The Mad Tinkerer Live and Uncut

Changes Coming

2010-07-17T15:18:00.002-04:00

I've imported most of this weblog over to Wordpress and after I'm done editing and cleaning it up, I'll be re-hosting it "back here" at madtinkerer.org.

While Blogger is extremely user-friendly and was adequate for quite a few years, it's time for me to upgrade to what I think is the best and most versatile system for weblogs.

Transformice!

2010-06-22T17:02:00.002-04:00

I'm taking a brief break from my Internet-exile to show you a video of a game I REALLY WANT TO PLAY:

That looks like so much fun. Too bad I can't get my computer to the Internet right now, and their servers are being hammered by people wanting to play it. But soon, perhaps...

Downtime

2010-06-08T12:19:00.001-04:00

I'll be without the Internet for a few days to a couple weeks. More posts when I get back online.

Pixel: A Documentary

2010-05-25T09:49:00.000-04:00

A documentary on computer graphics and the pixel art aesthetic:

Via Indiegames.com (link on the sidebar)

Don't Stop Mario

2010-05-22T06:49:00.005-04:00

Anyone can take video from Super Mario Galaxy and edit it with Queen's Don't Stop Me Now playing in the background. Fun, but not difficult:

Hacking a Super Mario World level so that the sounds play in time with the song? Now that's impressive:

Found via The Escapist's "Mario Party" article hub.

PORTAL IS FREE

2010-05-13T20:02:00.000-04:00

I'm sure you know this already, but for one week PORTAL IS FREE.

Rocket Knight Is Back!

2010-05-07T22:42:00.007-04:00

Rocket Knight is now available to preorder on Steam!

Rocket Knight.

Oh come on, you know what I'm talking about:

Video Games | Rocket Knight | Konami Gamers Night 10: A World At War Trailer

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Heh. "Blast Possuming". I saw what you did there, Konami. ;)

Doesn't ring a bell? Well, okay. The original Rocket Knight Adventures is one of those games that didn't turn into a big franchise despite it being really good. It got a couple sequels and then dis I'll let someone else who played it a lot more than me tell you all about it (warning: some strong language):

Got it? What's really interesting is that it's on Steam, because it seems Steam has been getting a lot more classic console/arcade-style games lately, especially platform games. This is something I highly approve of.

PREORDERED.

Dan The Man

2010-05-04T07:02:00.001-04:00

A video I spotted on HaLOLZ:

Video Games Are Art, Just So You Know

2010-04-03T21:53:00.002-04:00

Here's a video that makes a darn good argument for video games being an art form:

Parsed Programming With Inform 7

2010-03-26T16:53:00.009-04:00

Text adventure games are an interesting branch of the extremely varied tree of videogames. While Spacewar started the 2D Multiplayer Shooter genre in the late 60s, you're not going to mistake Pixeljunk Shooter for Spacewar. On the other hand, Colossal Cave (also from the 60s) looks pretty much the same as all other text adventure games, because text looks like text. Like books, text adventures are all about what's written. Unlike books, the reader drives the story via their own input, and gets feedback according to what the author has told the computer to do.

Text adventures are almost all second-person perspective and present tense, something that is extremely rare in non-interactive fiction. "You are in a room. The daylight streams in through the window, making you squint slightly." instead of "Conan was in a room. The daylight streaming in through the window made him squint slightly."

You type into a parser what you want your in-game character to do and the game will describe what happens next:

">close curtains"

"You close the curtains, though it is still quite bright in the room."

">south"

"The south door is locked."

">unlock door with key"

"You do not have a key to unlock the door. Perhaps there is one hidden in the room somewhere."

...and so on. The parser breaks down the phrases the player types in into commands that the game acts upon. Behind the scenes, the game keeps track of all the nouns (rooms, objects, creatures), the verbs the player can use (moving, taking items, wearing things), special events, and so on. If all goes well, the player doesn't run into too many generic error messages and is able to figure out what commands to type to get through the game.

So far, so simple. AGT and others did all this a long time ago. But Inform 7 is different. Inform 7 has taken things a whole step further.

AGT made some big steps towards making adventure games easy to write. Creating a room is as simple as typing:

ROOM 32
Top of Cliff
NORTH 33
SOUTH 34
WEST 35
END_ROOM

ROOM_DESCR 32
You are standing near the edge on the top of a tall cliff. To the east is a sheer drop of several thousand feet. To the north, west and south are paths that lead down the side of the mountain.
END_ROOM_DESCR

Now, that's fine. But it's very similar to programming in a programming language, especially when you get into Dummy Verbs and Meta-Commands. That still was a lot simpler than trying to write your own game from scratch in Pascal or whatever. But the way Inform 7 would do it is:

Top of Cliff is a room. "You are standing near the edge on the top of a tall cliff. To the east is a sheer drop of several thousand feet. To the north, west and south are paths that lead down the side of the mountain."

Same functionality: much, much, much less like programming.

The clever part of Inform 7 is that they took the idea of parsing player commands and put parsing in the compiler. Writing a game in Inform 7 is just like typing a story, except you have to fix illogical statements (bugs) as you go along. The compiler will take care of translating your plain English into the actual code, and it will give you error messages in plain English. Sort of like what your English teacher might tell you, though exponentially more picky.

This is brilliant, and it's a pity I had ignored the Interactive Fiction* scene for the last few years or else I could have written about this years ago. I don't know if I'll finish the game I just started (I have a bunch else to do right now), but it's definitely a very interesting way of making games. Inform 7 is not going to replace C++ anytime soon, but it's pretty much the way to make text adventures.

*Ever since the Internet became popular the cool name for text adventures is "Interactive Fiction".

Cave Story Story

2010-03-16T11:50:00.002-04:00

Via TIGSource I found this video:

Now if they'd just finish the WiiWare version of Cave Story already, I'll buy it!

Unlimited Detail

2010-03-09T23:55:00.002-05:00

Now here's an interesting technology demonstration. Ever since Carmack revolutionized realtime 3D graphics by pre-computing light sources with BSP (not to mention the many other techniques he and others have developed to make polygons look more shiny and nice), that's the sort of system most people have gone with. There are other systems, like voxels and raytracing (as mentioned in the video), but for various reasons they fell out of popularity. Mostly because polygons have been the best way to represent a world in a first-person-shooter game.

Now this may finally be changing:

I would still like to know what sort of lighting and physics systems are compatible with their tech (and/or maybe new ones may be invented as a result), but it's still a nice tech demo.

The second video on this page is also fairly informative.

What Not To Do To The Guys Who Have Made You Billions Of Dollars

2010-03-08T15:45:00.007-05:00

I haven't given up on the game industry yet, but it's really looking like it's going to be impossible for me to work for any studio that works under a large publisher.

EA have pulled nonsensical stunt after nonsensical stunt in the past, but seem to have calmed down recently. Ubisoft won't let any of their legitimate customers play their single player games without automated online supervision. And now Activision...

I mean really, let me get this straight: "The Company is concluding an internal human resources inquiry into breaches of contract and insubordination by two senior employees at Infinity Ward. This matter is expected to involve the departure of key personnel and litigation. At present, the Company does not expect this matter to have a material impact on the Company." (bold emphasis thanks to Dave Taylor)

Billions of dollars. The "insubordinate" dudes made Activision BILLIONS of dollars. There are plenty of other rumors flying around that make the situation even worse (like Activision witholding royalties from the guys who stayed), but forget all that. Let's look at the fact that ACTIVISION FIRED GUYS WHO ARE WORTH BILLIONS OF DOLLARS FOR "INSUBORDIATION".

It doesn't matter how well you do your job. It doesn't matter how much direct cash you are responsible for your publisher earning. You can be a huge success as a game developer and still get creamed by your publisher because someone doesn't like your "attitude". THEY MADE CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE 2 AND THEY WERE FIRED.

What I want to know is: why should I ever work for Activision? Why should I let myself be put into a position where I can be fired for doing an awesome job but I didn't kiss quite enough ass? Even EA and Ubisoft are not this foolish.

Oh, and if this turns out to be true: "But what really blows my mind is how Activision treats the people they expect to stay behind. If what I've read online is true, they've retroactively changed how the royalty stream works so instead of the stream coming 6 months after the game is out (1 quarter to make profit and 1 quarter to ensure you stick around) so that they pay out the royalty over 2 years. With the bonuses getting incrementally bigger, so the largest are at the end.

This is their idea to get the team to stay. Basically holding the bonuses / royalty payments for ransom."

Then I might well engage in an actual boycott. It's not like I'll be hurting the guys who make the game. I'll only be hurting the guys who collect the money and hoard it and punish those who make the game. So much for Starcraft II...

Ubisoft DRM

2010-03-08T00:17:00.005-05:00

I was quietly ignoring the whole Ubisort DRM scandal. After all:

1) I made my views on the Bioshock 2 DRM pretty clear and the new Ubisoft DRM is quite worse. So duh.

2) I still haven't gotten around to playing Assasin's Creed 1, so I'm not interested in AC2 at this point.

But then Ubisoft's online servers massively fail on launch day, locking many players out of their single player game. And then someone came up with this illustration which sums everything up rather nicely:

Portal 2!

2010-03-05T19:54:00.002-05:00

The announcement itself has gotten around now, so you've probably heard about it elsewhere already. Valve hasn't quite stopped teasing us yet, and Game Informer is going to be very informative.

I'd just like to say that as for a certain aspect of the sequel I suggested it two years ago. No need to thank me. :)

Also ME WANT GAME NOW.

Radio Madness In Portal

2010-03-02T18:22:00.005-05:00

Yesterday, Valve updated the PC version of Portal with a multi-layered unexpected surprise.

Layer 1: The first layer of this surprise is that every single test chamber has at least one radio somewhere. These radios are different to the original radios because they start off with a red light. If you grab a radio and take it to an invisible hotspot near by it will start picking up a mysterious transmission and the light will turn green. If you find all the radios and listen to all of the transmissions, you get an achievement. I've currently got 24 of 26 (EDIT: I ended up following a Youtube walkthrough. The ones I missed were a second one in the beginning of chamber 15 and the one in the hidey-hole near the five piston-pillars room in the escape sequence. I am mildly disappointed that there are none to be found in the GLaDOS chamber.).

There's at least one in every test chamber, (EDIT: two in chamber 15), chamber 18 has three radios, and there are at least 4 (EDIT: 5) after you escape the test chambers (including the one in the fire pit).

Layer 2: A few of the messages are Morse Code (which spell out understandable but nonsensical phrases such as "LOL"), but the most interesting ones are actually Slow Scan TV images. These images contain numbers and letters and photos of objects.

Layer 2a: Several of the images are of objects found in Half Life 2 or Portal.

Layer 3: Putting the numbers and letters together in the proper order forms a md5 hash of a telephone number.

Layer 4: The telephone number is an old-school BBS which, if you connect to it properly, will send you back a bunch of ASCII text images and partially-scrambled messages that seem to be from Cave Johnson (the founder of Aperture Science). There is a mention of "GLaDOS version 3.11" which many believe to be a hint that there is going to be a major announcement on the 11th during GDC, possibly something about Portal 2 and/or HL2 Ep3.

There's several very long discussions going on the in the Valve forums, and there's already been a wiki set up. This is so fun!

Zettai Hero Kaizou Keikaku

2010-02-22T10:32:00.002-05:00

I was just commenting to my brother the other day about how the Disgaea remakes on the portable systems are nice, and the rumors of Disgaea 4 are nice, but I'd really like to see another non-Disgaea game by Nippon Ichi. After all, Soul Nomad and the World Eaters is a sublimely deep tactical RPG of the Ogre Battle variety (direct control over the movements and formations of small groups of characters, but no control over individuals in combat).

And then I saw this video on Joystiq: a trailer for a game which, among other things, contains a hilariously huge variety of different weapons and skills you can give to your hero.

