Projects page update

I made a new page in my projects section giving details on my 2010 Global Game Jam game, Quest for Stick. The process of gathering together all of these old assets brought back a lot of great memories. It's wonderful realizing that I still actively keep in touch with four or the original seven team members.

Intermission

I haven't posted here in a while, busy making VIDEO GAMES. If you're a fan of fun pictures then my Tumblr has been getting some love in that regard lately. I'll be back here to post some stuff once I'm done with it.

Some of last year's releases that I enjoyed

Not quite a list, and not in any particular order. I present: some games from last year that I liked.

Monster Hunter Tri / Monster Hunter Portable 3rd

These two tie since they are so similar and because Monster Hunter Portable 3rd barely counts, being that 1) it's currently only available in Japan as of December 1st, 2010, and 2) I just received my copy at 10:00 PM on New Year's Eve. So far I like Portable 3rd better than Tri. There's just something about the tethered nature of the Wii console that turned me away earlier in the adventure, whereas I'll invest exponentially more hours into any portable Monster Hunter game, language barrier or no.

Having all the weapon types that were missing from Tri (Dual Swords, Hunting Horn, Gunlance, Bow, and the less-complicated Heavy/Medium/Light Bowgun system) return for Portable 3rd in addition to Tri's new Switch Axe make me happy when I'm in the mood to try new combat styles. Personally, I stick with the Hammer, same as my sometimes hunting buddy Michael Abbott. We're both quite stubborn about our hammer usage, disregarding the fact that players are designed to have collision with each other in multiplayer. This usually resulted in either of our characters being launched half across the map by the other's errant upswings. And sometimes not so errant.

Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies

You're a fallen angel turned Minstrel and you must save the world. Usual RPG fare, except for the Minstrel part. RPGs usually start you out as a generic warrior-type, so kudos to Level-5 for breaking that mold. DQIX's character customization is surprising for a modern JRPG. You choose the sex and look of your main character, then when you are able to gather a party you are completely free to roll up characters of any sex or class you want to fill our your running crew. There's no forced recruitment or sidekick character personalities  here. This may sound like a detriment but the non-player characters more than make up for it. The story's plot revolves around a multitude of side-quests involving the NPCs that inhabit the world. These piecemeal character vignettes can be just as investing as any main quest, most of their stories revolving around themes of death, change, acceptance, and moving on. Your main character is a guardian angel, so taking on these tasks is within character. An endearing game set in a colorful world full of forgivable puns, unique monster designs, and near-endless post-game content.

Of course, having created characters with no backstory shouldn't stop you from making up your own. Dragon Quest IX also supports a local co-op multiplayer mode where one player's world can host 3 other players, and these player-controlled guests can help you with your story quests or delve into some randomized dungeons with you. My friends and I would organize Dragon Quest sessions and we'd explore new grottoes with each other, figuring out the right path and coordinating our attack plans on the difficult boss monsters we'd find at the bottom. All the while making fun of each other's in-game fashion sense.

Bayonetta

The game's combat, its finest feature, is made unique by being able to combo different weapons between Bayonetta's hands and her feet, resulting in some interesting battle techniques. Each combination of the 15 different weapons in the game controls differently, encouraging changes based on situation and preference. This, in addition to the satisfaction brought on by the smooth dodge-triggered bullet-time mode, makes combat chaotic but manageable. The boss battles are also something to behold. Massive, cherub-like beings looking gaudy and slightly more organic than is comfortable, attack you while panther-mode Bayonetta dashes up their limbs in order to get to their vulnerable juicy bits. The game also has a lot of re-playability with its re-tuned post-game Hard mode, hidden playable character, and unlockables.

