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| ZOMG Dev-Blog - this will end in tears I know it |
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If I weren`t stuck here frozen I`d harpoon you in the eye!
(5:47 26.12.2007)
Not as prestigious of an entry as I had hoped for the next one to be, but a submission nevertheless - that is Paul Vaulting.
 Thought of it while I stumbled upon this on JiG. It`s first glance screen had me hoping to finally see a game about jumping with a pole with a nice physics touch. You can imagine how the pingu-throw-wonnabe flash scrap that I experienced did not rise to those expectation, so I decided to give making my own another try.
I say `another` cause I did try and gave up a few times before. You see, what`s challenging about such a gamie that is supposed to use a semi-proper physics engine (for me at least) is the tweaking, adjusting and most importantly fitting your target gameplay to the engine`s convention. You can`t for example just decide to stop the tip of the pole when you go into `lodging mode` - instead to not totally rape the existing engine, you need to adjust the land and air friction accordingly.
I was just about to quit trying this time too, but then tried a number of random values on the engine behaviour, including most importantly the pole elasticity and came up with something I considered decent.
Another thing that made me always think such a thing has no way of working is it`s repetitiveness - so ok you can adjust the bar height, but thats about it. Same jump, same movement, same control - how can you expect for people to play it more than once if that`s all that is to it. Well the solution to that dilemma was supposed to be the randomized ground - to max out on your score you gotta tap, choose lodging spot and jump spot accordingly to the surface. Of course the `maxing out` people will restart the game for as long as it takes to get a decent starting surface, but after milking that jump as much as they can they`ll still need to decently land the next two fully random levels. For my lowered standards that`s a good enough substitute for solid gameplay.
Of course people don`t appreciate the randomness - it`s too apparent in this case. I get comments like `sometimes it`s really hard to lodge the pole` - well of course, if in real life you`d try to pole vault on a downward slope you`ll be lucky to walk away with a bruised ego. The point is to use the ground as best as you are able. If a crappy surface breaks your awesome 220 streak then tough luck.
Take the famous or infamous pingu-throw I mentioned earlier - you cannot deny it`s popularity and that much more than a handful of people will say that the game is addicitve - It`s hella random - you land on randomly placed mines (or what was the bouncy thingy) in a positions and angle you had no way of predicting in the clubbing moment, so by proxy - random. But the randomness is not as apparent there cause after all you were the one clubbing the poor bird, and he did land on the mine where you told him too - seems like a simple case of causality. Plus the game has what I like to call the `bowling effect` working for it. The way I see it, people like to bowl cause of the end effect - you hear a big bam, large objects go flying all over the place, the whole event was caused by you - so via logical implementation you and your throw are awesome. Who cares that there`s no real finesse or strategy to it and that most commonly you`ll be able to experience 10 different pin set variation and in which cases theres only one specific, right way to throw the damn ball and all you have to do is not screw it up.
UPDATE: The original pingu doesn`t seem to have any bouncy minees or whatnot - I must have been thinking about some iteration of it - but my point remains valid!
Anyway, the link to the game was accepted on i-am-bored.com - yey to that, zome traffics for me sitor, it has at the moment I`m writing this a rating of 1.7/4 - not yey. Kinda disappointed. By all means I didn`t think I made anything special, but I did hope I made something that the mainstream player would find average. Dead wrong it seams. Think I totally lost touch of what people really want to see in a casual game. I`m making stuff like I was doing it for myself - eye candy, spectacularnes and level-design saved for last or irrelevant - I just want to lodge some physics up this things onEnterFrame. Don`t know whether I should change my direction/strategy or go with the flow and risk that the only time any of my games will be appreciated is after I die in some obscure way. But making games I hate but know the mainstream loves wasn`t really the purpose of this site - if it was you`d be seeing nothing but noname game mazes here.
Oh well, we`ll see how it goes - at least I have a couple of devoted players that play the game as I intended it to be played - like mr Kai there on the scoreboards.
