Dungeoner: January 2010 Archives

GOG now also sells Activision Glory

By volsung on January 30, 2010 3:45 PM

So, beginning this week, Good Old Games, the retro-gaming portal, is also selling Activision titles, starting with Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers and Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura (Spells and Clockwork in Spanish, just for laughs).

What can I say... I had to buy both!

Sins of the Fathers is the first chapter on the Gabriel Knight series, created by Sierra, and it's just one of the paradigms of point-and-click adventures, if not for the story (that is great), the characters (including the narrator), or the lovely graphics and ambiance, because Tim Curry gives voice to Gabriel himself, and Mark Hamill to detective Mosley. Which is awesome. The other two chapters (The Beast Within and Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned) will hopefully follow.

About Arcanum, well, there's no way I can just explain how epic it is with a short review. If you haven't played this isometric jewel from the 90s, you've lost something really good. Still very enjoyable (at least for me, way more enjoyable than some of the most recent softcore RPGs).

While these are indeed two of the best games Activision hold currently rights of, the door is open to way more awesomeness. Just to mention a few gems from the past: Interstate '76, the Mechwarrior series, Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, Civilization, every game ever released by id software (Doom, Quake, Heretic, Hexen, Wolfenstein...), SiN, the Total War series, Vampire (Redemption and Bloodlines)... and lots more.

I remember I couldn't play some of these games back in the day because my computer sucked, or because I was too young to afford them, or even because I wasn't able to find them at the stores. I still have a thorn on my side because I wasn't able to buy Urban Runner back in the days. Trying to get some of them after all these years has been usually not as successful as I would have liked; slow emulation, compatibility problems, obscure sites... at some point I just stopped searching for pre-2000 titles as it tends to be quite a hassle just to make'em work.

And now, for roughly €4 you can get (usually) almost perfect DRM-free versions of these games. Finally.

I love you, Internet.

Dungeoner goes Tumbling... Tumblering... Tumbring... Tumblring... to Tumblr

By volsung on January 30, 2010 2:59 AM

Since a couple of days I've been posting (auto-posting, even) Dungeoner's updates on tumblr., that micro-blogging platform for... uh... some weird 2.0 people. If you're into that site and use it to follow people and that kind of stuff, you can now follow Dungeoner as well.

Although, I must say, you shouldn't really expect much more activity there from my side.

No Internets!

By volsung on January 30, 2010 2:22 AM

So, next week I'm moving to my new apartment, that (of course) it's still not connected to the Outside World ®. That means that, at least for some weeks (maybe a month) I won't be able to post updates from home. I can still write them, tho, and post them from work, but it will probably slow down the rate a bit.

What can I say, but sorry!

Cities XL to close its online mode

By volsung on January 27, 2010 9:38 PM

Cities XL, the city builder with mmo pretensions (with a leveling-like system I wrote about) is, sadly, closing down its Planet Offer on March this year. The main cause? Lack of subscribers.

I must say I haven't played a lot during this time, but, while the game is still a very nice single player city builder, it just won't be the same. I really liked the idea of working together with other players to obtain a sustainable economy. Well, money will always be money, although I really don't know how much it may have cost to maintain the servers (including all the manpower behind them, probably quite a lot), and I guess MonteCristo isn't a company that can handle, let's say, only a 5% of their online users being "premium".

I can't but praise MonteCristo for being honest and open, giving two months notice. It's kind of sad that this will probably be one of those stains in their records.

The question now is, what went awfully wrong? Was this predictable? The news states the subscription rate was lower than expected. Reasons?

Maybe it's not really the kind of game to go online, maybe it would have been better to make it browser based, maybe paying for the planet offer wasn't interesting enough for their players... Remember Hellgate? When players can get almost the same paying and not doing it, it's hard to make some real money out of the situation. It's one of the reasons most F2P MMO just make no fucking sense on higher levels; either you pay, or you're not allowed to play the high end content.

In CitiesXL the differences between paying and not doing it were quite inexistent, in terms of gameplay. Having more kinds of buildings won't make your city more "powerful", as your citizens won't ever ask for anything you can't have. Having them doesn't make the game easier either, it just gives more content, but nothing really astonishing, über or game imbalancing.

