What I Learned - 3

What a busy week!  Facts and other cool things kept hitting me every day... Well, as I was reminded this week, "less talk and more rock"!

What I Learned - 7/28/13 to 8/3/13

1. Specific concepts tend to stick around if they are the first ones drawn.
1. Samwise; The Art of Blizzard Entertainment, pg. 138
2. Talk can kill a game; "rock before [talk]".
1. Brandon Boyer; Less Talk More Rock
3. Remember: Video games are primarily an audiovisual form of communication and 'talk' is just noise under such a context.
1. Brandon Boyer; Less Talk More Rock
4. The national age of consent is 13 in Japan; this explains why young school-kids can find themselves in sexual or high-tension situations in Japanese media.
1. mdrewltt; comment on The Evangelion Manga is Finally Over, and What a Ride It Was by Richard Eisenbeis
2. Confirmed by Wikipedia; Ages of Consent in Asia
5. (Not really for design, but interesting enough to share.)  Adults are those who've experienced "senseless pain with no hope of emotional justice and no power to make the situation better".
1. Lawrence Sonntag; IGDaily Newsletter - Never Stop Mounting Friends, Multiplayer in Arkham Orgins
6. There are levels of believable Sci Fi, each being unique and fairly easy to identify.  
1. Shared by David Wessman; Grading SF for Realism
7. If designing a game in Unity, youtuber StudicaNews makes tutorials that are thorough and easy to use.
1. StudicaNews; Youtube, Unity 3D Part 1 User Interface and Game Objects
8. Every game designer since forever has wanted to make a game where all things can be destroyed.
1. Dave Georgeson; How EverQuest Next will be Forged by Players, Shaped by Minecraft

Just a heads-up on the next post: designing contest visuals for Bungie and its new game, Destiny.

What I Learned - 2

What I Learned - 7/21/13 to 7/27/13

1. You are likely going to be doing things other than making professional games for awhile after college
1. DeeJ; Breaking In - Scott Bilas
2. 'Real' isn't fun.  Being 'unreal' in a 'real' situation can be.
1. David Wessman; Chatting over how to implement features in an unannounced game
3. Some 8 out of 10 jobs are filled by those who were referred to the work.
1. Random fact I passed-by away from my computer
4. When calculating unit costs in a game (specifically RTS), the base tech cost is a flat number that is spread over ever unit that requires that tech to be produced.  The more units, the cheaper the base tech cost.  Units are not produced at their sticker price.
1. Meditating on how to balance any custom unit made for Starcraft II
5. The time in RTS games that will not see a specific unit can be determined by the sum of time the resources needed to make it are gathered, the time for the required tech to be gained, and the time that the unit itself requires to be built.  That is the point where, no matter what, that unit will not be seen on the map.
1. Realization when writing the previous note
6. When an edge has only 1 of its sides showing, it should be darkened.
1. idcreatures; Youtube; Learn to draw using two point perspective - Part 1
7. Games are all about the features and a better game design doc should reflect this.  A "Core Features list" should list the major game components, explain why they were chosen, what is interesting about them, and how they work together.  Each item must show how it is to be used, how the game emphasizes it, the iteration of the feature, and why they are varied enough to succeed.
1. 1-25-03 entry; CBLOOM.COM real time 3d : game design rants
8. Those consuming entertainment will cry-out if characters that they invested in for dozens of hours are slaughtered.  Major fan backlash may ensue.
1. Game of Thrones Season 3
9. I read the EA Spouse letter.  I suggest you do the same.
1. EA Spouse

Another week, another few lessons learned.  If someone else won't use these notes, I'm at least sure to reference them.  Comment if you've learned something!

What I Learned - 1

I have something to confess.  My dutiful addition to this blog has been… sub-par, to say the least.

But, I've found some things to keep me on track!  One is to play more games; I hope to have more of my “I would include this mechanic/technique in my games; I would fix these issues in this game” posts.

Another is a weekly posting of “What I Learned” in my everyday experience as a game designer for the past week.  These posts will concern game mechanics, game development, programming, and visual design.  And this is the first such post.

What I learned

1.  For a professional concept/industrial designer, 2 days of thumbnail sketching work equals approximately 144 thumbnails, or 72 pictures in an 8-hour day, or 1 sketch per 6-7 minutes.
1. Scott Robertson, Start Your Engines
2. Keeping contingency plans active, especially in the roller-coaster job market of the industry, is very, very useful.
1. Time prior to leaving Secure Banking Solutions.
3. Pseudo Code is more amazing than I ever learned before; transmitting ideas between designers and programmers is a must, and can be undertaken by a programmer with a designer background, or a designer with a practical understanding of coding.
1. Figuring out how weapons will work in an unannounced game.
4. Coroutines and states are the saving graces of Unity game programming (learn about them!).
1. Rich Joslin, UnityPDX WWW Class Presentation
5. Testing AI is super simple; write functions that would do the animations, move the character, fire, etc, but only display console logs as to the action it should be taking based on what the player is doing.
1. Thinking on how to implement an enemy time (now time to do it).

That wasn't too bad, was it?  Expect this to be a regular thing.  But in the meantime, I need to start on re-imagining the style of this blog...

If you can suggest anything that I could learn from, please, do share below!