Last update, I thinik I posted a video of JetGetters, right? Well if I didn't then here it is:
That's a Week 1 prototype, and right now I'm on Week 3. This game idea is more exciting the more I think into it. Stealing enemy's jets, piggybacking on team-mate's jets, hijacking missiles mid-flight and steering them around...
I have 4 classes set up right now- I just described one of them for a whole paragraph but deleted it cos it sounded like bizarre rambling; BUT TRUST ME IT'S THE COOLEST!!
There's loads of potential for it to be a real Team Fortress, except I definately won't be falling back on "This is the Heavy equivalent, this is the Medic, you can unlock hats etc." clone stuff. For a tangent on something I learned about Team Fortress this week, scroll down to the comments. I'd give you a link right now, but it's not much fun for everyone to play one at a time, so what'd be the point in that? I'll organise a beta or something soon enough. Network code is really jerky and imprecise right now- Me n Alex are working on some collaboration and teamwork stuff that's going really well, but I can't confirm anything yet. If things line up, I could end up leaving England and going to live in The Netherlands to work on and release more games- so that's a BIG DEAL!
Mindchamber interviewed me, FUCKING SUCK IT @THEINTERVIEWER, WHAT NOW!!!!!!!?
MindChamber is really good at interviews. I did this one a while ago with Penny Arcade Report, and they sent me 7 bullet-point questions in an e-mail. I filled em in with a load of stuff, and they only printed a couple sentences of me describing No Time, and then kind of wrote a conversation around it. This one I just linked IS basically an improvised conversation, with all the slow boring parts cut out. That's WAY BETTER!!!!! Sorry if any of my answers come off as super hipster indie whimsical.
In November 2011 I went to MineCon, which is the Minecraft convention, and had a booth for some game I can't remember. It was in Las Vegas and there were a few thousand people attending, so that was a big crazy thing. In March this year, I think I'm attending the Flash Gaming Summit, and GDC. Fuck it this post is too long- That's it!
Play my Raybots!
I-smel
-So here's what I spotted in TF2. First off: did you ever notice they improved the designs over time?
<a href="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BDJl7I-CEAEpADS.png:large">https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BDJl7I-CEAEpADS.pn g:large</a>
Anyway I was kind of worried about the fact that I don't play so many multiplayer games, and I'm not experienced in designing them. So I feel like there's some missing ingredients I don't know about. Last week I watched this talk with Gabe Newell:
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8QEOBgLBQU">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8QEOBgLBQU</a>
"Testing a multiplayer game is so different to testing something like Half Life. In CounterStrike, we added the riot shield and player numbers went up. Then, we took the riot shield away, and player numbers... went up. Cos people are just there to play with their friends."
I think this is one of the key things I wasn't keeping in mind. Multiplayer games are ABOUT PLAYING WITH YOUR FRIENDS. Every Valve game since then has brought that more to the centre of the game. TF2 is full of medics that heal you, spies that take out turrets for you, engineers that give you ammo... the mechanics are all built to make you BE GOOD FRIENDS. It's a bunch of complete asshole strangers saying "Let me handle that for you!", and everyone feels like they're amongst friends. That's why I've played a billion hours of TF2 (and Gears Horde Mode) online, and about zero hours of Modern Warfare.
Left 4 Dead and DOTA 2 are also designed along this philosiphy. There's a bunch more I noticed when you look at the character's visual designs, but this is also pretty long, so I'll just sum it up and say that they're designed to let THE PERSON PLAYING shine through as much as possible. You might go into a class-based multiplayer game with all these ideas for funny, cool characters- but that's actually a mistake. The TF2 guys aren't made with that in mind, their function is to be a projection of your friend at the keyboard, and THAT HAS TO BE THE PRIORITY, because THAT'S WHY PEOPLE ARE PLAYING.