Maybe it just needed armies. Territorial control, something to compete for, instead of playing "alone with other people". I never used the chat. That's bad for a multiplayer game, I'm telling you.

Anyway, good bye, Planet Offer. Looking forward to Cities XL 2011.

PD: At some point, we'll see this game on Facebook, called "ShitCityApp" or something like that. And 40 million users will -need- to keep an eye on their cities every 5 minutes. I'm telling you.

Death Raiders - Braaaaainnnsssss...!

By volsung on January 25, 2010 10:03 PM

Remember the latest enemy update? Well, I told you I wasn't really fond of the skeleton, and neither was our main programmer. "Too magical, maybe it's better to have a zombie that is -really- rotten instead". So, behold our new monster... the... uh... really-rotten-zombie!

(x2)

And this is how it actually looks ingame, at two different levels:

Sweet, isn't it?

Bug Tracking

By volsung on January 24, 2010 7:37 PM

As projects grow development starts to get messy, especially when there's more than one person working on it. It may be obvious, but sometimes a bug is just forgotten because at the time you were told about it, you were centered on something completely different. Or maybe you're working on some code somebody else did, and find something strange you don't really understand, or you do understand but think you can code better. Well, sometimes you might fuck up something you didn't realize it was directly related to that piece of code. What to say, shit happens.

While Death Raiders is somehow a small project (as the team, heh), it's not bug-free. More and more lines of code are written everyday, and sometimes there are unforeseen circumstances that happen during a game, and might just break your scripts. Usually is minor stuff, but if coded in a really bad day, it could as well mean that the whole server crashes when, I don't know, the game tries to move a character to a non-existent coordinate, or a player tries to attack an out-of-bounds tile writing the Javascript by himself. It's not always easy to cover every single error a script can have.

Until now, we've been using just some kind of internal forums, where the Alpha testers are enforced to post all the problems they face. Moving towards the new interface, however, means that players are less prone to give their feedback. Why? Because now they need to re-log to access the old interface. Of course, people can just tell you on your instant messenger "hey, this is wrong, fix it", but it's not as effective as leaving a simple error report in a forum.

That's why today, I've been struggling with Mantis and Bugzilla, two of the most famous bug tracking tools, both of them freeware, and web based. While I'm more familiarized with Mantis (as I've used it before), I've finally decided to install Bugzilla. I'm still trying to finish the set up, tho.

These tools are just that, bug trackers, with options to set a different relevance for the problems or suggestions, their status, the version of the software they belong to, who's working with them, if they are resolved or not, and extra files attaching. Quite cool, when you get it to work as you want. Plus, the interface is really straightforward, at least for the reporters.

If everything goes right, maybe I'll be able to show some stats in a couple of months. If not, well... no stats :P

I can haz email

By volsung on January 24, 2010 1:14 AM

Just a small update, all the email addresses @dungeoner.net are finally working again. Apparently the redirection was only part of the problem, Gmail needed a couple of changes on the settings as well (as I'm still using gmail accounts as "base").

Anyway... sorry for the lack of updates today. Been on the town today, and working on the server a bit. I'm also searching for a new studio, and, well, it's been quite a busy day. Let's hope tomorrow brings a more profitable day.

A look into AGS Award Winners

By volsung on January 24, 2010 12:34 AM

Bored? Don't know what to play? An adventure maybe? Oh, but all those adventure games nowadays just take so long to buy, download and play... and then you get a "meh" adventure... hrm... may there be a quicker option? There is.

Every now and then there's an independent adventure appearing on this blog, the latest one being The McCarthy Chronicles, and a good percentage is done using the same engine: Adventure Game Studio. Maybe it's because it's easy to use, maybe it's because it's one of the most complete suites for this kind of games, or maybe it's just because it has one of the biggest communities, but it's obvious that the engine gathers a great number of them, in general.

On the official webpage we can find most of these adventures, including their download links and any extra information needed to run them. You can add many filters to the search so you nail your search matching your criteria. To do so, just go to the "games" section. However, every game is listed there. You can, of course, limit the games by overall rating, but there's something even better. The Award Winning games.

