Melos Han-Tani's Blog https://melodicambient.neocities.org/ Mon, 20 Feb 2023 01:26:39 GMT 20000 I went to Japanese Costco, and... https://melodicambient.neocities.org/posts/2023-02-20-Japanese-Costco Mon, 20 Feb 2023 01:26:39 GMT Transcript and interview of a talk I gave about our reclaiming our relationship and personal history with games. https://melodicambient.neocities.org/posts/2022-11-06-Crafting-Ludoancestry.html Wed, 11 Nov 2022 01:26:39 GMT 2002 translated interview with development staff of the GBA internet/adventure game, Sakura Momoko's Uki-uki carnival. https://melodicambient.neocities.org/posts/2022-09-21%20Sakura%20Momoko%20UkiUki%20Carnival%20Interview.html Wed, 21 Sep 2022 01:01:01 GMT In the near-future, a Professor of indie games visits a immersive museum dedicated to the game, "Anodyne". He later receives a letter from a certain "Melos Han-Tani". https://melodicambient.neocities.org/posts/2022-07-08-The-Museum-of-Anodyne-(Short-Story).html Fri, 08 Jul 2022 01:01:01 GMT A short story, set in the near-future, combining an FAQ of a fictional souls-like with the story of a person in search of their roommate amongst a towering suburb. https://melodicambient.neocities.org/posts/2022-04-02%20(Short%20Story)%20FAQ%200.99%20City%20Animals.html Sun, 02 Apr 2022 01:24:15 GMT A short sf/fantasy/surreal story, set in the far far future, about making music when humanity has forgotten how https://melodicambient.neocities.org/posts/2022-02-28%20Aloesian%20Mode%20(Short%20Story).html Sun, 28 Feb 2022 01:24:15 GMT Thoughts on the 2000 PS2 FromSoft game, Evergrace https://melodicambient.neocities.org/posts/2022-02-13-Evergrace-Thoughts.html Sun, 13 Feb 2022 01:24:15 GMT (A short story) Excerpt: Grandpa Tsu led the way, dense pines around us, their fallen needles, piling up, a scented cloud, notes of evergreen, early Christmas. Still at an age where one's hometown felt intractably large, I struggled to match his strides, his footsteps weaving into those low, evening sunbeams, flickering through the treetops. Looking down, watching piles of autumn leaves go by, I tucked my hands into the Pokemon hoodie that Grandpa gave me. A gift from his father, cherished, kept in his electric car for surprise outings like this. Though the appeal of the bygone franchise was lost on me, I appreciated its warmth. The Midwestern USA, a place of woods, farmland, flatness. We were off the side of a mile-long two-lane forest road known for nighttime traffic accidents and rumored hauntings. Lush with forest that extended into the roads. The bordering land was divided between landowners, state forest preserves, and the occasional dead-looking business, external renovations frozen in the 20th century. Though it merely connected my hometown to the neighboring city, I felt the road and its remarkable sameness always pointed out that it was me who was changing. The trees indicated the season, their shadows, the time. It was fall, after school (the 6th grade), and it was the first time I wouldn't just drive down the road. https://melodicambient.neocities.org/posts/2022-01-31%20Short%20Story:%20In%20An%20Overlooked%20Wood,%20Where%20Games%20By%20My%20Grandpa%20Sleep.html Mon, 31 Jan 2022 01:24:15 GMT The other day I stumbled upon a small, kid-focused retro arcade on the roof floor of a mall in Kanazawa, Japan. As a hotel attendant told me, "it's a bit like time has stopped..." I was familiar with most of the games - crane game variants, child rides, gachapon machines, air hockey. But a few were new to me. An Anpanman-themed popcorn machine (who, in its waning usage over the past decades, had gone from five flavor choices to a single "salt" flavor). A game where you have to scoop a certain weight of marbles within a time limit, without seeing the live weight measurement. A game where you can call Ash Ketchum with an old phone receiver and have him talk you through a few pokemon minigames. The most interesting were the "Kids' Medal Games". The Kids Medal Games had CRT monitors, tinny audio, simple control interfaces (usually one or two huge push buttons.) You exchange 100 yen for a number of medals/tokens. (In this arcade's case, it was 11 