building shelter, and making progress home with a limited supply of energy. Characters’ skills and attributes influence how much energy they must spend to complete various actions.

Periodically a larger event occurs, which may involve a combat encounter (such as with a wild animal) or a mini-game (for example, trying to flag down a passing search helicopter). The climax of the game has the player facing a nemesis which was introduced in a previous encounter. This nemesis could be a member of the party or a wild animal, such as a bear. Emphasis is on a game that can be played to completion in a few hours, but with strong replayability due to customizable characters and randomly generated terrain.

Cringelysays:

But Apple WILL make some inroads against Microsoft. The new Intel Macs will run Windows XP unofficially, and Apple Support acknowledges that they are only days from running XP officially, too. So Apple finally has a solid argument why Windows-centric companies and homes should consider trying a Mac. The best case, though, says that Apple sells an additional million units, which aren’t enough for Steve Jobs, so I see him going into a kind of stealth competition with Microsoft.

Here’s how I believe it will work. Apple won’t offer versions of OS X for generic Intel hardware because the drivers and the support obligation would be too huge. But just as you can buy a shrink-wrapped copy of 10.4 for your iMac, they’ll gladly sell you a shrink-wrapped Intel version intended for an Intel Mac, but of course YOU CAN PUT IT ON ANY MACHINE YOU LIKE. The key here is to offer no guarantees and only limited support, patterned on the kind you get for most Open Source packages — a web site, forums, download section. and a wiki. Apple will help users help themselves. With two to three engineers and some outreach to hackers and hardware makers, Apple could put together an unofficial program that could easily attract two to three million Windows users per year to migrate their old machines to the new OS. Imagine the profit margins of three engineers effectively generating $300-plus million per year in sales.

If Apple’s goal with the Macinteltosh boxes is to gain market share–and they are a public company, so that is almost certainly their goal–this would be a brilliant two-pronged approach. Macs have always appealed to a certain type of person. A person who is most interested in things that “just work.” These users were typically not very technologically inclined. With the introduction of OS X the tables turned. Macs were suddenly appealing to the most hardcore of techies–those who could appreciate the Unix-flavored core of the OS. With this new strategy, Apple positions themselves to expand both of those markets considerably. By enabling the “Just Works” users to put Windows on their Mac as a second OS, the barrier to swiching is lowered. Simultaneously, Apple will “stealthily” become the *nix distribution amongst techies, but without needing to offer support.

Since it’s the time of year for bloggers to offer their predictions for the coming year, here’s mine: Windows Vista launches in September. Simultaneously, Apple announces OS X 10.whatever is available in an Intel flavor in stores near you, but they do not officially support installations on non-Mac hardware. They (or someone else) will also announce an open-source project to develop drivers for OS X that allow it to operate with a generic box. Techies rejoice.

Tags:
Apple,Microsoft,Vista,OS X,MacBook,MacInteltosh,2006 Predictions,OS Wars

How to prototype a game in under seven days. (Gamasutra) This came in my feed from Joystiq this morning, though I read it a while ago. It’s a really cool sounding project at the ETC which had four students each creating a game every week for an entire semester. Some of the games are actually pretty fun! One of them even got a mention in PC Gamer magazine.

Tags:
ETC
GameDevelopment
CMU

Great news for Python fans and amateur game developers! Microsoft has released IronPython Beta 1. IronPython is a version of the Python dynamic scripting language that runs on Microsoft’s .NET platform. I believe it is the first dynamically typed language available for the .NET platform. Python is a very popular language which is used quite extensively by Google. It is also popular in the game development community. Amongst other applications, it is the main scripting language used in Civilization IV.

Tags:
Python, IronPython, Games, Microsoft,
Google

I’ve posted an uncharacteristically high number of times already today, but I just saw this and I think it crystalizes a bit of what I’ve been thinking about game design and game designers for a while now:

To be a Game Designer, relies on the ability to create Rules. Rules that will breed a new virtual world and where it’s inhabitants (the players) will have to move within those boundaries. Just like we move within the boundaries of space and time in the real-life world.

A World Designer is what Game Designers are in their essence.

[Context]

One thing I forgot to mention in the first half: during my summer downtime I also worked for the Tim Kaine for Governor campaign making phone calls and doing surveys.