There, you'll be able to find all those games that actually won awards in different competitions. Any of them will give you at least a good afternoon, or at least most of them. Of course, the list may not contain all the good games, but at least you can be sure that the ones included are actually excellent (and I'm telling you, some of them have professional quality).

So, next time you're bored, you know what to do, adventurer. Or, of course, you could as well just start your own.

Tutorial - Animating with Photoshop

By volsung on January 21, 2010 10:25 PM

As I said yesterday, it's now possible to create animated gifs directly with Photoshop (since CS3). Although you wouldn't use these directly in a game, you might still want to create some animated sprites to show on art feedback forums, or maybe you just want to rock the hell out of everyone with a cool avatar, or... I don't know. Anyway, here's how to do it.

Please, forgive me, my Photoshop is in Spanish, although the instructions will be given in the more suitable Imperial tongue.

(Click to show full size)

First you'll need to enable the animation tab, which is hidden by default. To do so, click on "window" and then on "animation". You should get something similar to the image above.

Then, just work with photoshop as usual. Create the whole animation cycle in the same image, using different layers. Once you have them all, you'll need to create more frames, and show/hide the layers as needed to create the animation:

With the small square you'll duplicate your current frame. Once selected, any changes you make on the image won't affect the state it had in the rest of the layers. With the bin you can, of course, remove an unwanted layer. You can change the duration of each frame by clicking on the small arrow next to the time, right below the frame thumbnail.

With the small reproduction controls you'll be able to check your animation on the main view. You can save your progress using the PSD file format.

Once you think your work is done, you want to save it as an animated gif. To do so, click on "File..." and then on "Save for Web and Mobile Devices...", or Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S. You'll get the usual window, but take a closer look at the part highlighted in the following picture:

Here you have once again the reproduction controls for the preview, and the loop options. You will be able to select whether the gif should loop forever, or just run once. Normally you'll want the first option. Photoshop defaults to the second.

When everything is ready, just click save and... there you are!

Ask whatever you want

By volsung on January 21, 2010 8:27 PM

Just a short entry to say that I've just created a formspring.me profile. So, from now on, if you want to send anonymous love letters, it'll be a lot easier! You can find it under this link, or under the (same) link on the sidebar.

For those who don't know about the Intertubes, formspring.me is a website where people can ask you stuff, and you can answer them. Pretty basic and straightforward. It's main feature is the possibility to do it from a totally anonymous account, so the inquired has no idea of who's asking him the question. Clever? I really don't know, but well, only time will tell.

Stalkers are welcome, as long as they bring roses and wine.

Problems with the email

By volsung on January 21, 2010 1:13 PM

I'm not getting any email sent to @dungeoner.net addresses, so, if you're trying to send me something, probably I won't be able to receive it. Sorry for the inconvenience (especially for me!).

Will comment on these news when everything is working again. Time to speak with my domain host customer support! Yippie!

Mortal Online - Stress Test

By volsung on January 21, 2010 12:17 PM

So, I've just received this newsletter today from StarVault:

2010-01-21 12 18 30.png

So, if you want to test this awesome MMO paying nothing, you'll have time to give it a sneak peek. Probably a buggy one, as it's a stress test, but fun nonetheless. If you're interested, just check Mortal Online's official webpage.

Small animation

By volsung on January 20, 2010 11:01 PM

Just testing the animation features of Photoshop CS4 with a small animated sprite of an unarmed Zarna.

(x2)

Not much action here, but it only took me a while. I might even write a small tutorial soon, not on animation, of course, as I'm not really good at spriting, much less at sprite animation, but at how to do so with Photoshop CS4.

Photoshop CS3 works more or less the same, but before that either ImageReady or other specialized software, but now, the cheap (only $699 or $999!) graphics suite allows its users to do it as well. So, soon, a small tutorial on how!

PD: Yes, I do have a barbarian fetish of some sort.

Death Raiders - Death and resurrection of a Northern Son

By volsung on January 19, 2010 5:59 PM

Last Sunday my main character on Death Raiders, Kaljim, died. It was that kind of stupid death; the doorbell rang and I felt the urge to check why, hoping that my brave warrior would be able to run for long enough. He couldn't.

