https://glassdragon.xyz/ Sun, 22 Dec 2024 06:08:53 +0000 Sun, 22 Dec 2024 06:08:53 +0000 Pico Cal Since my last blog posts, working on this new game was going really well. Key word: WAS. For the entirety of a few days! It was great! ... Sun, 15 Dec 2024 23:50:53 +0000 https://glassdragon.xyz/blog/lemon_juice_in_the_eyes Cal If there's one thing I really, passionately, way-too-strongly care about in Online Multiplayer Games, it is the ability to customize my character - or "character", as the game may be. If there's any kind of representation of The Player[^1] (and in an online multiplayer game, there pretty much HAS to be, right?) then I want customization options. But not just that: I want to be able to get more customization options. By playing the game[^2]. This is incredibly important to me, and if a relevant game fails to give me that option, it drops a giant anvil on the negative side of the scale. ... Sun, 08 Dec 2024 01:34:28 +0000 https://glassdragon.xyz/blog/cozy_game_customization Cal I think probably the most upsetting part of having to permanently shelve my writing gamification project is that it completely wasted my totally sweet name and logo for it. I needed to come up with something that gave the right vibe and tone for the game. Something that conveyed a little bit of what the game was about. Something that didn't sound agonizingly stupid. And now I get to do it all over again. Yayyyy. Thu, 05 Dec 2024 17:17:36 +0000 https://glassdragon.xyz/blog/whats_in_a_name Cal I've been posting on here about Browser Games :tm: and Cozy MMORPGs, right? They have been, unsurprisingly, high on my mind when it comes to thinking about game dev, with any given day being more on one side than the other just based on, I don't know, my mood. What I was looking at most recently. And then, about a week or so ago, I was mulling over my "but if I made a browser game, what would it BE" dilemma once again, when the obvious solution struck me. ... Tue, 03 Dec 2024 23:48:15 +0000 https://glassdragon.xyz/blog/cozy_browser_rpg Cal In an unsurprising but disappointing move, I'm already back to making games in Godot. Why? Well, it turns out that even though Godot is less fun, less typing, and more clicking, it's also... faster. A lot faster. Not in performance, mind, in development speed. ... Sat, 09 Nov 2024 18:52:23 +0000 https://glassdragon.xyz/blog/godot_round_two Cal For years now, I've held that one of the key ingredients for a successful online game design is allowing - and rewarding - players defining their own gameplay goals. Instead of laying out a single primary progression track and leading players down it, creating a more varied buffet of gameplay that are all equally valid and rewarding, and letting the players try, define, and freely swap between their own long- and short-term goals within the gameplay. ... Thu, 07 Nov 2024 21:23:05 +0000 https://glassdragon.xyz/blog/freeform_vs_flexible Cal It went great, actually! Had a little bit of a rough start, but things went pretty well and I enjoyed chatting with those of you who showed up. Then the week after was extremely busy and I only just found the time to post about it... a month later... haha.... ... Wed, 06 Nov 2024 23:02:54 +0000 https://glassdragon.xyz/blog/livestream_recap_updates Cal Recently while not feeling well, I picked up a new free incremental game on Steam. (It's nice, it doesn't try to micro-transaction you to death, like all the others these days.) And that reminded me of an interesting exchange I had on Discord, and that got me thinking... There's several different "start the game over" type of mechanics, and you'd think they'd all be pretty similar, but in practice, they feel completely different. So I asked myself one of my favorite questions: why? ... Wed, 02 Oct 2024 18:23:57 +0000 https://glassdragon.xyz/blog/prestige_succession_ngp Cal TL;DR: I'm going to finally start doing some live streams! The first stream will be 4pm EST/1pm PST, Oct 4, at twitch.tv/glassdragonstudios. I'll be getting my feet wet with Rust and SpacetimeDB by making something like a MUD! Sat, 28 Sep 2024 16:41:00 +0000 https://glassdragon.xyz/blog/first_studio_livestream Cal I've been learning how to work with Godot 4 for the past few months, and honestly I think it's a great engine. I like the whole modular design of its scene/node system - it suits the way I like to structure mechanics and stuff really well. GDScript is incredibly easy to pick up if you have any previous programming experience. It's got a ton of useful tools for setting up your 2D (and 3D, but you couldn't pay me to make a 3D game) environments and handling collision physics and all of that stuff. And it's Free and Open Source! Theoretically and philosophically, it was a perfect fit. ... Tue, 24 Sep 2024 17:35:28 +0000 https://glassdragon.xyz/blog/frameworks_vs_engines_goodbye_godot