I'm going to try to get started on coming up with some content for the homepage. Help me figure out what interesting exciting points I'm missing.
What is iotaBuildIt?It's an experimental game and method or philosophy for creating games. The game itself started out as one with very basic, flat graphics, and a number of features, but still very little actual game-play other than a tutorial on how to play. But a good portion of the available mechanics in the game revolves around building small robots from components that you pick up. Each component has a specific task, like powering other components, moving the robot or reacting to other creatures, to take a few examples. And the iotaBuildIt
philosophy also revolves around building something from small components: the game itself. It is an experiment in crowd-sourced game development. Each user/player is invited to contribute something of their own to the game world that any other player can then enjoy as they play the game. Then, the hope is, if and when players can rate these contributions, the best game will evolve from countless contributions from multitudes of users. There is much more to say about what iotaBuildIt is, but much of it will be defined by the players. More details will be discussed below.
Why is it called iotaBuildIt?The meaning of the word "iota" is something very small. The hope is that a multitude of contributions, however small, can add up to something great when combined. Similarly, the robots in the game are built from small components. One of the working titles for the game was "nanobots", but of course those are invisibly small. So maybe it makes more sense to call them "iota" bots. Combining small components to make a functional whole. The title iotaBuildIt also sounds like "I oughtta build it", and you should! We all ought to put something into this game to improve or expand it. The game is about building robots from small components, and the philosophy/method is about building a game from small contributions. The single title covers both of these concepts.
How does iotaBuildIt compare to other gamesUnderstanding the vision for iotaBuildIt may be best accomplished by comparing and contrasting it with other games
| Game | Similarities | Differences |
| Conventional platformer (Super Mario World) | The basic gameplay is similar to any platformer. It's a side-view game that scrolls as you move. There's a world map. You collect items by touching them, ride platforms, climb ladders, go through doors, etc. | - The game is playable in an HTML5-capable browser, so it's (hopefully) cross platform, which is not common for many of the platformers of the past.
- Editing the game is encouraged. Few platform games have editors, and fewer still (if any) encourage editing of the game down to the level of changing graphics and introducing new types of creatures (sprites) or backgrounds (tiles).
- Editing is flexible. Even for games that do have editors, the editors are designed for that particular game whereas the software used to edit this game is a general-purpose scrolling game creator, and can be used to define a wide range of graphics and behaviors with very little need to write code.
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| MineCraft | - The elements are pretty basic to start with - blocky/simple graphics.
- The world is open-ended as people are encouraged to contribute to and change it.
- The game involves on building things out of resources that you find.
| - This game is currently 2D, and will probably stay that way.
- Building within the game does not currently involve much changing of the environment, just building robots.
- Building outside the gameplay process is much more flexible, encouraging users not only to edit the blocks/tiles, but also all the ingredients: graphics, recipes, enemy behaviors; you could embed an entirely different kind of 2D game within this one.
- Because editing during the gameplay process is limited, it's possible to define much more elaborate puzzles and stories with specific constraints that can't be circumvented by players. For example, in MineCraft, it's very hard to trap a player because they likely have the resources necessary to build or dig their way out.
- The world is (currently) 100% created by players instead of generated.
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| Little Big Planet | - A multitude of players contribute their own content to the game universe.
- There is a separate mode for designing versus playing levels so that the player is constrained to certain rules while playing.
- Players can define how the environment and other creatures behave in their contributions.
- Contributions are shared with all so anybody can play.
- The intent is to (eventually) have a rating system so players can easily identify the best content to play with.
| - Players are encouraged to integrate their content seamlessly into others' content rather than having independent modules/levels.
- Players can contribute modifications and enhancements to graphics and fundamental functionality. Although Little Big Planet allows players to take pictures, and develop music, and define behaviors based on a pre-defined set of functions (pistons, logic gates, etc), it does not let you define objects at the same level as which the initial game was developed. In this game, every player has a power to create equal to that of the initial creator.
- The graphics and mechanics in this game are currently flatter than those in Little Big Planet.
- The physics in this game are not as realistic as Little Big Planet; they are more tile-based.
- This game is free to play and edit on any HTML5-capable platform (not limited to a game console).
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How does editing work?Although all the components of this feature are present, they have yet to be combined into a clean package. But I hope some iota builders out there will assist in formalizing this process. The elements are:
1.
Scrolling Game Development Kit 2 to edit the game elements, and export the game to playable HTML5 format, like
this. (Although someday, other editors may arise to edit the game more readily, perhaps editing the source file on the web, or editing the HTML5 file directly.)
2. The game itself - currently an SGDK2 project file, though we may consider some versions in which the HTML5 output is manipulated directly.
3. A distributed version control system, such as
Mercurial, and it's companion
TortoiseHg will be used to track and merge contributions from a broad array of players.
4.
SourceForge will (is) likely hosting this project and the PHP code (yet to be developed) to rate and combine contributions into playable HTML5 content.
5. A wiki will also be hosted at SourceForge for people to document and discuss the project.
PhilosophyThere is much to say here, but very briefly for now, I think more people should be collaborating more substantially on larger projects. I would like to talk about the Noosphere and how our combined efforts on a huge scale can develop something greater than an individual, or even a corporation. I think corporations are limited in their hierarchical structure which likely prevents many good ideas from surfacing, and inhibits quick and free flow/evolution of ideas.
