Raining Snakes: continued alpha dev

Hey all! Again, a bit of a REALLY delayed post, but after coming back to this blog, I thought I'd give an update.

 The pre-alpha game from a long while ago is still going strong and it's got a new title: Raining Snakes.

No updates on when the game will get out, as it's been stuck for a while, but the current word is soon. Be sure to stay tuned.

I'll try to get a site up for it very soon!

How to change your mind in a year and a half...

I don't have a lot of time at the moment and it's been a long time since the last time I've even tended to this blog in particular, but...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qS-LXvhy1Do

Yeah, I've finally seen the aftermath of the whole Jim Sterling v. Digital Homicide debacle since the embarrassment of an interview from a year and a half ago, including a couple of other talks about the court case itself and how it was (rightfully) thrown out of court. To be honest, it wasn't on my mind until this point.

I used to feel bad for the company and the one developer struggling to make a living making games, being clearly in over their head through the mess they cobbled together. I used to firmly believe that they were just a really incompetent one-man team who just couldn't handle criticism in any regard. I think the past year and a half confirms this.

I used to think Jim Sterling was somewhat of a bully, going after poorer quality games on Steam in some effort to shame single person efforts, seemingly with little purpose beyond bringing a light on them in an effort to attack people's efforts... (in a rather unfunny, nonconstructive, and non-entertaining manner, to be honest).

But at this point, I've really taken a 180 on the whole thing.

Jim still does his rounds at chasing these poorer quality games around, but the narrative seems clearer (to the point of being obvious). It's not really a red light flagging that these games are bad, but that Steam and by extension Valve had a broken system that allowed this lack of quality control to begin with, and allowed these games to be sold for large sums of money ($20-$50 for something I could have made in a game jam). Personally, I'm more a believer in letting the market and word-of-mouth decide what games are "quality" and letting truly bad games sink by making no money at all, but Greenlight alone allowed almost the exact opposite to happen, preventing decent to mediocre titles from even showing up on shelves, and letting the "community" vote to allow true trash to take its place.

Given, this isn't the full picture, and I have much less knowledge of the situation than Jim does, but it brings me to talking about James...

James Romine, founder of Digital Homicide, is just an anomaly. He loses all respect from me for the lawsuit he's posed against Jim Sterling, and yet I envy the bubble he's managed to live in up until this point. Part of me had wondered what the implications would be if a developer could sue a critic for perceived damages done, but reality checks in when the whole case gets thrown out of court, again, and again, and again.

And his company, Digital Homicide, really has stood up to its name with the sheer amount of trash they've put onto Steam, and the dramatic epic that has led him to waste time and money to chase after random Steam users, to ultimately getting reprimanded by Valve and his entire library of "games" removed permanently. Proudly, I still hold a copy of "The Slaughtering Grounds", as a reminder to never have a tantrum as epic as James.

He kind of comes across as someone that REALLY doesn't know how to let go of something, which is because, well... there's a reason the judge had to keep throwing the case out.

I guess I have to admit I was wrong, though I still stand by the points I held initially. I cringe at reading the old posts, but I stand by my point: a critic's review has a damning effect on someone's career. In the games industry, it could just mean the end of the career overall.

But in the end, I suppose, when a game is at the level of Slaughtering Grounds, it isn't the review that made it a bad product. It was the bad product that made it a bad product: the review only served to point it out.

Yeah... The Slaughtering Grounds is bad.

So... as a joke from a friend, I received a gift copy of that game while it was on sale for $0.20 (yeah, twenty cents).

Yeah, it's bad. Really, really bad. It's not a complete waste of money at $0.20 (or as a free "gift"), but it's still nonfunctional and on a thin line. Every bugged out 'feature' in this game makes me want to demand the source code just to fix half of what I saw.

That's all I have to say, honestly.

Jim Sterling is right about the game itself, but it still ain't right to vengefully chase after the game dev's whole library afterward and humiliate them for entertainment, regardless of how childishly they react to criticism. That's just my $0.02.

Snakes game pre-alpha screenshots

Well, it's been a while again. My bad...

Considering my last significant post was about harping on a game critic for making a developer of bad games feel bad, that's probably an even worse place to take a break from writing.

It might be better to finally just talk about my own bad games in progress instead.

Lately, I've been working on a tile-based puzzle game regarding snakes. Here's a few screenshots.

