Browsing Date Archive: 2007 February

The first ever edition of the Carnival of Video Game Bloggers took place on Monday at The Collected Writings of James Newton, and if you’re interested in games I highly recommend you check it out. There are some truly excellent articles, and they cover a really wide range of topics so you’re bound to find something that interests you.

If you blog about games, then you should consider writing something for the next edition of the carnival. Not only do you get extra readers, but you can find some stimulating articles to read and new blogs to subscribe to.

You can submit your articles at the carnival HQ page.

To coincide with the redesign of the main site and blog, it’s time to look back at some of the better articles that have been published.

Software Development Articles

Five Things I Wish I’d Known When I Started Programming. I’ve learnt a lot of things since I first started programming. Some of the lessons were quite humorous, so I wrote about five of the best.

Issue Tracking for Indie Developers. You can guarantee that any piece of software you write will contain bugs, but using a decent issue tracking solution can help you to keep things organised and reduce the amount of time you spend on managing your list of errors.

How to Ensure Your Project Fails. There’s no avoiding it – creating quality software is difficult. Managing a project of any size can be difficult, but there are a few key things you can do ensure it never gets finished.

Games I Designed as a Kid. Designing games is fun, and I designed my fair share when I was younger. Very few of the concepts ever made it past a few dodgy drawings, but it was just as fun to dream about the possibilities.

Games That Inspired Me. Playing great games inspired me to become a software developer. This article examines some of the most important games I ever played.

Indie Developer Interviews

Interview with Hanako Games. An interview with the creator of the excellent Cute Knight, discussing indie life, game development and whether or not there will be a sequel.

Interview with Amaranth Games. Another indie developer interview, this time with Amanda Fitch of Amaranth Games who talks about Aveyond and Grimm’s Hatchery.

Personal Development Articles

When the Sodaware blog first started, it was a mix of game development and productivity articles. As time went on, the productivity articles became less relevant to the core topic so all of the personal development articles were moved to a new website, philnewton.net.

A few of the more popular ones remain on this site, and they are:

Keeping a Progress Log. A look at my old productivity tracking system.

Printable CEO Scoring. How I weighted the points in my progress tracking system.

Hello and welcome to the first “issue” of the Sodaware Blog! There’s a lot of great stuff in this issue, so we’ll jump right in.

Featured Article

Computer Love

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, so it’s only right that we should take a look at love in computer games. Is it possible to create a feeling of love between the player and a character on screen?

Read the full article.

Also Featured

Also featured in this issue:

• Creating Emotions with Music — Music plays a very important role in enhancing the experience on screen. A good piece of music that compliments a scene increases the impact it has on the player. This article explores the difference good music can make in your game.
• GDL – Harvest Moon — The Game Design Lessons series takes a look at “Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town”. What can be learnt from a game set on a farm?
• The Best of the Sodaware Blog — A look at some of the finer articles from the history of the Sodaware Blog.
• What’s New? — A brief look at the recent changes at Sodaware.net, as well as some information on what’s in store for the next 12 months.
• Getting Started with Subversion — An introduction to Subversion, a concurrent versioning system. How to set it up, how to use it and what to use it for.
• Using zip files with Blitz Basic — A tutorial on using ZIP files with BlitzPlus and Blitz3D. Show’s you how to unpack files from a ZIP, create new ones and also how to compress a Blitz bank.

It’s been an absolute age since the last article was published, but with good reason. A lot of work has been going on behind the scenes to improve the quality of the site, both for players and developers. There are still lots of new features planned for the rest of the year, and you can subscribe to our free newsletter or our RSS feed to keep updated.

One thing that really stood out whilst choosing games to promote was the high quality of the indie games available. It’s sometimes said that there are far too many clones, and that the general quality of indie games is low, but I’ve found that to be quite a narrow view. Yes, there are lots of poor games out there, but the same can be said of commercial games. The good news is that there are lots of fun and original indie games out there.

A slightly different blog

As well as tweaking the front page, the blog has been redesigned to make it more visually appealing and the content easier to find. It’s a little bit different from most blogs, but that was part of the motivation for taking this approach.

The main reason for the design is that it suits the content better. There’s a lot of variety in the categories, which range from games to project planning and updates about what’s happening site-wise. Breaking the visual appearance into clearer sections to highlight this content will make it easier for people to find what they’re interested in.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the design, so please feel free to leave a comment or get in touch.

