Starflier

Gun Experiment

I went through Ahoy's Iconic Arms series recently. I'm not a gun buff, but the series is excellent, going over the history of each gun featured, and discussing the pros and cons, and how they translate mechanically into games.

I've been thinking a lot about player progression, and how difficult it is to make the player feel more powerful, and yet make things consistantly harder for them. In liniar, skill-based games, this isn't actually an issue, player progression is in the meta game of trying to get to a higher level or trying to finally beat that puzzle. In more nonliniar games though, often you have a character that becomes stronger as you play, and if you just have enemies getting slightly more strong than you, the game will feel flat.

This idea formed in my head of an arena shooter which allowed you to upgrade your weapon at the end of every level. Originally, there were two things you could upgrade, firing speed and bullet size, with the first being better for taking out swarms of small enemies, the latter being better for dealing with larger ones. The idea was that the number of each kind of enemy would increase steadily, and no matter what upgrade you buy each round, the overall difficulty would increase, making progression a matter of choosing the type of weapon you want to create.

The idea progressed from there, and today after work I decided to try putting together a prototype. This is currently just a little sandbox, but now the player has two guns, with 10 stats each. Right now you can adjust each of the stats to see how everything works.

Lasterday I spent some time digging holes in the back yard to hide bad compost from rats in. I just want to let you all know that these were some quality ass holes, all square and three feet down. Seriously, I felt bad dumping a bunch of putrid meat that the upstairs neighbors decided was compost in there. Today, I’m really sore, mostly in my palms, upper arms and core, and I can’t believe how much of a wuss I am about it. 

I guess, when your job and all your hobbies are sedentary, and you cook and eat to feel better about the world, your body gets weak. I know this to be true. And yet, the motivation to go for long walks, or ride my bike, or something doesn’t really show up to the party. 

Not that it counts, really, but Samantha and I have been trying to learn to juggle in the evenings. She made the balls out of flour and balloons, and we’ll stand in the living room and try to reach a count of five or ten. As soon as I start losing control, my whole body gets more rigid, and I speed up the process of dropping all of the balls. Picking them up off the ground over and over might be exercise…

I had to wake up early today, and so for the most part, the day was pretty blah. however we did eat really well, so that’s a thing. There’s a new spanish restaurant in town, Samantha and I got some food to go that was probably too saucy to get to go, but mmm!

Also, for dinner we made Beet Burgers that I’ve been wanting to try forever. And they were wonderful. I made biscuits for buns, and topped them with feta, cheddar, onions and coleslaw and they were enormous. ^^

Also, Samantha out of the blue made some juggling balls out of balloons and flour, (She’s done this before) and we spent some time trying to learn to juggle. That was fun.

Today was my second time basically mentoring a kid as he learns puzzlescript, which has to be the coolest thing I’ve ever gotten paid for. In preparation for our lesson I put together some haiku-size games:

This was what we worked on mostly, building a platforming engine from scratch so I could explain how each part of the Puzzlescript file works.

This started out as a simple character selection screen, and then I let things get out of hand.

And this I made because I felt Halloweeny, And because I liked the idea of using a really zoomed in camera in a horror game.

*shrugs* I did nothing of note today, besides voting. I don’t have any hot takes from that besides that I thought the Conservatives had shot themselves in the foot a lot harder than they actually did apparently. I was also hoping for a couple more Green seats, but y’know. 

I find myself wishing I’d kept up with Inktober. I did the first two days, then stopped. (So about as successful as my first NaNoWriMo) I don’t get a lot of down time at work lately, and I’ve been distracted by website troubles at home. Ugh. I feel Ugh today.

I have a couple changes to Village Royalty I want to make, tweaks to two cards, the Scribe and the Spy, that will make the game more thematic, enhance the deduction element, and make the experience more cohesive. And there’s a visual tweak I want to make based on some feedback I got on BGG.

I have a design for a one-page, real-time dice party game that I will hopefully be able to share soon. I just need to get a group to play it and make sure it works.