Idle Thumbs 142: Unmasking the Brain Burglar

[Jake]

Idle Thumbs 142:

 

 

Unmasking the Brain Burglar

The door to the plane opens; the crowd is deafening. Chris Remo descends the stairs onto the tarmac, the smell of Steam Dev Days still on his skin, the wave of the future shaping his every step. "What did you see?" someone asks. He continues past. "What did they tell you? What will happen to all of us?" another asks, as he pushes them aside, his gaze set. "Where are you going? What do you know!" Only as the door to his limousine swings to close does a boy see the Steam Machine and controller prototype under Chris' arm.

 

Things Discussed: SteamOS, Steam Controller, Candy Crush Saga, The Banner Saga, Candy Land, The Great Game, DayZ, Broken Age, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 (Wii)

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[BigJKO]

Brilliant, just in time for my trip to work. Thanks, guys.

[robotslave]

I like you guys, but I think maybe you should start being a little more self-aware when you say "we should put that on the blog" on the cast.  Go look at the blog.  Look at it!  Tell me what you see.

[BigJKO]

I don't actually think the two No One Lives Forever games are available on any digital platform. Because no one knows who owns the IP anymore. Fox Interactive was gobbled up by Vivendi, who then was consumed by Activision/Blizzard. And when an rep from Activision was asked if they had the right to the game they said:

 

 

  Quote

The person who I normally talk to about that stuff does not believe that we currently have the rights. They’v never seen it. They’ve never been given the permission to put that stuff on Good Old Games. They basically said, ‘If we had it, I would love to have been able to reissue those games.

At this time I do not believe Activision has the rights to No One Lives Forever, so if there were to be a reissue or remake or something like that, it wouldn’t come from Activision. I don’t know what the future holds for No One Lives forever, but I don’t think that that future involves Activision.

 

It is such a weird, sad situation.. I wonder what would happen if someone, anyone, just.. put a copy of it up on GOG? Would the actual rights-holder finally come out of the woodwork to stop that? Would nobody be able to do anything??

 

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/04/09/no-one-lives-forever-rights-nowhere-to-be-found/

[Abban]

First post, hello, I'm Abban.

 

What was the name of the Unity book you were talking about?

[I_smell]

Haven't listened yet, but man I fucking cracked the hell up at this title.

[Roderick]

Surely the motorcyclist coming by when Chris starts talking about Full Throttle is the pinnacle of the podcast. We're done here.

[DaveC]

That bit about getting into game development struck a chord with me. I come from more of a 3D animation / motion graphics background so I'm not quite as far removed as the guy in that email, but I'm turning 28 soon and also have recently had a bit of an epiphany about this stuff. 

 

Anyway, I'm about a month and a half into learning GameMaker and I've managed to put together a thing that sort of just about works (which is a lot further than I thought I'd get by now!).

 

It's been exhilarating, especially coming into it with zero programming knowledge. Like Chris I've also found the learning process interesting and fun.

Maybe it's because I've been in a frame of mind where I'm always thinking ''how does this apply to the kinds of games I want to make? How does this get me closer to my goal?''.

 

Anyway just wanted to put that out there. I'd recommend giving all of this a shot to anybody that's thinking about it. 

[Zeusthecat]

Candy Land... Probably my most played game of 2013. (Sadly, I am not being sarcastic at all.)

[plasticflesh]

I've had a hard time getting twine off the ground, sadly. It tends to crash when I try to move cards around, and then my save files are corrupted and hard to open. I've had this experience on Mac 10.7.4, Windows 7, and Windows 8. I've gone into research ways to patch and fix Twine, but then I'm in a loop of learning to patch an application, and I figure I could be learning JS at that point, which I basically need to know to fix Twine. And then I lose focus because I am a bad autodidact.

I hate to harsh the mellow of the prospects of Twine games, I'd really love for it to work.

[youmeyou]

  On 1/24/2014 at 12:01 PM, DaveC said:

That bit about getting into game development struck a chord with me. I come from more of a 3D animation / motion graphics background so I'm not quite as far removed as the guy in that email, but I'm turning 28 soon and also have recently had a bit of an epiphany about this stuff. 

 

Anyway, I'm about a month and a half into learning GameMaker and I've managed to put together a thing that sort of just about works (which is a lot further than I thought I'd get by now!).

 

It's been exhilarating, especially coming into it with zero programming knowledge. Like Chris I've also found the learning process interesting and fun.

Maybe it's because I've been in a frame of mind where I'm always thinking ''how does this apply to the kinds of games I want to make? How does this get me closer to my goal?''.

 

Anyway just wanted to put that out there. I'd recommend giving all of this a shot to anybody that's thinking about it. 

 

That's my background too, so it's great to read stuff like this. I'm not exactly sure yet how much I want to get into the nitty gritty of programming, but it does seem a lot more accessible now than it ever was.

