matthewmatosis

Recommendation Questions

I hope to make some recommendation videos again but since that's not happening any time soon, I had an idea. Back when I got the Steam Deck I took some recommendations from you all but it just occurred to me that we've never done it the other way around, so here's an offer: You can tell me what type of game you're looking to play - or any other information you think might be relevant - and I'll try to recommend something.

If you're interested, read these next few bits first:

- A...

Quicksay: Choice of Canon

If you’re not a fan of Shin Megami Tensei or Persona then the habits of their publisher, Atlus, might be unfamiliar to you. When it comes to these two series, it’s become common practice to release an updated version of each game after some time. This dates at least as far back as SMT III which released in the west after being updated but has two versions in Japan. Known in Japan as Maniax, the second version of SMT III added new...

Brief Update

Long time no see.

As you might imagine since it’s been six months, I don’t have entirely good news or bad news for you, there’s always ups and downs over that kind of timeframe. After my optimistic and determined blog post at the start of the year, real life immediately started throwing up petty hurdles again but the last few months have been alright. I suppose it balances out in the end. Most importantly, I’ve stuck to what I said and am more like my old self, I didn’t pause ...

Dawn of a New Year

Well, it’s a new year and I’ve been struggling to decide what to say here. I think it’s best if I try to keep this as brief as possible.

To put it simply, I’m not happy with how last year went. There were some nice accomplishments like the renderer, extrinsic motivation video and a couple of other things you haven’t seen yet. I just re-read the quicksays and they’re better than I remember which is a relief. Overall it felt like a year of chores, nuisances and petty frustrati...

Quicksay: The Law of Cutscenes

After completing a world in Super Mario Bros. Wonder it takes about two minutes before you can play again. I know this because I began replaying it recently and got so bored during these transitions I simply started counting the seconds in my mind. You exit the current level, see the castle from the outside, are teleported back to the hub and then have to watch a cutscene where you release a lock on Bowser’s castle, afterwards Florian speaks a little before you can access the world...

Quicksay: The Ultimate Ultimate

Well, I was already writing about this topic and even planned to use Super Smash Bros. Ultimate as my example but since Sakurai recently brought it up, I suppose this is technically another reaction to his thoughts. In case you missed it, he recently discussed Ultimate and how it puts the series in an awkward position. Crucially, with Sakurai’s inside knowledge we now know that the reason <...

Quicksay: Ancilliary Thoughts on Extrinsic Motivation

Some theories and topics are more pleasant than others. Although I’m not going to let this stop me from talking about a certain ideas, I can’t help but feel that Context Sensitivity and Extrinsic Motivation are complete opposites in this regard. Ever since I became more focused on the idea of context sensitivity, I started to see it everywhere. The irritations that are caused by bad cases of context sensitivity were always there but getting a better grasp on the exact problem allowed me t...

Quicksay: Local Maxima

When the Nintendo eShop closed a while back, I bought a few games to shore up my collection, including Mario & Luigi: Dream Team. It got me thinking about the idea of integrated tutorials. I assume you know the kind of thing I mean, where a game tries to teach you its mechanics while you’re playing. Sometimes this is done smoothly (The Witness) other times it brings the game to a halt (Dream Team). Sometimes it involves text, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes ...

Quicksay: Relatively Straightforward

There’s a moment in the Context Sensitivity video where I talk about first person shooters and how the directions you can move are “technically limited by which direction you’re facing”. The example footage from Quake does a lot to illustrate the point but I’ll try to sum it up in words: Since most FPS games assume 4 directional keys for movement, you can only move in 8 directions on any given frame....

Quicksay: Deep Input

Masahiro Sakurai put out a video recently titled Broad Input, Broad Output. In it, he says that in order to improve his own work, he exposes himself to as many games as he can. According to him, this type of broad input is especially important for directors which should come as welcome news to me since I’ve been devouring as many different types of games as I can for a long time. Unfortunately, I can’t hel...

Pledges Paused

I got a lot of pushback against pausing last month so I want to be as upfront as possible here. Last month some dissent against the pause was reasonable since I did at least make progress but this month is different. I bought a Steam Deck so I've been on a massive game playing spree and straight up do not deserve your money this month. When the novelty of my Deck starts wearing off, I'll be able to be productive again but for now I still like playing games more than making them. My PC backlog...

Pledges Paused and Poll Thoughts

It's been a good month but I have nothing to show right now so pledges are paused until next time. Honestly, there might not be anything to show next month either but I'll resume pledges then regardless since we're still making progress.

I figure I should share some thoughts on the poll while I'm posting. First of all, thanks for the responses and comments, there was plenty of useful feedback and I got the sense that everyone felt comfortable sharing their thoughts which is great. I was...

A Poll

No news this month since I put out a main channel video, I hope that's fair enough. As you might imagine, there was not a lot of progress towards Regulus on account of the video and Tears of the Kingdom.

Anyway, this seems like a good time for feedback about the new videos since you have two examples now: Context Sensitivity and Extrinsic Motivation. I have several other scripts like this in an early stage and I'm wondering if I should pursue them. The channel has never been a ...

