From Web to Game DevelopmentPietro Polsinelli @ppolsinelli ROME 27-28 march 2015

Get these slides:

http://bit.ly/web2games

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Notes from the diary of a personal voyage

that is still happening.

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Ambiguity in title: Isn’t web development a form of

game development???

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With “web” I don’t mean games that run in the browser.

Web development as creating sites and web based apps for

customers.

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Customer: “Turn a site into a game”

I released a site for RAI encouraging teenager girls to

write.

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Asks a sequence of questions.

Has challenges, points, scoreboard.

Has winners.

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Create a web based app for suggesting ideas for a new fiction.

Turn visitor from passive watcher to creator.

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So its almost a game. A web based game.

I’m already on a good start to do game development.

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Wrong.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

So what is the first game you want to make?

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http://bit.ly/agdArtInt

http://gameinternals.com/post/2072558330/understanding-pac-man-ghost-behavior

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No narrative. Hyper simple animations.

Hyper simple space.

And fixed camera, no audio sources …

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Game loops, physics, animations, AI,

growing difficulty (levels), characters.

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If not a story, a sense of purpose.

(Giving a sense of purpose on a web site is rarely a problem.)

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As web developer, you have no idea.

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And this is a very, very simple game.

The components of an opera:

story, music, scenography, scenes, actors, secondary

characters, drama, [pro singing / difficulty levels]

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Its actually worse. All the secondary characters are

moved by AI.

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You may decide to generate the scene and story each time.

And so on.

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As a web developer you have to acquire a whole new set of

concepts to do games.

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To become what?

Depends on the budget, depends on the team size.

From 0 to infinity and beyond.

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Lets stick to the worse case: a small budget, so a small team.

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Crossing the chasm

• Crossing the chasm

You will need to acquire brand new skills along two distinct lines: as game developer and as game

designer.

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And the line between the two blurs the more you know about

both.

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Note:

design in the sense of usability of UI graphic design comes after

(game) design.

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The game update loop.

Everything updates.

Your methods will be called 80 times per second on the same

object ...

instead of once per request.

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The independent life of your objects will be your saviour and

your curse.

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That is why composition is mostly used instead of inheritance.

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“Breakpoints? No, you don’t use breakpoints

much in Unity”

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http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/

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The structure of space

Even picking the most regimented, simplified, finite

solution, it’s a mess.

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Amit Patel http://bit.ly/agdHx 44

Book? Prototype.

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Game Feel

Feel is a highly technical problem.

4224047

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Material from Game Feel book examples.

Daniele Giardini http://www.demigiant.com/

See http://easings.net/en#

Soccer ball physics http://www.soccerballworld.com/Physics.htm

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Perception is a construction, and a game is a coherent universe where you may set your own

laws.

Ok, but…

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Too much creativity.

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Not Just Game Feel

Creating games today is not restricted to building arcades.

Even if you are building “small” games.

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You very often want / need a form of narrative.

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80 Days: branching universe text based, but …

Sunless Sea: the importance of a slow ship http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/237657/Postmortem_Failbetter_Games_Sunless_Sea.php

Relations and gossip: narrative!(Kardashian Hollywood)

Evolving the narrative dimension in a game is nor obvious nor

trivial.

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Example on the sublelties of these models.

Representing values like “moral stance” of a character again

requires refined modeling tools – not just a variable.

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And see the ensuing discussion on Reddit here

http://bit.ly/nar2vars

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Game Designer as Translator / Traitor

Game design and modeling practice trains you in translating work and learning situations in possible contexts for a game.

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Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Category, competition, avatar, war, reward, levels

Vs.

Inclusive, mentor, path, story, transformation

A language change.

Participative Action Research

And there is way more …

http://greweb.me/illuminated.js/parcycle/

And audio, texturing, 3D modeling, particle effects …

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So?

We’ve seen just a few of the several

things to learn.

So you need to be Da Vinci?

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The Love

You are creating the magic circle – a world with new rules.

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With games you can dance on the line between art & the masses.

In games you are in a highly creative environment.

This even if you are designing say games for health, games for EU,

like I do.

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People that have been in the field for a long time do these weak

attempts to present it as “just a profession like any other”.

They don’t believe it either.

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So …

Only The Love will make you survive this ordeal.

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Just consider in creativeness that you don’t need to author, you

just need to let yourself be authored.

You don’t need to be writer, just let yourself be written.

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Little work I do in the Indie game world puts me in contact and in

work pairs with real artists.

Some of them don’t even know they are.

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Special thanks:

Daniele Giardini for ideas & feedback

http://www.demigiant.com/

My twitter stream is mostly dedicated to game design

http://twitter.com/ppolsinelli

A blog on game design

http://designagame.eu

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