Archive for February, 2007
Tuesday, February 27th, 2007
Yes, the time has arrived. The time when the world discovers which of Determinance’s elite will be locked in mortal combat in order to strive for that most hallowed accolade: a copy of Bad Day LA….in Latvian.
And now, we hand you over live to Mode 7 Towers where the process is about to commence…
Lead Designer and Head of Picking Ian Hardingham swerves to avoid a squirrel as he tears around the country lanes of Oxfordshire en route to Mode 7 Towers…
At this stage, the draft process is being rigourously examined by an independent adjudicator.
The illustrious list of the chosen few is drawn up…
…and carefully divided by The Hands of Arbitration…
…sometimes even the Hands of Arbitration need to totally chill out with a Corona…
…as does the Face of Disdain (sponsored by Vidal Sassoon).
The highly complex and patented randomization algorithm is applied…
…and we learn that Archa is fighting Papple in the first round. The crowd goes insane.
Finally, PC Format knows what your rig wants better than you. Whether they will review our game or not remains to be seen…
After the picking process has been completed, we can exclusively reveal ROUND ONE:
Malakian vs. Faxmachinen
Nazriel vs. Telltolin
Dr Pineapple vs. Archa (Critics’ First Round Recommended Viewing)
Nadroj vs. Toshers
Mikeh vs. Aevalad
Worm vs. RichyGorgan
The Rules
Each tournament match will consist of a Best of 9 Duel Arena match with a time-limit of 60 secs using the default arena size.
Organise your matches in the original tournament thread, in-game, or on IRC.
Please report the outcome of your match in this thread. No cheating!
If you cannot play your match, or ever get one organised, let me know and your opponent will receive a bye to the next round.
Good luck! May the most ludicrous man win.
Posted in News | 10 Comments »
Monday, February 26th, 2007
Determinance had a very good weekend on the old sales statistics front, so thank you to everyone who has bought the game so far. We really do appreciate it massively and we’ll do our utmost to keep making it cooler for you.
We’re working all the time to bring in new players, and I have a lot of confidence that we’ll be able to keep doing that for a long time to come.
Posted in News | 8 Comments »
Monday, February 26th, 2007
http://forum.astalavista.ms/viewtopic.php?t=10213
I know that appealing to the better side of someone’s nature on a keygen forum is probably the daftest thing I’ve done in a long time, but I thought I’d post this link up here nonetheless. Please don’t pirate Determinance or other indie games: it’s one of the least justifiable things you could ever do.
EDIT: It seems that people who crack games are actually willing to enter into a discussion about the moral worth of the process! It’s the same old stock arguments (“People in Africa can’t afford to buy games”) but I guess it’s something.
EDIT: The debate goes to Level 2; I use two analogies, one of a car and one of a house! Will he bow under the weight of my rhetoric?
THE CONCLUSION: It apparently ended well, with the forum admin making a promise not to attempt cracking the game. I hope people out there looking for pirated versions read that thread and think twice about it. All we want to do is make fun games for you to play: help us to do it! Say no to drugs! Drink your milk! Take off that ridiculous hat!
Posted in News | 6 Comments »
Saturday, February 24th, 2007
My esteemed colleague is getting us some extremely good coverage, and I’m especially happy with the GameSpot bit below. We learnt from BluesNews that people are far less likely to go crazy anti-flying on us if we tell them in advance that Determinance is a bit weird.
I’m currently preparing the release of Determinance for our second distributor, Manifesto Games, which involved a change of security system – all a bit boring to be honest. I should be getting to work on exciting things like new weapons classes and kill-logging next week.
I was in Oxford today and picked up a copy of Edge. This month’s issue has an absolutely fantastic article on Super Mario Sunshine – a game with a reputation and no doubt. I’d really call it essential reading, Sunshine requires more thought than the majority of people have given it.
They also have a good feature on micro-payments/downloadable content, where Bethesda tell us that the Horse Armour upgrade would have gotten just as much flak if it had been (a) cheaper or (b) more fleshed out. They think that because it was the first mainstream piece of DLC on the 360 that it would have been widely criticised whatever. I actually think the water-testing that was Horse Armour was probably done in good faith by Bethesda, and despite it’s anaemic size I don’t really blame them for it. But the whole DLC thing has got pretty crazy recently, with stuff like Lumines Live, paid-for cheats, and paying to unlock stuff already on the retail disc. An interesting topic.
Posted in News | 2 Comments »
Saturday, February 24th, 2007
Off we go onto the major news portals again with this great post by Emma Boyes. Seems some gamers are willing to accept that Determinance looks more like a crazy Russian deathmatch game from the mid-90’s than a next-gen-smear-a-thon. I love the guy who’s like “Dude, how can they release this when Crysis is coming out?”, though.
Posted in News, PR trials and tribulations | No Comments »
Saturday, February 24th, 2007
Just as it gets bumped from the front page, I want to remind you all to keep entering the “special” competition to win one of those DVD’s. The entries so far have been a thing of genuine amazement.
Posted in News | No Comments »
Friday, February 23rd, 2007
Cheers to Andy over at Qatfish: we’re now a big hairy part of the Qatfish family.
Posted in News | 6 Comments »
Friday, February 23rd, 2007
Astonishing.
Posted in News | 9 Comments »
Friday, February 23rd, 2007
How could you make it look like this? How?
EDIT: People are actually voting on this post over at Qatfish, so I’m going to add a little bit about how I feel in here. Thanks EA for taking a great immersive single player experience and making it into, what looks like a 3rd person behind-the-ship 360 Live Arcade TURD. The reason Determinance doesn’t have a bloody Single Player quest mode is that I would LITERALLY have died trying to make it because I am only one man: EA is one of the biggest publishers in the whole world…how hard is it for them to actually use their resources to recapture the main thing that was good about Wing Commander in the first place? How? Why? I am ranting now. I am going to the good place.
Posted in News | No Comments »
Friday, February 23rd, 2007
Top new-ish site Strategy Informer is one of a bunch of sites now hosting our demo – check out http://www.strategyinformer.com/pc/determinance/demo/11839.html if you haven’t got hold of it yet.
Posted in News | No Comments »
