A Quick Thought On Camera Controls

Over the years, a standard has emerged for how a player controls a camera in a 3D game. How the camera frames the player's perspective is crucial to both interfacing, and for providing information. 

Most camera-in-the-sky games (city-builders, RTS, strategy, etc.) use either the middle-mouse, or right-mouse button click-and-hold style to orbit, and edge-scrolling, or the keyboard arrow keys to pan. 

Since the left-click is almost universally used for primary actions (mostly selection), the right-click is designated for opening context menus or setting target positions. Mouse-wheel scrolling typically controls camera zoom, or, less obviously, camera forward position.

The importance of the distinction between right- and middle-mouse click-and-drag cannot be overstated. Many laptops do not have an obvious middle-mouse button at all. To zoom, you'd use a 'gesture' (usually multiple fingers moving up or down on the pad) emulate scrolling. So, if you want a "gaming" laptop, you'll almost always end up also using a mouse to play those types of games.

For consoles, you also don't have a mouse, but you do have controllers, which have thumbsticks, buttons, and triggers. You just don't get the fine control that a mouse provides. That's the biggest reason RTS and city-building games were never entirely popular on consoles: players don't have the ability to quickly select, pan, and designate targets with controllers.

Any time a game strays from what is now the standard for orbit-style camera controls, I find it difficult to adapt. For instance, let's say a game uses the left-mouse click-and-drag for controlling camera orbit. I may go from attempting to select something to completely changing my perspective all of the sudden. Similarly true for a game that might attempt to have both a left click-and-drag for selecting multiple objects and, say, a shift-button-and-drag mouse for controlling camera orbit.

Some finely edited games take out these kinds of camera controls entirely. Some of them only let you pan, and maybe have one or two levels of zoom. Others have orbit controls, but then limit the arc to only allow a limited change of perspective. Others still limit the orbit to only happen on one axis; a kind world rotation.

Regardless of how designers and developers implement camera controls, I do feel it is important to point out the ubiquity of the keyboard-and-mouse setup. Fewer moving parts may be cheaper to mass-produce, but the resolution of control one gets from moving a mouse across a flat surface is going to be really difficult to beat.

Cross-Server Layering in World of Warcraft

I'd like to describe a social dynamic that is created from a series of design choices made by the World of Warcraft team. But first, some context.

To me, World of Warcraft (WoW) has always been one of this generation's greatest social experiments. While it wasn't the first, nor the last popular MMORPG, WoW created an interesting social dynamic out of a fantasy narrative. Players could choose which server they played on, so that they might ensure they were playing on the same server as their friends. Guilds allowed players to come together on those servers - even if they weren't already friends. 

Player guilds are represented by visual items: tabards that have their own slot on the character and show on top of any chest armor; and the name of the guild appeared below the player's name (which itself appears above the player's character). So the players had factions, or tribes within the game. Tribes are one of the most basic aspects of the human social dynamic.

One of the main mechanics of the game is questing. Questing usually involved killing enemies or finding certain items. This came with problems, especially on high-population servers. Players would either kill enemies too quickly to form a meaningful group, or only one player or group would get credit for the kill and then run off. Enemy respawns meant waiting for a timer that itself was not in any way dynamic. Quests that did not involve killing had similar issues, where an item would be picked up, disappear, and then players would need to wait for it to respawn. Even grouping up would not solve the issue.

Then something happened. The developers decided to implement a server mechanic called layering. What this did was spread people out so that, while it was still possible to run into people in the same layer, it cut down on the preponderance of players overlapping each other on quests, and to some extent, allowed players a bit more time to group up.

Overall, assigning quest credit is a difficult dynamic to solve for, as there are many edge cases that require effective finesse. I'd rather not get bogged down in the details, and focus a bit more on the effects of what layering did to the player experience in WoW.

Before, without layering, all the players on a server could see and interact with each other at any time. There were dungeons (actual 'instances') but those were gated - the group you were in when you passed through the gate is the group you'd have in the dungeon. Outside of dungeons, if there were too many people in one area, you'd be placed in a fresh layer, often times basically by yourself (at least geographically). It kind of killed the atmosphere, in exchange for a less competitive questing environment.

And then it got worse. Layering became a cross-server dynamic. In order to put back some of that atmosphere, areas or quests intended for larger groups or just more people saw players from other servers added in. To denote that the player was from another server, a tag, "(*)" was placed at the end of their name. While interactions with players from other servers were more or less the same, the chances of you seeing those players ever again were slim to none.

Diagram on layering: https://i.redd.it/xpz3z1ly1dy21.png
Developer Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYuUD0o-Nz8

Object permanence is definitely a crucial part of gaming, especially for players in online games. Because digital objects can be spawned and despawned at will, with little to no context, creating even the likeness of object permanence is a demanding goal. Having other players appear and disappear without reason can absolutely destroy a person's sense of immersion or enjoyment in any game. 

I don't think cross-contaminating the server populations was a good move. Either you have dedicated servers/realms for players or you don't. Many games simply assign players into regions (US/Europe/Asia), because that's what the server hosting companies do. I would speculate that even with layering, as long as it was within the same server, the social dynamic within the game would have been preserved. In other words, allowing players to interact between populations of different servers effectively voided meaningful social interaction within the game. If I know I'm likely never going to see someone again, I may not treat them the same. I'll still show respect and cooperate with them, but I may refrain from befriending them, or integrating either way into a social group.

In conclusion, design choices such as server/layer assignment have huge overarching implications for the player. The game as a whole changes in broad strokes as a result. I find many similar online experiences equally hollow because of a lack of object permanence. 

Say what you will about that, but those ideas are typically difficult to describe, categorize, and prove, without dutiful, costly testing.

Invididual Wealth

One idea keeps occurring in many of the discussions I have about modern society: wealth disparity. Highly industrial and technological nations often have the benefit of automation, food security, and good healthcare. Long life and limitations to how citizens can contribute or produce create questions about a person's purpose. What do they do? How to they pay for goods and services, food and shelter?

When large institutions and corporations manage all the collective money, individuals in those 'clubs' are often provided access to lavish lifestyles and seemingly infinite wealth. People on the outside, however, are left with next to nothing; a system of oppression, poverty, and helplessness. An unfortunate side effect of capitalism is that it creates a two class system - those with all the wealth and those with none of it. And of course, those with all the wealth manage both resources and influence. Policies are made by those at the top, and largely ignore how it effects large chunks of the population. Laws and regulations tend to ignore those at the top entirely, via loopholes or outright inability to prosecute. Wealthy individuals are untouchable in the eyes of words on paper; mortality, however, remains constant.