What does 2007 hold?

Hopefully no more redesigns! This one was more of a major tweak than a full design, but the back-end was converted from Etomite to Wordpress which took some time. Things are stable now, but it’s quite likely that many smaller tweaks will be made over time.

Current plans for 2007 include the release of several tools and libraries for Blitz developers, more games on the main site and more articles posted in the blog and developer areas.

This blog will also be hosting a future installment of the “Carnival of Game Bloggers”. It’s only young, but it’s well worth checking out. It also has a group on the Great Games Experiment, so join up and share your gaming thoughts!

The easiest way to describe Harvest Moon is as a farming game. However, it’s executed in a different way from regular “sim” style games such as Sim City or Transport Tycoon. In Harvest Moon you taken on the role of the farmer in an almost RPG way, and you run around planting crops and doing most of the work yourself.

There is also more of a focus on story and relationships, and there is a town full of people that you can befriend, and several lucky people that you can marry.

It’s a quite a simple concept in essence, but layers of extras are added on to create a strangely compelling game. So what game design lessons can we learn from it?

The Good Bits…

Freedom

There is a huge amount of freedom in the game, much like the more traditional sim games. Very little of the game or story is forced onto you, which gives the player a lot more control over how they progress.

Players can earn money with crops, livestock, mining or even just rummaging in the mountains for fruit and mushrooms to sell. Some routes are easier than others, there’s really no set way the game should be played.

The social aspects of the game are also optional, and you can choose to befriend everyone in town and get married or stay in your farm like a hermit.

Discovery

The freedom given to you also fosters a sense of discovery, as there are little stories hidden away in the game that you’re free to discover at your own pace. There are a few cut-scenes to illustrate important events, but the majority of the story can be discovered entirely at the player’s pace.

Simplified mechanics

Some sim games can dig a little too deep into micro-management, but Harvest Moon gets it just about right. You plant seeds, water them and then pick the crops to sell. There are no complex menus and dialogs about setting prices or managing transportation. This helps to keep the gameplay light enough to be enjoyed more casually.

Relationships

Being nice has an effect on the game, and can have rewards for the player. Some townsfolk may give you items, but some also open up new areas of the map.

A large example of this are the characters known as the “Harvest Sprites”. There are seven of them in total, and if you’re nice enough to them they will help out around your farm. You need to give them gifts in order to gain their friendship so that they’ll help. You’ll get bonus “friendship” points if you remember their birthday, and you can also wrap the gift for additional points.

The not so good bits…

Limited customisation

In any RPG, it’s beneficial to give the player a sense of ownership of the character. Very little about your farmer can be changed, and a few additions such as house decorating or changing clothes would have gone a long way to making the adventure seem more individual.

Notebook

I grew up with text adventures, when making maps and writing things down was part of the game. However, there’s a lot more complexity in modern games and keeping track of everything can get quite difficult, especially in an RPG.

The game does keep track of all your recipes, and has a library with shipping prices and crop growth times, but there is still a lot of information left out. A “Smart” notebook that fills in facts as you go could be useful, especially as not everyone wants to fill a Moleskine with pages of notes about a farming game.

What can we learn?

Keep it simple

Always be on the lookout to simplify things. Instead of adding new, complex features, see what you can remove until you’re left with the core elements of what makes you game fun.

This does depend on your target market though. For example, a flight simulator aimed at hardcore fans won’t be popular if you simplify it to a few key presses. However, most games can do without some of the more complicated elements.

Keep it data driven

On a slightly more technical note, take advantage of data driven game techniques. There is a lot of content in Harvest Moon, with around 20 different crops and hundreds of recipes. Coding each of these into a class would be a nightmare, so always be on the lookout for ways to make your code more data driven.

Have faith in your players

There is often the temptation to railroad players into playing the game exactly as you want it. This can either be to avoid bugs cropping up, or it could be because you want the player to experience the game as you designed it.

If you’ve ever watched someone play a game you’ve created, you’ll quickly find they’ll do things in a different way than planned. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Give your players some tools and an environment to play in, and watch what happens.

You don’t have to make your game completely open-ended, but look for ways to let the game take care of itself instead of events being heavily scripted. An added side-effect to this is that it gives a lot more replay value, and it can also generate those “You’ve got to see this!” moments for players.

