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Any offline Machinations-like tool?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by bitinn, Oct 16, 2019.

  1. bitinn

    bitinn

    Joined:
    Aug 20, 2016
    Posts:
    961
    If you have read Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design by Ernest Adams & Joris Dormans, you probably heard of a tool they developed called Machinations. It's basically a visual-scripting prototyping tool for gameplay designer to simulate outcome of a system.

    Screen Shot 2019-10-16 at 16.09.30.png

    Problem is, the Flash-based tool has been taken offline nowadays; and if you search for Machinations, the obvious result is a cloud-based tool in beta, works only in Chrome browser, that runs simulations in clouds ...

    Let say I prefer local simulation, and I am using macOS, what sort of tools would you recommend?

    (Nothing against using Excel or MatLab, just want to try a more game-oriented tools.)

    (Visual scripting tool for Unity would work too, and I have NodeCanvas and PlayMaker. But for simulations a dedicated tool is faster, and can visualize the graph without more work.)

    Please share if you use similar tools, or share your copy of the Flash-based Machinations, I would like to get it working on macOS :)
     
  2. bitinn

    bitinn

    Joined:
    Aug 20, 2016
    Posts:
    961
    Screen Shot 2019-10-16 at 17.04.16.png

    Good news (for me), with latest Adobe Flash Player and a bit of help from a tool called iSwiff, I got it running on macOS.

    Since the download is quite obscure, I will share my copy of Machinations here (v4.05 should be the latest release, along with examples it's just 260KB zipped, so actually smaller than this screenshot above :) )
     

    Attached Files:

    neoshaman likes this.
  3. jcsl

    jcsl

    Joined:
    Jun 27, 2012
    Posts:
    7
    Thank you very much for sharing. I am looking for this type of tool but offline too. No luck so far.