At PAX in September, Zach Barth, the creator of hyper-clever puzzle games Opus Magnum and SpaceChem, bumped into David Galindo, maker of Cook, Serve, Delicious!, in which you cook meals rapidfire and run a restaurant. Galindo had a problem. He'd been preparing to port Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!! to consoles, and he'd just realised that one of the challenges he'd set in the PC version a year earlier was impossible to complete.The challenge was to make all orders on every level perfectly. But Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!! has 400 levels, and, being a lone developer, Galindo simply didn't have the resources to test and balance them all. So he'd relied on making the levels fair with math, setting time limits according to what food was being cooked. He never heard any complaints, so Galindo assumed his system had worked. But players simply weren't getting that far in the game. Other than through Steam's public (and very basic) achievement data, reviews and streamers, Galindo had no way … [Read more...] about How developers harvest your data to make their games better
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3D, AI, procedural generation and black jack
About this blog This journal is dedicated to my auto formation and my experimentations. Entries in this blog Today, I finally finished the following features : Add new solid voxels at the selected position Destroy voxels at the selected position Generate chunks on the fly Remove chunks on the fly Here is a video demonstrating those features : For more information and updates about the game, which is a voxel colony simulation / survival, please subscribe to r/CheesyGames. World Generation This is a simple world made of chunks of 32³ voxels. The world itself is not static : as you can see on the top of the image, chunks only exist if there is at least one solid voxel in them. In other words, the world is dynamic and can contain as many chunks as the player's computer can handle. In this particular screenshot, the world is generated with the simple vectorial gradient equation that I invented in high school but which … [Read more...] about 3D, AI, procedural generation and black jack
About Druid: Our New Backend Technology
By now, many of you will be aware of the fact that GameAnalytics is about to undergo a major technical overhaul. For the past 18 months, myself and a small team of engineers have been rebuilding (and also migrating), our existing infrastructure to an innovative new solution. That solution is called Druid, and it’s essentially a high performance data store. In this post, my aim is to give more of a technical overview of the new systems and solutions that we’re putting in place. I hope this helps to give all users of our service more context about the change, why it was necessary, and the benefits it will bring. For more information about the upcoming changes, you can check out this Beta announcement post. What is Druid? Druid is an open source data store designed for real-time exploratory analytics on large data sets. The system combines a column-oriented storage layout, a distributed, shared-nothing architecture, and an advanced indexing structure to allow for the arbitrary … [Read more...] about About Druid: Our New Backend Technology
Leaked Google video reveals tech giant’s TERRIFYING concept app that can control your every move by spying on your devices
GOOGLE'S creepy secret mission to control your life by spying on your gadgets has been revealed in a leaked video. The short film, shared internally with its workers, envisions an era of complete data collection where the tech giant manipulates the populace's behaviour. Its core concept involves the creation of a digital identity for every man, woman and child using info snatched from smartphones, tablets, and the web – all of which Google already has its fingers in. This so-called data "ledger" would then be scanned to determine user “actions, decisions, preferences, movements, and relationships.” And you thought Black Mirror was scary. Google is pushing a more benevolent side to these invasive tracking methods that sees this ledger help you meet pre-defined goals, like staying healthy or reducing your environmental footprint. But it also admitted to The Verge that the concept video is designed to be "disturbing". "This is a thought-experiment by the Design team … [Read more...] about Leaked Google video reveals tech giant’s TERRIFYING concept app that can control your every move by spying on your devices
Alt.Ctrl.GDC Showcase: Living Orb
The 2018 Game Developer's Conference will feature an exhibition called Alt.Ctrl.GDC dedicated to games that use alternative control schemes and interactions. Gamasutra will be talking to the developers of each of the games that have been selected for the showcase. You can find all of the interviews here. Living Orb a manipulatable ball of LEDs, offers players a variety of games to play with light and rotation, as well as opportunities for other devs to make their own games from it. Designed to inspire creativity in those who use it, Living Orb looks to not only play some games through moving it, but also get developers to create their own games for the unique device. Jonathan Giroux, developer of Living Orb, spoke with Gamasutra about the challenges of creating this ball of lights, what sort of games they've designed for it, and why he made it easy for other developers to make their own games for it. What’s your name, and what … [Read more...] about Alt.Ctrl.GDC Showcase: Living Orb