John Carmack on iOS Game Development
id just released Rage HD for iPhone and iPad this week and it’s great. It’s an on-rails shooter with outstanding graphics and easily worth the asking price of $2.
John Carmack has been talking to various weblogs since launch, saying rather interesting things like this in an interview with Kotaku:
“The mobile games that will define the future,” the co-founder of id Software said, “are going to be more connected and social and id Software is not likely going to be the company that does one of those titles. We will take targets of opportunity and the low-hanging fruit for it, but I don’t imagine we are going to be the revolutionary platform definer that really leverages mobile devices to their absolute maximum.
Also, this:
Rage is on on-rails shooter, restricting players from the freedom of movement they’ll get from the entirely-different console and PC Rage game coming out next September as well as from Doom, Quake and id’s other classics. An iPhone and iPad lack the buttons, sticks or cursor control customary for the standard first-person shooter style of games id makes, and it doesn’t sound like Carmack wants to pretend they do.
“It does feel kind of like an inferior version when you play that,” he said, referring to trying any FPS game on an iPhone or iPad. “It’s cool that it’s on there. It’s good enough to enjoy and have fun. But clearly you’re a step down from analog sticks, which is a step down down from mouse-keyboard interface. And it just makes me think that may not be the best style of game on these platforms.
You can find another interview with TUAW here.
Automatypewriter
The Automatypewriter is a typewriter that can type by itself and detect what is being typed on it. It is designed as a platform for playing interactive fiction games:
A new way to interact with fiction from Jonathan M. Guberman on Vimeo.
Triple Town
To my knowledge, this is the first indie title publicly available on the Kindle. An industry first, low dev costs, high potential payoff and a chance to try out an original game idea. What more could you ask for?
There are many design lessons, but I’ll focus on three:
- Evergreen designs are not puzzles
- Reinvent old genres from the root
- Create better games faster by killing visual and technological crutches.
The game looks great, i hope it’ll make the jump to iOS sooner than later.
Finishing a Game
Derek Yu (of Spelunky fame) shares 15 tips on how to finish a game. Sound advice, and many of his tips are not limited to games development in their applicability:
We’ve all had that feeling about at least one game, comic book, movie, etc., that comes out: “Gee, I could do better than this! This is overrated.” But it’s important to take a step back and realize that, hey, they put in the time to finish a project and I haven’t. That’s at least one thing they might be better than me at, and it’s probably why they have the recognition I don’t! If you treat finishing like a skill, rather than simply a step in the process, you can acknowledge not only that it’s something you can get better at, but also what habits and thought processes get in your way.
Biolab Disaster
Biolab Disaster is an impressive jump’n'shoot game, developed entirely using HTML5 and Javascript. You can read some technical background information here and it looks like the game engine will be released sometime soon here.
Bouncing Beholder
Bouncing Beholder is a JavaScript platform game that fits in 1024 bytes by Marijn Haverbeke for the JS1K contest.
FarmVillains
I wouldn’t feel great about granting them access to my Facebook profile:
“Zynga’s motto is ‘Do Evil,’” he says. “I would venture to say it is one of the most evil places I’ve run into, from a culture perspective and in its business approach. I’ve tried my best to make sure that friends don’t let friends work at Zynga.”
My Four-Year-Old Son Plays Grand Theft Auto
I egged him on to take the car in front of him which was waiting at the red light. He quickly looked up at me with disgust and refused, stating that the car was already owned by the person driving it. His response absolutely amazed me, so I decided to sit back and observe how he chose to interact with this highly controversial game without the aid of a rotten-minded adult.
Piczle Lines post-mortem is a great summary by Score Studios on what went well and what didn’t in the development of their game.
