Dev Game Club

Latest Episodes:

DGC Ep 188: Eternal Darkness Bonus Interview with Brad Furminger Nov 27, 2019

Show notes

Following on from our DGC series on 2002's Eternal Darkness, we talk with designer Brad Furminger, who got his start at Silicon Knights working on Eternal Darkness and an earlier version of Too Human. We talk about design choices on Eternal Darkness and get lots of little stories.

Podcast breakdown: 0:42 Interview segment 1:03:35 Break 1:04:06 Feedback

Issues covered: getting in with geographical luck, progressively getting into deeper discussions with a future employer, becoming second party with Nintendo, being at a teaching developer, diversity of background and interests, structuring for various characters, studying the game bible, working with tough tools, the "glamour" of game development, having an intense crunch, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, not being able to show fear, having a learning moment that lasts, a four-room prototype, meeting ED, building worlds and universes and not just individual games, a universe with mystery, diversity of characters, a strong positive female role model, the ancient ones and their machinations, establishing the importance of places in the world, building and rebuilding the world, returning to a place and knowing where to go, blending the player and character experience, the meta effects, the adventure game beginnings, sanity effects coming from the whole team, incorporating good ideas as a designer, Brad's favorite meta sanity effect, the difficulty of going low sanity, "You need keys that aren't keys," illustrative koans, finding ways to connect Alex through the chapters as keys, teaching the player to navigate the unknown, Nintendo's excellent QA department, finding a weird.... hardware bug?, PEBCAC, sacrificing a feature to make the game a little more approachable, seeing the flaws in our own work, making not enough use of the body part targeting, having to change to Pargon for Japanese, the magic system, developing around four plays, the percentage of people who finish a game having started it, hoping rather than expecting people would play more than once, making changes that cut down on differentiation of playthroughs but benefited QA, getting into teaching, getting experimental in classes, the impact of 9/11 on Eternal Darkness, Bush invoking the Crusades, incorporating development lessons into teaching, a game recommendation, the impact of fans in keeping games alive and playable, usability testing and playtesting, getting information about the whole player, blind testing, having that discomfort and not saying anything about play, getting a sense of what the player is experiencing, giving voice to what you're playing, pushback on playtesting, using different departments to playtest, seeing and not reading, usability issues again.

Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: World of Warcraft, Silicon Knights, Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes, Too Human, Bedlam Games, D&D: Daggerdale, George Brown College, Toronto Film School, Denis Dyack, Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen, Full Sail, DigiPen, Sandbox Studios, Digital Extremes, PlayStation 1, Nintendo 64, GameCube, Nintendo, Ted Travor, Sierra, King's Quest, Space Quest, Robyn Miller, MYST, Lovecraft, Shigeru Miyamoto, Trevor Fencott, Runbow, 13AM Games, Jedi Starfighter, DLC Podcast, Jeff Cannata, Christian Spicer, Alynne O., FromSoft, Shadow Tower Abyss, Metroid Prime, Half-Life 2, King's Field, Dark Souls/Bloodborne, Owen Lawson, TIE Fighter, X-Com, Dark Forces, Planescape: Torment, Star Control 2, Stardock, Lucas Rizoli, Microsoft, Republic Commando, Michael Abbott, Valve, Blizzard, Jeffrey Sondin-Kung (Pinecone), LEC-Game Theory, Zachary Crownover, Johnny Pockets, John Romero, Persona 5.

Links: Patrick Klepek on Mizzurna Falls

Next time: Up to level 20 (?ish) in World of Warcraft

https://twitch.tv/brettdouville, @timlongojr, and @devgameclub DevGameClub@gmail.com

DGC Ep 187: World of Warcraft (part one) Nov 20, 2019

Show notes

Welcome to Dev Game Club, where we this week we start a new series with a bit of a different goal: a game we'll play for an initial couple of episodes and then return to from time to time. We discuss 2004's seminal and crowning MMORPG World of Warcraft, discussing the year in which it came out, a history (personal and not) of MMOs, and then dig a bit into the initial hours of the game. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary.