medals) https://melodicambient.neocities.org/posts/2021-12-28-5%20Retro%20Japanese%20Medal%20Games%20A%20review.html Tue, 28 Dec 2021 01:24:15 GMT As the younger generations laugh at the older generations for being unable to "Twitter", "TikTok", or "Group Chat", the older generations whittling away days at casinos with slot machines and gambling - the younger generations, too, have our own boomerisms and vices. Fortnite, Netflix, bleary-eyed browsing in the TikTok funny-faucet, the newest games, or in my personal case, indulging in the Gacha Game, one of the most brilliant and innovative genres of the 2010s, known for creating endless franchises and exciting sequels to existing high-revenue IPS. A genre that, with its brilliant game designer geniuses' innovations, can catapult our human race to some new train track towards an exciting, unknown future... I dedicate this list to the Gacha Game, and to all the amazing people who created the genre and made it what it is. I give you, the "Top 10 Brilliant Gacha Game Mechanics" https://melodicambient.neocities.org/posts/2021-12-20%20Top%2010%20brilliant%20gacha%20game%20brain-genius%20mechanic%20innovations%20of%20the%20year.html Mon, 20 Dec 2021 12:24:15 GMT (This essay is about how Hiking in Japan, Hiking in the USA, the USA's car dependency and roads, the connections of hiking/car dependency, and their relation to the design of AAA Open world games (or living in general.)) https://melodicambient.neocities.org/posts/2021-09-03%20Essay:%20American%20Roads%20and%20American%20Games:%20Why%20I%20Hated%20Hiking.html Fri, 03 Sep 2021 12:24:15 GMT https://melodicambient.neocities.org/posts/2021-08-20%20Kobo%20Abe%20-%20Box%20Man%20(1973).html Mon, 20 Aug 2021 23:24:15 GMT https://melodicambient.neocities.org/posts/2021-08-09-Sayaka%20Murata%20-%20Earthlings%20(2018).html Mon, 09 Aug 2021 23:24:15 GMT A review of three kobo abe novels https://melodicambient.neocities.org/posts/2021-08-02%20Kobo%20Abe-Kangaroo%20Notebook,%20Ruined%20Map,%20Secret%20Rendezvous.html Mon, 02 Aug 2021 23:24:15 GMT A review of a book and a few thoughts on game design https://melodicambient.neocities.org/posts/2021-07-21%20Kobo%20Abe's%20Inter%20Ice%20Age%204%20(And%20Game%20Design).html Tue, 20 Jul 2021 23:20:06 +0000 Reflecting on 10 years of game development, the state of game development, what i want to do next, and an interview about mother 64. Little mentions of Isamu Noguchi and Kenzaburo Oe as well. https://melodicambient.neocities.org/posts/2021-06-22_ParasocialNintendoComplex_10YearsOfGamedev.html Thu, 22 Jun 2021 00:01:10 +0000 a star-by-star commentary, thinking about mario 64's design and issues, (and where it might have been envisioned from) https://melodicambient.neocities.org/posts/2021-06-10_Mario_64_Playthrough_Part_01.html Thu, 10 Jun 2021 00:01:10 +0000 How's everyone's May? It's been a bit quiet on my Zonelet, huh... well, I guess I've just been busy and tired. I've been catching myself tweeting threads on Twitter a bit, meaning I have things I should be working out in writing... so... let's start with something more fun and easy! ... But first, did you know I started uploading my music to Analgesic's YouTube? I don't know why I didn't do this earlier, it's a great way to get fans to find our YouTube... well, better late than never. I guess that means I might need to ask the other uploaders of my music to take it down... Also... last year I uploaded some 'how the songs were made' about Anodyne 2's Center City Cenote and Pastel Horizon: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLk8kGXAr3dTutUbMzaKXM1SnIjlYBEl_I . That could be interesting! Sephonie Music Update For the past month or two, on Sephonie, I've been writing lots of music. I still have a ways to go but I'm past the halfway point! I pretty clearly see the finish line for Sephonie, wahoo. (By the way, did you catch the Sephonie song I put on YouTube?) (Oh wait, I'm realizing I haven't posted here since we announced Sephonie... well we did! Here's the TRAILER, here's my announcement tweet, and here's the Steam Page!). Doing all this music made me think about my process a bit, so I wanted to write some thoughts on that. But first... I want to explain a bit about my general philosophy on