We seem to forget that wealthy individuals are simple, fragile human beings just like everyone else. Sure, some people might be smarter, or taller, or faster, or better public speakers, but in the end, we all suffer, we all feel the same emotions, and we all bleed the same. What makes one person worth so much more than everyone else? They can speak on TV? They were lucky enough to grow up in the right family? They had the tremendous opportunity to trick people out of their money for something that had little or no value?

Why do we, as human beings, allow individuals to have so much more than everyone else?

Objective facts show that one person does not need more wealth than what is acceptable. But how much is acceptable? What are those objective facts?

I'd like to explore what those might be. In reality, I'm limited by the amount of time I can put into this, so I'll try to summarize and ask questions where further exploration is needed.

First, let's assign an individual human being a monetary value. Insurance (you know, betting against a company that something will happen - a form of gambling) allows us to access data that places monetary value on human life. In short, at the time of this writing, the value of human life in America hovers around $10 million or about $128,000 per year.¹

That gives us a good baseline for what our minimum and maximum should be. For practical purposes, I'm going to assign a humanist minimum at the poverty threshold, because I believe that all human beings have the inherent right to survival. $12,800 - one-tenth of the total value, or about $1 million over their whole life.² From that, it's easy to extrapolate the maximum value to be $1.28 million per year, or $100 million for their lifetime.

That's it. $100 million is the most an individual should have for their whole life. That value also assumes extremely valuable contribution(s), such as quality leadership or meritorious innovation. So why do we allow individuals to accumulate billions?

The finer details become grayed when you consider the valuations of resources and capital and otherwise non-tangible goods, not to mention corporate holdings. Part of the problem today is that we tend to accredit stock valuation when determining an individual's wealth, never mind the fact that stocks aren't real - they only demarcate an emotional value. What happens when the stock market crashes and many/most company's values go back to zero? What happens when a corporation and its products are no longer relevant? Supposedly, market forces and capitalism should more or less handle these events without outside intervention. But that's not happening, at least not as quickly as it needs to.

The next pertinent question is, how do we balance the current situation? The wealthy have already been allowed to consolidate wealth, so how do we convince them to reinvest in the world they occupy?

The obvious answer is climate change. There won't be a world to live in, reasonably, without direct and massive efforts towards reigning in our impact on nature. Refocusing on sustainability instead of growth. Putting millions of people to work on conservation efforts would be an easy way for a wealthy individual or a powerful corporation to reinvest in communities.

Decentralizing food production (massive land grant programs in fostering new small farms) could invert the trend of people moving to city centers and creating wealth drains. In most cases, a minimum supplemental income could foster a massive re-balancing of wealth from rich to poor, while simultaneously reinvigorating small towns. The point is, there's so much that the wealthy could do - that's the point, they have the resources - they should be the ones asking what they can do for us.

Then, maybe, if the responsible adults realize they can facilitate the change that will make the world better, we can all decide to limit the wealth individuals can have, and perhaps even have control over (i.e. limit corporate wealth). Why is it just a few dozen people get to decide what to do with hundreds of thousands of people's worth of resources?

Why can't we utilize the technology and data we now possess to automatically elect representatives for every neighborhood?

Recent Projects

Over the last nine months, I have been working hard on a number of projects. I see these projects as a culmination of my skills and talents as a game developer, and as major milestones in my journey to create my own masterpiece computer games. I'm still far from that goal, much less obtaining investment to pay for such ventures, but I feel validated by the progress so far.

ReBounce is a mobile wall ball game with only a handful of major mechanics. Mines, and holes in the wall, appear that the player should avoid. The player builds up a multiplier for bouncing the ball off the side walls, and points for catching the ball. A miss counts the same as throwing the ball into a mine or hole. Players also gain coins for each catch that can be used to purchase balls with special traits, or additional continues. Power-ups could increase the wall-bounce multiplier, or provide invulnerability. Enjin integration could provide players with the ability to obtain cryptocurrency-backed items for playing the game.

A.I. Logistics for Nokia is a standalone Windows game that pits the player versus the computer in a simplified and simulated warehouse. Trucks drive in and must be assigned to incoming and outgoing bays where their cargo is unloaded, sorted, and loaded onto trucks bound for specific destinations. Albeit a simple premise, the game has a high complexity curve given by the fact that each package has volume, and potentially, a unique size. We opted to simulate a uniform size and ignore package collisions with themselves to keep the focus on showing the capabilities of even a simple A.I. versus the constant and tedious input of a human player for a repetitive task.

More recent and ongoing projects include a global asset presentation 'game', a virtual reality flight simulator, and an account-based video player Android app. In the years prior, I've worked on numerous VR projects, including multiplayer, training simulations, and exposition games requiring not only Unity networking development, but also User Datagram Protocol communication.

I don't know exactly how my future will play out, but it is nice to be able to record some forward movement all the same. I have ambitions to make enough money to move to a more rural area, help pay for a fiber line to my house, and work 90-95% remotely. I believe strongly that software development need not be done in an office in a big city. Most of the people with money that I've met so far are diametrically opposed to such ideas, so it may be a while. I still have ambitions to make my own games, and there are quite a few hurdles to overcome still before I am able to truly begin that process. Namely, how to bring people together to focus work on one project, when everyone is more-or-less remote, and is doing their level best to resist society's best efforts to distract and divide us.

Theoretical Budget - February 2019

Here's my ideal monthly budget for 2019:

Primary

Water - $ 65 - Household of four, halved.

Food - $ 600 - At $20 per day, times 30 days.

Rent - $ 900 - An average 3 bed 2 bath house, halved.

Secondary

Electricity - $ 150 - Household of four, halved.

Waste - $ 35 - Trash, recycling, and sewage.

Clothing - $ 60 - The cost of one full outfit.

Entertainment - $ 75 - Games, movies, sports, etc.

Exercise - $ 15 - A gym membership or occasional outing.

Taxes - $ 350 - Withholding amount.

Tertiary

Transportation - $ 350 - Car payment, insurance, gas, and tolls.