As others have said, "First day purchase!"

The Food Debate

2010-02-15T11:35:00.001-05:00

Yet another TF2 video:

Hexxagon Video

2010-02-13T14:24:00.004-05:00

[EDIT: I decided to remove the original video review because of mild profanity I had forgotten about. So here's a plain video of the game being played.]

Here's a video of the classic game Hexxagon:

Hexxagon used to be played a LOT at our house in England. In fact, it's one of the few shareware games we got around to registering and thus we own a legitimate copy of Hexxagon II (not that anyone cares about registering an ancient shareware game whose company is long gone now).

So why is this post tagged "Game Development" and "Game Maker"? It's a surprise. A surprise you can probably guess, but it's not quite ready to reveal yet. Probably next week.

Centipong 2: The Nettening

2010-02-08T13:31:00.001-05:00

"MadTinkerer’s Net is now ingame."

Woo!

Game Design Snippet: Arcade Tokens in MMORPGs

2010-02-07T13:32:00.003-05:00

Over on Keen & Graev's Blog, they wrote about how microtransactions can ruin MMORPGs the way they're being implemented now. Having played Maple Story a bit in the past, I can testify about how annoying "cash shops" are. But there are only two other successful alternatives: subscriptions and Guild Wars-style instancing.

But maybe MMO developers should look at a microtransaction model that worked really well in the past: Arcade Tokens.

In a video arcade, you paid a minimum of 1 token to start a game, and if you ran out of lives, you could pay another token to continue. Why not, instead of charging for loot, you charged for access to dungeons and resurrection while in those dungeons?

This way there would be a true free to play section of the game. This free section would be everything characters need, plus some easy grinding & crafting & standard MMO activities. Premium sections would require 1 token for entry and 1 token for each time your character needed to be resurrected. You get to keep all loot at no extra cost, and can even trade it as normal. The monsters would be harder and the loot would be better in the premium areas, of course.

Essentially, once you have the loot, you don't need to go back into the premium areas (unless you want more of it) and could play the free part as much as you want. Players can also form teams for raiding the premium areas and pay tokens for each other if needed.

Timewaster: Global Game Jam Keynote

2010-01-31T17:06:00.003-05:00

This is a keynote speech from the current Global Game Jam, a competition in which game developers all over the world make games in just two days.

Watch:

Global Game Jam '10 Keynote from Ste Curran on Vimeo.

Angry Mob "Convinces" 2K Games To Fix DRM in Bioshock 2

2010-01-25T14:24:00.003-05:00

From Rock Paper Shotgun:

"The current status is: SecureROM check on launch, but no install limts, and now there are offline profile options for GfWL meaning you can in fact save, load, etc without being connected. "

Darn right. It still kind-of sucks that multiplayer is bogged down by GFWL, but as I said, I'm not getting it for the multiplayer.

I will reconsider not pre-ordering it, because there's probably no way they could remove GFWL from the game at this stage without serious delays. There's still a little over two weeks to get it at 10% off, so I'll mull it over for a bit. Getting rid of another one or more of the annoying DRM bits would probably sweeten the deal enough for me to preorder, but frankly I'm still on the fence right now.

But at least I'm on the fence, rather than throwing molotov cocktails over the other side, metaphorically speaking.

Ribbon Hero

2010-01-22T20:52:00.003-05:00

Well I posted about something exceptionally annoying yesterday, so here's something that is exceptionally interesting and has cheered me up somewhat.

Thanks to Lost Garden (link on the weblogs sidebar) for pointing me towards Ribbon Hero.

Ribbon Hero is a game that turns Microsoft Office into a game that teaches you how to use Microsoft Office. Oh, and it's integrated with Facebook, so it's kind of like a Facebook game that's actually worth your time. Now granted it's not the most entertaining game ever, but it's one of the best educational games I've played in a while. So it's social (if you connect it to Facebook), educational and fairly entertaining.

Hopefully it might even cure my Mom of having to call me over every time she wants to cut and paste a paragraph.

It's definitely a step in the right direction as far as the potential of video games having the ability to teach real world skills. Most educational games are aimed at elementary schoolers, and while that is a good thing (The original Sticky Bear and Reader Rabbit programs certainly helped me understand arithmetic and basic spelling), there's so much potential for teaching more advanced subjects as well.

If Microsoft are smart (which they are), they ought to integrate it into all Office apps as standard from now on.

Possibly Pirating Bioshock 2

2010-01-20T16:41:00.007-05:00

Under normal circumstances, I buy games legitimately. Between my brothers and I, we own legit copies of thousands of PC games on CD as well as dozens to hundreds of games for each of the consoles we own (depending on which console you ask about). My Steam account currently has 242 little icons in it's games list, including the original Bioshock, but not counting mods, demos and others.

But I'm seriously tempted to just pirate Bioshock 2. Because of this. Limited installations? Okay, we don't own that many different gaming rigs right now. GfWL for multiplayer? Well I was buying the game for singleplayer anyway. Having to be logged into GFWL to save my single-player game...

What.

No.

Let me explain something: If you must be a jackass and include DRM in your game, you better make it invisible. Completely invisible. I put up with the DRM included in Spore and Overlord because when I bought them the DRM had been cut back to be mild and unobtrusive. If I had known the multiplayer in W40K: DoW2 required a GFWL account for the Steam version, I would have thought twice about buying it, and I think it's a big reason why I haven't played it much. As for UT3, I just play with bots.

But this is a whole step beyond anything previously: needing to be logged into GFWL just to save my single-player game I (would have) bought on Steam? No. No, that's not something I am going to pay for.

I am not going to pay for a single player game that requires an internet connection through a server to another server just to save my progress. That's like praying that I'll be playing through the game and suddenly can't save because of a problem with one or more connections. It's one thing to be mildly inconvenienced on the rare occasions a Valve multiplayer game glitches and I get kicked from a server or can't access my inventory for a few minutes or whatever. It's an entirely different thing to require the same kind of connection to save a single-player game. It's just plain stupid.

I bought the original Bioshock after the DRM was trimmed down to be essentially invisible. I may buy Bioshock 2 eventually, or I might just pirate it. If they cut back on the DRM before launch, it probably won't be quite enough incentive to pre-order, and I'll probably wait for a sale. I have over two hundred games in my Steam account, but Bioshock 2 is not going to be one of them for quite a while. Or I might just pirate it.

It's a pity, really. I was that close to pre-ordering it...

EDIT (a few days later): Okay, I definitely won't actually be pirating it. It'd be 12 Gigs to store the pirate version, plus another 12 gigs for the installed files, so that's at least 24 gigs total. So meh to that. But you get my point.

Even if disk space wasn't an issue, once I calmed down I probably would have made the same decision. I really liked the original game, but if they're going to pull the same crap of horrible DRM at release, pissing off everyone who bought it early, then later reducing the DRM while reducing the price, they'll probably do it with Bioshock 3 (or whatever's next) as well. Frankly, I figure the only way to get the message across is to boycott BS2 entirely until... well it depends on the post-release reviews.

If it turns out to be another GTA4PC situation, then forget it forever. I'll just pretend BS2 doesn't exist. Which is a pity. Because I want to play it, but customer abuse must never be tolerated.

FF w/lyrics

2010-01-05T14:48:00.001-05:00

Since I haven't posted a video in a while, here's BrentalFloss's version of the Final Fantasy Theme.

Dear Lucasarts: Why Didn't You Tell Me?

2009-12-28T12:12:00.003-05:00

Dear Lucasarts,

I bought the Lucasarts Adventure Pack on Steam during the Christmas sale. It cost me $2.50. When I installed the games, I discovered that unlike the hastily DOSBOX-ed exact copies of the original games I was expecting, you guys had done a sort of Special-Edition-Lite thing and upgraded all of them to work with Vista and... INCLUDED VOICE ACTING.

DUDE.

Nowhere on the Steam website, nor anywhere else on the web, that I could find, does it mention that you guys added voice acting to the games. WHY THE HECK DON'T YOU MENTION THIS ANYWHERE?

Now, okay, Indy in Secret of Atlantis is not voiced by Harrison Ford (which would have been really awesome), but the guy you did hire does a decent impression and emotes nicely. I haven't played them a lot yet, but the overall impression compared to the original games is "wow". The voice acting really adds a lot to the atmosphere, especially to Loom which has the very cinematic option of having text be off as default (and I left it that way).

I totally would have bought these games sooner, and for regular price, if I had known you guys actually put some effort into making them more than the original versions.

So dudes, please let me know the full features of the games next time, and then I might not wait for a sale.

Sincerely,
The Mad Tinkerer

P.S. Looking forward to Monkey Island 2 SE.

Singing Tesla Coils With Lightsabers

2009-12-23T13:23:00.001-05:00

I've posted a video about singing tesla coils before, but here's an extra fancy party trick:

Recursive Television

2009-12-13T15:05:00.005-05:00

It's quite simple, really:

The dudes in the studio are editing a show called The TV Show, though they're actually broadcasting live and being watched by a guy running a noodle stand, who is in a show being broadcast on a screen on the side of a motorcycle race, which is actually a show on a giant billboard in a city under attack by a giant monster, which is really a show with miniatures and a guy in a rubber suit in a studio, which is a documentary being watched by an old couple in the mountains, which is a show being watched in an airport (which is actually a romance anime), which is being watched on a cellphone on the subway, which is being broadcast on a screen inside a video game, which is on display in a game store (which is being robbed), which is on a security tape being watched by the police, which is actually a show being broadcast in a war zone, as part of a news report, which is being watched by aliens, who are in a fictional show in a superhero cartoon, which is being watched by an artist drawing the superhero character, which is a documentary (?) being shown in a disco, which is in the background of a beer commercial, which is being broadcast at a baseball game, which is being edited by the dudes in the studio.

Got that? Because it gets a little more complicated soon afterward:

(Blatantly borrowed from Shamus Young.)

Light A Candle for The Goombas

2009-12-02T10:06:00.002-05:00

A video from a webcomic I had never heard of, but will definitely be checking from now on:

Flash Love Letter

2009-11-30T10:58:00.003-05:00

I updated the sidebars again, mostly the Weblogs You Should Read Too one.

Ran across this video via this post:

Here's a link to the original Love Letters for a bit more in-depth analysis and context.

The Number One Reason You Should Buy Left 4 Dead 2

2009-11-17T03:30:00.003-05:00

Okay, if you're a L4D1 fan and you've held out this long on buying Left 4 Dead 2, let me clue you in on a little something:

In the first level of The Parish there is a jukebox. There are a bunch of different songs on it. (EDIT: most of the songs are from the fictional Midnight Riders band who are introduced in another L4D2 campaign.) One of the songs is "All We Want To Do Is Eat Your Brains", but the really neat thing is that even if you're playing in commentary mode where the Director won't normally send waves of zombies at you, playing that song will trigger a wave.

Sing along, everyone!

Left 4 Dead 2 Plot Twists?

2009-11-16T23:30:00.002-05:00

Tonight is the night Left 4 Dead 2 is released. In fact, I'll be playing it in less than an hour. But first I want to post about something I discovered in the demo a few weeks ago and didn't get around to writing about until now.

Shortly before the demo was released something had occurred to me: Left 4 Dead has a very specific "mythos" concerning zombies that sets it apart as something the makers of the game have gone to great lengths to think about and detail both what is seen in the game and the back story that you don't see. The way the infection works is particular to the L4D universe and not quite like any of the many zombie movies/games that has come before.

Central to the whole L4D setting is the concept of "Immune" people who are immune to the virus that has affected most of the human population in the setting. Each of the main characters in both L4D and L4D2 are immune to the virus and won't get infected no matter how badly they are injured.

