A few years ago there was a mario competition to generate levels. When the contest was over I downloaded the entries and tried out some of them. Quickly I found that while they had successfully generated a lot of levels the levels were not very fun.
A few years ago I started playing a lot of mario style platformers writing down notes including what I found "fun" (for the day I would get around to making my own platformer).
Skip down to the "What is fun" section and you will find the first two items pretty much say when you die it is not fun. Skill level doesn't necessarily equal fun in a platformer game. That block that almost kills you and scared you? Turnes out it was scripted and there was no way you could have died no matter what your skill level was.
There are a handful of platformers on Linux and they all have the problem of being too hard. The games in the first few levels are so hard that the player quits before they can explore what the engine can even do or find the "fun" in the game.
Maybe difficulty is simply the easiest nob to twist when designing platforms which is why so many first time platform developer turn that first, but I would have to think that the fun found in a platformer is not from the difficulty, but in other aspects. No one would dare say that Mario 2 (japan version) is better than Mario3 because it was more difficult.
I love hard games, but there's a very fine line between hard and frustrating and pulling it off is difficult. For one, if I'm playing well and don't make many mistakes (how many depends on how far in I am - if I'm almost at the end, zero mistakes may be tolerable or even a good thing), then I expect to advance. For example, if I play really well and then lose because of an unforeseeable event, that's not "hard" - that's just frustrating. It's also closely tied in with fairness. If a game is only hard because the AI cheats (perfect aim, always knows where you are, always outnumbers you, infinite resources, whatever) then that is probably not going to be fun. It can be, depending on the game (eg infinite amounts of enemies are a fun challenge in one game but frustratingly unfair in another), but again, this is difficult to pull off. Repetitive stuff is rarely fun, no matter how hard or easy it is.
What makes hard games fun is the sense of accomplishment when you finally outwit or outplay the game. A constant sense of impending failure is a good thing. Failure is also not a bad thing, as long as you can learn from it and do ever so slightly better next time. Constant failure is not a good thing as it quickly leads to frustration. Anything out of your control is also a bad thing and leads to frustration (example: if I died because I made a mistake, that's fine. If I died because I didn't do exactly what the designer wanted and there's no other way to do it, that's probably not fine, unless it was obvious what I should do). Some games also expect you to die a lot, but dying isn't particularly painful, so its not all that frustrating (ie in VVVVV).
Finally, gamers often (maybe even "usually") make terrible designers, so unless you have proven yourself, designing a fiendishly hard game is going to be a pretty big gamble.
Our goal isn't actually to make a hard game. Our goal is to make a game that suits your skill level, whatever it is.
As for whether we've succeeded, we've tested the game on a few hundred people, both hardcore and casual, and have only had one dissatisfied tester (it was a 5 year old who was playing an early build that was way too hard. Honestly I'm impressed he played it for as long as he did). In particular the good folks at Microsoft and Valve seemed to have a great time playing today. (Hooray!)
I have to disagree. I think making a hard game that is still fun is very challenging. But when you accomplish it, it's an even better platformer than the not-so-hard one. Take Donkey Kong Country Returns (Wii) and Rayman Origins (Wii/360/PS3). Both are very hard, especially DKCR. But they are very hard in fair, legitimate and satisfying ways. Beating the later levels in DKCR takes a bit of dedication, but is oh so satisfying when you get in the zone and find that beautiful path through the level.
Also see Super Meat Boy. It's basically a hard as nails platformer where you can and will die hundreds if not thousands of times trying to beat it. It's another great example of very hard (it's way harder than both RO and DKCR), but still fair, fluid, and "zen-like".
I don't think any automatically generated levels could ever reach the level of flow that the games I mentioned have, though.
