Saturday, October 31st, 2009
Quick note to say the following (much more coming later):
- Nottingham was a huge success – we will be posting a lot of pictures soon
- Sorry about missing the podcast this week – normal service will resume next week
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009
We’re back! This week we discuss the death of single player gaming, Miyamoto’s place in the industry and UFO catchers. Join us!
Check out links from the show on our official Google Reader page.
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009
Hello blog people – I have realised that in past updates I have neglected to rant about of one of our handy features: in-game IRC! This makes a big difference during matches and helps keep tabs on what’s happening in general. I think it is going to be MASSIVE for Synapse and it’s very cool that have it – thanks to those who helped!
The game is looking a lot crisper – the annoying text from around the characters is gone and everything is icon-based now! Hurrah! Matt and Ian have apparently cracked a long-term animation bug, so congrats to them.
Bin is finalising the instructional video for Gamecity, which I will post up here as it is a pretty good intro to the game in general. That will also help sate the desires of those who have been clamoring for a longer in-game vid.
After Nottingham is done, I am looking into getting a big load more art done and sorting out Single Player once and for all. Now that the core of the game art is in, it’s time to add tweaks and polish and excitement which will make it really compelling. There are still some really annoying logistical things to sort out (when should certain things disappear or be greyed out; should some other things disappear to avoid overlapping; how are we doing to deal with parts of units poking through walls etc.) but beyond that there will be fun interface and menu things that I think will really add to the overall experience.
Now, onto other things. I was intrigued to see this from the World of Goo people. It’s startling that an indie game can generate numbers like that *from a single promotion*. I’m aware that World of Goo has mega “brand equity” but that’s still astonishing and can only be praised.
Here is an update on LIFE…
This is Burn’s dog Lilypad (yes really) meeting Official Mode 7 Dog Jasper. Jasper immediately tried to jump on her head many times, but now they are Dog Friends. Yes.
I had the priviledge of attending an Oktoberfest thing in London. This involved food and drink. Here is my friend Jon tackling a stein. The stein has little chance.
I don’t know why I took this photo but it’s a quite accurate representation of the evening. We recovered from Oktoberfest by walking up this hill…
It’s called Box Hill. There was, coincidentally, a biker rally there and some dude turned up with this orange thing:
It may look like a Robin Reliant but we saw it moving and it is 1.) Fast and 2.) Loud. I think that’s probably mission accomplished for its owner. At the top of the hill there is this:
If you can’t be arsed to read it, this says: “An eccentric resident of Dorking was buried here head downwards”. Personally, I think that’s a fairly rubbish inscription – it should say something like, “Yeah, what? I’m upside down. Deal with it.”
In the pursuit of endless futility, we now have 4 Mode 7 Official Cactii donated by Jon, who tried to propagate his cactus and ended up producing 107. I will, naturally, keep you informed about the cactii. This is in lieu of this update’s Basil Update.
Sunday, October 18th, 2009
Delivered like a delirious monkey with an infinite set of those colourful fridge-magnet letters and a huge fridge...This is it. The play-through of the Might and Magic six pack, and my immediate feedback regarding it. It’s the very freshest The Encounter With Dracula Is Terminated! If you didn’t catch the build up to this crazy ride, you can do so right here.
Book I.
A little background reading told me that, upon its release, the first entry in the Might and Magic series, ‘Might and Magic Book One: The Secret of the Inner Sanctum’, was extremely well received by critics. Things like the scope, freedom of game play and character choices (three things which are still buzzwords for many RPGs) were main reasons for the heaping of praise. My skillful preparation had luckily numbed me to how ridiculous the name was, so instead of writing ‘lol, gay’ at this point, I took an open minded approach while still bearing in mind the age of the thing.
When it comes down to brass tacks, though, might and magic I is rubbish. Unless you have some nostalgia for this kind of thing, it’s absurd. Instead of boxes popping up to tell you interesting things that the graphics don’t let on, when you walk face first into what is clearly a brick wall you get told ‘SOLID!’, while details like why you’re there or what you’re doing are left purely to your inference. Also you don’t need the 1990’s to have come and gone to realise that names like ‘Crag the Hack’ and ‘Swifty Sarg’ are just ridiculous. All you ever see of the characters is the names, too. While NES era J-RPG final fantasy had sprites for your characters, the battles in Might and Magic I are solely a text based affair. Couple that with dos box running it a bit too fast on my system, and you get convoluted lines of text about how Swifty has fired at a skeleton with a bow flashing up at the screen and leaving it so fast that it’s like having a very boring, nerdy seizure. It was about here I adopted my ‘play until I get killed’ reviewing strategy.
