GGTheMachine

GGTheMachine

Joined Member # 6528533
60 Posts 186 Replies 1,385 Reputation
Star Control: Origins - Professional Modder in Star Control Journals StarControl Forums

"Designer" is a rather vague term; it's my role on Star Control: Origins but it doesn't communicate particularly well what I do on the project. So how do I explain when someone asks me what it is that I do? Professional modder, is what I tell them. I create ships, but I'm not an artist. I create quests, weapons, and transform stars, but I'm not a coder. I work with the in-game ship editor and Adventure Studio, our powerful modding suite for Star Control: Origins. I'm creating content for the

3 Replies 44,199 Views
Dev Journal: Experiential Unit Design in Escalation Dev Journals AshesoftheSingularity Forums

Experiential unit design is the realm of making units and other game components feel different from each other, players have to think completely differently about Siege Tanks and Zerglings because of good experiential unit design. It may sound like a simple topic, but many RTS games have failed due to not executing it properly, resulting in a

13 Replies 219,465 Views
Reply to Dev Journal: The Challenge of Balancing an RTS in Escalation Dev Journals AshesoftheSingularity Forums

[quote who="Ashpire" reply="7" id="3712824"] Another terrific Dev article and continued evidence of the quality of the team behind the game and their dedication to continued improvement. Thanks for all of this work. {I am annoyingly prone to notice grammar tics so just FYI, you want "the importance can’t be overstated ". } [/quote] Ha, edited. Cheers. :D

8 Replies 162,369 Views
Reply to Dev Journal: The Challenge of Balancing an RTS in Escalation Dev Journals AshesoftheSingularity Forums

[quote who="Chronopolize" reply="2" id="3712617"] I think a quality a balance/design dev needs, more so than understanding of Ashes, is knowledge of design/balance from other RTS's. It's one thing to just fix everything that seems off, it's another to be able to picture things and design a relation between units of two factions. It reminds me of when I played in the Starbow community (an alternately designed sc2 mod) and everyone had ideas, but no-one had a larger grasp of rts

8 Replies 162,369 Views
Reply to Ashes Dev Journal: Why Balance Matters in Escalation Dev Journals AshesoftheSingularity Forums

[quote who="RomeoReject" reply="3" id="3711237"] " So what did you think, and what else would you like me to talk about?" I People flock to Starcraft's multiplayer because it's quick - most games average just 12 minutes in length. [/quote] I don't think that's a fair assessment. People flock to Starcraft's multipla

17 Replies 228,972 Views
Escalation April 1st Update in Ashes Support AshesoftheSingularity Forums

[For those lacking context in retrospect, this was posted as an April fools goof.] Unfortunately, the Escalation 2.75 update has been put on hold due to our lead designer, Callum, being attacked by a Kangaroo. In his absence, our intern has stepped in to take over development on Escalation. This is his first update. Updated Map Pool The automatch map pool has been updated to better r

3 Replies 48,779 Views
Reply to Dev Journal: Designing Alien Units in Escalation Dev Journals AshesoftheSingularity Forums

[quote who="MrPhalanx" reply="4" id="3708403"] And a second question, especially toward Generals Gentlemen: In the real life how big are the PHC or SS units? (I'm interested in the size of Dreadnoughts and Juggernauts , metric units please!) [/quote] I don't know specific measurements, but I would say a frigate is around the size of a car and a Cruiser is

6 Replies 159,524 Views
Ashes Dev Journal: Accessibility Woes of RTS in Escalation Dev Journals AshesoftheSingularity Forums

It's well known that RTS suffer from being less accessible than other genres, but I think the reasoning for why is oversimplified and under-analyzed. Most people attribute the accessibility woes of RTS to their steep learning curve, but that's only part of it. If the steep learning curve is such a hurdle, then why are MOBA's like Dota or League of Legends so immensely popular? I

2 Replies 69,594 Views
Reply to Next significant round of dev, and suggestion for community in Ashes of the Singularity AshesoftheSingularity Forums

As I said in the February Dev Journal , our resources is almost entirely going towards Star Control: Origins at this point. Once that is shipped we'll have resources to allocate back onto other projects, but we'll work out a roadmap for what that involves at the time. I'm still working on Ashes but I'm not an engineer so I can't do new features and code changes. That being said, the 2.75 update which h

5 Replies 53,830 Views
Ashes Dev Journal: Map Making Considerations in Escalation Dev Journals AshesoftheSingularity Forums

During my time working on Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation, I have made many new maps and reworked countless of the existing ones. There are recurring characteristics for the changes I make to maps, and criteria that I base most of my maps on, so I thought it would be interesting to articulate what it is that governs my map making and rework process. [[..]] Making maps b

3 Replies 78,821 Views
Reply to IDEA: Reduce tedium with Builders in Ashes Bugs and Ideas AshesoftheSingularity Forums

[quote who="fantstc1" reply="1" id="3706999"] I have, for instance, recommended that the metal/gas mining buildings be reduced to a single construct type. [/quote] Yeah this always bothered me. The seperate structures are good but they should be a single button on the build menu.

6 Replies 9,220 Views
Reply to Escalation 2.75 Update in Ashes Support AshesoftheSingularity Forums

[quote who="fantstc1" reply="1" id="3706730"] I can't say tat I'm a fan of the zeus changes. I use zeus to clear the swarms. They are already only marginally useful, living only long enough to pop a couple of shots. They tend to clear most, but not all of the swarm. I think of the zeus kind of like the tank in starcraft II. They are the hard counter to swarming, forcing opponent to use different strategy. The are already relatively useless against other units, taking 3-4 shots against th

17 Replies 108,146 Views