• The Lazy Designer,  Video Game Design

    Game Hauler Version 3 (Part 4 / ?) “The Big Design Change”

    Note: This post has previously appeared on Gamasutra and via my newsletter. Jump to Part 1 (if you have not read it previously). (If you want to play the latest build before reading the commentary then scroll down to the end of this post.) PROTOTYPE 3 (BUILD# 0.0.4.0) When I started building my prototype I had a general idea of where I wanted to go with it. Unfortunately my initial ideas didn’t pan out into anything I thought I could make fun. With this prototype I began the process of developing a rather different sort of core gameplay. The components of the game remain similar to the previous prototype (placeholder-art…

  • The Lazy Designer

    Update on the Prototype

    Well I suggested a couple days ago that I would stick to a schedule, for my blog postings and I don’t want to disappoint in the first week. That said, I’m quite far behind for today’s work, so a short update must suffice: I’m only spending a couple hours a week (at best) on the game prototype and primarily, for the last month or so, I’ve been researching various art solutions and doing some on-the-job training. Which basically means I’ve been creating ugly art for various prototyping ideas — primarily on the level design front. I’ve got some ideas to rapidly — and procedurally — generate some of what I…

  • Game Reviews,  The Lazy Designer

    Tackle Your Bigs Risks… Prototyping

    In my spare hours, in between writing and family obligations, I’m continuing with my unity prototype. I’ve been having fun with it but today I had to take a step back. I really want to dive into AI and combat, but I realize that these, while complicated system, are ones I’m confident I can get working properly. What I’m more concerned about is my ability to generate environments. So, this means diving into the technical details of creating the necessary environments — and abandoning the simplistic testing environment I’ve been using — but also figuring out how to make “worthy” environments for the concept. Part of the challenge here is…

  • Game Reviews,  The Lazy Designer

    When Brent Does Not Write… He Prototypes

    So, what have I been up to recently? Well, I’m well into writing novel #6 and planning novel #7 and planning the remainder of the Lazy Designer series. As well I recently released my open source writing organizer. So, I’ve been busy. I’ve also resumed playing around with the Unity game engine and am making good progress on a prototype. I have a working conversation system and am in a position to experiment with various character and camera controls. Mostly I am doing this just for experimentation purposes. Having lots of fun with it though, and it is a nice distraction from writing. p.s. Just in case anybody thinks I…