The game itself consists of controllable snakes which fall from the ceiling of a level into a large pit area. The player's control moves from snake to snake as each one comes in from the ceiling. The goal of the game is to prevent the pile of snakes that forms from reaching all the way to the top. To aid this, snakes in this game have an interesting mechanic that causes snakes of a similar color to "eat" each other, clearing space for more snakes to fit in.

Right now, it's just called "Snakes", but the working title is "Snakes, Lizards, and Lamias". Currently, people who've played it kind of compare it to a combination of the classic Snake, Tetris, and Dr. Mario.

So far, it's in kind of an unknown place, though the plan is to make it a game for PC, Android, and iPhone (potentially iOS on the whole). I have a working build of the game that's portable to both the PC and my Android phone at the moment.

Complaints right now are about the graphics being kind of kind of basic and ugly. You might notice the coin sprite is nicked from Mario, which also needs to be resolved soon. I plan to work those things out very soon, as the game mechanics at this point feel solid enough that the game is at least fun and challenging.

Updates soon, I promise!

Leaving the rain behind...

So... After living a couple years in the fine city of Seattle, I've decided to move and finally leave the rain behind. It really had nothing to do with the rain, but the title "Seattle Shut-in" has become a misnomer at this point.

I'm still debating what to do with this blog, but it's not yet popular enough that I think I can rename it without too much difficulty transitioning...

More updates to come, hopefully!

Jim F***ing Sterling, Son! (A Review of The Slaughtering Grounds of an interview)

I don't really know why I feel compelled to talk about this: it's more than a week old now and I feel like the cringe and quotable quotes from it have been extracted enough. The person responsible for instigating it has already lost and to discuss it would only rub the salt on a wound that, even by the transcript, you could tell was never able to heal for the six or so months it persisted.


Of course, if you want to listen to the attempted conversation between Jim Sterling and a developer behind Digital Homicide, you're very much free to enjoy:

http://www.thejimquisition.com/2015/07/special-podcast-jim-sterling-and-digital-homicide-hash-it-out/


I declare blissful ignorance on a good amount of the goings on between these two grown men leading up to this podcast, but seeing that the rage-filled mudslinging has continued only makes me sad. Sadder still with how beaten and dragged-through-the-mud the developer comes into it; it makes me question a lot of what he hoped to gain from the interview. It's clear he had no care for his own credibility at this point and he just wanted to try anything, ANYTHING, to knock this critical nemesis of his down at least a peg. I wonder if in retrospect he even wanted the interview in the first place, really. He comes out of it looking like an ass and a bit delusional and fails his goal entirely.


And yet Jim doesn't come out of this better. Sure, he dodged every attack like an expert pundit (more expert than was even required), but the fact he published it (regardless whether the dev did the same) makes him seem a lesser man, as if sending the message that he's beaten a dead horse and he wants to draw this out even further by showcasing every blow. A better man would have just let this developer's Temper Tantrum go and tried to sweep it under the rug, if just to let the man a chance to rebuild himself and move on. This isn't about journalism any longer, this is about spite and escalating tension for viewership. Jim has no way of losing at this point.


As for the content of the interview, I don't want to analyze it, and we wouldn't gain anything from any analysis. You can watch it, the link's still up there. In my opinion, no one wins the fight really. I don't need to explain much further. The fact it's being paraded by Jim, regardless whether in character or not, really only makes him a sore winner. I can only hope it ends soon.


So why do I even bring it up if it hurts me to think about it? Because somewhere in that pained pod-cast is a kernel of truth that cements a thought I've had about Jim Sterling and game reviewers for a while, both professional and amateur. Despite many of the concerning (unintentionally hilarious), desperate and sad attacks the developer made, one thing he said hits something right:

"Something like this can ruin somebody in hours... What you do can ruin people in hours."

The context is a little muddled in the interview because he's quoting someone else, which I couldn't verify to be accurate. After this statement there was a further muddling as it devolved into an argument over whether Jim's criticisms were attributed to malice, which does matter, but isn't effectively elaborated. Regardless of this, if you take the quote for what it is, it reveals one of the scariest points about game reviewers and and their subjects:


Game reviews have the power to ruin careers.


