The Unspoken Superpowers of the Average Player Character

Though Lazarus and the Time Machine sounds like a pairing straight from the Design-a-Tron, the next few Design-A-Days will be focused on two main metaphors: Time travel and resurrection.

And metaphors they are…most of the time. I’m not an academic, so you’ll have to live with my conjecture and the occasional link to Wikipedia to back up the loose history that comes next.

The Continue

I think it is a safe bet to assume that the original notion of the Continue was a simple revenue calculation. A player is more likely to pay another quarter to continue playing a game they have already invested time in rather than starting over from scratch. My quick search of the interweb hints at this, though I have found no direct confirmation.

Further, he conjectured, certain limitations inherent to the original arcade machine architecture would have limited the options for allowing the player to continue a game. Due primarily to the small amounts of RAM, if any, available (he pulled out of his assumptions) you would have been limited to either restarting the player from the point of death (no RAM, simply continuing in-situ), or restarting the player at the beginning of a level (saving only the level-start score, all other state restored from ROM).

But how do we continue a game from the point the player died? They’re dead, after all. Just drop their avatar back in the game, and let them go. Who’s going to question?

What about starting them back at the beginning of the level? Won’t that transition be jarring? Will they recognize that they have moved backwards in the game? It’s not that different than the jump-cut discontinuities of French New Wave Cinema; players will adapt.

And it was from these completely plausible and humble beginings that the two most powerful and successful metaphors of video game history were born: Resurrection and Time Travel.
(more…)

Well, I finally got eRadiRace in a presentable form. You can read the release notes .

Launch eRadiRace!

Here is a recap of how to play:

eRadiRace is a two player game.

Player 1 Controls: Left/Right/Up/Down Arrows

Player 2 Controls: A/W/S/D Keys

Player’s crafts leave colored walls on the playing field. The player who survives the longest without hitting a wall or the edge of the screen wins that round.

Players can control the speed of their craft.

To speed up, hold down the key in the direction of travel.

To slow down, hold down the keep opposite the direction of travel.

Example: If you are moving up, hold down the Up key / W Key to speed up. To slow down, hold down the Down key/ S Key.

Warning: Going fast makes you larger!

-game over-

Thanks for reading another action-packed installment of Design a Day. For background on the Design A Day challenge, take a peek here and here.

Wouldn’t you know it. The moment I get busy and swear off posting for a bit, I get a set of ideas that will not be denied. So this weekend I’ll be working on a new series of Design-A-Day posts, which should start showing up Monday. I would preview them, but hey…that would just be teasing.

Also, eRadiRace is close enough to done that you can pretty safely look for it in all of its two-player splendor sometime this evening.

Woot, as the kids say.

There is a new (and still incomplete) version of eRadiRace posted.

Launch the new broken thing!

I’ve come to the conclusion that talking about learning Flash is about as interesting as watching The Paint Drying Channel. So, I’ll spare you further exposure to that curse. What I will do is post these things up as they are finished in the game design section, along with the source code and pertinent lessons learned. The code may be ugly, but it’s well commented.

The preview: Flash 8’s Draw API is your friend.

Lameness Alert:

Pre-production is in full swing on the next round of games at Helixe, which means I’m Johnny-on-the-Spot for the next couple of months.

So yes, expect further slippage on the Design-A-Day. You deserve better, and I’ll understand if you want to start seeing other designers. It’s not you…it’s me.

I’ll endeavor to keep you amused and entertained, if not enlightened, in the meantime.

Code to the new version after the jump.

(more…)

Curse you, Flash!

Why solve simple problems, when you can be stumped by hard ones? I appear to have out-clevered myself for the moment. I’m not finding any good way to test for collsions against the arbitrary line movie_clip I’m drawing as a trail.

I’ll paste the code after the jump, if anyone wants to take a peek. Perhaps a good night’s sleep will bring council.

(more…)

My apologies. The drive swap took longer than it should have, but now I have more storage, less bad sectors, and less chkdsk’ing on boot, and well over 99% of my files recovered. To celebrate, I give you an hour-and-forty minute work in progress. This would be Flash game #2, a simple trail-blocking (soon-to-be) game.

It is set up so I can easily add a second player when the basic game code is up and running. The basic notion is Tron, but holding down the direction keys increase/decrease your acceleration and avatar scale.

When large, you move fast, but have a larger collision. When small, you can fit through tight spaces, but move slowly.

Currently Player one is mostly running without collision, sound or death. Hoping to polish of more of the loose ends tomorrow.

If I can finish the whole thing in under 5 hours, I’ll be pretty happy.

You may have to click in the window to activate the key input. Sorry for the crudity of the model, but keep in mind the idea is not to produce polished gems, but to use Flash as a method for rapid prototyping of game mechanics.

Launch eRadiRace!

-game not quite over-

Thanks for reading another action-packed installment of Design a Day. For background on the Design A Day challenge, take a peek here and here.

Have you read the April edition of Wired, the issue with Will Wright emblazoned on the cover? Not much meat in the in the New Worlds of Gaming section for those that are paying attention (and one editorial I quite disagree with, more later), but the Cory Doctrow interview with Danny Hillis did jar loose some ideas.

Called “The Massively Multiplayer Magic Kingdom,” it’s a look at the theme park as a precursor to the MMOs we all know and love. Sorry. No link.

Let’s take it as read that Theme Parks are one of the ancestors of the MMO. They are both magical environments with fanciful characters wandering about and long lines to get to the good stuff (at least in the days before the instanced dungeon).

So let’s turn it around. Can we talk today about taking an MMO and turning into a successful theme park? I’m partial to the idea. I was rooting around the file cabinet the other day and chanced upon a shareholder’s letter from The Dream Park Corporation dated 1995. Based on the Larry Niven novel Dream Park, they were trying to bring to life a very ambitious park-as-multiplayer game, a few years before the technologies to make it work were really available. I gave them a few bucks to push the idea forward.

More recently, I’ve participated in Otherworld, a fantasy-themed adventure weekend. This was a great experience, but doesn’t scale to theme-park size (check them out, you’ll have a wonderful time).

Could you create a theme park based, for instance, on World of Warcraft. EverQuest? Should you? (more…)