6 ms·

Mars After Midnight: Gameplay Loop

211 points by danso 4y ago

wsc981 4y ago
> I could get along better with Lua if it was just a little more performant. I really miss things like true consts, macros, inlines, and other basic performance-focused features. Overall it feels very much like a good scripting extension for a core compiled system and using it to build an entire game, even at the relatively high level I'm working at, is beyond the spec. Kinda wondering why Lua on the PlayDate seems to have performance issues in his game. Doesn't seem the game does very graphic intensive stuff. And from my experience LÖVE [0] is quite fast as is LÖVR. I would think Lua should be able to handle much more, but perhaps the animations in the article don't tell the full story. Perhaps the PlayDate doesn't make use of LuaJIT [1] as LÖVE does? Or perhaps the hardware of the PlayDate itself is just much slower than I would expect. --- [0]: https://love2d.org https://love2d.org [1]: https://luajit.org https://luajit.org
- orthoxerox 4y ago
  IIRC, LÖVE is mainly written in C++ and uses LuaJIT, which has a great bidirectional FFI interface on top of being a tracing JIT compiler.
- jmiskovic 4y ago
  Yes, PlayDate uses Lua 5.4, for a good reason - it is a retro console with a ARM Cortex M7 running at 168 MHz. This is similar to RPi Pico or ESP32 and LuaJIT cannot run on it. In such environment you'd best utilize Lua for configuration, implementing branching dialogs, scripting the story events and similar occasionally-triggered high level code that needs frequent tweaking. A more static project (turn-based, or a card game) could be done just in Lua. Using interpreted Lua in hot loops will not only drag the frame rate, it will also bring down the battery life. Luckily even the plain Lua can easily be integrated with C, so it's not that difficult to take a chunk of Lua-prototyped code and push it down to C. For LuaJIT it's a non-issue for most part (and most algorithms can be reworked to be more efficient while staying in Lua).
- nerdponx 4y ago
  Can you use Fennel for macros?
macrael 4y ago
I love seeing the interplay of story and mechanics, the game started as an idea for a mechanic mostly, with a little bit of story on top. When that mechanic wasn't enough, asking questions about the story led to new mechanics. Obra Dinn is a top five game for me. If you haven't spent a weekend binging it I can't recommend it enough.
- mock-possum 4y ago
  Obra Dinn is a must-play. Even if you don’t like the genre, even if you don’t like the aesthetic, even if you don’t like video games, you should sit down with Obra Dinn and check it out. It’s an incredible work of art. it belongs in a museum
  - b0afc375b5 4y ago
    That sounds questionable. I'll put this to the test as soon as the next GOG sale.
    - frogulis 4y ago
      As a vote in favour of that comment, it has to be one of the most consistent and best games I've played recently. Trying to say as little as possible, it has gameplay that made me feel clever, _fantastic_ sound design, effective use of its restricted graphical style, and a story that had me intrigued from end-to-end. Savour it though, you can only play it "for real" once.
    - the_af 4y ago
      You are right to question such statements, but let me add more input: I think everything Lukas Pope does is a work of art. The man is an artist. An artisan. He makes no two games the same, and he is not a copycat. He really explores the design space and comes up with something novel. I think he is the best game designer of this age. Sorry if it sounds hyperbolic, and you'd be right to doubt it -- but he truly is.
      - 4y ago
helloplanets 4y ago
There was an interesting profile on Lucas Pope in Ars Technica years ago. [0] What struck me was that he's very development tools oriented. Development not as a means to an end, but as much a love letter to the process itself. Comes through in every aspect of what he does. Couldn't come up with anything more inspiring if I tried tbh. [0]: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/01/from-uncharted-to-obra-dinn-lucas-pope-dishes-on-his-illustrious-game-dev-career/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/01/from-uncharted-to-obr...
- sdkgames 4y ago
  Adding a new game object to a game increases its complexity ("combinatorial explosion"). Good tools are needed to deal with this. "Great tools help make great games. Spend as much time on tools as possible" (c) J.Romero.[1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFziBfvAFnM&t=884s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFziBfvAFnM&t=884s
  - Cthulhu_ 4y ago
    The biggest "explosion" there has got to be Dwarf Fortress, where the interplay of every object and aspect of the game causes some really interesting emergent behaviour (like catsplosions or whatnot).
    - xwdv 4y ago
      You tend to get these kind of emergent behaviors easily when you design a game around entity component systems.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- kqr 4y ago
  This goes for any type of product development. Speed is a requirement for innovation (you need to try lots of things to see what sticks, and if you can only try things slowly then not many things will be tried), and good tooling is a requirement for speed. Best, of course, is if you find ways to use off-the-shelf tooling (maybe with some exaltation) so you can spend more time on the thing you're supposed to be doing. Either way, you should have a toolmaker in the team.
philistine 4y ago
They've reinvented Papers, Please with food and light switches instead of documents and bombs!
- the_af 4y ago
  The gameplay seems different, the only thing in common is the "window" showing a random person -- er, alien -- and the limited desk space. Everything else seems different to me.
- wickedsickeune 4y ago
  "They" are the same person as the developer of Papers, Please :)
vanderZwan 4y ago
> The accelerometer is oriented for holding the device flat on its back. You're looking through a vertical window here so the metaphor doesn't hold. There's a missing axis that precludes vertically-oriented readings. Is it just me, or does that sounds like a really bad hardware decision regarding the accelerometer? With that limitation what could you still use it for other than digital variations of a marble maze?
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  The standard 6 axis mpu-6050 isn't even expensive. Why skimp there?
bob1029 4y ago
I really enjoy this style of graphics. I'm looking at a similar path for a game concept I am experimenting with. From a technology perspective, 1bpp lends itself to some pretty hilarious optimizations relative to AAA ray-traced alternatives.
- mayoff 4y ago
  Check out Master Key for more chunky 1-bit chunky graphics. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1763030/Master_Key/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1763030/Master_Key/ https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/778295166/master-key/ https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/778295166/master-key/
  - redundantly 4y ago
    Reminds me of Minit https://minitgame.com https://minitgame.com https://store.steampowered.com/app/609490/Minit/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/609490/Minit/
- Plasmoid 4y ago
  Ditherpunk is really cool. I found this article about it to be so interesting - https://surma.dev/things/ditherpunk/ https://surma.dev/things/ditherpunk/
  - bob1029 4y ago
    This article is what inspired me to try it. I was already looking at a greyscale (256 level) pallet, so I figured why not go all the way.
the_af 4y ago
Lukas Pope is a true artist. He is without doubt one of the best game designers of this generation. I don't intend to get a Playdate (it's unavailable anyway, right?) but I do admire this guy and I enjoy reading his blog and updates. He really is a genius. I don't say this lightly. A lot of people rave about games which are essentially either tech demos (impressive, but is the game really good?) or a bunch of cutscenes with a dodgy/cliché story by wannabe film directors. Not Pope. He really focuses on engrossing gameplay and novel ideas. His art is always in service to the game. Where else would I get a game about an immigration office stamping entry permits -- an engrossing, fascinating game?
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  Yes, building stories out of the experience of applying mechanics is the thing unique to games, "agency as art." We tend to call games "good" when they most resemble one of the other two prominent narrative art formats, movies and novels. But games aren't better at being those media than those media themselves are, it's a creative dead end imo. He seems to have a really good sense of what games can do that is actually unique to the medium of games.
nazka 4y ago
I wonder why he switched to Lua instead of using Haxe.

