The first official post-Assembly version of Goldwingu is now released!
Celebrate this moment by listening to some Professor Elemental.
Bitches!
Category Archives: Computer Games
Day 0: Better Explosions!
I fire up Eclipse once again. Nothing has been gained so far and all my losses have only made me mad! But getting mad doesn’t mean you should lose your eye on the target. There is much to be done and multiplayer campaign mode is one of them but you have to start with essentials, better explosions.
When humans have a basic need for seeing that they make a difference in the world, the enjoyment a computer game can provide resides on its ability to give that feeling. When the most frequent form of interaction in your game is: push of a button -> the ship representing you emitting a bullet -> said bullet hitting an enemy -> explosion, it pays to make that interaction as rewarding as possible.
That means better explosions! Shit must get broken! This is what happens in the original Goldwingu, but it isn’t enough, it’s just random movement of the pixels that made up the enemy ship, there is no apparent force behind it. Better explosions should give you:
- An application of force (e.g. acceleration, perhaps affects on other entities)
- Awesome display of the color range from bright yellow to dark red.
- Badass sound effects.
Right now I’m concentrating on #1, with the others following in that order.
Birth of a Game Design Super Villain!
Assembly 2012 (Summer) Gamedev compo entries have now been published. I believe this makes me now a published game author…
http://www.assembly.org/summer12/news/gamedev-entries-published
EDIT: The votes are in, I came in last. Fools! You don’t know what you’re playing with, you don’t know what you have awakened! The Bane of awesome gameplay and top-notch audio-visual implementation shall soon devour your souls leaving only bare, quivering, well-entertained husk of a human being left!
Die Has Been Cast
I’ve just entered my game to the Assembly 2012’s Gamedev compo. Also a beer has been opened.
10th Anniversary Post!
Today this blog turns 10 years old. I didn’t have anything special planned for this occasion so, I thought I’d just give a quick update on what’s going on.
My game is progressing rather well, despite strong discipline on the way I’ve been working. The game is a rather simple (and classic) shoot’em up were every idea is stolen. Enemies come from the top of the screen in waves. The movement of the players ship is based on an old coin’op game I remember playing once and only remember it through its Finnish name Sukkula. The ship moves like it has a mass and inertia. If anyone recognizes this game, inform me about it’s proper name and be rewarded.
The amount of enemies will grow untill the end of time / until you run out of memory. This idea comes from an old Amiga game Datastorm (1989), in which the number of enemies gradually increased from level to level, until your machine was unable show them on screen, which still didn’t deter the game from pushing more enemies to the game.
The players ship produces certain amount of energy which can be distributed to shields, weapons or thrusters in various ratios. This idea is of course from the original X-Wing (1993) from LucasArts. This is what I call a Light Tactical Element (LTE). I’d like to have more LTE’s in the game, but at this stage I’m more interested in getting something finished. With Computer Games, you can always improve and re-work your stuff.
That’s the gist of it. I’m close to releasing the first playable version of it.
When Life Hands You Lemons, You Reboot.
I took a six-month-long leave of absence from my less than satisfying and respectable day job. Now I have pretty much all the time in the world to see what I can make out of this. I really have no excuses, I have the time and sustenance and skills as well (or the ability to aqcuire those skills).
Other than excersing body and mind I will come up with at least one game and publish it. I really don’t expect anything other from this but the satisfaction of creating something real and maybe a work example/experience.
I’m also planning on documenting the whole process here on my blog, tagged properly.
Finnish Game Jam, Pt.2
Okay, the jam is almost over, our game is finished. Fire! To deadify! Your rivals! I am quite satisfied what our team of three accomplished in just 48 hours. We hadn’t met before and there was nothing ready before the jam. I felt it kind of unfortunate that I, almost immediately after the theme for the jam and the voluntary accomplishments were announced, came up with the game idea.
Unfortunate in the sense that in a happening like this, it might be a bit risky to hang yourself on an idea right-off-the-bat. Fortunately the idea carried us to the end. And stop reading this and try out the game!
Finnish Game Jam
At the moment I am taking part in Finnish Game Jam, part of the Global Game Jam. We are to make a game in 48 hours, without prior idea or team. There are certain constraints, mandatory and voluntary ones. Right now we are progressing rather nicely. We have a programmer, a designer (me) and an artist in the team.
We have a solid 20 hours to go…
My Very First Game Console
I have been involved in a long process to buy some furniture to my appartment. I have cherished the thought to be, finally, able to have all my books and comics in relative order and realizing the quality of neat. This process has involved numerous trips to local flea-markets and what-nots. Last Saturday I found a perfect pair of book shelves but didn’t have the money to buy the upfront.
Today I went to get my business finished and happened to take a glance around the shop. There it was, innocently lieing on a bare shelf, a Super Nintendo box. Priced at 15€, I made an unusually quick buying decision for me.
Previously I haven’t seen much sense in owning the hardware of an old console itself. If one wishes to play old games, it is much convenient to run them on an emulator. Granted, this case existed when I had no extra money to put on frivolities such as concrete objects. Collecting consoles has always belonged in the when-I’m-rich -situation, which I guess I’m slowly advancing toward.
SNES it is.
The Future of Computer Games
NOTE: This article was supposed to appear in a Gaming related website (one more prominent than this) but due to certain re-arrangements concerning the operation behind the website, this plan has been (now finally) abandoned. Cheers and all the best to Nick.
We are peering in to a crystal ball to see what kind of developments we might see in gaming in the next 10-30 years. Usually when people make predictions they tend to exaggerate the short term development but underestimate the long term development. I take 10-30 to be short term so I’m taking the safe route proposing that things will stay mostly the same. We wont have the “holodeck” or “brain-computer -interfaces”. The computers we use will look mostly like the ones we use today. Perhaps they will be smaller, quieter but not light-based or quantum-anything. Programming of sort will still be required, Artificial Intelligence (AI) won’t be doing the job of game development for us, and cars will, for the most part, stay in the ground.
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