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Get to know sunandshadow...  Moderator - Writing for Games
Full Name Mare Kuntz
Nickname sunandshadow 
State/Province, Country PA   United States
GD Gathering City Pittsburgh, PA, United States
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Homepage URL http://home.comcast.net/~wickeddelight/ 
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Rating 1762  (Rate this user)
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5724  
Member Since 4/23/2000 11:58:45 PM
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Some recent topics started on our forums
Growing plants in games - examples you liked? I just finished playing Plant Tycoon, and I've played many of the Harvest Moon games and A Tale in the Desert which has a farming sim element. What other games would you all recommend where you enjoyed growing plants as part of the gameplay? I'm no... 
Posted December 12, 2010 3:51:12 AM
MMO Worldbuilding tldr: see next post for invitation to brainstorm fun MMO settings; this post is a big long introduction. Today my friend and I were discussing the topic that we needed a new game we could play together. I said I wanted to start a new MMO, but the... 
Posted November 26, 2010 2:40:48 PM
Collecting small plots of land within an MMO This week I've been playing Plant Tycoon and thinking about the Harvest Moon series, as I often do when pondering how to design an MMO with a lot of good farming and breeding sim content. I've previously described the concept of each avatar having a... 
Posted December 9, 2010 7:41:27 PM
Game designs of questionable ethics I probably shouldn't be surprised anymore when I encounter a game concept which is fun to play but morally horrible. There are many games where the player's goal is to commit genocide/drive species extinct, and many more games where murder and theft... 
Posted August 25, 2010 7:20:29 AM
CCG implemented as a single-player PC game I have a vague idea of the game's design, but I'd love to hear suggestions about what might be included in it to help me clarify my concept. My two main inspirations are the old Magic the Gathering PC game Shandalar, and the Pokemon handheld games... 
Posted September 27, 2010 5:35:39 PM
Thought Exercise: Audience Switch Here's a little forum activity, hopefully you all will find it fun. Here's the challenge: take a story originally aimed at children and rework it to appeal to adults. Pokemon, a Dr. Seuss Story, a Disney movie, any TV cartoon show, are suitable sta... 
Posted June 16, 2010 6:43:40 PM
[MMO] Ryzom is now GPL, who wants to play with it? Team name: None yet Project name: Ryzom-based MMO Brief description: An original MMO built on the Ryzom server and client. This would be a money-making project via either subscriptions or cash shop. Target aim: Aim of this thread is to... 
Posted May 7, 2010 4:17:32 PM
Decryption Puzzle (Not computer related) Is anyone a hobbyist cryptanalyst? I have a situation where I have a set of original unencrypted data, and the encoded versions of the same data, and I want to use these two sets to figure out how they were encoded. But I have no idea how to do tha... 
Posted June 6, 2010 12:43:13 AM
Good examples of minigames in MMOs? First off, fishing does not count for this exercise. Second, the minigame cannot require the player to have some minimum number of levels within the MMO, unless it's a really low number. Third, the minigame must reward the player with game gold or... 
Posted May 29, 2010 7:04:57 PM
Precognition/time magic gameplay design? I had a dream the other day that I was precognitive. I couldn't specifically see the future, instead I mainly felt a sense of urgency if I was near a person whose future was going to go badly unless I interfered, and I had to guess about what sort o... 
Posted May 20, 2010 7:39:40 PM
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Some recent replies made on our forums
Focusing the Plot Build backward from the climactic battle and be aware of your theme(s). If a piece of story doesn't move the plot from the initial incident toward the climax and also isn't important to the theme, it doesn't have a good reason to be in the game. Ma... 
Posted January 6, 2011 8:18:14 AM
Game story with no conflict Quote:Original post by Wai In this discussion, I want to focus on games with a substantial amount of story Ah. In that case my opinion is that a story which is substantial yet conflict-free can't exist. I believe that conflict is integral... 
Posted January 6, 2011 8:15:39 AM
How to Make a Compelling Main Character Theme and character are my favorite parts of writing and the ones that come most naturally to me, so they are the part I usually have a clear idea about before I start writing. I often become fascinated by a character in some other piece of fic... 
Posted January 5, 2011 8:02:57 PM
How to Make a Compelling Main Character I've seen some good stories about the inner struggle to be a good person (i.e. noble). Usually this is a children's story - it's especially common in tv episodes. This type of story is not very compatible with typical gameplay where you run around... 
Posted January 5, 2011 3:40:45 PM
Game story with no conflict This thread puzzles me. May I ask what the motive for the thread is? Is there some reason anyone would want a story with no conflict? I don't like stories with an extremely high amount of conflict, but I think some is necessary to make a story i... 
Posted January 5, 2011 3:27:43 PM
How to Make a Compelling Main Character I enjoy hearing about others' writing process too. I don't think there would be much difference in stories produced just based on whether the characters 'come alive', except that mine would be a little more consistent/formulaic (depending whe... 
Posted January 4, 2011 11:39:48 PM
How to Make a Compelling Main Character If I started out to write a story where love wins in the end (as I pretty much always do, since I write romance) if my story outline went a direction where love didn't end up winning I'd regard this as a problem, that the design had jumped the shark... 
Posted January 4, 2011 2:36:38 PM
How to Make a Compelling Main Character Quote:Original post by BinaryStorm Usually when I make a character I decide on a few principles that absolutely define the character, and I never have him stray. When I need the character to develop or I want internal conflict, I come up with a... 
Posted January 3, 2011 11:55:40 PM
How to Make a Compelling Main Character Quote:Original post by Pete Michaud Wow, that would be pretty great! ...but what a ton of work! Like writing 6 screen plays, not to mention producing them. Part of my issue with Kotiro is that I have to fit everything within the mythological and his... 
Posted January 3, 2011 11:47:29 PM
How to Make a Compelling Main Character Well, I was thinking each branch/ending would have a different storyform, but they would all overlap for the first act/signpost. The first act could be the player's actions determining whether the character was a do-er or a be-er, logical or intuiti... 
Posted January 3, 2011 9:07:24 PM
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