Another interesting thing about them is that they're all really, really, tough. In-game, the main characters can get repeatedly scraped, slashed, bitten, punched, and generally take a lot of damage compared to normal people in real life. A certain amount of this can be excused as "action movie logic", but what if the "Immune" are actually a type of Infected, just like Tanks, Boomers, Witches, and so on?

What if they are Carriers?

Now this would be a very interesting plot twist: The reason most everyone the Survivors meet seem doomed to become Infected is not because they happen to already be infected, but because the Survivors are infecting them. Or even maybe they're not, but the military thinks they are, which is why the Survivors of L4D2 are abandoned by the military in the demo's opening cinematic.

One also has to wonder, if this is all true and considering the link to zombie-virus and super-soldier experiments in other zombie milieus, if perhaps the "immune" characters were the original goal of the virus. Perhaps the outbreak and all the other kinds of Infected are unfortunate side-effects.

For about another half-hour this is all just wild speculation, but I'll be keeping an eye on the grafitti just in case.

EDIT: I won't spoil it for those who haven't played, but the ending of the fifth campaign is a lot more interesting if you're paying attention to the subtle clues. Especially the dialogue between the soldier on the radio and whichever character is using the radio.

Taste The Cake

2009-11-07T11:51:00.001-05:00

Best Portal music video I've seen yet (beware some Portal spoilers):

Eufloria Review

2009-10-31T11:00:00.005-04:00

Eufloria is basically an arcade-like 4X game (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate).

Traditional 4X games such as Civilization involve turn-based gameplay and the sloooooow conquest of a particular country/planet over the course of several hours, days, and even weeks (some 4X games let you conquer a galaxy the size of... a galaxy). Unless you're spending extra time building up your forces for a massive slaughter of the Hated Greys, most Eufloria levels can be played in less than half an hour.

The 4X mechanics are stripped down to the absolute essentials, but they're all there. Your starting planet has plants on it. Seedlings drop off of the plants, but these seedlings are like angry wasps with guns that you can send to other planets. You explore by sending seedlings out to other planets in range (ones adjacent to planets you control), expansion is handled by planting seedlings on new planets, exploitation is accomplished by planting more seedlings on planets you already control, and you exterminate by sending waves of seedlings to already-occupied planets. It's all so nice and simple.

Occasionally you will need to restart levels early on, if you accidentally provoke the enemy into attcking before you're ready, but generally once your forces are properly entrenched you probably won't need to restart. The action can be very fast-paced and nerve-wracking in the later levels as you realize that maybe you shouldn't have sent your entire armada after Blue because Green is taking the opportunity to strike back at you and oh crap the Hated Greys are traveling through your territory oh wait they're going after Yellow.

Despite the occasional very exciting parts, the ambient music and pleasant pastel colors really make this a relaxing game to play.

If you don't have a lot of time to play games, and you want something a bit different from everything else, I highly recommend Eufloria.

If you're a hardcore gamer, bear in mind you'll probably breeze through this like Portal. But also like Portal, it's a unique experience well worth your time.

Maybe It's Made Of Chocolate

2009-10-22T18:13:00.002-04:00

Oh, Yes:

Eufloria

2009-10-19T16:10:00.002-04:00

Stuff has been happening behind the scenes. Stuff I can talk about but don't feel like doing so, and other stuff I really can't talk about. What I can talk about is Eufloria:

I decided to pre-order it on Steam after I played Dyson a bit. It's pretty much the embodiment of an "ideal Indie game". It's simple to play, original and clear visuals, and it scratches an itch that no other game does in the same way.

More to come when the full game in unlocked...

"I Don't Have My Blaster!"

2009-10-08T15:16:00.004-04:00

Here's the latest episode of House, a particularly interesting one. It'll be up for the next few weeks on Hulu and then it'll be taken down:

The video game portrayed in the episode is an interesting take on traditional First Person Shooter games. The environment is typical: a Black Mesa (Half Life) style research facility in the midst of chaos. Rather than an alien invasion, it seems the lab is run by aliens (assuming the hallucination in the last third of the episode is more or less "canon") who are running experiments involving earth species.

The protagonists are intelligent humanoid animals, possibly made intelligent by experimentation, who are trying to escape a hostile environment. Fortunately there are plenty of weapons and ammunition strewn around, probably dropped by the now-deceased security forces which are supposed to keep things under control if things go Horribly Wrong, but things go More Horribly Wrong Than Anticipated and the only non-hostiles left are the protagonists. Perfect back story for a FPS.

The enemies range from the typical "Goddamned Bats" to various types of dinosaurs and aliens. Presumably, the main way to tell the difference between the good guys (the players and possibly the bird-men soldiers?) is humanoid characteristics and/or speech. Or since the only definitely friendly characters presented were controlled by players, perhaps it's like Left 4 Dead in that the only living friendly characters are the protagonists.

The game controls are obviously fictional 10-minutes-into-the-future style VR helmets and guns rather than based on any real console. The reason for this is obvious: any real-world portrayal of technology becomes quickly outdated, sometimes in a matter of months. But a fictional system based on the sort of things that are still being developed will seem current in a year or two while not seeming too science-fictiony today (though mapping the player's expression to an in-game character is pretty darn advanced). Hence House's preference for real-world-sauce Ragu, but no mention of XBoxes, PS3s, or Wiis.

In any case, it's obvious that a lot of research and thought was put into the back-story of the game: the fictional world of the animal action heroes, as well as the system, the controls, the props scattered around the office from games they've made in the past, and the way the developers speak seems pretty authentic. It's a little exaggerated for what's actually out in the real world, but not too much. The graphics for the game are prerendered, but not too beyond what current-gen is capable of. Of course, in ten years the better-than-current-gen graphics will seem terribly retro, but that's just how video games are.

Also, the sequence transitioning between the real world and the (hallucinated) game world was fantastic. Soda = napalm grenades was a nice touch. We never get to see what the Mega Blaster can do, but I can guess.

The game world is only shown for about five minutes, and the actual environment is relatively small, but the sheer amount of events that take place in it and the sense that there's a full-length story we don't quite get to see make it seem a lot larger. The number of unique characters and creature types in the environment is quite large compared to typical faux-games invented for fictional series: three protagonists with unique skills, bats, a giant pterodactyl, two creepy humanoid aliens, possibly-friendly-birdmen soldiers, and a shark. The only disappointment, other than the fact that it isn't a real game, is that the game is never named throughout the episode. Even "Animal Commandos" or something like that would have been adequate.

The rest of the episode is excellent as usual, of course.

Obsolescence

2009-09-25T11:44:00.003-04:00

Whenever I think about this weblog, I tend to think about how I wish I posted here more. However, I've recently come to a decision regarding quite a few of my old posts: I will be removing or severely revising many of them shortly. I'll back up the originals, of course, but there's no point in leaving them on the web in their current state.

They'll be in the "Obsolete" tag for now, and dealt with when I get around to dealing with them. For those wondering why I would do this to those posts, go ahead and read them while they're still up in their original state. You'll figure it out.

Thanks in no small part to the fact that we finally have a broadband connection at home, there's going to be some major changes in the direction of this weblog coming soon. Not just posting videos every day, but a real purpose. Old plans had to be thrown out entirely, and new plans are in the works.

EDIT: It's too bad the "uncut" part of "The Mad Tinkerer Live and Uncut" is more ironic than ever before, but that's the way things go. About half of the obsolete stuff has been dealt with. It's a pain to edit over a hundred posts, but much of it is minor edits and the seams aren't too obvious.

When it's done, I'll be posting about why I did it and what I'm going to be doing from now on.

6005 Polygons Per Krundle

2009-08-26T17:10:00.002-04:00

Okay, this is probably the best bit of marketing for a videogame I've seen for at least a year:

Serious Sam Teaser

(embedding wouldn't work for some reason, just click on it)

The line "advanced technology you wouldn't understand" made me smile, but the word "krundle" is what puts it over the line into actual LOL territory.

I've only played demos of the Serious Sam series. It was just one of those games that fell below the "I'd totally buy this if I had another $100 to spend this year" line, like so many other titles. But I'll seriously consider buying SSHD.

Game B It Is

2009-08-17T10:54:00.002-04:00

I've been getting into the Source SDK and the Hammer editor and all that, and I've come to a decision.

I knew neither Game A and Game B were going to be easy. Both of them would have stretched the limits of the Dark GDK and Source, respectively. However, after a few weeks of intense research and trying out different things I came to the conclusion that Game A is unfeasibly ambitious for a one-year project at my level of technical knowledge.

Actually, I could scale back my ambitions for Game A quite a bit and make a pseudo-3D sprite-based version in Game Maker. It would still be one of the most graphically advanced Roguelikes ever, and I could even incorporate some of my ideas on procedural graphics. However, I really want to go for a proper 3D game for Game Design 3 & 4. Plus, I have precisely the same amount of experience making procedurally generated FPSs as I have making FPSs with hand crafted levels: virtually none.

So for the last couple weeks I've been very focused on the Source SDK and Hammer level editor in particular. If Game A is just not going to work out, then I better check how realistic my expectations are for Game B. With the new semester looming on the horizon, I better have a good plan, right?

With a few concessions to the limits of the Source Engine, Game B is totally workable. I have to cut out a few things, like the 3D skybox, and very carefully watch the number and types of entities I place, but the whole "one giant island" thing and most of my other ideas are definitely possible. So the tentative plan for Fall is Game B, but we'll see if I'm allowed to do it first.

Now I just have to come up with a better name than "Game B".

Dark Messiah of Might & Magic Is Awesome

2009-08-10T13:09:00.003-04:00

I've recently started playing DMoMM. It's a third-party Source Engine game set in the Might & Magic universe, a fairly generic swords & sorcery setting. And it is fricking awesome.

I actually bought it a while ago on one of the weekend deals, a little while before I got my new laptop, so I didn't get a chance to play it right away.

It has a bit of a learning curve, with a tutorial section that's a little too brief and too reliant on the player already being familiar with how other Source Engine games (such as Half Life 2) play. It's also not clear right away, but you really do need to specialize in a particular set of skills as my usual method of picking a broad skill set and specializing later led to me quickly starting over again with another character.

I recommend Melee 1, then getting Stealth and the Healing spell as quickly as possible, in that order. But it depends on your playing style. The catch is that you don't get a chance to "try out" different styles before picking your skills, so expect to start over at least once if it turns out your initial picks aren't as useful as you thought.

Anyway, the game overall really, really reminds me of the Ultima Underworld games, specifically what UW6 or 7 might have been like. The combat mechanics, with the classic "click quickly for rapid strikes, hold down for a stronger strike", the broad range of skills to choose from which all are focused on different "classes" without forcing you into a particular role, the inventory system, and many other aspects take me back to the early 90s. More than anything else, is the environments and the pacing of the action. This article reminded me of precisely what it is about DMoMM that most reminds me of the Underworld games: the ability to calmly plan between fights, and the constant need to improvise and revise said plans as things don't go quite as you expect.

DMoMM isn't merely a homage to the classics, however, as it flawlessly integrates ideas from Source Engine action games into the action: lots of objects to grab and throw at enemies, traps to trigger, several ways to knock enemies back into fire or spikes, climbable chains, and various other ways to exploit the environment inspired by Gordon Freeman's adventures. Blackguards are as allergic to fire as Headcrab Zombies are, but Blackguards are much smarter.

Certain other games also come to mind: Hexen & Hexen II with the general art style and "you've found a secret area!" secret areas. Zeno Clash (though DMoMM was released first) with it's complex and delightful melee fighting mechanics. Prey comes to mind, with the clueless, annoying protagonist who is a fantastic illustration of why the main characers of all Valve games are mute (to be fair, the hero of DMoMM isn't nearly as annoying... so far), but fantastic level design that makes up for it.

