Friday, January 29th, 2010
We shimmy deftly into view to have a big argument about Microsoft Points, and talk about utterly contemporary stuff like Tiger Woods, the Apple iPad, game endings and retail vs. digital. JOIN US!
Check out links from the show on our official Google Reader page.
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010
I have just launched the first Synapse tournament. The players are:
Ian
Paul
Jordan
Melly
Bin
Burn
Mr.K
Nikomof
DBaker
When you sign in you will find two new matches against two of the people on this list, on the same map, with the first match having you as player 1 and the second map having you as player 2. You have 24 hours to do your matches, and the results will be posted tomorrow.
Have fun, and let me know how you think this can be improved.
Ian
Monday, January 25th, 2010
Here’s the third most popular question I’m being asked about the game!
Thank you to everyone who has said that they would very much like to see Frozen Synapse on there.
I’d like to assure everyone that we will be doing everything possible to get our game distributed on Steam.
The first stage of this process is submitting a build to Valve for them to consider, and we will be doing that as soon as it’s appropriate.
Beyond doing that, we do not have any say in the matter – it’s entirely up to Valve.
If you would like to see Frozen Synapse on Steam – maybe you don’t want to buy it from anywhere other than that – then perhaps it might be an idea to post on the Steam forums so that the game gets known on there, or maybe find some polite, appropriate, non-invasive, non-annoying way of contacting Valve to ask them about it.
Someone has already started a thread requesting it here - join in!
Saturday, January 23rd, 2010
I have been asked about this an inordinate number of times this week: here are the answers you need…
We are aiming to release Frozen Synapse by the end of the year.
We are not currently able to discuss pricing, but we don’t think our eventual decision will shock anyone.
I think we should have been clearer about those things initially – my apologies. Thanks to everyone who has shown an interest in the game – the trailer is still blowing up the place (metaphorically) and our community is growing slowly but surely. We’re committed to making this game great and releasing it in a sane way so you can buy it – don’t worry!
Saturday, January 23rd, 2010
I’m obsessed with finding a rankings system which is exciting and meaningful in the short term – ie, “yes! I did really well over today and now I’m being recognised for it!”. My first solution to this was the “Daily Rankings”, which were rankings based on total points in the last 24 hours. It was a good start, and is a good way of showing who’s been doing well recently, but I think it’s a little too effected by big scores on Secure matches, as well as being a bit de-motivating if you’ve got a big negative score.
So I introduce… Score Streak!
Your Score Streak is basically the number of wins you’ve had, and how many points you’ve won, since you last lost a game. So if you’ve won three in a row you’ll be looking pretty good, but if you then lose a game you’ll be back to zero. (And your Score Streak will be reset if you don’t play for more than two days).
It’s in the beta now, no update required so let me know what you guys think.
Friday, January 22nd, 2010
I don’t like the sound of onLive very much – it threatens customisation, modding, and games “ownership” and those are all things I like a lot. When it was first announced I wrote a short post on some of the problems it would face (which is still surprisingly relevant right now, apart from my input-lag figure of 50 being a bit off – it should read 50 on top of a lot of other things).
Since we’ve got the first un-varnished “real world” report of what it’s actually like to use OnLive I wanted to talk some more about it.
If I were to make one prediction right now, it would be that whatever happens with onLive, mouse-controlled First Person Shooters will never take off on the platform. I think that of all the input methods we expect the mouse to be instantanious and accurate, and no genre is as “twitch” as the FPS.
As is kind of alluded to in the article, we feel better about input-lag with a gamepad. One of the reasons for that is that consoles already have a pretty hefty input lag – never less than 50ms and as much as 150ms in some games.
I think the really new point here, for me, is that a lot of people can get used to some input lag. Use it for long enough and we’ll stop noticing it. Which is fine, and a good thing for onLive, except… onLive’s input lag won’t be consistant. It’ll vary by at least 10 or 20ms through a play session, and up to 70ms depending on what time of day you play/what the local internet conditions are. Can we get used to that much variation? Maybe we can – we won’t know until we try it. I personally still find consoles subconciously irritating to use – I’m a massive responsiveness-whore.