While normally that wouldn't have been a problem (he was a really sturdy guy), there were way too many zombies, and two specters. When I came back, he only had 4 out of his usual ~50 hitpoints. The horde was surrounding him (gah! I didn't even manage to cover his back on a corner!) and even if he could slay some two ghouls, one of the specters just sent the fighter to Taharda's arms.

It was a silly mistake, nonetheless, and I payed for a high price for my distraction. Frustration. Good old frustration.

As you might remember, death in Death Raiders is very real, and, above all, permanent if you don't take care. As I was playing alone (it was an easy dungeon!) nobody could resurrect my body. Kaljim is lost forever, and with him, his mighty +4 sword. He won't be forgotten, however.

And suddenly, life just became much more precious for Tanhausser, my main alter. She's not a strong as Kaljim was, but she's a bit more clever, and her affinity to the Spheres of Power is noticeable (SN 2, she's still a fighter).

So, hopefully, she'll be able to remember that life's a precious gift, and that dungeons aren't the proper ground for over-confident feet. Hopefully.

Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

By volsung on January 19, 2010 1:15 PM

I need to know.

Hellgate - It's back

By volsung on January 18, 2010 8:39 PM

Maybe you remember that short mention of the first expansion for the Korean version of Hellgate London posted a couple of months ago in this blog. If you, as me, thought that what happened to Hellgate was a shame, and that the game may had been evolving in a cool way on the Korean market (or at least, evolving in any way), then, you're having a lucky streak!

Hanbisoft, the Korean company currently maintaining the game is re-releasing the game en Europe, America and Japan after the launch of the Chinese, Taiwanese and South Eastern Asian servers later this year, including the upgrade pack (Hellgate: Resurrection) and the aforementioned expansion (Hellgate: Tokyo).

Source: Gamasutra

Rant - Videogames aren't anticool anymore :(

By volsung on January 18, 2010 3:49 PM

There used to be a time when playing games was a thing only freaks did. Believe me, I was one of those. Even if there wasn't really difficult to find anybody that played videogames, those who did it were considered "strange", and, if they did play quite a lot (as I did, for example) socially disabled. We spent our hours playing with that shrill machines that moved some weird anthropomorphic forms on the screen, instead of going outside and playing football, or hanging out with friends, or whatever kids for our age were supposed to do, apparently for no reason.

At that time, games were hard. They were often frustrating, as well. Maybe they weren't better, but even the most random title had a life span of years. I still play the first Metroid every now and then, or Contra, to name a couple, and they are almost as good as they were. Intense, hard. Normally, you won't be able to make it to the end if you haven't trained at least for a couple of weeks, in some of them.

But that's not happening anymore. At least not on the "mass market"; because that's what it is. Games aren't meant to be original, creative or even interesting on 95% of the cases. They are meant to be sold, as much as possible. Is Modern Warfare 2 the best shooter ever? I doubt it, but certainly has sold more copies than any other one.

Is this change necessarily bad? Well, it surely has brought games to a wider audience, although I wonder if something has been lost in the path. Luckily, nowadays, creating a game is easier than ever, and we get tons of great games made by "normal" people, independent developers that just want to do their games as they want them to be.

Internet is often the only way to know about these titles, and I can't but think that I'm missing tons of great titles just because I wasn't able to find them. I try to follow as many websites as I can, checking for anything that might catch my eye (because, of course, another of the consequences of the current "ease to create games", is the huge amount of not-so-well-resolved games), and still I keep learning about games that apparently came out years ago and got almost no coverage, even on these "expert" publications. Sometimes is just a signature on a forum, or a link on a comment in a blog.

And I can't, but remember the time when almost every single game had at least a page on the videogame magazines. And then I rant.

McCarthy, the new Tex Murphy?

By volsung on January 17, 2010 9:14 PM

I want to bring your attention to this small jewel I just found and got through, The McCarthy Chronicles, an adventure-game divided into various short chapters (about 2 hours of gameplay each?), the first one being the only available at the moment.