The plot (as far as I've played) is typical generic swords & sorcery stuff, with the twist that your mentor is so obviously one of the bad guys. I won't be surprised if he says the words "nefarious plan" at some point. Unless it turns out he isn't a villain. But seriously: from the "spider key" line onwards he just oozes "evil", and even the older wizard guy who's supposed to be his friend doesn't trust him.

I haven't played, or even installed, the multiplayer add-on yet. The single-player alone is easily worth the $10 price tag. I'm assuming from the file size and the skill tree I have a way to go before the end, so I'll assume it's of decent length as well. Note that the Metacritic score is merely 72, but the user score is 8.7. I don't review every game I play, but this is definitely worth a write-up.

A Speech By Elizabeth Gilbert

2009-08-05T11:32:00.004-04:00

I got this from the PVP website:

Much of what she's saying here I actually figured out a while ago. But she puts it pretty eloquently. I'm including the tag "Game Development" because game development is a creative process that this applies to just as much as writing.

I have a bit more to write on this, but it'll have to wait until later tonight.

To The IGDA: I Would Like Tim Langdell's Head On A Silver Platter, Please

2009-07-24T23:17:00.006-04:00

Dear IGDA,

I know I haven't participated much (or at all) in IGDA events, or even posted on the IGDA boards yet. I just signed up a couple months ago and have been busy with Real Life stuff. So of course you guys have no idea who I am. (Please read the rest of this weblog to find out, if you wish.)

Anyway, thanks to Shamus Young, I have been made aware of the recent situation with the giant cockroach in human skin named Tim Langdell. That a parasite who goes around suing everyone who uses the word "Edge" in their products could be on the Board of Directors of the IGDA is a freaking joke. As Corvus puts it, Tim Langdell's actions could "result in a massive defection of the membership." Not bothering to renew my membership was certainly my first reaction to the news, though I have reconsidered and am giving the board a chance to do the right thing.

Tim Langdell hasn't even managed to produce a game in 15 years because he backstabs people who actually develop the games for him. (I would cite specific links, but I accidentally closed the tabs I was going to link to. Just look at the pages linked from the above pages I linked to and you might run across the specific ones I'm thinking about, or others I haven't seen yet.) His company is still solvent purely because litigates others, like Namco for naming their game "Soul Edge", while baiting companies he can't bully so easily by doing precisely what he accuses others of doing (Tim claims to be working on "MIRRORS a game by EDGE", for example). A quick search around Wikipedia indicates that he may simply be malignantly narcissistic rather than outright psychopathic, but I don't know him well enough to tell the difference.

I've signed the petition. I expect the IGDA to take the proper action.

P.S. I remember when "someone" sued Edge Magazine over their name. Now I finally have a name and a face to match the "someone".

See you Next Week

2009-07-22T12:27:00.004-04:00

I've been rather busy recently, since I'm still working full time while migrating everything over to my new laptop and setting things up in preparation for doing projects & stuff. The good news is that I'll finally have something to show soon.

The bad news is: not until next week. But soon. Working on it now.

UPDATE: Did you know that the FPS tutorial actually displays everything upside-down? I guess it's not a problem unless you're trying to make a game that switches back and forth between 2D and 3D views. This is why I said "next week" instead of "in a few days".

UPDATE 2: Okay, so things didn't work out as planned with that particular idea. C'est la vie.

Insanely Good Graphics

2009-07-17T15:21:00.004-04:00

Now I am not a graphics whore by any means. When some new version of Unreal suddenly has Bi-Polar Smoothed Quadrangles and Dynamic Phunge Sporkles so that killing d00ds online now looks even more hi-res than ever, I just yawn and and point out that I'll still have to wait until at least the following year before anyone makes a compelling game with it.

So incremental improvements in graphics to make new games look just like old games but better is not what I call good graphics. What I call good graphics (and music) are games like THIS:

Video Games | Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet | Exclusive Extended Trailer HD

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Oh, yes.

My New Laptop!

2009-07-17T14:42:00.003-04:00

My new laptop finally arrived a few days ago. It's pretty exciting... except for one problem.

It's taking forever to download everything I need to it. Wifi is normally adequate for my purposes, but when you need to download dozens of gigs of stuff to your new laptop all at once, it's like trying to "chug" a gallon of beer by sipping through a straw.

On the positive side, once everything is downloaded (and I still have dozens of gigs of files to copy as well), I can finally relax and enjoy a few games and mods I wasn't able to check out before my old laptop died.

Also, I can finally finish the proof-of-concept phases of Game A and Game B to figure out which one I want to do for sure in September. Just a month and a half left...

The Terrible Danger of TVTropes.org

2009-07-13T13:46:00.002-04:00

It's true.

Do not click on a link from this linked page or you will be there for hours: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Tropes

You have been warned.

Adding A Bunch of Indie Links To The Sidebar

2009-07-09T17:00:00.002-04:00

The list of weblogs on the left has expanded quite a bit. At first I wanted to add a seperate header for them, but since I'm still using the default Blogger setup there's a limited number of "gadgets" that will fit over there.

(I really need to learn Wordpress one of these days, since all the cool kids seem to be using it for their weblogs. But I digress.)

Anyway, IndieGames.com The Weblog, TIGSource, and Play This Thing are all general Indie games news sites. IndieGames.Com The Weblog and TIGSource are particularly focused on the "news" aspect, reporting interesting events as well as developments of individual games. Play This Thing is a series of game reviews that all (usually) link to the games themselves.

The Experimental Gameplay Project is a site run by The World of Goo Guys for game developers to show off their quickly-developed prototypes. Some actually play well, and pretty much all of them are interesting. The site recently came back from a hiatus, and they've started a new contest for people to submit their shoot-em-ups.

Classic Lucasarts Games on Steam! AHAHAHAHA!

2009-07-06T14:47:00.011-04:00

YEAH! Lucasarts is releasing their Classic PC Adventure games on Steam as well as The Secret of Monkey Island remake! It's about time. I mean: what does one have to do? I bought most of them at full price back in the day, I bought a bunch of the Telltale stuff (those are "the bomb", take it from me), and was even considering buying the allegedly awful* Staff of Kings just to get The Fate of Atlantis again.

I was originally hoping they'd go for Good Old Games, since GOG specializes in bringing classic Win/DOS games to XP/Vista. But Steam? Oh HECK YES, just as good.

I hope they get Grim Fandango and Outlaws on Steam soon too, but really, I just want ALL of the classic non-Star Wars Lucasarts adventures on Steam. And maybe a few of the Star Wars ones too.

*Metacritic does fail some times, but is usually mostly reliable. Thus the "allegedly".

The Ultimate Food

2009-07-03T23:35:00.003-04:00

After seven years (with the occasional multi-month break in there) of working at Subway, I've come up with some pretty creative stuff. Yesterday I tried something radical, even for me, and it exceeded expectations, but I decided to refine it slightly today and managed to achieve transcending deliciousness. I have come up with the recipe for The Ultimate Food, with both American/Carnivore and Indian/Vegetarian variants:

The Ultimate Food (Meat Eater Version)

1) Place flatbread onto a deli paper sheet. Pour at least two ladle-fuls of marinara sauce onto it.

2) Place a tray of Philly cheesesteak (minus cheese, but we'll get to that) into the microwave. Set it to a low setting or short time: you don't want it too hot yet. Substitute a chicken patty or something else if you're being cheap.

3) When the steak is done, put it on the flat bread. Sprinkle a few red onion slices over the steak.
4) Take a Cool Ranch Doritos packet, open it and dump the Doritos on top of the steak.

5) Pour one or two more ladle-fuls of marinara sauce, sprinkle green peppers and olives, and sprinkle cheddar and mozzarella cheese, all on top of the Doritos.

6) Top off with Chipotle Southwest, Ranch, and Buffalo sauce, in a cris-crossing pattern.

7) Stick it in a Subway Toaster on the 6" Patty setting. The outlying Doritos should be slightly crisp and the cheese and sauces melted throughout the whole concoction.

8) Serve with drink of choice (beer or wine if you're super-super lucky/careful, unsweetened iced tea if the store has it, or just soda).

The Ultimate Food (vegetarian version)

As the meat eater version, but substitute veggie patty for cheese steak, and substitute (or add) yellow peppers and jalapenos for the olives and green peppers.

Now if you think I'm being arrogant to label this as the "Ultimate Food" of every food there has ever been so far, think of it this way: I have successfully combined nachos with cheesesteak. It's technically just a Cheesesteak Flatbread Meal Deal prepared in a very esoteric way, which means it's feasible to actually order it at a Subway, except they won't be able to wrap it.

Beware of adding bacon to The Ultimate Food. Current string theory hypothesises that adding the Ultimate Ingredient to what is already the Ultimate Food will collapse the concoction, the Subway store, and everything in a five-mile-radius into a 9th dimensional hyper-tunnel leading to another universe. Also: bacon is extra.

Prime Numbers & Such

2009-07-02T00:04:00.003-04:00

I should have known better than to read a book titled "Music of the Primes" before bedtime. Now I'm obsessed with pursuing a particular prime-related number sequence and can't sleep.

I wonder if other mathemeticians have stumbled upon the sequence I discovered. The annoying thing about it is that suddenly prime numbers have started showing up within the sequence, which means it's quite possibly useless for predicting primes, even if I come up with a simple formula for it. In any case mathematicians probably have known about it for centuries, but I just was never taught it.

Game A vs. Game B

2009-06-27T21:04:00.011-04:00

Okay, it's time to reveal part of My Secret Plan. Since the last day of GD2 I've been thinking hard about what I want to do for GD3 & 4. I ended up narrowing it down to two mutually exclusive (because I can't combine them into one project) major ideas I've been mulling over. Ideas which I want to do regardless of whether I can do them for college credit or not. Depending on what Prof Morrison does, I may have to postpone both projects and do an unknown "C" game, but here's A and B:

Game A is a procedurally generated first-person shooter I've mentioned briefly before. I would basically be borrowing the models from FPS Creator, but instead of using the FPSC program, I'd be loading them into my own C++ program via the Dark GDK.

Advantages:

3D Roguelike with extremely innovative design.
I'll be taking Comp Sci I concurrently with GD3, so I'll be learning the next "level" of C++ as I'm making the FPP.
This is the game I'm making the GM prototype for, so I'm already getting a handle on the essential algorithms I'll need to translate into C++.
It's territory on the "frontier". Games in the genre have been made before, but not a whole lot. DoomRL is the closest gameplay-wise and Hellgate: London is the closest graphics-wise.
It's tremendously interesting from a programming perspective. Not just because it would be my first major C++ project outside of a programming class that's not a text-based game, but because the game would be based on procedurally-generated content.
The FPS Creator modular floors, walls, and room features are perfect for this project. I just need to figure out the algorithms I need to tell Microsoft Visual Studio to make the environments.
FPS Creator itself can serve to test some of the things I want to try out in the game.
The source code for FPS Creator is freely available. Although it's in DB Pro and not C++, it's still a head start.
Since the tech side will definitely be the most interesting part of the project for me, anyone else I work with will have plenty of freedom to figure out the story and some of the design aspects.
Beyond the class, this would get attention from Indie news sites for being innovative and interesting.
Possible logical destination: the IGF and/or Indiecade.

Disadvantages:

Unless I give up on the idea of procedural content generation (which is the whole point of Game A), I can't use FPS Creator itself for the main part of the project.
The timing of it is such that I'll be far beyond the rest of the class in required tech knowlege, so no one else in the class will be able to help out on the tech side.
It's riskier because although I can look at the advice and experience of Roguelike developers and Dark GDK developers, nothing quite like this has been attempted before. Especially if I manage to add in some of my wilder and more esoteric ideas like dynamic terrain alteration (digging tunnels, etc.).
I'd really like to include some really risky stuff like procedurally generated plots, but that would rely on either really good HL2 style companion/NPC AI or complicated RPG elements. (The actual algorithms for the plots would be relatively simple fetch-quest/"Kill Monster Z for me" type stuff, but would require some amount of verbal character interaction which I'd need to have in place first. Easy in a text-based Roguelike, not so simple in a FPS.)
Short of procedural plots, I'd like to shoot for procedural puzzles. Puzzles wouldn't require any non-peaceful character interaction and I have a few ideas for implementing it, but there's even less precedent for procedural puzzles than for procedural plots.

