BlueCupTools Podcats! Grundislav & ThreeOhFour! Episode 82!

[Mr Underhill]

Aaah, I thought there was a new one already. Waitiiiing

[Amayirot Akago]

Taking another week off because @ben_304 has a wee cough! Back soon

[Grundislav]

Episode 111

Community relations!

[m0ds]

Nice one man...men...! Some good advice there. I need to settle on issues of time rather than talent myself. Anyway, now, about Ben Jordan...

[Snarky]

Yay, another dramatic reading! My paranoia instantly makes me wonder whether I was the bore who kept going on about Ben Jordan...

Regarding negative experiences on the AGS forums, it's probably something moderators see a lot more of, since we get the complaints. I didn't mean to suggest it has anything to do with "toxic gamer culture" â€" it's hard to generalize over what gets people upset, it's really individual (and often unpredictable). But you see people talking crap about the forums elsewhere on the internet as well, usually about us being too cliquish and standoffish, and you touched on it being intimidating. It's hard to tell from the inside what creates that impression (sure, with Mittens and other meetups, IRC etc. we're probably more tightly knit than many other online communities), and I don't remember feeling that way myself when I first joined the forums.

I've almost finished listening through the backlog of episodes, so there aren't going to be as many topic suggestions from me going forward. (Since it's listening to the podcast that tends to inspire topic ideas.) However, how about... ?

The future evolution of adventure games. You're both working on games that to some extent move away from traditional inventory-puzzle-based adventure gameplay, and many of the biggest titles these days do the same. Why do you want to work on "less traditional" games? Have adventure games finally got past being stuck in the 1990s? Does that mean puzzles are outdated? Are there other genre conventions we could stand to lose? What should a modern adventure game play like, today or five years from now?

[SilverSpook]

RE: No one to talk to about first person shooters: I started out gaming, and game dev, in first person shooters, and only recently immigrated to point-and-click country.   (Made Half Life 1, Unreal, Unreal Tournament, Deus Ex mods, etc.)  I play all of Doom 1 and Doom 2 at least once a year.

[Grundislav]

Episode 112

Knowing when to give up.

[Stupot]

Enjoyed listening to this one. I much prefer it without the long 'what have you been playing' segment.

Knowing when to give up has rarely been a problem for me because I generally tend to have already given up before it has even become a question.

There was one project I'd been stubbornly calling 'active' even though I hardly made any progress but despite it being fairly far through production and despite getting some help with some animations I officially have up on it because I just didnt like it any more. It was quite liberating really.

[Snarky]

Nice discussion! Glad you "digressed" onto some more general reflections towards the end â€" I thought those were the most interesting aspects.

You argued that one good reason to give up (at least if you're doing it as a hobby) is if it's no longer fun. But I remember you saying in earlier episodes that at some point every project you've worked on has become a chore; you burn out, lose faith in it or can no longer appreciate the things that drew you to it in the first place. It seems like that's something you just have to power through if you're going to finish anything.

Is it reasonable to expect every step in game development to be fun in its own right, or are there some things you just have to do because they have to be done? I mean, even if you like downhill skiing (to take another hobby) you probably don't enjoy standing in line for the ski lift, but it's just an (almost) unavoidable part of the experience: You have to put up with a bit of boredom to get the overall enjoyment. Unless you absolutely can't stand the unenjoyable part, it's probably not a good reason to give up on an otherwise fun and rewarding activity.

Good luck with the publishers, Grundislav! Hope it all works out soon.

Also, moderators can edit the thread title, if you want to bypass Ben's inaction.

[Click'd]

Also, moderators can edit the thread title, if you want to bypass Ben's inaction.

Long live the PODCATS!

[Stupot]

Also, moderators can edit the thread title, if you want to bypass Ben's inaction.

Long live the PODCATS!

Woah!!! No way. Am I the only one who has never even noticed that since it was changed 4 years ago? Incredible.

[Andail]

Yay, lots of old-time forum nostalgia in these past few episodes!

[m0ds]

Drinking game: Take a sip every time Ben says "you know"

...die of alcohol poisoning in that last episode Nice stuff though, interesting discussion!

[Snarky]

Sorry for the false hope, BCT-fans. I'm just bumping the thread to suggest another topic: Toolchains, debugging, and how to test a game in development.

When you're making a game, you often need to run it for testing/debugging purposes, e.g. to check that an animation looks right, or to test that an interaction you just scripted works, try to figure out why a bug is happening, etc. AGS has some simple debugging features built in (e.g. a debugger with breakpoints, teleport to a certain room, ...), and there are other tools and modules designed to help during development (like Monsieur OUXX's brand new Breakpoints/DisplayGUI module, or the SpeechCenter plugin to create voice acting scripts). I seem to remember seeing a devstream that showed a little control panel to adjust the positions of animations in-game (though I'm not sure how it was exported/saved). Do you use any of these? Do you implement any features of your own to assist you during the development, like ways to bypass certain puzzles? Are there any tools/features you're missing that could make your life easier?

I'm working on a game right now that has a bunch of randomness to it, and I'm thinking that for testing I'll need some way to bypass and control the results directly, so I don't have to try something ~100 times to check that the thing with 1% chance works correctly. Stuff like that.

Similarly, are there particular apps outside of AGS that you rely on to make your games, and do you benefit from particular tricks, shortcuts, plugins or macros in those apps?

[Ponch]

Ah! A new post! Surely there's a new podcast!

Sorry for the false hope, BCT-fans.

oh...

Good topic suggestions, though. I don't know about GrundlBen, but I load all my games with debug codes to make my life (and the lives of my playtesters) easier.   Just remember to disable them before you make the game available to the rest of the world.

[Grundislav]

Hey, a new episode!

Episode 113

Taking different approaches.

[Stupot]

Hey, a new episode!

Episode 113

Taking different approaches.

Cool. Is it on iTunes yet? I can't see it.

[Snarky]

Cool. Is it on iTunes yet? I can't see it.

+1

[MiteWiseacreLives!]

Holy Snickerdoodle! A Podcast!!!

Cool. Is it on iTunes yet? I can't see it.

+1

+2

why can I only get 10kB/s download from your site?
And A Golden Wake was good, people are just now realizing that (maybe), I think back on it very fondly like Inherit the Earth

[Ponch]

Holy Snickerdoodle! A Podcast!!!

Sweet biscuits, you're right! And just in time for Christmas!