Nice Games Club - a gamedev podcast!

In the first Nice Games Jam in a few months (and we made it a long one!), your nice hosts explore the history of bicycles to develop a racing board game.Our last Nice Games Club episode:EddiesTwo Wheels Good - Jody RosenSafety Bicycle - WikipediaPromptDesign a racing game in a historical setting.Game typeTabletop gamePlayer count2 - 4MaterialsMap book4-sided diceMeeple to represent racersSetupChoose a map to race on in the map book (only one made right now)Choose a starting point and an ending point on the mapDraw a conditions card from the conditions deck (not made yet! We just used rain, where you have to make a Stability check each time you make a turn)RulesSame area through timeYou choose your rider and bike (each with different stats) based on how the map looksYou spend your resources to get new bikes or upgrade a bikeWe started with penny farthings (bad stats), you can buy better ones later.At the start of the race you draw a “condition”, affects the course to make more stability checksYou also randomly get a start and end place (we just set it as corner to corner for testing)Types of stats: Speed: how far you can goWeight: how heavy your bike is, how hard uphill is and how fast downhill isCapacity: how much you can hold on your bikeStability: how easy it is to get past stability checksDurability: how much failing a stability check affects you  

Time is money, friend! Okay, not always. Sometimes time is a puzzle involving many interlocking responsibilities. That’s Beth’s situation, and she asks Mark and Stephen for advice on time management in the second half of this roundtable episode. During the first half, Stephen shares some BIG NEWS that will soon place some additional responsibilities on his shoulders. Beth and Mark offer suggestions.Narrative NuanceVerdant Skies0:4:40Creative DirectionA previous episode relating to Stephen's big news!Nice Thinking: "Sledgehammer Bride"0:31:35Time ManagementPomodoro TechniqueWhat is a sprint?Scrum.orgThe Eisenhower Matrix (important vs urgent)Wikipedia

Your nice hosts welcome famed designer Ron Gilbert (Monkey Island, Thimbleweed Park) into the clubhouse to discuss the virtues of inexperience, friction for its own sake, how it's all about story, and it's puzzles all the way down.The Intersection of Puzzle and StoryGame DesignNarrativeProductionReturn to Monkey Island will have a hint system because the internet exists now - Joshua Rivera, PolygonVerdant Skies - SteamClassic Game Postmortem: Maniac Mansion - GDC, YouTubeThe phrase "confederacy of dunces" derives from a Jonathan Swift quote.Examples of movies that feature a poorly-received genre twist include Serenity (2019), Remember Me (2010), and Safe Haven (2013).Ron GilbertGuestOwner of Terrible Toybox, the designer/creator of Monkey Island, The Cave, Pajama Sam and the designer/co-creator of Maniac Mansion, DeathSpank and Thimbleweed Park. Co-designer of Return to Monkey Island.External linkMastodon - @grumpygamer@mastodon.gamedev.placeBlog - Grumpy GamerStudio - Terrible Toybox

This week, your nice hosts talk about code that isn't yours and ask about the natural conclusion of the narrative. Mark is handy, Ellen kinda wants to add a note, and Stephen is grounded.It looked so easy in the brochure, but the brochure lied - Antony Ingram, Hagerty0:07:41Code LibrariesBest practices for writing code commentsEllen SpertusStack Overflow BlogDeclare namespaces to organize typesMicrosoft LearnYour nice hosts discussed licensing in a previous episode:"What's a little grand larceny?"Game OversAlternatives to the Game Over screenGame DeveloperWe didn't mention it in the episode for some reason, but our "Metroidvania-lite" game Widget Satchel had no deaths, game overs, or failure states.

Ryan Adams, a junior producer at Corgi Art House, discusses the intricacies of game production, emphasizing the importance of organization and task management in the industry. The podcast explores project management software, effective leadership in game development, conflict resolution, feedback collection, and the crucial role of producers in facilitating communication between teams. It also delves into the benefits of learning resources for aspiring game producers.

