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nvining posted:I'm not totally sure what to make of the fact that when we write serious, useful posts about things like design decisions and the building of systems, we get "huh" and when I go off the rails after a frustrating day in the code mines, I get a million comments along the lines of "Best Post Ever." It's a combination of schadenfreude and an informative blog post. You're also at a point in your development where you have interesting (to other people) bugs, such as the non-euclidian chicken, as opposed to the typical humdrum bugs (scrollbar won't scroll). We enjoy the other posts too, we really do 
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Aug 30, 2013 13:08
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nvining posted:I'm not totally sure what to make of the fact that when we write serious, useful posts about things like design decisions and the building of systems, we get "huh" and when I go off the rails after a frustrating day in the code mines, I get a million comments along the lines of "Best Post Ever." Well my thought process went about as such: haha deployable chicken guns would be hilarious and fantastic - oh nice - yep, sounds like work only less entertaining - holy poo poo you were working on your first game at 19? lucky bastard - heh, bugs still suck no matter what you do. It makes for a very gratifying post, if I don't say so myself, which I do.
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Sep 3, 2013 08:29
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Munkeymon posted:Well my thought process went about as such: haha deployable chicken guns would be hilarious and fantastic - oh nice - yep, sounds like work only less entertaining - holy poo poo you were working on your first game at 19? lucky bastard - heh, bugs still suck no matter what you do. It makes for a very gratifying post, if I don't say so myself, which I do. My first video game gig was at 16, actually, working for these guys: http://www.lokigames.com - now defunct due to mismanagement of epic proportions. My first video game gig where I actually shipped a title I worked on was for Piranha Games  - back in 2001, at 17, working on a game called Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza (the studio's first title.) (That game featured in this cartoon: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2002/02/11 - and my job, day and night, involved wrestling with and rewriting The Goddamned Lithtech Engine.) So, yeah, I'm basically ancient. 
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Sep 3, 2013 22:03
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nvining posted:My first video game gig was at 16, actually, working for these guys: http://www.lokigames.com - now defunct due to mismanagement of epic proportions. My first video game gig where I actually shipped a title I worked on was for Piranha Games Holy poo poo, you got history And bad karma from Nakatomi Plaza
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Sep 3, 2013 22:57
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nvining posted:My first video game gig was at 16, actually, working for these guys: http://www.lokigames.com - now defunct due to mismanagement of epic proportions. My first video game gig where I actually shipped a title I worked on was for Piranha Games I'm not a programmer, but was the Lithtech engine really that much of a pain to work with?
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Sep 4, 2013 02:37
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nvining posted:My first video game gig was at 16, actually, working for these guys: http://www.lokigames.com - now defunct due to mismanagement of epic proportions. My first video game gig where I actually shipped a title I worked on was for Piranha Games Not to derail too much, but have you seen how badly these guys are making GBS threads on MechWarrior: Online?  You made a good move getting away from that shithole.
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Sep 4, 2013 02:57
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Today's post is, once again, on biomes: http://www.gaslampgames.com/2013/09/04/steampunk-central-america-adventures-in-sort-of-verisimilitude/ With Daniel finishing up Steampunk Colorado, we're moving on to something resembling Central America. WebDO posted:(various gentle inquiries about my previous employment) I keep meaning to download MWO and fire it up, but I haven't found a spare moment. That said, I make it a policy to not comment on previous employers - but I am vastly amused that they have their own icon.
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Sep 4, 2013 20:08
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nvining posted:The Goddamned Lithtech Engine Hey, I remember that engine! Alien vs Predator 2 used it, and I spent way too many years playing that. I love discovering little bits of coincidence like that. Another example is FROM Software, of Demon's/Dark Souls fame, created both Eternal Ring, a fairly terrible game that was the first I got for PS2, and Chromehounds, a pretty cool stompy robot game that I enjoyed. Didn't find that out until a while after Dark Souls came out. Well that's my story.
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Sep 4, 2013 21:32
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Tag: "the opening line of Neuromancer doesn't work so well in an era without analog televisions" I've had this exact discussion with my friends. Kids these days will think that line means 'the sky was blue.'  Get off of my lawn!
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Sep 5, 2013 00:04
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New blogpost! More biome talk! http://www.gaslampgames.com/2013/09/04/steampunk-central-america-adventures-in-sort-of-verisimilitude/
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Sep 5, 2013 03:18
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Daynab posted:New blogpost! More biome talk! nvining posted:Today's post is, once again, on biomes:
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Sep 5, 2013 04:11
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 That'll teach me not to refresh before posting.
