I am Seb, and it’s been a year since I last wrote any code.

If you’re a creative of any kind who finds themselves deeply immersed in the art of constructing something new from nothing more substantial than your own imagination, then you will know the pain implicit in that opening sentence. The aching longing of an alcoholic who has spent every agonising moment worrying over the twelve steps, fingering the medallions like a rosary in the hope that one day it won’t be difficult any more, and the wearying exercise of wilful abstinence will dissolve away into the effortless reality of sobriety.

I’m here to tell you, friends, that there is light at the end of that tunnel.

The transition away from active development was a deliberate one for me. I didn’t wake up one morning and decide to stop, and thankfully nobody has ever felt the need to stage an intervention. (Though after a year of living together and rolling her eyes my caffeine-fuelled all-night hacking sessions, I suspect my wife was sorely tempted.) It came about as the only possible decision from the fortuitous combination of a crisis, an opportunity, and an idea that had been languishing forgotten at the back of my mind for many years.

The crisis I won’t go into in detail on following the advice of my inner lawyer, but the basic facts are that my previous employer folded in the messy implosion of a failing startup. Less of a bang than a whimper, but one that left its dutiful employees out in the cold with the barest of notice and not even the barest of redundancy terms a month short of Christmas. Fortunately, I have a fairly good CV, and was never in danger of having to get what my mother would call an honest job. (Whatever that is.)

The opportunity was one that only came about after a lot of reflection. In the process of finding something interesting to turn my attention to I came to the conclusion that I only wanted to work for a company with a strong set of values and a clear identity and culture that I felt strongly reflected my own. The only problem was that I didn’t really understand my own identity and values at that point –  so I found myself undergoing a significant soul-searching exercise with every new job listing. (I whole-heartedly recommend this as a way of choosing for whom to work; it makes for outstanding interview preparation.)

I got lucky, and found a company called Mind Candy whose values resonated from the moment I saw them: Entrepreneurial, Passionate, Playful, Innovative, and Commercial (we’ve since added Respectful to that list). Having that cultural identity spelled out in the job description was a clear sign, and it was pure coincidence that I had already encountered Mind Candy’s major product when working on a similar proposition at BBC Children’s. At that point (literally, mid-interview) I was presented with a clear choice: develop my technical specialism further in the development team, or switch career path and move into product management.

That brings us to the idea, which I first stared developing whilst reading Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age nearly 20 years ago, and which is the whole reason that I’m now immersing myself in the discipline of product management to the exclusion of the deep technical problems that have fascinated me since I got my first computer 30 years ago.

The idea is this: I believe that technology has an enormous role to play in transforming the education of children across the world, and that the opportunity to effect that transformation is coming in the next few years as plummeting hardware costs lead to portable, connected, and highly-capable devices at a price point that makes books redundant as a learning tool. Further, that this hardware inflection point can be combined with well-designed, useful and unobtrusive creative software tools to provide a new generation with techniques and capabilities to revolutionise the creative industries. Finally, that these factors combined with the advent of rapid prototyping and high-fidelity fabrication tools can produce a renaissance in the creative, manufacturing and design industries on a global scale within a generation.

It’s a big idea, and I’m far from the only person to have had it. A lot of clever people are working on it in many different and interesting ways, which tells me that it’s probably also a good idea. I think that I can contribute towards it, but to my mind contributing to something so momentous on an individual scale wouldn’t be enough to make the kind of difference that such a challenge calls for.

I feel so passionately about this that when the crisis, the opportunity and the idea all came together at the same moment, there was only one path that I could choose.

I stopped writing code. I started learning (and sometimes re-learning) the skills that I think I’ll need to participate meaningfully in a cultural and social revolution that could change the way millions of people live and work. In doing so, I found myself doing something that I truly believe in, having more fun and being challenged in bigger and harder ways than at any point in the first 20 years of my career.

I am Seb, and it’s been a year since I last wrote any code.

And that’s just fine by me.

This is the most beautiful video I’ve seen for a very long time. I can’t wait to go up there and see it for myself.

Not much to show yet, but a brief taster of my latest experimentation in Unity.

Playable version below in the Unity Web Plugin.

Please view the full post to see the Unity content.

Rendering Synthetic Objects into Legacy Photographs from Kevin Karsch on Vimeo.