Communication - $ 160 - One cell phone and average internet.

Shopping / Trade - $ 50 - This money goes to furnishings, equipment, electronics, and goods.

Healthcare - $ 250 - Healthcare and dental.

Safety / Regulation - $ 10 - For when you have to renew a license, or pay a parking ticket.

Social - $ 20 - When you go out for drinks.

Charity - $ 20 - To help others.

Education - $ 50 - Send yourself or your kids to college.

Creative Arts - $ 25 - A hobby or just craft supplies.

Risk - $ 25 - Do you feel lucky?


Total (Monthly)
$ 3,210

Total (Yearly)
$ 38,520

In years prior I was not withholding enough for taxes, which worked out because the income necessary for the budget was still in the lowest tax bracket. The numbers for healthcare and education I have are once again much lower than most Americans'. Also, before, I assumed wrongly to not have a larger transportation budget. Repairs, a car payment, and/or high insurance costs all have a high prevalence for most people. To summarize, in order to breach the minimum threshold between low and middle class, you have to afford the higher tax rate and higher expected costs. In effect, it shows that the middle class is hemorrhaging a massive amount of potential wealth to pay insurance premiums, most of which is required by law in some form, in practically every state. You'd have a tough time convincing me that's the right thing to do.

Citizen's Dividend

As corporate influences grow relative to government functionality, the dividing line between the two becomes more blurred and complex. The difference between employee, consumer, politician, and citizen likewise becomes less determined. While our current economic system attempts to retroactively reward those who produce more, moving forward, the system will need to evolve to provide for those who display productive merits.

As an interim step, governments should provide high returns, or dividends, to citizens who actively produce, and also supporters, who possess qualities that enable others to produce. This dividend functions similarly to the earned-income tax credit. It should be coupled with an active population control policy, such as tax benefits for having only one or two children, neutral taxes for three, and a tax burden for more than three.

Governments already define minimum levels of poverty, mostly for taxation purposes, and the target dividend for an average producer should be at least two to three times the lowest bracket amount. This money would be mostly levied from high-revenue, high-saturation companies. It could also be taken from high-impact ecological taxes, such as carbon credits. Regardless of the source, this dividend is only meant to go to those citizens who actively participate in, or contribute to, the economic market. It is not a safety net. Therefore, there are a few vital social programs which must be funded before dividends can be circulated:

• Social security, mostly for senior-citizens.
• Medicare, also for seniors.
• SNAP, for ensuring young families are fed.
• VA, for providing for military veterans.
• Pell Grants, for promising students.
• TANF, helps improve conditions for needy families.

To be clear, the amount per dividend would be based on a quantitative representation of a person's potential value, combined with their present state of productivity. This idea is already present in the free labor market of the US, in the form of higher pay for high-demand, educated, high-skilled jobs, and in the earned-income tax credit. One way to summarize this dividend would be to say that governments and corporations share responsibility for the well-being of citizen employees by providing social services, protection, infrastructure, etc., through a combination of high corporate taxes and citizen dividends. Instead of a company simply offering higher compensation to an in-demand candidate, they pay a portion of that position's compensation as taxes. (Which also incentivizes the company to keep that position filled!)

The reasoning behind having the wealth pass back through the government, instead of circulating wholly through the corporation, is both regulatory, and for economic stability. It also gives the corporation leverage to ask the government for help in filling open positions - moving the recruiting cost from corporation to government. If corporations are successful, so are the countries in which they occupy. If a corporation fails, either in part or entirely, a government has the power to reclaim assets and rights to land and resources. The ideal country would then be the one that can offer a citizen the highest dividend, while also offering corporations competitive tax rates.

This produces the question, "what about tax loop holes?" - Close them! Corporations, via Citizens United, have obfuscated the boundary between company and government. Tax benefits to move a company to a certain area are unethical at face value - the company should get access to a qualified labor source, and nothing more. Government regulations are not overbearing when, in their absence, blatant misuse and misconduct exists. If a large company fails, the government is not there to lift them back up, it is there to repossess and redistribute said company's resources, either to other, more responsible competing companies, or sold off to the citizens. 

The argument here is that a company should be incentivized to spend its accumulated wealth, not hoard it. That idea requires one simple change: Redefine corporate responsibilities to shareholders - If a shareholder's profits are linked to citizen dividends, and not private dividends/profits, suddenly the corporate relationship with its community becomes a high priority again. In other words, the more the company pays in taxes to the government, the higher the citizen dividends become for everyone, including the shareholders.

"Why give citizens a dividend?" - Citizens give a country its value. Regardless of how you define that value, the return citizens get has traditionally been food, property, safety in various forms, and a host of other benefits. With the proliferation of regulatory capture, the citizens must be given a means to provide for themselves - both corporations and the governments need consumers and citizens to have value, and without them, they cease to function. Citizens must be able to continue forward, and the boast of nations is, and always will be, how well their citizens can live. Likewise, a corporation's boast is how well their consumers can spend. Why would you enact policies that threaten your own survival?

Throughout history, power and control has been imposed and utilized through various forms of taxation, conglomeration, spending, and the nuances of trading influence. In the future, new variables will challenge traditional models. These variables include: heightened awareness, both of self and of community; increased knowledge and ability; access to information; capacity for individuals to undermine traditional consumerism; understanding of basic human equality; rapid transportation; reduced importance of religion as a method of control; increased influence of scientific method to define factual ideas; increased urgency of environmental balance.

"What about freeloaders?" Among the many questions raised by this topic, this one requires more finesse to answer. The optimist says give them a dividend regardless, albeit a much smaller one. The pessimist says let them swim without assistance, and maybe only some will sink. If someone isn't producing results, or maybe they can, but they're not effective at it, they likely won't get the attention they need to solve that problem. Fixing human inadequacies is a process that cannot be automated, and is a persistent, ongoing issue. Largely, it's a problem that can't be solved, only adapted to and perhaps circumvented in some cases. (It's also why teachers are consistently underpaid and their administrators are overpaid.)

What worries me most isn't that these ideas, and many others, might be ignored. I don't mind writing about my ideas in relative obscurity - if anything, it serves to structure my worldview. I won't be the only one to think of these solutions. What worries me is that I will be targeted as an outlier for even suggesting them. What worries me is that human inadequacies will gain stubborn, prominent, influential support, and anyone who genuinely wants to try something new will be spitefully harassed, slandered, silenced, or persecuted.

