Shaggy, Baggy, and Craggy Game Design
https://medium.com/kitfox-games/in-praise-of-messy-design-62722b88258e
Shaggy Design
A shaggy game design is one that forces the player to experience wildly varying systems and gameplay along the journey of the game. Rather than the smooth predictability of an elegantly cohesive experience, a shaggy game is jagged and perhaps even shocking. It’s less of a smooth ‘arc’ or power curve, and more of a wild ride.
Ex. Nier Automata
Baggy Design
A baggy game design is one that has a wide, some might even say excessive breadth of systems. Imagine a pair of cargo pants, each pocket brimming with goodies. It not only allows the player to wander off the critical gameplay path, but rewards doing so, and in fact the player might forget what the supposedly “core” gameplay was at all.
Ex. GTA, Yakuza
Craggy Design
Craggy design is one that has surprising, some might even say excessive depth of systems. Imagine you’re walking along a mountain pass, pretty sure you know where you’re going, stepping over small gullies, when you take a moment to look into a gully and realize it plunges down into a crevasse. Do you dare to follow it to the bottom? Will you ever make it back to the trail?
Ex. Breath of the Wild
@hystericempress I love stats like that, but the polygon-on-spokes is the worst way to represent that information! It's even worse, somehow, than the line graphs on the back of old Transformers boxes – you know, the ones meant to be read with the red lens?
It's what bar charts were invented for. Bar charts are nice. 📊
@porsupah @Leucrotta That's a really good cover!
However, it's really, _really_ weird that nowhere in that video's info is it mentioned who did the original track they're covering.
How to get the Electric Keet experience from social media. (second person, implied mh)
1) Decide whose posts you want to see.
2) Follow most of them, and a few other interesting-looking folks.
3) Fret about who you might have missed.
4) Read posts that vaguely align with your hobby interests; respond with paragraphs of minute trivia.
5) Read close friends' posts that resonate deeply in philosophical and personal ways and absolutely beg for insight or comfort; respond by clicking the little star.
6) Via mobile device, read posts that seem very interesting but require audio or long-form reading, then punt them to a "read later" list for when you're at a less mobile device.
7) Never go through those "read later" posts. There are more posts to read.
8) Continue to fret.
9) Get a bit of courage to type a little about your current interests, mood, thoughts, or environment.
10) Get discouraged halfway through when it doesn't come out right and you're not sure what CW to put on it anyway.
10b) ...unless the Adderall's kicked in!
11) Keep on fretting.
12) Refresh feed.
13) GOTO 3
@noiob I played a lot of Splatoon 1, and these pics are dredging up nostalgia for my Luna Blaster. Or, as I like to call it, the "Death Yam".
for all your copyright-free shitposting needs: jon manning has created CC0 versions of the expanding brain meme https://secretlab.institute/2021/02/15/cc-0-licensed-galaxy-brain-images/
via twitter (https://twitter.com/desplesda/status/1360743216832606210)
This was made with a python script I wrote that automatically changes the graphics data in an NES ROM to look like a lower resolution. If you'd like to try it out, you can find it here:
US tax product suggestion
W-2s and 1099s are due out today! When you get them, try https://www.freetaxusa.com/ instead of turbotax. free version is full-featured, support & audit defense upsell is only $7, and the UI is way snappier.
It can't try to import your income forms, but turbotax is bad at that anyway and I already have to do a bunch of manual corrections because (by law) employee stock sales are misreported on the 1099-B in a way that makes you pay too much tax if you don't. Thanks Intuit.
The Paperboy theme is such a great groove! Love these crunchy chords.
Videogame music "restoration".
@noiob Another friend of mine sent a link to a couple of these "restored" tracks, and while it's kind of fascinating, I felt as described in that article.
Another novelty that could be mistaken for "restoration" is the NCSF format for DS music. Some music benefits greatly from having top-notch sample interpolation... and some falls flat because the samples that were relying on a lack of interpolation to keep them sharp (chip-style sounds especially) become a muddy mess. Fascinating, but definitely not how it was "meant to be heard".
Super Nintendo Music Does Not Need "Restoration"
by 2Mello
https://www.vice.com/en/article/akdqbp/super-nintendo-music-does-not-need-restoration
I 💖 @orrery
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and yes to 🤖 but #nobot
avatar art by Dana Simpson (danasimpson.com)