Lost in the 4th Dimension…
Most indie game developers I know do “indie game work days”, where one or more people will get together at somebody’s house or a coffee shop to work on their individual games in parallel. Some people call this “co-working”, I guess.
Today, Marc ten Bosch is over at my place, and is working on new levels for Miegakure, his mind bending “puzzle-platformer in four dimensions”. This is what it looks like to try to design 4D puzzles:
Okay, back to redesigning my bookcase mission.
o the book looks nice :D
looking forward to this release i’m going to buy it once it hits my local game store
Thanks! I can’t wait to get it animating in game. Currently, I’m just using the closed version of the book as a static model. Well, until an hour ago, there was no book at all, and the book getting/reading/putting animations played without any book in the characters’ hands for the past six months. :) I had to get dynamic object creation over the network happening, which I just debugged, and now there’s a book in hand on both client and server. I still need to get the idea of animating non-character objects into the engine. But first, the missions needs redesigning…
Marc is working hard, I see.
That is merely a 3D projection of the 4D Marc working on his design. Some of the other layers are coding furiously.
Ha! Nerd humor at its nerdiest. I LOL’d.
Poor Marc looks like he’s in the dentist’s waiting room before a root canal. That or else writing a sappy melancholy love poem about the girl that just left him.
Is that..? It is! A CRT monitor?! Havn’t seen one of those in a while.
There are actually _TWO_ on that desk, one 21″ and one 27″. There is barely any room left on the desk. I’m having trouble taking them to the recycling center due to sentimental reasons…they’re the last two I have.
I guess it’s a good idea to keep one around just for testing gamma stuff.
I miss my old CRT. It was a beast (IIRC, ~18″-20″ 4:3, but I haven’t had it in 10 years)
Quirk, what on earth are you doing all the way back here?
Also, ever since I traded my crts for some lcd, I’ve always wanted to go back to them. Its really hard to with the space they take up, but man the picture was just awesome from every angle. If I was a pro graphic artist, crts for me please.
Back… here? Are you… from the future?
Damn, that looks smooth!! I got the idea when you feel like it you can make things extremely quick, like IK body solver etc. You probably found the Tao of game designing ^^
I don’t know about the Tao of Game Designing, but I do wonder how many other games have a book model with an animation skeleton and a turnable page. :)
I’m finding this whole process fascinating… seeing how the game develops from concept to final execution. I’m also terribly impatient, and can’t wait for you to be done so I can play it!
Cool, I’m glad you like the dev posts! I’m going to try to post more smaller things like this. In fact, this one was a kind of challenge to myself to see if I could just do a small update without writing a book and taking hours but still post something worth reading.
I love seeing this process too. I do a ton of web dev, so it’s interesting to see the process of design in another field, even if I don’t always follow the specifics. (That’s what Google is for).
Oh, I know about puzzle creation. Creating a hard, but solvable puzzle is harder than it looks.
It must be mind boggling! I don’t understand 4th dimension yet, but from the looks of it, to make a puzzle game about it seems a near impossible task, without falling into repetition that is..
Commonly, the fourth dimension is a reference to time. I saw an excellent video a while back going over all the possible dimensions.
Took me a second to find it, but definitely worth the watch to get in mental jog.
http://www.tenthdimension.com/medialinks.php
captcha: lobotomy owner
I lost it on the 4th dimension, but held on to the 7th, after which my brain wires got tied up in a knot and I had to stop ^^. Good video though, but that’s rough stuff for me to comprehend, thanks for the link, I’ll watch it again on another point in the 4th dimension.
Also checked out your site, that no clicking feels quite smooth, more people should use it, but you really have to have a good outlay as to not move accidentally over other th.
Thanks for the complement about the website. It’s been a while since I’ve updated it. (Really about 2 years). I really should do something, but I don’t know what. Hmmm…
I noticed ^^, expected graduation 2008 ;s, at first I thought the 4th dimension was messing with me, then I figured it was probably quite old.
It keeps getting better and better, and i can’t wait until It appears on Steam, or won’t it?
;)
/me volunteers for betatesting ^^
I wish i could do 3d modeling like that.
Btw do you also help each other with stuff if you get-together, like a co-op?
And do you do hackathons?
I would assume it’ll be on Steam eventually, but it’s way too early to tell.
Usually we work on our own games, but we definitely talk about design or programming or art issues we’re having. That’s important, but the main thing is another person there keeps you from wasting time, which is really important when you don’t have a boss or co-workers looking over your shoulder.
I’ve never done a hackathon myself. I get distracted easily, so one other person is about the right size for me. :)
Whens there going to be a beta? Im eager to play!
Beta isn’t going to be for a while, since “beta” usually means close to done. Alpha, probably next year!
Now I’m sad! I personally thinks this game will be awesome. Hell I’d pay $15 for it if you priced in that much. Whats in going to be released on?
Don’t be sad, just think, it’ll be perfect (hopefully) when you finally get your hands on it. Not sure about platform yet, hopefully “all of them”! :)
SO if it made the 360 (crosses fingers!) it would be an arcade game or an Indie Game?
XBLA, hopefully! I’m trying to make it a “AAA Indie Game”, like Braid, Castle Crashers, World of Goo, Trials HD, Shadow Complex, etc.
Well good luck man! Whatever it comes out for, I’m going to buy it!
I hope there’s a beta! I want to try it!!!