Tom Brien

a cartoon cat is sitting in a chair with the words lemonade below him ALT: a cartoon cat is sitting in a chair with the words lemonade below him

Moomins:

Man this is such a big job.
Even coming up with their solution, which is not dynamic or automatic, but a library of AUTHORED hand poses, is a tough convo.

Then the shape language of telling players what is and isn't pickupable from far away... something you can easily fail.

Hats off to 'em!

Accidentally coded a gift-box that contains a copy of itself.
Have I just invented the next biggest game on Steam? Recursive Loot-Box Opener?

Ooh this dot shading looks really good!

I love Phone Booth!
I recommended it a couple times to people looking for dumb, bad movies. It sounds bad!

But then 30 minutes in you're like... this rocks actually.

I thought you were a gameplay programmer

I knew a parent once who let their kids name the dog, and they named it Facebook

Taking a small detour to make the game handheld, so I can hand it to locals for testing...

Wahaha, misses eye-balls?

If you mean the remake, you should try watching Pop Star: Never Stop

You can remind players by just having the activity decorate the world.
Advertise the race track, have fun looking NPCs talk about the card game, put your Pool Hall next to the Store. These are lighter ways to remind a player to try a new feature that you can see in Yakuza, Persona and Stardew.

I got a bit lost reading this, in the first paragraph it sounds like experiencing failure is rich and interesting, but then in the 2nd paragraph you say implementing loss is a mistake.

I think I'm the only one who doesn't get it 🤷‍♂️

In my experience if you hide a bunch of stuff then they don't search for it. A player can always assume the game is not very big and close it, so you kinda have to introduce your features.

For the same reason I think you DO have to keep reminding players, but it's a deft balance of how and when.

Getting that feeling that I might have just added the most important item in the game

Ubisoft called Beyond Good And Evil 2 a AAAA game, so... at that point.

I dunno, this is some real "don't pick me, I'd probably screw it up" thinking.

I gotta disagree with that!

Was hunting for sound effects when I realised I have a microphone... I can just do the sounds.

Congratulations! I love seeing your work in this game, the art is really coming to life

It's a fun puzzle to think of one, but what this really highlights for me is that 90% of great games have beloved music!

Oh I love SF6 music, I listen to it a lot

I wonder why it's that specific spot

It sounds like a dumb thing to say about a comic strip, but I saw this one more than 10 years ago and I still think of it all the time.

Displaced wildlife, city parks, pets in cages, I just always think of The Big Fence.

Compiling extremely heavy docked variant of the moon shader...

Great cover for anyone releasing an album named HEAD DEMAGNETIZER

I spend a lot of my time strapping a bunch of debug stuff to the animals and watching them move around the world in slow-motion.
That's proc animation for ya!

Iconic image. Burned into my brain with the Nintendo Horse Bag patent

Ugh this is rampant! It really broke something for me when I used to flip between different game podcasts and I noticed they'd all go to a preview event, and come back with the same words, analogies, comparisons, predictions...

This guy seems to mainly hate colour variety

"The Artistry Of" does sound a little bit more cool than "The Art Of"

Cool!
I remember I was into that for a while, but it was just throwing time in the trash. Even an hour doing nothing can be a benefit to your well-being, while an hour being high always felt like a waste.