Sections played: Up until level 8

Issues covered: revisiting our chat with John Romero, looking at 2004 in games, a live game model in EverQuest, self-cannibalization, early history of MUDs, a sad discovery, reflecting on Brad McQuaid's career, sharing games as source, MUDs and theming, talking through the history of a number of MMOs, talking about the market and approachability of other MMOs, peak users, the influence of other Blizzard games on WoW, Brett's confession, introducing characters through the RTS, modding and Warcraft III, launch and WoW, pulling the games from the shelves, server queues, revenue gross, Brett does some on-the-fly math, Activision-Blizzard merger, the starting area for gnomes and dwarves, inviting you into the world like a DM, learning the design language of the game, usability of the quest system, shifting the focus to quests (vs combat grinding), doing multiple things with the quests and rewards, changing your character's look, each race having its own animation set, differentiating races strongly, pre-rendered introduction, RTS influence again, seeing your first human (on a horse), simplifying WoW in the modern version, having to read the text to understand where to go, adding user interface mods, increasing intrinsic reward through difficulty, managing your own grouping, growing the scale of what you see, scale of towns and villages, growing up with the world through exploration, experience ramp.

Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: John Romero, LucasArts, Republic Commando, God of War, Shadow of the Colossus, Half-Life 2, DOOM 3, Metal Gear Solid 3, Fable, Halo 2, Far Cry, Chronicles of Riddick, Katamari Damacy, Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines, Source Engine, Troika Entertainment, Tim Cain, Leonard Boyarsky, The Outer Worlds, EverQuest & EverQuest II, 989 Studios, Sony Online Entertainment, Rob Pardo, MUD, Roy Trubshaw, Richard Bartle, DikuMUD, Brad McQuaid, Zork, Adventure, MOO, Pantheon, Saga of Heroes, Habitat, LucasFilm Games, Randy Farmer, Chip Morningstar, Meridian 59, Ultima Online, Dark Age of Camelot, Asheron's Call, Raph Koster, Star Wars Galaxies, Ultima Underworld, Turbine Entertainment, Lord of the Rings Online, Mythic, EA, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Blizzard, Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, Bill Roper, Diablo, David Brevik, Warcraft III, Chris Metzen, DotA, Icefrog, Riot Games, Dark Souls.

Next time: To level 20

https://twitch.tv/brettdouville, @timlongojr, and @devgameclub DevGameClub@gmail.com

DGC Ep 186: DOOM Bonus Interview with John Romero Nov 14, 2019

Show notes

Following on from our DGC series on 1993's DOOM, we've been lucky enough to get connected with John Romero to talk about his early career and how id and DOOM came to be. We hear all sorts of stories about those early days, and we hope you enjoy it.

Podcast breakdown: 0:42 Interview segment 1:40:30 Break 1:41:00 Next time

Issues covered: a brief history of John Romero, playing games at the arcade and on a mainframe, programming without being able to save them, living with hyperthymesia, learning BASIC and 6502, hand-assembling without a computer, bailing from college, selling games to a bartender, meeting a fellow programmer for the first time, zeroing in on Origin Systems, co-opting a demo PC, Origin in New Hampshire, overlapping between John and Brett, being up against other Commodore programmers, killing the interviews, making every life change at once, making your own hardware and writing your own protocol, getting your first raise, the death of 8 bit, learning PC and moving house, missing out on your chance to make a great 8-bit game, wanting to make games all day, hiring an artist based on musical taste, knowing a coder from the game, Carmack renting a PC to port his own RPGs, getting your own room and making your own games, two games in a month, becoming the game everyone in Pakistan and India played, dividing up the work, vertical scrolling vs smooth horizontal scrolling, getting stuff done in a night, knowing when it's time to move on, pitching a game to Nintendo, mistaking fan mail, making deals through the mail, making bank and cutting a deal to avoid a lawsuit, nearly selling the company, shareware just taking off, moving into the black cube, writing a... strong press release, riding the rocket, being fluent in code and creativity at the same time, multi-user editing, breaking out of a rectilinear world, getting out of the intellectual model, no room could have been made in the prior game, having to solve unknown problems, coding everything into the editor and coming up with the needs, programming all sorts of wild secrets, goals for SIGIL, coming up with new ideas that are reasonable extensions, someone stealing your thunder, flipping switches to get from multiplayer to single player, loving designing stuff, the Empire RPG, dream game with the dream team, spending time with John Romero, working on 90 games, working solo, the history of games in one man's head, June calls out, we talk our next game, SWotH.

Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: Sigil, Origin Systems, Softdisk, John Carmack, Adrian Carmack, Tom Hall, id Software, Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Quake, ION Storm, Daikatana, Deus Ex, Anachronox, Monkeystone Games, Midway, Slipgate Ironworks, Gazillion, Loot Drop, Brenda Romero, Romero Games, Empire of Sin, Poison Cookie, Hunt the Wumpus, Nim, Adventure, Robert Lavelock, Will Wright, Dr. Cat (David Shapiro), David Crane, Capital Ideas Software, Apple ][, Nibble Magazine, Scout Search, InCider Magazine, AppleFest 1987, UpTime, Jay Wilbur, Cocktail, Epic Software, Lane Roathe, Ultima I, ManPower, John Fachini, Denis Loubet, Robert Garriott, Ultima Underworld, Mapping the Commodore 64, Inside Out Software, Might & Magic 2, Tower Toppler/Nebulous, Epyx, Lynx, Crush Crumble Chomp, Temple of Apshai, Alien, Dark Castle, Ideas from the Deep, Al Vekovius, Karateka, LodeRunner, Choplifter, PlayStation 2, LucasArts, Gamer's Edge, Sub Stalker, Tennis, Mark Crowe, Paul Lutus, GraFORTH, Catacomb, SuperNES, Mario, Zelda, Dangerous Dave, Solitaire, Minesweeper, Slordax, Michael Abrash, Captain Cosmic, Nintendo, Scott Miller, Kingdom of Kroz, Commander Keen, Aliens Ate My Babysitter, FormGen, Sierra, Ken and Roberta Williams, Wolfenstein 3D, Spear of Destiny, Kevin Cloud, NextSTEP, Wizardry, REKKR, Civilization, Paradox, The Irishman, Martin Scorcese, Francis Ford Coppola, Skyrim, World of Warcraft Classic.

Next time: World of Warcraft Classic (up to level 5)

Links: Making of SIGIL

https://twitch.tv/brettdouville, @timlongojr, and @devgameclub DevGameClub@gmail.com

DGC Ep 185: Eternal Darkness (part four) Nov 06, 2019

Show notes

Welcome to Dev Game Club, where we this week we complete our play and discussion of 2002's GameCube horror adventure Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. We discuss re-use and when it doesn't quite work here, but highlight the end of the game and then turn to our takeaways. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary.

Sections played: Finished the game!

Podcast breakdown: 0:39 Segment 1 -- ED discussion 59:30 Break 60:00 Takeaways and Feedback

