Stuff Under the Header

9/08/2013

Pink Journal

Edit: (September 11, 2013) Gamepad support is IN. It's not fully implemented yet, (It doesn't work with the UI stuff at the time of this typing) but it works awesomely for the character control. I even fixed up the control code in the process and made it more efficient. Even better is GM can detect the exact controller that's plugged in, so if I want to get really fancy, I can have the UI change along with the connected controller. For example, if an xbox controller is plugged in, the UI can show (A) or (X), etc, where a Logitech would show a (1) or (3). I don't know if I'll go back to DT1 and DT2 to add this in, but rest easy knowing that DT3 will have full on gamepad support built in! No more 3rd party software to get your stuff to work!

Once again the seasons are changing and the bird flocks are moving around, so a lot of the birds I interact with are moving with their flock. A bit less bird action, but since this is when all the grackles migrate down here, there will actually be more of them... a lot more.

DT3 Things Getting Done
It's a good and accurate section name. Gate 5 and all its troubles, yet interesting development findings is done. (Well has been done for roughly a week.) As the tweet says, I like how it ends. Most of my attention is now on its extra Gate, which have all been renamed to 'Nightmare Gates'. Since Claire got shafted on her first exclusive optional level, she gets it again. This time in the form of an ice based level with full on physics changes (slippery, but makes the dash a beast) and player controlled (and timed) moments of low gravity. If you've followed the tone of the previous optional gate bosses, it's pretty easy to figure out what this one is.

I'm also looking to get gamepad support built directly into the game so players won't have to use third-party software to get their controllers to work. I'll be borrowing Jeremy's controller that he has since the one I have is very unreliable when it comes to testing how things feel. I'm planning to let the D-Pad and left stick (if the controller has it) both control character movement and will see about tuning the left stick to feel right for that if that's what players prefer. The right stick, if I'm able to, will control Chao.

After Gate F is finished, which won't take very long, I'll probably move back to fixing up Gate C.

Game Dev Harassment
This is something that's gotten some attention lately, it's not new, but with the rise in social media, it's gotten a lot worse and more frequent. Here's two articles on the issue. One Two

It's sad, disgusting, disrespectful... it's a lot of things wrong. It's wrong when a developer changes something as small as 0.1 seconds on say, a gun reload time, and he/she recieves death threats from their players. It's wrong when developers don't want to interact with their players because these players are self-entitled twats who spew nothing but vile comments at them. I see it happening myself (not to me, I've had it good, though my audience is small, but I'm thankful that my audience gives me constructive feedback when they don't like how I've designed something instead of telling me I'm ) on various places throughout the Internet. Within the Planetside 2 forums, there's tons of disrespectful comments toward the developers. I stay away from those forums aside from patch notes these days because it's just angering to see how much negativity is there. One of the game designers during their most recent Friday Night Ops (which is a thing the devs do most Fridays where they highlight certain players, or Outfits(guilds) and play along with them, ask them questions and all that) mentioned this negativity being one of the reasons they choose to interact with the players in other places most of the time. (That being Planetside Universe, THE fan site for the game, and reddit.)

This guy here talks about why Call of Duty is made and changed the way it is and presents it in a very well done manner. I recommend checking it out. The reason I mention this here is simply to help raise awareness of this issue as it has become a big problem lately.

In closing, I found a hard covered pink journal completely new. It was just... there. I now use this for drawing up level designs and concepts, among various other DT related works, and probably non-DT stuff in the future. I don't know when, but soon(TM) I'll be posting a video on some of my methods for designing boss fights. Let's hope I can control the speed of my speech and not derp up the video quality. The odds are not in my favor.

7 comments:

DarkSonicTrail said...

Don't worry dood, the REAL fans of your games will never do something like that!......I Hope.

ano0maly said...

I think you have an incomplete sentence in the parentheses.

DarkSonicTrail said...

*shrug*

Anonymous said...

If something becomes well-known enough, you tend to get fans from many backgrounds and extremes. That doesn't make it suck any less, but that's how it works. I don't think any of us are like that (at least, I sure hope not), but...

...people can really suck at times.

This comment sounds negative, though. That's bad. So I'll share a story.

I played Distorted Travesty 1 and 2 a few years ago. I got frustrated at a few bits, but overall, I loved it, and I kind of lurked following the project's development ever since.

Since then, I'd also taken a stab at some really amateur game development myself for what would eventually be the later Super Talking Time Bros. games. My contributions were not major by any means - I'd just made a level or two - but for the one Raocow is LPing right now, he remarked while playing one of my levels that it felt a lot like Distorted Travesty, which gave me a grin.

ZephyrBurst, your game's level design just totally went and took over my subconscious. You need to tell it to stop that!

But no, seriously, I've followed this blog for a long time, and I really look forward to Distorted Travesty 3, and will continue to follow it.

ZephyrBurst said...

Incomplete sentence.
You say improper grammar.
I never do that.

That's a fun story, actually I think I saw that video where raocow said that. I don't watch all of his stuff, but I do pop in from time to time, especially on Super Talking Time Bros (the one before 2.5) and Copy Kitty.

Super Marina World has some nifty levels, but there's a few I found kinda bullshit. (That probably sounds weird from me.)

I liked the effects in Takkoman, and got some ideas for effects in DT3 from that.

And I shall not be held responsible for any unintentional subconscious takeovers.

Kurtis Haren said...

I'm actually rather excited for the gamepad support. I have a controller that I bought for my PC for playing Nintendo 64 and PlayStation emulators, and I noticed that trying to use Joy2Key for the left stick makes it very hard to control sidescroller games, and the control pad's placement is just slightly awkward enough that you'll accidentally hit a diagonal when you don't mean to. Many times, I died because Jerry or Claire would duck rather than move out of the way of an incoming enemy. If you're going to be designing built-in controls specifically for an analog stick, I can't wait to try it.

I know you said a while back that you wanted to be done with updating the original Distorted Travesty, but do you think you'd be able to go back and do controller support for that one too? I originally thought of trying that game with my controller first, but could never figure out how to map the controls to be able to access all the different abilities easily. (My controller's basically a PlayStation controller, but with the left analog stick and control pad switched around)

Also, I'm looking forward to seeing how you design boss fights. Some of those were my favorite parts of the DT games. Well, those and the final level of DT1. Jeremy was freaking badass through that whole thing.

NegativeZeroZ said...

Game dev harassment seems to be a popular topic ever since Phil Fish got into a Twitter argument with a troll and ragequit development on FEZ 2. I won't comment on what I think of Fish, since in this case it's kind of irrelevant. FEZ 2 was cancelled and that's terrible.

I find the entitlement issues of current-generation gamers astounding. "Entitled" has almost become a buzzword now. "Entitled generation" shows up in the Google drop-down. I predict in less than a decade NPD will be the new ADHD. It's a problem with this generation in general, but the gamer community has it especially bad. Look no further than people who pirate charity bundles:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/100576-Who-Would-Pirate-the-One-Cent-Humble-Indie-Bundle

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/05/10/one-quarter-of-humble-indie-bundle-downloads-were-pirated/

These people are a cancer on the gaming industry--and is it just me, or has kickstarter become a really popular way to fund games these days? I think game developers are starting to figure out that that's where the money's at--grown-ass adult fans with actual money who grew up playing video games, love video games, and just want to see a video game exist and enjoy playing it. Not some group of broke-ass self-entitled cunts who assume everything on the internet is free and are just looking for a quick fix to cure their insatiable boredom. There is nothing on a kickstarter page for those kinds of people. It's probably a better environment for the game devs too, because the entitled gamers stay far away from anything that asks for their non-existent money.