Sunday Links #3

Welcome to another installment of Sunday Links ™. Today I have a pretty eclectic mixture for you. Not all of it is games but (as usual) all of it is interesting. Either that or your money back!

Image: Polygon Heroes: The Hulk

This is from a series of pictures from James Reid. I love the way it creates a retro polygon aesthetic. It’s not unlike the resurgence of pixel art as a style to abstract everything. Maybe the “another world” graphics will make a resurgence. I wouldn’t mind.

Also note that I’ve been using Pinterest a lot lately. You can find this and more nerdy graphics (among other things I pin) on my personal Pinterest account or by checking out the Pinterest widget in the right hand column.

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Sunday Links #2

Welcome to another installment of the Sunday Links. This time with a bit more explanation and personal opinion for each of the different links:

Video: Van Gogh – Starry Night, interactive art

A wonderful example of what people can do with technology – as far as I know it was done with Kinect. For some reason it also reminds me a lot of flOwer. Even though it’s not a game I could easily imagine games with a similar painterly artstyle using lots of particles.

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Sunday Links #1

Picking up an idea from Gunnar Lott / Herr Kaliban I’ve decided to compile a list of all the interesting things I stumble upon over the week into a weekly digest. Not all of this will be games, but all of it should be interesting. So here we go, the first installment of Sunday Links:

Video: Sequelitis review of Mega Man X.
An excellent look at teaching gameplay without text. I’ve looked at some other videos in the series and can recommend all of it so far.

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Procedural Cities on the BLDGBLOG

An interesting article over at the BLDGBLOG about procedural generation of cities. That’s a topic I’m really interested in and that article is a good quick read with some interesting links to further stories.

Especially noteworthy are the game Subversion from Introversion and the procedural city project from Shamus Young of DM of the Rings webcomic fame. Also Viktor Antonov, designer of City 17 is mentioned in there. If you remember, I’ve already stumbled over him in the EDGE podcast I linked to a few days back.

Check it out.

Also if anyone has some additional info on Marco Corbettas Structure, I’d love if you could share…

EDIT: Here’s a YouTube video on Structure.

No More Wrong Turns is online

Navigation ToolsThe article I’ve been mentioning and working on in the past couple of weeks is finally online. You can read No More Wrong Turns over at Gamasutra. It deals with ways that Game and Level Designers can steer the movement of players.

Give it a read and please let me know what you think. I’m eager to get some feedback. Feel free to post a comment over at Gamasutra or here on my blog.

Edge Panel on Architecture and Videogames

I just stumbled over this feature from Edge magazine called Architecture and Videogames. It’s a recording of a panel on – who would have guessed – Games and Architecture. It’s avilable as an mp3 on the link above and it’s really interesting. I’ve found inspiration to get back to two blog articles I’ve already started. Be warned though, the recording is quite long.

The panel is made up out of a mix of people who have a background in both architecture and video game development. They do make a lot of interesting points on what digital game architecture is and how it relates to physical architecture. I particularly liked the comments about the design of experiences, something that’s firmly in the realm of level design. It’s the job of a level to provide an entertaining joyride with highs and lows. On the other hand there’s few architectural spaces that are designed to provide experiences. The few exceptions that do are things like theme parks or monumental architecture.