4 ms·

This reminds me of Scribblenauts. There was an interview with one of the devs at the E3 before it was released and he discussed how much time went into the game

This reminds me of Scribblenauts. There was an interview with one of the devs at the E3 before it was released and he discussed how much time went into the game simply to pad the internal "dictionary" and conjure up not just things, but also make sure that those things could interact with other things (e.g. "bread" should be able to interact with "toaster" to make "toast"). I don't remember if it was the dev talking about his own team, or if he was talking about players interacting with the demo, but he mentioned that some people were attempting to summon a list of ingredients (flour, eggs, sugar, milk, etc.) and throw them into a bowl and then into a heat source to see if they could make cookies within the game.

journalctl 7y ago
Oh wow, Scribblenauts takes me back! I love games like that. Half the fun is sitting there just figuring out what interacts with what. If I recall correctly, you can conjure up a Large Hadron Collider, which blows up and makes you lose a life. It sounds tedious to program for sure, but the result was amazingly fun.
throwaway66920 7y ago
I always thought that game must have an incredible ontology underneath it that would be amazingly useful to other ventures... I also recall playing it and, at a certain point, realizing that I was stubbornly uncreative in using the variety of options available to me. In retrospect maybe that wasn’t true, and the game managed the massive potential for variance by condensing things into smaller buckets. Either way those were some brave developers agreeing to that project scope.
- AdmiralAsshat 7y ago
  Take a look for yourself: https://gamasutra.com/view/news/300313/Scribblenauts_dev_shares_lessons_learned_in_making_its_huge_object_library.php https://gamasutra.com/view/news/300313/Scribblenauts_dev_sha...
  - scrollaway 7y ago
    The twitter thread has been deleted :( This is the only reference to it I can find: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMakingOfGames/comments/6ibtrf/scribblenauts_hand_authored_vs_systems_text/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMakingOfGames/comments/6ibtrf/sc...
- J5892 7y ago
  I recall beating most of the levels with just a jetpack.
  - jdnenej 7y ago
    And the bazooka. In the later games you could use adjectives so you could have "flying shoes" that worked like a jetpack

journalctl 7y ago

Oh wow, Scribblenauts takes me back! I love games like that. Half the fun is sitting there just figuring out what interacts with what. If I recall correctly, you can conjure up a Large Hadron Collider, which blows up and makes you lose a life. It sounds tedious to program for sure, but the result was amazingly fun.

throwaway66920 7y ago

I always thought that game must have an incredible ontology underneath it that would be amazingly useful to other ventures... I also recall playing it and, at a certain point, realizing that I was stubbornly uncreative in using the variety of options available to me. In retrospect maybe that wasn’t true, and the game managed the massive potential for variance by condensing things into smaller buckets. Either way those were some brave developers agreeing to that project scope.

AdmiralAsshat 7y ago
Take a look for yourself: https://gamasutra.com/view/news/300313/Scribblenauts_dev_shares_lessons_learned_in_making_its_huge_object_library.php https://gamasutra.com/view/news/300313/Scribblenauts_dev_sha...
- scrollaway 7y ago
  The twitter thread has been deleted :( This is the only reference to it I can find: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMakingOfGames/comments/6ibtrf/scribblenauts_hand_authored_vs_systems_text/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMakingOfGames/comments/6ibtrf/sc...
J5892 7y ago
I recall beating most of the levels with just a jetpack.
- jdnenej 7y ago
  And the bazooka. In the later games you could use adjectives so you could have "flying shoes" that worked like a jetpack