If you asked, "what about freeloaders?", well, many of them are well off, in power, and have been for decades. In the future, governments and corporations, citizens and consumers can exist in a balanced chaos, but only if those in power realize the opportunity presented to them by enabling those below them to live in relative comfort.

Economies in MMO Games

MMO - Massively Multiplayer Online - "...an online game with large numbers of players, typically from hundreds to thousands, on the same server. MMOs usually feature a huge, persistent open world, although some games differ."

Let me preface this by saying that I am scratching an itch about laying out my understanding of virtual economies. I am in no way trying to professionally define certain aspects of online interaction. My intention is to explain, largely to myself, how these complex systems come to exist when a simple set of rules is defined to create the illusion of player interdependence within an online game.

What is a virtual economy?

Many, if not most, online games have a simple resource mechanic at the core of their design. In order to obtain some object that helps the player advance, they must first gather resources and craft intermediate components. Often, these games include a time element to gathering. For instance, manually gathering 1 unit of ore takes 2.5 seconds. This is our first economic piece. If a player wanted to gather 10,000 units of ore, it would take them 25,000 seconds, or almost 7 hours. If building a vehicle or structure frame requires a bit more than those 10,000 units, we can relate the time required in-game to our time working an 8 hour shift at a job.

This is the primary economic paradigm that causes my intellectual itch: If I can work 8 hours a day at $30 an hour, that's $240 a day of work (minus taxes, of course). That means the developers of our example game expect you to divert almost $240 of potential earning into creating a digital object that isn't even a completed product! It's still only a frame! Regardless, players world-wide frequently take part in these online economies and happily give up significant portions of their time (mind you, usually it's free-time outside of their normal work) to create digital resources and products. They're just fragments of code that exist as electricity on a computer. Most of the time, this data doesn't even live on the player's computer, it's stored on a large server database of a private company.

So why do we actively pursue these economic outlets, when it provides only intangible goods?

Entertainment. Increasingly, we're relying on our digital products to provide us with ways to pass the time. Especially in areas where the quality of living is relatively high, and which correlate to high levels of automation or white-collar jobs, people have plenty of free time to dedicated elsewhere. The problems arises out of a need to be physically present, or at least available, while not fully engaged. It also arises out of part-time, disability, contract, or temporary work situations.

One of the most obvious fundamental deficiencies of the modern world is a significant lack of purpose.

That's a lot to take in, but consider this: As more and more of our duties become bureaucratic, administrative, or mentally draining in nature, the less we have to help drive our sense of purpose. The disconnect comes from a distinct lack of positive feedback from the way our societies are designed. I don't mean that we need to be feeding happy emotes to everyone when they do a good job. That's simple-minded on the level of Idiocracy.

Tiny design choices can be more than enough to provide positive feedback, while simultaneously extracting vital productivity. For example, effective sound design can and often does define 80% of an experience. A small "boop" noise when pressing a button can help change a repetitive action into one that is more related with progress. When you tie a good sound effect in with a positive feedback loop, such as, "you received 1500 experience!" and a $0.10 raise for every 15,000 + 2,500 * level experience, you've just created a very simple but very effective way to set goals and provide a limited kind of purpose to the "player."

Most games fully understand this in their overall design. Players are driven to gather resources, make components, and fulfill a supply and demand system within an online game simply because they are rewarded with increased potential when they do so. A player can grow in a virtual world, often much more tangibly than they can in the real world. Games are specifically designed to give players more power and control when they succeed according to the rules, while our society often rewards those who simply succeed (regardless of method). To go one step further, our society, and the people in it, can be found to give merit to those who succeed, even when the success is outright fraudulent or even straight evil. We all know the vagaries of right and wrong, and everything in between, but I see so many people caught being carried along by someone's perceived success (when there is only an illusion).

I digress. I wanted to explain being enamored with virtual economies, and concluded with them being effectively designed positive feedback loops. I appreciate this conclusion because it lends itself to explain why some of the most basic human interactions can be so rewarding and purposeful - we see their immediate effect and benefit. The examples I used here are extremely simplified. If someone were to apply this philosophy to their business model, I hope they would take the time to research, test, and iteratively design each division with care.

Tower Seven Now Called Salvage Guard

Just a quick update: The tower defense game I've been working on is now called Salvage Guard.

My plans are to include a skirmish mode with a random map generator, along with the missions in the campaign. The mechanics now include building up a small base, which is straight-forward, but may need some design tweaking. Each of the buildings are currently too necessary, and I want to avoid forcing the player to build at least one of each every single new game. The short-term solution is to provide partial or pre-built bases, but include design flaws which force players to adapt.

I've gained much experience working with data saving and loading, and multiplayer networking. The former will most certainly be used to help with saving player progress. The latter is still being considered, and will likely be left for after the alpha release. I do want to at least give players local or even LAN multiplayer, and I know I can accomplish that goal - it's just a matter of if I can make enough progress in the more vital mechanics in a timely manner.

The visuals are also slowly improving. Each pass I make ends up being a huge boost to how the game looks, but are also costly time-wise. That means that they'll likely get lower priority moving forward.

I hope to make a new demo video and get new screenshots in the coming couple of weeks.

Kynaro Mansion

I may never obtain enough wealth to construct this lovely home, but I've designed it roughly a dozen times in various forms.

The Sims 3 does an amazing job at rendering house designs.

If you'd like to hire me as an architect, I'd happily draw you up official plans, layout, and section, and even do the interior design. I don't even have to live in it!

A view of the atrium pool behind the waterfall.

The atrium pool and waterfall.

 Details:

• 2 or 3 car garage.
• Atrium pool with waterfall.
• 2 kitchens.
• Full pantry.
• 2 dining spaces.
• Den (living space off main kitchen and garage).
• 3 private offices.
• 2 studio spaces.
• 6 storage rooms (3 in right tower, 1 in left at top, 1 in between bedrooms on the 1st floor, 1 above garage).
• 3 half baths.
• 6 full baths.
• 6 bedrooms.
• 2 laundry spaces.
• 2 workout rooms.
• 1.5 living rooms.
• Nursery
• In-home cinema with seating for 9.
• Activity and music rooms.
• 12,000 book library.
• Rear tower has reading nook at top floor.
• Roughly 10,000 sq. ft.