game music: https://melodicambient.neocities.org/posts/2021-05-08-Writing%20Music.html Wed, 08 May 2021 04:01:44 +0000 I was struck by the (tentative) news of Sony planning to permanently close downloads for PS3 and Vita. If you haven't browsed those stores, there is a surprisingly wide array of PS1/PS2 games - especially Japanese. I was actually impressed with whatever decision making led to that library being available. But whoever's in charge now sure doesn't care! Closing this store down is the equivalent of torching a lush forest to make way for a Starbucks and McDonalds with a piece of corporate art about forests. It's transparently a nudge to force more people into PS4/PS5 game ownership. After all, 100 less hours spent playing "crappy old games" is 100 more hours spent playing PS5 games! The console ecosystem is a machine designed to generate money. Part of this machine is getting old: replace PS3 with PS4. Replace PS4 with PS5. Fuck whatever cultural value that old engine had. We need to fill our existential holes with 4k and 60 FPS (and Anodyne 2, which is on PS5! I am contradictions...). Or maybe the stores are too easy to hack and no one wants to put in the money to making it future-proof. It's all numbers in the end. Bye Wii, bye PS3, bye Flash. To all this, there's not much I can do, but more developers should open source their work to help future-proof it. When I think about my personal ecosystem - the physical environment I live in and its history, my social environment, etc... what I feel most is the sense of history slipping away. On a large enough timescale, like the timescale of the quarterlies-driven husk of an executive who has lost any grasp of childlike joy, anything is bound to fade to nothingness and 'not worth saving'. Favorite restaurants go out of business, fields turn into forests, or fields into forests. The opportunity to have or revisit a lived experience will become memories, words, photographs and eventually darkness... https://melodicambient.neocities.org/posts/2021-03-24_Everyday_Layers.html Wed, 24 Mar 2021 14:01:44 +0000 Hello everyone! Be sure to leave a comment below if any of this is interesting to you. Hope the first 16.67% of the year is going okay. A few months ago I made a post about a "Shuffled World" game design. The gist of it was a game world that 'shuffles' as you play it, so the areas of the world don't remain in any one orientation for too long. This is conceptually similar to randomizers in games like Dark Souls or Zelda, which randomize where level transitions take you to. In the past months I've had some time to do some design thinking about my post, and thanks to others' ideas as well I have a sort of game's framework I want to describe in this post. Rooms and Roomsets A key idea is the Roomset and Room. A Room is a single, small level, something on the order of magnitude as, say, a room in a 3D Zelda Dungeon (on the big end: the first chamber of the Deku Tree. On the small end: a one-off puzzle room). A room isn't necessarily a literal room: it could be outdoors. Above: The first room of the Deku Tree The motivation for the size is practical and design-related: if the room is too big, it could become a chore to traverse multiple times over the game. If it's too small, there might not be enough 'space' to express an interesting design idea or spatial idea. Exceptions could be easily made (in fact I'd expect myself to add some very huge rooms and some extremely tiny ones), but I think this kind of size would work okay. On the practical side... rooms around this size are just easier to conceptualize without worrying about more frustrating concerns like landmarking within a single space. A Roomset is a set of related rooms (Melos's Forest, Melos's Mall, etc). The Shuffled world consists of connected rooms from roomsets. No Roguelikes In December, my thinking was initially inspired by Roguelikes - the entire Shuffled World would be procedurally generated (procgen). So I came up with a world-generating algorithm that would connect the world in a tree-shape, using binary trees and binary strings. Not going to describe it in detail, but it would work. However, thanks to recent design thinking... it was