If this ever was playable, there is literally no point in doing so now. I wasn’t too disillusioned by this, though. I knew the very first was going to be a bumpy ride, but after a couple of hours I could take no more and decided to concentrate on the next entry in the series: Might and Magic II: Gates to Another World! It better contain at least one gate to a considerably different world.
Book II
The second I start Might and Magic II I am met with what looks like an elongated white jawa declaring himself a spirit of someone who wasn’t important enough for me to remember, and going on to say how I face battles innumerable. This upset me. I was really hoping for a more ‘battles easily numerable’ themed comment after the last game. Anyway so this game is a touch more palatable. If you’re at all interested in really classic might and magic for some strange reason, then this is the one to go for. It feels like the first and works in much the same way, except there’s a lot more visual, audible, and textual prompts. Seen as it has the same problem of the first in that places use repeating animations, it’s hard to tell this wall from that wall or this door from that door in the expansive bits, but luckily a compass is added in the form of ‘Face = N’. Nice. The graphical differences do a lot for the experience. There is a tangible day/night change, and seeing the adversary rendered poorly stops the text-battles from triggering a ‘too long; did not listen’ response. For a little. Sorry, what? Oh right, moving on…
Hypnobeetlehypnobeetlehypnobeetlehypnobeetlehypnobeetle!!
One of the more positive differences is the increase in environmental feedback. While it’s still pitiful, it’s less so. A lot of doors you go through will have a brief description of what you’re facing in front of you, with a sprinkling of Y/N choices. This definitely does a far better job of breaking up the monotony of a game which has very little diversity to offer. While it is a much preferable offering to Book I, book II isn’t oceans away. It still retains the same core mechanics. The battles are still unanimated, the environment is still lackluster and repetitive, and the dialogue is so poor it’s unacceptable. The plus side of that is that it keeps it mildly entertaining. However, by the time I received this proposal…
The enormous gladiator Spartacus will mercilessly beat you for 500 gold. You will be stronger. Pay the brute (y/n)?
…I was about sick of it, and hitting ‘N’, I strode out of the city, only to be met with a big box saying ‘DEATH STRIKES!’ and something to the effect of ‘A volcano has erupted and killed you’. Obviously if the volcano was graphically represented I may have had a shot at avoiding that one. With the only evidence of the eruption being the black box with the solemn news in it, I just took their word for it. As had happened once before, I’d been slain, and it was time to call it a day. At this point I’m at the end of day three, and my feelings towards the might and magic marathon I’d embarked on were no longer what they were. I was looking out the window longingly at couples walking, laughing with each other. I truly felt like a Might and Magic player. Tomorrow would be book three, and the mammoth task of keeping my boredom and vitriol from biasing my thoughts on it. Perhaps this will be just the breath of fresh air I need, I hoped.
Y. Y. Y!!
III: Isles of Terra
Might and Magic III was the first Might and Magic game of the 1990s. It was a less tedious experience than the prior two because of various improvements. One of the most noticeable is the Doom-style addition of party character’s faces along the bottom instead of the representations of the prior games: their names in white text. It really does make a difference to the ‘role playing’ thing to know you’re not just a few white letters. The expressions on your party character’s faces reflect their condition, and clicking on them brings up statistics nobody cares about. ‘Crag Hack’ has reinvented himself by dropping the ‘the’ from the middle of his name. Good to see him back. The battles take place differently too, with enemies visible in the world rather than the world freezing for a battle to take place. Battles take place much in the same turn-based fashion, but mouse-clicks of icons replace keyboard commands for things like attacking. Plot wise, you’re after some baddie called Sheltem. He was also the bad guy in 2 and continues to be a pain throughout the series. These really aren’t strong on story. I didn’t bother explaining for 1 and 2, so I won’t start now. A final strong point I will mention is the music. It’s got some basic polyphony going on, so it makes it…very funny.
The game is still atrocious by today’s standards, and unfortunately there was little to giggle at in this one. Judging in context I’d say this one is passable if you are a dwarf in purgatory. If not, keep on avoiding. Time for four!
IV – V
Four and five come together in some dual pack, as apparently installing both gave you the full experience. A bit of a PokeMôn blue/red type thing going on, I reckon. Anyhow, I think it is IMPERATIVE everyone watches the introduction to clouds of Xeen.