Tower Defense Game Progress

First thing's first: I'm working on the levels for the tower defense game. I've decided that the working title "Tower Seven" is about to change. Other than that, many bugs have been fixed, tooltips have been roughly implemented, and the backstory has been given context with the recycling plant that is now attached to the salvage drone's landing pad. In the next few weeks I'll continue to squash bugs and create levels - hopefully along the same line of work I can come up with a new working title!

Avorion Ships

I recently got into a new space game called Avorion. It's much like Space Engineers, where you can use a voxel grid to build almost any shape. Where Space Engineers failed to implement trade mechanics, complex AI, or meaningful space systems (such as a galaxy), Avorion has all of these things. Avorion is stricly 3rd person, viewing space from outside your ship, and from two other map views, while Space Engineers is almost strictly 1st or 3rd person, viewing from your astronaut's perspective. While both are still being actively developed, regardless of which direction Avorion goes at this point, it will likely be better in scope and value. The game uses LUA scripts that can be edited to manage most of the user interface and outer mechanics, so the game can be modded as much as (perhaps more than) Space Engineers. Personally, I'd like to see some design changes with how ship size scales - both with how the ship reacts phyiscally in space and how the building tools work to assist the player with making various shapes, how crews are hired, how turrets scale and are sorted, how mining and building resources work, how time is used for hyperspace (and how hyperspace is designed in general), and how trade is balanced. If the developers somehow made the turrets more independent of the player, or at least the player was focused more on flying the ship instead of using it as a blunt weapon, the game would make the drastic jump from old-style space-sim to something deeper about the human experience in space. It sounds like a stretch, but trust me, right now you outfit a big phallic analog with lots of guns and you go head-first into enemies. Avorion could easily be quite thought-provoking and fuel your imagination even more than it already does. I guess that's my way of saying that I'm happy with my purchase.

Now, without further ado, here are some of my ships so far.
 

The Game Development Checklist

One thing that I actively looked for and wished to have was a game development checklist: a simple almost one-page document that outlined what I needed to make a successful game from the ground up.

• Title: The name of your game should be short, and don't forget about what the acronym for the name might be. For example, "Age of Empires" is "AoE."
• Subtitle: This is the one-line description. For example, "7 Days to Die is an open-world game that is a unique combination of first person shooter, survival horror, tower defense, and role-playing games." This is also the line you use to start your elevator pitch, and if you have your audience's attention, you can keep elaborating.
• Full Description: This is a full-detail explanation of your game, including some contextual story information. This description is so you can fully relay the concept of the game, without your audience actually playing it. For example:

Factorio is a game in which you build and maintain factories. You will be mining resources, researching technologies, building infrastructure, automating production and fighting enemies. In the beginning you will find yourself chopping trees, mining ores and crafting mechanical arms and transport belts by hand, but in short time you can become an industrial powerhouse, with huge solar fields, oil refining and cracking, manufacture and deployment of construction and logistic robots, all for your resource needs. However this heavy exploitation of the planet's resources does not sit nicely with the locals, so you will have to be prepared to defend yourself and your machine empire...

• Game Type: This can be slightly vague, if it has to be. The genre is there simply so prospective buyers can find games that appeal to their personal preferences, and so you can help people understand it when your pitching it to them.
• Feature List: What are the primary mechanics of your game? You can be vague or extremely specific here; it's up to you. I like to be more specific, with things like, "full 3d character movement, jump, crouch, pick up, activate, aim, and shoot; full inventory, pick up items, drop items, item physics, and item weight, value, and category."
• Asset List: Try and list out each individual major asset - as many as you can. This way, you can keep track of what needs doing, and what gets done. For Tower Seven, that would be: "Ground Enemy, Air Enemy, Salvage Drone, Wall, Machinegun Tower, Cannon Tower, Chaingun Tower, Flak Tower, Flamethrower Tower, Rocket Tower, Artillery Tower, Missile Tower, Laser Tower, Gauss Tower, Lightning Tower, Radar Building, Power Plant, Drone Pad, and Salvage Refinery."
• Game Icon: Make a 1024x1024 pixel image to use as a nice-looking icon. Compare it side-by-side with other icons and make sure it looks the way you want.
• Game Cover Art: This image can be as big as you want, but it's primarily so you can catch peoples attention - it needs to look amazing! You will also end up using this for various images for community, marketing, and store pages (usually with some minimal editing).
• Trailer: Video trailers are slightly more difficult, and require some time, but once you have a 1-2 minute trailer, it becomes easier to market your game. Trailers can be made by making a recording of you playing your game, then going back to edit, add some music (remember to credit the artist!), and make the trailer play through enough clips of your game to make people want to learn more or straight-up buy it. Try to edit in all of the features you listed out above.
• The Game: Don't forget that the build of your game that people play will definitively determine whether or not people recommend it to their friends, want to show it off, or simply give it a decent review. Make sure that there is at least one really epic quality to your game that even the most dejected player can remember for later.
• Languages: We live in a big world, with lots of people who speak different languages. While English does cover quite a good market portion, many games don't have much to read anyways, so why let that market potential go to waste? At the very least, pick a few localities, translate the game text, and make a build for that locality. If the game is small enough, it might even be possible to create a drop-down list in the game with ready-to-go text conversion.
•  Marketing Plan: Last, but never least, is how you intend on reaching your audience, and how you intend to sell them your game. Generally, start local, with friends and family. Tell them about the thing you did, and work to sell it to them. Humility and tact go a long way here - keep moving to new potential customers - eventually one of them might even help you sell a few copies!

AVIT and T7 Milestones

Hand-painted by Jordan Black

My artist for A Village in Time, Lance, has completed 95% of the card art, and the game is now in its beta form. Soon the proofs will arrive and I'll be able to playtest at Animefest in August! Exciting! If I time it correctly, I might even be able to sell a few copies. So that is monumental progress. Once Lance is back from his Summer gig, I'm hoping he'll be excited enough to continue.

Box art coming soon!

I'm also at the point with Tower Seven where I'm getting close to an alpha build, which is insane because I have reworked the entire game in a little less than three months. I have a Steamworks account, which is awesome because they've outlined the whole process for me, and I will spend the next few months going down the checklist to publish the game on Steam.