pointless!! Why? Door drama!! (By "Door", I mean when in a game you walk to the edge of a map, or a literal door, press a button, taking you to a new area) If I procgen the whole world, that means the Doors are fixed... and I think there's an interesting design space to explore with allowing the player to influence where doors go. Pure procgen flattens the drama a bit and I think makes for a less mysterious setting. I have a bunch of ideas relating on to how the Door could be 'dramatic' by allowing the player to influence the probability of where the door leads to, but more on that way later. https://melodicambient.neocities.org/posts/2021-02-27ShuffledWorldPart2.html Wed, 27 Feb 2021 05:31:12 +0000 The other day, I played the Steam remaster of Nihon Falcom's action light-RPG, Ys I (1987), after playing through Ys 6 (2003) while researching well-scoped, minimal-control and difficulty-accessible action games. Ys 6's design is a little sloppy yet tightly-scoped game. There are two other Ys games with a similar system I'm looking forward to playing (Origins and Oath). It's a length I desperately wish Falcom would return to (they now mainly make 50+ hour installments in the Trails and Ys series) . The remaster of Ys 1's design was not changed much from the '80s (thankfully!) The twist of Ys 1 is it's an action RPG without an attack button: its "bump system" means that the angle you run into enemies determines whether or not you get hurt. While the level design doesn't reach particularly great heights (often the most interesting thing is dealing with the tension of being at low health and trying to avoid the erratic enemy movements), boss fight design feels tightly woven to the core moveset, and I appreciate that from a formal standpoint. I'll play Ys 2 soon, which has the same. Ys I History Lesson Okay, now, here's an exercise: try to guess (1) when this quote was written, (2) who it was written by, (3) their role on the game, and (4) what game. Once you have a guess, read the answer. Recent RPGs have been very difficult, and it takes a lot of willpower to finish them. So eventually we came to have our doubts: was this really “fun”? With GAME, therefore, we set out to create the opposite kind of game, something that would be accessible, easy to play, and not geared toward hardcore RPG maniacs. ... ... Don't peek! https://melodicambient.neocities.org/posts/2021-02-10%20Lost%20Futures%20of%20Miyamoto%20(The%20Ghost%20of%20Ys%20I).html Wed, 10 Feb 2021 05:31:12 +0000 On how the game industry is constantly losing game design talent, and games are becoming "Dead" https://melodicambient.neocities.org/posts/2021-01-10%20Deadgames%20and%20Alivegames.html Sun, 10 Jan 2021 05:31:12 +0000 A post reflecting on Harvest Moon's mechanical legacy, my Idea Guy farming ideas that popped up in past games' development, and speculating on potential futures for Farming Games. https://melodicambient.neocities.org/posts/2020-12-30%20A%20New%20Type%20Of%20Farming%20Game.html Wed, 30 Dec 2020 14:01:44 +0000 https://melodicambient.neocities.org/posts/2020-12-20-Treatmills,%20or,%20Hades,%20Roguelites,%20and%20Gacha%20Games.html Sun, 20 Dec 2020 05:32:09 +0000 ...In my game idea, there is the Surface World and the Shuffled World. The Surface functions like the home base of many roguelites - it's always unchanged, various events play out here. The Shuffled World consists of a couple hundred, fixed mini-levels. Some are towns, containing characters. The mini-levels might include a Forest Glade, a Cavern, a Lake. Each mini-zone is like a room in a 3D Zelda Dungeon: they connect through "doorways", and the game fades to black and back again when going to a different mini-level.... https://melodicambient.neocities.org/posts/2020-12-16-The%20Shuffled%20World%20Game.html Wed, 16 Dec 2020 14:34:25 +0000 https://melodicambient.neocities.org/posts/2020-12-06-The%20Meaning%20of%20Christmas.html Sun, 06 Dec 2020 11:42:55 +0000 https://melodicambient.neocities.org/posts/2020-12-04-Corona,%20Japan,%20a%20Novel,%20and%20Gamedev.html Fri, 04 Dec 2020 11:42:55 +0000 https://melodicambient.neocities.org/posts/2020-10-17-Trails%20In%20The%20Sky%20Music%20Analysis.html Sat, 17 Oct 2020 11:42:55 +0000