Issues covered: Tim talks about his surprise trip, leaning into spells as lock and key mechanisms, having to use the dominant color, systems that are more simply multiplicative, the portraits of the human archetypes, committing to personification, rune descriptions and lore, Lovecraft's racism, natural opposition in different archetypal systems, the fourth playthrough, Pious's purple dispel, learning at the same rate as Alex, setting the final rune and soft failure, having a hard time knowing what to do, usability fighting fiction, getting into a designer's head, describing the WWI bosses, communicating how to fight the boss, timing with the seven-part magical attack, scripting-heavy bosses, playing against your instincts, our go-to spells, objects showing up in the trapper world, running past because your sanity is low, the most repetitive points of the game, using the towers as an amplifier, good camera use, finding a cyclical story for production benefits, the final fight as a restatement of the rest of the game, starting the game as Pious, villainous consistency, learning to hate Pious with Alex, phases of the fight, getting lucky with the ghosts, Brett's Book Recommendation, the strength of the structure of the game, the statues in the walkway, finding a story that allows for production benefits, finding additive bits via the insanity systems, adding coats of paint to levels, water cooler talk, viral marketing, generating surprise, insanity effects and a conflict with a resource, interplay with difficulty, Alex slowly going insane, the magic system and its visual and experiential representation, gender and racial representation, a note about our book club feel, lighting in DOOM vs gzDoom, lighting complementing emotion, level design and lighting, fidelity and lighting, using light as a landmark to propel the player, photorealism and its interplay with design, remembering you're making a game, lightening the load on the player.

Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: Brian Taylor, HP Lovecraft, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, Hamlet, Victor LaValle, The Ballad of Black Tom, Waypoint Radio, Austin Walker, The Night Ocean, Paul LaFarge, Metal Gear, Diablo, Dejan Josifović, DOOM, Sigil, John Romero, Alan Wake, Dead Space 2.

Next time: An Interview!

https://twitch.tv/brettdouville, @timlongojr, and @devgameclub DevGameClub@gmail.com

DGC Announcement 10-30-2019 Oct 30, 2019

Show notes

Just a quick announcement to let people to know we're on what we hope is a brief hiatus.

DGC Ep 184: Eternal Darkness (part three) Oct 23, 2019

Show notes

Welcome to Dev Game Club, where we this week we continue our play and discussion of 2002's GameCube horror adventure Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. We talk up the magic system as well as the level design writing checks that the camera and perhaps the tech can't quite cash, as well as other topics. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary.

Sections played: 6-9 (Brett, nice), 6-8 (the other guy)

Issues covered: Tim gets a reference, the Spanish Inquisition, levels getting more complicated, returning to locations you've been to before, having additional things bolted on, reconfiguring a space, visiting cities that have built upon themselves, every location having something beneath it, uncovering the past, small differences between color playthroughs, the predator/prey color wheel and a mnemonic for it, where Tim got blocked by the camera, putting too many items in a camera frame, missing the lectern/podium, Nintendo lessons of learning and acting, teaching spells earlier, things getting away from you, where Brett gets stuck, the characters looking at objects, missing a critical object, putting too many things in a room, level design and camera design must work together, being constrained by your tools, scripted spline cameras, the difficulty of good camera tools, being worried about breaking your scripts, runes with meaning you can explore in the magic, sentences in older and younger languages, the god speaking the spell, the timing mechanic, the elegance of putting time into the spell-casting, the ways it can be interrupted, insanity effects, returning back to Alex, Pious Augustus using the same spell language, tying voice work between related characters, voice acting coming into its own, large number of characters, models being unable to emote and thus relying on voice acting, using tricks to make the lack of emotion work, is a handheld good for horror, requiring time to build tension, how baring mechanics works against horror, having space to move preventing horror vs claustrophobia, feeling capable and having power mechanics, insanity effects as titillation, the camp bathroom system in Dead Rising, frustration working against horror, seeing extra content, achievements, how the Internet changes game designs, streamable and giffable moments, finding the pearls of the game that are shareable.

Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: Monty Python, Far Cry 2, Nintendo, Grim Fandango, Breath of the Wild, Dungeons and Dragons, Crystal Dynamics, DOOM (1993), Jennifer Hale, Mass Effect, Soul Reaver, The2ndQuest, Resident Evil, Stargate SG-1, Fatal Frame, Resident Evil 4, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Wii, Luigi's Mansion, PT, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro, Demon's Souls, Zachary Crownover, Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill 2, HP Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Dead Rising, Alan Wake, Gothic Chocobo, Arkane Studios, The Outer Worlds, PUBG, Minecraft.

Next time: Finish the game!