Hard and fun are completely different things, I agree. I spent about 3 months on the basic algorithm, making sure the levels generated were feasible and interesting. The remaining 3 years have been spent making the game fun. The real trick is tailoring the difficulty to suit the level of the player. When you nail this correctly it leads to a very satisfying experience (and the algorithm does have a sense of 'flow' when it designs level, although I can understand that's hard to believe without playing the game)
Tell that to Dark Souls. I recently replayed ST:FU on it's harder setting. I think perhaps the difference between "dying" and "not fun" is a couple of things: first, there are regular and predictable save points so the level doesn't have to be started from the beginning; second, there is still some progress saved, experience earned, etc., so that even in death there is some progress; third, a way to track community progress (via achievements or social features) so that it's clear the end is attainable by something other than luck.
> second, there is still some progress saved, experience earned, etc., so that even in death there is some progress
I accidentally realized how important this is while playing Bioshock 2. The fact that when you're trying to kill a BigDaddy and you die, they keep their damage when you restart so that you can still kill him even if you don't have any weapons left and have to repeat 3 or 4 times.
If that wasn't the case it would have probably demoralized me from continuing the game when things got tough.
Therein lies the pendulum swinging the other way. When dying doesn't really disadvantage you, it takes a lot of enjoyment out of the game. Particularly in Bioshock where it can be an advantage to die (free health!)
Some people honestly do love nigh-impossible platformers. I am not among them, but the Linux games are going to be made by people who 1) are making it for themselves (and possibly a few others; that community's relatively small) and 2) aren't looking for massive distribution.
People who love platformers that much usually like them to be hard.
Very few platformers can pull off "hard" well because it can easily become re-playing the same 1/2 of a level for extended periods of time. This will result in users putting the game down, not telling their friends about it and game making less money. As for the open source examples my hunch is that they just wanted to make a mario clone and having play tested the game themselves throughout making the game didn't realize how hard the first levels were and never sat down and tried to built up any progression of difficulty that might match the players skills.
I love insane platformers like N+, Super Beat Boy, the upcoming cloudberry (from the OP), and of course the super hard mario levels.
I think what's interesting about cloudberry is that they are dynamically generating the levels, so you can play the game easy or hard. Properly implemented, it could be attractive to both casual and hardcore platform gamers.
Watching the (30 second?) trailer I saw a lot of the same stuff repeated which typically doesn't equate to much fun. With the hype of more levels than you could ever play seeing the same thing over and over in a trailer made me cringe. With dynamic level generation it is a bit odd that they would even have difficulty settings and instead adjust the difficulty on the fly like Crash Bandicoot's engine did to make the game more fun for the user.
> There are a handful of platformers on Linux and they all have the problem of being too hard. The games in the first few levels are so hard that the player quits before they can explore what the engine can even do or find the "fun" in the game.
When you're developing a game by yourself, you play it 1000s times to test every small change, debug, etc. So you're becoming pretty good at it.
So you balance it to be challanging, and it's too hard for regular players. At least that's what happened to me.
As a counterpoint: Spelunky is great fun, extremely hard, and very addicting. It's levels are randomly generated, and if you die you start over from the very beginning; it's perma-death.
Seriously? "Ha ha ha fat chicks! Ha ha, theorem proved, bitches!" [image of him doggy-style dry-humping a woman he assures you in the comments 'he has no idea who that girl is'] ...The subject is honestly interesting, I'd like to see the game-dev work he did, but this guy has a huge problem throwing sex into it. Way to make women hackers feel welcome there, "bro".
To be fair, this makes male hackers feel unwelcome too. I opened the page, thought "I'm not being caught with this open at work", and came here to deride the author. That's nice work, Lou...
piss people off == less links == less visits == less sales.
clearly their is a fine line, but I think the best link baiters lead with a premise that is outrageous, and content that is pretty agreeable.
I think you misread that. The girl in the first picture is his girlfriend but he is referring to the second picture of the girl in the red dress when he says, "has no idea who it is."
Yes, seriously. Not everyone has a problem with sex, either in earnest or in banter. If you're too uptight for reading creative people's blogs, maybe you should abandon link aggregators and go for something squeaky-clean and PC like CNN or WSJ. The level of PC groupthink on this thread is downright depressing.
