Month: November 2013

Nobody gives a straight answer when asked “how do you make good comments?” The responses are all formatted in terms of what to do and what not to do. Don’t overdo it. Don’t try to make them look pretty. Be concise. The vague-ness of our answers exists because there’s no right way to comment, but there are plenty of wrong ones. Also, strong-arming a particular cookie-cutter series of required components can potentially lead to bloated, irrelevant comments. Even so, as an industry with so many existing development and production standards and so many different coding styles, why is there no standard practice for commenting? Would this not vastly improve the quality and readability of our collective code?

When it comes to Unity, the entity-component system that the engine employs makes so much damn sense, it’s a wonder that not all development platforms follow a similar system. When so many games depend on interacting elements in 3D space nowadays, simplicity and flexibility are at the top of the list in terms of organizing assets and code.

It is because of this system, why not do this…

/* MobileControls
* Attaches to: Player
* Function: Controls device touch points, rotates and translates the character
* Function: Displays the directional pointers */

Okay fine, given that the functionality of this particular MonoBehavior isn’t very complex, we allow for simplicity in the comment. However, the way the Unity Engine is set up, the ability to create ambiguously floating scripts often lends itself to require answers for two questions: where do I go, and what do I do? Answer them, and for the most part, you’re golden.

Recently, I looked back at some art pieces I did about 2-3 years ago or so. After going through the usual “oh god this looks awful” reactions that comes with improvement over time, I noticed something that was missing in my more recent work.

There was a sense of adventurousness and creativity that I had not seen in a long time.

In 2010, I played around with a project making playing cards that used C2 symmetry. I wanted the end-product to combine hand-drawn and techno-punk aspects, and playing card styles seemed like an ideal platform to try out the idea.

The Machine Court

At first glance, I immediately identified issues with proportions, line-work, layout, and a host of other embarrassing problems, but the ideas were there. The imagination was there.

The core part of creating interesting gameplay derives from established norms of fun and imbues them with differentiable aspects that make the game unique. In an art sense, this can mean adding mechanical elements to contrast medieval themes, creating steampunk-like properties. In designing gameplay, surprising the player by applying a twist to what’s expected is crucial to making a good game.

For the most part I’ve transitioned away from art and almost exclusively code gameplay for games. Reflecting back, the goal now is to channel that naive, explorative mindset and add it to the work that I’m doing now.