• Metaparticle tool and AnimStrip Builder

    Hours Categories Gamemaking

    I forgot to blog about this when we released it, but I have some more of those handy little development tools that we’re releasing for Metaplace available here for you. There’s a particle editor that spits out sprites so you can bring them into 2d worlds easily, and there’s an animation strip editor that helps you make sprite sheets. Both of them are only available for Windows right now — sorry! — but they’re fun to mess with and might be useful to you even outside of a Metaplace context. You can grab them here. They’re basically unsupported, since I do them mostly in my free time.

    Some screenshots are below. There’s full docs in the tools.

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  • Lessons Learned, and gaming folks using web ways

    Hours Categories Game talk
    Comments 10 Comments

    Lessons Learned is a really good blog that gives a lot of insight into exactly all the sorts of things that I was referencing in that AGDC panel on how we have to adapt to web ways of doing things. Be sure to read through the archives.

    I commented on that panel that the notion of doing things like A/B split testing is sort of foreign to game developers. But it’s something incredibly powerful when correctly applied. But it’s a little hard to conceive of saying “the combat rules are different from fight to fight.” The commonest form of game A/B testing is alternate rule shards, which is a huge investment and is far too large and game-adjusting an approach to really be used as a split testing factor.

    It’d be worth pondering what sorts of split testing could be fruitfully brought into the game world, given how useful a tool it is. Of course, part of the barrier for game teams in the large-scale MMO world is that clients are updated via patches, not streaming, and there is no good mechanism typically for patching only half the clients, or some such. But imagine having taken the original SWG UI icons and the more colorful NGE revamp, and upgrading only half the users — and then seeing whether the control or the new design have better metrics.

    There’s a level of commitment that we feel when making game changes that we should try to avoid. After all, successful game design in the early stages of prototyping and platytesting involves killing lots of sacred cows, often making big shifts in how things are played. But we tend to see patches as a case where “it’s a big deal if we have to revert.” Part of the web way is acknolwedging the frequency of mistaken hypotheses.

  • Jeff “Dundee” Freeman

    Hours Categories Misc
    Comments 54 Comments

    jeff_freemanYears ago, when I was a young punk kid on UO, there was this really sharp, really witty, really annoying guy named Dundee on the r.g.c.u.o newsgroups. He challenged everything I said, and I got into epic discussions with him. He was an avid opponent of the PvP and PK structure that UO used, and had no patience for all of my endless reasons why it was important to allow player freedom and agency, saying that I was allowing jerks to run roughshod over everyone (and in the end, I came to agree with him).

    His reasoning got more and more sophisticated as we argued. It was clear he was very knowledgeable about games. So eventually, I dared him. I don’t recall what it was in regard to, but I suggested that he go grab a mud codebase and just try his ideas.

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  • The Sunday Poem: Watching a Play

    Hours Categories The Sunday Poem
    Comments 1 Comment

    From afar, the patchwork paisleys, tights
    and robes, gaudy gowns
    a glitter, the ladies

    all a carnival, a sumptuous play, riches
    on display until full light
    hits her full force and then we see

    the sawdust backgrounds, painted bright
    to eye fool eyefulls, add horizons,
    set the stages

    gap between surreal, unreal, and real
    and really, do they know
    the way they fool us themselves?

    and then the way the light hits
    their saddened eyes
    the lacework lashes

    such pride in paisley promises
    stony pride
    in teetering at proscenium’s gap

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  • True Moonlight Blood in the Twilight

    Hours Categories Watching, Writing
    Comments 17 Comments

    Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout, stalwart plucky young Southern Gothic reporter,  has landed a prized interview with one of the first vampires to go public…

    Sarah had fretted quite a lot before the interview; photos of Renaldo Angelicus Dramatico had revealed him to be exactly the brooding type that she used to dream about as a teenager. Which was only a year ago, before ths small-time local station morning show gig. But now that she was under the lights and before the cameras, she felt better about it. The assistant producer, Jodi from Minnesota, had tried to get her to calm down, but they couldn’t help but giggle about it, trading off-color remarks about long… fangs.

    Until he walked in. A blousy white shirt, revealing smooth and hairless pectorals. A confident stride and a firm handshake, even as his eyes flicked up and down her body as if she were just meat. Which she supposed she was, in a way. His hand was dry but not clammy, smooth and uncalloused, and his skin sparkled under the lights.

    As the cameras ran, Sarah felt like she babbled through the introductions: “unusual opportunity,” “learn more about these creatures of the night” whatever. The vampire merely looked on her patiently until the formalities were complete. Finally, the preliminaries were done, and he gave a little half-bow from his chair as she was introduced.

    “I do hope you aren’t here to eat me,” she said, as her opening gambit.

    “Ah no, senorita, I could never do such a thing. You are far too lovely to make that sort of meal.”

    “You really aren’t from this century, are you,” she said, looking down at her notes. “So, tell me about yourself. I understand you’re a pacifist vampire–”

    “War is such a waste,” Renaldo interjected. “All that blood running in the streets.”

    “–A pacifist vampire who only drinks synthetic blood or blood taken humanely from animals under PETA’s supervision, and you are not evil but in fact are cursed to live forever with a remorseful soul to atone for horrific deeds in the past until you meet your one true love. Isn’t that a little unusual?”

    “Not at all. In fact, that’s the case for about one in five of the vampire population.” Read More “True Moonlight Blood in the Twilight”