Classic 2-D space games such as Star Control were keyboard-centric: WASD for turning and thrust, plus other buttons to shoot, dock, and so on.

It’s been a decade or so, and it’s time to update 2-D spaceship controls: it’s time to use the mouse.  Here are some requirements:

• Navigate anywhere.
• Control speed.  I don’t mean reverse thrust: maybe you have to turn around and thrust in the other direction.  With enough skill, though, I should be able to stop near that planet, or go faster, or slow down.
• Communicate and dock with other objects.  Land on a planet, hail a ship.
• Inertia.  I should be able to rotate in a particular direction without affecting my current thrust.
• Shoot.  What’s a game without shooting?

Some options, in case that’s too easy:

• Turreted fire.  While pointed in one direction, I can shoot whatever turreted weaponry I have at my command in any arbitrary direction.
• Location-targeted secondary abilities.  This may be a dupe of turreted fire.  Think Diablo 2, with the ability to place a trap anywhere on the screen.
• Targeted abilities.  I want to launch my tracking missile at that ship over there.
• Multiple types of fire.  As mentioned above, I’ve got some regular guns, and perhaps some turreted guns, and missiles.  And mines and shields and boosters and all sorts of goodies.

The goal is to accommodate all of the required features and enough cool optional ones, while making an interface that’s comfortable and easy to learn.

Disclaimer 1: I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I don’t believe there’s an easy solution.  Some compromises in requirements or ease of use may be required.

Disclaimer 2: If anyone proposes an awesome solution, anyone who reads this is free to use it in any space game they may or may not be working on.

Zombies took over Union Square yesterday. Fortunately I was not there, or I might not have been able to bring you this crucial information.

Brave photographers were able to bring us these chilling images (and more) , while there are more stories from survivors who hid in the Apple Store.

Here’s the official site, but if you want gameplay videos and don’t want to deal with Blizzard’s broken downloader, go to GameVideos.com.

My take: the RTS genre hit some big roadblocks many years ago, and has been unable to progress beyond its core gameplay from the days of C&C and Warcraft: hard-core, micromanagement intensive multiplayer that punishes all but the die hard player; single player campaigns that involve repeatedly building up a large base and army from scratch, then overrunning the clueless AI opponent.

Supreme Commander, the biggest RTS innovator in many years, still hit a lot of those issues. They may be impossible to overcome. Most people are not good at dividing their attention, as you must in an RTS: here’s my scout; here’s my main army; here’s another army. This guy’s set up on a path to go over here, and I’ll check in with him in a second to cast this spell. These other guys need to dance annoyingly back and forth to screw with the AI on those guys. I need to upgrade this building, and make some more dudes out of that one. And so on. If FPS games are like Microsoft Word, the RTS genre is vi.

It’s clear from the gameplay footage that Blizzard is not attempting to change the genre. Blizzard will make (awesome) iterative improvements, and spit-shine the hell out of the game. The core gameplay will still be vintage Starcraft.

What does this mean? It means Starcraft 2 is a huge gift to the hard core. It’s for anyone who’s ever been really into Starcraft (and still wants more). I watched the gameplay videos, noticing things like the removal of the 12 unit selection cap, or how much faster the Zealots appeared to get in melee range with the Terrans (game-changing!). A Warcraft 3-style interface will have huge repercussions for all of the powerful special abilities: finally, I can execute a multi-Battleship lockdown with my 3 Ghosts! I can get a Dark Swarm from whatever Defiler is nearest and has the mana! If this kind of stuff gets you excited, Starcraft 2 is for you.

What else this means: expect to see the hype start for World of Starcraft after the Starcraft 2 expansion pack. Starcraft 2 is just to charge the batteries. World of Starcraft is for the masses.

I’ve noticed I appreciate great architecture in a game– if I’m in a first person view. I have to remind myself to stop and look around in something like Final Fantasy XII or KOTOR, even with FFXII’s really fantastic art direction.