Harvest Moon at Amazon.com

Zip files are one of the most common compression formats around, and are a great way of storing files. Using the userlib functionality of BlitzPlus and Blitz3D, it’s now possible to access and manipulate zip files from within your Blitz applications. This can be useful for packing your media, as well as compressing network data.

This article will show you the following:

• What files you need to use zip files in Blitz, and how to install them.
• How to open an archive file and find out what files it contains.
• How to extract a file from an archive.
• How to create a new zip file and add files to it.
• How to compress and uncompress Blitz banks.

What will you need?

Blitz.ZipApi — A free library that you can include in your Blitz project. It comes with everything you need to use zip functionality within Blitz.

Installing the files

Once you’ve downloaded the library, you’ll need to copy “zlibwapi.dll” and “zlibwapi.decls” to the appropriate “userlibs” folder so that you can use the userlib functions in your application. This will be something similar to “c:\program files\blitzplus\userlibs\”. The userlib file is fully documented and has XML comments for use with Protean IDE.

You’re now able to use simple zip functions, but if you’d like to get easier access to some of the more common functions, you should include the following into your project:

• Blitz_File_ZipApi.bb — Helper functions for using zip files in Blitz.
• Blitz_File_FileName.bb — A few functions for manipulating file names. Use them to get a directory name, file name and extensions from a string.
• Blitz_Basic_Bank.bb — PeekString and PokeString functions.

All of these files are included in the Blitz.ZipApi distribution, along with full documentation in HTML format.

How it works

The zip library works in a similar fashion to the standard Blitz file functions. Before a file can be read from it should be opened with ZipApi_Open, and once finished with it should be closed with ZipApi_Close. Files to be written to should be opened with ZipApi_CreateZip and closed with ZipApi_CloseZip.

Fully documented examples are included with the library, and are also available online.

Subversion is an open-source version control system. That doesn’t sound particularly interesting, and at face value it isn’t, but you only need it to save your skin once to realise how useful it can be.

Version control is a method of storing different revisions of the same file, usually source code or documents. This allows developers to see when changes to a file have been made, which can be useful for isolating bugs, and can also be used to “roll-back” a file to a time before a bug was introduced.

Along with these features, version control allows developers to merge two versions of a file, which is very useful for projects with more than one person.

This article covers the following:

1. What software you need
2. Creating a new repository
3. How to set up a Subversion server
4. Adding password protection to a Subversion repository
5. Laying out your repository and importing files
6. Checking out and checking in
7. Using tags and branches

What you’ll need

Subversion – The primary download is source code, but there are binary versions available for different operating systems, including Windows, Mac OS and most common flavours of Linux.

If you intend to use Subversion mostly from the command line, you might want to add the Subversion binaries directory to your Windows PATH variable.

Optional Downloads

TortoiseSVN – If you’re using Subversion with Windows, I highly recommend installing TortoiseSVN. It integrates with the Windows explorer shell, so you can see an icon if a file has been changed. You can and also check in items, commit changes and perform other common operations with a few clicks of the mouse instead of using the command line.

Games can make us feel many different emotions. Fear, excitement and even sadness are common emotions in games, but what about love?

What is love?

Many people throughout time have attempted to describe what love is. Poets, philosophers and scientists have all had a go, but love remains a complex mystery.

If you’re the romantic sort, love is the greatest thing ever. It makes the world a more beautiful place. Birds sing more clearly, flowers smell better and everything is wonderful. If you’re not quite so romantic, love is just nature’s way of getting two people together to mix DNA.

The fact that love is so difficult to describe makes it all the harder to convert into a gameplay element. To some, even the very notion of turning love into something trivial for a videogame is unthinkable.

For the purposes of this article, I’ll be discussing two kinds of love. The first, and perhaps easiest to experience, is a caring, nurturing love. The second form is the romantic love that makes Valentine’s Day so very expensive.

How do we create love in games?

To create a sense of love, you must give the player something to care about. Several factors make a person more likely to care about a fictional character on their screen.

Create a connection between the character and the player. Creating a common ground between the player and the character is a good place to start. You’re much more likely to care if you see part of your own personality in the character.