It is depressingly obvious by IV that there will be no surprises in this game collection. Each is just a face-lifted and revamped version the previous. At least with IV-V, you are dealing with the best of the bunch. The intro music alone sounds like it is lifted straight off the best prog-rock album that never happened. Truth be told, there’s not much more that needs to be written after viewing the intro movie, so I’ll keep it brief. What I will reiterate is that the 4/5 combo is much more tolerable to play than the previous titles and a semblance to fun games like Morrowind is clear. The added animation is welcome, and the spoken sound bytes from shopkeepers and such like aren’t too annoying and add some immersion, though the blue woman who sells you spells sounds thoroughly synthesised. Synth-women are the best you can hope for from this series, though. A drawback is the then-popular manual-based ‘look at line 5, word 3. What is the word?’ copy protection that pops up. Bit irritating, as now it’s enshrined in PDF rather than a tangible manual. Another thing that is annoying is the high pitched key press noise. Every time you press any key (including, and particularly problematic to the movement keys) a high pitch is emitted. You don’t walk continuously, oh no. You move forward in set distances as in all previous games. As you can imagine, after 5 presses or so you’re annoyed with the noise. God knows how furious I was with it when I gave up on this heap. Why? Just WHY? This is also a problem for….
Might and Magic: Swords of Xeen
I didn’t realise, but this collection included a seventh game (heavens preserve me. I can’t take anymore). This game apparently came from the mod community, and wasn’t true Might and Magic canon. It tries to plug a few bits of the V plot here and there, but isn’t really story driven. It’s entirely on the V engine, so more of the same here.
The bees, the bees. Oh god, the bees.
I was sat alone in the dark at the time I gave up on Swords of Xeen. I was sitting staring at thousands of words about this. I couldn’t take it any more, but one of the biggest entries in the series yet was still ahead of me. Now, I’m not a man of faith, but there are moments in everyone’s life when you think ‘hang on, that seems a bit too convenient’. I was at my lowest point, and, as I was firing up Might and Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven, I was to experience one of those moments.
I couldn’t get it to work on my system. I was free. It was all over.
In more than the obvious way, I was quite happy not to have been able to play what could have been the diamond in the rough. It leaves me with room to say maybe, just maybe, it was all worth it to get to this point. If I knew how bad that point was, I might well throw myself into the aforementioned magic monster pit.
Looking back on the experience, it really was fearful. I had practically no human contact apart from IRC while doing this. I don’t feel right. I will not recommend this to someone who isn’t buying it for nostalgia, or really has exhausted every other experience known to humanity. It is tough, unrelenting, unrewarding, stupid, ugly, and has all the other unlisted qualities of Maggie Thatcher as well. Still, it has been, above all else, interesting. Seeing the difference between ‘then and now’ in what players would accept from a video game RPG experience was interesting in the way that old farming equipment is. People genuinely were happy to put up with this in those days. The influence of statistic based development is still clear in games like Fable 2, but the difference is nowadays they are used as part of an experience to pace it, whereas in the Might and Magic series it does feel like the statistics are the game.
For the price, though, I cannot write it off as uniquely dreadful, as anyone interested in a bit of RPG history and evolution can’t really go far wrong. If you’re nostalgic about these games, which I assume (by the critical reception of the time and Youtube speed runs) that many people are, then you’ve struck gold. For the rest of us, this isn’t quite the same joyous trove. I’d like to propose that if you are considering putting yourself through this for fun, you should instead take a dice and roll against an imaginary rat. If he rolls higher, you die, or vice versa. Move on to a crocodile, then god. If you win these rolls successfully, pretend you’re the king of the universe and be satisfied with your RPG experience. Please, don’t put yourself through what I have. There is, nowadays, simply no need to climb this mountain.
Friday, October 16th, 2009
We’re coming up against some difficulties getting everything ready in time for Gamecity, so Visiting the Village has been postponed this week. Hoping to get something up today, but we’ll see. Thanks for your UNDERSTANDING.
Thursday, October 15th, 2009
Click to read our post on ModDB, because the cocking thing wouldn’t format properly when I copied it over here. NATCH.
Monday, October 12th, 2009
Excitement is rising here at Mode 7 Towers in advance of what will actually be the first public showing of Frozen Synapse…
Our artist Matt has added a few nice little touches just to give the beta some polish:
Once we’ve tidied up some of the unnecessary text around the characters, put in some nice new icons, given the menu a tweak, resized everything and finished off a little bit of colour tweaking, I think we’ll have something that’ll definitely look nice on a few screens in a tent!
Ian is currently working on our competition game mode for the festival: this is likely to consist of a set of “Endplays”: single turn challenges. You have to look at your opponent’s setup, then make a quick, instant plan to defeat him. This should work really well – there will be a few endplays to train on, and then the EVIL DADDY competition endplay where we’ll personally craft the nefarious plan our challengers will be up against. Should be good! I’ll keep you updated on that through the week.
