contemplating hobbyist gamedev projects

[yhlee]

What are y'all up to in game-playing or game design/development?

I don't think "shitpost" is the correct term but mopey foxmoth [was] up at 2 a.m. having not eaten enough during the past 24 hours so you get what you get. Mainly, I am soothing myself thinking of Fun Playing Around in Hobbyist Gamedev after CROWNWORLD is turned in (likely by end of month).

I have a tracking number for my Playdate console. I'm excited!

Things I could hobbyist gamedev for, in terms of game engine:

- Defold. This builds for macOS, Windows, Android, HTML5, Linux. I'm likeliest to use it when targeting HTML5, with Lua and Matchanovel.

- Godot. This builds at least for macOS and Windows. I think you can target HTML5 but Defold is specialized for light/efficient HTML5 builds and Godot is not.

- Playdate console, which has an incredibly beautifully documented SDK for devs. This is the weirdo option in that I do not know one single person who owns a Playdate. Most of the people I know haven't even heard of it. But that's weirdly appealing: I could develop for a weirdo specialty handheld console for my household. In fact, the comparative rarity of the platform takes pressure of to ever release to the public vs. something that's just for me and my family, and that's hugely freeing!

I'm excited about handheld console devices generally. I didn't grow up with any. The gift Nintendo Switch was literally my first one. I played an amount of Regency Solitaire on it I refuse to disclose to you while I was bedridden for a year. We have a gift Steam Deck (Regency Solitaire 2, I am consistent), and my new one (for PICO-8, among other retro or retro-style experiences) is the Anbernic RG CubeXX. But I hadn't realized that developing for one might be within reach for a hobbyist!

I have to admit now that my fave RG CubeXX game right now is...the Pong clone. I miss playing tennis and racket sports, and aside from a little time with the Pong implementation on the original iPod (a gift), I haven't actually played much Pong at all. :D

(Technically I could be messing around with Unity or Unreal or Picotron / PICO-8, but I've fallen in love with Defold + Matchanovel, Playdate SDK, and Lua. C or C++ maybe later.)

There are ways to make VNs in all three, which would be my starting point.

- Defold: Matchanovel
- Godot: Ink + e.g. inkgd, Dialogic, etc
- Playdate: NobleEngine + PlayVN
- also: Ren'Py + Python extensions

Right now I'm having fun, in stress relief, daydreaming about projects I could work on.

The mode I'm likeliest to find most personally rewarding is "visual novel" or "visual novel with a significant 'game' component."

Ninefox VN
Joe and I were discussing how a Mechabellum-lite-style autobattler may well be EASIER than card game as a tactical battle component, not because things like collision detection starting as a n00b will be "easy" but because I'm wildly likelier to find existing codebases to adapt to get some kind of playable result.

One of the weirdo paradoxes (lol) of card games especially with any kind of CCG or deckbuilder vibes is that physical shitty prototypes for card games are super easy mode, but game balance testing (especially the closer you get to CCG mode) is a gigantic horrorshow once you get beyond a certain size of cardbase due to combinatorial effects. Every single fucking card that has any kind of specific effect is now its own coding nightmare with combinatorial effects and a hobbyist is now at Monte Carlo simulation bullshit to even try to test some of the possibility space.

I should add that I have a scope hierarchy for Ninefox VN guaranteeing that I will get something out the other end for myself even if no one sees anything further but my family:

- visual novel with tactical battle "minigames" (e.g. Doki Doki Literature Club - those aren't battle as such but the fact that there's an integral "game" component)
- visual novel, choice-based but no "minigames" (e.g. Slay the Princess)
- visual novel but now a kinetic novel, no choices (I don't think I've played one of these but I know they're out there)
- parser-based interactive fiction/text adventure with interaction, no graphics (e.g. Emily Short's Pytho's Mask or Andrew Plotkin's Shade)
- parser-based interactive fiction/text adventure, minimal interaction, no graphics (e.g. Stephen Bond's Rameses)
- choice-based text-based videogame with minimal or no mechanics (e.g. Lifeline, which I played on iOS)
- gamebook with mechanics (e.g. Fighting Fantasy like Steve Jackson's Sorcery!, Joe Dever's Lone Wolf)
- choose-your-own-adventure-style gamebook, choice-based but no mechanics (e.g. Choose Your Own Adventure anything)
- just a novel :p
- just a series of connected stories
- just a series of unconnected stories

Shuos Academy
The benefit of this is that this was Star Spy Academy before I had to cancel out of the contract with Choice of Games because my household was flooded out (2016). I still have the outline with all the mechanics and which had been approved by an editor at Choice of Games. About 50% of the game exists in ChoiceScript format! But I think there's an opportunity to change the format and add more actual gameplay beyond what Choice of Games format originally supports, which is exciting because "gameplay" is the part I like best in videogames! Ironically, I've ended up making games (e.g. Winterstrike or Moonlit Tower) with some kind of main text-based narrative as a crutch because I have deeply mediocre coding skills with which to implement gameplay that isn't narrative/text-based.

I spend all fucking day up to my neck in story. I need something that's not that to do for fun. My top three all-time fave videogames that I would still play are

- Mechabellum
- M.A.X.
- OAngband

I guess technically there's a narrative to OAngband but I almost didn't notice it. :p The other two don't have much narrative beyond the framework of HERE ARE YOUR ROBOT ARMIES NOW FIGHT!!!