Game B is a Source Engine First Person Shooter set in the Half Life universe. It's essentially a compilation of various ideas I've had while playing HL2 and other Source engine games, which then evolved into a distinct setting. It's comprised of one huge level: a mysterious island surrounded by a Combine force field. There's action and puzzles, but the emphasis is on exploration, survival, and discovering the island's dark secrets in order to finally escape (the whole island was owned by Aperture Science at one point, and yes, there are plans for portal-based puzzles). Inspired by Myst, The Prisoner, Lost, the Half Life universe, and every story I've read or watched that was set on an island.

Advantages:

3D FPS with game mechanics most PC gamers are familiar with.
The entire Source SDK is free to anyone who owns a Source engine game on the PC made by Valve.
It would look great. The FPS Creator, and therefore Game A, looks good, but this would look great.
The current design document is based on semi-modular (in the sense that most of them can be cut if necccesary) areas around the island and a fairly straightforward plot. Unlike Game A, the designers can feel free to add in a lot of specific detail to specific areas.
Using the Source Engine means a heck of a lot easier job on the tech side of things. Not just the mechanics of moving and shooting, but also lots of neat AI-related things as well as the excellent Faceposer application for NPCs.
There's a ton of art resources available in the Source SDK for making Source Engine mods with. Even more than I got with the FPS Creator Bonanza.
The Half Life universe is a nice, established, flexible setting.
There haven't been any "sandbox" games in the Half Life universe so far, nor many Source engine games where you have to explore a large area and are able to backtrack.
Beyond the class, this would open up potential opportunities like getting attention from mod sites, and act as an awesome resume-enhancer for anyone who wants to work for Valve specifically.
Possible logical destination: publishing the game worldwide on Steam.

Disadvantages:

Some of the things I want to do, such as a very simple conversation system for a handful of freindly NPCs, and a simple inventory system for storing widgets for puzzle-solving, I have no idea if it's possible without access to the source code. Which I certainly don't have.
While Game A involves telling C++ how to put levels together in an interesting way, this project would require a large island to be constructed by hand. This may actually be an advantage, but I don't know if it is yet or not. I currently have less experience using the Source SDK tools than I do with C++ (though when my new laptop arrives, I'll finally have the option to try out the Source SDK tools again). Because of the above point, I'd probably need at least one other person helping me with the mapping aspect.
It would impose stricter limitations on the rest of the team in terms of what things look like, sticking to Half Life canon (unless we decide not to), etc.
We hopefully, maybe could add in some custom models, but that's another area I have zero experience with so far.
It would require the rest of the team to stop being consoletards and get into PC gaming.

Mutual Advantages:

Both of these are innovative designs (in different ways) that are likely to get attention if marketed right.
Both of these are definitely games I would like to spend a whole year developing.
Both are deliberately designed to have flexibility for the rest of the team to add in their own ideas.

Mutual Disadvantage:

As I mentioned before, both of these are completely my invention and neither may fit even a little bit with Prof. Morrison's plans for September. This is part of the reason I'm revealing them now: to get them, in this form, out on the web now in case this is as far as I'm able to take them. Some modification would be necessary regardless (no game follows it's design document to the letter), but I might need to put them to the side entirely. Or maybe I'll come up with a better Game C before the semester starts.

What will probably be the deciding factor between them, if both are choices, is how many other students in the class will be working with me and how many will be working on the other project being discussed for GD4. If I end up working with 1-3 other people, or just myself, I'll probably advocate going for Game A. More than that, and I'll advocate going for Game B.

Quick last note: I'll be editing in a bunch of links later. I know there's a bunch of jargon and unexplained acronyms. The links will explain everything.

Math Class & Other Craziness

2009-06-27T10:40:00.004-04:00

This week I started a new class, one which is four days a week and finishes in just four more weeks. So it's basically cramming a lot of new and semi-familiar math concepts into my brain in a short period of time. I wish I had taken it as a regular Spring/Fall semester class, but it's a prereq for Computer Science I and I really wanted to take CS1 this fall.

Meanwhile, Gordon Babcock, my biological father who is guilty of Count Olaf level evil, has proceeded to reach a new low in despicableness. Hopefully I won't be forced to move out of state for financial reasons (because the rest of my family may be) before I'm done the Game Design program... But that may happen.

In one sense, the asshole can keep his fucking money*, because he'll rot in Hell forever and it's not like we can do worse to him than that. On the other hand, Mark's medication is expensive, and someone needs to pay for it. Better for someone who can afford to pay for it, to do so, right? Especially when he's the father? Too bad Gordon Babcock doesn't seem to have a soul, or at least a conscience. Too bad the New Jersey courts are too damn corrupt to uphold justice in the case of a rich computer architect vs. his family that he's obviously driving into poverty. (In the past, I assumed our judge was just stupid, but yesterday it became obvious that it's much, much worse than stupidity.)

So anyway, the bottom line is that I'm going to have to concentrate a lot on studying over the next few weeks so updates will be sporadic. I do want to eventually get around to writing a bunch more on E3 and the folks I met there, but math class takes priority.

*This is a polite way of expressing what I really think, which would probably be unwise to publish on this weblog.

EDIT: I'll try to post something more upbeat tonight after work.

PC GameGun!

2009-06-22T22:13:00.002-04:00

One day I'm going to get around to making an awesome homebrew gadget like this:

FPS Creator Bonanza And Serendipity

2009-06-19T20:39:00.004-04:00

I ordered the FPS Creator Bonanza shortly before I left for E3. I've been playing around with it for a little while now, and it's part of the reason I didn't post yesterday.

It's turned out to be quite a good deal.

1: FPS Creator itself is available for free in a few different ways, but all come with strings attached and no physical disc. A physical disc is part of the deal.

2: Also part of the deal is the most vital one: the DVDs. Although FPS Creator is pretty strightforward to use, the tutorial DVDs are very instructive and comprehensive.

3: I haven't gotten around to trying out the extra model sets I downloaded as part of the deal, or the free sample models you can get from the TGC Store, but I assume they're of the same quality as the default models, which are fairly nice.

So far, I only have a couple of complaints. The default sounds aren't great, and there aren't any default scripts for companion characters (I'm not asking for L4D super-AIs, just NPCs that will attack hostile NPCs instead of the player).

The FPS Creators levels are made from "segments", which has it's upsides and it's downsides and deserves a post all it's own. It's particularly interesting because it seems that FPS Creator levels are assembled the same way as the FPS tutorial in Game Maker. Additionally, the Dark GDK can easily handle levels exported from FPS Creator. This means that, theoretically, I could get Visual Studio to do exactly what I'm trying to get Game Maker to do in my current prototype, except it'll look a million times nicer and be proper 3D. Going from theory to a finished result is probably going to be a giant pain, but I do have a whole year to figure it out.

Plus, if it works, I'll have a huge library of 3D models to work with. But we'll see.

Torchlight!

2009-06-17T23:39:00.003-04:00

Lest you think I hung around the Indiecade area and moped about the Valve guys being inaccessible the whole time (not true: I only did that for a few hours each day), I better write about one of the many, many other things at E3 that have to do with neither.

So Torchlight was being demoed at E3, waaaaaaay in the back, around a corner so you really had to look around to see it, in West Hall. It's by the former Mythos team, now called Runic Games who seem to be putting their skills making Diablo-like games to work making... a Diablo-like game.

Now here's the thing: I played the Torchlight demo and it's actually pretty fun. Diablo III is definitely aimed at the hardcore crowd, but Torchlight is more of an arcade/casual style variant. It's a bit like how Halo and Half life 2 are both Sci Fi FPSs but otherwise couldn't be more different. It also struck me as a bit like Fate, which isn't surprising since one of the guys also worked on that game as well.

In addition to the fact that it's a neat game to play, there's apparently plans to support modding and map editing in Torchlight (something past Diablos haven't done, and D3 probably won't do either), which I'm certainly happy about.

Pluff Is Amazing

2009-06-16T15:41:00.003-04:00

Pluff is an amazing new controller/game combination from Diana Hughes. The controller is a soft, round Tribble-like object that allows you to interact with the on-screen Pluff character.

Nevermind force-feedback, motion-sensing, and analog sticks. This is the sort of special controller that's revolutionary.

It's pretty neat to see it in person, but until she manages to get a major company to mass-market it and makes kazillions in royalties, you'll have to be satisfied with a video:

By the way, that's me in the background. I'm the guy with the glasses and goatee who's looking away from the camera most of the time. I'm talking with one of the Cogs guys, and I think we were talking about Pluff at the time.

If I spot myself in any other E3 videos, I'll let you guys know. ;)

Unskippable: E3 Trailers

2009-06-15T13:55:00.000-04:00

This week's Unskippable is pretty good. I particularly liked the comments on FF14:

Now if they'd just do the intro for Left4Dead, or any game from the 1990s, I'd be really happy.

Re: Death to E3!

2009-06-13T10:10:00.003-04:00

So a couple days ago I was going to post about Shamus Young's Death To E3 article, but I ended up doing a little venting inspired by something else he had written instead.

So now I'm going to respond to both his Death to E3 article and it's follow-up.

First of all, I need to point out that I had a "green badge" which meant I was allowed to go to the exhibition halls, but not the conference rooms. (Red Badges are for exhibitors, I think it was blue for media, and black badges are for super-ultra-elites that can go anywhere.) So half the stuff you see in the various videos coming out from E3 are places I couldn't go.

"This is not unlike E3, when everyone gathers together under one roof and everybody tries to talk at the same time." , "For every game or company we hear about, we're missing ten others."

This is true to a certain extent. Certainly if you're only reading about The Latest Most Awesome Headline News From E3, you probably saw footage of the God of War III demo on the first day. I actually didn't notice there were playable demos of GoW3 until day three.

Admittedly, I had different priorities from the start, which is why I'm not going to cover any of the "big stuff" on my weblog. But the fact of the matter is that the little guys are there too, and not just in the Indiecade. It's more of a problem with the media folks' priorities rather than E3 itself.

"Don't forget to buy a few bins of giveaway swag and hire some booth babes to hand it out."

There was a lot less of that this year. This was my first E3, but some of my companions had been to the 2006 show and there's photo evidence that this year's swag was not up to the standards of the days of yore. Sure, I entered a raffle for an XB360, got plenty of T shirts, a couple inflatable pool toys, and a code to download Battlefield 1943 on the PS3, but mostly it was promotional material for the games themselves. Most of that promotional material was being handed out by the mid-sized to small companies, so it's easier for me to remember them a week later than all the noise the big guys were making.

"What exactly are you getting for all of that money? Because if all you want is the attention..."

Actually, a lot of serious business deals were also going on behind the scenes. I don't know any of the details, of course, but there were a lot of people taking advantage of the fact that it's a trade show for people in the business. There were lots of meetings behind closed doors, and quite a few guys in business suits who (shockingly) weren't collecting loot or paying attention to the games at all!

"If you go the E3 route it's entirely possible your game will be lost in the noise."

Shamus, the fact of the matter is: there are several other levels to E3 other than what you get to see in videos on G4 or gaming news sites. You really do need to go next year.

Now a few comments on the follow-up article:

"Because Jedi are special. Except, in an MMO, you can simply choose to be a Jedi."

Actually, you're completely forgetting about the playable Sith characters. I think most of the Goldshire-dwellers are going to go for The Awesome Side of the Force and leave the Jedi alone.

