Also, taking breaks remains vital. More breaks, please!

I guess what I mean is that yesterday and today were stressful because I was spending a lot of time holding several moving parts in my head. Things were disconnected, and if I lost the thread they would never be properly connected. That's how it felt, anyway.

I'd like to keep things simple, to know how things are connected and to make sure it's not complicated.

Okay, so I actually had the whole idea since the beginning of how to connect things up. I think this was an absolute misuse of 29. SCREECH, but I did just typo it as 29. SCREEN while listening to some Vaporwave Chill.

SCREEN would have been a highly appropriate prompt.

Reflections:

One of the things I like a lot about droqtober is that at the end of the day, I get to put the project down. It's done. This is a powerful way to control scope creep -- not as a production concern, but as an artistic-motivation-inspiration-fuel concern. When I went to bed yesterday, I knew I still had more left to do. When I woke up today, I knew what I was going to be spending the day doing, even if I didn't know exactly what form it would take. And I don't mean I "knew" like I know when I wake up tomorrow I'll make a new game... It's a much more restrictive knowing.

What I mean is that the Day 12, 28, 29 project was scope creeped as far as Droqtober goes. The work spilled over, and worse than spilling over from one day into the next, it spilled into hour after hour. Most of these games are done in 3-4 hours. On days 28 and 29, I ended up working more like 8-9 hours...

For a schedule without weekends, that's a lot. I'm not saying that it's a bad thing, but I do want to acknowledge the amount of energy it took... I'm tired and I wouldn't want to work on something like this that lasts much longer. I'm glad it's done.

Also, I don't mean to prescribe. You might find that you love the idea of a thousand crepusculant lucifers. Maybe it's a joke that keeps on giving, or it's representative of a consistent style. I'm thinking about the name crepusculant lucifer in my own (narrow, personal, particular!) way.

How long will it remain relevant, interesting, worth it to you? How long will it keep on giving?

Right. The latter part of the subject line: Juicy oatmeal is still oatmeal.

I'm intrigued to apply this to juice, too. Juice can hurt when it's overdone, when it doesn't "get out of the way" like "laser cannon," but instead dominates the mental landscape like "crepusculant lucifer" does.

Re-using the same juice over and over can't carry an experience forever; that's okay! It doesn't have to. But when designing juice, ask yourself how often it's going to steal the spotlight (think in literal numbers: will it be center stage 1 time per player, or 1000 times across a whole playthrough of the game?) and then ask yourself how often it deserves it.

Adjacent "laser cannon", "crepusculant lucifer" is hilariously overwrought.

Suppose a work is not a series of interesting choices... just a series of interesting moments. Once those moments cease to be interesting, the user disengages; it is no longer performing its function.

We do not continue to eat a meal once the food is gone and all that remain are bones and cutlery, even if those things are beautiful.

What's wrong with oatmeal?

In So you want to build a generator... Kate Compton describes "the 10,000 Bowls of Oatmeal problem."

Quote from: Kate ComptonI can easily generate 10,000 bowls of plain oatmeal, with each oat being in a different position and different orientation, and mathematically speaking they will all be completely unique. But the user will likely just see a lot of oatmeal. Perceptual uniqueness is the real metric, and it's darn tough.

Boiling this oatmeal problem down to one of perceptual uniqueness misrepresents the problem.

When writing, when drawing, when making a game, when creating any bit of content, ask: What is EXCITING about it? What is NEW here? What is it doing that might make you burst into your friend's room and holler, "Look what I found!" or "did!"?

Rather than Perceptual uniqueness, consider instead the simple benchmark of Delight, or if you like, Fun. Sometimes you need to generate oceans of content in order to properly enshrine a particular beautiful thing -- in Probability 0, old and crusty thing that it is, the level generator is, to my eye, stupidly simple. It is a game about jumping and shooting and awkwardly positioning yourself around corners. The levels that it generates are just... not that interesting or valuable on their own merit. That's alright, though. They are there to be forgotten. The delight comes from jumping, shooting, and awkwardly positioning yourself around corners, among other things. The levels are not designed, they are in your way, they are passed through, and they are occasionally destroyed.

So, getting back to Backus' "crepusculant lucifer" question. What's the "better way of naming things"?

Crepusculant lucifer as a name is hilariously overwrought. It makes me curious about the definition of a word I've never read before: crepusculant. It suggests something strange and abstract and dangerous: lucifer. But the phrase "better way of naming things" implies that the question might be "Can I hand-generate a hundred bowls of oatmeal like this?" Each name is its own little work of art, its own potential source of delight.

There is delight in "crepusculant lucifer," but it's not delight you can repeat ad infinitum. It is a work of art, and it stands alone.