Hmm, this post already ran longer than expected both line and time wise . I shall then fast-forward through the topics I wanted to mention in an unintelligible manner:
Next Project: Portal Flash - I know it`s been done before and perty well I`ll admit - but wasn`t quite happy with its physics and level design implications. Demo will come no idea when, but hopefully soon - for now a screen with a short description:
Main objects Weighted Spheres - cos cubes harder to code in flash - but I will do an effort to do a companion cube, how could I show my face in public if I didn`t. The red ball is supposed to be the main character - I`m stalling his rendering because I suck at character animation - but the target look is a fat stick figure like in the schematic in-Portal drawings. the white lines are links - like in the PaulVault the pole is a link - so it pulls and pushes the linked objects - no idea how I`m gonna use it in the game but wanted to show off how nicely it goes through a Portal. Portals can be put also on moving, rotating and stretching walls - the latter means sometimes when you go through a portal which other side is of other size - the object will change its size accordingly - cool eh?
Of course the more complicated the theory the more buggy it`s incarnation - so I don`t know when will I work out a nice working demo, time shall tell.
Getting an iz3d monitor in January I hope. What triggered that decisions is seeing Beowulf in a dolby digital 3d cinema. Mmmm Angelina Jolie half naked in 3d - I`d so do her if I was that guy at the end, he wouldn`t live out to see the consequences anyway.
The effect of a dually polarized LCD might not be exactly the same - but I imagine some pants soiling when I fire it up for the first time in a game like Bioshock.
Also this is amazing (Head Tracking for Desktop VR Displays using the Wii Remote) must buy myself some bluettooths and try it out - It surpasses my wildest dreams seeing that technology on a iz3d monitor - if I get the opportunity to try it, I shall write about it assuming I survive the amount of awesomeness I`ll be exposed to.
Orange Box still awesome - didn`t even touch half life really - I have the delusion that I don`t have time for playing linear games that take more than 2:45 (my first Portal run :P). Team Fortress hella fun and equally as annoying. But you can feel how well the classes are balanced out by how all the classes are equally annoying as your foes. My type of graphics too - I can only hope the iz3d will work with them.
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You win again, gravity!
(7:48 24.12.2007)
Post incoming - for now link:
GAMIE
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Tis a cliché
(10:32 21.08.2007)
Well, poo - the last post was supposed to be about the upcoming adventure gamie, but before I finished writing it - it already became out of date. I gotta clean up my post-writing act and keep it fast and systematic.
The day-job is draining all life and motivation out of me, but gonna try to fix-up my bio-clock and retain working a few hours per day plus the lovely weekends.
I`m hoping to accomplish two things during the upcoming month. Finish a toy or demo of a physics-based minigame (probably that replay-themed one) and do a big chunk of work on my .. cue the drum roll .. online adventure game. 
It shall be a perty-looking, fully prerendered mini-adventure gamie, with that "Meanie Moose" character you can find in the gallery. It will be published one location/level/chapter at a time, meaning you will be given a challenge or goal and a small set of locations you can move around in, to complete it. When you do succeed - you will either jump to the next set of locations or level if you will, without the ability to go back OR .. you will see a nice friendly sign saying that THIS LEVEL IS STILL BEING WORKED ON!, but your progress will be saved. (somewhat like 3wish)
This benefits me, cause I won`t have to do the whole game in advance before publishing it, to only then realize everybody hates it - and benefits the users, giving them the simplicity of not having to search through dozens of location to find what they`re supposed to do to advance anyway.
The biggest challenge will be the "prerendered" part - it will be hard on my patience cause with my prehistoric machine it will take ages to render just one frame - and it`ll be arsing to put it all together in flash, but I`m thinking the end-effect will be quite worth it.
I will try to keep the plot coherent - but expect much randomness in between.
The first location is almost finished - I won`t try to retain any secrecy to avoid spoilage or anything and will upload some screens as the development goes.
