Tabletoppin'.

To begin, I am not a table top gamer. I've played boardgames in the past, and card games occasionally, but these are most always at the insistence of others. I suppose the main aspect I do not enjoy is that the plot and underlying subtexts in a boardgame rest within the interactions of the players themselves, and less in the game. The game presents rules and an environment, but then when it comes to narrative, suddenly the game's out on a smoke break and you're left to fill in the characters with the inevitable string of alliances, antagonisms, and betrayals. Maybe what boardgames need are more NPCs.

Munchkin
Of the two games played today, Munchkin was much more entertaining for me. There's a nice blend of turn based activity (each player taking turns drawing door cards), but also curses that can be used at any point. I like the comedic text on the cards, but either someone has to read it out each time (which I hate) or everyone crowds in close to read it; neither are ideal.

Small World
Small World basically embodies everything I don't enjoy in boardgames. The rules were a bit complex, and while the mechanic of mixing races and classes's variation ensures that no two games would quite be alike, after playing 3/4 of a game, I feel like I would have to play it through another four or five times before I could really begin to really get a feel for the strategy. Setting the game up took forever, which is usually the point where I get annoyed and stop caring about the game.

Games, I really should be thinking about them more.

Eventually we'll need to make one. How about an idea or two in the meantime?

Sidescroller - This is a 'go right' game, I don't want it to be an infinite runner, but I suppose the concept does hold well for it. In a brief animation, a family puts the last boxes of the move in a car, then gets in and drives. The player is the family dog, left behind and trying to catch up to the car. It makes sense that you can only move in one direction, as the dog's only sense of purpose is to return to its family.

Logic, my one true love.

Programs can be broken down into three fundamental parts: Statements, Decisions, and Loops. Statements are declarative aspects: functions that fire and end. Decisions are simultaneous Statements which require user interaction and input. Loops are functions that continue and repeat until stopped by outside interference, like a broken record or security guard (the guard would walk his beat until a thief disturbs him).

More specifically, all programs are loops, which are composed of decisions and statements, which are composed of (or are) statements. I think. Maybe that's an oversimplification. Maybe everything is an oversimplification.

Also, today afforded me a chance to think about my favorite sport, Blitzball, the sweet science. Go Zanarkand Abes. Also, go Al Bhed. And as always, go Goers.

Lerpz, unfortunate turtle.

Today begins our whirlwind affair with Unity 3D, and with it, we meet our Virgil through this first circle, Lerpz. I find it funny that the tutorial goes so far as to give the game a story, because this is oriented to those making games, the ones already with stories and the ability and understanding to look towards the conventional 'portmanteaus' of meaning.

In a more real sense, today's lesson involved creating game objects in Unity, positioning them in 3D space, making prefabs and instantiating them into the program, assigning them components (parameters and functions which operate on or around the object, assigning game objects into layers (used for shading, among other things), and some scripting. I got lost around the scripting.

There was briefly some HUD building to, which works just as the game objects do::the background.
BoxColiders to detect when the player interacts with certain physical boundaries (more specifically, a falling death sequence, complete with spawn points with logic loops to determine which point should be active.

They keep mentioning the art was done in Maya, like it's a challenge, like I'm not going to go get that, like I didn't have enough things to do currently.

The First Day (Pilot)

Today was the creation of what we are currently calling What‽ Games. Continuing on that thought, I think I like the inverted ⸘ better. That's logo material. We take already obscure tropes and turn them on their heads. Although, something that's bothering me is the difficulty of Google-ing What Games. I like how it sounds, a lot like From Software, odd and rememberable. But Google-ing it, and how it's read in text, might be more important.

Now that I've had a moment to Google some things, fools are a hard theme to work a new idea into. Musakavahana perhaps, on the mouse that Ganesh (the lord of obstacles) rode upon. And the logo could be an issuing mouse! I love that idea.

Like that except a mouse.