We'll control the actions of Rick McCarthy, a prototypical Noir detective, guiding him through the resolution of a case where a raw reality, satanism and old legends blend gracefully creating one of the greatest ambiances I've found in recent adventure games.

The whole game color palette is in grey-scale, save for some of the elements on the scenery, giving it that awesome "feeling". The story flows smoothly, and the way it's related is just brilliant. The first chapter of the series just creates the setting, but Hell, it does it in a way you can only think about getting the second one! The game is available for free, although the author, Calin Leafshade, humblely accepts donations.

You can download the first chapter from the AGS database, here.

Death Raiders - New enemies

By volsung on January 17, 2010 2:02 PM

Just added a couple of new monsters to the game last night.

Banshee

Skeleton

Lich

Spectral Mass

Shadow

As you can imagine, most of these are pretty badass. Not really fond of the Skeleton (or the Lich, which uses the skeleton as base) although it will appear often using armors, which should improve the appearance a bit. Still, I might end up re-doing them. It's kind of difficult to paint an outlined ribcage with 6 pixels of maximum width.

My personal favorite of these? The Banshee, probably, although I think the Spectral Mass is rather cool.

Preview - Wake

By volsung on January 16, 2010 7:35 PM

Right after Vessel's preview, I'm bringing you another cool game soon to be released on PC, Wake.

In this adventure platformer, created by Boss Baddie (Lunnye Devitsy), we'll play as an engineer trying to flee from a ship that's sinking, a very commendable attitude.

The game features some lovely 2D graphics and tons of cool effects (tons of particles, layers, shader intensive stuff, and so on) you can already check by downloading the rolling demo from the official webpage. It's kind of hard to explain with just images, but the results are really exceptional, so you might want to actually download the aforementioned demo. Still, as I am a cool guy, here you are: Pics! (Click on them for full size).

Old-school graphics and the most advanced effects get blended gracefully (and a bit blurry, in these images). The game still has no official release date, or. at least, I haven't been able to find it. But damn, it does look quite good already.

Preview - Vessel: 2D + Platforming + Physics = Win

By volsung on January 16, 2010 4:58 PM

I'm quite sure that Strange Loop Games, a small indie company from Seattle, is going to give a lot to talk in the following months. Founded by John Krajewski and Martin Farren, Strange Loop's goal is to use all the amazing hardware capabilities we currently have (compared to those we had say 10 or 5 years ago) to push the gameplay one step further by the creative use of physics simulations, instead of just getting better and better 3D graphics.

Their first attempt to do so is Vessel, one of the finalists for the Independent Games Festival this year.

Vessel is a 2D action platformer with physics-based puzzles, where we'll find characters made of different fluids, that will behave how you'd expect them to, for example, when chopped by a giant metal blade, or when crossing through the holes of a metal fence. This creates quite some original challenges to one of the most classic basic genres.

The game is still under development, and we'll probably come out at the same time for PC and game consoles (PS3 and 360, at least).

John Krajewski was interviewed not long ago by IndieGames about the game. If you want to know more about this amazing piece of art, just check the article here!

Game Maker changes its logo. God kills a kitty.

By volsung on January 15, 2010 6:14 PM

YoYo Games has managed to arise the rage of their community for Game Maker, their famous middleware, with a rather superfluous movement. They changed their logo. It wasn't really good before, but people got to like that red ball thing with the hammer. And I can totally see why, as now the company has decided this should be their most successful product's new logo:

At this very moment, there are 1206 comments on the release thread. Guess what users (and developers) are saying about that smiling monstrosity.

Are ASCII graphics dead?

By volsung on January 15, 2010 1:46 PM

Not for Cactusquid. Here I bring you, one of his (possible?) new projects: "Hide from the Sea".

The mood is really awesome, and the way the characters fade to show this "torchlight" appearance is quite cool. Can't comment much more, as this video is almost all the information there is about it.

First-Person Tetris

By volsung on January 14, 2010 8:18 PM

Ever wondered how cool it would be to be a Tetris block? Me neither, but here's what the people at "First-Person Tetris" thought it could be like. Random.

PD: Kudos for the scan lines!