Game Design Case Study: Factorio

Factorio is a game in which you build and maintain factories.

In the spirit of most early city-building/simulation games, it's a top-down view over a player that runs around the surface of an alien planet, mines for resources, assembles parts, and automates industrial manufacturing.

The end goal (currently) is to build and launch rockets and satellites. The developers plan on extending that beyond just the scope of just a single planet surface, such as colonists coming there, or having you go underground, or having you go with the rocket to another planet or moon.

At one point, there was even a mod that had the player collecting and sending food and resources back to a home world via a portal, which gave the game a sense of purpose and connection to things other than just the player.

The game does have multiplayer, which is an incredible feat on its own since the game is designed to be hundreds if not thousands of small animations - the primary benefit of the art style. The sense of purpose is bolstered by other players joining in on the design process, however, there is no progress tracking system in place. When new players join a game that has already advanced through the first stages of the research tree, there's no easy way to see what has been done and what needs doing. Players spawn around the same area. There is no trade system between individual player inventories or owned property. There is the idea of property, in the sense of the game tracks who built what, but no rules as to who has access to what. There are no team nor competitive mechanics, and no trade systems between teams.

The thesis of the game is an exercise in exponential industrial consumerism. Aliens are hostile, as they should be, since you're senselessly polluting their environment. All resources are mined - nothing is sustainable other than solar power. The player is expected to gather resources at an increasing rate, process them into usable parts and materials, and consume that to create research.

Research is to improve the technology the player uses to mine and process resources. Far enough in, the automation becomes efficient enough to allow drones to do most of the material transport and construction for the player. Trains, a major component of the long-term game, allow for an interesting mini-game to help the player move resources to the central factory area from long distances. Research, however, is largely arbitrary and a massive time-sink. The ingredient requirements and ratios of manufacturing alone is enough to make the game interesting and time-consuming. Technology research should be a game mechanic, but not so demanding as to be the game's primary immediate goal.

Specifically, the grid system is misused. Single cells are capable of storing thousands of resources, including full-sized vehicles and structures. There is no spatial relationship at all. I would much prefer if at least the storage mechanics used something closer to 1:1 ratios; right now they average around 1:64. I even made a modification to the game that reduces the storage to around 1:4, as well as utilize another mod that adds storage and warehouses that are 9:32 and 36:64 (altered to be much lower, of course). The game has no grid (also known as entity) representation of items, so mods cannot yet be made to achieve 1:1 storage of resources.

Power production is messy. Electrical lines are short, on tall wooden or metal poles, and distribute power in a square around them. A better method would be to have electrical power assumed for all electricity-using entities within a certain distance of each other, and then only need to use poles to transport electricity over long distances.

Conveyors and water pumps don't use electricity, while just about everything else does. There's no wind turbine, no geothermal plants (no lava on an alien planet? ...come on), and no flowing water, which means no dams or water-wheels.

There is no production waste, and so no recycling methods are included either. Recycling even older technology would be beneficial to the game design.

Why would I use trains when conveyors are drastically cheaper to produce, and provide a constant flow instead of a large, periodic flux?

Impassable or non-flat terrain could add challenge to the game in the place of making research less arbitrarily time and resource-consuming. Also, more environmental events, such as dust-storms, rain storms, and fog could make the game more interesting and challenging.

In conclusion, the only reason that I took the time to study and analyze Factorio's design is because I enjoy the concept and the game greatly. All of the items I mentioned are possible, and most are, dare I say, easy to implement. The framework is present, with exception of item storage, to build Factorio up to a game that easily beats out the competition in an otherwise flooded market of computer games. If the game can be modded and made better, to the point where most players play with a collection of specific mods, the developers (which includes me, for my own games) need to seriously consider and implement mods as realized game mechanics.

I want to urge future game developers to strongly consider the thesis, or the message, of their games in the scope of how people perceive them. I perceive Factorio as a manifestation of the industrialization of our civilization. I strongly desire Factorio to become a game that is aware of its own message, and to give players the option to play in sustainable ways. In the future, I hope, such destructive resource exploitation is looked down on and laughed at as wildly naive and wasteful. We can utilize minerals and materials fully, we just have to learn how. Factorio can help!

Net Neutrality

The internet is really, really great.

The internet, in it's simplest form, allows for people who have very little to feel as though they have everything. That's because they have access to almost anything, via the internet.

The internet could be many things: what it is to me, is a source of information, entertainment, and communication that is better, faster, and more efficient than anything humans have ever had before.

Many people have grown up with that benefit - with that tool. Many people depend on access to the internet to be productive, stable members of society, including myself.

...I don't know how to fully articulate how important equal and untainted access to the internet is.

That's always been one of my weaknesses - effective communication, in person. Taking time to go and start a conversation where there needs to be one, or simply making my point without seeming defensive or overbearing. I know I don't have much influence over the vast majority of the world. That's not at all the issue - my weakness doesn't show up here.

The issue is the writing on the wall. Those who do have the resources and influence can't seem to see it when it matters. The writing says, "internet access is a basic human right." Almost all human beings have some access to electronic technology, and the software that allows us to connect to the internet is a circumstance of the proliferation of that technology. Therefore, by sheer saturation, we all have the right to access the internet, and that access need not favor some over others.

In most of rural America, there is no reliable internet access. Sure, we have satellite technology which helps alleviate that situation, but reliable is the keyword here. Already there is a glaring inequality between those who live in urban and rural areas. Then, to make matters worse, even those in urban areas don't have many choices when it comes to who provides access to the internet.

Net neutrality isn't just about throttling speeds, and choosing favorite outlets over outliers, it's about provisions, access, and market saturation. Investment in internet infrastructure should come at a short-term loss, while the long-term benefits will provide ample reasons to get started now.

If I were an internet provider, I would be putting massive amounts of capital into rural fiber infrastructure, simply because the long-term returns (even at sub-marginal subscriber rates) massively outweigh the loss of profit that is happening due to inactivity, apathy, and general mismanagement.

Let's run a quick case study.

Assuming it costs $13,000 per mile to run a fiber cable (which is already a high estimate), and we want to go from the Pottsboro, TX hub to Highport Marina along highway 289, which is 7 miles, it costs $91,000 to lay the line. Let's round that up to $100k for argument's sake.