This mind-boggling technical demonstration from Kevin Karsch et al. from UIUC shows just how far algorithmic interpretation of imagery has come. The possible uses for it are many and varied, but the potential for games has really piqued my interest.

The age of the point-and-click adventure has come and gone, but many will remember fondly the days of Monkey Island, Space Quest, and Gabriel Knight. The defining characteristics of the genre were simple enough: a linear, narrative-led journey through a series of static locations with interactive puzzle elements that had to be completed in order to progress to new locations. With such a limited mechanic it wasn’t the gameplay elements that we loved – in fact they were often obscure and frustrating to the point that they spawned an entire industry of premium-rate help phone services – it was the stories and the sense of immersion that the intricately-crafted settings offered.

Of course, static locations, no matter how elegantly-rendered, were a limitation of hardware capability that vanished with the advent of real-time 3D. From the moment that Wolfenstein and Doom appeared on the scene the days of the point-and-click as the dominant gaming genre were numbered.

The thing that really captures my imagination about Karsch’s technology, then, is how simply it could be used to generate photo-realistic point-and-click adventures from photographic source material. Want to recreate the black-and-white horror of WWI trenches without employing several dozen artists and animators for a couple of years? Or the gothic majesty of 1930′s New York? Grab your source photos, spend ten minutes setting up the geometry of the scene with this software, then drop in your 3D interactive elements and you’ve got the basics of a game engine with a visual fidelity that current top-end 3D engines would be hard-pressed to rival.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

- Arthur C. Clarke

[verb] Give up (something important or valued) for the sake of other considerations

Giving up. It’s not really something you associate with the timed-reward structure of most games. Gamers have become accustomed to a steady accumulation of, well, pretty much everything, so who in their right mind would ask players to give something up?

Trading within games is a well-established mechanic, and one that players will recognise immediately from the world outside of games. You give something of value, and you expect something of equal (or hopefully greater) value in return. Whether it’s foraged rupees for a boomerang, or disenchanting epics for their crafting components, the bargain is clear and mutually beneficial.

The differentiating factor with sacrifice is that it’s not a straight trade as in a barter system, but the immediate surrender of something of value for the potential of future benefit. The implication is that the future benefit will be greater than the immediate gains of retaining the thing that is sacrificed, however this is not guaranteed. Sacrifice is almost universally an act of faith.

One common aspect of sacrifice – be it to the gods for a bountiful harvest, or to the volcano to ensure its peaceful slumber – is that the thing to be sacrificed must be of value and significance to the person offering it. Food and drink are perhaps the most common of sacrificial offerings, which is hardly surprising given their immediate value for survival. In ancient greek culture it was normal to sacrifice a symbolic amount of wine (normally the first cup at a meal) as a libation to the gods, a practice that is still common in eastern cultures today. Many cultures practice the ritual sacrifice of food animals, such as the muslim Eid al-Adha or festival of sacrifice, in which a domestic animal is sacrificed and the meat divided between the owners, their relatives and neighbours, and the poor.

Fortunately, the practice of human sacrifice – though common throughout ancient history – is universally treated as murder and exceptionally rare nowadays. Though extremely popular in mythology as the image of a terrified virgin girl tied up and left to a terrible fate by cowardly villagers (usually to be saved in the nick of time by the hero of the tale), the true image of human sacrifice more often resembled the mass execution of slaves to follow their master in the afterlife.

Regardless of the exact form of the sacrificial offering, its value more often than not was in its scarcity. In game design, scarcity is often overlooked as a limiting factor outside of defining the game’s difficulty. Whilst scarcity of ammunition is a common method to force a conservative strategy on the part of the player, it’s seen as far less acceptable to limit the rewards offered to the point that the player is unable to earn something that she desires.

Scarcity, whilst the more common basis for value, is far from alone. Investment is another means by which the player may imbue her possessions with value. Many games offer some means by which a player can invest some combination of time and resources into the creation of a new item or artefact within the game world. Whilst crafting or customisation tools are predominantly the domain of role-playing games, these mechanics are finding their way across a broad range of genres to encourage player investment.

