The Quixotic Engineer

This week saw the release of Valve’s new beginner-friendly level editor for Portal 2, dubbed the “Perpetual Testing Initiative”. Many have praised this new software for its accessibility, and have advocated it as an entry-point for first-time level designers. I had a chance to experiment with it a little myself, and I’d like to explore some of the specific principles Valve employed to create this remarkably approachable editor.

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A few weeks ago, the gents from the Moving Pixels podcast invited me to join them in conversation about League of Legends. League is an extremely popular free-to-play game in the style of Defense of the Ancients, and I’ve been rather hooked on it for the last few months. Jorge Albor, G. Christopher Williams and I discuss what we love (and hate) about the game, Riot’s clever business model, and the type of community that competitive games attract. You can download the podcast or subscribe on iTunes at the link below:

Moving Pixels – League of Legends

Since it’s been seven months since my last post, here’s a quick list of what I’ve been up to lately: I gave a talk at Juegos Rancheros (Austin’s indie game collective) back in November. Pax Britannica was ported to Montreal’s Arcade Royale and demoed at the Prince of Arcade showcase. Mostly, though, I’ve just been working hard on Starhawk (look for it on shelves May 8th!) However, all this does not excuse my writing hiatus; I’ll endeavour to resume regular blog cromulence over the next few months.

[Sona & Jax Lunar Revel fan artwork by RUshN]

While I’m not typically a shmup player, lately I’ve been enjoying a great indie shooter called Jamestown. It piqued my interest with its colonial Martian setting and beautiful pixel art. However, the game’s lasting appeal rests in the strength of its peculiar Vaunt mechanic.

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SpaceChem is a remarkable puzzle game about fake chemistry. The game challenges you to build a factory in order to transmute the given input molecules into the given output molecules. While chemistry is the theme, on a mechanical level it has more in common with programming. The methods used to tackle challenges in SpaceChem are akin to real techniques used by computer programmers. I’d like to elaborate on these manifold similarities, as well as explore how games like SpaceChem could be used to promote procedural literacy.

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If you follow me on Twitter or elsewhere, you may be aware that I moved from my native Montreal to Austin, Texas last year to work for a new studio called LightBox Interactive. We’ve been requisitely tight-lipped about our project until this last Friday, when we finally unveiled Starhawk to the community.

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