211 points by danso 4y ago

> I could get along better with Lua if it was just a little more performant. I really miss things like true consts, macros, inlines, and other basic performance-focused features. Overall it feels very much like a good scripting extension for a core compiled system and using it to build an entire game, even at the relatively high level I'm working at, is beyond the spec. Kinda wondering why Lua on the PlayDate seems to have performance issues in his game. Doesn't seem the game does very graphic intensive stuff. And from my experience LÖVE [0] is quite fast as is LÖVR. I would think Lua should be able to handle much more, but perhaps the animations in the article don't tell the full story. Perhaps the PlayDate doesn't make use of LuaJIT [1] as LÖVE does? Or perhaps the hardware of the PlayDate itself is just much slower than I would expect. --- [0]: https://love2d.org https://love2d.org [1]: https://luajit.org https://luajit.org

orthoxerox 4y ago
IIRC, LÖVE is mainly written in C++ and uses LuaJIT, which has a great bidirectional FFI interface on top of being a tracing JIT compiler.
jmiskovic 4y ago
Yes, PlayDate uses Lua 5.4, for a good reason - it is a retro console with a ARM Cortex M7 running at 168 MHz. This is similar to RPi Pico or ESP32 and LuaJIT cannot run on it. In such environment you'd best utilize Lua for configuration, implementing branching dialogs, scripting the story events and similar occasionally-triggered high level code that needs frequent tweaking. A more static project (turn-based, or a card game) could be done just in Lua. Using interpreted Lua in hot loops will not only drag the frame rate, it will also bring down the battery life. Luckily even the plain Lua can easily be integrated with C, so it's not that difficult to take a chunk of Lua-prototyped code and push it down to C. For LuaJIT it's a non-issue for most part (and most algorithms can be reworked to be more efficient while staying in Lua).
nerdponx 4y ago
Can you use Fennel for macros?

macrael 4y ago

I love seeing the interplay of story and mechanics, the game started as an idea for a mechanic mostly, with a little bit of story on top. When that mechanic wasn't enough, asking questions about the story led to new mechanics. Obra Dinn is a top five game for me. If you haven't spent a weekend binging it I can't recommend it enough.

