By Guido on
When I started making computer games in 1983, an immense sense of wonder and exploration surrounded the discipline. It wasn’t a science, the way it is today, where entire college majors are dedicated to even specific disciplines within software and game development. We were mostly on our own, with a piece of hardware before us and very little documentation to… Continue reading "The Things We Did on the Atari ST"
By Guido on
Platform: Any/UnityLanguage: Python/C#Requirements: None Many of you may be familiar with the term Title Case in conjunction with text handling. It is typically used for things, such as book titles, game titles, movie titles, and so forth.The common perception appears to be that writing a name or headline in title case means to simply capitalize the first letter of each… Continue reading "Proper Title Case creation in Python and C#"
By Guido on
Platform: AnyLanguage: PythonRequirements: None Earlier today, I stumbled across a small programming challenge on rosettacode.org that required a solution in Python. I was intrigued enough to give it a shot and below you will find my approach to “commatizing” numbers in string. The challenge is simple. Take a string, see if it contains numbers and then format the numbers in… Continue reading "<i>Commatizing</i> numbers in Python"
By Guido on
Platform: Unity3D Language: C# Requirements: Pixelplacement’s iTween Plugin Recommended album to listen to: Uriah Heep – Look at Yourself Many classic, scrolling arcade space shooter games used a technique that is commonly known as an endless starfield. It is a backdrop that is continually generated as players direct their ship through space, annihilating swarms of approaching enemy vessels. The traditional… Continue reading "Endless Scrolling Starfield in Unity"
By Guido on
How much time did you spend thinking about the impact your print layout has on your profit margin the last time you did the book design for your print-on-demand book? The answer is probably none at all. Many self-published authors are all too happy to jump in with both feet to create their own print layouts for Createspace or Ingram.… Continue reading "Increase your profit margins with tighter layouts"
By Guido on
This article is a repost of a featured blog post I wrote for Gamasutra.com The extinction of computer roleplaying games seemed inevitable by the mid-1990s, a time when publishers almost uniformly dropped the genre. High development costs and long development cycles made them risky propositions, especially since they catered to a niche audience and therefore never generated the same shareholder-pleasing… Continue reading "A new recipe for the roleplaying game formula"
By Guido on
For 30-odd years I have been developing computer games. Over that period of time, I have seen many changes, both in technology as well as in general game design. As I look back, however, I find that things are not always just moving forward, as we blindly assume. It pays to look back on occasion, to learn from the lessons… Continue reading "To Build a Better Game"
By Guido on
This post is part of a three-part series. Directly access each installment here Part I • Part II • Part III Now that we know how to create a grammar context and how to reference different GrammarAttr objects in our parameter list, as shown in last week’s simple example sentences, let’s take a look at more complex scenarios. The nazgûl… Continue reading "When simple text generation is simply not enough: Part 3"
By Guido on
This post is part of a three-part series. Directly access each installment here Part I • Part II • Part III In the last installment I illustrated the immediate difficulties game designers run into when they try to dynamically create text output that takes random game objects into account. Grammar gets in the way… Today I want to show you… Continue reading "When simple text generation is simply not enough: Part 2"
By Guido on
This post is part of a three-part series. Directly access each installment here Part I • Part II • Part III One of the key elements in your toolbox when developing role-playing or adventure games is a smart text generation stage that allows you to intelligently create dynamic text strings on the fly so that you can embed item names,… Continue reading "When simple text generation is simply not enough: Part 1"
