Blasphemous 2: Crown of Towers

Es bromi, es facil si has jugado hace poco 😂

Norfair

The prototype puzzle dependency chart

I guess it's time to start working on the puzzle dependency chart, at least until I have enough material to prototype some puzzles and see how the mechanics feel on the Playdate.

Something that I love from Metroid Prime 3 is the use of motion controls. I want to do something similar in my Playdate prototype.
Since it's a handheld and you need to be able to see the screen, these won't work as-is. But I have a good idea on how to adapt this concept and make it feel cool 😎

Seguramente cero. Suena al típico flipado que quiere jugar a ser una startup de silicon valley y no llega ni a pepe gotera.

Empezamos bien con lo de contratar a un junior con solo 2 años de experiencia y pedirle que haga el trabajo de un director técnico 🤣
Aunque seguramente toda la historia sea mentira y es solo lo que le ha pedido al chatgpt que le escriba para hacer publicidad de lo que sea que vende.

Back when online games weren't GaaS there was a bigger incentive on doing actual moderation.
Nowadays they don't want to ban anyone because they want everyone's money and need them to buy cosmetics and battle passes.
I know for a fact that whales are untouchable.

Back when I played on Xbox 360 the moderation seemed to work, at least I could report and block any player that was abusive.
Still I would just use the game party and talk only to friends most of the time.
There are too many teenagers and "edgy bros" nowadays so I only play PvE games now.

Walter from Fringe in a taxi listening to a song.

Walter from Fringe listening to the song and restoring his soul.

Most accurate depiction of how it feels to take a sabbatical after decades of working in the gamedev industry.

Skeleton meme: MY BODY IS A MACHINE THAT TURNS TODO INTO DONE

These days I feel like...

NBA 2k26 tournament brackets.

Se me ocurren los dragon ball budokai, los pro evolution soccer, fifa, el mario strikers, los NBA 2k... supongo que casi cualquiera deportivo.

Cumbersome setup while shooting an action scene in wonderwoman

Agnes Varda with a 8mm movie camera.

David Lynch with a small movie camera.

My philosophy is that we can create great technical systems, but we often forget to give creatives time to play, to be dreamy, to find the fun.

Give your creatives tools that are easy to use, let them iterate quickly, that don't require an entire team to operate... and they will find the magic.

actor sandy face-right actor sandy do-animation reach walk-actor razor to-object microwave-oven start-script watch-edna stop-script stop-script watch-edna say-line dave "Don't be a tuna head." say-line selected-kid "I don't want to use that right now."

function meetWillie() { inputOff(@{ breakwhile(GLOBAL(taking_photo)) actorTurnTo(willie, DIR_FRONT) actorWalkTo(selectedActor, MainStreet.willieTalkSpot) breakwhilewalking(delores) startYack(selectedActor, willie, "Willie") breakwhileyacking() actorWalkTo(willie,MainStreet.willieSpot2) breaktime(1.0) actorTurnTo(delores, DIR_RIGHT) breakwhiletalking(willie) sayLine(delores, SAY(11154,"Night Willie!")) breakwhilewalking(willie) actorAt(willie,Void,point(0,0)) }) }

I would rebuild SCUMM. Not SCUMM as in the exact same language, but what SCUMM brought to those games. It was a language built around making adventure games and rapid iteration. It did things Lua could never dream of. When Lua was in High School, SCUMM beat it up for lunch money. True story. SCUMM lived and breathed adventure games. I’d build an engine and a language where funny ideas can be laughed about at lunch and be in the game that afternoon. SCUMM did that. It’s something that is getting lost today.

If you're wondering whether this actually makes sense, let me share a secret: SCUMM, the scripting system behind LucasArts adventure games, uses the same concept.

Years later, Ron Gilbert forked Squirrel to create yet another scripting language, Dinky, for his game Thimbleweed Park™

This way your gameplay scripts are basically screenplays. It makes writing your game logic really, really easy and feel natural.

Let your designers to be free to experiment, iterate fast, and most importantly, not break anything while they're at it 😂

What I like to do is to create the ability for a singular entity to say "Hey game, I'll take control, let me direct this scene", so when the director calls "action!" everything works and reacts to the director.
It's not until the director says "cut!" that everything takes control again.

Many use scripts as an extension of their game engine. For example, when someone wants to create a script that handles an in-game event such as a cutscene, they still need to check the proper states of systems, game, the player... make sure they do not make any illegal calls.

It's really cumbersome

Inversion of Control is great for designing triggers and logic sequences, you're in a place that can control whatever you need: the player, the world, or any game system.
It handles persistence/etc for you, so you can focus on designing the interaction, whether it's a puzzle, a cutscene, anything.

import "actions/CA_TestHello" import "actions/CA_Template" game.init() pd.resetElapsedTime() function pd.update() game.update() if ContextualAction.active == nil then local requestedName = game.consumeRequestedContextualAction() if requestedName ~= nil then ContextualAction.start(requestedName) end end ContextualAction.update() end

function CA_TestHello() game.logToConsole("CA_TestHello has started, now wait 3 seconds...") ContextualAction.waitForSeconds(3.0) game.logToConsole("3 seconds has passed, goodbye!") end ContextualAction.register("CA_TestHello", CA_TestHello)

I created a main.lua file that imports all my Contextual Actions, then the update loop checks if there's one active to update it or if there's one that needs to be started.

The actual CA script it's very simple, just a list of commands of what you want to do: show a dialogue, wait some time, etc.

Doing a proof of concept of my Contextual Actions on my Playdate prototype.
It's really easy to hook Lua to your C program. I now can have separate scripts for each entity that can be interacted, so they behave like smart objects (like The Sims). They can take control over the player and the world.

Wow esa puerta está a otro nivel xD

The building I currently live in would be perfect for a backrooms game. Everyone who visits says so. Delivery guys are constantly getting lost, there are hidden areas, locked rooms, doors that lead nowhere, really long hallways that all look the same... I may end up making the game, if I survive 💀

Years ago I wrote a pitch for a turn based tactical game (think UFO XCOM in space). It featured rodent like characters. I had the perfect name for the game: Mouse Effect.

If you only want the end result a game that you can sell and call yours, you're just a guy that wants to roleplay being a gamedev.
You can't be a game developer if you skip the steps that make you one.

You're not going to get rich selling Playdate games (or games in general). If you're making games is because it's your passion. If it's your passion, don't rob yourself from the experience of creating any art for your game, be it graphics, sound, code, writing... or from finding collaborations.

I hope that the exception to code is only because of some game contract already signed preventing them from doing it now and that they eventually ban genAI code as well.

Even if it's just an honor system, it makes their stance clear, so I'm glad they're doing this.

Sobre esto: he perdido el tren que tenía que coger porque DOS de los cercanías que paraban en la estación y que iban anunciados como accesibles NO eran accesibles. Iba con más de una hora de margen y ni con esas. Al final he podido volver, pero HOSTIA TÍO.

Soon I'll need to start creating gameplay scripts for my prototype. I want to look into Lua, since it's already built into the Playdate SDK.
My goal is to design entities and triggers that, when interacted with, can take control of the player and the world.
I call it the Contextual Action System.

Silent Hill, they used a still from the intro.

Además de eso, yo los pasos de cebra los hago siempre desde el extremo contrario al que viene el vehículo, ya he oído demasiadas historias en el que el primer coche para, pero viene uno detrás que lo golpea y atropellan al peatón.