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Sep 5, 2013 05:15
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nvining posted:My first video game gig was at 16, actually, working for these guys: http://www.lokigames.com - now defunct due to mismanagement of epic proportions. My first video game gig where I actually shipped a title I worked on was for Piranha Games I think I rented that Die Hard game for my Playstation back in the day... yeah How'd you get into the industry so young? Re: the biome post: never knew that my local limestone cave geology had a name, but now I want to use karst as an expletive :\
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Sep 5, 2013 08:27
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Daynab posted:New blogpost! More biome talk! Will say that Steampunk Central America looks absolutely karstian. Do you think you'll get to Steampunk Eastern Seaboard, where dark water washes against the slim beaches of barrier islands that protect salt marshes with the spartina bending on the fresh sea air, greenery shifting from sturdy palmettos on the coast to oaks clothed in Spanish moss shifting to unending forests of pine trees as we ascend to the rolling foothills and finally haze topped mountains where failed colonists have inbred and found who knows what in those Cog-forsaken Catskills. (write what you know )Or maybe Steampunk Indonesia, where vines overtake dark stoned temples to forgotten gods as intrepid citizens of the Empire beat back the jungles filled with beastly Ourang-Outans that keep making off with the Imperial brandy provisions the scoundrels. Triskelli fucked around with this message at 15:07 on Sep 5, 2013 |
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Sep 5, 2013 14:54
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Forgive me if this has been answered before, but I was wondering about these biomes and such. Are you going to have multiple biomes per map based on elevation like Sim City 4's system, or something like Dwarf Fortress where you pick a spot on a pregened world?
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Sep 6, 2013 02:17
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Triskelli posted:Or maybe Steampunk Indonesia, where vines overtake dark stoned temples to forgotten gods as intrepid citizens of the Empire beat back the jungles filled with beastly Ourang-Outans that keep making off with the Imperial brandy provisions the scoundrels. I would love a Southeast Asia biome, please put it in. I'd also love to see a deep south style biome - the tidewater coast, the bayou, cabbage palms, live oak, Spanish moss, and finally maybe inland a piedmont region with low rolling hills. Perfect place to grow cash crops for the empire.
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Sep 6, 2013 02:44
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Will there be options to make the game more of a hellscape? Burning sulfur fields are so pretty at night.  
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Sep 6, 2013 03:40
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Triskelli posted:Will say that Steampunk Central America looks absolutely karstian. Do you think you'll get to Steampunk Eastern Seaboard, where dark water washes against the slim beaches of barrier islands that protect salt marshes with the spartina bending on the fresh sea air, greenery shifting from sturdy palmettos on the coast to oaks clothed in Spanish moss shifting to unending forests of pine trees as we ascend to the rolling foothills and finally haze topped mountains where failed colonists have inbred and found who knows what in those Cog-forsaken Catskills. (write what you know Well, there has to be a Steampunk Eastern Seabord so we can have Steampunk Pine Barrens full of Steampunk Jersey Devils. Which totally either needs to be some kind of pseudo-megabeast or a species of primitive tribal-dwelling horrors or something.
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Sep 6, 2013 03:42
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Soylent Pudding posted:I'd also love to see a deep south style biome - the tidewater coast, the bayou, cabbage palms, live oak, Spanish moss, and finally maybe inland a piedmont region with low rolling hills. Perfect place to grow cash crops for the empire. Since we basically described the same thing I'll be explicit: as a resident of South Carolina, I want a Steampunk Carolina biome so I can recreate a Steampunk Beaufort SC and destroy the similar but differently pronounced Beaufort NC. ("beew" and "bow" respectively). But I suppose in the name of geographical fairness and recognizing what parts of the world were still being colonized at the time, I concede that the Steampunk Congo, Steampunk Sumatra, and Steampunk New Zealand should come first. (Earnestly though, Beaufort is the second oldest city in the state and founded in part by a hard fightin' hard drink'n Irishman named "Tuscarora Jack" Barnwell. Early on it was an excellent shipbuilding town, with all the live oaks that basically grow sideways making for naturally grown ship keels. With the growth of the slave economy it became one of the wealthiest per-capita counties as plantation owners built summer homes. It was taken early in the war during one of the largest amphibous assaults until D-day completely intact because the residents all bolted, leaving only one guy who recently moved to town from up north It served as a base and a place for escaped slaves to flee to and recieve emancipation, education, and after the war land through the Freedmen's Bureau. Port Royal Sound is the deepest natural sound south of the Mason-Dixon Line, petty politics over which gave us the Marine Corp training facility Parris Island instead of a naval base. Phosphorus mining and cotton were huge until the boll weevil and the 1893 hurricane devestated them beyond repair. And nearby Hilton Head Island once had an experimental steam-powered naval cannon I kid you not. And I'll be damned if we don't have some of the world's tastiest oysters. They're smaller yeah and they cluster so it's harder to pry 'em open but that just means they're perfectly sized for your saltine crackers and a bit of Tabasco. Steamed oysters have gotta be one of my favorite things in this world, and nothing beats getting together on a cold winter night with friends and family for an oyster roast and prying open those shells still warm from the fire and just eating 'em raw. )
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Sep 6, 2013 14:10
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President Ark posted:Well, there has to be a Steampunk Eastern Seabord so we can have Steampunk Pine Barrens full of Steampunk Jersey Devils. I don't know about the Steampunk Jersey Devil, but we do have these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolian_death_worm
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Sep 6, 2013 20:46
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Triskelli posted:Since we basically described the same thing I'll be explicit: as a resident of South Carolina, I want a Steampunk Carolina biome Okay, somehow I got more of a New England vibe from your post. Oops.