Extrinsic Motivation

It probably goes without saying but this will be the only post this month. I haven't played Tears of the Kingdom yet and it's about to eat up a lot of my time. As always thanks for your support, I hope the video is a pleasant surprise.

Project Regulus Work In Progress Screenshots

Take on the last dangerous job in the universe as a cosmic pearl diver. Produced by deep space aberrant entities, pearls are the most valuable substance in existence. Snatching one is no easy feat but you were made for this.

2023-04-30 02:05:20 +0000 UTC View Post

Brief Update

Hello there, I’m probably going to go dark before that Tears of the Kingdom presentation happens tomorrow so I’m hastily writing this update a little earlier than usual.

Things are going well. Mushido’s pause has been upgraded to a hiatus and the prototype I mentioned - codename Regulus - is our main priority now. Regulus is unrelated to Proxima but is similarly small. It’s already in much better shape than Proxima ever was so it has about five minutes of gameplay and a...

Potentially Acceptable Rendering

Pledges are active again. The video above basically represents my February, if you're a patron you should probably take a look.

My partner has been working on art for the new game I mentioned last time. We have a pretty good idea what kind of visuals we're going for and she's making sprites already.

It's still too soon to say whether we'll stick with this new project so we'd like to wait a while before showing anything. It'll be at least a couple more months before I have any more...

Pledges Paused

It's been a productive month here for both of us but we've put Mushido on hold to explore a prototype. Since its still in an early state, there's not enough to show. It remains to be seen whether this prototype really has legs so we could be back to Mushido soon. Regardless, I'd like to wait a little longer before revealing the new thing. As such, pledges will be paused this month.

I also spent some time getting an SDL/OpenGL project up and running. It's been a valuable learning experie...

Mushido Concept Art 01

As promised before, I'll re...

Brief Update

It’s been a while since I’ve done a straightforward update post and I think now’s a good time so here’s how things are going. There’s a summary at the bottom with the most important parts, if you’re a patron you should read that bit at least.

We’re continuing to collaborate on enemies for Mushido. Since this is design work, there’s been less consistent progress than with programming. Some days are very good, some days are not. Naturally there are a lot of factors which g...

Action Editor

Continued Improvements

Context Sensitivity

Coming Soon

Hello everyone, I'm keeping pledges open this month even though I don't have anything to share just yet. I've been trying to get something ready but I've finally accepted I won't meet the end-of-month deadline. I can't promise you'll like what I have to show, so if you're on the fence maybe you should pause your pledge for this month. Personally, I'm happy with the results so far and I'm looking forward to sharing it. I nearly made the deadline so you won't have long to wait but now that my w...

Pledges Paused

Hello all, I started this month by self-indulgently updating Teio Form which took a few days. If I had known what was to follow I definitely would've postponed this.

First I got sick. I'm still not sure what was wrong with me and it wasn't that severe but I had enough stiffness and pain in my back to force me to rest for a while. Then, not long after I recovered, we had interruptions...

Project Betelgeuse Developer Diary 007

Hello everyone. I’m a little under the weather at the moment and have spent the last two days trying to decide how I should update you all this month. The indecision is costing me so much time and energy that I think it’s best if I do this basically as a stream of consciousness. I’ll try to update you on some happenings but I want to write this as fast as possible so it might be a little unrefined.

After the huge collision wins last month, I started this month by putting it throug...

Various Improvements (and an update on art posts)

It's been a great month for progress, most of which is showcased in this video. The biggest win is a rewrite of the collision system to be 4 times faster, easier to understand/modify and more robust than it ever has been. Other improvements are covered in the video if you'd like to know more.

The only thing I'd like to add which isn't in the video relates to art posts. Last month we revealed the protagonist and a few other tidbits. The reception was great and I'm really looking forward...

Project Betelgeuse Developer Diary 006

Disclaimer: Everything about this project is subject to change. It’s not ready until it’s ready.

With that out of the way, it’s finally time to reveal some stuff about the world of Betelgeuse. First up, our protagonist.

This insectoid samurai is our main character. I’m delighted to finally show him so I’m fighting the urge to talk about him at length. As much as...

Pledges Paused

I said I would have something for you this month and I don't so that's a pause. No action required on your end, if you do nothing then your pledge will resume next month.

We're both still making progress and there haven't been any setbacks, I'm just not ready to do an update yet. Despite that, I'm optimistic about how it's going, I just need to keep you waiting a bit longer. Sorry for the delay and any disappointment, I'm looking forward to the next update myself.

Brief Update

Hello everyone. This was buried in the last Q&A so it bears repeating here: My partner is helping me on Betelgeuse by doing art. I planned to work on enemies this month but since she was brought on later I think she needs more time to catch up. Lesson learned, get the art department on board as soon as possible.

Anyway, she worked full-time on Betelgeuse this month and I took it as an opportunity to slack off. I mostly played a bunch of games while occasionally stepping in to discus...