In contrast, marveling comes naturally when I’m playing an Elder Scrolls game (especially Morrowind), or Half-Life 2. Maybe it’s as simple as an easier upward view: 3rd person cameras encourage a lot more looking at the floor. Your towering statues, vaulted ceilings, long unbroken columns, and high stained glass windows don’t really do anything for me when I’m rarely looking above five feet. I think there’s a deeper problem with the 3rd person camera, though, a way they change your perception of the space that surrounds you.
Can anyone think of a good counterexample? A non-first-person camera game where you really marvel at the architecture? I occasionally do on gryphon rides in World of Warcraft, where they can engineer a fixed path for choice views (and force down time). Anything more interactive?

I’m currently importing batches of CSV (comma separated value) data into a MySQL database, using phpmyadmin.

As you might expect, phpmyadmin has a default character to “separate” the “values”.  As you might not expect, the default is… a semicolon.

The guy who runs GameBeep.com just dropped me a line about Indie Game Jobs, a site that lets you post and search for… uh… maybe I should just paste from the e-mail:

A new job board, www.indiegamejobs.com, just opened up that caters to the independent game developer.  The site allows you to post jobs or search through job categories including 3d, textures, programming, and level design. You can evaluate artists by previewing their work and reading feedback ratings from other users. You can also post and browse resumes.

I haven’t actually given the idea much thought.  I’ve been entertaining thoughts of using RentACoder.com to accelerate my own prototyping or dev work.  Would a dedicated site be a better matchmaker?  Frequently, the most productive outcome of these sites is a few test runs, and then an “off the grid” relationship with someone who works out particularly well.  If IndieGameJobs gets sufficient volume (and quality), maybe it can help me find that special someone.

I’ve been playing Final Fantasy XII, and it’s magnificent. So I was a little startled by one of their systems: “chaining”. You get a bonus for killing a bunch of the same type of creature in a row, and your chain is broken if you kill any other sort of critter.

While there’s a small amount of fun gameplay here (Run away! That’s not a dire rat!), for the most part it’s just encouraging you to perform a task you’ve already mastered, again and again and again. If you choose to ignore it, as I do, you still get a discouraging message flashing up on the screen every time you break a chain. “You just killed a brand new, big, bad-ass monster! … How could you? You had 7 dire rats going!”

There are plenty of examples of games encouraging un-fun behavior (Everquest’s camping; Castlevania’s leveling up). While it’s impossible to plan for everyone’s different ideas of fun, some game systems have explicit penalties for something that’s clearly a behavior the minority of gamers will enjoy.

In contrast, look at a game like Grand Theft Auto: minimal penalties, with tons of activities I can participate in if I choose. When you feel like it’d be fun to drive a cab, you can drive a cab: and the game rewards you for it. When you want to go off some cool jumps, go off some cool jumps: more rewards. The game doesn’t penalize my mood at the moment, but instead encourages me to have fun.

Chronic Logic was kind enough to post the sales numbers for Gish.  They break it out into some nice detail, but in short: 3 devs, 6 months, $121,000.  A not insignificant portion of that is actually from an IGF prize.  It’s good to see that someone can pioneer new game mechanics and make a few bucks off of it.

Recently, I’ve found myself deciding it just isn’t worth it to try to get a group together, or schedule some play time, or log on at just the right time to jump into whatever activity I want/need to do to progress.  It’s not that WoW isn’t still great– it is– but single player RPGs (Final Fantasy 3 and 12, currently) are offering me my fix without all the overhead.

I’m probably just one of the many WoW players that retires his or her character not long after running out of good solo content.  Ironically, I actually prefer to play grouped.  Grouping in WoW is no problem if you log on at a regular time, or simply play all the time.  If you’re like me, fitting gaming into the opportunities that arise, WoW is much more hostile to pick up grouping than something like City of Heroes.

I want to make it clear that I’m not saying WoW is in any sort of big trouble: heck, I’m not even canceling my account.  Millions of players will continue to play for the social fix that a single player game can’t give.  I’ll probably be back in next month.  What I’m saying is that if Blizzard is starting work on a Starcraft MMO, it’ll probably be out at just the right time to pick up a lot of ex-WoW addicts.

(Note: I just read today’s Penny Arcade news post, and Tycho’s saying pretty much the same thing.  I’m not as convinced as he is that the May 19 announcement is World of Starcraft– I think they need to be further along before they announce that.  I think it’s either Diablo 3, since it’s been so long in development, or Starcraft 2, the perfect game to release two years before World of Starcraft.)