"the truth is that Telltale games has a spectacular track record. "

Plus, if you count the five new episodes as separate games, Telltale is about to produce more Monkey Island content than Lucasarts did in the first place! (Well, okay, I doubt any of the Tales will be the same length as Secret, but it's still exciting.)

Trixel!

2009-06-12T11:26:00.003-04:00

There's lots to write about, but since Daniel Boutros was the very first guy to email me when i got back from E3, he's up next.

Trixel is like a cross between Q Bert and Portal. Probably some other stuff too, but that's what the levels I played seemed like. It's a pretty addictive puzzle game for the iPhone, and I'm planning on getting a copy myself as soon as Mom stops hogging the iPhone.

Here's a video:

Dan himself is a pretty cool guy and had some helpful tips for playing. Tap the tiles instead of dragging them, for example.

So I Met The Cogs Guys

2009-06-11T16:02:00.003-04:00

Not too long ago, during the development of Steam City Chronicles, I saw a video of a puzzle game on the PC called Cogs. Since we were still discussing the subject of exactly what constitutes steampunk at the time, I posted the video to the private forum.

Then, a couple months later, at E3, in the Indiecade area, I met the Cogs guys. It was really pretty neat: their game helped shape the look of our game (though it wasn't the only influence), and I got to meet them there. They're cool guys, and I gave them a copy of SCC.

This is the sort of thing that makes me want to go back to E3 next year. Nevermind the pomp and circumstance, for me E3 is foremost a place for developers to meet other developers and give kudos.

The video:

Those Jerks At Valve

2009-06-10T15:21:00.006-04:00

I went to E3 with the assumption that I'd get to meet some guys from Valve, and hopefully give them a copy of my game. It's pretty precious: there's only 100 copies of Steam City Chronicles in the whole world after all, (and due to circumstances beyond my control, that may be all that will ever be produced) so I can't just give it out to everyone I meet. I was also hoping to maybe play some games in progress such as Portal 2 or Half Life Episode 3.

But no.

Valve had a meeting room up on the second floor where media folks could go, but not us mere green-badges. No booth in any of the exhibition halls.

"So, all right." I thought, "I guess I'll run into one of them on the show floor."

No dice.

I ran into guys from NCSoft, Blizzard and a bunch of other companies that have no booths either. Companies that didn't make any big annoucements. But I still found them. I gave out a ton of business cards to lots of folks, but none to the ninjas at Valve. Despite me flying across the country in the hopes of meeting guys from Valve, I didn't see a single one of them the entire time.

To add insult to injury, the demos of Left4Dead 2 that were available to play were XBox 360 only. It's like they knew I can't play FPSs on consoles and were trying to rub it in.

So I'm joining Shamus Young's Boycott HL2Ep3 Group. Until Valve releases HL2Ep3, I won't buy it. Until Valve releases Portal 2, I won't buy it. Until Valve releases Left4Dead 2, I won't buy it. Until Valve releases Half Life: Decay on the PC, I won't buy it.

Unless, of course, there's a good pre-order deal.

That'll show 'em. :(

EDIT: Reading this again, the irony might not be clear. Read the last couple paragraphs carefully if you don't get it.

Update: There's a proper Steam group for the "boycott" now, with some amusing comments. Also, Shamus Young has posted a followup.

Indiecade!

2009-06-09T11:31:00.003-04:00

Despite my being somewhat into the indie games "scene", I had not heard of Indiecade before E3. But now they've got my full attention.

Indiecade is an organization that organizes events where indie game makers can come and show off their games. Many of the events take place within larger conventions such as E3 and PAX, but they also have their own show.

Due to time constraints and the fact that I want to write several more posts on the various guys I met there, this one is short. Just click on the link, will you?

I'm Listening

2009-06-08T23:43:00.002-04:00

It seems that a lot of folks are responding to me via email! I'll eventually get back to all of you, and I also have drafts of several posts in the works. I ended up not being able to post this morning, so I'll try to write / finish writing two substantive posts tomorrow. There's a lot to write about, and too little time.

I Left My Toothbrush In Los Angeles

2009-06-06T13:37:00.003-04:00

So here are the events that happened during E3:

Each morning, except Friday, we ate at Dinah's, a diner with a great breakfast deal: three pancakes, two eggs, and sausage, bacon or ham, all for $5. The pancakes are especially good.
Monday afternoon we ate at In-N-Out Burger. Darn tasty burgers & fries, and it was packed. In addition to the normal menu, there's also the Secret Menu which you basically have to know about already from someone telling you or overhearing it there. Grilled Cheese sandwiches are one item on the secret menu, as are "Animal Style fries" which are fries with lettuce, tomato, the burger sauce and everything that goes on the Double Double burgers except patties and buns.
On Monday night, we were walking on Venice Beach an a bum pulled the old "I bet I can tell you exactly where you got your shoes, down to the state, city, and street" swindle (answer: on your feet). Apparently no one else was wise to the trick, but I kept my mouth shut because he was very entertaining. He put on a great show, with some terffic improvisation, and we were all quite happy to him a dollar each. I suspect he may have been a professional actor once.
Also on monday night, we played a drinking game called "king of the cup" which involves a pack of cards, balancing the cards on the cup as they're drawn, twelve standard rules, and making a new rule if you draw a king. The challenge is to remember and respond to all the rules as you get more inebriated. If the stack of cards falls off the cup, you have to chug your beer.
Tuesday afternoon, I left my toothbrush wrapped up in a washcloth (because that's how I pack it) on the sink. The staff mistook my washcloth for one of theirs, and my toothbrush was gone. Oh well, not their fault.
Tuesday night we ate at Home Town Buffet, which is an exact carbon copy of Old Country Buffet. Might be some kind of rebranding thing.
Wednesday night four of us ate at China One Buffet. It was a very good Chinese buffet and I felt sorry for them that there was hardly anyone else that night to enjoy it. So if you're in Los Angeles, check it out.
Thursday night we went to Video Games Live. It was great: they had Ralph Baer live on the big screen via Skype, some great piano playing by the Video Game Pianist, a good mix of orchestral and rock music, a fantastic medly of Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross music, and a really nice encore with One Winged Angel and a Castlevania medly.
Friday was spent flying home to NJ.

Oh, you wanted to know about events that actually happened at E3? Well I'll write about those soon too.

Quick Note

2009-05-31T14:13:00.002-04:00

Just a quick note of thanks to my Boss, who did me a big favor at the last minute. Thanks, Boss!

Now I just need to pack up a few last things and I'll be leaving tonight!

Laptop Woes & Last Post Before E3

2009-05-29T14:35:00.002-04:00

I was "incommunicado" because I was hoping a friend of mine could fix my laptop for me. That isn't happening. So I need to send it off to be repaired or get a new one. Both of which are going to be difficult and neither are getting done before E3. This is quite vexing as I don't really have any spare computers to work on right now (even my brother's computer is too unreliable even if he did let me use it).

Fortunately, I have nothing but E3 to think about for the next week or so. I just need to finish packing and pick up my business cards from Staples. Then, so early on Monday it's sort-of Sunday night, I leave for the airport and I'm off to the best vacation ever.

Anyway, I'll have plenty to write about when I come back.

Alas, Poor Silas

2009-05-29T00:20:00.004-04:00

Okay, one last long post before I go, since I have a little time online.

Silas Merlot is one of my favorite characters in the Girl Genius universe.

We first met Dr. Merlot waaaaay back in the first few pages of Volume 1. He's a cranky, pushy, slightly cowardly, know-it-all who is desperate who hold onto any scrap of status that he can in a society run by mad scientists. The so-called "Sparks" are people who are able to make mad science work. Give a Spark the parts for a clock and he'll make an automated washing machine, machinegun turret, or flying mechanical bird depending on his personality and mood (he probably won't make a clock, but if he does it will be a very unusual clock). Silas Merlot is not a Spark.

Well he wasn't a Spark. He was a very, very intelligent guy who is stuck in a world where he might be the smartest person in the room, but he's still overshadowed by the magic brain people. For that reason, despite his personality flaws, I really felt for him and made him my avatar for most of my online forum accounts.

But he did exhibit some very Spark-like behavior. Or maybe he was just cranky. Or someone who isn't a Spark but has natural Spark-like tendencies and "gets caught up in the enthusiasm". Oh wait... maybe he's a Spark after all? Yes (that style of speech bubble is reserved for Sparks)!?!

Silas breifly showed up before, somewhere in the archives that I'll edit in later, but it was a brief cameo and there was no indication that he had become a Spark. But now...

Silas' trouble is that he harbors a grudge against Agatha. This grudge is at least partly motivated by the fact that he wasn't a Spark. But now he is. So if he thought about it rationally for a second, he'd realize there's really no reason to attack Agatha. Unfortunately, even good Sparks are quite unhinged and have trouble focusing on reality. So now that Silas is a Spark, it's impossible for him to give up his obsession on his own.

I was hoping that maybe Silas would survive his denouement and become an ally of Agatha. After all, Baron Wolfenbach keeps DuPree around and she's done much, much worse. Silas's clank may be his Breakthough device, and that means he has just started to show off his potential. But unfortunately The Castle takes matters into it's own... masonry.

Poor Silas. There's still a chance that he'll be revived, but it looks like he's done for. On the upside, there's plenty of nice new art of Silas to photoshop into avatars. On the downside, it looks like there won't be any more ever again. So tragic...

You Can Fail 100 Times As Long As You Succeed Once

2009-05-25T22:45:00.010-04:00

One last fascinating video I ran across before I go:

EDIT: Eh, I've edited and re-edited and there's no way to say what I originally wanted to say without it sounding like sour grapes. So I'll just let the video speak for itself.

(Comments for this post are disabled for now due to me being incommunicado for a while.)

Incommunicado

2009-05-25T21:31:00.004-04:00

I'll be stuck without any predictable Internet access until about June 6 starting tomorrow afternoon. Basically, I probably won't be able to check my emails, PMs, et cetera, more than a couple times until I'm back from E3.

The biggest thing this affects is showing off @venture's current stages. I definitely won't have time to post any screenshots before Internet access is cut off (the computer I'm developing it on doesn't have a working Internet connection right now). On the bright side, the various disparate prototypes are starting to coalesce into a coherent whole.

I'll have plenty to write about when I get back from E3, so look out for that starting on June 8th.

Leaving for E3 in 160 Hours

2009-05-25T14:41:00.002-04:00

I can hardly believe it, but this time next week I'll be in the air on my way to Los Angeles and the Electronic Entertainment Expo. The only way I could be more excited is if I was going to the IGF, but maybe I'll get to do both next year...

This year is the first year that E3 is going back to being a "huge" show where the biggest and best annoucements are revealed. I'm particularly looking forward to what Valve have to say, as well as the rest of the show in general. (Maybe I'll get to play Portal 2 or Ep 3? Here's hoping!)

Square are also going to reveal their "mystery game" there. I hope it's another PC game, considering I had to wait almost a decade bewtween the release of Final Fantasy VIII PC and The Last Remnant on PC.

@venture: Retro Procedural FPS

2009-05-22T22:30:00.001-04:00

It is time to write a bit about my Secret Project I've been hinting at elsewhere. I am working on a retro-style procedurally generated first-person shooter. It's being created in Game Maker, since that's what I've been using all semester and I'm pretty comfortable with it.

Retro Style: I grew up in a time when TRON's visuals were considered ridiculously awesome and every kid I knew dreamed of the day when we might play games that looked like that on our PCs. Audio tape storage and other really retro technology was already obsolete by the time I got my first computers, but editing batch files and making DOS Boot Disks was a way of life for the PC gamer of the time. I had to work for my games, and those games had graphics that were designed for, and required you to make use of, your imagination. So graphically @venture is going to be a tribute to the games of that era.