After moving to Norfolk we sold the old house quite quickly to some friends of ours. Work was going really well for me, though the amount of actual work I was receiving began to taper off to almost nothing. Unfortunately, my mother’s work was not going very well at all. For several years she had been growing more and more disgruntled with the administrator of the school she worked for, who had been working hard to change the nature of the school. My mother had been working at the school since the seventies and had been the headmistress at one point. The current administration of the school, perhaps perceiving her as a threat, decided to fire her this fall. After consulting a lawyer, she was able to obtain a decent severance package; it’s not as if we’re out on the street or anything. The decision came as a shock to everyone in the school community; though in hindsight it does not seem totally unpredictable.

In a terrible twist of events, while on the way to sign her severance papers, my mother got in a car accident. It was ruled entirely the other driver’s fault (they had pulled out in front of her); but my mom’s 2000 Volvo V40 was ruled totaled when they discovered that the frame had bent in the collision. She was provided with a rental for a few weeks and a fairly hefty chunk of bills with which to buy a new car.

Around the beginning of December I completed my months-long search for a car when I settled on a Silver 2002 VW Jetta. I won’t say how much it cost, but suffice it to say it’s the most expensive thing I’ve ever purchased by a factor of five. (And that includes a trip to Europe.) So far she’s been treating me right. I recently decided her name is Rosalyn.

My girlfriend came to visit me for two weeks over the holy-days. It was wonderful and I miss her terribly now that she’s gone back home. I look forward to a time when I can always be near her.

My mother’s search for a car was much shorter than my own. She bought herself a brand-new Prius for Christmas. It’s black and sleek and futuristic like it was delivered by space aliens. I love the way the engine shuts off at stop signs. Very sexy.

That just about concludes the short version of my 2005. When I’m fifty or sixty or seventy I’ll be looking back and I’ll probably think of 2005 as one of the most influential years of my life. Obviously I didn’t mention everything, but these posts are long enough as is. Stay tuned for 2006: The Year in Preview.

Here are a couple of ideas for blogs I would read. Someone may already be doing these, but I haven’t run across them yet.

1. The web’s only Plog. Short for pooplog, this would be a day to day blog about stool. Bloggers could cover their own movements as well as the always hilarious This Week in Poop news segment. Enlightened discussion of poop: that’s what the internet was invented for.

2. Haute Lingua: Hott Language for the Hoi Polloi. I receive Dictionary.com’s word of the day. I would love to see a blogger try to write one entry per day that relates to their own life, is no longer than one paragraph, and uses the word of the day. It would, at least, be an interesting writing exercise.

2005 was probably the most eventful of my approximately 22 years. I started the year off in a funk, having not done as well as I might have liked in school last fall. I also was dealing with the issues typical of a second-semester college senior. I had senioritis. Most of my friends had already graduated. I felt like I had outgrown college generally and my social scene specifically. I was very eager to graduate in May.

Graduation could not have been better. My family and friends visited from all over the country. It was nice to see everyone in one place. On the other hand, it was sad to leave some friends behind who have not yet graduated. One month later my brother graduated from high school, which gave me another chance to see my family and friends.

The beginning of the summer was simultaneously very stressful and very relaxing. It was nice to have some time off to just relax; but it was also very stressful to have the burden of an uncertain future. The bank account ran dry and I was living off credit cards for a while. I did get a chance to spend some time in Miami with my girlfriend, which was a lovely diversion, but I soon had to return to Virginia. It is during this period of too much downtime that I launched my website.

I had been searching intently for jobs since graduation; but the one branch I hadn’t yet shaken was personal connections. (Which, everyone knows, is the only way anyone gets a job.) To extend my poor metaphor for a moment, that branch contained some of the proverbial low-hanging fruit. A friend of mine was able to quickly introduce me to a friend of hers who got me an interview. Everything went swimmingly and I started my new job as a professional web developer on July 18th.

The next few months went by in a blur; I have found that doing the same thing every day causes this phenomenon. I have been learning some skills on the job; but most of what I do is not very challenging. It is in these first few months of my job that I worked on Diplomacy in my spare time. I eventually got sort of burned out on Diplomacy, and decided I needed to give it a break.

Also during August I was helping my mom and my brother to clean out our house, which we have lived in for thirteen years, so that we could move. Four bedrooms seemed like an awful lot, considering I will be moving out within the next year and my brother will be going away to college next fall. My mom does not need a four bedroom house to herself. We decided to take the opportunity to move downtown to Norfolk, specifically the Ghent area. Ghent is a perfect neighborhood within walking distance of everything in Norfolk worth doing. We have a three story townhouse that is more than spacious enough for the three of us. (The fourth being my best friend, with whom I share a room.)

To be continued… Part Two (Cars, Holidays, Norfolk, and Jobs + Predictions, Resolutions, and Aspirations)