Some will point out that it's "not the job of the [critic] to help the developer, but to protect the customer(s)", but there's already evidence of the skewed power of the review here:

http://kotaku.com/metacritic-matters-how-review-scores-hurt-video-games-472462218

And we shouldn't forget how in this blog alone one man's review crusade against a developer's entire set of works has quite clearly crushed "Robert" to a point where he's given up any personal credibility just to try to bring down Jim one last time, failing and having a mental breakdown, recorded and uploaded publicly just for entertainment.


I don't trust Jim Sterling's opinions about games all that much. He does a great job at calling out goings on in the industry, but most things he calls out are in a negative light, and often they are skewed by his own biases against certain companies (Ubisoft, EA, etc). I'll accept that most of his bias stems from a 'history of bad practices' (a phrase you can paraphrase from many of his Jimquisition episodes), the fact he assigns a personality to these companies and attributes most actions directly to malice and greed is enough to make me have to double check everything he says. He raises red flags on games industry practices, but mayhap he doth protest too much.


Even then, I have to admit as a game developer myself, Jim Sterling scares me. Even if he jokingly says to fear him in his recent Jimquisition about the interview, I'm legitimately worried. I'm afraid of the inevitable day when Jim approaches something I release. He's proven he can kill someone's aspirations and make a killing in his own career in the process. Whether it be a short Squirty Play, a legitimate review, or (god forbid) a Jimquisition, I'm going to shit bricks if it's about my work. A single review shouldn't hold so much power, but it certainly does.

And you should be afraid too, if you make games independently.

Be afraid of Jim Sterling. And all his fans.

Because if you make one poor choice, one flub, one mistake that only makes you human.

He'll come for you.

He's coming for your careers.

He's coming to attack your ego.

And he's going to eat your lunch...



Disclaimer : I'm aware that the developer in question is behind a lot of games that are very unpopular, none of which I own or have tried myself. Try to look past that for a moment and look at what I'm trying to say about game reviews on the whole. Try to imagine it was your work getting the Jim Sterling treatment... I know it's not my own work... yet...

Do you remember Memory Lane? (CityStreetsVille retrospective)

It's been months since I last posted anything significant to this blog. Even after stating I should post more, all I have in the last couple posts is a review of a level generator and a rant about something that I really know nothing about (voice acting, really?)...

I do have a remedy, though...

CityStreetsVille

Yes, after a few years of non-action, I finally came back to Source mapping and the contests that inspired creating this dev journal. If you have a chance you should try out the mod if you have Half-life 2 : Episode 2 installed. There's some really good stuff in this contest pack, much unlike my entry in it...

Memory Lane

When I awoke, there was a written note by the door...

I really don't know how to approach talking about this. I admit, even at the end of this contest deadline, minutes before turning in my entry, I felt like I did something wrong. Even after I submitted the entry, I cut and tweaked it several times and requested to resubmit the entry days afterward. And after it was made public, I felt the immediate urge to apologize.

At this point now, however, I don't really feel like it's the major failure that I originally thought it was going to be. However, a lot of the feedback is pretty much dead on, especially the negatives, and for the most part feedback was consistent enough that I almost feel ready to tackle the project once more before it continues to fade into mediocrity.

Good Intentions (Like All Roads to Hell)...
I tend to approach most contests with a personal goal of subverting expectations, often to my own detriment. This contest was no exception. Immediately on mention of using Half-life 2 Episode 1 for reference, I made an internal goal of getting as far away from City 17 as possible.

Inspired by an abnormally foggy day in downtown on the day this contest was launched, this map set out to create a realistic looking setting based on an American city, as opposed to the City 17-like, European city streets throughout the Half-life 2 universe. Knowing early on that one week is not enough time for a city map, I started out trying to scope this as simple as possible, planning a single uphill block, and focusing on wave-based combat as the main driving force, and rewarding the player with elements of story. I admit the result leaves much to be desired.

To be honest, much of the original idea had been scrapped and forgotten pretty quickly over time, in favor of more story elements, leaving much less time for combat testing. The only things that stuck was the heavy emphasis on story over combat, and on rewarding the player with visuals: the text was never supposed to be mandatory and a majority of combat was outright avoidable on subsequent playthroughs when the player knew what they were supposed to do.

Once again, I guess it sounded better in my head than it did in execution.

This...

...To this was too jarring in retrospect.

I don't really want to say too much about the story, not because I don't think it's not worth talking about, but because it's incomplete in this map, and the ending is a cop-out because I wanted to avoid the words "To Be Continued" at the end. I'm pretty sure if I want to try to finish the level proper and talking about the story would actually spoil the better twist in the whole thing. Believe it, it's better than the player redoing the same mistake...

