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Topics - Harkins
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« on: August 10, 2011, 07:23:23 AM »
Here's the Week 11 poll of So Play We All, where three browser games are developed in public and BBGZ votes on who made the best progress. This week we spent 2 hours on any topic: The contenders: Fantasy Adventure: git checkout -b sim_card_gameOaqn: Laziness Pays OffAllabrilyn: Innocent LostLast week's poll, the winner was Allabrilyn. Want more info? Here's the site for the contest with rules and links to every update: SoPlayWeAll.com
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« on: July 20, 2011, 07:11:26 AM »
Here's the Week 8 poll of So Play We All, where three browser games are developed in public and BBGZ votes on who made the best progress. This week we spent 3 hours on any topic: The contenders: Oaqn: Lazy UpdatesAllabrilyn: No Rest For The WickedFantasy Adventure: Bar fights and wenchesLast week's poll, tie between Oaqn and Fantasy Adventure. Want more info? Here's the site for the contest with rules and links to every update: SoPlayWeAll.com
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« on: July 13, 2011, 07:03:52 AM »
Here's the Week 7 poll of So Play We All, where three browser games are developed in public and BBGZ votes on who made the best progress. This week we spent 4 hours on Content Generation: The contenders: Fantasy Adventure: no update by deadline? [Edit: yeah, missed deadline, unfortunately] Oaqn: One Step ForwardAllabrilyn: Between Forms and PagesLast week's poll, tie between Oaqn and Fantasy Adventure. Want more info? Here's the site for the contest with rules and links to every update: SoPlayWeAll.com
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« on: July 06, 2011, 07:00:21 AM »
Here's the Week 6 poll of So Play We All, where three browser games are developed in public and BBGZ votes on who made the best progress. This week we spent 2 hours on any topic: The contenders: Allabrilyn: Class SessionFantasy Adventure: A spring bubbles up!Oaqn: The Plumbing WorksLast week's poll, Allabrilyn won. Want more info? Here's the site for the contest with rules and links to every update: SoPlayWeAll.com
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« on: June 29, 2011, 07:00:17 AM »
Here's the Week 5 poll of So Play We All, where three browser games are developed in public and BBGZ votes on who made the best progress. This week we spent 2 hours on on the game world (yep, same topic as last week): The contenders: Oaqn: HangupsAllabrilyn: Deity of DevelopmentFantasy Adventure: Anyone have a Roland?Last week's poll, Fantasy Adventure won. Want more info? Here's the site for the contest with rules and links to every update: SoPlayWeAll.com
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« on: June 08, 2011, 07:02:37 AM »
It's time for the Week 1 poll of So Play We All, where three browser games are developed in public and BBGZ votes on who made the best progress. This week we spent 4 hours on on any topic of concern to our games (we're diverging earlier than expected, oh well): The contenders: Oaqn: Week 2: Pretty (Shameless)Allabrilyn: A Long Way to CodeFantasy Adventure: Did not make time budget, paid funding penalty to Luke and Jim! ( Last week's poll, Fantasy Adventure won. All the blog posts.)
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« on: May 25, 2011, 07:07:50 AM »
From this forum, me, JGadrow, and bbrowsergames have started a contest between us to create a browser game in a few hours a week: So Play We All. Every week we’ll pick a new area of our games to code on and budget how many hours to spend on it. Every week, someone will be judged to have done the best. Anyone who doesn’t put in the time pays the price by funding the others’ games. Anyone who quits has to delete their entire codebase and all backups. (Hit the link for full rules and such.) Basically we're each going to work on similar topics each week and post a BBGZ poll as to who made the most progress. The topic for the first week was to name a game and write up a blog post explaining the idea. Please read the posts and vote for whoever you think did best: Harkins: Oaqnbbbrowsergames: Fantasy AdventureJGadrow: Allabrilyn
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« on: May 24, 2011, 02:55:21 PM »
Unsocial 'Social' Games by Greg CostikyanCostikyan is a classic designer of some awesome games and wrote a nice article on the social aspects of gaming. It's not the usual griping that social games like Farmville aren't very social, he talks about what it means for a game to be social and how to design good ones. You can argue, in fact, that SNRPGs are antisocial in nature, since the only real interaction with other players is attacking them. In short, developers have learned how to use the social graph to rake in the bucks, but not how to use it to foster gameplay that is actually social.
What does "actually social" gameplay look like? It's not very mysterious. The following is not exhaustive, but here are at least a few of the means by which social play can be encouraged.