This episode recounts each guests' recent project - Stephen is developing a new spirit for Spirit Island, Ellen is getting into music, and Mark talks at length about his car. The club helps Ellen process a recent pivot her company had to make. And Mark reveals some simple insights from his life: urgent vs. high priority, he has an irritating existence, that he's very restless, that he's skeptical of his satisfaction, somethings that I know very well, being married to him. The episode ends with a pitch build an emotional support group on nicegames.club/discord, by asking everyone to share how they structure their time.Stephen and Spirit IslandSpirit Island - Board Game GeekEllen gets into musicMark's SmartCarThomas Jefferson was born in Virgina - WikipediaMark changes out his car panels - Mark LaCroix, ThreadsPlease support us financially and emotionally through the following:patreon.com/nicegamesclubnicegames.club/discord0:11:20PivotingTango Gameworks of Hi-Fi Rush was closed0:40:27Working on Multiple ProjectsThe Eisenhower Matrix task managment matrixAsanaThe days in the lives of creative work from Mason Curryin a circle chartdeMilkedin an infographic Open Culturein an articleThe Marginalian

As MEMODEMO, Kobe Anthony creates music for video games and inspired by video games. In this episode, we learn about Kobe's creative process for composing music. He also shares a bit about how he uses his DAW (digital audio workstation) to capture sounds and convert them into melody and beats. Also featured in this episode: memes, rhythm games, and three seconds of terrible beatboxing.Creative Process & Workflow for MusicAudioIzotope RX 11 (audio repair toolkit)XO by XLN Audio2 MelloNot in the Groove (game)Sideshow Bob Stepping On Rakes Compilation - Cartoon Vids, YouTubeRolling Sampler777 - RoughSketch, YouTube"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." - Hanlon's razor, WikipediaKobe Anthony (aka MEMODEMO)GuestKobe is on Bandcamp, YouTube, Soundcloud, Ko-Fi & more. Here's his Linktree!From a student spotlight piece by the University of Oregon:Kobe came from a musical home, so his love for making music started when he was very young. “My first memory of noticing music in video games was when I played Sonic Heroes for the first time as a three-year-old. I remember hearing the theme song and it was, quite literally, life changing,” Kobe explains. From there, he started playing with GarageBand and, eventually, as he got older, started making original music on a much more advanced system MIDI. Kobe published his first song at eight years old called “Chaos Angel Error Emerald,” a remix of the theme song to Zone 7 of Sonic Advance 3, “Chaos Angel.”Under the pseudonym MEMODEMO, Anthony has over 5,200 monthly listeners on Spotify, over 4,500 followers on Soundcloud, and over 370,000 subscribers on YouTube.

Stephen brings a half-baked thought into the clubhouse for this Nice Thinking episode: how can we improve dialogue systems? He's got some opinions, which Mark and Ellen immediately debunk, but it leads to some engaging conversation.Dialogue Through Goals

Last month, Mark gave a talk at the IGDATC Gamedev Meeting about what it might mean to take game development seriously as an artistic practice, theorizing that video games are still a very young and immature medium by that standard. It's "sorta-Socratic" seminar, a set of three case studies, and a string of stone cold bummers that ends on a hopeful note.Your game has a message... did you write it?

In the episode, Mark, Ellen, and Stephen talk local events, including (don’t worry everyone’s fine) a fire in the clubhouse’s building, construction, and the games they are playing, so if you are just here for the topics, go ahead and skip to minute 23. Ellen learns about King Making, Stephen humble brags about being good at Smash Brothers, and Dale plays kingmaker in naming the second topic!NewsMasu Fire - Paul Walsh, Star TribuneBus Rapid Transit (BRT) - Jared Brey, GoverningWhat We are PlayingDragon's Dogma 2 - WikipediaPrincess Peach Showtime NPR Review - Rakiesha Chase-Jackson, NPR0:23:00King MakingStephen has been QA testing Harvest KingdomBen HunderDiscordThe YouTube video that Stephen referencesDistraction MakersYouTubeKingmaking in Root (Leder Games) videoCole WehrleGDCSmallworldBoard Game Geek0:49:17Thinky Bits (Off-Screen Gameplay)Games discussedReturn of the Obra DinSpirit IslandBoard Game GeekDeath Drives a Busitch.io