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Reading List (November 2020)
🕑 Added 2020-11-26 14:28:40 +0000 UTCHey everyone! Hope everyone's doing okay - I've had a good November, due to the million subscriber milestone and the new consoles. But, still stuck inside so hopefully these articles and videos will keep you occupied. Speak soon.
Designer Notes
[Watch | CC | 21 mins] How Alien Isolation Survived its Difficult Development - Noclip talks to Creative Assembly about the choices that lead to Alien Isolation, including the bold move to first person.
[Read] Designing Choices in Visual Novels - The developers of visual novel Arcade Spirits talk about some lessons learned from offering players dialogue choices.
Critical Hit
[Read] PS5's Activities System Makes Playing Open World Games Brutally Efficient - An SSD and bookmarked quests changes the way we'll interact with games.
[Read] Watch Dogs: Legion Is Completely Detached from Reality - WD:L felt like Ubisoft's first "political" game. It's not, really.
[Watch | CC | 12 mins] More Demos, Fewer Conferences - Why watch fake trailers of games when you can just play em?
Culture Club
[Read] Where’s My Review Key? - A PR person explains the complex and mercenary world of handing out free games to people.
[Watch | 6 mins] Why Button Mashing Works (Sometimes) - Fighting game channel Core-A Gaming explains why its okay to pound your fightstick like its been a bad widdle boy.
[Read] Horse fans mod The Sims 3, RDR2 into the horse games they crave - Sure, why not.
[Read] No Man’s Sky players have built entire rave planets - Sure, why not.
Code Monkeys
[Read] Open-Source 2D Level Editor From The Creator of Dead Cells - Might be handy to anyone making a platformer or roguelike.
[Read] Generating an organic grid - A break down of the complex maths behind the grid-less grid-based game, Townscaper.
[Read] The Secrets of Monkey Island’s Source Code - A game preservation group has got the original code for Monkey Island. Here's what they learned.
[Watch | 12 mins] The System Behind Hades' Astounding Dialogue - People Make Games talks to Supergiant about building procedural dialogue for a roguelike.
[Watch | CC | 16 mins] How Spreadsheets Power the Civilian AI of Watch Dogs 2 - Meanwhile, AI and Games is looking at the striking complexity of Watch Dog's San Fran citizens.
History Corner
[Watch | 1 hour] Overblood 2 | Back from the Dead - Charlie goes deep into this cult PS1 classic, which was way too ambitious for its own good.
[Read] The Internet Archive's new Flash library is a nostalgic goldmine - Line Rider! Meat Boy! Helicopter Game! Badger badger badger! What a great project.
Indie Nation
[Watch | CC | 26 mins] How The Stanley Parable Was Made and Broke Up The Dev Team - A great breakdown. Check out the channel for more indie dev stories.
[Read] After 7 Years in Development Hell, No Fairytale Ending for 'Ray's the Dead' - VICE follows the long journey of one under-appreciated game.
Scenes, Sound, Story
[Watch | CC | 9 mins] The Atmosphere of Metroid: Zero Mission - Dan Root celebrated Halloween by looking at the spooky Metroid remake. There's also one on Prime 2.
[Watch | 20 mins] Austin Wintory's Themes are Simple, but Sophisticated - 8-Bit Music Theory breaks down the motifs of the storied game composer who did tunes for Journey, Abzu, and more.
[Watch | CC | 18 mins] Designing The Witcher 3's Most Famous Quest - Lessons from the Screenplay has a new video game channel. There's also a video on Outer Wilds.
[Read] Is Madeline Canonically Trans? - Celeste dev Maddy Thorson explains how Madeline's identity developed over time.
Beyond Bytes
[Watch | CC | 36 mins] The Tragedy of Droids in Star Wars - Pop Culture Detective looks at the slave symbolism of droids.
[Watch | 26 mins] Slow Mo Sound is FAKE... mostly - Find out how the Slo Mo Guys make those super slow sound effects for their videos, because they ain't real.
[Watch | 42 mins] What's the Point of R-Rated Superheroes? - Patrick H Willems wants to know why all these superheroes need to be cutting dudes' heads off.
Comments
Game Maker's Toolkit
Oops, fixed!
Fabian
"Townscaper's developer breaks down the complex maths behind a grid-less grid-based game" - that's not Townscaper's developer.
Iffish91
Thanks for the list!