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Sep 6, 2013 20:57
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nvining posted:I don't know about the Steampunk Jersey Devil, but we do have these: I am, somehow, more excited now.
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Sep 7, 2013 02:33
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Karst geography always seems moderately unattainable with the "sheet"-based landscaping most games do. I don't know the actual term, but you know what I'm talking about, right? I'm thinking mostly of Bethesda games where you can only have sheer cliffs if you have rock/cliff objects sticking out of the (admittedly steep) hillside, but practically every game with a natural setting does the same thing. Far Cry 3 had cenotes that felt proper, but it still had cliffs you could butt-surf down elsewhere. Basically I guess I'm wondering how steep you can make your landscaping, and how stretched the ground texture will look. 
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Sep 7, 2013 14:09
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Daynab posted:New blogpost! More biome talk! Its funny what can get you excited for a game. I noticed in the tropical coast concept art there are sponge like corals drawn on the sand. As a huge marine biology nerd I am now salivating at the prospect of my weird steampunk coral based society. Please tell me this can be so Gaslamp Games.
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Sep 7, 2013 16:57
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mitochondritom posted:Its funny what can get you excited for a game. I noticed in the tropical coast concept art there are sponge like corals drawn on the sand. As a huge marine biology nerd I am now salivating at the prospect of my weird steampunk coral based society. Please tell me this can be so Gaslamp Games. I believe David did some corals and polyps and things awhile back, but I haven't hooked them up yet. Dareon posted:Basically I guess I'm wondering how steep you can make your landscaping, and how stretched the ground texture will look. This is why we don't do sheet-based landscaping. We use triplanar texturing: http://www.volume-gfx.com/volume-rendering/triplanar-texturing/ is a pretty good write-up - precisely to avoid this sort of stretch. I actually need to rewrite the code so that it tries to do simpler things on ground that doesn't need triplanar texturing, because this is currently one of the two major sources of our framerate issues (the other two: SSAO, which really needs rewriting anyway because I'm still not happy with it, and water reflections.)
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Sep 8, 2013 04:11
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How is it that I'm only just now hearing of Mongolian Death Worms? I wonder how much of an inspiration those were for the sandworms in Dune...
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Sep 8, 2013 04:34
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I wonder if Gaslamp Games artists have created the Mongolian death worm art assets yet? If not, then perhaps they could use a little real life inspiration. http://vimeo.com/28280553 e: They're even worse when you read about them. Paralyzing neurotoxin anyone? http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/09/absurd-creature-of-the-week-bobbit-worm/ Lowen fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Sep 8, 2013 |
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Sep 8, 2013 17:13
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Lowen posted:I wonder if Gaslamp Games artists have created the Mongolian death worm art assets yet? If not, then perhaps they could use a little real life inspiration. http://vimeo.com/28280553 Never before have I thought I'd ever say "gently caress the Ocean" in a games thread.
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Sep 8, 2013 22:51
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nvining posted:We use triplanar texturing: http://www.volume-gfx.com/volume-rendering/triplanar-texturing/ is a pretty good write-up - precisely to avoid this sort of stretch. Sweet. I realize the approval of one random guy on the internet doesn't mean much, but I'm honestly not seeing a single thing about this game that I'd put in the negative column.
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Sep 9, 2013 02:56
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Dareon posted:Sweet. I realize the approval of one random guy on the internet doesn't mean much, but I'm honestly not seeing a single thing about this game that I'd put in the negative column. Well, they have not yet confirmed that Urchins can be used as a sustainable food source.
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Sep 9, 2013 06:05
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nvining posted:I believe David did some corals and polyps and things awhile back, but I haven't hooked them up yet. Grey Hunter posted:Well, they have not yet confirmed that Urchins can be used as a sustainable food source. It sounds like we are getting there. Keep up the pressure marine bio nerds. What about Whales and Whaling, these were also important Victorian industries ? Dishonoured really integrated whales into the lore of the game. I assume CE will also give them the executive treatment !
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Sep 9, 2013 08:01
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If not included, hopefully parodied! Diggle Whales. 
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Sep 9, 2013 14:23
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Whiggles you mean.
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Sep 9, 2013 14:25
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mitochondritom posted:It sounds like we are getting there. Keep up the pressure marine bio nerds. I think by Urchins he meant the street variety as opposed to the sea ones..
