Don't post too many separate submissions at once, the site has some automatic anti-spam defences. And also the front page works better if submissions are spread out.
Well, since the necromancer has visited this thread...
Don't forget that Diablo 2 was actually a really early iteration of that genre. As far as I know, the genre barely existed until developers started being "inspired" by Diablo 2. Not sure why that didn't happen with the first Diablo.
Don't think that people play these games for any one reason. Some will be more motivated by the story, some by exploration and discovery, others will be more motivated by min-maxing, some will want pretty art to look at (and look forward to looking at). Some will even be motivated by the gambling aspect; more direct gambling is a huge industry for a reason, people who do it are not just motivated by money but by more fundamental biochemical reward loops, and any game with "drop tables" is a kind of gambling with your time towards a different end. The full list of reasons is bound to run into double figures. I expect that the games which aspire to be big hitters in this genre will have to try and tick at least the top ten or so boxes on the list. Indie devs don't have to do that, they should probably pick 3-4 boxes and focus on those.
Since there are hundreds (at least) of "Diablo clones" now and quite large amounts are invested in developing more, it is probably approaching an exact science. Go back two decades and you couldn't even do a university degree in "game development", but now you can specifically do a degree in "game design" at lots of universities. Some of those graduates have probably done entire courses on how to balance Diablo clones for maximum appeal! All of that expertise may be floating around on the internet somewhere, if you can find it.
I've been playing TES:Blades lately, and the fine balancing of the loot system in that game is really noticeable... partly because this is something which TES games have historically done very badly, so it's a huge jump. At the very least somebody has spent some serious time with spreadsheets refining that. I wouldn't be surprised if the most serious gamedev studios are playing with using ML to refine the balance of their games by now, since that stuff has really come of age in the last decade. Hire the right expert and they can show you the whole spread and distribution of ways that players can proceed through the game, including which builds are over- or under-powered and even some of the 'sploits that TAS types will find, before a genuine end user has ever seen it.
I thought that FiveBros was suggesting an "AI generated" tick box which wouldn't affect anything else, but could be used to hang new site features off to help with admin. E.g. adding a new field to specify which AI was used. Sounds like a good idea to me but it would be even easier for mods to insist that AI-generated stuff has certain tags in the tag field. I don't think that those should exclude other tags, because just knowing that it's AI-generated won't help anyone to search for the kind of artwork that they are after, they have to be able to search on the thematic content.
My original post was thinking mainly about rapid submissions, because these new tools will be able to output stuff so fast. However MedicineStorm points out that this is already dealt with.
The boss of one of the company that has released one of the newer tools likes to talk about these being basically "search engines for stuff which could exist, rather than just for stuff that already exists" and that strikes me as an excellent way to think about them. The problems and opportunities that they bring will be just like that. In terms of stuff which is produced from these tools, a site like OGA will then become like a cache or a mirror; in theory you wouldn't need to post the actual artwork, you can just post the search string and the specific tool that you put it into, and then anyone else could retrieve the same artwork - but that would depend on the tool remaining available, which is not guaranteed. So when you hit upon something which you think is exceptionally good whilst playing with the tools, it would make sense to submit a copy here in order to guard against that eventuality.
That leads me to another idea. If AI-generated stuff could be easily retrieved by anybody using the same search string and the same tool, should OGA encourage submitters to include that information with the submission?
I was just reminded of this thread and I noticed that the link to the specific game is still removed. So I hope blue_prawn won't mind if I post it again: https://boticelly.itch.io/no-to-war-in-ukraine
I appreciated blue_prawn's original post and I thought it was respectful and quite well pitched.
I also understand fully Ragnar's concerns. We wouldn't want this forum to descend into angry political tribalism, which can happen very easily in these times.
After six years of being held captive in MedicineStorm's basement, bart reveals that he was looking for someone to take over running the site anyway, and he'd like to extend her an offer. Then he gets up, snaps his zip ties like they were made of wet spaghetti, and Dr Manhattans into the ether. A slight whiff of lavender-scented particle accelerator is left behind in the cellar dungeon.
Oops, I didn't want to know bart's physical location. I had a niggling urge to know why the forum founder is no longer active on it. My question has been answered!
Don't post too many separate submissions at once, the site has some automatic anti-spam defences. And also the front page works better if submissions are spread out.
Well, since the necromancer has visited this thread...
