Day 0: Better Explosions!

Computer Games, Game design, Programming

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:

  1. An application of force (e.g. acceleration, perhaps affects on other entities)
  2. Awesome display of the color range from bright yellow to dark red.
  3. Badass sound effects.

Right now I’m concentrating on #1, with the others following in that order.

Birth of a Game Design Super Villain!

Beginnings, Computer Games, Game design

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!

Almost Non-Spoiling, Unprofessional and Short, Prometheus Review

Review

Prometheus was one of those rare films that I’ve actually expected to see. An alien prequel showing off Space Jockeys and their ships? With todays special effects? I’ll take a dozen, please.

I can calm those among you wondering whether the trailer spoiled the movie, it didn’t. In a good trailer-way, it blends visual elements from the film, but plays around with their order to mess with our expectations. Of course everything doesn’t go as planned and everybody ends up having a bad time, this is given, there are no market for feel-good sci-fi films about aliens. It is the nature of that bad time (and the subsequent solutions) that we are there to see.

My biggest (and pretty much only) disappointment is the nature of the premise of that bad time. This premise is presented in the very first scene, which quite frankly doesn’t make any sense, no matter how you grok it. The first scene is (by my interpretation) about the origin of (human) life on earth and just clashes with what I understand e.g. evolution is all about.

Now, you can do sci-fi films in two ways. Either you explain everything so that even dumbest among me understand how everything is supposed to work (ex. Inception), or you leave some things un-answered and vague, such as in original Alien. Nothing was told or known about the origin of the ship, its cargo or purpose. The first way expects that everything checks out, you can’t really have any big gaps in your back story unless your viewers are expected to really sell their disbelief to the lowest bidder. The latter way produces often more sci-fi-ish results, the sense of wonder.

Either way of these can work. Prometheus tries the first, but fails. I’m sorry. I’m prepared to argue about it and be proved wrong in my interpretation or at least swayed enough to suspend my dis-belief.

The above doesn’t make Prometheus a bad film. The acting is strong through-out, Fassbenders David (the android) is chillingly perfect. Charlize Therons cool (but not cold) company lady is one big meow in a silver business suit. Noomi Rapaces Shaw is the one who shows what humans are made of. As a recovering feminist it always warms my heart to see people portrayed as characters rather than gender stereotypes.

As such, the ending leaves me slightly contradicted. On the other hand it’s made quite clear that this really is an alien prequel, which is nice, in a way, kinda. On the other hand, the last survivors noble decision in the end left me with a startrekish feeling of humanity.

10th Anniversary Post!

Computer Games, This Blog

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.

Beginnings, Computer Games, personal, Programming

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.

Friday Night Ramblings, part 2.

Current Matters

You know you have hit somekind of low when the only reason you decide to right to your blog is that you are going to have a nice long line of 1’s in the permalink.

But then again, this blog has traditions, everybody remembers the big triple-8 entry that is still being discussed in Slashdot. That last thing is possible untrue, but you might as well believe it. Ramble ramble.

I just got back from my working out, first 1.5 hours were light, but the second 1.5 was not. Add o.5 hour of cycling and you have a rather tender piece of a person right here. I sincerely recommend exhaustive physical activities for everyone, the innumerably light sense of being afterwards is the purest form of existing I’ve felt.

That sounds so grand I feel the need to return this blog back to ground (and beyond!) and I’d like to say something like “I just farted”, but it wouldn’t be true and if this blog is about something it’s truth. And when I say it’s about truth I mean that it’s not to an extent that I’m not comfortable in admitting. Hows that for a ramble?

Monday Night Ramblings

Ramblings

Hello, good evening, how are you? I’m fine thanks.

The best way to stay relevant in Gooogle searches is to keep on producing content. As it’s just me and the bots, it really doesn’t matter what the content is, so, as usual, this is me leaving the here and now on a tangent.

I read yesterday that Chris Robertson had died. He won an oscar in 1968 as a mentally challenged man in the film Charly. The film was based (faithfully as I recall) on Daniel Keyes’ novel Flowers for Algernon. I remember being rather impressed with the novel as well as the film. In the story, Charly receives an experimental procedure that makes his intelligence rise first to a normal level and then high above normal. He goes through life, from where it had stopped for him, in an accelerated pace (e.g. finally understands that the men in the bar weren’t friendly but making fun of him, falling in love).

Of course, in a Hollywood film like this, this can’t be the case for good. The experiments effects subside and Charly recedes to his previous level of intelligence. Despite its premise (a procedure that improves intelligence, albeit briefly) for this lowly way to solve a “what-if” scenario I would be hesitant to call the story Sci-fi. For a counter-example how to solve the premise (and be Sci-fi), see Isaac Asimov’s Lest We Remember.

We Have a Job Offer for You

Uncategorized

Please, apply to us for a job. We offer interesting work related activities and sometimes a promotion. We have a great working culture, even the dumbest noob will get help, although we don’t hire them. They are either born here or result of a recent acquisition. Of course, you are expected to learn everything you need to know, even though you really don’t have any time for that during your work.

We are also diverse as fuck. There are people from all kinds of backgrounds, there are engineers and business majors, for example. And as you can see from these people profiles, even one attractive female dares to work here, although she just designs GUI’s and thinks of herself as a gamer since she plays Angry Birds on her phone. She’s also married and a lesbian.

We also offer competitive salary plus benefits which means we pay you what everybody else is paying and little less. We have a lovely working environment with minimum bureaucracy which is to say that there’s some of it and in any case more than we are prepared to admit.

Just check out these pictures of our founder and CEO in their luxury cars as a testament to how fun it is to work here and how successful you must become! Come on, lets draw these boxes on the white board and hand me those post-it notes!

On these points, we find it compelling for you to try and get our attention. You won’t probably get it, but who knows? Maybe if everybody else wanted to hire you as well. Yes, probably in that case. Otherwise… well there’s always someone who wins the lottery.

Random Link of the Week

Current Matters

It’s Friday night and not feeling my most creative (I’m not drunk!), so instead of trying unfruithfully trying to come up with something witty (because I know my readers are discerning bunch) I’ll just post a link taken from Reddit, it’s almost meta and that makes it almost witty, right?

Coffee Jerks: My friend took a series of 1950s/60s-era coffee commercials and edited them down to just the moments when the guys were the biggest jerks to their wives about coffee

Reddit discussion on the link