There is no delight in "laser cannon," but at least it gets out of the way.

Quote from: @nihilocrat / Kenny Backuswhat is a better way of naming things in a sci-fi videogame?

[48.8%] "laser cannon"

[51.2%] "crepusculant lucifer"

84 votes

link

Today I made a cassette-tape-case-decorating game for use in the 'metagame' layer of The Droqtober Collection...

Rough notes:

27. Shovel
started at ~7:20 AM, no food yet
Digging...
Vampire (Shovelheads)
Shovel hat - pretty silly wide brim, low crown hat. looks like it could belong in a Dark Souls game.

game idea - digging holes with a shovel (Link's Awakening) to find something? problem - what encourages the player to dig in one place and not another? what's the method of feedback?

game idea - side view excavation game thing? hmmmm minesweeper?

28. Mask
Putting stickers on a cassette tape, please

Quote from: p40Like conjuring tricks in reverse, such instruments [as telescopes, as well as good explanations, all perhaps only through "sophisticated chain[s ] of theoretical interpretation"] fool our senses into seeing what is really there.

Quote from: p36the fact that a computer or a robot can perform a task mindlessly does not imply that it is mindless when scientists [people] do it.

Fuuuccckkkk

from this thread

in retrospect one of the most important things i ever learned was that if you floss and your gums bleed, it's not a sign that you're flossing too hard or that you should stop flossing. it's a sign that you waited too long, but it's a good thing you're doing it now.

it was very important because these days i've found myself thinking about a lot of things in life this way.

when i wake up in the morning & want to work on a game but my body aches a little, it's tempting to figure out how to use my body less all day in order to make it not ache but usually it's a sign that i'm using my body too little, that i've waited too long between moments of bodily activity. it's a sign that i waited too long, but it can only be a good thing to do some now.

Quote from: ~11:30If you're trying to get to the top of a mountain to get some rare drug that's only there, you're not playing a game, you're just trying to get to the top of the mountain. If you're trying to get to the top of the mountain, as a mountain climber, then certain restrictions are part of what you're doing.

[example about how you respond if someone flies by in a helicopter and says, "hey, want a ride?" the drug-seeker says "yes," the mountain climber says "what do you think i'm doing here?"]

Even trying to get to the top of a mountain to get some rare drug can be thought of as engaging with obstacles on a voluntary level. To differentiate such a task from games is dangerously close to adopting an attitude that play is necessarily unimportant and valueless which is not the case. A person who climbs a mountain, as a mountain climber, very likely benefits from the social ties that make up the mountain climbing culture. The person who tries to get to the top of a mountain to get some rare drug is following their own ''rules'', so to speak. Replace the helicopter example with one where someone says "hey, I found a more interesting path to climb!" The mountain climber says "great!" and the drug-seeker is the one, this time, saying "what do you think I'm doing here?"

I'm not really getting along with this talk right now, I'll stop until droqtober. For now I'll wrap up and say that I think Nguyen's attitude towards games, and what they are, is clashing against my current Play Anything-fuelled mindset, which these days screams something like, "play is just loving the world around you and engaging with its features rather than disengaging with them." The mountain climber can pursue a life-saving drug AND discover, savour, and appreciate the pleasure of climbing a mountain at the same time. Just because the task has a functional, useful output, does not mean that the task is suddenly disqualified from being play.

Games are, or should be, conceptual things that provoke us to play, and perhaps show us how to play in a new way, or an old way we've forgotten.

25. OPPOSITE (cont'd rough notes)
Webster's 1913:
standing or situated over against or in front; facing; a house opposite to the Exchange

- I love the phrase "a house opposite to the Exchange", and also "standing or situated over against or in front" lol

W:
Extremely different; inconsistent; contrary; repugnant, antagonistic.

One who opposes; an opponent; an antagonist.

You are the antagonist. You're trying to kill the player, who has the power to save/load, as well as pause the game. How can you kill the player? a SHMUP, where you are the endboss?

Hmm takes too much AI?

Mirror, mirror...

STARTED AT 6:30

26. SURREALIST ART
STARTED AT 7:49 AM   
Took about 3 1/2 hours
Focused on visual style for the first hour or two
Didn't have a game
Strongly resisted the urge to discard the game and instead look at what I had and see if some mechanics could be mined from the remains
Removed an entire game mechanic right before GIF/release. Feel good about my choice!

24. BIRD'S EYE VIEW

Wanted to make an "overworld" kind of thing, but I ended up focusing on style today. Thinking about LOOTBNDT's style.

25. OPPOSITE

Starting work on this today soon!