While the weapon combos can sound borderline nonsensical in any practical sense, the system works well and encourages experimentation. I found putting the elemental claws, Durga, on Bayonetta's feet and the impressive katana, Shuraba, in her hands resulted in my favorite fighting style. Lighting-mode kicks yielded area burst effects and charged up fire-mode kicks allowed me to carefully plant time-bomb traps for unwitting enemies; there was also the added bonus of the feet-equipped fire Durga allowing Bayonetta to walk on lava, making some of the final boss encounter less tricky. The elegant katana affords speed and reach, and also I found it easier to use than some of the gun options. Certain enemies made me miss Bayonetta's ranged weaponry, but remedying that just required a quick equipment swap before she went back along her elemental-taloned, sword-wielding way.

Other games I played that came out last year and I thought were pretty enjoyable: Mass Effect 2, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 Portable, Z.H.P. Unlosing Ranger vs. Darkdeath Evilman, Kirby's Epic Yarn, Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey, Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City, 3D Picross, Civilization V, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, Mario Galaxy 2, Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale, Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light, and Costume Quest.

Dragon Quest IX: The Roster

Meet Brynhild. She's a guardian angel. Don't let the lack of wings and halo fool you, she's legit (regardless of what that damned fairy says!).

Bryn here does good. She has to, if she wants to get back to where she came from. Don't get me wrong, she wants to do good, but we won't pretend there's not some underlying benefit in it for her. Though lately she's felt more like Death itself, since that seems to be all that's preoccupying mortals these days. Reaping souls is all in a good day's work for an upstanding Celestian like herself. It's in the job description.

She can't handle all this do-good stuff on her own, though, so she hired some mercenary hands out of her good friend's inn, the Quester's Rest. They're a solid group and get the job done.

First there's Morrigan. She's a mage.

She's been blind since birth, but that doesn't stop her from slinging spells like the best of them. Raining ice on your foes doesn't require that much precision as long as your teammates know to give you plenty of room. Morrigan is generally always upbeat but does have a tendency to run too hot at times. She has frequent mana-drain issues. But she gets the job done, as long as the team doesn't dawdle.

And being sight-impaired doesn't leave her too picky about armor hand-me-downs.

Next up is Sigurd, resident priest and only male in the group.

As of late he's been relegated to Slime-mascot. 

Sigurd is a bit of a pushover and a worry-wart, but he's damn good at keeping the whole group alive when things get tough. He has an almost psychic-like ability to anticipate who is going to take the biggest hit next and reacts accordingly, for which the team is grateful. Sigurd gives the impression that he wishes he had been sent to mage school instead of the seminary, but he doesn't let that get in the way of his healing duties. He also hopes the boss finds a new hat to give him soon.

And rounding out the roster is Kasumi the Thief.

Kasumi has been going through a bit of an identity crisis lately, but she always ends up returning to her original profession. She desires to be the most lethal of the group, but she can never seem to match-up to the leader, Brynhild. They have a bit of a rivalry going, though a mortal can only hope to achieve so much when ranked against a Celestian. But she doesn't know that.

She likes to glam-up and moonlight as a Minstrel on some nights. You know, when the mood takes her.

This unlikely group is out to save the world. But first, they need to coordinate their wardrobe better.

>GET LAMP_

This past weekend was the inaugural Penny Arcade Expo: Eastern Edition. I marked my schedule grid as far in advance as possible, and one of the events that stuck out most to me was the GET LAMP premiere, a block where a special-edition cut of a documentary about Interactive Fiction would be shown. I'm sort of a dabbler in the genre, and I definitely appreciate what it can do, so I made it a point to get into the showing. I also found that for most of the convention I was surrounded by IF aficionados, so how could I not go?

We quickly learned that if you wanted to get into anything at PAX East that you have to line up early--like an hour or more before a scheduled event. We found places in line outside the Manticore theater well in advance and chatted while we passed the time. The queue kept growing and before we knew it we were being herded into the small room and the show was about to begin.