Let's also assume there are roughly an average of 10 subscribing customers per mile of line, each paying $100 per month for their internet service. That's $1,000 per month, or $12,000 per year for fiber service to a rural community.

The investment pays for itself after 8 years and 4 months. After that, the subscription pays for maintenance, upgrades, and expansion for that area.

Here's where I think many business leaders get caught up: Where's the profit margin?

The profit margin comes when/if Pottsboro grows into a major urban area, much like what happened in Richardson, Plano, Frisco, McKinney, and even Sherman. The spine of the infrastructure has already been paid for and placed, and now with a solid subscriber base and an expanding potential market, it's much easier to acquire additional capital to pay for more fiber. That's where the profit margin enters into the picture. It's obvious urban areas are more profitable than rural areas, but with the internet, you can't discriminate.

So instead of getting caught up in the mindset of constant profit/growth, I'd like to see leaders make decisions based on merit and long-term provisions.

Which circles us back around to net neutrality. If we allow ourselves to get caught up in making as much money as possible in the short-term, we will erode our source of profit entirely. Future generations will be left with nothing. Why make all of this technological progress if we're just going to throw it all away?

The result of this fight for neutrality should be that even more people have access to the internet, and that all of us should be free to use it fairly and equally as a constitutional right.

Interactive Development

I just completed my first contract with 900Lbs. of Creative. Overall, working there was amazing. The commute to the Bishop Arts District in southwest Dallas was difficult, to say the least. Some days were good, with an optimal 40 minute commute, but most days were about an hour, and at worst being almost two hours. Generally, though, once I was there, I had my own computer and station, skylights, a window, and I would work in Unity on various projects. If I needed to rest, I rested. If I needed to get up and walk around, no one asked questions or was incredulous. There was fresh, cool water and a microwave downstairs, and a fridge and utensils upstairs. Two bathrooms meant the twelve or so of us never really had to wait (or at least, I didn't). Lunch was built into my hours - it was assumed that I would take as short a break as possible to eat, and then get right back to work. No clocking in or out; just a simple excel document. The atmosphere was informal, to put it lightly. That meant, however, that if I had something to say, I was expected to be brutally blunt with it. There were positive and negative aspects about their form of communication, but I preferred it over previous workplaces because I felt like I had a voice, even if the decisions weren't mine to make.

Small things like those add up to make the difference between a stuffy, sterile workplace, and a productive, energetic team. I would be happy to work there again.

Now to step back and view the big picture...

You want to get away with paying people pennies on the dollar for their jobs? Expect people to work freely, including, but not limited to, what I've just described. Just like everything else, you get what you pay for. If you pay people less than what they're worth, and pick away at their freedoms, expect high turnover and low productivity. Also, expect an awful client/customer experience. Nothing is worse for a bottom-line than adopting policies that create hostile or repressive work environments.

I've watched my whole life as managers and directors exploit an expanded labor pool (and even take measures to ensure that it keeps expanding), only to compensate stockholders. No reasonable person should actually believe that constant growth is sustainable. There are so many reasons for that, but the overarching idea is that Earth is a zero-sum environment. We are all limited to a specific, finite amount of fresh water, arable land, clean air, and various natural resources. We consume at a maximum rate, while our environment replenishes within a predictable, but limited range. If we consume more than what nature can offer or replenish, our ways of life crumble.

The counter-argument that the quantity of all of these resources are so massive that we will not run out in the foreseeable future is naive and selfish. We shouldn't exploit our resources. We should utilize and sustain them as best we can. Recycling, and the efforts to make packaging biodegradable or recyclable, is what will carry our society into the future safely, and without compromising our environment. Clean energy and fresh water are important, but I feel that the massive amount of unmanageable garbage is a slightly more pressing issue currently. (Ever see Wall-E?) Managing waste is a readily solvable problem, and one that could put a bunch more people to work.

What does any of this have to do with being an interactive developer? Everything. As we move forward as a society, as automation and software removes the need for human labor, we will see a shift from blue-collar physical jobs to white-collar office jobs. Creative jobs, and more bluntly, jobs that don't have a high profitability, will keep our society running smoothly. As more and more people hold creative jobs, and even more technical jobs (like programming), the pay for those people will predictably decrease. That shouldn't happen unless there is also a safety net in the form of either a universal basic income, a huge earned income tax credit, or some similarly stabilizing program. If my wage stagnates, simply because I don't have a STEM degree, and despite the fact that I could, theoretically, complete a master's degree in computer science (if it didn't come at an exorbitant price), I will simply be one of thousands of moderately to highly educated citizens who cannot contribute to our nation's sustainable future.

If I am a case study for the future of our educated middle class, then at every interval I will put forth this kind of informative argument. The large majority of people I know are struggling to find the same balance I am.

Societal Needs - Revisited

A while back I posted about what society needs organized into their respective priorities. In terms of the whole concept, the categories are vague enough to work, but when used to organize specific resources, they tend to breakdown. In summary, I want to simplify the model. Even though doing so seems counter-intuitive, the reasoning is that by simplifying categories which are already vague, each category can be implicitly broken down into their exact components later on. Instead of making many categories that could potentially overlap, fewer categories can end up being more specific.


Needs such as work or purpose can be combined with exercise.
Risk, safety and regulation, and social security can be worked into a tax category (along with income or property taxes).
The need for company, religion (or charity), education, and the arts can be combined into one social category.

The new breakdown reads as follows:



Primary - each primary need must be available as an easily accessible, unpolluted, and temperate function of life.

• Water
• Food
• Shelter

Secondary - although not absolutely necessary, providing for secondary needs allows small groups to exist in one location over a long period of time.

• Clothing
• Work
• Electricity
• Recreation
• Waste

Tertiary - these needs allow for many large groups to coexist with others harmoniously, and for even denser urban areas to function over longer periods of time.

• Goods
• Transportation
• Communication
• Healthcare
• Taxes
• Social
• Savings

Expressed as a budget, with resources allocated to each need, one would use their income to take the difference, and then arrive at their savings.

Winter 2016 Projects

I am going to finish my tower defense game.

The game lacks a unique punch; I thought the salvage mechanic would be enough but since some time has passed, I can clearly see that yes, it is unique, but not enough so to totally differentiate itself from other generic games. In summary, I'm going to finish out the salvage mechanic in a much simpler way than previously planned.

And then I'm going to add multiplayer.

