Rune Skovbo Johansen @runevision@mastodon.gamedev.place

It's just refreshing to see a video game being released that attempts something different - and does it to a high standard!

The game has a few wonderful open areas that reward exploration, but the large majority of the game is very linear. But overall it's a wild ride that's entertaining almost all the time.

Now, it's not that I don't have reservations about this game. The high level of variety means there's limited depth, and inevitably, some segments of the game are not as captivating as others (*cough* Gates of Time *cough*).

I would have thought you could pick 3-4 of those at best but here we are. Maybe I'm just not used to what AAA feels like, but that's because AAA hasn't been doing genres I enjoy since the early 00s.

- It has an incredible amount of variety in both scenery and gameplay, including mechanics (a bit like Psychonauts, but much more).
- There's no grind, no collectathon, and nearly no repetition.

And you get all this in a fun-loving platforming romp rather than a shooter!?

I'm kind of amazed it exists.
- It has a solid platforming core.
- It knows what makes co-op great.
- It has high production values.
- It's fairly long (20 hours for us - reportedly 16-20)

We finished playing the two-player co-op game "It Takes Two", and it's easily among my all time top co-op games as well as just a remarkable game in general. No wonder it's among the top rated games of the year.

So anyway, my free puzzle state space tinkering tool PuzzleGraph now supports retina and is compatible with recent versions of macOS.
https://runevision.itch.io/puzzlegraph

Okay the mipmap issue was because Unity had chosen (upon upgrading the project?) that the default quality level (which I have never touched for this project) is the lowest one where all textures have half resolution. Stellar default behavior there Unity.

I now went through the trouble of implementing retina support and that at least makes the text nice and clear, but the sprites *still* seem to be using a low-res mipmap on Catalina, but not on High Sierra.

Okay why does the same build (with retina support disabled) look crisp (albeit low-res) on macOS High Sierra but completely blurry on Catalina? It's not even just bilinear interpolation; it seems to use too low res mipmaps or something? Is this Apple's or Unity's fault?

I never saw this video with @Nifflas@twitter.com even though it’s from 2017 - I mean 1981. It’s so good!

RT @jantonsson@twitter.com

@Nifflas@twitter.com Aww yeah she did 😊

https://youtu.be/woCKrdLUIjw

🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/jantonsson/status/1377321539020992515

I just stumbled upon this. I made this back when I worked at Unity in reference to certain users, but thought better of it than to show it to anyone. Since I no longer work there and am just a Unity user myself, I can post it now. It's in fact me in that picture; I'm that dog.

The artist contracter is the expert in their craft while I’m the expert in what the vision for the project is and what does/doesn’t fit that vision. There’s an inherent two-way dynamic that I rarely find trivial to navigate. It’s going all right though! It’s just a lot of work.

I’m deeply buried in the cover art design process. I spend days on the evaluation and feedback phases in the collaboration between concept artist and me, comparing, combining, remixing to try to find something that fits the vision.

Is there any good minimalist MacOS viewer software that will just let me very easily see a bunch of images in a grid on the screen so I can compare them? Sort of like what Finder can do, but like, not wasting 80% of the screen real estate on spacing?

I'm really happy to see a major outlet like http://Gameindustry.biz take such a clear stance against blockchain and NTF and the arguments are well formulated too.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-03-16-why-were-passing-on-blockchain-pitches

For reference, their previous game “A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build” was only slightly above “meh” for me. “A Monster’s Expedition” is so much better and deserves to go more mainstream.

And I must say I’m super impressed with how clever the mechanics in this game are. The basics are clever enough and then more depth is gradually revealed throughout the game’s length, often causing surprise. And the way it’s tied in with the exploration is genius.

*By “open world” I mean that all the puzzles are in one large interconnected world with (sometimes) non-linear progression, backtracking, and gradual unlocking of new areas, which all contribute to a sense of exploration.