Take-aways from the contest:
In my opinion, Memory Lane wasn't a success or a failure; it was incomplete. Many people had consistent complaints that I can't help but agree with, but a lot of them could have been discovered and attacked with an extra week of testing (or just an extra week in general):

Always plan and estimate ahead of time (don't accept death march mentality):
I feel like there were plenty of times where I knew the idea I had planned wouldn't be doable in the time frame. I can say that I barely scraped about 40% of what I wanted out of the two weeks I had. It could have been more, but I was already over-reaching at the end.

Trust your gut when combat isn't fun:
The current street battles aren't fun. Compared to many of the other entries here, the choice of weapons mixed with the sheer number of enemies the player has to face is too hard on most people. Unless you're aggressively pushing your way through and hunting for health, you can die too quickly. Even while playtesting it personally, I found myself more bored than I should have been, and my fingers kind of hurt after trying to use the pistol so many times against metrocops. What should have been a fun mechanic was punishing as a result. A lot of people are saying half of the number of enemies could have been enough. I think it maybe should have been optional altogether.

Text is not fun:
There's an old adage of "Show, Don't Tell" that reigns true in game design, but in this level, there was a bigger issue at play. A few people cited that they didn't enjoy the reading in this, but I think one playthrough said the most when they criticized that I should have used voice acting instead and that the text was in the way. It was at this moment that I suddenly realized there was a bigger issue here that I'd always overlooked. People don't just dislike reading in general, the text on the screen made it impossible to look past it at any visuals. This was a bigger issue and it sort of ruins the moment, and also kills the pacing in the faster action areas.
I think I can fix this one while still hanging onto notes, but the notes need to be one line of dialogue to really work. Even then, I'm not sure how to make it more memorable than fluff.

Text is not (nicely) supported:
A majority of the notes in this level were provided through game_text entities (documented here). While useful for small-time usage, it was clearly never meant for anything more than title text or even simple sentences. Hammer has a very annoying bug regarding new line characters that require you to open the map source file in a text editor in order to correct Hammer automatically mapping '\n' into '/n'. Quotes are also impossible, and any attempt to use the quote character will make Hammer crash on loading your map, once again requiring you to fix this in a text editor.

The concept is 'interesting', but poorly executed:
I got this a lot, and I realize that 'interesting' is vague enough of a concept that it could go either way. It could actually be something inspiring for some, and for others 'interesting' could have just been the most polite thing to say. I feel like the story I told was kind of terrible, made worse with the rushed nature of the contest not allowing me at least half of the story elements I wanted to include. This isn't really the fault of the contest; I could have told the story in a better way overall. Some people really liked this entry though, so I might have done something right, yet mildly polarizing on the whole. I generally don't like being that hit-and-miss guy, though...

Keep it Simple, Stupid!
The winner to this contest was primarily an action-based shooting level with little to no story, but a clear and up-front goal. Many of the assets used were already part of Half-life 2, and were easily available to anyone that wanted to use them. These gave Marnamai a clearly thought-out advantage and they didn't need to re-invent the wheel just to get core mechanics working. I don't know where to sit in this camp, because I can't deny quality over creativity when the idea doesn't work, but without experimenting, it's impossible to find out what works in the first place.

Looking Forward...
Memory Lane is kind of depressing to look back at. I have an extremely tough time watching people play it because it's at a point where, despite knowing internally that it's not a finished product, it's being played and criticized like one. There's a permanence to the whole thing that really shouldn't have happened. Hindsight is 20/20 for the most part, and it often looks the worst when you see your hard work pulled through the ringer.

On the other side of it, though, I feel a little better that it wasn't completely bad. I tend to be unrealistic when looking at my own stuff, and sometimes I need to ground my thoughts by rereading over other people's reviews. I can't get through the recorded play throughs without cringing, but it's clear there are parts that work, kind of, at least.

I don't know what the future of this map will be. I want this map to have a future. I don't really want it to end as a failed attempt at something when it's so close to working out to something stronger. At the same time, the longer I wait to decide, the more negative things I find, and the less desire I have to finish it. I have other things to do, but the fact this one is still hanging undecided makes it harder to choose.

Meet me at the lake... where we already had plenty to drink.

I'll need to think on this. The canned reserve is tastier anyhow...