And now I giev you the first look at how the game begins - clicky on the moose or HERE.
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No sleep - no title
(3:01 15.07.2007)
As promised, I aim to no longer stay in the shadows while this site rottens and gets covered by cob-webs. There shall be activity, even if it`s forced, insincere activity.
I also bring gifts. Not a toy, as mentioned before, but something that gives an illusion of an actually finished game.  A crappy game perhaps - but a game nevertheless.
This kept me awake for the past couple of nights, and I surely aged while finishing it up. I should probably get my prostate checked by now...
Anyway, hope this thing receives at least a mediocre`ly positive response. The awesome music will surely help. It reminds me of an oldie.. F16 or F17 game I played ages ago in the times where genres didn`t matter - you played what you had. I played that and Duke Nukem 3D Atomic, ah good times. Wouldn`t touch a jet-game nowadays.
So for the audible greatness which will surely boost likability I have this guy to thank for. If you like the music, go there and check out his other great tracks, but don`t offer any lucrative contracts to him just yet, he is not allowed to become rich before I do, period.
The game unfortunately delayed me greatly, and now there`s no chance I`ll manage to make it for that JayIsGames competition. I blame my beta-testers - i wanted to quickly publish this old, buggy thing I had lying around, as a distraction and proof of upcoming activity, but noooooooooo. Fix this glitch, fix that one, debug this bug, make a title screen, go shower, add sounds BLEH. Work always seems easier until you actually dig into it. I thought I could finish it up by Friday morning and have lotsa time to slap at least a demo of my idea for the comp together - but it ain`t happening. But I shall post what I came up with as soon as I have a couple playable levels for it. So you lose nothing, I lose alotta potential traffic, blargh.
Anyway, I promised a dev-blog - and I guess that means an analysis of this lil doohickie I put together:
Complexity - bad. Yep, I definitely overdid it with the physics on this one. This could`ve been a simple yet fun pendulum-experiment-game with a good, smooth playability which - together with N-like graphics - could`ve created a classic-simple-yet-fun flash. But no - I had to have proper bounce behavior - if this corner of this triangular craft hits this wall with this angle this happens - didn`t think I could get that any other way than by creating a 3-node model for the craft. Sure, you get proper enough bounces, but lose a great deal of playability, predictableness and smooth fun. But alas, it was too late and I was too lazy. I stuck with this remotely working engine and hoped for the best. And don`t even ask about the physics behind the moving gates.
Chances of succeeding - minimal. Before even hearing from the great and all-knowing voice of the public, I know this game won`t gain much popularity. Why, you ask? You aren`t asking? Doesn`t matter, I`ll tell you anyway - this game has no kung-fu, explodie action. If a game is about reflexes, people require enemies to shoot, bullets to dodge, cars to slam.. not buttons to press and finish lines to cross. The game has too little to offer in its current form which I will never be motivated enough to develop further. I only hope it will appeal to the "ropers" - a term that derives from the Worms games, but I assume it also applies to fans of many other games and minigames that are built around the pendulum effect fun. Oh the joy of swinging objects and letting go at just the right moment. It`s not a mainstream choice of play, I can tell you that. But you can`t deny there`s something to it. Here be a perfect example.
Replays - awesome. Ah, first time I bothered to do all the simple loggings needed to re-play the moves of the player`s run. The result you can see in the how-to window.  Dunno about you, but I consider that quite a fun feature and I`ll try to stick it into more games in the future. Also, some easter-egg info bonus for the people who bothered to read this entry up until now - on the Game-Over screen in the bottom right corner you have a small input form with dark grey numbers - the data there is quite larger than what you can see - that`s your replay data. To save it - click there, press ctrl+a to select it all, then ctrl+c and paste it to some notepad file or whatnot. Not planning to do custom replay playing just now - but if you think you had an AWeSOme run - you can send it to me for future purposes.
Oof, so tired. Might write some more and update this post later, but for now - sleep awaits.