The author was both skilled and entertaining. If you don't like his dev blog, then don't read it! Move on to the next link.
I'm offended by your insinuation that only hacker women would be offended. My guess is someone's girlfriend or wife or little sister might be in the kitchen reading her iPad and stumble onto this thread by mistake, and be offended that you're not considering that she's offended.
I have no argument. I just think it's kind of ridiculous how huge of a reaction there was to what is probably the mildest example of sexism i've ever seen. There's only one actual reference which could be interpreted as sexist (because apparently a stereotype about the mongul empire immediately defers to rape?) in the whole post and the rest of it is just tacky/creepy look-here-are-some-pictures-of-me-with-women.
Just as some people need to be told to reign in the sexualization of their posts, some people need to reign in the outrage.
Also I was really annoyed by the pointless use of the word 'hacker'. Seriously, people, just stop using the damn word. It's meaningless.
To speculate a bit, it seems like many people in the tech industry feel like women have been historically alienated in the industry, feel that this is unjust, and as a result are willing to err on the side of being oversensitive in this issue (perfection of course being impossible in this sort of fuzzy cultural area).
A similar thing applies to talking about women on the site. You can see the difference between referring to an example woman reading hacker news as a fellow hacker vs "someone's girlfriend or wife or little sister might be in the kitchen reading her iPad", right? The latter reinforces sexist stereotypes of women only being related to technology through men in their life rather than engaging with it themselves (plus, if someone's on hacker news, it's fair shorthand to assume that they're a hacker rather than a relation of one, whatever you want "hacker" to mean).
(Also you obviously do have an argument. The discussion is better when you state it outright rather than lashing out with vague sarcasm.)
I don't have an argument. I have a complaint, and I lodge it with sarcasm and parody because I don't think it's worth discussing. If somebody had something meaningful to say other than "I am disgusted by these pictures and a vague reference to a guy ravaging his girlfriend like a 14th century asian warrior!" maybe we would have something to talk about.
I think there is a bit of cultural relativism going on here. As someone who goes to UCSB, that's simply the culture here. We have a lot of very smart "bro"s and while it might offend you, that's just the way we roll. It's about being chill. partying hard on weekends, getting drunk, having fun, having sex and then working hard during the week (some people are partying all the time, but as the uni has been getting higher and higher caliber students every year this has become rarer.. well except for the SBCC kids.).
While maybe a bit crude, for the average women at UCSB this wouldn't be "unwelcoming".
Maybe he should have targeted the website more to the average American and mentioned Jesus a few times (I'm being facetious to make a point)
I went to UCSB as an undergrad for 2 years. I can guarantee if you ask -- and really listen! -- to women at UCSB, every single one would find this unwelcoming. Sexism isn't a 'culture' it is disgusting. Way to go 'bro'.
Wait what.. The problem is that women hackers might not feel welcome, because 'sex has been thrown into it'. Seriously? The author obviously intended it to be funny in a way, so if you don't like it (which of course is subjective), don't come up with over-emancipated crap like this :).
I for one think that people ought to take stuff less seriously, and this writing style seems befitting. Way to go!
I didn't notice at first, but there is a problem. Not sex specifically, but the asymmetry. In the photo as well as in the text, the all too familiar "male over female" pattern showed all over.
Now if it were a female hacker talking the same talk and showing the same photo, only with her banging her boyfriend from behind, then it would be different, because this situation definitely isn't the default. It could still be offensive, but I would find it funnier.
I would go so far as to say it is pornographic. I don't have a personal problem with the style, but degradation as humor has never been a good enough excuse, in my household, anyway. I just sort of pity the kind of thinking that begets such accoutrements.
This is one of the worst trolls i've seen on HN. Obvious ignorance of pegging, flame-baiting the downvoters and trying to link the possibility of alternative sex acts with physics.
She could bang him with her fist too. That would be from behind, and completely feasible with human anatomy. Clearly you haven't been on the internet very long. I can probably find you video evidence in about 20 minutes...