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« on: August 28, 2010, 10:35:21 PM »
I've mentioned a few times the value of analytics and a/b testing, there's a deal on for the next day for several products, you can pick it up and save it for when you're ready to use it. I think it'd be a steal for CrazyEgg alone. http://www.appsumo.com/
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« on: August 25, 2010, 04:09:08 AM »
We were just kicking this topic around in #bbg after Nox asked some questions about storing user data and I'd really like to hear from people currently running games... Game owners, how do you deal with lost accounts? When someone has forgotten their password and lost the email address they signed up with (perhaps because they left a job, graduated school, or forgot that password), they may get in touch with you to ask for their account back. Has this happened to you? Do you ask them to prove it's their account some other way? Do you say "no" to automatically? Do you have a standard policy?
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« on: August 17, 2010, 11:19:23 PM »
http://www.1up.com/news/google-shows-future-browser-games If you've heard the rumblings about Google buying web game companies and investing in Zynga, they're starting to reveal their mad scientist plans to take over online gaming. The Chrome Web Store will list games with player reviews and process one-time or subscription fees (5% fee, no exclusive req'd).
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« on: July 09, 2010, 02:05:52 PM »
http://indie-fund.com/about/A group of successful game devs who are looking to invest in interesting games. And you wouldn't have to give up equity or be personally liable if your game does not succeed - looks like it could be a great opportunity.
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« on: June 27, 2010, 03:22:11 PM »
Icehouse is a set of tabletop game equipment, three sizes of pyramids in a variety of sizes. (More info on Wikipedia.) They originally were a strategy game, but now people have made hundreds of different games with them.  I ran across Homeworlds, which has some similarities to the mafia/werewolf party game and a really neat mechanic around sacrificing units. Here's the full rules. If anyone's trying to figure out what kind of game to design, the Icehouse Wiki has lots of game designs. They're all designed for single-session play, but you could adapt them or just pick up interesting ideas. There's a huge number of ideas here waiting to be used.
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« on: May 06, 2010, 09:58:02 PM »
In the irc channel we've been swapping links... well, mostly I paste in anything I think I can see a use for in a browser-based game once or twice a day. So I've started a linkblog at http://browsergametools.posterous.comPosterous tries to make it easy to create group blogs -- I haven't set one up before, but it should be set to allow anyone to post (with some moderation). I welcome contributions!
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« on: May 04, 2010, 07:34:34 PM »
I figured the obsessional performance junkies would get a kick out of this article: 8 jQuery Micro Optimization TipsSome of the suggestions are kind of ridiculous overkill, but there's some fun stuff and a bit of jQuery's code if you've never read it.
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« on: February 04, 2010, 12:49:49 AM »
I was reading through the blog of one of the GitHub cofounders and an article caught my eye because it described a process very similar to the one that forum posters here have said they use: You start your project in a directory named working. As you code, you try to write one feature at a time. When you complete a self-contained portion of a feature, you make sure that all your files are saved and then make a copy of the entire working directory, giving it the name snapshot-0. After you perform this copy operation, you make sure to never again change the code files in the new directory. After the next chunk of work, you perform another copy, only this time the new directory gets the name snapshot-1, and so on.
What's the point? Well, he doesn't insult anyone for using a process like this. Instead, he sees it as the first step toward the design of a distributed version control system. A DVCS is software to run this process, to encapsulate all the best practices people have learned from decades of coding and collaborating in an automatic system. The following parable will take you on a journey through the creation of a Git-like system from the ground up. Understanding the concepts presented here will be the most valuable thing you can do to prepare yourself to harness the full power of Git. The concepts themselves are quite simple, but allow for an amazing wealth of functionality to spring into existence. Read this parable all the way through and you should have very little trouble mastering the various Git commands and wielding the awesome power that Git makes available to you.
For anybody still on the fence about whether version control is worthwhile, give The Git Parable a read to find out why most developers consider it a necessity. If it gets you curious to learn git, the free book Pro Git is the best thing to read next.
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« on: January 28, 2010, 09:14:13 AM »
The EFF has a new project called Panopticlick looking at identifying browsers without using cookies and instead using things like browser string, plugins, fonts, etc. Could be some nice ideas for catching multis. 
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« on: December 02, 2009, 01:12:16 PM »
I'm seeing an interesting new bit of game design where casual games are playable a few times per day and the player has a persistent character or stats. One example is AlphaBounce, which is a well-polished Breakout/Arkanoid except the levels are on a big grid map that you move around. It includes quests to collect items or beat a particular set of levels, and you can earn permanent upgrades that will make your paddle wider, or able to do a Lunar Lander-style minigame, or move around the map faster, etc. Blimp Wars is a new game from the guy behind Golemizer. I haven't played it yet, but it's apparently very similar in that you can play a couple different kinds of matches against other players. You have a player record to boast about and can purchase upgrades for your balloon. On both of these games, you can play free three times per day and pay to be able to play more times. I think it's a really interesting business model where you give people something fun to do every day and earn money from the passionate players. Anyone seen other games like this, or run one and care to share experiences?
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« on: November 19, 2009, 05:33:09 PM »
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