No Time To Play
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Weekly Links #173

Hello, everyone! The ZX Spectrum BASIC game jam that I announced three weeks ago started on itch.io on Thursday. As my own entry was ready much earlier than expected (and there's a blog post already lined up), getting another one in is very tempting. But deciding what to make that would work well in slow, line-number Basic yet still be compelling isn't so easy. Stay tuned.

In unrelated news, open source strategy game FreeCiv has had a HTML5 client for a while. But now they've been working on a WebGL-based version (via the Dragonfly BSD Digest). And you know what? Never mind all the problems they've been running into, that simply wouldn't exist in 2D. Never mind that they're doing everything with shaders — presumably because "it's easier" — so a lot of players stuck with on-board graphics adapters won't be able to play it. Notice how this new, "improved" version is a muddled mess compared to the cartoony, pixelated art of the past. Like modern 3D almost always is.

If this is progress, I want a Nintendo 64.

Moving on to the game design department, from the IGN we learn why the world needs more trash games, while itch.io points out what every developer can learn from short games. More specific is Bruno Dias' search for an ideal quality-based narrative system, that complements Emily Short's from last week. I've been forming my own ideas about it, but that's a story for another time.

Until next week, embrace imperfection.