I went to GDC to see a demo of Love and the tools used to
create it. Eskil
Steenberg is the one-man team behind the game and the tools. I
played with the tools the night before, so I was interested in seeing
someone who knew what they were doing use them. The tools are something
else. The tools are visually compelling, sparse, and bit foreboding
owing to their entirely unique interface. Each tool is dedicated to one
task, and they all interact real-time via the verse server. In a sense,
they are an extension of the Unix philosophy of development with respect
to small tools.
For the tools demo, Eskil brought up his game Love, and brought up
Loq Airou, which is the 3D modeling tool. He approached an object in
the game, and he found the geometry for it in Loq Airou. He then moved
the object up in Loq Airou and the game showed the object move upward to
a levitating position. It looked seamless. There wasn't any noticeable
latency between the update in Loq Airou and the game. I expected there
to be a beat where they were out of sync, but I didn't see that. He
could scale, rotate, or twist the geometry and it was all immediately
conveyed in the game. Eskil noted that by having this kind of direct
access to the objects that are hosted in the world a host of problems
become very easy to address.
After talking about the tools, Eskil talked about the game. He
created a post in the game, just an upright post like a lamp post. He
placed another post some distance and connected the two posts: A white and
black stripped rail appeared hung between the posts, and Eskil jumped on
and sled to the other post. This is part of the game's infrastructure.
Players can create their own fast-access paths through the world.
Eskil then placed a mine on the ground. It had a built-in radio that
he configured it to listen to a frequency and a keyword. He changed his
chat to the same frequency. When he said the keyword, the mine created
an explosion of colors. Then he showed how to convert that chat action
into a button, and clicked it quickly and the mine exploded furiously.
(This can be done with any chat action, so group coordinating efforts or
things like "help" can be made into a button too.) Neat, I thought, but
the next part really astounded me and opened my eyes as to what kind of
game he was putting together. He placed a new item on the ground. It
was a proximity sensor. He configured it to the same frequency as the
mine and to emit the same keyword. Now, when he stepped on the sensor,
the mine exploded (from a safe distance). He said that doors, gun
turrets, and all manner of objects in Love have radios. Just think, one
could build Star Trek-like doors in this game (a door with two proximity
sensors would do it).
Next thing to show off was the mutable environments. On a small
bridge, he grabbed the floor and extended one block of it upward,
raising a pillar. He did this across the bridge, effectively making a
wall. Then he cut into the wall, leaving a doorway. This reminded me
of MUDs which are one of the few games that offered mutable
environments, and for MUDs the task was easier because it was all text.
Next Eskil walked up to a cliff face. Using the same tool he demoed to
create the door, he just started cutting into the mountain. I
immediately thought, this is Dwarf Fortress but in 3D with
guns! I expect to see a lot of creativity expressed in this game.
I wish I had asked to see what the avatars look like. There is a screenshot
that shows what may be a player character, but I am definitely excited
by the prospect of getting to try Love. One of the things that Eskil
emphasizes a lot is the creation of stories by the players rather than
by the game developers, which I think is laudable. I don't know exactly
how he intends to create that kind of social storytelling, but he will
be limiting the servers to about 200 people, which is I think a good
call. It may allow for social norms to be operative, and hopefully it
will be small enough that the social circles of people will overlap.
Thinking on it, Leeroy Jenkins is
a great piece of player storytelling, and it's a rich piece of media. I
hope that the players are given some storytelling tools that are richer
than a chat client. Maybe a camera or even a video camera would be a
welcome edition to multiplayer games (i.e., in game cameras and video
cameras that capture what the player sees, not a webcam or anything).
Before the raid on an AI's settlement, everybody turns on their video
cameras in case there is a good story to share afterward.