Don't forget that Diablo 2 was actually a really early iteration of that genre. As far as I know, the genre barely existed until developers started being "inspired" by Diablo 2. Not sure why that didn't happen with the first Diablo.
Don't think that people play these games for any one reason. Some will be more motivated by the story, some by exploration and discovery, others will be more motivated by min-maxing, some will want pretty art to look at (and look forward to looking at). Some will even be motivated by the gambling aspect; more direct gambling is a huge industry for a reason, people who do it are not just motivated by money but by more fundamental biochemical reward loops, and any game with "drop tables" is a kind of gambling with your time towards a different end. The full list of reasons is bound to run into double figures. I expect that the games which aspire to be big hitters in this genre will have to try and tick at least the top ten or so boxes on the list. Indie devs don't have to do that, they should probably pick 3-4 boxes and focus on those.
Since there are hundreds (at least) of "Diablo clones" now and quite large amounts are invested in developing more, it is probably approaching an exact science. Go back two decades and you couldn't even do a university degree in "game development", but now you can specifically do a degree in "game design" at lots of universities. Some of those graduates have probably done entire courses on how to balance Diablo clones for maximum appeal! All of that expertise may be floating around on the internet somewhere, if you can find it.
I've been playing TES:Blades lately, and the fine balancing of the loot system in that game is really noticeable... partly because this is something which TES games have historically done very badly, so it's a huge jump. At the very least somebody has spent some serious time with spreadsheets refining that. I wouldn't be surprised if the most serious gamedev studios are playing with using ML to refine the balance of their games by now, since that stuff has really come of age in the last decade. Hire the right expert and they can show you the whole spread and distribution of ways that players can proceed through the game, including which builds are over- or under-powered and even some of the 'sploits that TAS types will find, before a genuine end user has ever seen it.
I thought that FiveBros was suggesting an "AI generated" tick box which wouldn't affect anything else, but could be used to hang new site features off to help with admin. E.g. adding a new field to specify which AI was used. Sounds like a good idea to me but it would be even easier for mods to insist that AI-generated stuff has certain tags in the tag field. I don't think that those should exclude other tags, because just knowing that it's AI-generated won't help anyone to search for the kind of artwork that they are after, they have to be able to search on the thematic content.
My original post was thinking mainly about rapid submissions, because these new tools will be able to output stuff so fast. However MedicineStorm points out that this is already dealt with.
The boss of one of the company that has released one of the newer tools likes to talk about these being basically "search engines for stuff which could exist, rather than just for stuff that already exists" and that strikes me as an excellent way to think about them. The problems and opportunities that they bring will be just like that. In terms of stuff which is produced from these tools, a site like OGA will then become like a cache or a mirror; in theory you wouldn't need to post the actual artwork, you can just post the search string and the specific tool that you put it into, and then anyone else could retrieve the same artwork - but that would depend on the tool remaining available, which is not guaranteed. So when you hit upon something which you think is exceptionally good whilst playing with the tools, it would make sense to submit a copy here in order to guard against that eventuality.
That leads me to another idea. If AI-generated stuff could be easily retrieved by anybody using the same search string and the same tool, should OGA encourage submitters to include that information with the submission?
Does anyone know of any games written in javascript, and using HTML5 for graphics, where the source is open and intended to be human-readable?
I was just reminded of this thread and I noticed that the link to the specific game is still removed. So I hope blue_prawn won't mind if I post it again: https://boticelly.itch.io/no-to-war-in-ukraine
I appreciated blue_prawn's original post and I thought it was respectful and quite well pitched.
I also understand fully Ragnar's concerns. We wouldn't want this forum to descend into angry political tribalism, which can happen very easily in these times.
After six years of being held captive in MedicineStorm's basement, bart reveals that he was looking for someone to take over running the site anyway, and he'd like to extend her an offer. Then he gets up, snaps his zip ties like they were made of wet spaghetti, and Dr Manhattans into the ether. A slight whiff of lavender-scented particle accelerator is left behind in the cellar dungeon.
If that were the case, then MedicineStorm has already given Sharm, Redshrike, and Botanic away as being in on it.
Oops, I didn't want to know bart's physical location. I had a niggling urge to know why the forum founder is no longer active on it. My question has been answered!
Reminds me of Lemmings. Looks quite good.
Where do the tiles come from that are used to build the 4th image (the green and purple one)?
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