Soon Jason Scott, the director, took the stage and explained to us what we were about to see and how the content would differ on the soon to be released DVD. He didn't waste much time getting to the film. I don't want to spoil too many details, but it opens by explaining the very roots of text adventure games and interactive fiction; it starts with caves. Enthusiasm about exploring caves got the very first authors going, and the concept of interpreting an imaginary 3D space through text (and possibly a hand-drawn 2D map) expanded until it became a commercial success with Infocom at the fore. Eventually that all came crashing down and the hobbyists continued on the tradition, which is where we stand today. That's just it in a nutshell, though. To get the full history you'll have to watch the movie itself, and maybe read Nick Montfort's book Twisty Little Passages.

The movie concluded and we were treated to an MC Frontalot video about being eaten by a grue, featuring Steve Meretzky! Then the panelists were summoned to the front. The panel included: Dave Lebling, one of the founders of Infocom and one of the authors of the first Zork games; Don Woods, who modified the original ADVENT text adventure game and made it available on the internet back in 1976, calling it Colossal Cave; Brian Moriarty, who authored many games including Trinity, Wishbringer, and Loom, and is currently a professor at WPI; Andrew Plotkin, author of current fan favorites such as Spider and Web, Shade, and The Dreamhold; Nick Montfort, MIT professor and author of Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction; and the aforementioned Steve Meretzky, author of many games, such as Planetfall, A Mind Forever Voyaging, and Leather Goddesses of Phobos. Anyone with a bit of knowledge about the history of the medium could see that this was an intense gathering of industry personalities.

The panel discussed various aspects of the movie, and each member brought up how appreciative they were seeing a particular segment of the film that featured blind players and what the games meant to them. At one point everyone on the panel was also asked if they could think of a particular game was influential on them, which when the question came to Don Woods it became quite funny because the man practically invented the genre.

I'm acutally finding it hard to bring up particular memories about the panel talk itself, being that at the time it was nearing midnight after a long day at PAX, but I do recall that my favorite part was when Dave Lebling personally apologized for the notorious Oddly-Angled Room puzzle (a part of Zork II that relied on knowledge of a baseball diamond to solve, which was not very friendly to foreign players) and Steve Meretzky chimed in that Dave should have listened to him when he was QA for the game and had warned him that the puzzle sucked. I do love me some Quality Assurance humor!

My boyfriend and I got home and immediately pre-ordered the DVD! There are going to be a lot of extras, with some going into more depth about the history of Infocom, and the final cut of the movie will be much longer than the hour-long one that was shown. The disk will also contain many text adventure games to play! I know I'm excited for it. Now we just have to...

>WAIT
>WAIT
>WAIT
>YOU HAVE BEEN EATEN BY A GRUE._

How did this get by QA?

I just recently authored a Developer Diary that was posted on the front page of the Lord of the Rings Online site. How exciting!

A moral dilemma

Quest for Stick is the type of game that calls for important moral decisions.

G.I.JOOOOOOOOOOEEEEEEE!!

A nice place to visit

Being the punctual gamer that I am, I finally beat Bioshock today—the first one.

I didn't wait this long because of a lack of desire to play, but the 360 version didn't appeal to me—I am horrible at aiming in FPSs with a console controller—and it wasn't until now that I had a computer able enough to run the game. But that recently changed!

I liked the game. The introduction sequence was great and put me just enough on edge to make the experience exciting but not terrifying. I ran around upgrading my plasmids, saving Little Sisters, and looting anything that wasn't nailed down. I loved the voice diaries that you stumbled across as you explored, but I wish there was a better variety of them. I really wanted to hear more from the average citizens of Rapture. Sure, getting bits of the inside story from some of the big players was important, but hearing further entries from the members of the lower-class would have made the whole experience more fulfilling for me.

I'm also interested in hearing more about the outside world, and what thought processes drew people to Rapture in the first place. Was there an application process to get in? Perhaps I should find time to read some Ayn Rand, maybe the answers I want can be found there.

It's a good thing I get to revisit Rapture in Bioshock 2, which can hopefully satisfy my curiosity.

Global Game Jam 2010 - Quest for Stick

Last weekend was the second annual Global Game Jam. Developers around the world gathered at sponsored locations and put all their willpower towards creating a playable game in 28-48 hours.

