I promised to post a review of this a very long time ago now. In truth I finished reading it a long time ago I’ve just been far too busy to blog anything until now.
I bought this book as a follow-up to Blink as I wanted to know more about subconcious decision making and instinct. On that front I am not at all disappointed.
Gut Feelings demonstrates alot of the ways that we make decisions subconciously and presents data resulting from many case studies around the world pitting logic and reason against intuition. The Conclusions are very convincing and I finished the book happier in the knowledge that I could apply what I had just learnt not just to my work (more on that in a moment) but to my everyday life.
An interesting problem that crops up occassionally in Second Life is the question of Whether or not a Viewer bug that affects rendering should be fixed.
In most MMO’s the idea of fixing a bug is a very simple thing. Bugs are bad and there to be squashed. However as soon as you have an economy that pushes roughly $450m a year around the world you start to get into all sorts of problems.
The most recent issue is a fix to the order of Alpha rendering on Avatar Skins. Ever since I can remember The Eyebrows and Lips were rendered below the texture and this has been used by Skin makers to allow users to modify their skins without destroying them by making the lips a little darker or adjusting the overall skintone.
As you can se ein the picture above though changing the render order to draw these elements above the texture can have some very nasty side-effects that could threaten to ruin the Skin industry.
Fortunately this fix is being reverted by Linden Labs as they aren’t so stupid as to incur the wrath of their entire customer base and destroy a lucrative industry with a few lines of code.
The original bug report (and hysterical comments) can be found here.
You can find my musings on the impact of Second Lifes economy on it’s technical progression beneath the cut.
Normally it’s the other way around. You lay out a level and a concept artist will create an impression of what it might look like for the Enviroment artists to work from.
However Damnation are apparently going a different way and basing their Level Designs on Concept art.
This fanmade video representing a key part of Eve Onlines large backstory (essentially the start of the Caldari/Gallente war) is absolutely amazing. It was made possible by one very dedicated player and CCP’s immense support by allowing him access to their own machinma tools.
It is a real shame however that the actual fleet combat in the game isn’t anywhere near as fast-paced or close-in as the combat in this video.
To CCP: If you want an experienced Designer to head up a project to create a single player narrative driven space combat game based on the history of Eve with a direct control combat model then I am volunteering for the job!
There is a belief that a good game never punishes players and only rewards them.
It’s a belief that often causes debate amongst Designers because the phrase is usually reinterpreted to mean “The player must never fail.” and this couldn’t be more wrong. Failure does not equal Punishment and in fact Failure is an intrinsic feature of all games and forms of play.
One of the biggest problems is that failure is thought of as being a negative thing. If you fail the mission then it’s Game Over. This is only a correlative relationship however in that Punishment (which is almost always negative) often follows Failure (which can be positive). “Cum hoc ergo propter hoc” as somebody who understands Latin might say (I don’t I just stole it from Wikipedia to look clever).
Failure is a Positive experience when it is possible for us to learn from it. This may sound a bit like a line from a self-help book but it’s something that is worth emphasising.
This managed to pass me by when it first appeared but Andreas Zecher made a series of Flash Games called Understanding Games which try to explain the fundamentals of Game Design via Game Play. It is to Games as Understanding Comics is to Comics.
The games clearly take alot from Raph’s Theory of Fun and is a cool grounding for anybody unfamiliar with the medium (and could probably stand to re-iterate the basic principles veteran games designers might forget in the white hot forges of crunch).
For a fun Friday morning exercise try and identify some Design Principles he’s used but not explained. That’ll be that unconscious mind at work again I suspect.
I’m always keeping an eye out for good Level Design resources to recommend to people as I believe that it is a hideously under-documented topic and what documentation does exist is often buried deep in forums, wikis or blogs. The remainder I find isn’t actually useful documentation that Designers can learn from. A large part of this is due to the way the information is presented and written rather than the quality of the advice.
So in the interests of trying to aggregate the genuinely useful links I find I shall be trying to keep this post up to date with what I find.
