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using Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy game engines
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Message: 4447
Author: andrewbroad
Date: 11/09/2004
Subject: Re: Classical/Synthetic/Glitch...&...Bottom-up/Top-Down/Reuse
Alexandra wrote:
>It's interesting that you should distinguish three styles. When we
> I was thinking that there are 3 styles of JSW game, and they
> coincide with musical styles:
>
> 1 - Classical. Trying to describe real places, a la JSW, and
> Adban's games (amongst others, though he seems to be the most
> skillful and consistent in this area). Can also incorporate a bit
> of surreality (indoor trees, hell) but is generally coherent.
>
> 2 - Synthetic. Not trying to describe real places, or describing
> very unreal places ;). Synthetic games/rooms are sort of like
> playable abstract art. They can and should be pleasing to the eye
> but lack the discipline and restraint of classical, whilst gaining
> more freedom.
>
> 3 - Glitch. Glitch is the style of malfunctioning computers, both
> in music and JSW. Filsoft's JSW Again is very much in the glitch
> style (when I first saw it it reminded me of a computer crash or
> some other kind of transfer error in the digital domain).
> Placements can be seemingly random but often conceal hidden design
> (such as quirky features).
discussed this in March 2001 [Messages 2138-2141], it was
"synthetic" or "natural" (i.e. "classical"), and that's how I've
tended to think of MM/JSW rooms ever since.
> Note that not all authors/games/rooms adhere to one style solidly.I would describe We Pretty as mainly "abstract" (what you call
> For example, We Pretty comes across to me as a fusion of classic
> and glitch styles, whereas my own Strangel is more in the realms
> of synthetic/glitch. On the other hand JSW:RR is purely classical.
"synthetic"), as most of the rooms there are very surreal, although
some are quite classical (e.g. "EM ERG ENCY SB A C K Y A R D" -
which has a strong beach atmosphere - and "IRON B RIDGE WITH THE
CURVED TOP").
I'm not sure why you would classify We Pretty as "glitch", although
"A S P H A L T ST O R M " springs to mind here - a seemingly
random yet ingeniously designed scattering of wall-blocks:
.....................|..........
.|...|.......|................|.
.......|.|.|....................
|..............|................
..|.|...........................
|..........|......|.|.....|.....
............................|...
.|..................|...........
......|..|...|...........|......
..|............|.....|..........
...............................|
..|............|.......|........
...|...|...|....|...............
.|...............|........|.....
.................|..............
|.||.|...|...|.|...||.........|.
But "glitch" to me would imply starting with something random and
massaging it into some sort of order, whereas all the rooms I've
written so far, I've started either from blank or from an existing
JSW room.
(In fact I did once write a JSW room based on a random screen-
layout, but didn't save it as I was just messing around, and ended
up with a boring tunnel.)
Richard Hallas's "Worse Things Happen In Space", from _JSW in
Space_, is a prime example of the glitch style, being based on Room
63 from the original JSW.
Another example of "glitch" is interpreting various data as 16x16
graphics, trying to spot a sprite that looks vaguely physical, and
trimming off the noise around its body to produce a new sprite. I
used this technique a couple of times in both Goodnite Luddite and
_Ma jolie_, and I now plan to look through the data from all MM/JSW
games in the JSW CK sprite-editor so that I can take this idea much
further.
Strangel reminds me very much of We Pretty, in terms of both quirky
features and a surreal atmosphere.
MM:Hobbit and _JSW:Lord of the Rings_ are almost purely classical
(with a little artistic licence), as I was aiming for a faithful
interpretation of the books.
Goodnite Luddite is a combination of synthetic and classical, as I
was trying to describe a realistic place whilst retaining the
surreal atmosphere of We Pretty. It's much more classical than We
Pretty.
The map of Goodnite Luddite has three major sections: the abbey and
the outside (which are quite classical), and the Antiselesian
section (for those who know to go up from the start-screen "I & MY
MONASTERY"), which is more surreal and a little "glitchy".
Afrikaan - which I plan to start writing on 22nd October if the
prophecy of Armageddon turns out to be false - will probably be a
combination of your three styles, more evenly balanced than my
previous games as I want to experiment with "glitch" now.
I also want the geography of Afrikaan to be more balanced and to
provide a better difficulty-gradient than any of my JSW games so
far. After five 48K JSW games, I still don't think I've approached
the ideal where most of the game is relatively easy to explore, with
the difficulty concentrated in item-collection and reaching a few
out-of-the-way rooms like "Under the Drive" and "Tree Root" in the
original JSW. I plan to design the Afrikaan map in hierarchical
clusters, with several teleports.
MM:Allana Truman is very classical - particularly in the second half
where the emphasis is on locations from Neighbours. In particular,
the next two rooms to be beta-released - "The Coffee Shop" [11]
and "Lassiter's Lake" [12] - I designed by drawing a picture before
I worried about how to turn them into playable MM rooms.
Following on from that, I can identify three ways to design a MM/JSW
room:
1. BOTTOM-UP
Start with a blank room, and slowly build it up from technical
building-blocks (for me, this means always thinking "what quirky
feature can I incorporate here?"). I design the majority of my rooms
bottom-up, which tends to result in economy of space, with each and
every character-square having a purpose.
2. TOP-DOWN
Start with an overall picture of the room in your head, draw it in
MM/JSW blocks, then add technical features to make a good, playable
room. This tends to result in sparser, more iconic rooms (contrast
Stuart Hill's Monstrum! with his earlier game Utility Cubicles).
Sometimes I do start with an overall mental picture, but since my
brain is optimised for bottom-up processing, the room usually ends
up looking considerably different to how I vaguely imagined it,
unless I explicitly take the approach of drawing a picture first.
3. REUSE
Start with an existing room, and modify it into a reinterpretation
of that room. More than half the rooms in Party Willy were designed
in this way.
--
Dr. Andrew Broad
http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/
http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/
http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/willy/
http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/download/
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