Frederick Zeleny’s Post

Another article about our unfortunate story. If possible, share about it, so that more developers are aware and can avoid this kind of horror story!

The other game tried out at last night's Games Night is one quite appropriate for the Devon Library called "Really Loud Librarians". This is a party style game where two teams face off against one another. The premise is simple: your goal is to travel as far as you can around a track calling out items beginning with certain letters from randomly drawn categories. Simple, right? Not so fast. First of all you're working under a one minute time limit. Secondly rather than just one letter to match and advance, you are presented with three possible choices which complicates the brain processing immensely. That is further complicated as bonus letters worth more points start appearing, changing strategy and thus taxing your brain even further. It's the kind of game that will stump and entertain any social setting. Even with two players we found each other comparing responses, stealthily trying to give hints and marveling how such a simple task can become such a brain twister. All in all, a lot of fun and I look forward to giving it another go.

Swen Vincke calls out what artist have been saying since the Sistine Chapel. Capitalism askes, “When will you make a buck?” And artists answer, “When I’m finished.” Everything in between is negotiatable. Real creative art has been and is being built from game tech. Their is connection and storytelling to be grown here. If we look at human history, oral storytelling, theater, literature, had thousands of years to develop, film passed a century decades ago, video games are the newest last refuge for artistic growth. I believe it will keep going and it will be the small studios that innovate. Our current state for video games is like 1940’s for film, 1700’s for literature, or just past cave painting for oral history. If you’re working in gaming know you’re moving storytelling forward with every little creative step. You are Michelangelo’s assistant, you’re Orson Wells’ gaffer, you’re the typesetter for the King James Bible. Video game creative history just got interesting and it’s nowhere close to being contained.

I'm excited to share that I've published documentation for my open source project FoliCon! After many late nights of writing, organizing, and polishing, the FoliCon docs site is now live at https://lnkd.in/dN3R97zP. As the project grew, I knew comprehensive documentation would be key for future contributors and users to understand how to use and extend the project. With the docs, I aimed to create an engaging, easy-to-navigate reference for all things FoliCon. I've included overviews of key concepts, detailed usage and contributions guide, and graphics to showcase functionality. My goal was for the docs to reflect both the usage of the project as well as my own passion for clear, usable documentation. This has been an extremely fulfilling process for me - I love writing and organizing complex information so others can understand and build upon it more easily. I'm hopeful these docs will empower more people to use and contribute to FoliCon. Of course there's still work left to do, but I'm excited by what I've created so far! Let me know if you have any questions about FoliCon or the new documentation site. And if you're interested in contributing, the code is all open source on GitHub at https://lnkd.in/djg2Vers. I welcome new collaborators to help strengthen the project and its docs moving forward. Thanks to JetBrains for WriterSide, which motivated me even more on what I already loved. 😎 #jetbrains #WriterSide #Java #CSharp #Document #OpenToWork #hiring

Hi friends and colleagues! TL;DR - Working on a satirical yet adorable business/office simulation video game, for which I (amongst other things) write music and do sound design - and there is a free-to-play demo! Link at the bottom. It's been a while since I posted an update here about my creative work - so here it goes! About 6 months ago, I joined my ex-Google colleague and friend Eric Cheng at his indie game studio Most Dangerous Games to work on a cute little game called CapitalismCraft: A satirical business/office simulation game where you get to exploit workers to make lots and lots of money for you! They will most likely get sad and worn-out over time, but that's just a part of the rat race. Originally, Eric needed help figuring out path-finding and collision avoidance for this hilarious game. Being the nerd that I am, I jumped on the opportunity. Needless to say, as I was working on navigation for the adorable characters in CapitalismCraft, I fell in love with the world and lore, and started contributing in other ways, including music and sound design! And for the exciting news: the game has a live playable demo that you can try for free on Steam: https://lnkd.in/ecXhKGHg

Over the festive break I read the crowd funded autobiography book by the Oliver Twins. If you didn't know who they were, they were the most successful 8bit game developers in the 1980s to 1990s, achieving the Guinness World Record for creating the most number of games. Takeaways from their story for me were: - To always find new ways to do things better. - Use short and succinct code as opposed to longer form code as this will take up less memory. - Code offline and keep backed up versions of code. - Create utilities to improve your workflows in game development and finally stay motivated.  Here is their website, do check it out ( I don't gain commission to recommend 😊) : https://lnkd.in/e_52Sutv #retrocomputing #retrogaming #coding #8bit

This is a must-have: "Fictional Games A Philosophy of Worldbuilding and Imaginary Play" by Stefano Gualeni and Riccardo Fassone. "What roles do imaginary games have in story-telling? Why do fiction authors outline the rules of a game that the audience will never play? Combining perspectives from philosophy, literary theory and game studies, this book provides the first in-depth investigation into the significance of fictional games within fictional worlds." https://lnkd.in/dFSQ5Cva

Fascinating video by Marc Evanstein on Tic-Tac-Toe! It's intriguing to see how a simple game can be broken down into a finite set of scenarios, blending music, coding, and math to explore the concept. #TicTacToe https://lnkd.in/gYpt6iGF

Next up on devcom/gamescom: From Book to Game - How does that actually work? Monday, August 21, 2023 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM · 1 hr. (Europe/Berlin) Stage 9 - Kongresssaal 1 There are plenty of games based on books: The Witcher 3, The Dwarves, Orwell are good examples. In this one-hour workshop, the game author and narrative director Lena Falkenhagen, the visual development artist and storyboarder Klaus Scherwinski, game designer Marta Fijak (Anshar Games) and the author Boris Koch will take a look at his book "The Dragon Whisperer". From this book, the games-experts will create the basic concept for a game. They will present examples of which aspects of the book you can pick out, how to choose the perspective, what you have to pay attention to with regard to the author and maybe even which legal aspects you have to pay attention to. Sounds experimental? It is. Feel free to participate and give input or ask questions about the topic.

What is required for a video game to be considered as a visual novel genre? The traditional visual novel genre basically allows the player to experience or interact with a story through out text and cg. Instead of imagining about plot or characters when reading an actual novel, visual novel games visualizes how thing looks for the player. My question is if a game extends the visualizing and experiencing aspect even more than the traditional visual novel game does, for example, imagine a game where the player can move the character in 2d or 3d space and can interact not only just with the NPC(non-playable characters) but also with any other objects in the surrounding that can affect the plot of the story. If the game is basically like a traditional visual novel ONLY when interacting with the NPCs but the player can now roam around the area where the story takes place and if the plot will get heavily impacted by the player's interaction in the 2d or 3d space world, will it still be considered as a visual novel where the game gives more freedom for the player to actually explore and experience the game world rather than forcefully making the player to follow the plot only in simple scenes with text?