The End of Summer

A disappointing end, but an end. I’ve only come so far with my Diet ambitions. I mapped out a lot on paper, but only got as far as creating the first draft of the house map. I found a couple free tilesets that allowed me to create something above the minimal amount of pixel art standards I have for the first phase of Diet (traditional RPG knock off). Here is a screenshot of the initial map:

As far as biogenesis work I have been diligently trying to improve the trainer. The fundamental problems of behavioral complexity lie in two places: the limitations of the current version of NEAT, and the lack of interaction organisms have with the environment. This splits up the work evenly, so the former problem has driven me to isolate the training system and work on it’s own screen allowing me to try all kinds of crazy ideas:

• “plug and play” training scenarios
• formally defining ‘serial’ and ‘parallel’ training scenarios
• using CPPNs and HyperNEAT
• threading out genome training batches, since no genome training depends on another
• defining high level goals and have ANNs only access those functions
• indirect encoding

Only a few of these have been tested since my updates to all the sensors (optimization, improvement). The good news is that, by the time the environment and event systems are in place the new training system will be able to utilize them to their potential.

Lastly, my first attempt at a Ludum Dare will be this weekend. The only thing I have to prepare is what engine I’m going to use. It’s looking like GameMaker, but I’m hoping to gather up the courage and determination to use a more coded approach like pygame or XNA. Results\updates will be posted.

General Updates – Diet

So Diet has been put on hold for a little bit. I might explore the game in several different engines. The reason it got put on hold is due to some bugs in the map editor and engine that need tweaking so I’m waiting on those. My new approach might be:

• a heavily coded approach using my original engine choice (Valkyrie) where the tradeoff has been more flexibility for longer coding time
• a ‘drag and drop’ engine (e.g. GameMaker or even RPG maker) for focus on the simple design and possibly dialogue depth
• a fancy 3d approach using Unity

It’s a big commitment, but this way the game ideas I have will be fully explored from several “angles” and perhaps a trilogy of games will be interesting as a small packages.

Technical plans include implementing a game state manager for possible events in the game. I am following the example of Grow Island and Grow Tower (link) where an impressive amount of complexity can come from a small set of choices (namely, 2^n states and for any state requiring m (of total n) actions there are potentially n! / (n – m)! paths to it – so I don’t think I”ll run out of options for state paths). I’ll plan out a small set of ‘actions’ which trigger events and also toggle it’s bit in the state set. Actions could then require states to be activated, and different states could trigger different sets of events, etc. A simple bitset could handle all of this, so I will just be implementing a simple way to define actions, objects, and events the character knows about and the paths of events\states that lead to them.

Lastly, I’ll be meeting with DJ to develop some dialogue scenes\paths. Perhaps I’ll use Valkyrie to implement the gamestate idea, Game- or RPGmaker for a dialogue intense experience, and Unity to explore lighting and environment.

Diet overview

Diet is my first attempt at following some different trends in independent game design, mostly focused on creating unique and emotional responses through interesting literary elements, or even a general storyline. Recent major inspirations include Dear Esther (the Chinese Room), Today I Die (Daniel Benmergui), and Ceramic Shooter (Theta Games). All these games are vastly different, but what is interesting about them isn’t necessarily any game mechanics but a clear attempt to inject interesting literature into interactive media. I feel this trend is new (at least in reaching the indie mainstream) and a good show of maturity and progress (yes, I enjoyed Heather Chaplin’s GDC rant) for games.

Diet is a story focused on body image and the absurdity in schemes to get people feeling bad enough about themselves to hurt their bodies in the name of losing weight (e.g. harmful dieting, anorexia, bulimia). The first thing that struck me about the story (to be posted) was that it was a simple concept, interesting, and even included some, albeit small, cultural commentary. Body image and the advertising industries attack on it affects everyone, but it certainly hurts women more than men, which is important. It’s important because men still dominate the gaming industry and demographic. Creating games and content directed even slightly towards women (without sexualizing and\or patronizing them) is an essential step the industry will have to take to continue it’s stride to be culturally relevant.

Development-wise I’ve just started setting up the Valkyrie engine (XNA) to get ready for a simple, topdown pixel 2d  project. I’ve temporarily hijacked pokemon-ish pixel art until I find content suitable for the game.