Finally, beyond the physical bases for value, one aspect that cannot be overlooked is the player’s emotional attachment to a potential sacrificial offering. Whilst emotional responses to games are far less predictable than the simpler (and heavily conditioned) responses to scarcity and investment, skilled game designers have a wide range of narrative and psychological tools with which to manipulate a player’s emotions in ways both subtle and profound. It is in exploiting the emotional value a player assigns to an item or character that the most significant reaction to sacrifice may be observed.

There are 3 levels of sacrifice immediately apparent: token sacrifices, major sacrifices, and self-sacrifice.

Token sacrifices

Obviously the thing should be of value to the player, otherwise it’s not a sacrifice. The aim here is to prompt the player to assess what’s important to them within the context of the game. There might not necessarily be a right choice here, and the result of the sacrifice might not be an absolute requirement for progression.

Token sacrifices may be renewable resources, though it is expected that the player should invest some effort to replace her sacrifice lest it devalue the act.

Examples:

The player could be asked to sacrifice score.

As play progresses, game gets more difficult and the player runs the risk of losing. At any point the player can retire, permanently sacrificing a relatively larger proportion of score in order to not lose. (Although score is accumulated throughout the game, as the player’s last act is one of sacrifice it cannot be reclaimed later.)

Score could be used as a proxy for player power, a resource to be exercised in order to perform some action. The player would have to find a balance between accumulating score with low risk strategies, or risking the loss of score for potentially higher gains

The player could be asked to sacrifice her most useful weapon.

Determining which weapon the player favours and asking them to relinquish it for possible future gain is a difficult choice for many players. It’s also a great twist on the cliche of having all your weapons except your weakest magically removed in an FPS.

The player could sacrifice a pet, or other such replaceable resource.

Great examples of this are the Warlock sacrifices in World of Warcraft, where a summoned demon can be sacrificed for a temporary bonus such as brief invulnerability or increased damage. As demons have a high summoning cost sacrifice is usually an act of last resort.

Major Sacrifices

The player is asked to sacrifice something which in normal circumstances a person would never consider sacrificing.

In general terms, the point here is to offer the player a moral dilemma. On the one hand the player’s natural instinct should be to protect whatever it is she is asked to sacrifice, but on the other hand there must be a valid moral imperative to the sacrifice. (Or at least the appearance of one.) Again, the sacrifice might not be an absolute requirement for progression, however the apparent consequences of refraining from the decision should be significantly detrimental as to warrant the decision being difficult.

Examples:

The player could be asked to sacrifice the life of an NPC in order to prevent more lives being lost.

The climax of Mass Effect 2 can put the player in the position of choosing NPCs for potential suicide missions and thus losing them.

The player could be asked to sacrifice her friendship with an NPC.

Several Bioware RPGs require the player to sacrifice her friendship with one NPC in order to become closer to another NPC, such as choosing to let Loghain live and join your party causing Alastair to permanently leave in Dragon Age: Origins.

This makes for a great setup for the cliched return of the NPC as an adversary later on.

The player could be asked to murder an NPC as an order from a superior.

The player could choose to sacrifice an NPC for considerably greater power.

This is used to its logical extreme in the Star Wars games as the critical differentiator between the Jedi and Sith factions.

Self-Sacrifice

Self-sacrifice is the ultimate act of selflessness, and an oddity in games where players are conditioned by the medium to look for an optimal winning condition. There are significant barriers to encouraging a player to sacrifice himself in order to progress in a game: from a logical standpoint it’s impossible to progress once you’re dead, and from an emotional perspective you have to convince the player to care more for the outcome than she does for himself to satisfy the narrative impact of the sacrifice.

It’s probably for this reason that self-sacrifice is an exceptionally rare mechanic in games, and for games where it does exist the cost is generally mitigated by other game mechanics that allow a rapid return to life. The final, permanent death is rare enough that it is normally considered the ultimate form of punishment or failure within a game.

One game which makes use of this mechanic exclusively is the short but provocative art-game ImmorTall, where the player’s only available choice is whether or not to sacrifice himself to save a small group of civilians caught in a war.

It’s important to distinguish here between self-sacrifice as a specific gameplay mechanic, and self-sacrifice as an emergent gameplay style. Taking World of Warcraft as an example, the Paladin class gains the ability to sacrifice the player’s life in order to confer temporary invulnerability on another player. This gameplay mechanic is extremely useful, however its serious nature is negated by the prevalence of resurrection abilities and negligible cost of death. For the player it’s a decision taken lightly as a normal class mechanic.

