Hi,
This is Tommy. I am the engine programmer, I program the engines. That's not to be confused with "injins" which my peepaw calls Native Americans. For the record, I don't program Native Americans...if I did they wouldn't have been so anxious to trade everything west of the Appalachain Mountains for 8 shiney pots and a belt buckle. Plus they would have had many more particle effects.
Anyway, to all 4 people that read this blog, here is our video. We sent this to Microsoft the other day and they liked it. We had a call with them and I thought it was good but Aubrey didn't take the news so well. It's not that there's anything wrong with Aubrey, it's just that as a child his parents beat him with a rake whenever he smiled. I understand this to be the norm in England. Anyway, here's the video. DON'T EVERYONE GO AT ONCE OTHERWISE YOUTUBE WILL EXPLODE.
.wmv - Higher Quality video, limited bandwidth.
Love,
Tommunism
P.S. Clyde McParkstein is avaliable for weddings and bar mizvahs.
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A Game Development Blog: Return of the Bedroom Developer.
1:37pm. Restate my Assumptions:
Aubrey Hesselgren and Tommy Refenes are Designer and Coder at indie outfit Amorphous. This blog tells an occasional tale of a life lived mainly in their own bedrooms while making a fairly weird game with close to no income. They've been too scared previously to tell anyone about "Goo", incase they are pointed and laughed at by all the other indie developers, who are much cooler and better and stuff. Recently, though, they've grown something approximating a testicle, so now you can see an early (early [early]) video of their progress.
All opinions expressed on this site in no way represent those of Aubrey, Tommy, or Amorphous. They reflect your opinions. Shut up and conform!
All opinions expressed on this site in no way represent those of Aubrey, Tommy, or Amorphous. They reflect your opinions. Shut up and conform!
Some HTML Hyperlink Links
- A. Buxton
- Amorphous
- Charlie Brooker's Guardian Column
- Danc
- Dr. D. Dockters
- Dr. H. Jenkins
- Dr. J. Juul
- E. Zimmerman
- F.Sjolund
- G. Costikyan
- I. Barry
- Indy Gamer Blog
- J. Bell
- JC Barnett
- K. Gillen
- M. Gallant
- M. Mateas + Friends
- M.Nowak
- Mainly About Games, innt?
- Metanet's Blog
- R. Herring
- R. Obots
- S. Johnson
- S. Swink
- T. Kelly
- The 2 Bears
- TIGSource - more supportive than my mum.
- U. Resistance
- W. Kim
- W. Spector
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11 comments:
I think it goes without saying that this is super work in progress.
We have a lot to do, including re-making the menu, finishing the game modes, new skins, and general physics/gameplay tweaking. You also can't hear the sound effects here which are all linked tightly to gameplay in indiscrete ways.
At the end of June we might have another video.
For a WIP it looks mightily impressive, and a lot of fun! Are the areans going to be skinnable too? What about home-made skins?
Can't wait to have a go(o) myself! (see what I did there?).
We hadn't planned on arenas being skinnable, but that wouldn't be impossible... we'll think about it.
The background you see there will definately be overhauled (along with most things in the game, really!)
And thank you kindly for your kind words and puns and things. I laughed because it was quite clever, but I still managed to understand it.
Looks interesting, reminded me a little bit of that cloud game. Can't wait to see the crowds of bees skin.
Looks very interesting! Although I didn't get the gameplay idea until you explained it at the very end. Call me stupid, but I just didn't get it ;)
I think it would be a good idea to explain the gameplay a little earlier in the video.
But as I said, it look really interesting! And as Barnett said, very impressive.
This is a breath of fresh air among games with "traditional" gameplay!
"reminded me a little bit of that cloud game."
Yeah, when I saw cloud I was all clenched fists and shouting in the air "Damn yooou Jenovaaa!".
There's a few games which are a fairly similar (look up Liquid War also - far closer than cloud is to this. Total War has some similarities, too) but I felt like the treatment I had in mind was different enough to justify it.
"I think it would be a good idea to explain the gameplay a little earlier in the video."
This is definately the concensus opinion we've had so far. The video doesn't show very many captures because we were trying to hard to win. Also, the capture events don't have that much flourish (needs more red/yellow alternately flashing photo-sensitive epilepsy triggering lights), so for the next video we'll work on those aspects.
Thanks for the feedback guys!
Uuuhh, i like! Simple and intuitive.
Maybe you're already planning to do this, or maybe you just dont want to do this at all, but i thought it might be worth speaking up:
Since im an emotional person, i'd love to see some kind of characterization (if thats even an english word in that sense) ... for example make the nucleus a naked hawt woman smeared with oil/goo, haha.
Or yeah, the swarm idea for the goo is great too ... just something that you can emotionally connect to (give it cute eyes and you'll have about 50% more females buying the game)
Oh, and you could also make a ball game with those game mechanics... but now i think im starting to talk twaddle.
Anyways, i wish you good luck!
Yes like liquid wars, but with much better control. What you are showing is an interesting control mechanism and some gameplay, but the objective always seems to be to surround your opponent, Goo won't be so fun for players after realising this (I suspect ten minuets). If you could add something (call it a wildcard if you like) that made a one sided battle shift when the player chose to do/collect/activate/use something Goo would quickly reach a new level of fun as it would then require strategic reasoning and quick evaluation to beat harder opponents. That is unless you have already realised this, in which case ignore my ramblings.
Thanks. What you're saying is in line with a lot of people's criticism thus far.
I'm not going to disagree, because the video doesn't really focus on the depth which is apparant in combat when you actually play - our bad, and we'll be working to highlight this a bit more.
The aim is for the core mechanic to have far more depth than "10 minutes". I think we're on target, but it seems that it's a bit like with Boxing: To a newcomer, boxing is this voilent, thoughtless sport. To trainers, boxers and boxing enthusiasts, there is real strategy, and a good fight can feel more like a ballet than a slug-fest. Some will never give boxing enough of a chance to reach that level of appreciation. That's fine. There's more to life than fixating all attention on one thing.
However, I think that a lot of games have to get their players/audience past this first hurdle of percieved depth. A game with a huge amount of buttons and actions can be pretty shallow - the complexity of the interface can just hide this. Likewise, games with simple rules can be immensely complex when actually played out.
There will be other game modes which use the core mechanic to do higher level stuff, but I really believe that it can stand on its own if you're the sort of person who likes to delve into the depths of game mechanics (though they're probably in a minority). I'm also a strong believer in core mechanics which are intrinsically enjoyable - I don't much like games which use higher level gimmicks (reward structures etc.) as a crutch for poor core mechanics. A good core has to be the foundation for higher level gameplay, otherwise achieving high level goals through the gameplay feels more like work than play.
But yeah, there should be more interesting things going on. We've really only just started on higher level gameplay. Most of the previous work has been engine stuff/core controls.
I totally deleted/moderated out a comment by mistake! Something about turning a goo into a sexy lady with huge eyes so that you could empathise with the goo in a mystical way... whoever that was, sorry!
Post again! Moderation is off! I obviously can't be trusted with it!
Impressive, very slick(LOL!1!!)
But is it actually fun?
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