[HN Gopher] Game design wiki
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Game design wiki
Author : janjoseph
Score : 83 points
Date : 2023-07-14 15:29 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (rosacarbo.notion.site)
(TXT) w3m dump (rosacarbo.notion.site)
| lelanthran wrote:
| This isn't actually a wiki, now is it?
|
| Or are we calling any published document a wiki these days?
| 12907835202 wrote:
| I think people use wiki as a synonym for Encyclopedia now.
|
| But even that would be wrong in this case.
| spoiler wrote:
| I think the intent was to be like a wiki/knowledge base, but
| I agree with your and GPs sentiment though.
|
| Aside: is there a wiki platform for things like these? I know
| there's fandom wikis which feels like the wrong platform for
| these sorts of things, and that you can host your own, but
| sometimes that's just overkill...
|
| Do we have a business idea here (with a free tier, obvs)?
| lelanthran wrote:
| > Do we have a business idea here (with a free tier, obvs)?
|
| I don't mind offering one on a cheap VPS, with restrictions
| on image/video files.
|
| No need to, though:
| https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Hosting_services
| samtho wrote:
| Fandom (and a few others like it) is really what you're
| looking for although the adverting on these sites makes it
| very user hostile. I don't know if there is a better
| business model for this other than charging directly. I
| would probably just do a one-click digital ocean deployment
| pinkcan wrote:
| anonymous/guest editing does not a wiki make
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Notion is a wiki engine (usually used for internal company
| use), so it's technically a wiki, even though editing is
| restricted.
| pabloarteel wrote:
| I quite enjoyed "Theory of Fun for Game Design" by Raph Koster.
|
| It has many great insights about what we'd call product or design
| decisions, but it feels like a philosophy book, and you'll also
| learn stuff that applies to daily life.
| readyplayernull wrote:
| For most indie game developers getting resources to keep
| developing games is a meta-game :)
| OptionX wrote:
| Kinda parallel to this, if anyone has any recommendations on a
| good book about game design, more focusing on design patterns,
| how to structure code, good practices, etc rather than how to
| program or use a specific engine I'd be grateful.
| codampa01314 wrote:
| There's a book from 2014 that's all about game programming
| patterns: https://www.amazon.com/Game-Programming-Patterns-
| Robert-Nyst...
|
| I pulled it out recently and it still has its usefulnes.
| reidjs wrote:
| I second Game Programming Patterns! I created a little indie
| game [1] using the design patterns mentioned in that book.
| Still not quite complete, (good) games are HARD, but even
| this small game would've fumbled into a mess of spaghetti if
| it weren't for what I learned from that book.
|
| [1] https://www.vanlifegame.com/
| OptionX wrote:
| Oh cool. I actually have read his Crafting Interpreters book,
| but had no idea he did game design as well.
|
| Probably exactly what I was looking for.
|
| Thank you very much. :)
| digging wrote:
| I haven't read it, but Tynan Sylvester wrote a book about game
| design while making Rimworld. I've seen the way he's discussed
| some of his decisions in public forums and it's always seemed
| insightful, so his book it probably good.
|
| Out of curiosity, would principles about how to structure code
| be different in games vs other software?
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| The best book I've read about making games is the two Blood
| Sweat and Pixels by a games journalist.
|
| Regarding design, Vlambeer (Rami Ismail and JW Nijman) is kind
| of the template of the contemporary indie game. Watch their
| talks.
|
| HN frequently links to stuff that could appear on "Awesome X"
| lists on GitHub but I don't personally find it very useful.
|
| Honestly you will not find good books about these things. Games
| culture writing almost entirely falls into the wrong side of
| cultural materialism: since the vast majority of game creators
| are still living, talking about them is marketing. Marketing is
| survival. It's very hard to have a negative subjective opinion
| about anything to do with games, including engineering and
| design, and participate in the gaming ecosystem. All of the
| games industry operates, essentially, under the "Banning the
| Negative Book Review"
| (https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/30/opinion/banning-the-
| negat...) premise, in a Darwinian way.