An example of emergent gameplay might be a situation where, in order to prevent the death of another player, a player attracts the attention of monsters and as a result sustains damage resulting in death. The first type of sacrifice requires a deliberate choice and action on the part of the player, with no uncertainty as to the outcome for him. The second type is the natural consequence of taking on an overwhelming foe, and the player may not always be certain of death. In a game where the cost of death can be crippling such as Eve Online, emergent mechanics such as these are literally life-and-death decisions in the game: players in smaller cheaper ships will often sacrifice themselves in order to prevent larger ships from escaping combat and thus earn their fleets valuable time to turn the tide of a battle.

The final milestone is now complete, and Scavenger Wars now has environmental hazards as described in the previous milestone. As this is the final build, I’ve included a web player version embedded below, as well as Mac and Windows builds.

Some caveats: you’ll want to play in a widescreen resolution, either windowed or fullscreen. There’s only the one level, and as it’s just a prototype there are some slight physics glitches. However, there’s enough here to get a feel for how gameplay would be in a fully-developed version. For what amounts to about 14 hours of work, I consider that a decent achievement.

Windows standalone (2.9MB .zip)

Mac universal binary (12MB .zip)

Web player:

Please view the full post to see the Unity content.

Continuing last weekend’s mini game jam, I’m implementing the last few milestones from the Scavenger Wars design document in short sprints. Combat is now complete, as per the milestone from part 5: with explosive missiles and line of sight behaviour for the AI player.

The AI pathfinding behaviour from the second milestone was very slow and clunky, which has been bothering me, so I spent some extra time and now have a re-worked AI that is far more aggressive and capable of much faster navigation.

For the next milestone I’ll be implementing environmental hazards: radiation, electricity and radiation. Initially these will all be visual variations on a simple trigger mechanism which causes constant damage whilst the player is inside the area of effect. I will also add in some exploding barrels which are detonated whenever they’re hit by anything.

1. Area trigger which causes constant damage on contact with player. (40 minutes)
2. Particle cloud rendering with different colours for the different types. (30 minutes)
3. Barrels which explode when touched, causing damage. (40 minutes)

This is the last functional milestone for the prototype, which I will leave in its current state after this change. Over the week I’ll write up some of the game’s features as tutorials in preparation for next weekend’s Reddit Game Jam.

Unity3D has a decent web-player implementation, which requires no more than a button press to deploy. Compared to working with Flash it’s almost insultingly easy. So really it only makes sense to put up a build of milestone 2 to show how it works in practice.

So click below to try it out!

Controls are arrow keys or WSAD. You start top-right under the GUI (an annoying side-effect of squashing the game down to fit in the width of this website). Give it a shot fullscreen as well. Don’t expect great things as we’re only talking about 12 hours of work here!

Please view the full post to see the Unity content.

Milestone 2 is complete, though it took far longer than I expected mostly due to stopping to watch films all afternoon!

The game now has an AI controlled opponent which will seek out collectibles and manoeuvre to collect them, avoiding environmental obstacles. It’s not complex behaviour, and is a little slow (I use the physics engine for movement so was over-cautious with my approaching algorithm), but it gets there. There are some very obvious tweaks that can be made to make it more aggressive and better at navigation, but it’s a good start.

The next milestone – which sadly I may not have time to complete in the weekend – is combat. Specifically, adding a weapons system to allow both players to take each other out in competition for resources. This is fairly straightforward:

1. Add a projectile weapon that fires in a straight line forward from the ship. (30 minutes)
2. Make the projectile explode when it hits anything. (10 minutes)
3. Test: Fly around shooting things. (5 minutes)
4. Make the object the projectile hits take damage. (10 minutes)
5. Make the explosion add a force to anything nearby to push them away. (30 minutes)
6. Test: Fly around blowing things up and yelling one-liners from action movies. (10-20 minutes)
7. Make the AI player fire whenever the player passes in front of it within a certain angle and distance. (45 minutes)

As there’s a couple of hours of work there, and it’s already late in a day I’ve decided to extend my GameDev Weekend in order to complete the prototype described in the design document. That will mean at least one more milestone after this for the environmental hazards, and possibly another for polish and a couple of well-designed levels to play on if I have the time.