I almost didn't go. My weekends are precious to me and a game jam can be quite a commitment. But I have good friends who poked, and prodded, and begged for me to attend. I think there may have been threats, and the poking sure hurt! I relented and promised I would be there. I honestly didn't have an excuse, the location I had signed up for was one subway stop away, in Kendall Square. This was my second year participating in the Game Jam at the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab. I knew a lot of people attending, so I shouldn't have felt nervous, but I did.

I got there 15 minutes before the keynote was broadcast. It was a very encouraging video by Ste Curran. The walkthrough he gave of his daily routine made me feel better about my own long commute. I was pumped after seeing this!

When the keynote finished we were told the constraints we needed to design under: the game had to have "deception," "rain, or Spain, or plain," and "abstraction." Attendees started breaking into groups and discussing ideas. I tried including myself but found that approach a bit too noisy for my tastes, so I ended up in the corner of one of the other rooms with a computer and started researching. Ste's keynote included a story about a dream of his where he was at a masquerade, so I started to follow a thread about masks for inspiration. My handy Wikipedia skills lead me further into topics such as shamanism, which I could then apply an abstraction of "rain" to (a rain stick). I settled on the genre of platformer because they can be simple yet entertaining, and I've always wanted to work on one. This lead to my pitch.

Basically our star, shaman, was out to deceive platform blocks in order to reach his goal, a rain stick. It worked within the constraints. During our presentations to the group we were asked to give three words that best described our game, to which I said, "quest for stick."

After presenting I was called over by my friend Jeff Ward. He basically had come up with the same sort of concept, but more abstract. He wanted to do a physics-based platformer. This thrilled me because I had worked with Jeff last year and I knew he was a skilled programmer. We combined our ideas and gathered up some teammates. More than we bargained for, actually. Our team had a total of seven people—which is a lot for a jam—and four of them were artists. We were jerk artist hogs! At the time we were contemplating splitting up the team but I felt this would do more harm than good. We would make it work.

Duties were allocated as necessary. Luckily one of our artists, K. Adam White, was a DJ and could work out some music and sound for us. Having a dedicated sound person was so good! Next we had Jeff Himmelman, a super talented concept artist. We relied on him for most of our character assets and backgrounds, not to mention the victory screen. Then there was Aaron Artessa, a friend of Jeff's who was visiting form New York City. Aaron normally does illustration and graphic design, so we asked for a lot of interface and other assorted assets from him. He also did our lovely title screen and the super awesome grid effects! As for myself I did basic concepts and some in-game assets, like the totem pieces and the tutorial screen.

We also had three programmers: Jeff Ward, Kate Baxter, and Zhunping (Justin) Zhang. Kate and Justin had never used XNA before, so Jeff had to train them on the fly. That didn't stop them from contributing greatly to the project! Jeff did a lot of work on the basic mechanics and implementing the game's level. Kate worked on getting the character animations in along with sounds, while Justin did AI programming for the boss and got our interface elements in. The programming team was able to collaborate pretty well with their code merges, since Jeff's AngelXNA prototyping engine plays nicely with versioning.

After an eager Friday evening, a long Saturday, and a frantic Sunday afternoon our game was as done as it could be. Sure, there are bugs, but it works! GAMBIT are such awesome hosts, too. Thank you so much, MIT!

The jam was a good time and I'm glad I actually went. Thanks, team, for being awesome! And I hope to find time soon to go over the other seven games made at the lab since they all were wonderful. It's really amazing how much progress everyone has made since last year. Way to go, everyone!

Well, here's the game: Quest for Stick! (my teammates insisted on keeping that name) Jeff made a nice installer so you don't have to worry about having the proper XNA redistributable to get the game running. And if that's still too much trouble for you I made a video of myself playing through the game. Feel free to laugh at how badly I do!

And some screenshots! More can be found on our Twitpic page.