I think "throwing in sex" and "throwing in derogatory content" are a little different. I didn't mind his writing style but the pictures (sans the monkey shot) and captions took away from the article. He's free to do as he pleases, but I respect him a lot less for choosing to use such content. I don't really want fat chick jokes while reading a game development article.
The author appears to have the maturity of a high school sophomore, but wow does that game frighten me, in a Super Meat Boy way. Forget Microsoft, do a Kickstarter to raise funds to hire a real artist and build some kind of story around the game, then publish it for PC and Mac (on Steam if you can - good luck with that meeting). If you're successful there, the publishers will come calling.
The game mechanic is clearly there, but it needs a story and style. Again, Super Meat Boy has the "ungodly hard" thing down, but without the distinctive art direction and slightly disturbing story, would it have been as big of a success? I suspect not.
One thing that SMB did really, really well was provided a very slick learning curve. Every level provided you with techniques that, while learned through repetition, were applicable in future levels and scenarios. Every new mechanic was introduced sparingly at first, but then compounded upon by introducing new quirks to the formula you had already learned.
I think that's what made SMB such a solid game; not the difficulty, but the way the game presented you with that difficulty.
(Also, I'm in general agreement with others about the presentation of this article. It felt like the author was trying too hard to act like a college bro. I will admit, however, that I liked the bit with the monkey.)
> Super Meat Boy has the "ungodly hard" thing down
SMB is very playable and does a lot to mitigate its difficulty. You can find much harder platformers out there. An example is IWBTG (http://kayin.pyoko.org/iwbtg/) whose creator also designed some of the bonus levels for SMB.
I was totally expecting this article to be about IWBTG.
The thing about Super Meat Boy is that it's JUST A BIT harder than you can do normally, but just a bit easier than you can deal with at your very best. So it makes you want to win.
YES. Mega Man 9 is another great example of this. Both games get incredibly difficult, but only so difficult that one's inability to complete a level is their own fault, not the result of any "unfairness" on the part of the level designers. It's too hard, then you get better, then you win. That's how you make a great game, and SMB does it to a T.
Hi all, pwnee programmer here. Thanks for all the support! I'm headed out to our meeting with MS in about an hour.
I'd like to quickly add: I'm good friends with all the people in the pictures (except the monkey). The humor was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, and I apologize if it came off as offensive. My 'wife' in the story is actually a great guy I met in Thailand. I don't believe he would be offended by the caption.
Just want to point out that your perception of what is offensive is going to be strongly skewed from the perspective of everyone else. That's just human psychology and relative experience; because you're the originator of all the humor and jokes, you know exactly where the wit stems from. Anyone who is not you (or a close friend of yours) does not, and no matter how much you say "It wasn't meant to be offensive, people who know me know it's my sense of humor," that's not a sentiment that strangers can judge. So they're likely to go with their gut and have a negative first impression. Simple as that.
People on HN are most likely more tolerant/forgiving of this as long as the hacking is good. I doubt that suits at Microsoft or any other corpopration will be. There's just not much point in risking offending someone who has the ability to ax a deal when the humor in question -- from the average outsider's perspective -- adds absolutely nothing to the enjoyment of the explanation.
I think I'm in that "more tolerant" crowd, but the pictures made me stop reading pretty quickly. Just doesn't look like something I'll be interested in even if the content is good.
People on HN are most likely more tolerant/forgiving of this as long as the hacking is good.
Really? Have you read this thread? Any time there's anything remotely immature or misogynistic posted, the comments tend to focus way more on that than the actual content. Not saying that it's bad or good, just pointing out that I'd say HN is MORE sensitive than most places to this sort of thing.
Given the relative maturity and (geographic) diversity of the demographic here, I think we give a pass to a lot of design/taste-related faux pas, as long as the idea/discussion is great. But the content in the OP arguably crossed the line, thus the high number of complaining comments.