 

I love the idea mentioned of prototyping in Twine or Processing. Might be a good way to craft and refine an idea, then pitch it and find someone who's actually proficient at programming to jump on board.

[Jake]

  On 1/24/2014 at 5:56 PM, youmeyou said:

I love the idea mentioned of prototyping in Twine or Processing. Might be a good way to craft and refine an idea, then pitch it and find someone who's actually proficient at programming to jump on board.

I think it has power even if you want to pursue it yourself. They're both incredibly good at getting something up and running incredibly quickly, which can let you know what direction you should go next, whether that's polishing the game in the tools you're using, moving on to another prototype, taking your game concept to another toolset, or using it as a pitch to find others to collaborate with.

[Sean]

  On 1/24/2014 at 5:56 PM, youmeyou said:

I love the idea mentioned of prototyping in Twine or Processing. Might be a good way to craft and refine an idea, then pitch it and find someone who's actually proficient at programming to jump on board.

 

I actually just did this a couple months ago at Campo -- we were talking about a way to start the game and I had an idea for it and said "fuck it, I can make this in twine in a few hours" and then did and sent it around. In two minutes folks were able to glean the idea and we then were able to jump right to the conversation about how we'd actually put an experience that felt like playing the twine game into the actual game.

[plasticflesh]

Oh neat, just this month twine released 1.4.1 for OS X. So that's a hopeful remedy to my previous whining. 

[JoshCalderhead]

Thanks for reading my email on the show! Was super cool to hear what Sean had to say about prototyping in Twine. Getting the narrative into a pretty easy system would probably really help form and refine the idea and whole of the game. About using the Unity 3D platformer tutorial, it was more for getting a handle on the tools and finding out how the workflow would come together for my personal use. I'm grateful for the advice of all you fine folk. I come away even more inspired. Thanks!

[Spenny]

I had to look up the CoD:BLOPS2 game show the e-mailer wrote in about. She was unfortunately incorrect in saying it was done on the Wii, it's done on the WiiU so I'd imagine the version they are using is on par with the xbox or playstation's version. It's still quite wonderful. It's done in the style that resembles American Idol mixed with Survivor. I had a good laugh when I saw their equivalent to the torch extinguishing ceremony.

 

I couldn't find playlists of the seasons, so I made my own:

 

 

[jccalhoun]

interesting to hear the emails about LAN experiences. My dissertation was an ethnography of LAN parties. They are still going strong at IU. the Gaming@IU club has been holding events once a semester for over a decade. more can be seen at iugaming.com

[N1njaSquirrel]

  On 1/24/2014 at 8:56 AM, Abban said:

First post, hello, I'm Abban.

 

What was the name of the Unity book you were talking about?

 

I second this. I'd like to know the title of that unity book.

[Blambo]

I've found that a lot of indies use Gamemaker from start to finish, because it can be used as an all-around rapid prototyping tool and also has a decent amount of advanced functionality for those who take the time to learn it, and because having your entire creative process in one environment (more or less) is a really great way to visualize the end product very very early on.

[juv3nal]

Haven't listened to the cast yet, but re: prototyping in twine, it's my understanding that Kentucky Route Zero actually integrates Twine directly into their actual game. Also have read that the recently Kickstarted Night in the Woods will be doing something along those lines.

[elmuerte]

Took some effort, but I found out the domains Sean registered:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

██████████████.com/.net/.org

 

  Reveal hidden contents

I bet you tried to highlight that. You idiot.

[jeremywc]

  On 1/26/2014 at 3:51 PM, elmuerte said:

  Reveal hidden contents

I bet you tried to highlight that. You idiot.

 

Maaaaybe.

 

[melmer]

I tried to find the domain as soon as the cast ended too . I didn't really get very far, but then again I don't really know what I'm doing.

[tabacco]

  On 1/25/2014 at 4:29 AM, N1njaSquirrel said:

I second this. I'd like to know the title of that unity book.

 

I haven't listened to the cast yet, but Chris recommended this to me at one point years ago and I found it an excellent starting point: http://www.amazon.com/Unity-Development-Example-Beginners-Guide/dp/1849695261/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1390864174&sr=8-1&keywords=game+programming+by+example+unity&tag=idlthu-20

 

(This is the newer edition, obviously, since 4.x didn't exist a couple of years ago )

 

  On 1/24/2014 at 7:30 AM, robotslave said:

I like you guys, but I think maybe you should start being a little more self-aware when you say "we should put that on the blog" on the cast.  Go look at the blog.  Look at it!  Tell me what you see.

 

I was going to swap out the blog tracker on the front page with a twitch tracker, but...

[JonCole]

I also saw Chris recommend this Unity book on Twitter - http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006O8WY1U/