Comments for Angry Fish Studios

Comment on Qualitative Game Design by Nick

Nick — Tue, 24 May 2011 04:22:23 +0000

I couldn’t agree more with this post.

I myself was pondering the ins & outs of what would be possible with qualitative feedback for a WoW-esque game. I feel like one of the larger factors leading to my abandonment of WoW was the community that sprang up around the mathematical foundations of the combat system and spent their spare time analyzing it to death.

I definitely feel qualitative games are the way to go, even when dealing with games that rely heavily on math and statistics under the hood. A qualitative approach could be used to relay information that could be processed by the gamer much more easily than a whole caravan of floating numbers in different colors and formats. Its all about the interface when you want to make a great gaming experience and I don’t want to do math in order to play a game well. The computer was made to crunch the numbers for me in the first place, why would I want that responsibility back?

I was cruising the web and also found this related discussion which I found amusing:
http://www.materiamagica.com/community/forum/5-feature-discussion/449361-combat-change-from-qualitative-to-quantitative
(To sum up, it is a qualitative RPG that someone is commenting should have the “hidden” numbers added to the text output)

I am always interested to discuss this topic more so feel free to contact me at my e-mail which was in fact inspired not long ago by this very topic: PwnedByNumbers@gmail.com

Comment on Qualitative Game Design by Kelvin Kao

Kelvin Kao — Sun, 15 May 2011 02:19:48 +0000

I think RPGs (and even more so MMORPGs) use a lot more math because there are not a set number of players, so you can’t just balance the game qualitatively. You need to assign weights to each, and by doing that, things get quantitative. And with the element of luck added in as well, it models those game in which you draw cards and throw dices than something like chess.

Interesting topic to think about!

Comment on Qualitative Game Design by Marshall

Marshall — Fri, 13 May 2011 15:24:21 +0000

Totally agree! I rolled a priest in WoW, just so i could mind control people off cliffs.

Comment on Qualitative Game Design by Adrian Love

Adrian Love — Fri, 13 May 2011 03:01:24 +0000

I used to play DPS caster in wow and my favorite ability was that I could maintain frost bolts through entire battles. fine tuning efficiency was a good source of fun which other games didn’t provide a platform from but my funnest move was probably ice-block because it was just strange.

I think it goes to be said that minute to minute game play differs from second to second game play and it’s always a challenge to keep people engaged at all levels, I feel a tuned system like you mentioned with elemental bonuses helps minute to minute game play but second to second game play in Puzzle Quest is the ever addictive Bejeweled clone which excels at it’s task.

Let me know if you find the answer to not getting involved in programing formulas instead of designing fun. :<

Comment on Qualitative Game Design by Chad

Chad — Fri, 13 May 2011 02:56:34 +0000

I like your thoughts. The idea of the “coolness” factor involved in gameplay engagement/motivation vs. the mere technicality of a move, item or skill, etc.. is a great point!

Have you ever checked out Jesse Schell’s “The Ar of Game Design”?
He not only builds a solid foundation for game design in general, but also fives into many of the intriguing aspects of game appeal and fulfillment.

Worth a check if you haven’t already!

-Chad

Comment on Adventures in Bitmasking by Ryan

Ryan — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 03:11:16 +0000

Great post! Thanks for sharing this info. It’s always fun to see how a bit of logic and math can condense a complex problem.

Comment on Adventures in Bitmasking by Mike

Mike — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 21:33:20 +0000

Very useful – thanks for taking the time to write it up!

Comment on Tile Map Using CoreAnimation by Byron

Byron — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 17:18:43 +0000

Good article. One thing I found useful when working with CA and tile maps is that if things start feeling “chopping” when adding and removing layers you can disable animations for that call.

[code]
- (void) updateTiles {
[CATransaction begin];
[CATransaction setValue:(id)kCFBooleanTrue
forKey:kCATransactionDisableActions];
// all your add sublayer stuff here. Because it's wrapped in this call you won't get the over head of each tile having transitions applied as they are added.
[CATransaction commit];
}
[/code]

Comment on Sprites using only CoreAnimation by Abdo

Abdo — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 20:51:18 +0000

I find this post to be very useful as I’m relatively new to game development and I’m using Core Animation as well on my 2d game. I believe that Core Animation is underestimated when it comes to 2d games.

Great job on the mitch digger game, the prototype looks awesome !

I gotta say the frame rate is really smooth. Did you notice any frame rate issues while coding ? I may have up to 5 CALayers moving on the screen in my game so I’m a bit curious if that would affect the frame rate (the calayers are basically images not bigger than 80×80, and I just change their positions in each frame) ..

Thanks and good luck in choosing a name for your game