Yes, that's right. I've done it once before, on a prototype game that never saw the light of day, so I know it's possible.  I'll have to experiment with Android's platform to determine the viability of this idea, but I imagine, at least on a local basis, that it shouldn't be too difficult.

Let me elaborate: I want Tower Seven to have the ability to put the player up against the computer, or up against another human. The other person will have to be in proximity - I'm really not comfortable with a wide-area networking solution yet. The players use resources not only to build towers, but also to send units of their own towards the other player - much like the mechanics of a versus Wintermaul in Warcraft 3. Players send units at each other until one falls behind and gets overwhelmed.

If it's easy enough (it won't be), I might also add cooperative play.

Okay, so maybe it's not that innovative, but I am going to try this. If it's totally unfeasible, I'll come back and own up to learning more.

Prospects!

I've been working on a game currently called Panopticon, which is about a guy in a special prison. This prison works primarily through surveillance, and only punishes the player for smoking. It's a simply 2.5d platform game, but there's good narrative and environmental appeal. It's also my first game in Unreal 4, and I'm slowly making friends with the blueprint system.

Fortunately, I haven't done too many job applications yet - I'm not burnt out. I really want to be good enough at my work that people recommend me, so if I do apply for a job, I can at least get an interview. If I burn myself out just doing job applications, I feel sorry for my first employer.

Also, my work in the foreseeable future seems to be mostly virtual-reality-related. When I was much younger, this was my dream job - inventing the ultimate virtual-reality system and games. I still want to do this, but I also feel that my education hasn't been directed towards being on the leading edge of that technology. At this point, and despite my reservations, I am grateful to have gone back to school to really build skills in programming, design, and using game engines to make experiences.

Unknown Future

My current projects include reworking the Kyn Creations website to reflect recent changes with how I want to display myself as a game developer. Ideally, I would allow visitors to one-click download the game demos I have available, instead of requiring a name and email. Since I'm using WordPress and the Easy Digital Downloads plugin, I am not given the option to easily organize and display those downloads with all of their related content (most notably the nicely laid-out thumbnail grid) without sending visitors to the cart to checkout first. This is a detraction from my site since I don't want to charge for unfinished products, and requiring an email is still technically charging. At the very least it's a waste of time.

So I'll have to create my own page with the thumbnails and manually lay everything out myself, and then create download buttons in a similar style. Not difficult, but certainly tedious - especially since I'll probably end up taking most of those off the site when I start finishing projects. I'm also fairly certain there's some add-on someone's made that I could just download into WordPress and use, but at this point in my professional opinion most of those things end up requiring a similar amount of time in their documentation learning how to use it compared to just doing it manually. Any time I run into intuitive design nowadays I try and point it out.

Part of the plan for reworking my website includes coding examples. This is an exciting challenge for me, because I typically write a type of hastily thrown together code that functions but is otherwise lacking in commenting and flexibility. For example, I wrote some code that dynamically handled sound clip creation for independent sounds - like gunshots and explosions - so that they would overlap, reverberate, and react to the environment, and generally sound as realistic as possible. That code has to be tweaked every time I reuse it because each situation requires a slightly different set of rules. Things like pitch modulation for footsteps and volume reduction for sounds that happen frequently. I'm hesitant to show that off as a representation of my skills when it is observably flawed.

The other part is including information about my game concepts. This is somewhat controversial, and here's why:
Many of my compatriots believe that good game ideas are entirely too common, and I agree. The execution of a good game idea is what makes the game actually feasible. The problem with that logic, though, is that then we're basically telling ourselves not to openly advertise good game ideas, and I think that is wrong.
A good game idea that sits on a shelf forever is a tragic missed opportunity, especially in the ever-changing political environment we occupy. For all we know, our way of life could come to a screeching halt and suddenly any form of video gaming is now outlawed for its distinct lack of productivity (or whatever argument may be the most believable and misdirecting). The flip-side to that argument is that a good game idea that gets overproduced, that is to say, multiple games get made on the same subject matter, are observably worse quality. I'm sure there's some psychological theory that explain things in a rarity-makes-quality kind of way, but that's beside the point.

What I want is to show people who have the opportunity to invest in other young talent, to actively build an educated middle class, a potential product that could not only make money, but also initiate people on journeys that are otherwise impossible without our computer technology.

By including game concepts, even if they are simply excerpts of a bigger design, I want some intrepid investor to say, "Wow, yes that's a good idea, I want to help make that real." The difficulty is to pitch an idea. Most entrepreneurs take a product and sell it. Video games are different. You can't just make a bunch of games and sell them and then go to an investor and say, "I've made ten games that gross $267,000 in a year and that's why you should give me an additional $150,000 to make one more that's bigger and will sell ten times what I made last year!" Video games aren't that simple.

During my time in Game Lab at UTD, three to four months making a vertical slice, or a demo, of a game wasn't nearly enough. The best we ever got was usually 60-70% of a finished product. That's one game. So, speaking for all game developers out there, we need a bit of a push from the investor side - either in educating investors as to the worth and risk of a single idea, or in getting investors to understand that a single product can take months (think of it as R&D) before sales are even possible.

One of the main problems is inherent with this post - it's a wall of text. It's not an 800 page report, so there's a much lower chance of misdirection, but I know no one willing to spend more than 60 seconds deciding if an idea is good AND putting their money behind it. It's like there's a reverse correlation of the amount of time spent deciding something to the amount of money put towards it

I've also talked with people who are clearly capable of investing thousands (if not tens and even hundreds of thousands) on solid projects, who simply shirk a good idea because it wasn't presented perfectly. I've also seen some of those few go on to invest in clearly bad ideas. That's a major and fundamental flaw of capitalism. No matter how free your market is, there's no expectation that good ideas will actually prevail - just the ones that work temporarily. And by work I mean make exponential and unsustainable profits and problems.

I've seen my peers dump hundreds of hours into side projects that are clearly bad ideas, and even I have not seen some of my better ideas through yet. That's my fault entirely, but I do wish quite often that I had someone mentoring me while I'm still young and telling me that thing I haven't finished is more important.

So the reason it's an unknown future is because I can't see past my decision to simply give up - and either teach or join the computer programming industry, games or not - or to keep moving forward with my ambitions and keep being poor until I either finish a game and make it popular or find the funding to expedite the process.