Hi danso, I agree it's difficult to correctly gauge how others will react to any piece. For this blog post I had my three sisters read it -- as well as about half a dozen other people from diverse backgrounds -- and no one found it offensive. Of course, that's not a guarantee that no one anywhere will find it offensive.
The first picture is a bit edgy, I agree. Perhaps that colors the interpretation of the remaining pictures. But the following pictures are really not offensive at all. The next picture is of a woman molesting me (in a pretty PG way). Then there is a picture of a man kissing me. The last picture is of a monkey. That seems pretty harmless by most standards. But I can certainly see how the first picture may set people up to interpret the remaining pictures in a different light.
I don't mean to overstep my bounds here (and it's not any of my concern anyway), but when people are telling you that something's offensive [1], responding with an assertion that "it's not offensive at all" and an explanation of why that's so is a HUGE RED SIGN that you're ... not getting it. Whether you're right or wrong.
[1] I think the word "offensive" is overused these days — I wouldn't say I was offended by your post but I did find it very distasteful.
Wasn't offended, but I was put off by how immature parts of the article were. The game itself is quite an achievement, and while I certainly don't expect suits and ties, I think the tone undermines your effort and accomplishments thus far.
You could have just posted the video and a PayPal link, and probably brought in 4-figures+ by the end of the day. The game stands alone, you don't need to sell us on how high-larious and cheeky you can be.
Asking people for money scares me. A lot. We could certainly use some though. This post was just a quick tongue-in-cheek piece, mostly to calm my own nerves. We didn't post it to HN and weren't looking to get a lot of attention.
I personally thought the photos were hilarious and "got" that they were humor, clearly intending to show a progression of suitable partners as you descended deeper into the code cave and away from respectable corporate employment working for the man, eventually resulting in being with a monkey. At no point did I assume these were necessarily real partners.
My attempt at feedback: If you are trying to promote a game you made, promote the game. I have no clue why there are all these pictures of you with random girls, but I can tell you that it lost my interest far before I ever read a word about your game.
Personally, I liked the humor. It shows you're an actual human and not a program yourself.
I'm always amazed at the commentators on HN who advocate that you should never offend anyone in the slightest way, ever. <sarcasm>After all, it's clearly not a strategy that works for anybody. Just look at Zed Shaw or Giles Bowkett.</sarcasm>
Jordan, your sense of humor isn't limited to just to your story, you can also find it in your team's biography: TJ's main role, it seems, is to "look attractive" and your artist, Anders, is "sexy".
An interesting story sadly ruined by the profanity and sexist photos. Best of luck, although I must admit that were I an investor, I'd want a signed guarantee that there wouldn't be any hidden easter eggs along these kinds of lines ;-)
Might be a good game underneath all that but the article made me say "yuck". As a general rule, thin young guys don't look better when they comment on "big girls".
I've never smiled so much at a game demo - the final video looks insane and so much fun! I really like the various co-ops modes you're throwing into the mix.
The whole time I was reading it I just wanted him to stop talking and take my money. He should release it on Xbox Live no matter what microsoft says. (I think anyone can do it now right?)
Yes, through the Xbox Live Indie Games program (they might have renamed it recently). Problem is, he wouldn't get the promotional backing that a "real" game gets, both from MS and from a publisher. Those games hardly get any attention, and good games often languish amongst 2-hour tech demos and ridiculous Minecraft ripoffs.
true, and hopefully microsoft comes through for him. But if it doesn't, he should go the indie program and steam route. Put up a post on reddit, and make his millions (thousands?).
Well, I mean, there's an above the fold pic of a guy simulating sodomy, and lots of F-bombs. Some of us don't work for startups, or even, gasp, in places with an HR department with no sense of humor and a sexual harassment policy.
It's completely SFW if you have privacy. If you don't have complete privacy it's SFW if anyone who might possibly catch a glance at your screen will unrealistically spend the time understanding the content on said screen.
In most workplaces random passerby's will only get a quick glance and then try to decipher what they saw from visual persistence. Almost anyone will assume he's looking at porn of other workplace-questionable content.