Now without further ado:
CLICKY!
A large link! You must click it!
Some other thoughts:
- Been working some time ago, on a "roping" gamie. Now that I`m in this high-activity, low-standards mode, I thought I could try and finish it up and publish it too. I was quite disturbed to see a link to this Nitrome game on JayIsGames today. Alltogether with the screen that suggested roping gameplay and the usual awesome-n-cute graphics I thought "Crap, bastards beat me to it and did it better than I ever could".
Let me just just say - I felt quite relieved when experienced the actual gameplay. Mouse steering, heh - good luck with that...
- CaveStory Rules!!
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Alive again?
(4:13 10.07.2007)
Jeez, ages have passed since I`ve submitted an entry or did anything on the site at all, the time-stamps on the posts depress me. There is no way I could gather my thoughts and inject them into a coherent-sounding entry. In fact - I`m not even going to try. Just gonna ... list them, if you will:
- The coolness of the Kloonigames and 2dboy blogs got me craving for my own freq-updated development-blog with little touches of ranting. Thus I`m gonna drop the distinction between site-news and personal stuff and just try and write as often as I can. Some English-loving freaks will take this as another blasphemous insult to their beloved language, because as you can see my writing skills aren`t as sophisticated as one could hope for. But a poetic masterpiece is not what I will be going for. Just simply - as often as possible posted entries, showing I`m still alive and describing what I`m working on... or what I should be working on. And as hard as it may prove to be for my paranoid and selfish heart - I`m always gonna try to publish some "toys" before the initial games so that I can hear what you, the ignorant-visitors-that-don`t-even-read-blog-entries-or-post-comments-because-they-came-here-from-a-random-link-not-even-knowing-why-they-clicked-it think about the concept and what could be done to not totally screw it up.
While still on the blog-dash let me note that I found those blogs and many awesome games on this site. I hate you ALL for not telling me it existed for so long. It lists all the physics-based games I knew and loved and more. I basically soiled myself when first found it, as it links and reviews games that embody what I love most in games and what I thought was long dead in these 3d-10mln-dolla-budget-game days.
- I`m gonna try and enter this 3rd JayIsGames competition for which I have an idea and even something to show atm. I tried before and failed miserably. I generally have a hard time with these things due to deadlines and... the requirement of actually finishing stuff. But gonna try and be optimistic this time and keep the standards low so that I can finish in time. This here post pretty much sums up my problem with making games and why I have so little and so prosaic achievements to show for now. I totally didn`t give a rat`s ass about the response when making the NoName game, treated it like a "how do I shoot a flash to the web" practice project and look ... it had a bigger response than for example the snaky thing that I had relatively high hopes for and which basically went unnoticed. But I guess that`s the way the cookie crumbles. The knowledge that I`m not alone with this problem would be bracing if not for the depressing factor that 2dboy is talking about his baby-project, his bringing-fame-and-glory massive project... and I`m talking about basically one week minigames. How can I find anything smaller for distractions than that!? But oh well, guess that`s the way the high-aspiration-cookie crumbles onto the jar of shattered crumbs.