mock-possum 4y ago
Obra Dinn is a must-play. Even if you don’t like the genre, even if you don’t like the aesthetic, even if you don’t like video games, you should sit down with Obra Dinn and check it out. It’s an incredible work of art. it belongs in a museum
- b0afc375b5 4y ago
  That sounds questionable. I'll put this to the test as soon as the next GOG sale.
  - frogulis 4y ago
    As a vote in favour of that comment, it has to be one of the most consistent and best games I've played recently. Trying to say as little as possible, it has gameplay that made me feel clever, _fantastic_ sound design, effective use of its restricted graphical style, and a story that had me intrigued from end-to-end. Savour it though, you can only play it "for real" once.
  - the_af 4y ago
    You are right to question such statements, but let me add more input: I think everything Lukas Pope does is a work of art. The man is an artist. An artisan. He makes no two games the same, and he is not a copycat. He really explores the design space and comes up with something novel. I think he is the best game designer of this age. Sorry if it sounds hyperbolic, and you'd be right to doubt it -- but he truly is.
    - 4y ago

helloplanets 4y ago

There was an interesting profile on Lucas Pope in Ars Technica years ago. [0] What struck me was that he's very development tools oriented. Development not as a means to an end, but as much a love letter to the process itself. Comes through in every aspect of what he does. Couldn't come up with anything more inspiring if I tried tbh. [0]: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/01/from-uncharted-to-obra-dinn-lucas-pope-dishes-on-his-illustrious-game-dev-career/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/01/from-uncharted-to-obr...

sdkgames 4y ago
Adding a new game object to a game increases its complexity ("combinatorial explosion"). Good tools are needed to deal with this. "Great tools help make great games. Spend as much time on tools as possible" (c) J.Romero.[1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFziBfvAFnM&t=884s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFziBfvAFnM&t=884s
- Cthulhu_ 4y ago
  The biggest "explosion" there has got to be Dwarf Fortress, where the interplay of every object and aspect of the game causes some really interesting emergent behaviour (like catsplosions or whatnot).
  - xwdv 4y ago
    You tend to get these kind of emergent behaviors easily when you design a game around entity component systems.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
kqr 4y ago
This goes for any type of product development. Speed is a requirement for innovation (you need to try lots of things to see what sticks, and if you can only try things slowly then not many things will be tried), and good tooling is a requirement for speed. Best, of course, is if you find ways to use off-the-shelf tooling (maybe with some exaltation) so you can spend more time on the thing you're supposed to be doing. Either way, you should have a toolmaker in the team.

philistine 4y ago

They've reinvented Papers, Please with food and light switches instead of documents and bombs!

the_af 4y ago
The gameplay seems different, the only thing in common is the "window" showing a random person -- er, alien -- and the limited desk space. Everything else seems different to me.
wickedsickeune 4y ago
"They" are the same person as the developer of Papers, Please :)

vanderZwan 4y ago

> The accelerometer is oriented for holding the device flat on its back. You're looking through a vertical window here so the metaphor doesn't hold. There's a missing axis that precludes vertically-oriented readings. Is it just me, or does that sounds like a really bad hardware decision regarding the accelerometer? With that limitation what could you still use it for other than digital variations of a marble maze?

mrguyorama 4y ago
The standard 6 axis mpu-6050 isn't even expensive. Why skimp there?

bob1029 4y ago

I really enjoy this style of graphics. I'm looking at a similar path for a game concept I am experimenting with. From a technology perspective, 1bpp lends itself to some pretty hilarious optimizations relative to AAA ray-traced alternatives.

mayoff 4y ago
Check out Master Key for more chunky 1-bit chunky graphics. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1763030/Master_Key/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1763030/Master_Key/ https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/778295166/master-key/ https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/778295166/master-key/
- redundantly 4y ago
  Reminds me of Minit https://minitgame.com https://minitgame.com https://store.steampowered.com/app/609490/Minit/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/609490/Minit/
Plasmoid 4y ago
Ditherpunk is really cool. I found this article about it to be so interesting - https://surma.dev/things/ditherpunk/ https://surma.dev/things/ditherpunk/
- bob1029 4y ago
  This article is what inspired me to try it. I was already looking at a greyscale (256 level) pallet, so I figured why not go all the way.

the_af 4y ago

Lukas Pope is a true artist. He is without doubt one of the best game designers of this generation. I don't intend to get a Playdate (it's unavailable anyway, right?) but I do admire this guy and I enjoy reading his blog and updates. He really is a genius. I don't say this lightly. A lot of people rave about games which are essentially either tech demos (impressive, but is the game really good?) or a bunch of cutscenes with a dodgy/cliché story by wannabe film directors. Not Pope. He really focuses on engrossing gameplay and novel ideas. His art is always in service to the game. Where else would I get a game about an immigration office stamping entry permits -- an engrossing, fascinating game?

giraffe_lady 4y ago
Yes, building stories out of the experience of applying mechanics is the thing unique to games, "agency as art." We tend to call games "good" when they most resemble one of the other two prominent narrative art formats, movies and novels. But games aren't better at being those media than those media themselves are, it's a creative dead end imo. He seems to have a really good sense of what games can do that is actually unique to the medium of games.

nazka 4y ago

I wonder why he switched to Lua instead of using Haxe.