Moving to a new platform

By volsung on January 14, 2010 12:47 PM

So, yes! These are the news I had prepared for a while. Dungeoner is moving to a new, dedicated server, which should among other things bring a nice performance improvement, both for you (as pages should be loading a tad faster) and for me, as the publishing performance will increase a lot, and things like task scheduling or background publishing will finally work (they couldn't be done on the previous hosting).

The blog is already set up in the new machine, although the nameservers will take a while to update. If you're posting these days, your comments may dissappear for a while, but I'll try to import every single one of them after everything has moved completely.

The new server isn't very fancy, but it should work quite OK for just this webpage, shouldn't it? Here are the specs:

Core2Duo@2.33 GHz 3MB L2 - FSB 1066MHz
2GB DDR2
2x500GB SATA2 Raid 0/1
100Mbps - Unmettered*

* This means there's no monthly traffic limit at all!

The computer is running Debian 5.0 (Lenny) 64bits.

For now I'm not using it for anything else, but, of course, nothing is set on stone.

Lack of updates?

By volsung on January 13, 2010 5:33 PM

Yes, I know! These past days have been a bit busy, trying to settle a bit on Gibraltar and basically gathering my senses once again. But don't worry, I haven't forgot about you! In fact, I was doing some background work on the blog yesterday, and I hope I can soon bring you some cool news about it.

Fly safe!

Updating the blog

By volsung on January 10, 2010 2:53 PM

I've just updated teh platform (MovableType) to version 5.01. Tried to make sure everything is working flawlessly, but there may be something in need of tweaks yet. If you find that something, just let me know!

Preview - Overgrowth, a sequel to Lugaru

By volsung on January 10, 2010 7:35 AM

I'm back and settled down after a long, long day, and I bring a preview with me!

Some of you might know Lugaru, an action/adventure title for Windows, Mac and Linux. I didn't, and now I think I missed something good. Don't let the furry theme fool you, the game is apparently quite good, and had a very good reception, especially on Mac. Although the graphics were a bit primitive, its combat system was quite advanced; deep, challenging and really fun. You can take a look in this video.

But I wasn't going to talk about Lugaru, but about Overgrowth, the sequel, developed by the same team, Wolfire games. The development has been going on for quite a while, and luckily for us this small indie team is very open when it comes to the relationship with their players, showing most of the improvements to the game almost as soon as they are done. This includes not only updates to the graphics engine, but also design decisions.

In Overgrowth we'll be playing again as Turner, the hero from the first game. There's not much info released about the storyline, but it will start some years after the events in Lugaru. Unlike it's predecessor, it will also include multiplayer features (co-op) and mod support.

Anyway, for now, most of the released information is about the game engine itself, and hell, the more I read, the more astonished I am. There's so much awesomeness I don't think I can cover it all.

I'll start with the core of the game, the combat. Apparently, it will be a couple of lightyears beyond Lugaru's. The Phoenix game engine allows things such as environment changing the way characters move, being different to fight in a steep hillside, a river or a random plain. The engine will consider things like slopes, mass and centres of gravity. This gif shows an early example of it, the character trying to maintain balance by leaning its body forward or backwards:

Sweet, isn't it?

The game also features what has been called "real skeletal animation". This means bodies will move as if they had bones, muscles and ligaments. A good example can be seen in this video.

As you can see, there are a lot of good things coming with this game, so many I can't just explain them all. Just for the sake of exemplification, trees and flora will grow, and they will grow differently depending on the environment surrounding them. What for? I have no idea.

So, as a lazy solution, I'm leaving this video showing off some of the awesomesausages.

If you want to see more, I can't but recommend you to take a look at the official blog. By the way, it's also a very good resource if you're making games yourself, as some of the articles can get really technical, and anyway, it's a great source of good ideas. Hell, they even want to implement modular armor!

Packing my stuff... again

By volsung on January 8, 2010 10:07 PM

So, here am I, putting the clothes again in the bag. I'll be flying to Gibraltar in 8 hours, hopefuly. Long day coming, heh.

