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Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

arstechnica.com

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Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#241

Post by mcphage »

jan_Inkepa wrote: post #157
ImprobableTruth wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These games are the starting point, but the bulk of the game is new puzzles combining mechanics from different games together Seems like the puzzles are novel, but the mechanics are not?

interactions between the various mechanics in the games likely yield countless surprises, and let you build something considerably more elaborate than thesum of its parts..

The Puzzle Boy / Kwirk series of games is Sokoban-based, but has 3 different mechanics on top of that: turnstiles, pits (that can be filled by blocks), and blocks larger than 1x1. One of the things I love about it is that, each mechanic is interesting on its own, and each combination of mechanics results in levels with very different feels. Lots of puzzles with a bunch of mechanics try to throw tons of them into each level, and each level ends up feeling very samey. But judicious use of combinations can lead to a lot of interesting variety.

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#242

Post by GoatInGrey »

dagmx wrote: post #192
torginus wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Political? The most political I've seen him get was when he spoke out against the idea of accepting technical compromises for the sake of not hurting people's feelings and being PC. As in, you get to be cranky as long as you're arguing for the highest quality solution

Just a comment, that often when people say things that are within your own political belief system, that people often don’t consider them political. But what is neutral to someone is not inherently neutral to others. Or even if it’s neutral to them, it’s still a form of political expression.

Do people really believe that opinions on interpersonal communication count as politics now? I'm asking sincerely.

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#243

Post by jayd16 »

gortok wrote: post #99

The folks that dismiss JB’s work by saying “this could have been done in ” are missing the point of why anything is done. If you are entirely utilitarian in how you approach making a game (as in this case) then you’ll want to create as little as possible to make the game. An existing game engine, an existing programming language, existing libraries, etc. If your goal is the economic return that making a game will (ho…

If you want to make art, you can do whatever you want.

The issue is JB has seemed to push custom engines as not simply an artistic choice but the utilitarian choice as well.

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#244

Post by kilpikaarna »

__alexs wrote: post #6

The Witness was a slog, maybe he's learnt how to make puzzles which are actually fun this time.

I would put The Witness somewhere very high on the list of most impressive games of all time. This is despite it being the only first person game to ever give me motion sickness (a common experience -- the crosshair and adjustable FOV that were added via an update helped a little but not completely), me not generally having the patience for this type of puzzle game, and not even playing it all the way to the end.

There's a pivotal moment where (assuming you find it at all, which isn't a given) your entire perception of the game world flips around, and walking back through environments you've already explored you're now perceiving them in a completely new way. The closest thing from fiction I can think of is the big reveal in Fight Club, in that it puts the entire plot in new light, except in The Witness the flip is basically unrelated to any of the "content" of the game. Very very impressively done.

It's weird that people seem to really have latched on to some off-the-cuff remarks Blow made on stream about not being an atheist (even though he also called out the false dichotomy between naive atheism and literal interpretation of Christianity). Blow has been open about his experiences with meditation practice and its influence on his game design, and I think it shows. I'm not personally a huge fan of the type of games he makes, but the thing he seems to be aiming for in his use of the medium are interesting enough that I'm definitely going to pay attention.

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#245

Post by stocksinsmocks »

ferguess_k wrote: post #210
EvilTrout wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blow and Muratori gained a following of engineers by bashing existing popular languages and engines, claiming they were all garbage. They both started this after the Witness came out, 10 years ago. Since then, guess how many games Muratori has shipped? 0. (He cancelled his announced game.) Guess how many Blow has shipped? 0 so far, but it sounds close now. These engineers spent their time ragging on other developers…

I think I'll judge that by looking at how convincing their arguments are (some are not, I think), not by raw output. After all they already output a lot.

Thus, by their fruit, you will recognize them.

Heckling is a lot easier than creating. Personally, I think we have an over supply of “ideas guys“

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#246

Post by luke5441 »

thrance wrote: post #232
luke5441 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is wildly extreme in the nature vs nuture debate. What is your opinion of gay conversion therapy?

I'm telling you: I'm out of my depth here. I don't need opinion on gay conversion therapy though, it's been shown repeatedly to be completely ineffective (and extremely cruel too). What's your point? Careful though, I'm not telling you that playing video games as a kid makes you autistic, I'm telling you that doing so can make an individual adopt behaviors previously thought to define/be exclusive to autism.

Well, behaving like an autist is obviously not good. If it is by nuture then we can prevent it by e.g. prohibiting video games for kids.

If it is by nature (being gay is generally accepted to be by nature) means that it cannot be changed by nuture.

The trans issue is currently the hot frontier of this debate.

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#247

Post by arduinomancer »

NathanaelRea wrote: post #215
EvilTrout wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blow and Muratori gained a following of engineers by bashing existing popular languages and engines, claiming they were all garbage. They both started this after the Witness came out, 10 years ago. Since then, guess how many games Muratori has shipped? 0. (He cancelled his announced game.) Guess how many Blow has shipped? 0 so far, but it sounds close now. These engineers spent their time ragging on other developers…

That's kind of a rediculous assessment. "How many games have you shipped in the last 10 years" is the standard for how good your advice is. John has made two games + one soon in the last 17 years. Braid started off the indie boom, and the witness was a blockbuster hit. Casey works on game engines and optimization, and has an entire video series about writing a game from scratch. I agree that some authors don't ship a…

Did Casey ever finish the video series?

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#248

Post by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF »

tialaramex wrote: post #238
bena wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, I had not heard of the Witness until well after it came out. Braid came out the same time XBox Indie Games. I will say, I do not find a lot of their rhetoric convincing. Especially for people who have never attempted to write the software they are criticizing. Blow only writes single player games that do not persist significant data to the machine. Nothing bad happens if your save file is corrupted. Nothi…

What the hell language was Muratori teaching with that he doesn't have a sort ? Even C provides a halfway useful comparison sort in the box† and they're so cheap they don't even supply the O(1) growable array type † It's named qsort, but despite the name it might not just be Hoare's "Quicksort". However it also won't be somebody's half-remembered bubble sort.

Handmade Hero teaches depth-first development. I'm not sure who it benefits

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#249

Post by ModernMech »

saberience wrote: post #93

So he spent 10 years making a pseudo-3D version of Sokoban with 2010 era graphics? I think he must have spent 9 years working on his new programming language and one year working on the game.

If you want to do X, "build a programming language first then use it to do X" is a tried and true way to never do X.

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#250

Post by bena »

tialaramex wrote: post #238
bena wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, I had not heard of the Witness until well after it came out. Braid came out the same time XBox Indie Games. I will say, I do not find a lot of their rhetoric convincing. Especially for people who have never attempted to write the software they are criticizing. Blow only writes single player games that do not persist significant data to the machine. Nothing bad happens if your save file is corrupted. Nothi…

What the hell language was Muratori teaching with that he doesn't have a sort ? Even C provides a halfway useful comparison sort in the box† and they're so cheap they don't even supply the O(1) growable array type † It's named qsort, but despite the name it might not just be Hoare's "Quicksort". However it also won't be somebody's half-remembered bubble sort.

He's using C++ as closely to C as possible.

Part of the purpose of the series of Handmade Hero is to build a game from the ground up with no dependencies. So I don't think he's bringing in stdlib

So he could use that, but goal is to be someone who doesn't necessarily need to do that.

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