Ugh, layout is a pain. I'm intentionally avoiding most of it with Segira by going with a style that basically predates modern digital document layout software, drawing from old military manuals and Twilight 2000 for inspiration with a handful of space-filler art. I'm not looking forward to Genship Exiles, which is going to have some truly fantastic art in it, but will be a royal pain to actually layout as a result.
I actually really enjoy layout. It's not just of the puzzle aspect, but actually getting to tinker with subtle variations in font and white space to try and make something that conveys more information than is actually on the page.
Of course for me it's really more of a method of visual programming. Trying to figure out exactly how much of the layout itself that you can near-mechanise, working out what styles can chain to what automatically, building your sidebar and other set-asides so that they're consistent and clear but don't get in the way. Preplanning and plotting those art inclusions so they don't break everything.
I used to to spend a lot of time in InDesign for fun. Clearly I have some sort of disease.
I'm kinda hoping to introduce one who I've had a really good experience with to Steem, but I'm kinda unsure how to evangelize it best.
"Hey, there's the social media platform that I hang out on – no, no, don't run away! The interface is kind of crap, but there is a little bit of an art community with a lot of international flavor who would love to see some of your work. And, if you get very lucky, you might be able to pull in a few extra bucks from the weird funny money system they have going on."
Just don't put the crypto-commodity stuff upfront. Putting the international focus side of the community upfront, I think, is more likely to get some real interest.
At least I can add an absurd level of familiarity with word processing and desktop publishing software to my resume if I ever need a new day job. I just hope that at some point I can add community interaction to that list of "Things I have experience doing as a hobbyist/small business owner."
Writing for games is probably the best part of being involved in the game in the game industry at all. Everything else exists so that the writer gets to write and the reader gets to read. In that sense, it's a very pure industry. At least if you can manage to stay out of the politics, the infighting, the petty power mongering – come to think of it, more than I would like is too much like academia. Which, I suppose, is one of the reasons that most of the writing for games I've done most recently outside of this journalism thing has been for wargames, not RPGs. While the wargaming community has their quirks, they do tend to be a lot less pain in the ass to deal with on a personal level by large.
I love my RPG compatriots but unfortunately I cannot count on "get woke, go broke" coming home to roost for them because for the most part they're all lousy businessmen and they started broke. Keep digging that hole, guys. Keep digging that hole.
I'd never really thought of EU4 and Minecraft together, but I can see the similarities. Really, both are pretty keen on emergent play. Traditionally I compare EU4 to Dwarf Fortress due to how incredibly deep the systems in those games are. I'm always surprised when I bump into a kid who plays something like Stellaris in their free time, but then I realize that it's sort of an act of mastery in and of itself; if you can play Stellaris, you can play anything.
I love emergent play. I love emergent play no matter what game or interaction mode that I'm engaged with; it's one of those weaknesses I sport in a happy way. Ben Robbins just came out with a specialized spinoff of Microscope called Union, specifically focused on doing the genealogy of pivotal characters in fictional histories and I simply cannot wait to get the opportunity to play it. (Now, if only he would get the urge to name his games in ways that are Google search friendly, life might be more complete.)
DF is also one of those highly emergent game platforms, though I feel a lot of the time that it's really hampered by the interface, which doesn't really convey the important things about what you're seeing very easily. There have been some graphical overlays for DF which do reasonable jobs, but what it really needs is a complete rework to tie into some sort of isometric rotatable view of what you're doing which might end up looking something like Towns or Castle Story. Without that, frankly I'm just as happy to play RimWorld and get the same sort of emergent multiagent play without the headache that DF can sometimes be.
The next major changes in Stellaris are going to really take it much more into the abstracted vein of the rest of Paradox's grand strategy systems with the complete rework of the tile system into an abstracted work spot and building system and the addition of trade lanes, I think we're going to see that learning curve become a lot more steep.
Which is cool. Paradox is pretty well known as the creator of Dark Souls for the strategy game crowd, and I would hate to lose that.
One thing that I think would be interesting is to see an interactive tutorial for Stellaris/EU4 that scaffolds the player into running an empire, tied into a roleplaying scenario where the player takes on the role of someone responsible for just an aspect or two of their controlled civilization at pivotal moments.
I'm not sure that really is going to be the best kind of approach for introducing people to Stellaris/EU4. In part because part of the fun of the actual play of the game is the relatively controlled appearance of RNGesus. That unpredictability which is manageable by gaining mastery over knowing what the possibilities are at any given point isn't something that you're going to be able to convey in that kind of extended interactive tutorial. Honestly, I'm not sure that the prevalence of Let's Plays doesn't already satisfy that request. You get to see someone else guiding the decisions, and in particular with the ones which are played on live streams, you often get to chime in to help make decisions in an interactive way with the streamer. That's some of the best material that you could ever hope for to expose people to that kind of gameplay.
Though there is a game that just got out of Kickstarter which has an element of the player not having quite so much direct control over their controlled civilization. Remnant.
Remnant is a real-time 4X space strategy game set in a single planetary system. Take command of a rising faction and lead your people. Expand your influence across the system, consolidate power and quell internal strife. Crush your enemies until you alone rule the system. In an endless sea of clones and "re-imagined" experiences, Remnant strives to be unique. We're throwing away all the tired tropes so you can fall in love with the genre all over again.
The principle design goal is to create an experience you feel emotionally connected with from start to finish. Every facet of your empire has a name, face and individual identity that you become attached to. Admiral Harken was killed and his flagship, Executor, was destroyed before Delta Fleet could retreat at the battle of Concordia instead of Two hundred beam cruisers were destroyed at the battle of Concordia. It's a subtle difference but just one of the many threads that form the personal story of your empire.
At the heart of this emergent narrative based gameplay are the agent and colony program systems I've designed to take the genre in a whole new direction. Agents are randomly generated characters that are both your empire's primary tools and resource. Your empire is nothing without a collection of competent subordinates. Programs are government-led initiatives that control how you view and shape each of your individual colonies. It's nothing like you've ever seen before.
I backed it. It's ticking a lot of good boxes for me. We'll see if they can actually follow through on the design ideas. I have some degree of hope.