|
| So like if it's a book by a game creator... At the end of the
| day, they have to promote their game. If they were dead, and
| someone else were writing about it, okay, the bad stuff won't
| be omitted, it will be authentically bad. It won't be mea culpa
| or here's-what-I-learned badsplaining. But that doesn't happen
| because everyone is still alive.
|
| This is difficult to express because there isn't a succinct
| humanities idea for this - it's cultural materialism, but that
| covers a lot of ground - but it is the reason you can't just
| like, find a book about game development that is mind-bendingly
| good. It's why there isn't an idea as succinct as The Hero's
| Journey for games like there is for books. You have to
| accommodate any and all ideas for making games, not because
| there's no objective truth to it (there is), but because you
| might make someone's thing less marketable.
| briangray wrote:
| I would not recommend Blood Sweat and Pixels. While it does
| have details on publishing decisions and crunch of making
| games, it has little insight into any actual game
| development. It's more of a sensation piece on how difficult
| games are to make. GP seemed to be looking for design and
| pattern references.
| levesque wrote:
| Absolutely, was thinking the same. IIRC it's also only
| telling success stories, so people burning themselves out
| but succeeding in the end.
| [deleted]
| Nzen wrote:
| It's not really clear what you are asking for. You term your
| desire 'game design', but that generally means _the arrangement
| of systems (ex rules) for a game_ . But, your first list sounds
| more like 'video game architecture'.
|
| Perhaps Robert Nystrom's _Game Programming Patterns_ fits your
| bill, as it discusses high and low level patterns.
| [https://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/contents.html]
|
| The _Architecture of Open Source Applications: Volume 1_ book
| has a chapter on the game _Battle for Wesnoth_ .
| [https://aosabook.org/en/v1/wesnoth.html]
|
| I found Chris Deleon's _Hands-On Intro to Game Programming in
| HTML5_ a helpful book of graduated exercises that also
| demonstrates how to reuse components of previous games.
| [https://gamkedo.gumroad.com/l/hands-on-game-programming] It
| is, however, somewhat expensive and I only sprung for it as
| part of a larger bundled deal. I imagine that you could find
| similar works, or it might not jive with you. His udemy course,
| using this as the text, has a preview video.
| [https://www.udemy.com/course/how-to-program-
| games/#instructo...]
|
| Perhaps other communities, focused on this topic, might provide
| better answers [https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/]
| codampa01314 wrote:
| It's exciting to see experienced people in the game industry
| trying to break down barriers to show how things are/can be done.
| Everyone seems to do it differently, especially at smaller game
| studios. It's so easy to get caught in your bubble of how to make
| games and not figure out all the different tools out here that
| can pop you out of your comfort zone, biases, and blind spots.
| codampa01314 wrote:
| This seems like a good start and has the potential to be useful.
| But some of the documents are hard to consume because it looks
| like you need more context to understand nuance and how they fit
| together with other things.
|
| I'm not very familiar with Notion. Will this be something that is
| easy to expand with Notion or is this the wrong platform for such
| things?
| lelanthran wrote:
| > I'm not very familiar with Notion. Will this be something
| that is easy to expand with Notion or is this the wrong
| platform for such things?
|
| It's the worst platform for developing a wiki.
|
| Closed software, running on proprietary site, with no edits
| allowed without signing up to the company.
|
| It's great for company use, but it's entirely the wrong
| platform for creating a valuable resource of information on the
| internet.
| codampa01314 wrote:
| Makes total sense.
|
| Any alternatives you'd suggest?
| lelanthran wrote:
| MediaWiki.
|
| There is probably nothing better for a technical wiki. It's
| usually bundled as part of the cpanel software on cheap
| webhosting sites.
|
| For $5/m or less you can have something professional
| looking, rather than the notion document linked above.
|
| And if your community can't collectively (eventually) cough
| up $5/m for the hosting costs, then you don't have a
| community anyway, so it would be pointless having a wiki.
| guessbest wrote:
| I used to use sites like this back in the day.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20120121195938/http://gamificati...
|
| Unfortunately it turned in to a employee training website then
| went off line.
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(page generated 2023-07-14 23:01 UTC)