Plus, retro-style means I can spend more time on the programming side instead of worrying about making things look pretty.

Procedurally Generated: I've wanted to create a roguelike of my own ever since I started playing the DOS version of Rogue and various variants in the mid-90s. At the time I was also into a game called Warhammer Quest, which is like a multiplayer boardgame roguelike. Until recently, I hadn't considered Game Maker as a possibility for such a project. Working on Steam City Chronicles changed my mind.

Although there haven't been a whole lot of Game Maker roguelikes, there are a few out there already. But there's never been a procedural FPS made in GM before as far as I know.

First Person Shooter: (For those who don't know what a first-person shooter is, it's a game shown from the point of view of the protagonist, where most of the gameplay involves shooting things.)

It was the Yoyo Games First-Person Shooter tutorial that gave me the idea for a procedural FPS. The way the walls are laid out in the 2D view reminded me of the "overhead" standard roguelike perspective (as well as the fact that in GM, "3D" is still generated from a completely 2D room). It occured to me that instead of laying out the rooms manually I could figure out / borrow some algorithms and get GM to lay out the rooms for me. It'll obviously take a bit of work to make it function, but so far it seems feasable.

The whole thing is going to be highly experimental. I don't know exactly how much like a roguelike, how much like a FPS, how much like a traditional RPG, or how much like a traditional adventure game it's going to be yet. I don't know whether I'm going to stick to a vaguely D&Dish / Tolkienish theme like so many roguelikes, or go for some kind of steampunky-fantasy theme, or go for a more "self aware retro" feel where the character knows he's in a computer, or go all out sci fi and set it in a giant spacecraft, abandoned space colony, or post-apocalyptic London.

I'm definitely aiming to have:

full features of original Rogue environments: algorithmically created walls, rooms, passageways, and doors

Mouselook + WASD shooter controls

a HUD stolen- er, inspired by the Ultima Underworld series

pixillated goblins with serviceable AI

a proper inventory

actual Data Structures to handle the behind-the-scenes stuff.

procedural environment features (simple trees / mushrooms generated from algorithms, for example)

switching from 3D to 2D and back again for a "magic map" (the documentation has a warning that this doesn't work, but we'll see)

proper menus and everything

light and fog effects, since GM has options for that

I may also have, depending on time and what seems to be working:

more early 90s-looking than early 80s-looking graphics

prefabricated rooms loaded from text files (that's Vaults in Angband jargon, but I got the idea from WQ originally)

a "card dealing" mechanic to deal out the vaults like cards just like in WQ, but mixing in algorithmically created rooms as well.

procedural puzzles (but it's doubtful unless I get the vault dealer to work)

shops and/or workshops (if I go for the Steampunk-Fantasy theme)

water terrain (like the Underworld games)

sloping floors and walls

tunneling through earth and destructible walls as a major gameplay feature (like Dungeon Keeper & Dwarf Fortress)

submitted the "final" prototype at the end of summer to Yoyo Games website as a "work in progress"

What I have working right now definitely isn't worth putting screenshots up yet, but hopefully as soon as next week I'll start posting them.

The New Star Trek Is Perfect Because Of The Villain

2009-05-20T00:55:00.008-04:00

There will be some minor spoilers concerning the origin of the villain in the new movie. They're not big twists or anything, but if you're really worried about it, go see the movie first.

First of all, The Onion is right:

Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film As 'Fun, Watchable'

Now, I wouldn't consider myself a Trekkie. I've never been to a Trek convention, for example. I had absolutely no complaints about the new movie, so i'm definitely not a Trekkie. As someone who was a big fan of the original series when it was rerun shortly before The Next Generation started (I was excited to find out Reading Rainbow host LeVar Burton was going to be in TNG), and more or less kept up with the various series over the years, I think the movie is absolutely perfect.

Think about it: The best Star Trek movies are the best because they leverage the classic villains really well. Kahn in 2, the Klingons in 6, the Borg in 8. If not the villains, then they leverage a good time travel story line in 4 and (again) 8. The biggest problem with Nemesis(10)? The Romulans didn't get a chance to be the Big Bad, and they should have been instead of some dumb clone. The clone dude, who is so forgettable I don't even remember his name, isn't the worst Star Trek villain, but he definitely wasn't good enough to upstage the Romulans.

The new film not only does absolutely everything right, it actually corrects what was wrong in past movies. Nero is not only a Romulan, and an awesome villain, he's quite possibly the most memorable villain ever.

Now let's think about this for a minute: Nero is basically an ordinary guy. He's not royalty, doesn't have funky alien powers, isn't genetically enhanced, or even have much advanced technology compared to everyone else in his time. He doesn't have any grand plans for domination. He's just the captain of a mining vessel, the frickin Red Dwarf of the Star Trek universe. He even speaks like a regular guy. He's a cockney accent short of being David Lister.

His villainous motivation? Greif. His planet gets destroyed but before he can work through all the stages of grief he's dumped a century and a half in the past. He gets twenty-five years to work through Shock & Denial and Pain & Guilt but before he can work through Anger (bear in mind he's a Romulan and they don't deal with anger very well to begin with) he's given a planet-destroying device. So he starts out as Lister but ends up somewhere between Stanley H Tweedle and Darth Vader. A bit of Captain Ahab too, but considering how loyal his crew seem to be, more like (and this is probably deliberate) Captain Kirk from the original series.

Kirk starts off as the underdog, because this is the origin movie, but in many ways Nero is even more of an underdog who just happens to have a giant mining ship and planet-destroying-device from the future. Everything else in the movie is basically well-portrayed stuff we already knew about, but Nero is the perfect villain, and that makes this the perfect Star Trek movie.

SSTF2

2009-05-19T14:38:00.003-04:00

I have a bunch of things lined up for this weblog, but for now here's a video. It's a little late to post it here, as it's been all around, including even the TF2 weblog, but here's Super Smash... Team Fortress 2:

Watch more videos of TF2

Game Presentation Reminder

2009-05-07T17:52:00.003-04:00

I'll be leaving this post as the top post for a while, and then it's going to be a lot of posts on various subjects. Anyway:

This is a reminder that the Game 2 & 3 students at Camden County College are presenting their games on the Blackwood campus in the CIM building auditorium at 7:00 PM next tuesday evening (12th of May). If you can get to the Blackwood campus, ask where the CIM building is and go in; there will be signs to the auditorium when you go in.

All are welcome except Gordon Babcock, of course.

Pride and Zombies

2009-04-23T21:51:00.003-04:00

Okay, a little while ago this book, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, was released.

I would just like to point out that about three years ago, as an April Fool's joke, I made a suggestion on a message board about just such a thing. I called it "Pride and Zombies" and it was originally conceived as a setting for All Flesh Must Be Eaten, a zombie-themed RPG that has many, many different genre supplements (including a Wild West supplement written by Shane Hensley) but is sadly lacking in the 19th Century English Countryside genre.

(Also, a little later it was conceived as a possible crossover setting for the Cinematic Unisystem Games, with Elizabeth Bennet or one of her friends as a Slayer, Ash showing up via time travel and Angelus as a possible villain. This would have been dreadfully fanfictiony, however, and I decided to drop it.)

So then someone goes and essentially writes my original idea in novel form. I guess I should have gone for it myself. Oh well.

Steam Is Everything

2009-04-22T15:00:00.002-04:00

Steam has recently added NCSoft games to their catalog. This includes Guild Wars, Lineage, and City of Heroes / Villains.

Other than a few quirky holdouts who refuse to put their games on Steam, and older PC games available via Good Old Games, there is very little reason to buy PC games any way other than on Steam. The only remaining major game developer to not have a presence on Steam is Blizzard. Seriously: World of Warcraft is the only major subscription MMO to not be on Steam now.

It's too bad my gaming laptop is currently exiled from the internet, or perhaps it's a good thing. I still need to get the bosses working for the Alpha of Steam City Chronicles, and CoH/V's new nifty mission builder would probably prove to be a bit of a distraction.

Anyway, it's interesting how Valve's serivice has basically become a serious alternative to every physical store. And soon there'll be Ep3 and Portal 2, and I'll probably have a new laptop by then anyway. It's such a good time to be a PC gamer.

P.S. Also, incidentally, it means I can finally buy a game that Shane Hensley worked on via Steam. Just a nice bit of serendipity there.

WoG Piano Medley

2009-04-22T14:21:00.002-04:00

This is officially the current most awesome thing done with a piano and Youtube:

An XKCD Comic About Sheep

2009-04-20T05:16:00.004-04:00

This is amusing if you know anything about different variable types. But it's hilarious if know anything about different variable types and you're sleep deprived.

Yeah, I know I need to fix the column width.

Laptop's On The Fritz

2009-04-18T15:18:00.005-04:00

A big part of why I haven't been posting here is because my laptop is messed up. It's hard to tell exactly what's wrong, but I suspect that it at least needs a new fan. But the more serious issue is that XP suddenly is missing some drivers it needs for any browser to work.

Thus, as of a day or so after my last post here(EDIT: The one before the video of the singing turrets), I can't post from my laptop anymore. It's the very definition of "vexing".

Game Maker works, so at least I can still work on the game.

Steam, Excel, IE, Firefox, and Safari won't work even after I reinstalled some of them. I keep getting error messages about missing DLLs. McAfee seems to be able to update itself, so maybe it uses it's own proprietary drivers or something. Word is still working fine, but Excel isn't. I don't know what Steam and Excel have in common that Game Maker doesn't, and that worries me.

I am saving up for a new laptop anyway, but I'd prefer to figure out how to salvage this one both because I can't buy a new one yet and because I intend to eventually give it to my younger brother if it's still working.

Anyway, no promises about updates until this situation is resolved. I'll probably post something around presentation time, though.

We Work For GLaDOS Now

2009-04-17T11:33:00.002-04:00

Vid:

Watch more videos of Portal

Soon: Presentation Day!

2009-04-06T06:30:00.005-04:00

The Game Design Presentations are currently slated for:

May 12th
7 PM
CIM auditorium

Bring money for copies of the game as well as T shirts & stuff. Proceeds directly go to supporting the teams.

Mission 9 will be presenting their full complete, awesome, game Steam City Chronicles.

Team Omech will be there too, doing something or other.

P.S. Gordon Babcock is not welcome to attend, but pretty much everyone else is.

First Playable Prototype

2009-03-30T18:14:00.004-04:00

The First Playable Prototype is done. It's still a little too buggy to release yet, but we do plan to release the first level either as a web application for for download.

The trouble with antihistamines is that they sap my enthusiasm. So I really just don't feel like posting much here right now. Need to figure out a way around it.

However, I am making decent progress on the HUD. Which is good, because that's my main assignment right now.

Misery Season

2009-03-27T15:04:00.003-04:00

Well it's spring again, and I'm trying out a new allergy medication. Right now, I feel a bit tipsy because of side-effects, but not too bad. What is bad is that I'm still sniffling a little (but not nearly as much as I was last night and early this morning) and the pollen count isn't nearly as bad as it's going to get in a couple weeks.

If I can get the HUD finished tonight anyway, it'll be a good benchmark for what I should be able to do for the rest of the semester.

Making This Weblog Better

2009-03-13T19:46:00.006-04:00

I've decided to add some more functionality to my weblog. I'm busy with stuff, but for now I'm adding some links to the side. Have a look at four weblogs I read often, some on a daily basis.

I'm considering doing a lot more with this weblog. Like not only posting more articles more often (and I will be returning to the Torque/Game Maker issue soon, I just need to do them both justice by getting to know GM a little better), but scheduling something every single day. The every-day stuff will mostly be videos, of course, but I may find more stuff to write about when I get into a better posting habit.