I thought it sounded like an interesting submission. While I am hardly a prude, 15 seconds into it the stench of "Bro!" was too overwhelming and the Back button drew my focus.
Great story and the game is looking good. Do you plan to release your algorithm (as a code or paper)? I wonder how much does it take to check if a level is beatable.
I've long thought we'd see a web browser appear soon with a menu option to see how the user got to that tab's location. I'd use that at least once a week.
Isn't that just a back button? I supposed the issue is that opening a new tab doesn't duplicate the back button history into it, but I think there are extensions for that.
His brilliant idea for infinite platformer levels came in 2009.. 3 years after Notch released an infinite Mario Bros level generator as public domain and numerous competitions had already sprung up around the idea.
Also the video shows elements that are way too close to existing Nintendo properties for my liking and probably the liking of MS or Valve's lawyers. I mean, taking ideas from other games is fine, by why are your fireball sticks fireball sticks? I can't think of anything other than Super Mario Bros. when I see that.
You can pay homage without ripping off (see, for example, what Jon Blow did with Braid while also creating an actually unique game idea, in his own time, without funding and without coming off an 8th grade misogynist in his pre-release blog posts).
The fire spinners have been in the game for 3 years, and we've debated them for 3 years. I can see both sides. They're clearly a direct homage to Mario, but it's just one small piece of our game, and the overall package is really nothing like Mario at all.
There have been a few procedural platformers over the years, which is awesome. We're not the first to scene. But I believe we are the first to offer provably possible levels that can scale to any difficulty, both casual and insanely hardcore.
As a guy who opened this at work, lol. Not sure if he intended it to have a sexist vibe, I got the impression he was single and poking fun at himself. The game I will never play because I don't hate myself, but entertaining post for sure.
Why is it such an all or nothing approach to distribution? Getting on XBLA, which requires a publisher (I guess he must be meeting with Microsoft Game Studios then), is extremely unlikely for a indie dev's first game. Value might be able to look away from the game's lack of polish if the gameplay is really good, but even then there are indie games with a lot more polish and award recognition that don't make it on to the service.
Even without Steam/XBLA a good game could still make enough money for a indie dev to make another game
You're right, I was over dramatizing things a bit. It's only getting easier for small indie studios to get their games out and be successful. This really is the indie golden era.
As 54mf said, it needs more polishing. Kickstarter is a great idea. You'll surely find scores of hardcore gamers interested in funding a game that suits their tastes. As long as you satisfy the elite gamers, casual gamers (like me) will follow suit, just like we did with Super Meat Boy.
What I haven't addressed, 54mf has done already, so all that's left is a "good luck".
I'm in love with the idea of infinite levels, and playing a level that hasn't been played. It reminds me of the thrill of watching a minecraft level birth itself in front of you.
Agreed also, on the kickstarter project. My wallet is ready.
I was hoping this would be about Battletoads, which IMO is the hardest platform game I have ever played. Even on an emulator, with the ability to freeze frames and save/reload game state, I could not beat Battletoads.
A few years ago I started playing a lot of mario style platformers writing down notes including what I found "fun" (for the day I would get around to making my own platformer).
http://benjamin-meyer.blogspot.com/2010/04/what-makes-fun-ma...
Skip down to the "What is fun" section and you will find the first two items pretty much say when you die it is not fun. Skill level doesn't necessarily equal fun in a platformer game. That block that almost kills you and scared you? Turnes out it was scripted and there was no way you could have died no matter what your skill level was.
There are a handful of platformers on Linux and they all have the problem of being too hard. The games in the first few levels are so hard that the player quits before they can explore what the engine can even do or find the "fun" in the game.
Maybe difficulty is simply the easiest nob to twist when designing platforms which is why so many first time platform developer turn that first, but I would have to think that the fun found in a platformer is not from the difficulty, but in other aspects. No one would dare say that Mario 2 (japan version) is better than Mario3 because it was more difficult.