Dev Links: Moonbase

Today’s Dev Links look both forward and back, with predictions for 2013 and a look at some innovations indie games have come up with in 2012.

Indie Tools: Adrift(IndieGames)
“Let me start off by wishing everyone a happy and creative 2013! Now, focusing on the creative bit, let me suggest you have a look at ADRIFTand maybe even craft a new text adventure. Yes, ADRIFT is indeed an interactive fiction creation toolkit that easily and via an almost intuitive GUI lets you create and publish your game. The built-in objects, locations, characters, tasks and events editors make perfect sense and, following a few short tutorials, even first timers will have something to show within an hour or so.”

Hey, Game Developers: Please Steal These Ideas In 2013(Kotaku)
“Whether it’s a quick save option, fast travel, the ability to skip cutscenes, or something totally random but life-saving, some games in 2012 have experimented with what seem to be really small ideas, but contribute to an overall greater experience. They may not have been the creators of these ideas, but they’ve got the right idea in incorporating them.”

What I Did On My Christmas Vacation(The Witness)
“Way back in 2008 when I came upon the core idea of this game, the design was the exciting part. Though I started in games mainly as a technical person who was excited about technical challenges, I have shifted into a mode of thought where, when I program, it’s mainly just to get the design done in the most straightforward way.”

Sim City 4 Rekindles My Inner Stats Geek(Cliffski.com)
“I’ve got totally addicted to Sim City 4. The new version will have to be something very special to make me prefer it to this classic. I enjoyed it thoroughly upon release, but have recently rediscovered it’s charms. Weirdly, it’s performance on my PC is not great. I strongly suspect that this is because it is a game running on an assumption of single-core PC’s, in a single thread, or maybe running on an assumption of low polygon-throughput, given it’s interesting approach to hybrid 3D-2Dness. I would truly love to wade through it’s source code.”

How Could Chrono Trigger Be Improved?(Zeboyd Games)
“Chrono Trigger is an excellent game that did a lot right but there have been plenty of articles on why Chrono Trigger is a great game. Here’s an article on where Chrono Trigger could have been improved.”

Twine Bundle, New Year’s(Auntie Pixelante)
“i realize now i’m never going to be able to keep up with all the amazing games twineis making possible. i’m not gonna try. and i’m not gonna weep, either, because i’m amazed and inspired by what so many people are accomplishing with twine. it’s like – the analogy i keep using is it’s like realizing your kid has finally become smarter than you. it’s liberating to feel unnecessary. twinehubis keeping a list of all the twine games. i’m gonna try and periodically post a bunch of my favorites, though:”

Techno King(Vlambeer)
“Grab Techno King here for Windows PC(the Mac version is somewhat rushedly ported, but we made sure there’s a Mac build too!)”

Video Game Industry Predictions 2013(AltDevBlogADay)
“Well, the world didn’t end (of course) so it’s time to look to the next twelve months and predict what we might see in 2013. Below are my predictions for the video game industry in 2013.”