GDC2013 - Introducting Machinations: A New Way to Design Game Mechanics

Ernest Adams and Joris Dormans introduced their tool to design game feedback diagrams.

• There are many types of game mechanics - physics (running, jumping, ballistics, vehicle), economy (collecting, resource management), progression, tactical maneuvering, social, etc.
• Internal economies appear in most genres. There are many prototyping methods (paper, spreadsheets, software,), but machinations offer a fast, cheap, flexible, and easily playtestable solution. The only thing that machinations have trouble prototyping are physics.
• The motivation for the framework is to visualize overall structure of game mechanics and economy systems. There are various attempts to systemize game design, but they often try to do too much. Machinations focuses on economic functions and entity flows.
• Machination diagrams include four main components -- nodes (entities and economic functions), resources (that move between nodes), resource connections, and state connections.
• The tool offers templated design patterns such as the dynamic engine. In a dynamic engine, a source produces an adjustable flow of resources, players can invest resources to improve the flow, there's a trade-off between short-term and long-term investment, and players upgrade until a certain point and then the game switches over to another system.
• Another design pattern is the multiple feedback system, in which a single mechanism feeds into multiple ones, each with a different profile. This increases difficulty and learning curve.
• You can create diagrams to map economies of space exploration games or even first-person shooters.
• Machinations is no silver bullet. It's a prototyping tool designed to explore game economies. It is better to focus on general structure of the entire game or a detailed structure of individual mechanisms.
• Future features include multipage diagrams, hierarchical design,, user-defined nodes, standalone app that doesn't run on Flash, and actual integration into game engine architecture.
• Machinations allows developers to prototype internal economies, facilitate understanding of complex dynamics and emergent systems, and allows methodological approach to game design.
• Start using Machinations at: http://www.jorisdormans.nl/machinations/

GDC2013 - Developing a Windows Store Game with DirectX and C++

• Phillip Napieralski give a quick tutorial for developing a Windows Store game with DirectX and C++.
• He showed off the Taptiles hub interface, which was built with XAML. The game is built under the hood with DirectX but uses XAML for the main menu interface.
• Fruit Ninja, on the other hand, uses DirectX for its main menu UI.
• XAML is a markup language that interacts nicely with DirectX in various scenarios.
• Direct3D Visual Studio template is a code example.
• It has two main classes (CubeRender and Direct3DApp).
• The ^ operator is a 'handle." It's a WinRT pointer that is reference counted.
• There are five classes to override and implement (Initialize, SetWindow, Load, Run, Uninitialize).
• There are also two lifetime management events (Suspend and Resume).
• You have five seconds to load or the OS thinks your app has crashed. He recommends to have a secondary splash screen in Run() for the loading sequence, rather than loading assets in Load().
• He showed off the Marble Maze game example with additional features (store simulator, cheats, notifications with friends, share charms, and animated live tile).
• Take full advantage of Win8 features.
• Tiles - should have dynamic content like leaderboards, send updates to users, and can use Microsoft servers instead of from inside the app. Tiles are just an XML document and there are lots of templates to start with.
• Toast notifications - immediate notifications defined in XML, needs a push server
• Appbar - triggered by gesture (swipe from the edge), Windows + z keyboard combination, or right click.
• Charms - make game social with ease, define a source and a target for the charm
• Persistance - process lifetime management
• Saving data - space available for roaming data, easily switch LocalSettings to RoamingSettings
• Monetization - can include in-app purchases or set time periods for trials
• Get Windows8 and Visual Studio 2012 (Express version is free).