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Sep 9, 2013 14:51
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Zoe posted:I think by Urchins he meant the street variety as opposed to the sea ones.. I'm not ruling out a combination of the two! Forget Fishmen, give me Urchin Urchins!
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Sep 9, 2013 14:54
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Grey Hunter posted:I'm not ruling out a combination of the two! Forget Fishmen, give me Urchin Urchins! 
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Sep 9, 2013 20:38
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Grey Hunter posted:Well, they have not yet confirmed that Urchins can be used as a sustainable food source. Are you referring to the spiny marine lifeform or the archetypal unwashed homeless child? I don't object either way, but I was curious. This might be a dumb question but, given that this is kinda like dwarf fortress, does that mean there's a solid combat element to it? I really like games that let me build forts and defend them from things, so if it has a developed combat system I'd totally buy it. My main gripe with DF is that it has terrible combat balance and little to no tactics involved. I'd love a game that has both of those. Even if it's part of the design element. Like in DF you can't tell units to use a tower properly, because they don't know how to use fortifications and can't properly stock ammunition for themselves. And there's little in the way of terrain effects or unit formation bonuses or anything. I would imagine with the whole gunpowder and steampunk style that cover would be important, and that setting up killing zones and fields of fire would be an excellent tie in to the building aspect, as well as making combat less of a 'train a dozen dudes and throw them at goblins until they die' affair which is how DF works. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 21:02 on Sep 9, 2013 |
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Sep 9, 2013 20:52
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OwlFancier posted:Are you referring to the spiny marine lifeform or the archetypal unwashed homeless child? I don't object either way, but I was curious. Where do you think Crimble comes from? quote:This might be a dumb question but, given that this is kinda like dwarf fortress, does that mean there's a solid combat element to it? I really like games that let me build forts and defend them from things, so if it has a developed combat system I'd totally buy it. See: http://www.gaslampgames.com/2013/05/01/designing-combat-for-clockwork-empires/
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Sep 9, 2013 23:37
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OwlFancier posted:Are you referring to the spiny marine lifeform or the archetypal unwashed homeless child? I don't object either way, but I was curious. The Unwashed children that shall be the source of cheap labour for our steam mills! Although if we can find someway to enslave the sea version for our aquafarms, then this is acceptable as well.
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Sep 10, 2013 14:57
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nvining posted:Where do you think Crimble comes from? Aha! I figured it would be covered somewhere but there's a huge number of blog posts to go through, so I thought I'd ask. That... actually looks way more involved and interesting than I was expecting, honestly. I was going to settle for maybe something like 'build a bunker, shove five dudes in, keep it supplied with booze, bullets, and beans and it'll shoot anything that gets close' or something similar. That kind of interconnected military organisation, economic support, and building design looks pretty fabulous to me. I get what you say about it not becoming the sole factor in the game, but equally I value combat as a loss mechanism because for me, it's just so much more interesting and cool than losing by economic collapse. Building an economy that works is an engaging challenge, but using that economy to fight a war is sort of the thing you move onto when you've mastered the economy. The economy tends to be the same every time, but different combat challenges can both impact the economy, and present different military challenges. If a certain kind of enemy is prevalent and needs a certain weapon to defeat, production of that weapon becomes an important goal of your economy, and thus it shapes everything around it. There's also something cooler about blowing the crap out of stuff/getting your crap blown up than even a dwarf fortress style tantrum spiral I think. It's more cinematic to my eyes. But I am very glad to have this sort of non-combat depth to the military, as that means it's interesting and engaging even when it isn't actually fighting. I'm definitely going to have to pick this up, I didn't get dredmor because, well, I don't actually like roguelikes all that much, as much as I really wish I did. I like a lot of games that are also roguelikes in a sense of the word, but the core gameplay of a roguelike is a little dull for me. But dwarf fortress I love the management and customisability aspects of, and I love games about building and trying to make something cool rather than just blowing stuff up to no end. My main gripe with it is the interface is obtuse and gets in the way, and a lot of the systems don't work too well because permanent in-development. I also really like the style of dredmor even if I wouldn't necessarily enjoy the gameplay, and as far as I know it's regarded as a very good roguelike, so that's pretty cool. But yeah this is kind of my ideal game, from the sounds of it. Looking forward to giving it a try. Grey Hunter posted:The Unwashed children that shall be the source of cheap labour for our steam mills! Although if we can find someway to enslave the sea version for our aquafarms, then this is acceptable as well. Personally I'd suggest digging a big ditch, filling it with seawater, and then tipping a big mess of the marine variety into it to act as a super moat. Call it a wildlife preserve while you're at it. I'm not sure what they eat but I'm sure you could throw in some of the terrestrial variety if the population declines too much. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 17:29 on Sep 10, 2013 |
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Sep 10, 2013 17:16
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