We’re planning on having a looping video playing as people come in, which should give some tutorial pointers on the game. I think this will really add to the atmosphere – ace video maestro Bin is wrestling with resolutions and codecs over in the corner right now.
Talking of Bin, here he is standing next to our awesome promo banner:
Bin is not a small man – this is a significant banner! It’s going to go outside, or just inside the entrance to the event. Very cool for us to see the artwork blown up nice and big like that – we’ve always said indies should shout about their games more and this is…a visual shout. This thing will be schlepping around the world with me to every conference / expo we go to – really hoping to hit PAX next year…
Let’s talk about prizes…I got into the office this morning to see this waiting for me…
Various mysterious boxes! Contained within…
…a massive prize haul! Note: my wallet is not a prize. So what do we have here? Well, there’s the Novint Falcon, copies of Starscape and Mr Robot, a copy of AAAAahaAhahaAhAA – A Reckless Disregard for Gravity, CD’s from Prefuse 73, Maximo Park, Clark, Squarepusher, Grizzly Bear and others!
For those of you new to these updates, I always like to provide a bit of a behind-the-scenes glimpse, so here we go…um…yeah.
These are ladybirds. Loads and loads and loads of ladybirds. They have decided to “overwinter” in our house and must be endlessly encouraged to bugger off. It is vexing. They apparently lay down some kind of horrible insect SIGNAGE which prompts more swarming. Those of you following these updates closely will remember the small cluster of ladybirds from before. They have now EXPANDED.
On Sunday I had to go to Coventry. Um…this was there.
I also went to see the Coventry Blaze ice hockey team play the Nottingham PANTHERS. This was, generally, awesome, but a total ludicrous affront to the game of hockey. They have anglicised this deft game and tranformed it into a brutal slugfest. It was amazing. I witnessed the world’s most girly fight as well – I would post but it probably violates some taste and decency criteria. Coventry Blaze won 5-2. Before the match, this gimpy, disturbing man came out and skated around. “How many goals did we score against Nottingham last time?” he bellowed. “Not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, SIX GOALS!!!!” This is a brilliant way to psyche out your opponents – I am going to start doing this when playing tennis.
At least they managed to keep up a bit of HYPE in the true style of the game, with deafeningly loud music, stupid lights, and this terrifying dragon thing. It looks like there are about seven people at the game, but that is just because the stand in the corner was quite empty.
England is such a mixed bag. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes hatefully ignorant. I enjoy passing things like this amazingly S.T.A.L.K.E.R.-like post-apoc building when on the train, though…
I’ll be posting more regularly this week as we descend into Gamecity Crunch – enjoy!
Thursday, October 8th, 2009
In the first screen you get to after logging into Synapse there’s a button which says “Play an Endplay right now”. No one seems to be clicking on this button. Maybe an explanation of what an Endplay is will help.
If Synapse is “bite-size hardcore strategy”, then Endplays are, um, extremely bite-size. Basically, you are presented with a random situation and you have one 10-second turn to design and submit. Once you’ve submitted you watch your play against three different people who played the other side from you.
It’s a pretty simple concept. The idea is that you can play these at any time and don’t have to organise a game with anyone – they’re kind of single-player, and kind of multiplayer.
They also kind of work right now. The scoring is broken (what a surprise), and the interface is hardly very lucid, but you can go on and play a load of Endplays right now. And I think it’s pretty fun! Give it a go and give me any feedback you can.
I’ll be revisiting Endplays – not a lot of work on the interface will give a much slicker experience I feel.
Thursday, October 8th, 2009
Episode 31 arrives like a bat in a snowstorm. This week, we discuss Epic Mickey, Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble, the PSPgo and other ridiculous things.
Check out links from the show on our official Google Reader page.
Thursday, October 8th, 2009
I just showed Warpy the game for the first time and he was the third person to immediately say he wanted HOOKING in Synapse. For the uninitiated, “hooking” is the process that allows you to move the camera by holding down a mouse button and dragging.
So I put it in. Luckily there is a space for it – holding down the right mouse button and dragging has no current use. It works, and works well.
Also in is tab-switching between your units. This feature has actually always been present but it was on ‘w’, which no-one knew about. Tab is something people try to use automatically, and any feature I don’t need to actively teach is a good one.
Finally, I also fixed a scoring bug that recently cropped in to do with Secure, and most recently affected Thom and Douglas Baker.
If you have the updater, update!
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