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Clearleaf

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A member registered Aug 24, 2016

Recent community posts

Thank you very much for this!

I was only expecting this to be good for organizing. But the overall experience of writing text is great. My dream operating system would actually include this as a stock app. To me this it's better than the almighty Microsoft Word in tons of different ways. It actually reminds me of when I used to use Wordperfect and Word and actually liked them, before I started using plaintext editors instead. There's a whole philosophy behind this that's just incredible and VERY needed in today's computer world. 

Below, I have attached light and dark "gruvbox" themes. The default black theme is a bit too high contrast for my tastes. The light one turned out basically identical to theme 2 lol, but maybe it will just right for somebody out there.

The only two suggestions I have for what would make this THE perfect journaling program for me:

1. To be able to set the default font size in the config. It's just a teensy tiny bit small for my eyes sometimes. But it's actually fine, it would just be nice.

2. Autosave after 5-10 seconds of inactivity. I lost yesterday's entry because I never minimize windows. I just open more stuff in front of them, so it never triggered the save. I ended up not being able to get back to it, and when the date rolled over it was gone. 

Those are two things I can totally live without though, this is otherwise one of the most perfect programs I have on my computer right now.

Gruvbox low contrast light and dark
{
"base": {
"background-color": "#282828",
"color": "#ebdbb2"
},
"emptyDate": {
"background-color": "#d5c4a1"
},
"selectedEntry": {
"background-color": "#98971a"
},
"unselectedEntry": {
"background-color": "#458588"
}
},
{
"base": {
"background-color": "#fbf1c7",
"color": "#3c3836"
},
"emptyDate": {
"background-color": "#928374"
},
"selectedEntry": {
"background-color": "#98971a"
},
"unselectedEntry": {
"background-color": "#458588"
}
}

I ignored the fruit knowing I would never find them all. But I still had a lot of fun just flying around. Going up high and diving straight down towards the ground is a rush. When you swoop at the last second and skim water you really feel the speed. I wish there could have been a bit more to it but I played for 20 minutes doing nothing so it's still pretty good.

If you have a game that's meant to be run windowed, you can make it any aspect you want so that's a pretty good solution.

This is EXTREMELY cool. I'm not even making a shoot em' up, I just enjoy seeing the ships this tool comes up with. I can't stop. Send help.

I had a lot of fun with this. It's was so fun that I accidentally reset the game and lost my progress, but played through half the game again because I was enjoying it so much. The game had a very nice blend of puzzle and skill that made it just the right amount of challenging.

(2 edits)

Steam hardware surveys have shown that there's a lot of diversity in the displays people play their games on.

16:9 is considered a standard and the majority of Steam users have 16:9 screens in a variety of resolutions. However the number of people using alternative aspect ratios such as 21:9, 16:10, or 4:3 is nothing to sneeze at. There are a lot of reasons why somebody would use a non standard aspect ratio, but the point is that as game designers we have no control over the types of screens our games will be played on. So this presents and interesting choice.


Letterboxing

Pros:

  • The designer can be absolutely sure of what will and won't be onscreen for every player at any time.
  • Composition and framing are much easier.
  • UI glitches will be less common. Problems like buttons overlapping each other or elements going offscreen will be easier to avoid if your menus are never put in an unexpected situation.
  • It can be used for effect. Some games use an ultrawide aspect ratio for a "move-like" feel. Many games with a pixel artstyle use a square aspect ratio to make it feel traditional.
  • Most players won't notice or care about black bars on their screen.

Cons:

  • Some players actually will notice and care about the black bars on their screen. People HATED this about The Evil Within and created mods that removed the bars. Other games that use letterboxing don't get as much flak as Evil Within did, but mods that remove black bars are still common for nearly every game that has them.
  • If you're ambitious and want to port your game to lots of different platforms, a forced aspect ratio will make that a lot more difficult. Especially if you want to enter the world of mobile phones and portable consoles.
  • The rigidity of a forced aspect ratio is something that some designers will disagree with.

Filling the screen

Pros:

  • A properly designed game can be played at any aspect ratio (to an extent), so there's no reason a game has to be one ratio over another when it can fill the whole screen. Most PC games I play will conform to both my 16:9 and 4:3 monitors with no differences in gameplay. A lot of games even offer you the choice of several very different aspect ratios and it never seems to affect gameplay at all in those games.

Cons:

  • Cropping can affect the difficulty of your game. 2D Sonic games are so much easier in widescreen that 4:3 feels like a handicap in comparison. In multiplayer games, players on a wider screen have a clear advantage over players with a narrower screen. Blizzard made a deliberate choice to force all Overwatch players to play at 16:9 no matter what monitor they're using.
  • Some players who have ultrawide screens or multi monitor output might be able to see things you don't want them to see, which can break the illusion or even allow them to cheat.

So what do you think? In a general sense, is it acceptable to force an aspect ratio on the player if it gives you more control over the experience? Or should we design our games to work no matter what ratio is being used? This is something I've been wrestling with for a while now so I would love to hear the community's thoughts.

(2 edits)

This game made me feel like I was playing one of those old adventure games made in shockwave/flash, but at the same time it felt very modern because of how tactile the controls felt. I hope more games like this get made.

(1 edit)

Very cool concept. Games where you manage the emotional state of the player character are a pretty rare, so if you manage keep it this elegant in the full game then I can easily see this idea being very copied very fast. I can't wait to see where you take it.