i_c_b

5 ms·

1.
by i_c_b 5mo ago
There are a lot of properties that game mechanics can have that make people invest in games. Legible rules, clear feedback, deterministic and discrete cause and effect, clearly understandable win conditions and game states, being relativel
2.
by i_c_b 5mo ago
(I'm a game designer, so I can't help but respond to this as a designer first, and not primarily a player) I wonder how much of the issue here is the rise of the abstraction of "gameplay loop" itself as a lens that shape
3.
by i_c_b 6mo ago
I worked on a couple of high profile FPS games during the era when designers really started trying to make these Potemkin village spaces off in the distance of levels to suggest larger realities (especially the 2000 shooter Soldier of Fortu
4.
by i_c_b 10mo ago
Back in the late 90s, when I first entered the video game industry to work (when it was quite scruffy, countercultural, and populated by some pretty odd people), one of the first things I encountered was a new co-worker who, next to his gia
5.
by i_c_b 1y ago
I really try to avoid anything about politics here, but I recall there already being a controversy about this back in May of 2024. Specifically, there were public comments from the new CEO to investors about Cracker Barrel needing to chang
6.
by i_c_b 1y ago
"But that's not how real life works at all, right?" How real life works is always a plausible interesting goal, but it's very often at odds with a bunch of other valuable goals for players. A particular sharp example of
7.
by i_c_b 1y ago
A few years ago, I was feeling dispirited about being middle-aged and had come around to the conclusion that, at least when playing games, my general dissatisfaction and "meh" response to the games I was playing was probably a fun
8.
by i_c_b 1y ago
I'm probably saying something obvious here, but it seems like there's this pre-existing binary going on ("AI will drive amazing advances and change everything!" "You are wrong and a utopian / grifter!") th
9.
by i_c_b 1y ago
I was in the game industry when we originally transitioned from C to C++, and here's my recollection of the conversations at the time, more or less. In C++, inheritance of data is efficient because the memory layout of base class membe
10.
by i_c_b 2y ago
Hey, thanks! I ran myself ragged on that project, so that's nice to hear. And yeah, I think we really did nail a particularly kind of visceral experience.
11.
by i_c_b 2y ago
I was knee-deep working as a technical game designer + engine programmer on Soldier of Fortune when Half-Life came out. I can't put into words the impression that the opening that game left on me; I still remember very distinctly expe
12.
by i_c_b 2y ago
I went to college in 1995, and my very first week of school, I was introduced to the internet, usenet, ftp, and netscape navigator. A few months later, I was downloading cool .mod files and .xm files from aminet and learning to write track
13.
by i_c_b 2y ago
I never loved the original Far Cry as a player, but I did deeply appreciate it as a game designer. I was working as a game programmer and technical designer on a big budget FPS back when the original Half-Life was released, and immediately
14.
by i_c_b 3y ago
Ah, yeah. If you go through the code there, Bryan had to change that file in quite a few places to implement crouch sliding. Nick Maggoire is an animator. Super nice guy. No inside voice at all. I shared an office with him for a while :
15.
by i_c_b 3y ago
Thanks! That's really cool to hear, 20+ years later. I actually did all the effects work on the weapons (muzzleflashes, smoke, explosions, bullet holes and surface sprays, and all the extensions to Quake2's particle systems to ma
16.
by i_c_b 3y ago
Thanks! I've been thinking a lot recently about maybe getting some of my own stories down. The late 90's were a really fascinating time to be in games. And I loved Masters of Doom, too, although it was weird reading it and occas
17.
by i_c_b 3y ago
I ... hmm. My memory is really, really dusty on that. I remember I had a handful of conversations with Bryan Dube during development about Q4 deathmatch. He was a super sharp game programmer / technical designer who had done a ton of
18.
by i_c_b 3y ago
Well, as I say, I'd been meaning to look into this in more detail because it's something I'd been long curious about. But I don't think I have time right now to dig into it.
19.
by i_c_b 3y ago
Wow. This post gave me emotional whiplash. I opened the collection of links, which is quite good if a bit old. But then I had a subconscious mental itch, and thought, wait... where had I heard the name mrelusive before? That sounds _real
20.
by i_c_b 3y ago
I'm not exactly up-to-date on current techniques (I've been out of AAA game making for a while now), but here are some general observations that might be useful. Way back during the transition from Doom to Quake, which in some way
21.
by i_c_b 3y ago
Andre LaMothe's prior book, Tricks of the Game Programming Gurus, was literally life changing for me. I was in my late junior or early senior year of high school when it came out. My stepfather had a 386/20 and then later a 486&#
22.
by i_c_b 3y ago
For anyone who wants to give LOGO a try, there's a really nice browser-based, javascript-implementation live at https://calormen.com/jslogo/ . Source for it can be found at https://github.com/inex
23.
by i_c_b 3y ago
I think there's a couple of orthogonal issues here. One of them is the nature of interactivity in the levels themselves. There's a spectrum between having a game grammar made of distinct discrete interactive reusable objects and
24.
by i_c_b 3y ago
You can read Carmack's .plan archive from 1996 here, if you're so inclined: https://github.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-archive/blob/mast... It's a _fascinating_ snapshot into Quake's devel
25.
by i_c_b 3y ago
That's sort of how things ended up, but I don't think it was the intention. Doom and Doom2 were (and are) magnificent single player and co-op games, if you like that sort of thing, which I do (Doom was my lode star when I was wor
26.
by i_c_b 3y ago
"You can even tell that from the quality of Quake's levels which start with beautifully crafted and intricate levels, and as you approach the end, progress into "whatever, let's just ship it, this is gonna sell" kin
27.
by i_c_b 3y ago
This isn't even the first legitimately interesting video game connection to McDonalds, weirdly. Treasure is an influential game development studio that did a lot of really interesting work in the mid to late 90s, responsible for games
28.
by i_c_b 3y ago
There are serious aesthetic ramifications for running with the idea of games (and especially game rules) as being primarily composed of databases. Specifically, at least in my experience, foregrounding database thinking when making game rul
29.
by i_c_b 3y ago
Yeah, I have a deep game development background (both in industry and as an indie dev), but I've also worked closely for a number of years on building learning game prototypes with education professors from UW-Madison and CMU. So this
30.
by i_c_b 3y ago
I like the general idea - I would like a game tool like this. (and before I give my feedback, I should say, I spent a year or two working on a solo indie Zelda/Diablo mishmash focused on teaching guitar fretboards and music theory back

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