design – The Daily SPUF

A Ramble About Adobe CC

May 3, 2021April 23, 2021 Medic 0 Comments design, ramble, rant

The other day, on a whim, I decided to try out Adobe Creative Cloud. For a while now, all of Adobe’s products have been subscription-based, with a lot of cloud stuff going on. The idea is that it’s all online and you can access it anywhere. Also allows Adobe to offer advice every five seconds. I’ve considered trying out Adobe CC for a while, but I never got around to testing the free trial. So, uh, I tried the free trial. And I wasn’t impressed. First things first, the trial requires a card. You can’t get the free trial unless… [Continue Reading]

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Differentiating Maps Through Gameplay, part 2

September 17, 2020September 17, 2020 aabicus 0 Comments analysis, comparison, design, maps, payday, payday the heist

Previously I used Left 4 Dead 2 to showcase “thematic gameplay“, a development philosophy whereby each map in the game gets a subtle tweak to the core gameplay loop to make it feel different from the rest the game has to offer. Payday the Heist is actually another masterclass in this philosophy, so to reinforce my point I thought I’d discuss how a second title used thematic gameplay to create very memorable and distinguishable heists. 1. First World Bank First World Bank doesn’t really have any gimmicks, as it’s setting the baseline for the rest of the game. One after… [Continue Reading]

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Why Apex Legends is the Best Battle Royale

February 10, 2019February 9, 2019 aabicus 0 Comments apex legends, comparison, design, Fortnite, playerunknown's battlegrounds, pubg, release

I previously covered PUBG and Fortnite on this channel, and you may have noticed neither of them stuck around for very long because I just couldn’t get into them. To be honest, I’ve never been a fan of the Battle Royale genre in general, but Apex Legends is seriously the first Battle Royale game that I’m finding legitimately fun on its own merits and I’m amazed that I can’t wait to start playing it even from the moment I’ve turned it off for the night. The developers have looked at all the things that usually make Battle Royales boring and… [Continue Reading]

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aabicus at College: A Conclusion

December 24, 2018January 2, 2019 aabicus 0 Comments college, design, real life, recap, spuf of legend

About a year ago, I wrote an article discussing my first quarter of my Master’s Program. I’d ended that article saying that first quarter was expected to be the busiest, but honestly each one had more work than the last. Not a complaint, mind you, but it turns out it’s not easy cramming two years of work into a single year. That article ended with me becoming Creative Director for a healing-based puzzle shooter called Medical Necessity, and that project took up the lion’s share of the following (winter) quarter. You can read about the progress we made by checking out… [Continue Reading]

See this little cunt? This is a Cetus Wisp.

Now for Something Completely Different

Interaction Design and the User Experience

July 16, 2018July 12, 2018 Medic 0 Comments design, ramble, rant, ui, ux

Don’t mind me. Just summarizing what I’ve been learning lately. But I feel a LOT of this could be applied to gaming, so maybe it might interest you as well. Interaction design focuses on how people use and work with devices and other products, such as computers and smartphones, but also how they work with interfaces in general, such as that of smart watches and ATMs, anything with an interface. The context of interaction design is on users, activities and environments, with users focusing on physical, sensory and cognitive capabilities, while environments include not just location, but also the setting,… [Continue Reading]

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aabicus at College: An Update

December 28, 2017January 20, 2018 aabicus 0 Comments aabicus, college, design, medical necessity, real life, recap, spuf of legend

Hi everyone! I’ve been almost completely silent on both the forums and this blog, and I apologize for that, but as I mentioned in this video, I’ve been attending a Master’s program in Game Design, and it’s been loads of work. Luckily it’s been amazing and enjoyable work, and I’ve just wrapped up my first (and supposedly the busiest) quarter. It has been so great getting to explore so many different elements of game design in an academic setting! This article is basically a compilation of what I’ve been doing the last four months, and a bit of discussion on… [Continue Reading]

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Left 4 Dead: The Birth of a Genre

August 23, 2017December 11, 2017 aabicus 0 Comments analysis, design, left 4 dead, payday 2, payday the heist, steam

Left 4 Dead was a great game. It had the perfect mix of arcadey action and strategic gameplay to entice shooter fans of every skill level, while also having amazing writing and atmosphere that really sold the survival horror aesthetic. Sure, it wasn’t the first 4-player coop (Yahtzee even griped in his Left 4 Dead 2 review about how commonplace those sorts of games were), but it carved a niche for itself that is so prevalent nowadays that I’d call an entire subsection of Co-op horde shooters “Left 4 Dead clones”. Left 4 Dead famously came into existence when the… [Continue Reading]

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BarrierWatch

May 23, 2017June 4, 2017 aabicus 0 Comments complaint, design, meta, overwatch

I’m finding myself playing less and less Overwatch these days, and while part of it is the new workload from preparing for my Master’s program in game development later this year, another part of it is me getting pretty tired of a mechanic that seems to have been Blizzard’s answer to too many balance problems. I don’t think there’s a single element of Overwatch that’s been buffed as many times as the barriers have. When the game was first announced, there were only two barriers among the initial twelve characters, and Winston’s sucked. Now, it’s perfectly possible (heck, downright common) for the defensive… [Continue Reading]

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How to Design Enemies That Are Truly Scary

January 7, 2017January 27, 2017 aabicus 1 Comment comparison, design, enemies, horror, mechanics, On Shooters, scary

There are many, many enemies in video games designed to be scary, and I wanted to take some time to talk about ways to make enemies that fulfill this trope without resorting to “cheap” tactics like jumpscares or making them speedy OHKOs. Note that this article is mostly interested in “normal” enemies, not single boss-like monsters (like Spider from LIMBO) or full-fledged NPCs (like Pyramid Head from Silent Hill). Also I’m not an art major so my focus is on game mechanics and AI behaviors, and less on appearances. One of the scariest monsters I’ve had to fight in any game was… [Continue Reading]

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Differentiating Maps Through Gameplay

April 19, 2016 aabicus 0 Comments design, gameplay, left 4 dead, Left 4 Dead 2

Previously I used Left 4 Dead 2 to show an example of well-distinguished enemy units in a video game. I thought I could also take the chance to look at a little-known element of map design called “thematic gameplay”, and this time compare it to the original game, Left 4 Dead. While the first game’s initial four campaigns have a unifying vision of atmosphere and incredibly strong visual themes separating their design, they are almost completely lacking in gameplay alterations. They all involve forward progression through linear zombie-infested environments, eventually surviving a holdout finale and rushing the escape vehicle as soon as… [Continue Reading]

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