Single-Player
Level Design Pre-Production - Dating back to 2003 this article goes over the practical aspects of actually designing a level layout before you start building it.
Using Loop Layouts - From the Valve Community Wiki. This is a concise and to the point explanation of using looping layouts in single Player Levels with several case-studies from Valve Games.
Bouncing or Back-Tracking – Also from the Valve Wiki another concise page detailing effective use of Back-Tracking or “Bounces” in Level Layouts. Again lots of excellent case-studies.
Color Theory – Another page from the Valve Wiki! This page ties-in with what I describe in Continuity Level Design about contrast and composition but also covers more general color theory.
Multiplayer
Competitive Level Design – Dating all the way back to Quake 3 this page is an excellent grounding in the tactical and strategic considerations required by designing competitive maps.
Level Design Patterns – (Warning PDF Alert!) Skip to Page 10 for the useful stuff. A Good grounding with Case Studies on common Patterns in Level Design. The Principles can be applied to other genres than FPS games quite easily.
Making de_dust – Proof that it’s better to be lucky than smart the creator of the worlds most played Level takes you through the creation of de_dust.
I am currently reading Gut Feelings: Short Cuts to Better Decision Making by Gerd Gigerenzer. If you’ve ever Read Blink (or even if you haven’t) then I recommend this book as it deals with the concept of intuition, instinct and the unconscious in a much more detailed way. I’d argue that you can completely bypass Blink altogether and go straight for this as it is a much more useful book and very easy to read.
However this post isn’t about the book (I’ll save that for when I’ve finished it and filled it full of post-its). It’s actually about what I’m doing on this site.
When I write a blog post I am not so much telling the world things or laying out facts. This is part of my learning process. By writing about the things I discover or have learnt I’m helping to improve my understanding of them. I actually use this blog as a mnemonic device. By the act of writing about a topic I am ushering that information into my unconscious and hopefully helping it to become intuitive.
In short I’m writing this for me and not you. If you find it helpful than I’m glad. But be aware that what you see on these pages is rarely ever backed up by anything resembling evidence or research. It’s either all cribbed from books I’ve read or lessons I’ve learnt so take it with a pinch of salt.
Like a lot of Designers I tend to operate on my gut instincts a lot. When generating a new design or mechanic I tend to operate on automatic, letting my instincts rule the creative process. I believe that in the early stages of Design when you are roughing out what you want this is the best way to operate. By Instinct. Our unconscious mind is powerful as anybody who does anything remotely Creative will attest. Companies pay a lot of money for people with good instincts.
Prompted by this article over at Bit-Tech on How AI in Games works it made me want to blog about some of the ways you can make your enemy AI appear smarter without having to re-write your AI back end or invest in expensive middleware.
SCRIPTING
A huge amount of what convinces us a game has good AI is often completely scripted. Nothing ruins the illusion of AI like the Level Designers treating them purely like cardboard cutouts or filler. What the AI is doing before they start fighting is just as important as what happens during the fight.
My favorite reference for believable AI scripting are the NOLF games. Yes you couldn’t go more than ten yards without stumbling on a pair of AI guards having a conversation but it adds so much to their characters that you become far more forgiving towards them.
The arrival of an enemy is a great opportunity to make them seem smarter than they really are. AI that Rapel down a wall before fighting you or who shout for backup when they see you causing two more enemies to sprint around the corner. These are almost always scripted events but most Players will attribute it all to the AI.
Even just adding Patrol routes or some good ambient animations can make a very simple AI character appear more inteligent.
It’s Friday and frankly I’m too tired to post anything too thoughtful.
The week has been an interesting one with RPS linking to my Level Design piece on Sunday which made a complete mess of my my stats graph by putting a big spike in the middle.
However this is a link round-up so here is some reading:
There is a belief that a good game never punishes players and only rewards them.
by Gerd Gigerenzer. If you’ve ever Read Blink (or even if you haven’t) then I recommend this book as it deals with the concept of intuition, instinct and the unconscious in a much more detailed way. I’d argue that you can completely bypass Blink altogether and go straight for this as it is a much more useful book and very easy to read.