The mouse-controlled onLive game is still doomed in my opinion, because we won’t be able to get used to it – we spend a lot of time using the mouse with “zero” input-lag, and will continue to do so when onLive is around. I really wish there was a web-app I could link to suddenly experience the mouse with a 150ms input lag (I had a quick look but couldn’t find one, and if I was handy with flash I’d knock one up) so we could all try it and discuss whether we’d enjoy going to that to play games.
To be honest, I think onLive is going to happen and be a real force in casual and mid-level gaming. But look at what core gamers are always driven by – the cutting edge. And onLive, despite how advanced the tech is, is not cutting edge when it comes to games – (relatively) low resolutions; compression artefacts; and lag. It’s a step backwards. And it will always be behind Sony and Microsoft’s home consoles.
It’s true that onLive can upgrade its graphics hardware at any time, and therefore get a step ahead of the existing consoles. Except, that’s not true. When Microsoft and Sony release a new console generation, the consumers at least pay them for it. OnLive has to foot the bill itself. They have no incentive to upgrade their hardware – they won’t be able to charge more for it*. And they will still be resolution-and-compression limited. I submit to you this: OnLive will never be the premium way of experiencing games. And the market for non-premium ways of experiencing games is unbelievably competitive. Unless you really believe that there’s a massive market of netbook owners ready to spend $30 a month to play Crysis when they’re near a wifi connection which is good enough to use onLive on… it’s not like cafes and trains and airport lounges are going to be thrilled with letting people use what promises to be the most bandwidth-intensive application of the internet.
So my message to onLive is: good luck fighting Nintendo and Sky for the casual crowd.
*you can argue this point, I admit – but I see onLive launching at near the maximum the market will stand, so there won’t be much room for them to go higher.
Friday, January 22nd, 2010
First up, thanks to the many people who have emailed me asking to be on the beta. I’ve put you on a list. I’m not entirely sure what or when is going to happen to that list, but there is a list, and you are on it.
A bit of inside info: the people we really like to get on the beta are the people who hang around in our irc room (#mode7games on irc.maxgaming.net) for a while, come back a few times, and who we get to know. I’ve found that these are the guys who really stick with the beta and become a good part of the community. If you’re *really* interested in playing Synapse, that’s the best course of action.
When not coding furiously on line-of-sight modes, I’ve been relaxing with the MW2 multiplayer. It’s a lot of fun, but what strikes me most is the kill/death ration of even the top players on a server – it tends to be very close to 1-1. This seems to confirms a suspicion I have, which is that the open level design makes MW2 quite a “random” game, where even a highly experienced and skilled player will be killed from behind a lot. It’s definitely quite a long way from Counter Strike in that regard. Having said that, CS is almost innaccessible to me even despite the 80 hours I’ve put into it over the years – eighty hours is obviously not that much relatively, but I trend to think that if you put that much time into anything you should be able to be at least competitive.
Thursday, January 21st, 2010
Better late than never! This week, we discuss tips for indie game developers, ModDB’s Desura, the cult of personality, Ron Jeremy and lots of other things that we probably shouldn’t talk about in public! Take heed!
Check out links from the show on our official Google Reader page
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010
First up, apologies for the site’s slowness. One of the following things has happened:
(1) We’re being slashdotted
(2) We’re being hacked
(3) Linode has gotten annoyed with us for some reason
(4) My Dad crashed the server while pissing about with cgi scripts
Obviously, I hope it’s (1)… who knows.
Second, Paul has absolutely promised to have the podcast up tomorrow lunchtime.
And third… Frozen Synapse. We’ve got some internet attention the past two days, and the response has been almost overwhelmingly positive. I am very excited about it.
I am also excited about Line Of Sight, or Dark as I’m calling it. Dark Secure is the new game mode du jour, and I really think you guys will like it. Update the beta as of two hours ago and that mode will be selected by default.
If you know of any forum communities or web sites which would like it, please send them our trailer.
Tuesday, January 19th, 2010
Thanks to everyone for their hard work on this: Bin had to do a lot of boring stuff (including while being ill) and Ian did a great job of directing parts of this trailer as well. Very proud of the team – hard to get decent quality video working online but I think we managed it! Please pass this video around as much as possible – put it on your Facebook page / send it as a “tip” to news sites / tweet about it – we really need your support. Thanks.
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