Make the player feel important. You can foster a relationship between the player and the character by making the player feel as if what they’re doing is important. For example, Tamagotchi’s would get sick if they weren’t properly cared for. Creating this sense of responsibility in the player makes their decisions seem important, and increases the chances that they’ll care about their character.

Make the experience unique to the player. This is perhaps the biggest element into creating something special. Tamagotchi’s were special to people because they weren’t the same as someone else’s. You become more protective of something if you believe it can’t be recreated.

What about romance?

Romance is a completely different experience, and much, much harder to recreate. There are several barriers, both physical and moral. Is it right to make someone fall in love with a fictional character? Most players will be aware that “it’s only a game”, and won’t succumb to anything more than lust for what’s on screen.

A more realistic way of creating romantic love is to let the player take the role of a different character on screen, and have the romance play out between them. This approach is commonly taken in RPGs, but is often scripted and gives the player very little control over what is happening. This can create a sense of distance between the character and the player, and should be avoided if wishing to create something deeper.

The “S” word

Sex is quite popular, apparently. With adult books, DVDs, websites and more, it’s only natural that games should get attention from the adult industry. The majority of sex games are overly salacious, and merely an excuse to put some porn in the form of a game. Even the Atari 2600 got some of the action (pardon the pun), with some truly awful sex games being released, such as the infamous Custer’s Revenge.

With advances in artificial intelligence, and the proliferation of cyber sex in MMORPG’s such as “Second Life”, the future may see AI bots replacing pornographic games. It’s quite plausible that such a bot may one day pass the Turing test, and fooling the player into believing they are interacting with a human may be the best way to improve the player’s experience.

Conclusion

There is still a very long way to go, but using techniques from artificial life makes it easier to create a sense of love between a player and a character. It may never be the same as the love between two people, but perhaps that’s for the best. However, at least you don’t need to buy a computer dinner…

Music can easily convey feelings and information that graphics and text can’t or shouldn’t. Appropriate music and sound, employed effectively, will make your island platformer more jaunty, your subarctic wasteland more desolate and your army of forty-legged robots incomparably evil.

Imagine the scene.

Your player has just hit the spider boss between the eyes with a well-aimed rocket. It screeches and falls from the ceiling of the tunnel, crashing in front of the player. The music falls from a thumping beat to a clear silence. The enemy stops twitching and stiffens. The player leaps over it and runs towards the exit, the new upgrade clearly in sight, the final key…

BOOM! A deep bass drum resonates.

You can almost hear the gulp from here.

Music’s importance in mainstream games is now widely-recognised, but in terms of indie games it still seems to be an afterthought in some cases. Here’s why that should change.

Make it enjoyable

Every aspect of your game should be carefully planned to ensure the player will find it appealing and enjoyable. If your music is repetitive or unsuitable, you can be sure they’ll switch it off as soon as possible.

No matter what kind of game you’re developing or playing, good music is highly important. Think of any genre and there’s a classic game with a great tune attached:

 Puzzle – Tetris. Chances are you know it and like it.

 Platform – Sonic or Mario. Green Hill Zone and the Overworld theme are two of the most famous pieces of music for any game, widely recognised and admired.

 Racing – OutRun. I can say no more.

Good music will genuinely elevate the quality of your game if it’s suitable, memorable and enjoyable. You work hard on making the rest of your game those things, so why not the music?

Don’t waste chances

Unless you’re developing for a system that includes rumble or force feedback, indie games only use two senses: sight and sound. Not maximising those senses is a waste, and severely limits the impact of your game. 

Try playing your favourite game, indie or otherwise, with the music off. Does it feel different? I always feel much less interested in a game without music; there seems to be no mood, and I can hear my brain thinking “this isn’t any good.” It’s okay, you can put the music back on now. Much better, isn’t it?

“I can’t do it!”

You don’t have to. Hiring and collaborating with musicians over the Internet is easy; you send them artwork and they send you music. You send them money and they send you thanks. It’s straightforward, the quality of music will be much higher and it leaves you with the other nine billion jobs to take care of.

The key to good music in games is…

Not to waste it. Use suitable music for the mood you want to achieve and your player will become much more involved and, as a result, enjoy themselves so much more. Seeing as that’s your business, you owe it to everyone to put great music in your games.

James Newton is a writer and musician from York, England. He has written music for several independent films and documentaries, and has also created tracks for several games. You can listen to his work and read his thoughts on games and more at Prosody.co.uk.