I _really_ like the idea of object creation/modifying happening in-line, rather than as a completely separate interface like in most game editors. Especially if that is combined with lots of built-in 'clip art' objects that you could pick from, I think that removes one of the nasty barriers to using these tools.
Maybe the same could be done for rooms/levels. Your rules could say "go to [level]" where [level] can either be your dropdown of created levels or the inline editor for a new one.
I basically read the event sheet in tools like Klik & Play, MMF, and Construct as rules. They are all "When X happens, Y happens" type rules, but it's hard to think of game rules that could not be rephrased in that form. So I wonder if that model is actually fine and it's just that it needs to be presented to the user differently.
Regarding the direct questions: I don't remember GameMaker's room/object editors well enough to comment on those specifically. As for how it could be implemented, that's a bigger discussion than I would want to fit into a blog comment. (a forum, im, or email would be good though!) I don't think you need functions as first-order functions (if I understand what you meant by that). C# is great but I think you would be creating a list of rule objects, each of which has a condition and action object, which themselves will have internal objects that do the selecting of game objects, and performing of the verbs in the rules. Pretty much any OO language can handle that fine.
Yeah, lately I've been fooling around with Kodu game creator and it's also very "rules-based" but it has that neccessary conditional.
I find the "When [x], [y] structure to be really bad for the "always" case – it doesn't make any sense to anyone but a programmer. Most rules thrive off that structure but if we want to design from ground-up to be user-friendly, we need to take the language of the rules super-seriously even if it seems like a minor semantic issue. But SINCE it's a semantic issue it seems like it could be hacked onto an existing framework like GM, etc… along with the inline editing. which i agree is killer-important.
I don't think any gamedev suites are open source though, which seems dumb. didn't know about MMF or construct though, checking those out now.
I _really_ like the idea of object creation/modifying happening in-line, rather than as a completely separate interface like in most game editors. Especially if that is combined with lots of built-in 'clip art' objects that you could pick from, I think that removes one of the nasty barriers to using these tools.
Maybe the same could be done for rooms/levels. Your rules could say "go to [level]" where [level] can either be your dropdown of created levels or the inline editor for a new one.
I basically read the event sheet in tools like Klik & Play, MMF, and Construct as rules. They are all "When X happens, Y happens" type rules, but it's hard to think of game rules that could not be rephrased in that form. So I wonder if that model is actually fine and it's just that it needs to be presented to the user differently.
Regarding the direct questions: I don't remember GameMaker's room/object editors well enough to comment on those specifically. As for how it could be implemented, that's a bigger discussion than I would want to fit into a blog comment. (a forum, im, or email would be good though!) I don't think you need functions as first-order functions (if I understand what you meant by that). C# is great but I think you would be creating a list of rule objects, each of which has a condition and action object, which themselves will have internal objects that do the selecting of game objects, and performing of the verbs in the rules. Pretty much any OO language can handle that fine.
Written by:zach
Sorry! I actually am really interested in this, but have been distracted by my own projects. I will check this out soon!
lol it's cool, i've been crazy-busy too 🙂
i really need to get to work on some more serious hi-fi prototypes – i'm not entirely sure that this is even useful except for laying out my thoughts.
Nice!
I _really_ like the idea of object creation/modifying happening in-line, rather than as a completely separate interface like in most game editors. Especially if that is combined with lots of built-in 'clip art' objects that you could pick from, I think that removes one of the nasty barriers to using these tools.
Maybe the same could be done for rooms/levels. Your rules could say "go to [level]" where [level] can either be your dropdown of created levels or the inline editor for a new one.
I basically read the event sheet in tools like Klik & Play, MMF, and Construct as rules. They are all "When X happens, Y happens" type rules, but it's hard to think of game rules that could not be rephrased in that form. So I wonder if that model is actually fine and it's just that it needs to be presented to the user differently.
Regarding the direct questions: I don't remember GameMaker's room/object editors well enough to comment on those specifically. As for how it could be implemented, that's a bigger discussion than I would want to fit into a blog comment. (a forum, im, or email would be good though!) I don't think you need functions as first-order functions (if I understand what you meant by that). C# is great but I think you would be creating a list of rule objects, each of which has a condition and action object, which themselves will have internal objects that do the selecting of game objects, and performing of the verbs in the rules. Pretty much any OO language can handle that fine.
Yeah, lately I've been fooling around with Kodu game creator and it's also very "rules-based" but it has that neccessary conditional.
I find the "When [x], [y] structure to be really bad for the "always" case – it doesn't make any sense to anyone but a programmer. Most rules thrive off that structure but if we want to design from ground-up to be user-friendly, we need to take the language of the rules super-seriously even if it seems like a minor semantic issue. But SINCE it's a semantic issue it seems like it could be hacked onto an existing framework like GM, etc… along with the inline editing. which i agree is killer-important.
I don't think any gamedev suites are open source though, which seems dumb. didn't know about MMF or construct though, checking those out now.
Rules-as-objects would be good, yeah.
Nice!
I _really_ like the idea of object creation/modifying happening in-line, rather than as a completely separate interface like in most game editors. Especially if that is combined with lots of built-in 'clip art' objects that you could pick from, I think that removes one of the nasty barriers to using these tools.
Maybe the same could be done for rooms/levels. Your rules could say "go to [level]" where [level] can either be your dropdown of created levels or the inline editor for a new one.
I basically read the event sheet in tools like Klik & Play, MMF, and Construct as rules. They are all "When X happens, Y happens" type rules, but it's hard to think of game rules that could not be rephrased in that form. So I wonder if that model is actually fine and it's just that it needs to be presented to the user differently.
Regarding the direct questions: I don't remember GameMaker's room/object editors well enough to comment on those specifically. As for how it could be implemented, that's a bigger discussion than I would want to fit into a blog comment. (a forum, im, or email would be good though!) I don't think you need functions as first-order functions (if I understand what you meant by that). C# is great but I think you would be creating a list of rule objects, each of which has a condition and action object, which themselves will have internal objects that do the selecting of game objects, and performing of the verbs in the rules. Pretty much any OO language can handle that fine.
Sorry! I actually am really interested in this, but have been distracted by my own projects. I will check this out soon!