Maybe tired of documenting in this de log too :) need to go back and reread to see if any of this is useful!

I'm not tired of making games- that part is still quite great. I am, however, tired of tweeting.

Also, wow, I'm TIRED. Making a game every day is no small task. I wonder when the skies will clear and I'll see the light on the other side!

Okay, I made a game in the genre I will call "very arcane ruleset games." It's weird, making games like this, because the joy comes from studying something that makes no sense. I think the best ones of these come together to create a sort of whole where once you've finished comprehending the ruleset you go somewhere higher-up with it. But... these types of games are for a very niche audience.

Ninth Alchemist (tweet)

DAY 9. PERSPECTIVE ( & PRESSURE )

Frick, this stealth game is so fun. Droqtober Game 8 tweet (video)

I basically saw shelliest's day 8 inktober submission (before it was tweeted - I did NOT make Game 8 in one hour lol; it was more like 3-4 hrs) and the whole idea flowed from there.

USING PAST KNOWLEDGE:
- Familiarity with Entities Pathfinding on a grid (I have a little wrapper for it but mostly directly using Godot's AStar2D).
- I've implemented a VERY similar platformering/climbing control scheme a few times in the past, but never made anything out of them. (fun fact: the first time was for a game that i was trying to make for SHARECART1000! (fun fact: i have never successfully made a sharecart game))

Money and magic:

I often want to play with strange resources, and money is one that comes up quite often. But, I realized just now why I don't like the way money feels. It's social.

Many other resources have the flavour of being a 'force of nature', but buying something from a person at a shop is more like a conversation, and I need to remember to treat it that way.

A transaction between people isn't magic or science: it's social.

* And, having these ideas and chasing them down is some of the most pleasurable and productive and satisfying stuff there is. I say "there is a chance that this idea, or one like it", but what I mean is that any individual such idea has a chance. In aggregate, it is almost guaranteed that when I do get to a good place, the road was paved entirely with chance successes.

I'm playing with tiles (the idea of 'underwater magic', as a result of a yet earlier train of thought not worth recording) and placed these purple ones down and just looked at it for a moment and thought, "hey, maybe moving through a diagonal passageway with a sharp turn like that (indicated by the black arrow) could be fun."

Playing around with making games is absolutely full of moments like this, and documenting every one of them makes the process significantly less free. It's why I can't really stream game development, and why sometimes timers are harmful - it feels like there's a weird sort of pressure to 'only have good ideas' that I don't feel in other contexts.

This is by no means a good idea, but there is a chance that this idea, or one like it, will lead me to a good place. Who knows?

I spent the last few sessions timing myself! I'm going to go back to my day 1-3 casualness and not record so much.

Expressing values through 'systems' --- and NOT about the choices the player makes within the system, but just... presenting a system which draws attention to the concepts relevant to the values. Not prescriptive. Leave room.

Day 8. Value

Today I'm thinking about subjective value structures - what if you're playing an arcade game with multiple scoring systems, connected to individual characters with their own 'Value Systems'?
I have two related problems: 1. Conveyance, and 2. Content.

Problem 1. Conveyance

How do I make it clear why a certain character is giving you points while another is taking them away? The world needs choices subtle enough to make this kind of thing interesting, but... the individuals and elements that make up the world need to be a little trope-y in order for them to be readable at all.

Problem 2. Content

This is a highly abstract idea in my head; it's exploring the high-level concept of "value structures" without actually approaching what those value structures are. This is an idea lacking in content. I'm theoretically fine with creating abstract value structures which do not map to real-world value structures but...

a) It's harder, and

b) it may be less meaningful than referring to such existing structures? This is about having value structures, not what the values are themselves; can non-specificity really be that useful? Thinking about Anna Anthropy's criticism of Gris:

Quotegames whose narratives are metaphors often feel trite and insubstantial [..] using the limited and awkward vocabulary of (especially digital) games to tell a story about Depression or Grief or Mourning, it could feel safer and more appealing to abstract that story. but i think abstraction weakens these themes. [..] Grief is such a Specific experience, and there are so many different kinds. when you abstract (Grief as a whole, not This Specific Grief) you are universalizing the experience, and arriving at something that feels vague and intangible. i want to see Specificity in our stories.

Quote from: p32, end of chapter 1The real source of our theories is conjecture, and the real source of our knowledge is conjecture alternating with criticism.

[..]

The role of experiment and observation is to choose between existing theories, not to be the source of new ones.

realizing my take will have to be on thecatamites' text as texture, of course. wish me luck :x

As always, I kick it off with Webster's 1913 and a quick internet search for 'art element texture'. Also this one is gonna have to be fast.