On demand

August 7th, 2008 by Ian

I have 600 channels in my house in the village and I don’t like it.  I have thirty movie channels and I never want to watch any of them.  Yeah I know that’s cliched.

In Oxford I have a video store and it’s wonderful.  For some reason I thought getting Sky meant it was silly to rent movies anymore.  But going to the store, taking 30 minutes to choose a movie (with the constant thrill that you might find a film with both Lillard and Ron Perlman in it.  Don’t you dare IMDB that, I don’t want to know), then walking home with it and watching it.  That’s on demand.

Sports channels are good.  Movies and TV shows are better served by a movie store.

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Games!

August 7th, 2008 by Ian

Wonderful Mellzor links me to Amazon UK, which implies that Head Coach 09 will indeed get a PAL release.  Given what I’m hearing on The Nut and Feisty Weasel I just can’t wait.

I picked up Soul Calibur 4 (PS3) today and will play it tonight.  I’m not expecting great things, and I am expecting my 50 inch 480p television (yes you read that right) to make it look pretty terrible… but hell maybe it will be compulsive fun for a while.

Our intern Thom switched me onto an old PS1 and PSP game called Carnage Heart.  Basically it’s about programming basic AI for mechs and then letting them loose in a “protect your base kill the enemy base” situation.  Sounds absolutely brilliant and the aforementioned Mellz is trying to get me a PSP copy from San Jose.  I’ll report when I get it.

Boom Blox is still the game I’m enjoying most and I can’t recommend it enough.  It has some killer multiplayer modes.

I’m playing some Gunpey PSP (£5 from Game)… it’s ok.  Not bad.

I’ve played a little Crush PSP and I’m amazed by how ugly it is.  I need to play it more before I can comment on much else.

But it’s pretty damn ugly.

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When New Games Journalism Attacks!

August 7th, 2008 by Paul

I’m generally a fan of writers who foreground themselves when doing speculative pieces about games, but this (Simon Parkin’s piece on visiting Amsterdam) is just a jumble of disconnected verbiage that reaches for emotional weight and achieves…a kind of horrible triviality.  Out of nowhere, we’re suddenly confronted with shipping a bad game as an analogy for turning to prostitution.

“But just as nobody sets out wanting to make a bad game - stuff happens, choices are made or made for you and then that’s where you end up - so I don’t think any little girl sets out wanting to sell herself like this.”

Oh dear.

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Thursday afternoon

August 7th, 2008 by Ian

The decision has been made.  Graphics are going into Synapse starting on Saturday, and when they’re in the beta will start.  We have an amazing concept which I won’t show you just yet because I want to make sure it gets into the actual game ok.  But graphics are go.  Excitement.

The process will be as follows, I expect:

1.  I put the basic elements of the art into the game.

2.  Write custom rendering bits to make it come alive and look awesome

3.  Do some funky stuff to do 3d animation for the players and then export it to 2d.

It’s happening!

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Wednesday evening

August 6th, 2008 by Ian

First things first, Synapse.  If EC is blogging about it it must be good, and it is.  I’m in a highly exciteable state about it.  It needs a long process of adding, tweaking, and balancing; but right now it’s just… incredibly exciting.  I’ll be getting you guys involed very soon.  Yes, you too Richy.

We have an intern in this week called Thom, who’s in his 3rd year doing Compsci at Imperial.  Very nice guy and he’s working very hard so far.

Will I be able to get Head Coach 09 in england??? Someone tell me.

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This is also such an amazingly bad idea

August 5th, 2008 by Paul

Kieron’s post over at RPS about the Eternity’s Child vs. Destructoid giant kerfuffle is essential reading for all indie game developers who are likely to get their output reviewed.

In case you don’t know, here’s the summary: guy releases indie platform game on Steam; it looks beautiful so a load of people play it; it has massive control issues which make said people cry; Destructoid give it 1/10; comments thread shitstorm involving the creator ensues.

Here’s the original comments thread.  It’s…surprising…in some ways.

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This is such an amazingly bad idea

August 5th, 2008 by Paul

I’m pleased to see that one of the world’s biggest developers makes the same mistakes as us.  Check out Blizzard’s Jay Wilson wailing on some Diablo 3 screenshots that have been altered by fans.  “Your ideas are stupid,” he essentially says, “because you are wrong and you do not understand my vision.”

