Naomi Alderman on video games

I happened to catch that on the radio in my car yesterday (yeah, I do listen to Radio 4)

BBC iPlayer - Front Row: Naomi Alderman on video games

Rare to hear about that topic on the radio (at least in a good way).

Gamasutra - News - Tips from a combat designer: Fibonacci game design

Interesting article on how to know when to say "stop, no more", and how to use the golden ratio in game design.

Gamasutra - News - Tips from a combat designer: Fibonacci game design

Articy:draft

Earlier this week, a co-worker let me know about a tool aimed at helping people write branching story lines, mainly for games. It's called Articy:draft and allows you to define the flow of your story, the conversations (even handles multiple-choice dialogue systems). You can also create annotated maps of the various locations. It's multi-user and integrates with version control systems. It looks really cool, but the benefits/price ratio will make it hard to convince anyone to buy licences.

Regardless, it's worth checking it out:

UDK vs CryEngine 3 SDK: Custom geometry

Today, I'll take a look at the pipeline for getting your own meshes into the editor. I will focus on "normal" meshes (i.e. those that are not rigged).

I won't spend any time explaining the actual process, the documentation (UDK, CryEngine) does that well enough. I'll be pointing out the restrictions and peculiarities that rule the way the artists should work. I will then go over geometry export, collision export, and material export.

Note that as I'm a Maya user these days, I may talk more about Maya than about Max.

Why should I care?

I want to know how quick it is to get a new model into the game, and how quick it is to update it.