I have realized that I need to play more games. Also I don't have the time to really sit down and play so I got thinking that maybe a portable gaming device would be cool. Then I can utilize many smaller snippets of time instead of devoting long hours.

The last time I owned a portable was my old Game & Watch Donkey Kong JR. That was a great game and the only portable I have ever owned. Even my mum considered herself a gamer in those days. My sister and she even started playing the game upside down to get more of a challenge. Alas my hot tempered sister threw the game in the wall in frustration :P, and that was it for the poor fellow...

Anyway I have not paid any attention to the portable scene in a few years but I guess it it pretty much down to getting a Nintendo DS or a Sony PSP. Price is about the same, the PSP is more techy but the DS has the touch screen advantage and is compatible with Gameboy Advance games.

Right now I'm leaning towards the DS... but I really don't know. If you got any experiences or suggestions I'd really like to know...

Summer is ending, and to start things off here comes the third best practice of software engieering, as always with a game development point of view. I will try to get the rest of the article out there at a somewhat higher pace now I hope :)

Manage Requirements

Many projects fail simply because the system solves the wrong problem, when the software is finally delivered it fails to provide any benefit to the customer. Requirements need to be collected, analyzed, documented, tracked and organized. This is a fundament of any organization wishing to deliver on time and within budget. Good requirements should be a major driving force behind the project. Requirements need to be handled with care and respect. Failing to do this means almost certain project failure, even if all other practices are observed and practiced.

In game development the requirements come from the game designer, traditionally described in a big bible called the "game design document". This is the same as the "grocery lists" of old time software development and will almost certainly not produce a fun game. The "fun-ness" of a game is something that is very hard to nail down completely on a piece of paper, you simply need a working game to be able to evaluate, iterate and refine the requirements.

I have spent a few hours trying to find a new TV for my living room and shit there really is a jungle out there...

I want a 32-42" with good qualities for movies and games.
I play a lot of Wii games and view standard DVD´s so full HD is not that important.

Now I´m trying to create a list of TVs.
When I find a TV, I first use the www.testfreaks.com to check what reviewers have thought about it, then I compare prices on www.pricerunner.se
I plan to bring the list to a store so I can compare their images myself.

Maybe I overdo this? It will only end with me keeping my old TV since it is impossible to find anything perfect.

Larva Mortus by Rake in the Grass is a top down, horror arena shooter. I found the game to have great atmosphere, nice controls and great music.

In Larva Mortus you are an agent of the Agency finishing of the dark forces in a number of missions. There are both free missions and quest missions. The quest missions driving a simple story and beeing somewhat bigger often ending with a boss fight. The free missions are much there for collecting score and ammo.

The game mechanics are clear and simple and basically consists of you running around killing off monsters in rooms forming a level. If you clear a room the monsters will not respawn if you reenter the room at a later point. In the rooms are also various crates, coffins etc that you can destroy for additional goodies, such as extra ammo and time limited bonus abilities like extra damage, or berserk.

You have a nice arsenal of weapons ranging from the broadsword, the mandatory shotgun to more advanced weapons.

In some levels you need to clear all rooms, rescue hostages, find an artifact or kill the boss monster.

There is also some rpg-ish things that i did not get a good understanding of (i.e. level up) and that part seemed more or less glued on.

There are some potential problems in the game design that does not serve the game any good.

The monster respawn thingy could be exploited by a stubborn player to get a high score (= high level). I did not try this and there could potentially be some protection against this.

You regain your health by just idling (I think this is a rather poor game mechanic in general) making the pace of the game slower as you can simply opt to idle in a cleared room to get full health. There is no drawback to idling exept that the game gets boring.

Me and johno just finished an interview thingy for Emil-O-Rama over at swedish gaming pod-cast spelradion. Emil-O-Rama is a show dedicated to indie and retro gaming. The episode will be "aired" on friday, so make sure you check it out (in swedish only though)

Was a really cool experience, and both me and johno are quite good at ranting. Will be really interesting listening to the finished version :)

And thanx to tdj for giving them a hint about us!

Update!

The podcast is online now! Get it at: Emil-O-Rama: Avsnitt 15

Been thinking about narrative and stories in games, and one sleepless night I got an idea. I will now ramble a bit about it.

I'm of the oppinion that games are not stories. If you want a story you should read a book or see a movie. These are both superb mediums at telling stories.

Stories in games are actually the actions the player take. The moves, choises, actions, confrontations etc. In this sense all games are non-linear, as you play them each differently each and every time, and you get a possibly different story from the game every time.

One way of thinking about it would be to have a narrator/speaker sitting beside you as you play and then retell you the session in an exiting way. You could also imagine the story of a game in the conversations between gamers after a lan party. "Did you see the move I did when I ..."

This would implicate that games are actally not a media (carrier of information/stories) in the sense of you getting some story from the developer. Quite the opposite games let you create your own stories.

A game is a language.

The letters are your choises (push button A, move mouse right), the words and sentences are combinations of choises that make some meaning (easy to imagine as a combo in a fighting game), the rules of the game on different levels are the spelling and grammar, paragraphs are your choises to complete some goal, etc.

When thinking about a game as a language this way the traditional story elements of games become quite strange (i.e. mid game cut scene). Imagine the english language as it is, but in the middle of all novels there is a mandatory pre fabricated paragraph!

I don't actually know if these thoughts are meaningful or productive. But it would be interesting to analyse a few games in regards of their "language" capabilities.

I found an article that caught my interest; Iterative Design. Much of the writing in this article resonates with my and johnos article Software Engineering Best Practices in Game Development that I have published parts of (maybe it's time for another part soon).

I think it is really interesting that the "normal" software industry has been doing iterative development for several years now, and the gaming industry is just about to take this on. Maybe soon someone will realize that games are first and foremost a software product.

I also don't understand why the writer calls it "Iterative Design", sure the article has a design focus. But the whole development effort should be iterative, not just the design part.

Another thing is that game developers seem to be cowards, only releasing to "focus groups" and special testers. Get your games out to the people from day one! It is only when delivering working software to the end users over and over again that you are truly iterative!

You really need to be eXtreme!