Anyway, if I get enough traffic, and get into much better habits about putting stuff up on a daily basis, I am considering putting ads up. I don't think that I'll be making much, but

1) I do pay for hosting this site. If I could get more money from doing stuff with my weblog, I could afford a better URL. Not that I'm complaining about $10 a year for a .org domain, but maybe I can do better.

2) I am a college student and therefore poor by definition. Subsidizing tuition and book costs even a little bit will help.

I'm not looking for comments on this yet. It'll be a couple weeks at the earliest if I decide to go with ads. Sprucing the place up is a much higher priority.

ALSO: I need to do something about this default page layout. It's functional, but three colored dots isn't super-exciting.

ALSO: I will eventually put labels on all the old posts.

Reason Why Garry's Mod Is Awesome #1

2009-03-12T10:23:00.005-04:00

I love Garry's Mod. This is just one of the reasons why:

Watch more videos of TF2

(For those of you unfamiliar with the individual elements of what's going on: the levels are from Half Life Episode 2, the animal dudes are Starfox characters and the other guys are the Heavy and Medic from Team Fortress 2. The spaceships and ornithopter are constructed from in-game props using GMod tools. The whole video is impossible without GMod.)

Making The Switch To Game Maker

2009-03-10T14:53:00.009-04:00

I've been quiet the last two weeks. "Too quiet." There has been stuff going on behind the scenes and it's finally time to write about it.

A few weeks ago we were pondering switching to something other than Torque to make the game with. Things were discussed, a class was canceled which disrupted the discussions, and some mild drama happened, but eventually two things happened:

1) The Tech Team completed the Tech Demo in Torque. It took us five weeks to make something barely functional.

2) The Tech Team completed a second Tech Demo in Game Maker. It took us less than a week to put more stuff in it than was in the Torque version.

The bottom line is that the Tech Team discovered something we've suspected for a while: Torque sucks for entry-level game development if you don't somehow already know how to use it. It has plenty of good points, which you can easily see from the GG website and the games that have been made with it, but it does have some serious flaws:

1) There is no book for Torque Game Builder. Every book for Torque covers Torque Game Engine instead. This is like trying to teach people how to swim in a pool by demanding that they swim in the ocean first. Even Torque for Teens, which really should cover TGB, starts with TGE instead.

2) Torque is structured to make it very easy to develop games if you've been through Comp Sci I, or an equivalent object-oriented language class such as Java. We haven't done CS1 yet, though this is entirely the fault of the way the Game Design program is currently structured rather than Garage Games' fault. What is Garage Games' fault is this fact combined with #1 above, because this wouldn't be as big of an issue if there was simply a frakking book on Builder.

3) The Torque Developer Network is under renovation and we can't wait that long. Our project is due at the end of the semester.

4) The tutorials leave a lot to be desired. I think the real problem with them is that they're written by people who know what they're doing, so they're failing to explain things in a way that can be easily understood by people who don't know what they're doing. The Fish Tutorial teaches you how to make The Fish Game easily. It says little about how to make Your Game. Too much copying & pasting of code and too little explanation of what the code does.

Game Maker has none of these issues, and lots of "easy things" that just make things easier which I'll be explaining in another post. Game Maker does have it's own issues, which I'll also be explaining later. There are lots of things that Torque can do that Game Maker can't, but it's a better entry-level game development environment.

Also, Game Maker is WAY cheaper.

A guy plays the Wind Waker theme by himself.

2009-03-04T14:41:00.003-05:00

I have at least three things I want to post here, but I feel kind of "meh" right now.

So for now here's a YouTube video:

Scout Update Excitement

2009-02-24T09:22:00.002-05:00

Is anyone else really excited about the imminent Scout Update for Team Fortress 2 yet? I know I am.

Soon, I'll finally FINALLY get the Does It Hurt When I Do This? and You'll Feel A Little Prick achievements for my Medic. Possibly Big Pharma and other assist-based achievements too.

The Tech Demo

2009-02-23T14:08:00.003-05:00

Marc and I are hard at work on the Tech Demo for Steam City Chronicles this week. More news on that next monday.

The rest of Mission 9 have already produced some pretty good stuff, and I'm confident the game is going to look and sound sweet.

In the meantime, until I have something of substance to post, I may post a video or two.

Gordon Babcock's Series of Unfortunate Events

2009-02-23T13:35:00.006-05:00

In a recent letter written as part of a court case, Gordon Babcock wrote:

In short, I have been shut out of my children's lives by a serious [sic] of very unfortunate events.

I wish to put forth a rebuttal to this claim.

THIS is A Series of Unfortunate Events:

In this series of books written by the pseudonymous Lemony Snicket, a group of children must endure various bad situations, many of which are directly or indirectly made much worse by their elder relative "Count Olaf". Olaf's disdain for his relatives and lust for money is only eclipsed by his ability to act in the opposite manner and feign victimhood if called on it. He dons a variety of disguises, occasionally dressing as a woman, and is such a good actor that he often is able to fool the many adults he comes in contact with. These adults are often mystified as to why the children don't trust Olaf, and it's because Olaf doesn't even bother acting nice to them; instead making it very clear to them that he's after their inheritance money in a Richard III way and he'll never stop until he gets it.

Not all of the childrens' troubles are directly caused by Olaf, but it seems that whenever the opportunity arises for Olaf to make their lives more difficult, he'll jump at the chance. He's also guilty of many more horrible things besides what he's done to them, but has managed to avoid prosecution for it. Each story ends with the children just barely escaping complete ruin (usually at least partly caused by Olaf) and moving onto the next bad-and-about-to-get-worse-partly-or-entirely-because-of-Olaf situation.

When looked at in this light, it is plain to see that Gordon Babcock's choice of words is far, far, far, far, far more appropriate than he possibly could have realized at the time he wrote them.

What I've been doing instead of posting here

2009-02-18T20:52:00.003-05:00

Although I have been posting here at least twice a week, which is pretty good for me, I've been even busier over on the Game Design Guild forums.

This is mainly because the Game Design classes at CCC use the GDG forums to communicate to the rest of the team, but also because some interesting stuff has been happening.

The Word on The Streets forum is a new forum that's basically all about free stuff to get: mostly free Indie games, but other stuff as well.

GD2 Meeting 3

2009-02-13T17:35:00.006-05:00

Well we had another meeting yesterday. This is probably the last time I'm going to do an update for a class / meeting for several reasons it's probably best to avoid mentioning online.

Each of the Game Design classes has their own team name. Each team has their own private forums. These are theoretically used to help teams communicate well while they make their games.

I'll let you draw your own conclusions as to why I used the word "theoretically".

Despite... hiccups... we are making decent progress. We're keeping the name of the game the same.

GD2 Class 3

2009-02-10T10:52:00.012-05:00

We had our third class yesterday. Not a lot to talk about, because we have a pretty solid idea of how the game is going to work, what characters are going to feature in the plot, the setting, the weapons & gadgets, etc. The GDD assignments were handed out and we're working on the GDD and tech demo.

Marc got a sprite to move around and follow the mouse in class from scratch. Tech Team rules!

Steam City Chronicles (or whatever the final name will be) will kick ass.

EDIT 2: Edited out a sentence and a word to spare some peoples' sensitive feelings. We wouldn't want person x to punch person y in the throat because person z didn't realize person x was cranky about subject n.

GD2 Meeting 2

2009-02-05T20:25:00.003-05:00

We had our second meeting today. The story and features of the game are pretty fleshed out now. Not a whole lot else to say for now.

Lots going on behind the scenes, though. I'm hoping we have time to do a behind the scenes doc for the final product.

GD2 Class 2

2009-02-04T13:31:00.004-05:00

Monday we had our second class of GD2. It was pretty productive.

There was an incident last week on the Guild forums that was resolved in class. Then we reviewed the Tech Team's PoKs, did some team building exercises and various other stuff.

Nothing terribly exciting yet, but most of the good stuff (so far) happens outside of class anyway, as each team works on the individual parts of the game: Marc and I (the Tech Team) are working on Torque tutorials. I'm working on drafting a document for tomorrow's meeting that will give the Design team a better idea of what kinds of puzzles can be designed. The Art team are figuring out the art, the story is coalescing into something interesting, and the Marketing team have some good ideas for later.

I have a good feeling about the end result of all this. Even if the game itself completely sucks, which I don't think it will, it's definitely good practice for working in a team and eventually making something that's actually pretty good.

Webcomics By Girls

2009-02-04T10:00:00.006-05:00

First of all, for those who don't know yet and don't want to go hunting in the archive for clues, I am a guy. I am the sort of guy who occasionally posts videos of cats and other animals to my weblog, but I also like to drink and visit the shooting range and do other manly stuff. XKCD is one of my top favorite webcomics and I understand 98% of it. I used to be in construction. Nevertheless, I have been reading a lot of webcomics by girls/ladies/women (whatever the cartoonist thinks is appropriate) lately.

The latest one, which I just discovered a couple minutes ago, is Sketchfervor. Like most of the comics I read, I found it by clicking on an ad in another comic (so if you want me to visit your comic, the best way is to advertise on a comic I already read). It's a combination of slice-of-life and fantasy and she's not afraid to break the fourth wall and make fart jokes. This anything-goes formula can be a recipe for disaster, but she pulls it off pretty well.

One I've mentioned before is Kate Beaton's (Often Historical) Comics. She's carved out a unique niche for herself by mercilessly making fun of historical figures, her ancestors, and herself. It's usually a lot more intellectual than Sketchfervor: the punchlines are lowbrow, but the setups require a decent knowledge of history and sometimes also geography and science.

Then there's Mr. Never-Updates-His-Site-Anymore's favorite webcomic Narbonic. I've been following the commentary version, as well as Shaenon's new comic Skin Horse, every day. Both series are very, very, geeky with Narbonic having a strong male protagonist and the characters of Skin Horse just being very strange. It's so popular, you probably already read it anyway.

The pioneers of webcomics were all geeky guys because of the tech knowledge requirements to put anything on the web, but lately it's seemed closer to a 50/50 gender ratio for the new comics (there's a bunch more I know about but don't have time to write about). More females getting into entertainment media that have been traditionally too techy/geeky/male dominated is generally a good thing (theater, radio, and film have all been like that in the past). Ada Lovelace would be proud.

GD2 Meeting 1

2009-01-29T21:45:00.004-05:00

Quick update on the meeting this afternoon:

The room was a bit cramped, but serviceable.

First thing, we determined for sure what kind of game we were going to make. On the forums, I had suggested a Zelda-style (specifically, the first one on the NES) game, as well as two other ideas, and in that thread someone else brought up the idea of doing a steampunk setting. Until the meeting, nothing had been decided yet, but the group decided right away that "Steampunk Zelda" was the coolest idea of everything that had been proposed so far.

A lot of excited brainstorming happened, with people pitching ideas back and forth. Our protagonist is going to be a "steamborg" (NOT my idea) whose name we are tentatively calling "M" after our group "Mission 9". He works for a guy named Orrison and is fighting a guy named Spike. There may or may not be a ghost involved. There will be puzzles and fighting.

We're doing the PPD over the weekend (well, the rest of the team is, I'm going on the Village PCA Men's Retreat), and turning it in on Monday. I've done my PoK for Monday. This is going to be great.

GD2 1st Day

2009-01-26T15:30:00.006-05:00

We had the first class of Game Design 2. It was pretty awesome.

We haven't decided on the game we're going to make yet, that's what we're going to figure out in our first outside-of-class weekly meeting. But the teams are set up, responsibilities have been distributed, and we're ready to rock.

The team name is probably going to be "Mission 9" unless we decide on something better in the next meeting.

I had forgotten that I had already bought two of the books I needed for class(Game Writing: Narrative Skills for Videogames & The Game Producer's Handbook). Good thing I found them right away when I came home.

My homework, called "Proof of Knowledge" is essentially doing a Torque tutorial. I can probably handle it. :)