Inside the Indie Mind: Zach Barth (Zachtronics)
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- čas přidán 20. 05. 2018
- In this 2018 GDC talk, Gamasutra EIC Kris Graft talks to Zachtronics founder Zach Barth discussing topics such as inspiration, puzzle design, and his overall game development philosophy.
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When I got my Deluxe Shenzhen I/O binder, I brought it to work and told my boss that I was leaving for an engineering job in China. She was absolutely speechless. That has to be some of the best money I've ever spent.
I really wish it was easier for me to get that in my country, as I absolutelly loved the game!
Zach is basically my game design idol. Just thought I'd say that.
After watching this, me too.
I love the sort of progression you get from Zachtronics games. The progression is 100% the player understanding the game better and figuring out cool tricks and optimizations.
When I played SpaceChem and TIS-100, I was trying to optimize every puzzle to the best of the my skill. After I beat a couple of levels, I came back to the earlier puzzles and easily found ways to make them smaller and faster and almost always fell on the extreme left of the online charts (i.e fastest/smallest). I felt like I was getting smarter and better at the game without needing an actual progression system.
The games give you a huge sense of accomplishment, first when you beat a level and some more when you optimize them.
That said, later levels become excruciatingly hard, to the point I gave up, but feeling I did well enough.
I thought I was the only person that hated progression mechanics! Awesome!
I agree wholeheartedly. I never finished Spacechem, but I did go through both TIS 100 and Exapunks. My challenge then was to make the fastest solutions I could. I'm currently playing Shenzen.io and I find new challenges there.
This was a fantastic Q&A. I was really impressed at how many questions Zach got through, while answering most of them meaningfully.
Absolutely amazing talk
I so much enjoy Zachtronics games! This guy is wonderful.
23:44 "Nobody makes about programming in C"
*makes a game about programming in Assembly (TIS-100)*
shenzhen I/O.. exapunks ...
"Assembly" isn't really a thing. Assemblers are things, and hence assembly languages are things, but none of them are capital-A Assembly the way there is a capital-C C language. Assembly is a discipline the same way Chemistry or Electrical Engineering is a discipline and you can make toy versions with made-up rules. You can't really make up rules for C -- if you do what you get can't really be called C at all.
@@OMGclueless So youre suggesting that Assembly is a domain language?
@@augusto256 Pretty much yeah. The domain is the instruction set the assembler targets.
Lot of fun to listen to this guy
Have slowly come to respect Zach's designs a lot over the years, first time seeing a video of him. Seems like a cool guy, wish I could hear more from him and his team.
Also wish I could get one of those badges for having beaten the game. Darn.
He said he ordered way too many... shoot him an email. Seems like the kind of guy who would send you one.
Did u ever contact him and see if u could get a badge by anychance?
Inspiring, thank you.
OMG I did beat OPUS MAGNUM! Definitely want one of the badges!
I like this guy.
If you are interested in puzzle game development Look up Alex Bruce's GDC talks.
26:22 - Scott is that you?
i thought the same thing!
That sounds exactly like him, not "harhar, that sounds sort of like Scott Manley".
Just checked, he apparently works very close to the conference center and was there.
I see you @Scott Manley
Finding the balance between real-world programming and playable in-game representative programming is something I’ve worried about for a long time. It’s nice to hear that maybe I shouldn’t be so concerned about the real and just make it fun and people could still enjoy it!
I want SpaceChem 2 tho
31:50 Nice opera.
@26:20 that sounds like scott manley
I beat Opus, just had no use for a patch... Fun talk. Didn't know about the Minecraft thing.
Not all heroes wear capes. This one wears a hoodie
The Dark Souls of puzzles
Hands up if you didn't realise that Shen Zhen IO's solitaire was on iOS
zach-likes are the dark souls of puzzle games
"come up with stuff that looks solvable and ship it" Lol
"We are not making Spacechem 2...." * He makes Opus *
Opus isn't Spacechem 2, it's Codex of Alchemical Engineering 2.
Opus is pretty much Codex 3.
infinifactory was pretty much 3d space chem...
I think the only problem with Zachtronics games is lack of a good storyline. I think infinifactory had so much potential for an awesome story and he threw it away. @@jasondads9509
@@stockloc That is not a uncommon criticism of his games, Zach said so himself that his players really want some kind of plot, and thus has employed writers to add context to the puzzles of his later games.
Though personally i don't mind too much, you say that story is the only problem you have with his games? What do you think of the manuals you need to read and continually reference to even play his more recent games?
2:50 That's the definition of puzzle, the acepted one at least. If it has 1000s solutions, it's no puzzle then.
22:45 Trudat, bro!
I dont think it's not a puzzle if there are more than one or even thousands of solutions. The valid solutions just have to be hidden in a larger space that includes invalid solutions.
Would you say the rubik's cube is not a puzzle then? There are countless solutions and countless methods for creating solutions.
Nice guy, shitty advice. Or lack thereof; all of his answers can be summed up as "idk just make your game good"
it's like asking a writer 'where do you get your ideas from" the real answer is 'I don't know" and then they either try to make up an answer and trot that out every time or they just get pissed off when they are asked over and over. If he could explain his creative process in a way that others could use then we would all be succeeding in making creative things.
Wise decision to not do RL educational stuff. Because then old 40+ teachers will crawl out their basements and try to teach you. Result: ALL FUN LOST
Yeah, being learned to, eeew, right? :/