Plus, there's already one casualty: My desktop PC. I'm not carrying it with me this time, so, time to survive with the Laptop, at least for some time. I'm already trembling!

Anyway, this shouldn't mean Dungeoner won't be updated, unless the plane crashes. If that happens, I'll let you know, somehow.

Anyway, back to the bags!

OpenGL vs DirectX - Back to 1997

By volsung on January 8, 2010 7:28 PM

Just saw a nice post in Overgrowth's blog about this subject. It's nothing new, and probably won't tell you anything you didn't know, but sometimes it's good to refresh it.

It's quite long, but interesting nonetheless. Plus, there's quite some nerdrage on the comments that's worth the click. If you want to check the article, just follow this link.

Review - Squid and let die

By volsung on January 8, 2010 4:51 PM

The other day I stumbled upon this pearl, Squid and let die, a game by Bagfullofwrong (who make games with pretty colours). The concept is, on the words of Robert D. Fearon (the developer) basely loosed on 1984's ZX Spectrum's game Transversion. As mostly none of you have played the former (and neither did I), some extra explanation might be needed.

The concept is simple; get all the shiny light balls on the grid, while dodging laser beams shot by the enemies moving outside the formerly mentioned grid. Easy? not at all.

If you think you have the balls for some old-school action/skill retro game, go download Squid and let die now from either the official page or Dungeoner's download mirror (available on the Downloads section).

Either way, don't forget to donate the author if you like it!

Design - Wizard fights

By volsung on January 8, 2010 3:37 PM

The other night I was futilely trying to sleep and my mind was wandering through the most random subjects. One of the things I was thinking about was videogames (RLY?), and the following rough idea came to me:

(Click for full size)

OK, that's just a mockup; a quick (and horrible) sketch, even. The idea behind is basically what would be a fighting game featuring wizards, mages, shamans and that kind of stuff. Although the controls would be basically the usual for this genre (including combos, and all that), the characters wouldn't be able to move from their places.

Different buttons would bring different types of powers (such as attack, shield, buff, de-buff, summon...), and powers would need mana. The mana recovery could be both passive, slowly regenerating over time, and active, getting huge boosts in "concentration mode", where we would be defenseless unless we've set up some sort of passive shield.

Maybe there could be something like a pool of different powers we could pick before battle, depending on the spheres our character could handle. These powers would always require the same combinations, but we could "equip" a fixed quantity of them, maybe unlocking the best ones by winning combats, or something alike. A small RPG aspect could also be inserted, such as equiping our character with different items to help him (or her) in combat.

Well, just a random idea.

Let's talk about LOVE

By volsung on January 7, 2010 11:04 PM

No, not that kind of love. Today, I was (randomly) strolling the Intertubes, when I found the following update in Twitter:

After being metaphorically raped by three different demon lords in Solium Infernum (a game I'll talk about soon), I wanted to try something else, at least for a while. My hand moved beyond my control and clicked the link. "What may this be?" I was asking myself. And after trying the Beta for a while, I'm still not sure. So, I'll try to explain it the best I can, and probably fail miserably.

LOVE is some short of micro-MMOG; well, that would be a MOG (Multiplayer Online Game) as, although it's all about persistant worlds, these are small, maintaining small player populations (rounding 200 users per server). It's a cooperative environment, where every player is facing the same NPC faction, and where, differently to other PvE games, collaboration is really important.

There are lots of reasons for this, starting by the player hubs. Players can build cities around monoliths. The position of these can be chosen by players themselves. Inside the area the monoliths cover, players can build other structures, and, the best part, modify the world itself, creating mountains, caves, walls or pits, in real time. Of course, the game needs quite a particular engine to allow this, and considering the game is the work of a single person (Eskil Steenberg), the results are quite astonishing.

The game features a colorful and shader-intensive graphical aspect; in fact, it's one of the things that have stricken me the most. It's a bit hard to see what's happening, everything looks blocky, in a cool way, and painted by an impressionist artist, but not that well. After half an hour my head was aching a bit, and I had some real problems to distinguish the enemies, their guns, and the mountains. I guess it's all a matter of getting used to it, and, of course, that the game is still in Beta and some of these shaders still need some tweaks.

