I've been working tirelessly on trying to get my prototype completed this year and, unfortunately, I don't think it's going to happen. So I've decided to ease off a bit so that I don't go completely bonkers during the holidays.
This weekend was Blizzcon, which I always buy virtual tickets for. For those who don't know, Blizzcon is an convention that Blizzard Entertainment tends to organize every October/November or so. Virtual tickets allow people who don't attend to watch lifestreams of the show. It was a great event and I wish, one day, that I could attend in person. It made me realize just how little I've been gaming recently. Oh, Diablo... how I missed you.
I don't know if any of you play Blizzard games but, to me, Blizzard were always the best video game developers and each year (during Blizzcon) they keep reminding me of why they're the best. I was somewhat hesitant to buy a virtual ticket this year, though, for a few reasons:
- The first one was that a lot of their content was streamed for free; drastically lowering the value of a $40 purchase.
- The second reason is that I don't really follow as many Blizzard products as I used to. I stopped playing World of Warcraft years ago. Starcraft is fun but I really don't play enough of it to really dig deep into related news. Unless they had something new to showcase for Diablo 3 (which was unlikely given the amount of attention/panels the franchise gets at Blizzcon), I was already aware of what's going on.
Diablo had two panels this year (now that I think about it, I think it's always been the case at every Blizzcon) and one was just a recap of all of the updates that happened during the game's life cycle.
- The third reason why I was hesitant to buy a virtual ticket was because of Blizzard's art style. Seems like an odd thing to say but I REALLY, really love Blizzard's art; especially the painterly/cartoon look. That style, and how they approach art in general, has influenced me as an artist since the Warcraft II days. When I do textures for my 3D models or when I doodle pictures, my style is heavily influenced by Blizzard's style.
So what's the problem? Well, despite my love for that kind of look, I don't want my game to have that style. I was afraid that, if I watched Blizzcon and saw all the wonderful art that they were making, that I would start to hate what I was doing. Ever worked hard on something only to throw it away after looking at someone else's work? Yeah, that's a terrible feeling.
Fortunately, I still like the direction that my game is going and that's a huge relief. I like to think that it has, at least, passed one of the stages/moods where I was at my most critical.
Anyways, I miss gaming. Well, it's not like I haven't been playing video games; I just don't do it as much as I would like. Mondays and Wednesdays... what kind of gaming life do I have if those are the only evenings I have to play games? So yeah, I need to fix that. The first step I took was spend most of my weekend playing Diablo 3 while watching Blizzcon. That felt good.
Tamriel's calling me, though, so I'm shopping once more for yet another hard drive (still haven't replaced the one that almost died, can you believe it?) and I'll be recording some more game sessions. I didn't mean to just stop playing.
Gix- what a pleasant surprise! Your videos are going from history to legend to...myth? I hear whispers around campfires about the one called Gix and his heroic journeys through tamriel..but the children exclaim "Gix is not real. We have heard those old stories before...hes the tooth fairy of lets plays!" You must come back to the world gix, and be reborn on the youtube like a digital phoenix. Sucks about your hard drive issues. Cloud storage would be great if not for your data cap. I'm very glad you aren't going with warcraft type art....it immediately downgrades the feel of a game to light hearted which I'm not too fond of. Keep up the hard work!
ReplyDeleteNice to know you're starting to relax a bit more, and that we'll possibly start seeing more videos of yours. How much more do you have to do until you finish your prototype?
ReplyDeleteAlso, I've been wondering for a while (I understand if you want to keep this a "secret" but I'll ask anyway) how are you going to go about HP in this game, if you want it to be realistic and have as little visible values as possible? As far as I'm aware, humans in real life don't have a certain amount of life force that increases the more they kill things. Will you still use a generic HP system or are you going to go with something different? That would be pretty cool, although it would possibly be quite hard to code something as realistic as in real life.
Anyway, good luck with your game and enjoy your "Christmas break" as it were :-)
The prototype continues to be increasingly more elaborate but I'd say there's a couple of month's worth of work still to do before we "finish" it. Maybe in March?
DeleteThe way my game will handle health won't be revolutionary or anything like that but we will be handling it differently than most RPGs. There won't be any hearts to collect, or points to invest in health.
We're being very careful as to how the game feels and we're very dedicated to keep this as "game-y" as possible. There's a lot of stuff that we're going to do that'll just make sense from a simulation standpoint (wearing heavy stuff slows you down, etc) but all of it will be for the benefit of the game experience.
The same is applied for level design. While our dungeons are procedurally generated, we keep a balance between "does it make sense?", "does it look good?" and "is it fun to be in?"
I have not been following your videos that often this year. I do watch skyrim, gamedev twitch broadcasts.
ReplyDeleteI do like your playing style and your comments. I learned about random bags I think you mentioned once. This is something that I can use for my own programming.
Blizzard games are not on steam so I have not played a blizzard game since warcraft 3. I did watch a little bit of the blizzcon but not that much,
Looking forward to seeing you play the next game from bethesda. I will be watching that !