Kzqai

616 reputation

416

bio	website	bitlucid.com
	location	New York, NY
	age	32
visits	member for	2 years, 10 months
	seen	Apr 6 at 19:57
stats	profile views	49

I'm hirable at bitlucid.com, train ninjas at ninjawars.net, do crazy art when I can at dnaexmosn.deviantart.com, and code stuff at github.com/tchalvak

Code in:

html/css (come on, tell me webdesign isn't coding, dare ya)
javascript
php

Want to code in: - Clojure

Want to code on: - node.js

Formerly Tchalvak

	616 reputation	bio	website	bitlucid.com	visits	member for	2 years, 10 months
416 badges		location	New York, NY		seen	Apr 6 at 19:57

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67 Comments

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Mar 27	comment	Good technological solutions to build an ascii map and moving characters in a browser (like dwarf fortress)? Nice. I can use that. Or at least learn from the way someone else did it to inform my own approach, since I want to make a roguelike, but not that like a roguelike. :D
Mar 27	comment	Good technological solutions to build an ascii map and moving characters in a browser (like dwarf fortress)? Well, rot.js may be exactly what I was looking for, but didn't know it.
Mar 27	comment	Good technological solutions to build an ascii map and moving characters in a browser (like dwarf fortress)? I'm not actually sure how this would be of benefit vs. an embedded css monospace-family web font? I mean, it would take more rendering, maaaybe it would allow for spacing issues to be solved more reliably, but with an embedded css font it wouldn't matter if people were missing the font or using a different language? Though I guess that would restrict operations to just the embedded web font's character set, hmmm.
Jan 10	comment	What math should all game programmers know? ... at least for a way of being able to understand the balance at a glance. Obviously you want to add testing to that as well. I actually bought the book on the strength of a smaller, cut down pamphlet that had awesome game related content, including discussion of the payoff matrix and rock-paper-scissors relationships and all kinds of great stuff, and was disappointed to find that the final book is a tome, and deals a lot with C++ programming (which is not my thing), as well as AAA title management problems. Everything in the cut down pamphlet was great, though.
Jan 10	comment	What math should all game programmers know? It was this: amazon.com/Game-Architecture-Design-New-Edition/dp/0735713634/… I wish that amazon version enabled searching inside the book, because it might be a great thing to reference in bits for this site. Though maybe the amazon in-book search doesn't work that way. Anyway, that's where they went over payoff-matrices, using warcraft as an example, and the advantage for managing complexity was so clear it made me an instant convert. That's no guarantee that Blizzard actually used that approach, but they're smart guys, so they probably had a mathematical solution...
Jan 9	comment	What math should all game programmers know? Uh, they almost certainly were, the initial warcraft armies were modified duplicates of each-other that were probably created with payoff matrices designed to make them balanced overall. After that they may have simply built upon what they learned to tune things, but they probably had to do it again with starcraft to gets some reasonable level of balance now that three different armies were involved, and again when starcraft II units were added. Obviously you don't simply stop at the model, playtesting often shows emergent properties, but a payoff matrix is how you initially model complexity.
Dec 13	comment	How can I make video games if I don't like programming? Hmmm, you could read my answer, or you could just watch penny-arcades video that @5ound posted, which says it all better, with imagery. penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/so-you-want-to-be-a-game-designer
Dec 13	comment	How can I make video games if I don't like programming? I was going to make a comment, but it turned into a full fledged answer.
Mar 27	comment	How they made Pokémon games so flawlessly balanced? I think this is the right answer. There may be a lot of visual/apparent complexity in the form of the various pokemon types, but their actual combat mechanisms are limited. Combine that with the same framework used again and again over the sequels, has a way of ironing out bugs.
Oct 31	comment	How to handle Multiple-accounts creation and cheating? The only way to make the threat effective is to follow through, which requires continuous monitoring and banning of your playerbase... ...which is just about the least desirable outcome, certainly first you should explore changing the system to minimize cheating potential.
Oct 31	comment	How to handle Multiple-accounts creation and cheating? That is a lot of deep gameplay philosophy, right there, good read.
Jun 17	comment	Revisitability of Game Elements Games that are hard for the sake of selling add-ons probably lose more in customer-base than they gain in add-ons.
Jun 17	comment	Revisitability of Game Elements On the flip side, the less is tracked and repeatable, the less deep/complicated your plot becomes. E.g. minecraft, infinite repeatability, no plot.
Jun 16	comment	Success checks for client-side javascript mini-game embedded within a server-side browser game Yes indeed, the image is just one that I pulled from the web at random. Even the sliding puzzle type is just an example, I'd like to come up with something more original, just need to get the groundwork of how to make it feasible down.
Jun 16	comment	Play game by coding your strategy What's the game going to be called? It'd be interesting to check out the game when it's finished.
Jun 16	comment	Persistent Browser Based Game: To Captcha or not to Captcha? Good advice, but un-achievable by humankind?
May 30	comment	What behaviors should go into making a “non-perfect” AI combatant? This is exactly the problem I have with simple randomization. Randomization may be an extreme simplification of the complexity that results from human thought patterns, but simplifies so much that there can be a loss of the potential for analysis of behavior for the player to use intelligent tactics against. Thanks for putting my intuitive sense of things into words.
May 28	comment	How do you prevent inflation in a virtual economy? This also suggestss that the in-game currency (e.g. gold) should be seperate from the drop currency (e.g. items, minerals, gems) so that the exchange between the two can be adjusted.
May 17	comment	How does a single programmer make a game? +1 for photos, I'm going to have to try that myself.
Mar 8	comment	How much memory usage is too much in a Flash game? I suggest you change the title to reflect the actual question, i.e. "How much memory usage is too much?"