Post on 19-Jul-2015
From Web to Game Development Pietro Polsinelli @ppolsinelli ROME 27-28 march 2015
Notes from the diary of a personal voyage
that is still happening.
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Ambiguity in title: Isn’t web development a form of
game development???
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With “web” I don’t mean games that run in the browser.
Web development as creating sites and web based apps for
customers.
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Clarify what I mean through an
example.
Turn a site into a “game”: released a site for RAI
encouraging teenager girls to write.
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Has challenges, points, scoreboard.
Has winners.
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Create a web based app for suggesting ideas for a new fiction.
Turn from passive watcher to
creator.
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So its almost a game. A web based game.
I’m already on a good start to do
game development.
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Wrong.
Wrong. Wrong.
Wrong.
So what is the first game you want to make?
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http://bit.ly/agdArtInt
http://gameinternals.com/post/2072558330/
understanding-pac-man-ghost-behavior
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No narrative.
Hyper simple animations. Hyper simple space.
And fixed camera, no audio sources …
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Game loops, physics, animations, AI,
growing difficulty (levels), characters.
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If not a story, a sense of purpose.
(Giving a sense of purpose on a web site is rarely a problem.)
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As web developer, you have no idea.
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And this is a very, very simple game.
The components of an opera:
story, music, scenography, scenes, actors, secondary
characters, drama, [pro singing / difficulty levels]
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Its actually worse. All the secondary characters are
moved by AI.
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You may decide to generate the scene and story each time.
And so on.
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As a web developer you have to acquire a whole new set of
concepts to do games.
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To become what?
Depends on the budget, depends on the team size.
From 0 to infinity and beyond.
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Lets stick to the worse case: a small budget, so a small team.
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Crossing the chasm
• Crossing the chasm
You will need to acquire brand new skills along two distinct lines: as game developer and as game
designer.
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And the line between the two blurs the more you know about
both.
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Note:
design in the sense of usability of UI graphic design comes after
(game) design.
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The game update
loop.
Everything updates.
Your methods will be called 80 times per second on the same
object ...
instead of once per request
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The independent life of your objects will be your saviour and
your curse.
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That is why composition is mostly used instead of inheritance.
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“Breakpoints? No, you don’t use breakpoints
much in Unity”
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http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/
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The structure of
space
Even picking the most regimented, simplified, finite
solution, it’s a mess.
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Book? Prototype.
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Game Feel
Feel is a highly technical problem.
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Material from Game Feel book examples.
Soccer ball physics
http://www.soccerballworld.com/Physics.htm
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Perception is a construction, and a game is a coherent universe where you may set your own
laws.
Ok, but…
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Too much creativity.
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Not Just Game Feel
Creating games today is not restricted to building arcades.
Even if you are building “small”
games.
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80 Days: branching universe text
based, but …
Sunless Sea: the importance of a slow ship
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/237657/Postmort
em_Failbetter_Games_Sunless_Sea.php
Relations and gossip: narrative!
(Kardashian Hollywood)
Evolving the narrative dimension in a game is nor obvious nor
trivial.
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Example on the sublelties of these models.
Representing values like “moral
stance” of a character again requires refined modeling tools –
not just a variable.
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Game Designer as
Translator / Traitor
Game design and modeling practice trains you in translating work and learning situations in possible contexts for a game.
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Wednesday, March 25, 2015
Category, competition,
avatar, war, reward, levels
Vs.
Inclusive, mentor, path,
story, transformation
A language change.
Participative Action Research
And there is way
more …
And audio, texturing, 3D modeling, particle effects …
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So?
We’ve seen just a few of the several
things to learn.
So you need to be Da Vinci?
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The love
You are creating the magic circle – a world with new rules.
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With games you can dance on the line between art & the
masses
In games you are in a highly creative environment.
This even if you are designing say games for health, games for EU,
like I do.
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People that have been in the field for a long time do these weak
attempts to present it as “just a profession like any other”.
They don’t believe it either.
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So …
Only The Love will make you survive this ordeal.
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Just consider in creativeness that you don’t need to author, you
just need to let yourself be authored.
You don’t need to be writer, just
let yourself be written.
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Little work I do in the Indie game world puts me in contact and in
work pairs with real artists.
Some of them don’t even know they are.
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Good luck love.
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Special thanks:
Daniele Giardini for ideas &
feedback
http://www.demigiant.com/
My twitter stream is mostly dedicated to game design
http://twitter.com/ppolsinelli
A blog on game design
http://designagame.eu
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