tcb's blog

Batting Practice Part II: It Came Down to Fisticuffs

boxing

For Cricket we wanted both “tactical” and “easy-to-use”, but above all we wanted to capture the slash and parry of being at the crease under the big-game lights. We wanted that flow; we wanted TV-slick. We wanted modern. That meant 3D graphics, that meant a certain look, and it meant we couldn't plaster the screen with buttons, gauges, sliding indicators or Ragdoll Kung-Fu limb control. In different games all of those things have their place, but it didn't feel right for us.

Batting Practice Part I: Many Ways to Swing a Bat

Bat

You're designing a game. Where do you start? If you said “gameplay” you've just warmed my designy-heart, but you still get a hearty, “not so fast, buckaroo”. Even if your game is pure gameplay, and abstracted to Timbuktu and back like Tetris, Trism or Bejewelled, you still need to have a guiding principle. You want to have something that you're looking to capture, a feel, a rush a challenge. If you don't work that out early on, you tend to get a weird Frankengame where the freaky-big arm punches the opposite leg as it walks.

The Bloggening

We've been talking about having a Spinfast development blog for a long time in the offices. It's probably not surprising considering that both Robert Spencer (aka Rj) and I have a background that stretches back into game magazines. In case you don't know -- and why would you? – Rj and first worked together in 1997 on a magazine called Australian PC Gamer. In fact, we also had one of our star IT guys, Jeremy Byrne along for the ride as well. So, yeah, we can be wordy. We can also be a little quiet at times too … especially when we're on a big push to get an update together.

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