I loved Planescape: Torment to pieces but have never felt compelled to replay it after winning it once. Replaying videogames for which the main drive is story, even with narrative branching, is so excruciating for me I almost never do it.

Winterstrike mk. 2
I do in fact have permission to refactor Winterstrike at all from Failbetter Games since Storynexus is technically defunct (though the game is, as of this writing, still technically playable). In this case I have the entire game text + mechanics export file, but I would want to rethink the mechanics for a standalone format. In particular, refactoring means that I no longer have to be beholden to including Nex monetization costs (that was a condition of the contract), which opens up the delightful possibility of reorganizing the mechanics in some alternate shape that would (I hope) still support the story, and perhaps extending it.

Ironically, the original version of this idea (which started life as an unfinished gamebook) was much closer to MOONSTORM in that the icebird was a mecha, but implementation quirks of Storynexus's graphics-based "coding" system meant that tracking "are you in the mecha or not" would have quickly become unmanageable. Taking it out of graphics-based code would open up the possibility of putting the originally intended mecha aspect back in.

Ghostroad
This is the parser IF I started writing 20 years ago (not long after Moonlit Tower) in Inform 6. I started refactoring the code after Inform 7 was announced + released but ran out of energy. I still love the imagery and core conceit; it would be interesting to revisit this.

Guncrypt
:waves feebly at A Friend: I STILL HAVE THIS ON MY HD. I still have the outline. It's a comparatively compact game design-wise; if one were not married to the idea of preserving the original parser IF construction, an interesting wireframe would be (I believe) comparatively fast to prototype in Ren'Py or Defold + Matchanovel. I HAVE A BRILLIANT IDEA but I need to check in with A Friend.

(I have owed this game to A Friend for OVER TWENTY YEARS and yes, this is embarrassing and I owe COMPOUND INTEREST COMPOUNDED CONTINUALLY and yes I know what that is.)

Some of my itch.io games could lend themselves to simplified VN or text-based videogame implementations, with some thought about the design. Good candidates (IMO) include Blooded, Six Slots, and weirdly, Amiable Planet. (Disinclined to do that last only because, well, it already exists on the web.)

Comments

[stepnix]

I'm theoretically still working on the grail war game, but i've been putting more energy into trying to plug activity into the Papercult forum and the zine i submitted to... trying to get infrastructure for others in place

On the other hand I've also been trying I Was A Teenage Exocolonist (critically acclaimed indie game) and Shinsetsu Mahou Shoujou (fan-translated freeware) and those are really responsive to my design brain. They're doing things I can point at and say "hey that's game design," it's great

[yhlee]

Oh, very cool! I confess I've mostly been on Discords for specific game engines.

[davidgillon]

I don't have the brain for much more than slaying the zombie hordes at the moment - though I'm slowly evolving my personal set of mods for Seven Days To Die, latest to make the list being the Escape from Tarkov mod, which (surprise!) ports in the guns from Escape to Tarkov. Next time I boot up a completely new campaign, I want to add in a couple of environmental mods that absolutely cover the ground in plants and rubbish, making it really look like civilization died a couple of years ago (assuming my laptop has the oomph to run them).

I do want to run a new Stellaris campaign, but there's a major rework due out at the start of May, so I'm umming and ah-ing about whether it's worth starting yet.

I got Jurassic World Evolution II free on Epic the other week (it was actually on my wishlist anyway), so maybe I'll play some more of that.

[yhlee]

I hear you - Mechabellum is familiar enough that I can play on the lower settings and get enjoyment out of it, and there is zero story to parse; Pong clone is just pure physical reflex. Pawnbarian and Balatro are a little thinkier but in the lower-stakes roguelike-ish way. :p

I hope you have fun with Stellaris by and by, and Jurassic thing! :D

[davidgillon]

Completely forgot that I picked up the middle tier of the Runequest offer on Humble Bundle, which I'm picking at intermittently and which so far has mostly convinced me that I think Runequest mythology is weird: Elves are plants, Dwarves are halfway to machines, Trolls can eat anything, even air, and there's the usual order vs chaos war in heaven, but with the balance shifting back and forth as heroes rerun famous scenarios for the Nielsen Ratings (joking, but sort of not).

[yhlee]

Is Runequest the one that's vaguely or explicitly based on Elric of Melniboné or am I badly conflating it with something completely else?

[davidgillon]

I'm no expert on the Elric stuff, don't think I've ever read any of them, but I don't think Runequest is related. Back in the 80s Runequest was second only to D&D as a fantasy setting. AIUI it's a completely independent creation by Sandy Peterson - a bit like Empire of the Petal Throne in not owing much to any of the well known fantasy mythologies. The order vs chaos stuff is so central I did wonder if RQ influenced the Warhammer creators, but that's influence flowing in the opposite direction.

Call of Cthulhu uses the same d100 rule system if you've played that, though there's a completely different magic system.

[yhlee]

AHA, I had the causality backwards:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stormbringer_(role-playing_game)

There was at least one Elric TTRPG but it was based on the Runequest system! :D

[davidgillon]

That makes sense, Basic Roleplaying/BRP - Runequest with the magic stripped out - was the pre-GURPS equivalent of GURPS, or later background agnostic systems like D20.