I wonder if we would/could ever implement something like this in HmH. I was shocked by its simplicity and how ingenious it is, and surely never came across the concept before!

Overall, it sums up for a good read!

You can find the full article here

What do you think about it? I was all giggly about it when I found it!

Very interesting.

EDIT:
One of the coolest games I remember to have ever played was "Full throttle". I only vaguely remember it now. But it was 2d, but it still made for a great gamefeeling. I remember it still, vividly almost 30 years later. (Don't know if it would fly now, though).

I've played many 3d games, since. But when I think about it, all of the memorable once, was 2D games, with a good story. Or great gameplay. Except for Skyrim. (Quake I ,CS and Battlefield too btw, but that's because of the multiplayer).

I absolutely loved Skyrim. Even I also many times hated it for it's character and trader interaction. And even though I felt it could be made like a 1000 times more interesting by having harder, more dangerous opponents, and better balance. Some monsters should be invincible. Or so hard to kill that you would avoid them. Stuff like that would make it a whole lot more interesting, when you have to seriously consider avoiding some areas of the game. And then maybe put something really worth having there... It managed to still create this awesome feeling of exploration, conquest and a great story.

I think that a good story is more important than anything else. Even a Textout will make a significant interesting effect on a player, if the text he sees make the story interesting.

I also heard gamers; REALLY good gamers, say they just dont care about graphics at all. Programmers and designers care a lot more about it?

Since I don't have any real experience making games, I may be talking out of my ass, but I feel now, that it should be

1. Story
2. Balance of monsters.
3. Game feeling. (the things Casey shows us now)
4. Sounds
5. Visuals

If (1) is good enough, and you have a resonable 2 and 3, you can create a great game from small means. But if all you got is 4 and 5, then you're in trouble, unless you're the very best. The bleeding edge.

So I think that there is a trap here for developers. We tend to focus on the TECH. The tech is what is interesting to us, perhaps. And it may be a great selling point for an engine or something. But it doesn't make for a great, playable game.

RAGE for instance. I was looking forward to it for, like 2 years. I payed for it the minute it came out. It was nice looking at the time, and it tried to tell a story as well. It tried to have an atmosphere. But you know what, after I lost my orgin keys, a few weeks later, I never missed playing it, and didn't complete it. Same with this otherwise great game "Mordor or something". It's technically superb. It has 40G worth of gameassets. But I didn't even bother to complete it. And it does have it's momentsm it's far from all bad. But the story, it is retarded. It a game, with fantastic talent, and resources, and it still just isn't interesting enough, for me to bother to finish.

But many times I missed to play "Full throttle". This old funny game, with this Old man, Bikes, and the angry dog :) Maybe I am just getting old?

So my consclusion would be that there's a LOT more to a good game, then just tech.

Just some observations. I didn't really pay that much attention to games anyway. So just my 2 cents.

I would like to say that feel is under appreciated, I agree with Casey if a game doesn't feel good you just lose interest within seconds. It's like starting to read the most amazing book but it has spelling errors. Everything else is perfect but it will be VERY hard to just plough on, just because it jars so much it keeps calling attention to itself. The same is true of feel, if it's good you might not even notice it but if it's bad you're out of there, see a game like N+ for instance on the face of it a platform game like so many others, but interaction is super satisfying that it begs to be played.

You mention Full Throttle, which is an amazing adventure game but even here the interactions are really satisfying the menu system is cute and fits the theme and when you pick up something you can't do anything with it's still trying to be funny inviting you to go on, this has nothing to do with the story but is hugely important. Imagine if the fist half hour of that game was the same story but the gameplay was only that of that AWFUL level where you have to jump over cars, 99.99 % would have put it away. The only reason I went on was because all the stuff leading up to it was good.

You sirs are completely correct, at least for what concerns me. I never intend to work on a 3D engine again in my life (especially now that I like to make games for my own amusement, and I'm both the coder and the artist). There are too many parts in a 3D game assets pipeline for me to quickly prototype exactly what you describe (the resulting feeling), until I get exactly what I meant to make.

Call it nostalgia, i was born in '78 after all, call it whatever you want, but I just don't like it as much as good 2D.

Don't get me wrong, I'd never render in software these days, and only use OpenGL, since I still like to use the GPU for dynamic shadows/lighting/particle effects, but the best game art for me is and will always will be 2D.

What turns me on these days are titles like these in the works:

Heart forth Alicia
Witchmarsh

Glorious!

And if I shall ever get to sell something I made, I wouldn't do it for the money, and I'd be super happy if I hit a niche of 10k players only, that appreciates the same stuff I do.

Ingredient #1 of every good game, however humble, is LOVE. Can't make something that doesn't move me deeply, now can I?

P.S. I absolutely loved Full Throttle, and N for me was a masterpiece. I actually ported the N physics engine to Javascript with Metanet's permission. You can check it out here (arrow keys to move).

Good job on the port, feels really nice.

burn

Ingredient #1 of every good game, however humble, is LOVE. Can't make something that doesn't move me deeply, now can I?

Yes. But what is "love"? It is a feeling right? Or many. And that's why I tend to think story is so important.

Because human life, is about stories.

We all know, right, that when love is gone, that it was all "just" an illusion. The only thing that made it felt real was _feeling_. Feelings are not illusions. But you often need a bit of illusion to trigger them.

If you can convince a player that a simple TILE in a game, is a GOLDBAR, and that it can make you RICH, and promises to make the game more interesting. Then it does not matter if it's just a fillrect in the color of yellow. And story can do that. Books does this all the time.

In Skyrim, the weapon-handling was very good, but the interaction between game characters was awful. But NONE of that was important, in itself. After you was tired of the storyline, and the repeating battles, what you missed, was the STORY. It is just as good in the handling of weapons now, as when it was released. But the story, and the anticipation is gone. Therefore it is now unplayable.

And that's what I mean by story being the key. And then handling and so on must follow up not breaking the story.

I absolutely agree :)

burn
I absolutely agree :)

Great :)

So how about that awesome parallex code right? ; ).

I once did Street Fighter 2 style parallax ground scrolling, by cutting the lower section of a background bitmap into a number of strips then varied the scroll speed of each of them.

The result was pretty identical and I was amazed.

This was at age 15. Over 20 years ago :(

Hitting 37yo this year, I still feel like when I was 15 when it comes to coding. Only problem I can't pull off 36 straight hours of coding in a session, like I used to when I was 20 :D

We're still young(ish)!