This is an awesome book by Daniel Shiffman on programming and natural algorithms that have applications in game development and creative coding in general. It's pay what you want, but there's also a free web version with actual embedded, running examples of some of the code and concepts (which is where the link above leads).

I’m super into the OUYA. I find the flaws to be endearing, kind of. It’s super cool to think that a little under a year ago I was freaking out about the prospect of an Android-based indie-friendly games console, and now it exists. I can’t wait to get mine

Yeah, it's definitely cool that it's become a real thing. Barring them totally screwing things up, it can only improve. And it will.

Time, choice, and subjective value

I guess I used to be a hardcore gamer. But then you get older and life does its thing, and you get interested in other things, and playing games isn't as central anymore. Also, you've played so many games, and you've internalized all the various systems they are composed of to an extent that they become these more mechanical experiences, that almost everything you come across seems like a slight variation or evolution of what has come before. At this point, time has become a huge variable in your life, a nonrenewable resource in short supply that is divided among the obligations and the many things you're passionate about.

I recently decided to revisit Shadow of the Colossus via the PS3 remastered version. It was already one of my all-time favorites--it originally came out on the PS2 around 2005--and playing it again just further solidifies it in my mind. Here are a few observations about the game that I believe contribute to its sheer artistry:

the game world is a sort of melancholy psychespace. There's a deliberate loneliness to its expansive emptiness, a certain ambience of loss encoded in the lighting, wind, colors that may be reflective of the protagonist's state of mind. But here and there you'll find glimmers of life and hope. It's kind of jarring when you do encounter all of a sudden these strange eel-fish in a lonely pond, or bats in a cave, or turtles crawling around, after moving through so much relative desolation. And the ending speaks to this hope, too, which suggests the cursed land has a brighter and livelier future ahead.

animation has rarely been used as effectively in games as it is used in SotC. Ueda comes from an animation background. There is so much life and energy instilled in and conveyed by the animation and the attention to subtle detail. There's this kind of abstract physicality and expressiveness of motion that somehow manages to make the experience more immediate and less abstract. It's masterful.

complimenting the animation is the camera system. It also lends energy and life to the game through motion and defining the game's scale and space. It's such a harmonious blend of programmed and player-directed movement. If you've ever played it, notice how that part of the battle with the colossi is in controlling the camera. When they thrash and try to shake you loose, so too does the camera thrash. And you have to actively steer it back into a favorable angle. So many games would go the straight-up functional route, but it takes a deliberate artist like Ueda to understand that functionality can be the enemy of meaningfulness.

Here's a few other things I like about the game:

boss battles as environmental puzzles (which many games have subsequently ripped off)

Kow Otani's brilliant and epic orchestral score

minimalistic focus with little extraneous filler, both in the gameplay and narrative

You know what I'm fond of? Epiphanies. I had one of those today, while taking a shower of course. Is it possible to set up a work environment in one of those? Heh.

For Project Timeline, the main gameplay hook is the seed from which all else sprouts from creatively; it was the first thing I conceived. Obviously, a lot of games start out like that, and as a consequence the story--if the developer(s) want one--has to be retrofitted or molded to fit over that. In my experience and observation, the narrative is usually an afterthought or at least subservient to the interactivity. That's always kind of bugged me, and it's something I'm always conscious of when conceptualizing games.

Ever since initial conception, Project Timeline has gone through at least two general story iterations. Each time those iterations became a bit complicated, and each time I would run into problems weaving parts of the interactivity with the narrative; or I would leave gaps to be addressed or filled in at a later time. For me, it's important that the narrative and interactivity metaphorically intersect at as many points as possible as coherently as possible, because if that's not happening, that just seems like a waste of inherent opportunity video games as a medium provide.

Terra is a new low-level system programming language that is designed to interoperate seamlessly with the Lua programming language

I like the name, because it is in fact the terrestrial, lower-level counterpart to the lunar, higher-level Lua. Some things about it:

it's a statically-typed, compiled language, hence the low-level part

can call Lua functions from Terra code, and vice-versa

can use Lua to metaprogram Terra programs (conditional compilation, templating)

it's trivial to import and use C functions/libraries (as well as Lua)

like Lua, can be relatively easy to embed in applications

I think this thing has a lot of promise. Ever since I heard about it I've been a bit excited. Although I'm sure there is, I can't recall off the top of my head two or more languages with this kind of synergy.

For the past month or so, I've been helping out on the open source Polycode project. I've posted a few times about it previously. After taking part in a quick public beta, I decided to take the plunge and get actively involved. This is basically the first open source project I've become a part of, and it's been a good and valuable experience so far. I'm creating Project Timeline with it.

Polycode, in case you're wondering, is a 2D/3D creative coding, MIT-licensed framework that also includes its own IDE. It's built in C++, and has Lua bindings. The heavy lifting is done by a guy named Ivan Safrin. I jumped into the project without that much relative C++ experience, or experience building large projects from source. There's been a definite learning curve, but I'm getting better at it all and gaining more knowledge in C++, building from source, and git revision control. The code above is an API feature I added, to allow scrolling and navigation of tree widgets in the UI module with the arrow keys. It's from this feature commit.

Some other stuff I've worked on so far:

added a console command history, navigable by up/down arrow key

added copy/cut functionality to a line of text the caret is on (without selection)

a few bug fixes

added ability to indent/unindent blocks of code/text

As good as this game is, I still wish they could have made it without you ever having to fire a gun. Thinking back on my experience, the best parts to me where when I wasn't shooting stuff: the exhilaration of jumping on and off the skyline, the conversations with Elizabeth, curiously studying the varied environments and all their narrative richness. And there is of course a precedent for these kinds of non-shooting first-person experiences: see Portal and Mirror's Edge, both of which are brilliant experiences.

My gut feeling right now is that if they took the resources poured into the shooting stuff, and devoted it to other things, Infinite could have been revolutionary instead of evolutionary. They had a really good framework to do just that: Elizabeth's tears. Expand that concept some more, and you don't even need to constantly hide behind cover, exchange fire, and rummage through a billion containers looking for more ammo. The creative solutions for navigating through the environment go up exponentially.

The OUYA works, it’s here, and it’s heading your way: our first look at the finished system

Still, the fact that [Ouya] exists, is finished, and is running working software with a store you can already browse is in and of itself amazing. “Nine months, under 20 people, hardware product, a software platform and ecosystem that people are super-excited about,” Uhrman said. “We’re leaders of this new 'un-console' movement, and we just want to deliver and include people in the process.” 

Sometimes I try to reason out tricky details of complex game/software systems by engaging in a dialogue with myself. The first and most important function of that process is to address the problems and express possible solutions--to reify, somewhat, the situation at hand, through the simple act of expression. It's basically a  cheap and dirty sounding board method. The second function is to have a record of that thought process for future reference and revision of course. A lot of the time, I just end up deleting these dialogues.

Architects and Gaming - the serious architecture of The Witness

Ken Levine, creative director of the upcoming Bioshock Infinite.