Human Interest
Robert Yang kindly asked me to translate the article about my level design considerations for my bachelor's thesis game. I'm slightly afraid that he is going to be disappointed, since this is not so much a theoretical approach to architecture and level design in general, but rather my thoughts and motivations for creating the specific level architecture for my own game.
When starting to design the level, I considered the following points to be the main guiding lines:
Isolation
With the game being a serious game and a bachelor's project, I have neither the time (now) nor the money (in the future, when, hopefully, I'll be able to finish and publish the game) to create a large, open world.
Okay … normally, April Fool's jokes are somewhat lame, and I have a tendency not to repost them. But this one … this one is pretty cool.
Actually, it's a pity that it's just an April Fool's joke. With good writing and engaging characters, this show would have potential. Hat tip to Chris (or, actually, one of his friends – anyway, without being Facebook friends with Chris, I would not have found this).
Yes, I know I should be now checking my mail (which, as I already know, will contain some business regarding this blog, which in turn will involve you, my dear readers1), but I just have to post this, because it now follows me for some days, and I find the idea both awesome and a bit intimidating.
So, there is this guy, Kelly Sutton, who got rid of most of his possessions, to "live out of the hard drive", as BBC put it:
About a year ago, I came to the conclusion that the most logical thing to be done was to rid myself of all (or most) of my possessions. After meticulously itemizing all of my stuff, I put almost all of it up for sale on a site I built in a weekend, Cult of Less. Yesterday, the BBC News ran an article about myself and a few other folks replacing their physical media with their digital analogs. There are many implications of selling everything, some great and some not so great.2
Well, after my own claims of "home is where my broadband internet connection is", getting rid of most of the physical stuff would be the next step, indeed.
The greatest thing gained from Cult of Less has been an unprecedented amount of physical freedom. A willingness to drop your stationary physical possessions and move is the greatest freedom I have found in this project. Sure, you could get by without a bed, furniture and a few other essentials, but you will be miserable. No one wants to sleep on a floor if they can help it.
A minor yet pleasurable consequence has been interacting with people from around the world.
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Who are you guys anyway? ↩
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All quotes from this article. ↩
Actually, I wanted to write a post concerning several reviews of Red Dead Redemption I have come across recently. Unfortunately, my draft with the links to those reviews has been lost, with the exception of Guido Berger's review (in German). The other one is, unfortunately, forever lost in the wilderness of electrons.
Or, maybe it is not. After searching for yet another review to contrast it, I guess I stumbled over it: Michael Abbott, a.k.a. the Brainy Gamer has some thoughts on the topic as well.
This is what it boils down to: sandbox games seem to fall exactly into the same valley as computer graphics in general. At some point, they are pretty good; so good, actually, you start to notice the gaps and holes, the problems especially well. A sort of Uncanny Valley.