You will get a lot of suggestions from the community about your game: some will be daft and others will be great.  The way to respond is not to suddenly weigh in with a massive deconstruction intended to prove why the contributor/fan is bananas, but to listen to the parts of their criticism which are useful; to tune into the meta-content if you will.  If someone makes a screenshot where they add a load of noise to an image, they’re not telling Blizzard to ADD A LOAD OF NOISE to everything that’s rendered, they’re saying, “We want you to make sure the game has a cool dark aesthetic that we like, and doesn’t make everything too glossy.”  That’s a really valid fan opinion; they should take it on board and make changes that it’s possible to make, or at least release shitloads of interesting content to prove to the more sane fans why they should like the new look.  Finally, the ultra-hardcore are untouchable; you can’t sway their opinions, so why poke the bear by telling it that it’s an ugly, silly bear?

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Notes on Synapse

August 5th, 2008 by Paul

Ian’s been ranting at me for the last week or so that he’s “cracked” Synapse - well, he’s right.  Synapse is actually fun now, and pretty compulsive.  We all just played in the office - it’s got past the stage of being overly clunky and its course is, in my mind, mapped out.

We’re under a lot of pressure to deliver right now, but if we can refine the gameplay that currently exists in Synapse and make it presentable to people, we’ll be as close to a home run as we’ve been yet.

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Deformable Terrain

August 4th, 2008 by Ian

Got building destruction into Synapse yesterday and today, really looking forward to testing how it plays with Bin this afternoon.  EC should be excited too.

Destructable scenery is a hugely popular feature of any game, and it’s often (but not always) quite easy to add.   In a tile-based game (which Synapse isn’t) it’s usually almost ridiculously easy.  Just go through the squares which an explosion hits and swap out the sprite and collision properties.

Synapse’s was a little harder - we use arbitrary-size axis aligned boxes for our buildings and I just had to write an algorithm which geometrically subtracts one box from another.  That’s a *lot* easier with axis-aligned  boxes .  We’ll have to use some tricks to get the jagged nature of our deformed scenery to look ok, but I’m confident it will work.

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Friday afternoon

August 1st, 2008 by Ian

EC speaks!  And lo it is good.

Lots of stuff today, but let’s start with Synapse.  I took a break from it (and worked on Secret Project Q and Guile) because I’d hit a wall, and I know that when that happens I need to take time away and not put pressure on myself.  With game design (as with most creative endeavours by the sound of it) you just will not do good work if you’re stressed and putting pressure on yourself.

Yesterday, I got back to work on Synapse by just playing it a lot with Bin.  I basically just wanted to play it at random (by that I mean with whatever map Bin comes up with and whatever units I feel like playing with) and see if I got inspiration, and I’m very happy to say I did.  Playing around with one seldom-used unit on a slightly unusual map showed me a giant hole in my thinking about Synapse and I think we’re back on track.  For the first time in a while I feel certain of what I need to work on next with it and that feels very good indeed.

Onto other stuff.  This is as good a place as any to initiate yourself into what’s going on with Madden this year - EA Tiberon has basically removed a massive part of the community’s ability to balance the game by taking out the legendary “sliders” for the CPU players (these govern everything from running strength to passing accuracy).  This has added to an already heated opinion of NCAA 09, and now there is significant voices in the hardcore Football gamers’ legions against EA’s monopoly of the NFL license.  Unfortunately, I’m almost certain that it can have no effect.

But the whole story is interesting - you probably won’t find a game that has a more diverse range of players and playing styles than Madden, and that’s not something you immediately think of.

I’m seriously considering getting into Dwarf Fortress.  I think it’s hit the stage where it’s a must-play game.  There’s a really fascinating mini-interview with the creator here - got to love that he’s making a living from donations (and that he starts coding at 11pm.  My ability to think straight enough to code has usually way gone by then).

Absolutely loving my new place.  Living with Lizzie in our own place is much, much better than living with her in a shared house or at home.  Much less pressure and just a lot more natural.  Really fantastic.

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