Links: IGN pushing ED sales

https://twitch.tv/brettdouville, @timlongojr, and @devgameclub DevGameClub@gmail.com

DGC Ep 183: Eternal Darkness (part two) Oct 16, 2019

Show notes

Welcome to Dev Game Club, where we this week we continue our play and discussion of 2002's GameCube horror adventure Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. We talk a lot about the structure of the game, how it differentiates the choice we made last time, and also discuss the variety of player characters and how cleverly they get mileage out of some decisions. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary.

Sections played: Levels 3-5

Issues covered: achieving the pulp aesthetic, the structure of using Alex to find pages to enter more stories, linear storytelling hidden by apparently useful skills, running into well-placed insanity effects, having more insanity effects than you realize, having the work you put into a game pay off for someone, lack of efficiency in an open world game, efficiency of mechanics in Eternal Darkness, efficiency in design vs development, embracing a system team-wide, changing audio with low insanity, changing play when you don't care about your insanity, Tim's trouble with enemies, being under-resourced, feeling painted into a corner, save strategies, game play derived from that early choice, expectations of the player, being punished by a powerful enemy, how enemies differ across color, playing different characters due to the structure, a variety of endings for characters, the conspiracy to kill Charlemagne, having a fatal flaw that comes around to get you, good puzzles and showing you the states, hiding the locks and keys, the death of Charlemagne, revisiting the shrine where Pious Augustous became a lich, Karim's ending with a ghost, joining up eternally to protect some artifacts, having a freeze frame on the twist death, seeing Maximilian's ghost, going back to a different stage of the mansion, the weakening penmanship of A. Roivas, the secret entrance to the library, the pattern of the pulps, a long discussion of controllers and fighting games, we talk about our use of combo again, thinking differently about a game for the podcast.

Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: HP Lovecraft, Alan Moore, Providence, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier, Hamlet, Shakespeare, Warren Spector, Deus Ex, Breath of the Wild, Shadow of the Colossus, Starfighter, Resident Evil, Dark Souls, Thief, The Passion of Joan of Arc, Creepshow, EC Comics, Amazing Stories, Stephen King, George Romero, The Nameless City, Alone in the Dark, Dark Corners of the Earth, Charles Dickens, Robert Howard, Conan, HKris7, Warcraft, Derek from Spokane, DOOM, Chex Quest, Street Fighter, Sega Genesis, Marvel vs Capcom 3, Call of Duty, Chrono Trigger, Republic Commando, The Matrix, Alan Wake.

Next time: Levels 6-9, nice.

Links: Angry Video Game Nerd on Chex Quest

The Hit Box

Mike "BrolyLegs" Begum

https://twitch.tv/brettdouville, @timlongojr, and @devgameclub DevGameClub@gmail.com

DGC Ep 182: Eternal Darkness (part one) Oct 09, 2019

Show notes

Welcome to Dev Game Club, where we this week we turn to the start of our annual spooky game content by looking at 2002's GameCube horror adventure Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. We situate the game in time a bit and talk about its critical and commercial reception, as well as the GameCube, before turning to the game proper. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary.

Sections played: The first three levels

Issues covered: how names appear backwards, our horror tradition, this year in games, Nintendo and close third parties, the mythology around a good GameCube game that disappeared, moderate sales but critical success, the Nintendo horror gap, Japanese lens on sales, understanding the mind of Nintendo, finding the comic spookiness rather than true horror, avoiding mature stuff for first party, cosmic horror, not connecting with Lovecraft, Mantorok the Corpse God, paying plenty homage to Lovecraft, Brett's tax on game lore, taking itself seriously, minimal insanity effects, Brett's never-empty bar, Tim describes an insanity effect, describing the initial experience, reading the Tome of Eternal Darkness and as a result playing the game, writers and writing and their madness, ancient history and its influence on modern day, using libraries to find information and history books, seats of American academia, delving into memory, using an Animus vs a book version, the Necronomicon, changes to Alex as to whether she's astrally projected, having multiple interpretations, Pious Augustus's transformation, making an uninformed choice, making better informed choices in Kingdom Hearts, starting to see the structure, being in the same location across multiple time periods, whether or not one required a manual, the forces for and against manuals, slowly adding mechanics in a Nintendo way.

Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: Resident Evil, Silent Hill 2, Thief, Nintendo GameCube, Metroid Prime (series), Resident Evil 0, Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, Animal Crossing, Super Mario Sunshine, Kingdom Hearts, Hitman 2, Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon, Jedi Starfighter, Ratchet and Clank, Sly Cooper and the Thievious Raccoonus, Warcraft III, PlayStation 2, LucasArts, Silicon Knights, Denis Dyack, Tatsuya Hishida, Hiro Yamada, Shigeru Miyamoto, Satoru Iwata, Resident Evil 4, Capcom, Retro Studios, Nintendo Switch, Mother 3, Kirby Dream Course, SNES Classic, Disneyland, Haunted Mansion, Luigi's Mansion, Devil May Cry, Bayonetta (series), Cthulhu, HP Lovecraft, Edgar Allen Poe, In the Mouth of Madness, Assassin's Creed, Evil Dead 2, Alan Wake, Dungeons & Dragons, Kingdom Hearts, MYST, Super Mario Bros, Bill Roper, Lurking Horror, Infocom.

Next time: The next three levels (until Lurking Horror)

https://twitch.tv/brettdouville, @timlongojr, and @devgameclub DevGameClub@gmail.com

DGC Ep 181: DOOM Bonus: DOOM (2016) Oct 02, 2019

Show notes

Welcome to Dev Game Club, where we this week we turn to the start of our bonus content about DOOM. We look at 2016's re...boot? Reimagining? Re...launch? of DOOM and talk about its modernization of mechanics and its resource loop, before turning to catch up on the mail bag. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary.

Sections played: First few levels

Podcast breakdown: 0:41 DOOM talk 40:30 Feedback

Issues covered: Tim likes to get into the lore and how this supposedly ties all the DOOMs together, Tim's free time, what it's like rebooting something, how do you deliver a modern version of a classic game, infinite interconnected positive reinforcement resource skill loops, drawing you in with glory kills, combat stats and finite enemies, how DOOM feels visceral, risk/reward in the glory kill mechanic, the limits of long-range combat in other shooters, dealing with the Hell Knights and being forced retreat, orthogonal enemy design, being put off by the demo, leaning into the heavy metal, corridor/arena design and length, having characters to interact with, thinking about the game when you're not playing, difficulty, how the game improves as level design starts to get more abstract, being a little at odds with itself, lack of aim-down-sites, lower maximum ammo, appreciating tight tuning, the NPC similarities, influence of art direction, having a space make sense as a place you've been, not stopping to think, playing as a designer, Tim vs Brett as how they play and disconnect if they can, WASD becoming a thing, what control schemes and controllers might work, VR controls, MOBAs and ability triggering, naturally using your hands, eye-tracking as another improvement in interfaces, finding the one game that encapsulates all sorts of play, player-created narrative vs authored narrative, "welcome to the Nether," teaching game design, using analysis to get at mechanics and their connection to dynamics and aesthetics, source ports, multiplayer being important to a campaign, being in communication with players through knowledge vs social media, the uniqueness of SIGIL, games as products, having multiple player types, figuring out your relationship with players, .plan files, designer/developer interaction through plan files, Usenet, art and games as a gift, being able to give more to your players, Brett's Book Recommendation, expansion and contraction in game design, the natural rhythm of play matching breathing, natural pacing, AI story direction to manage tension, focusing on a single enemy as a contraction.

Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: id Software, Prey, Dishonored, Call of Duty, Zenimax/Bethesda Game Studios, Republic Commando, Rage, Quake (series), Wolfenstein (series), Machine Games, Raven Software, Half-Life 3, Bioshock, Terminator 2, Total Recall (1990), Viktor Antonov, Unreal Engine, Cry Engine, The Evil Within, Resident Evil, Tacoma, Gone Home, System Shock 2, Austin Powers (series), Logan's Run, Michael York, Gilmore Girls, LucasArts, Daron Stinnett, Tomb Raider, Mike Vogt, Apogee, Dark Forces, GOG, Ingar Shu, Valve Software, Kinect, DoubleFine Studios, StarCraft, WarCraft, Facebook, Oculus, Horizon Zero Dawn, Mass Effect, Mikkel Lodahl, Minecraft, Nintendo, Legend of Zelda (series), Mario (series), Metroid (series), Disney Infinity, Project Spark, Little Big Planet, This War of Mine, Sam Thomas, SIGIL, Unreal Tournament, LEC-Quake, Ryan Troock, John Romero, Mario Maker, Halo (series), Ken Levine, John Carmack, SiN, Levelord, George Broussard, 3DRealms, John Yorke, Masters of DOOM, James Franco, The Disaster Artist, Tom Bissell, Paul Reiser, Mad About You, Oscar Fiasco, Link's Awakening, Day9, Super Mario 64, Starfighter, Left 4 Dead, Silent Hill 2, Thief: The Dark Project, Eternal Darkness, Nathan Martz, Alan Wake, Control.

Next time: Either a guest... or a bit of Eternal Darkness, check your local listings (i.e. Twitter)

https://twitch.tv/brettdouville, @timlongojr, and @devgameclub DevGameClub@gmail.com

DGC Ep 180: DOOM Bonus: SIGIL and Thy Flesh Consumed Sep 25, 2019

Show notes

Welcome to Dev Game Club, where we this week we turn to the start of our bonus content about DOOM. We look at 1995's added fourth episode "Thy Flesh Consumed" as well as John Romero's 25th anniversary megawad SIGIL. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary.

Sections played: Thy Flesh Consumed & SIGIL

Podcast breakdown: 0:40 TFC & SIGIL 47:26 Break 47:59 Feedback

Issues covered: shooting a lot of eyes, who worked on what with Thy Flesh Consumed, difficulty level, level design propelling you forward, having to jump gaps by moving fast, open sight lines and being fired upon, more death surfaces, seeing the evolution of level design and discovery of emergent mechanics, having moments of surprise, Brett's rendering issues, the experiments in this game space, playing with expectations and making you feel like you know the level, circling back to the same place, seeing John Romero's style, being able to convey a level from memory in a single sentence, masterful manipulation of geometry, increasing detail and nuance, teaching you about the eye triggers, Baron backstabbing, Tim talks about the level with the three paths with the colored keys, being fully immersed in a level, squeezing every drop of blood from a design stone, being a master of your techniques, feeling a little too agitated, playing with a controller vs a mouse and keyboard, aim assist and magnetism, playing with highest resolutions and hardware, speed of controller games vs mouse & keyboard games, better tools and using DOOM as a learning tool, a lesson from the Pokemon series, the huge reach of the biggest franchise, Nintendo games as exemplars of good design, games we've been inspired by despite not having played much, the granularity of game bits, mental mapping in Will Wright's games, mea culpa mea maxima culpa, playing with a controller vs a mouse with the most recent game.

Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: Tim Willits, id Software, Kevin Cloud, John Romero, American McGee, GZDoom, Shawn Green, Hexen, 3D Realms, Daikatana, Nintendo, Switch, XBLA, nickmcco, Pokemon, Pokemon Go, GameCube, N64, JC Porcel, Super Crate Box, Final Fantasy (series), The Sims, Richard Evans, Will Wright, Mark Brown, The Game Maker's Toolkit, GTA III, Matt Ackeret, Apple ][, Atari 2600, The Witcher III, DOOM (2016).

Next time: DOOM (2016)

Links: MiniDOOM 2 Trailer

Download link for Mini DOOM2

https://twitch.tv/brettdouville, @timlongojr, and @devgameclub DevGameClub@gmail.com

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