after friday’s romero’s wives reading, i unwound by delivering a post-partum of my game dys4ia with liz. parham gholami was gracious enough to not only record the thing, but to edit it – my slides weren’t quite working, so there was a little fumbling. you can download the audio recording right here, and the transcript is below. [...]
being the author of a book about digital game-making for non-coders and a hopeful ambassador for game creation, i figured i should have some link on the front of my site where someone with no game-making experience can click and learn how to make her first videogame. naturally, i picked the simplest, most non-coder-friendly, and [...]
knytt stories is an amazing introduction to level design. it attracts a lot of amateur designers, which is rad. but i also see lots of amateur designers make the same mistakes, and it’s frustrating. there’s a zzt game called zzt syndromes that tries to identify common design errors in zzt worlds, created in the hope [...]
my friend james invited me to speak in front of his class at san jose state university – a class that he’s hoping to expand into a full program eventually. standing in front of this room of bright young authors / the next generation of game creators, i told them what i wanted to see [...]
cloudy mountain (aka “ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS cartridge”) for the intellivision is a pack of neat little ideas. today an ad&d-licensed game would probably involve talking to bartenders in rural towns to take quests to go investigate a cave and kill blork the orc and bring back his stolen magic sigil, bringing you one half-step [...]
game maker is an incredibly valuable tool for non-programmers and non-professionals who want to explore game-making. discovering it in 2004 was life-changing. in 2011 there are other easy-to-use game making tools, but game maker still occupies an intersection of versatility and transparency that few other tools can lay claim to. unfortunately, yoyo games, the company [...]
i’ve written about what a level of lesbian spider-queens from mars looks like in the game’s language – not the layout of the halls and walls, but the script that dictates which enemies appear, and when, and what timing each level moves to. these level scripts and the rooms’ actual layouts are seperate – a [...]
a year ago i posted about what a level of letters from beneath looks like on the inside, but a level from that game is a simple grid with walls and triggers. what does a level look like in a game like lesbian spider-queens of mars, where a level’s contents aren’t tied to what it [...]
there’s a lot of neat design in super mario bros., but it often seems like we only talk about those first couple screens. (i am no exception.) the above is one of my favorite setpieces in the game, appearing almost at the beginning of world 4-2. the centerpiece is the narrow hallway on the right, [...]
last night i gave a talk at evergreen valley college’s (“we’re proud of you”) craft and punishment exhibition. they have a bunch of games set up in the school art gallery (and a continuous loop of all of paul robertson’s movies projected on the wall): nidhogg, norrland, all our friends are dead, i want to [...]
