Designer Notes #93: Charles Cecil (@revolutionsoftware.bsky.social), co-founder of Revolution Software, lead designer of Beneath a Steel Sky and the Broken Sword series. Part 1!
www.designer-notes.com/designer-not...
holy moly, ok! we did it?? we made a collection??? it's the first 13 games, bundled up with unlockable dev notes, updated audio, some sneaky bug fixes, cloud saves, and Steam Deck support!! store.steampowered.com/app/4044300/...
One more thing: Loved being able to use the #GDC26 Podcast Booth for a live Designer Notes. Was a great experience being able to see and also talk with listeners before and after the show. Thanks for following me on this (lengthy) endeavor! (Should get to episode #100 soon...)
Saltsman: I get over the "blank page" problem when making a game by starting on the art tab instead of the code tab (in PICO-8). #GDC26
Saltsman: Follow your ideas where they lead to end up in a place you never would have found without that process. #GDC26
Saltsman: Discovering the right formula for your idea is the process of having your darlings and killing them too. #GDC26
Saltsman: Ideas are much more important to protect than any other part of your project. #GDC26
Saltsman: Formulas are not the same as ideas. Ideas are what you want to say. Formulas are how you are hoping to achieve that. #GDC26
Saltsman: Truly easy things tend to be not obvious - no one may have considered skipping the normal steps. #GDC26
Saltsman: My manifesto for making games. How can we make it easy on ourselves. #GDC26
Saltsman: What if we could make games for ourselves? #GDC26
Classic scope creep... #GDC26
Holley: The Golden Secrets of Yotei's Event Deck. #GDC26
Holley: Shortcomings to the Event Deck in Yotei. It relies heavily on dialogue, which is expensive to make and can fatigue players who usually skip dialogue. #GDC26
Holley: The advantage of Yotei's robust and dynamic Event Deck is that we can focus on outputs instead of inputs. The player can make their own choices (the input) and the game can still lead them down a good path (the output). #GDC26
Holley: We could sometimes fake things by using the same voices for multiple characters during fast scenes (like combat)... as long as we weren't switching genders. #GDC26
Holley: The math for each Event's combination of conversations times voices times lines depends on how important the Event is. #GDC26
Holley: Hard reality for Yotei's VO budget. #GDC26
Holley: We had to do the hard work of having multiple ways (including different VO passes) to communicate the same Event. This one has four different dialogue sequences. Three will not be used. All that is multiplied by different languages and six different actors who cover multiple NPCs. #GDC26
Holley: These different player actions would have led to the same story beats (main quest, weapon unlocks) from the Event Deck. #GDC26
Holley: Camping Events are very important because it's a frequent player action that happens everywhere. We can rely on them in case players ignore all the other Event triggers. #GDC26
Holley: Here are examples of rules that are checked to determine which Event is chosen when camping. The situation needs to match how the Event will be delivered to the player. #GDC26
Holley: In Yotei, if multiple Events are valid, then we always choose the first one, giving the system a natural linear order. #GDC26
Holley: Each Event has multiple ways that they can be added to the game, depending on the context of the current encounter. #GDC26
Holley: Yotei sometimes reorders the deck depending on what you already are pursuing. Better not to overwhelm the player with multiple goals that are too similar. Every goal you give the player has a cost. #GDC26
Holley: We have a Loneliness card in the Deck that skips over giving the player a new task, to slow down the pacing and let the player experience the world in quiet. #GDC26
Holley: We needed a variety of Dealers because not all players do the same interactions. (Some may never look at a bounty board.) #GDC26
Holley: Various interactions (bounty board, camping, customer in sake house) are Dealers that draw from the Event Deck to give you a near-term goal, depending on your current situation. #GDC26
Holley: Yotei implemented a "dungeon master" to guide players through the game via a Event Deck of possible story beats, side quests, weapon unlocks, etc. #GDC26