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Rob Brown

Rob Brown

@robmbrown.bsky.social

1 followers 18 following 190 posts

I make pictures and words about stuff. Sometimes developer.

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Rob Brown @robmbrown.bsky.social · Nov 19

Never stop pushing things forward.

Rob Brown @robmbrown.bsky.social · 22h

The irony being the images are illustrating open source/demo scene implementations, so this is probably one of the few times that content has ever been region-locked. Congrats Labour, really doing us proud.

Rob Brown @robmbrown.bsky.social · 22h

Narrator: actually, the children are still browsing sites like Imgur but they're not telling their parents about it. Their parents are as usual in ever-growing ignorance and estranged from their childrens' experience and *their generation will never bridge a gap widened with distrust and enmity*.

Rob Brown @robmbrown.bsky.social · 23h

But no that's cool that UK people don't get to have those kind of sources or inspirations or information or connectivity any more. I feel so safe, and the children are so safe right now too, isn't it great.

Rob Brown @robmbrown.bsky.social · 23h

I don't really browse Imgur that often any more, but when I did on a daily basis it entirely inspired my taking up and eventually learning half a dozen different skills like doing procedural art in Blender and god knows what else.

Rob Brown @robmbrown.bsky.social · 23h

Saw my first imgur purple box and I guess I'm out of the loop but I actually thought it was parody at first but no, it's just our government that's a parody of itself.

Rob Brown @robmbrown.bsky.social · 1d

Posting this cos hey maybe someone at some point will read and they're also snagged up on a mechanic and realise 'oh, the solution is already just there on the page'. I think inspirations are VITAL and I couldn't do any of this without all these games (and devs) existing but yeah, you do you.

Rob Brown @robmbrown.bsky.social · 1d

I think because a huge part of the inspo/vibe for this game is dungeon delving I had got snaggled up on combat rounds and 'ordained combat moments' of TTRPGs but to be honest, I understand why it exists but in this game it feels like a massive headache waiting to happen so let's just.. not I guess.

Rob Brown @robmbrown.bsky.social · 1d

Anyway this week or so was kind of a new experience when it comes to games where I typically just bash out code and don't really get impeded by anything, but now I actually had to down tools and solve a design snafu. That honestly doesn't feel that great but finding the way forward - for now - does!

Rob Brown @robmbrown.bsky.social · 1d

FM is a little more complicated iirc in that if not watching literally the entire match or for matches being simulated 'offscreen' it kinda does generate events based on all the data rather the opposite of having them bubble up organically through players kicking the ball around. But I digress...

Rob Brown @robmbrown.bsky.social · 1d

And I mention the venerable Football Manager (for my mind, honestly secretly the best RPG ever created on top of being one of the best management and sim games) because of how it handles its match playback, with organic interactions which lead to eg goal scoring chances - not generateGoalChance().

Rob Brown @robmbrown.bsky.social · 1d

In DF the player can look at the combat log where it breaks things down into discrete-ish sparring instances but that's just a UI nicety (I think?). I assume entities are just bashing away at their own pace they're not taking turns or locked into any process (again, I imagine).

Rob Brown @robmbrown.bsky.social · 1d

Where AP is just a shorthand for the duration an action will take in frames, which entities will have a loose sense of (later on) for choosing what they want to do.

Rob Brown @robmbrown.bsky.social · 1d

I got too hung up on the brain melt of how to insert this thing called 'combat' and how to hook entities in and have them participate and sequence it and cost actions and.. no if we're not doing turn-based combat (which we're not) then we just need to handle AP, interruptions and results of actions.

Rob Brown @robmbrown.bsky.social · 1d

So kind of one of those cases where the answer was right there to begin with (and already implemented for movement), to really double down on action points and frame timing of events and let the chips fall where they may. Which I think/assume is how games like DF, Rimworld, FM etc do it.

Rob Brown @robmbrown.bsky.social · 1d

Figured out my combat design puzzle (and ensuing gumption trap) by realising that I just won't do combat. No, wait, come back! That is to say, no turn-based combat rounds, no codifying combat as some discrete thing, just entities swinging at each other (or not) for however long they need to do it.

Rob Brown @robmbrown.bsky.social · 4d

Feels a bit strange waiting so long for Bloodlines 2 that I can't even remember how long (is it nearly two decades?) - enough to rediscover my fairly kindred soul multiple lives over in the interim - and then deciding to wait a little longer on reviews. But yeah, I guess that's where we're at :/

Rob Brown @robmbrown.bsky.social · 9d

Anyway (anyway), totally looking forward to people telling me which of the silly lines in my game/s are not remotely funny - and they'll probably be right! I guess it's likely some people will find none of it funny, too. Which I will find very very funny, so there's that.

Rob Brown @robmbrown.bsky.social · 9d

The Jackbox games are another great example, since they almost always aim for excess (the exceptions are interesting), and not just for sake of parody, but they understand where the line is and it makes you smirk instead of cringe. It feels like they just let their writers *cook*, and do they ever.

Rob Brown @robmbrown.bsky.social · 9d

Anyway, it does at least serve as inspiration if more were needed to really write the shit out of your script until it still makes you grin after reading it a hundred times. Not everyone is going to laugh and some of it is probably just stupid/weird but that stuff is important (and memorable) too!

Rob Brown @robmbrown.bsky.social · 9d

One of the touchstones for my game project (and honestly maybe in general) is Blood Bowl for its pervasive absurd humour and the iconic commentary stemming from the codexes which is brilliantly realised in the games. Yes it's a really high bar but I would expect a LEGO game to give it a fair crack.

Rob Brown @robmbrown.bsky.social · 9d

And yeah pretty much every line has to be a zinger or just smart or fun because of its delivery. There is no room for the kind of placeholder nothing filler which is every single line in LEGO Party from what I have seen in the twenty minutes I could tolerate watching.

Rob Brown @robmbrown.bsky.social · 9d

I mean sure The LEGO Movie exists, so it's not the most idiotic idea but that entirely relied on its killer writing. If you're doing a commentary track *in anything* let alone a game where players/viewers are going to be subjected to the same lines hundreds of times for gods sake find funny writers.

Rob Brown @robmbrown.bsky.social · 9d

Mario Party has pithy cute UNVOICED dialog bubbles that you can skip over and are charming largely because of Ninty genre conventions and tradition (and because UNVOICED and skippable). No dev makes a decision to add a voice track. This is producer bullshit. That nobody will ever fess up to.

Rob Brown @robmbrown.bsky.social · 9d

So LEGO Party ripped absolutely everything from the other party game to the point of feeling like a cheap knock off but then decided that the formula that has worked for nearly twenty years and almost as many iterations needs an absolutely gratingly unfunny commentary on top?

Rob Brown @robmbrown.bsky.social · 13d

(forgive me and just imagine that I correctly capitalised KotOR/KoTOR in the middle of all that)