Why how your work is represented is how your works is understood to yourself and others.
“Your capacity to understand your game is determined by how you represent the games data — that is the capacity to turn game data in something that is meaning — just representation”
Programming is about turning data into information. Making it meaningful but the way we visualize that data is via pages of pages of linear code defined in folders and called upon in other parts of those pages. Im going to try to convince you this this is an incredible cost on the mental space of. Traditionally the folder based model was to hide away information for long term retrieval at a later point it works. But Ive got a better method for you dear reader. Im here to ask you a question.
Fascinating isnt it…
This is how shader forge does its programming language, as we can see the language is not represented linearly but is represented through a flow chart. Because having pages of code allow you to see the lines of code one line at a time. But the problem with that is that it puts the burden on reading the data of code and means you have to visualize it to inform it what you are making. This makes writing code difficult.
“The easier it is to represent complexity, the easier it becomes to handle complexity” — platoboy69 on leveling up prayer
What shader-forge has done by using a combination of previewers, stepping the events and image displays is turned the data form of writing code and turned it into information. The burden of visualization is no longer on the human mind but rather is displayed right on the screen itself.
This is what it would of been in a traditional setting
And now it looks like this
This style of turning the data of programming into a more informative experience isn’t a unique phenomenon, many modern languages are representing them in far more useful ways.
here is unreal engine 4’s scripting language, this style of programming I am very excited for and I believe will be the next generation of engine based programming. No longer does tabbing have to be a thing, no more the ordering of structures be limited to one direction, in this one can create symbolically structures that the human brain knows what is together/what isnt through just looking at it, the brain is able to see when nodes start and how they effect other nodes. Without a single scroll of scrolling. This is informative data.
How Todd has inspired others by using twine as a concept map
Todd inspired this article; when I saw him representing his project in twine as a way of ordering how the story and how the systems interfaced with each other. We were very impressed by this way of thinking as it allowed for anyone to see how the mechanics for 24killers and the story worked harmoniously.
Usually when I’m working on games I have troubles picturing the two working together but what todd did was by linking them together he had created a todo list, how to match story to mechanics, when mechanics are used, when they are not used, what order they are used in, when do they repeat.
This was far more useful then a todo list, mechanics list, story concepts because it was all together at once. You could go micro into the project and macro. Harmoniously being able to see how each one of the components fits together.
Dwine
Dwine is a twine killer that was inspired from watching todd luke recreating a concept map for his game. Designed as a better alternative to trello due to trello only having stackable y plots on a x plane. Mason (the maker @online_frog on twitter) used twine to represent the relationships between the concepts. Going one up and adding in picture support, mason was able to associate ideas together that could’nt of been done on trello.
In this case the mouth is pronged out with text, and the images of the face are seperate. The individual images make up the character. Mason used a 2 prong window to represent the player speaking inbetween speak1, and speak2.
This way of representing this concept includes 2d space of how the character is drawn in the game world, how dialogue works, and how the world looks. Far more effective then the previous trello page did. which (trello) only represented the ideas and there notes on the ideas. limiting the way the concepting of the world could be expressed.
If you are interested in dwine I suggest signing up to the burrito galaxy mailing list @ www.burritogalaxy.com or following masons twitter account
Deios II Deidia in twine
Inspired by todd I represented all of the levels of my game Deidia into twine, at once I was able to see how all of levels flowed that I could never get buy looking at the text files. I saw how all the levels worked together instead of seperately. I solved 4 dead ends in the game, worked out how to make the levels flow into each other and also appreciate how much work I have done. The twine map had allowed me to see how the game worked together(twine) instead of how individualistic each of the files were (windows file explorer) that I could never get from a linear view.
This suggests that the more I represent my game in a web like enviroment the greater I get to understanding how my game works in its entirety.
“The varibles that can be configured together will have their experiementations be configured together. The varibles that are configured seperately will have their configurations working against eachother” — Queen Elizabeth II on modern Gui development; a critiscm of 2001 design
Joseph Campbell once said that each programming language tells you a belief about how you doing in the code. Windows file manager is designed to keep files seperate so you can individually pick them out and that is the correct way for that to be represented.
But games are the total of their parts. In order to see what a game is — you must see it in its entirety, and not all languages have caught up to this yet. If you are working on your own engine, or are trying to see how you game can be improved — prehaps this is the solution you are looking for pilgrim.
who knows how far people will take this idea, how far will we take it?
Get mapping boys and girls.
good luck pilgrims
Download items
Twine :: https://twinery.org/
Good Starter Guide by Anna Anthropy (you’ll just need to read to the part about linking them) :: http://www.auntiepixelante.com/twine/