 - I`m a semi-half-partial-active-member of the Worms Armageddon community. Sure it looks like a game for 7 year olds from a first glance, but there`s so much more to it. Many, MANY variations of game styles, challenges, and rivalry on-line. If you once had a copy of Worms and only played it offline, you wouldn`t believe what happens once you open the internets to it. So if you`re a fan of games with polished physics and unlimited challenges for both the reflexes and strategist mind - you should definitely try it out and try it out now cause a new beta update has just been released. Its new features, amongst other things, include huge color custom map support and max 250 mines (mmm explodie fun). Best part is the game is insanely cheap - you can probably get it for like 5 bucks nowadays, and if you want a custom flag, map, patch or anything not included in the box, you don`t have to log on to some xbox-live or whatnot and pay 10$ for it. Just download it for free from many fan-sites around. Lemme link you to a couple of exemplary vids that present it`s funness. (meh, do a decent design you lazy sods)
- Lightning poor excuse for movie reviews (old!):
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN 3: Man, gets weirder with every part, but too mesmerized by Jack Sparrow to complain about anything. PRESTIGE: Plot-twisting, mindboggling awesomeness. CASINO ROYAL: Great action movie about a secret agent that bares similarities in the name and life-style of another called James Bond. PRISON BREAK: Illogical, unrealistic, silly, hard to watch - mindboggling is only the reason why everyone loves it so much. SPIDER MAN 3: Decent, first fight with Harry is best - most dynamic, however a viewing-pleasure-diminishing attempt at squeezing more than advised subplots into one movie must be noted. FIGHT CLUB & SIN CITY DVDS BOUGHT: Gotta love the classics - hurry up and make SC2 DAMMIT. 300: Shut up, I liked it, perhaps because of setting the expectation bar extremely low due to trailers before seeing it, and never being a history-nerd, that is at this point irrelevant. The fact of the matter is it is a meme now, and that means something, doesn`t it? BORAT: Lol, so primitive, yet so funny. NOT. NOT. CRANK: wtf HOT FUZZ: Drenched in British humor, but quite enjoyable if you can manage to turn off the part of the brain responsible for coherent plot recognition. STRANGER THAN FICTION: Harold quickly calculated the odds of his making an ass of himself in ratio to the amount of time he stayed to chat." nough said. THANK YOU FOR SMOKING: You would think this movie is about objectively presenting a subject for debate and leaving you with making your own argument. But the objectiveness decreases with every minute and at the end attempts to make you come to the conclusion they want you to come to.
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My fellow hideous inferior human pig smellies...
(6:06 11.10.2006)
Inspired by the funnes, humorous randomness and artistic factor of the "Invader Zim series" (I tell myself, I'm not too old to like it) I decided to give Jhonen's (the creator) personal work another go. My first encounter with it wasn't as stimulating. Probably approached it with the wrong attitude and expectations. Seemed like a pointless bunch of violent strips with no other purpose than to let out the negative emotions piled up throughout childhood.
But now with more of an open mind i found it rather amusing if not hilarious. It supports the reader with classy random humor, if such a thing exists. A perfect example would be the "Fillerbunny" - my personal favorite. The feature that got my attention most and made me giggle like a lil girl, is the self-awareness of all it's characters and the depicted struggle of the author to reach the upcoming deadline or his bosses expectations.
Vasquez engages in dialog with the reader via placing little notes in the panels - often containing self-criticism regarding the way he drew something and was too lazy to fix - or about how much his place smells of urine. Such little treasures will keep you amused throughout the books and will make the 25 pages seem like a eternity of good fun (meh am i trying to come up with a pitch line here or what) a very dark and disturbing eternity that is (better). An open mind is required - the artist does not avoid taboo topics by far. Child abuse, aborted fetus characters are just a few subjects I'd caution the more innocent minds against. And of course the bloddines, oh what bloddines it has.
Also memorable books: "Squee" - struggle of a innocent child's mind to avoid insanity when a world of violence and hatred surrounds it - and "I Feel Sick" - a battle (hah didn't use struggle) of a female artist for inspiration while her day job and society desperately tries to drain it from her.....a bit preachy, but the humorous balance is nicely kept.
Now opposed to the popular opinion "Johny The Homicidal Maniac" was the book I enjoy the least out of the collection. The character seemed to be a lil too emo for my taste. Turning his asocial problems into often unprovoked acts of violence and mutilation, but of course doing a little speech about it before inflicting the final blow. The tiny humor insertions just couldn't balance it for me. Good thing for the funny mini-strips placed here and there in the book, otherwise I could have had regretted the purchase (oh noes, not consumer wrath).
So yah overall good stuff and the geometrish art style is a nice, refreshing twist of the usual roundish ones - so give it ago if you've got the time - it's wacky!
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Snake game - and about time 