The interface is very innovative. For example, fixed chat channels are replaced by a radio. Players are able to select which frequency they want to use, and every player in the same frequency will be able to read what's said in that frequency. Clever. Plus, players can use the radio to control some of the buildings (such as mines), activating them by sending some specific string of text through the specific channel. It's one of the things I liked the most.

Controls are a bit slippery; the game runs in a first person perspective, and we never get to see our character. There's no customization either, or at least, I wasn't able to find it. We don't see our weapon either, and some weird things may happen in some situations, such as firing our weapon against a building and see nothing happening, as if we didn't shoot.

At this very moment, there's no sound in the game, but there's a volume control, so I guess it's a matter of time.

Overall, the experience has been quite positive, and I can't wait to see what comes from this game. The core mechanics seem awesome, original, and the attempt is very ambitious, specially with the game being developed by just one person.

As my explanation may have been quite bad, I'm leaving you a video made by Steenberg himself explaining some of the basics.

Currently, the Beta is open to every player willing to pay â¬3; a symbolic quantity that will however help the development of the game a lot. Plus, there's the possibility to play with a friend for free while both players are connected at the same time. If you want to know more about LOVE, just visit the official webpage!

Death Raiders - Re-working the whole interface

By volsung on January 7, 2010 8:37 AM

Even if I don't write about it, Death Raiders is still moving forward. Maybe that's the reason, even, heh. Anyway, we're working now on a particularly interesting part, at least from my own perspective, which, may be a little biased. I'll let you decide.

(Click for full size)

These horrible graphics you're looking at here, are the game's main city. It will look way more awesome in a couple of weeks, don't worry. So, what's so interesting about it?

Well, until now, most of the management was done through a webpage; there were different sections like the market, the character sheets/inventories, the forum and such. Under the new schema, everything will be done directly in-game. It's not something really "original", as most MMO follow that path nowadays, but the way it's handled, I would say it's at least, a bit interesting. Everything is built and shaped by the players themselves. Or, being more precise, most things.

So, to put it simple, players will be in charge of building and upgrading all the buildings in the town, and will only have access to that content they've "opened". For example, building a Temple to a certain deity will also bring several new objects to the game, and continue doing so after each upgrade of the temple itself.

The idea is to move absolutely everything inside the game window. Everything. From the relatively normal things like the marketplace, shops, inns, guild houses... to even the account creation system. Plus, the way the game it's handled, it's even possible to just enter the webpage and watch other people play; initially, the idea was just to show the town live on the background while you filled the forms, but I guess it's tweakable.

The interface is still pretty primitive (although, working 99%).

(Click for full size)

As you can see, there're also some problems with the encoding right now. Well, I can promise those won't be there when we reach the first Open Beta stage.

You might also notice that we've added a zoom function (both images are on a 1:1 scale). At the moment it's working mostly perfect under Firefox, Chrome and Opera. Internet Explorer it's another story. We'll have to decide whether to change dramatically the way the zoom works, or just drop the support for Microsoft's web browser. The zoom is "smooth" at the moment, and bringing support to IE would probably mean lowering the game experience for every other browser. Sigh.

Anyway, back to the city thing. Instead of using a tiled background, this time we're going fixed. Fixed in a way that's still easy to let the city grow (as the "background" image is still done by using something similar to tiles and it's rather change-friendly). At the moment the image is 2048x2048 pixels. That might sound like "not too much", considering that there's even a non-useful zone (all the walls and the grass on the other side). As the size of the buildings is also fixed, I did some quick calculations:

(Click for full size)

However, the size isn't decided yet, and it's subject to change, probably doing it soon. Hopefully, we'll have something better to show in a short period of time, or at least, something more pleasant to the eye.

On a side note, we've been working on lots of other stuff, such as new powers and a new way to handle them, some combat tweaks (changed the formula to calculate the dodge probability), added bows, crossbows, some new armors, re-vamped dual-wield combat, and the character creation system... among many other things.

So, well, looking back to these past two weeks now, it seems like we did actually work a bit on the game this Christmas, doesn't it?

Preview - The Cat Lady

By volsung on January 6, 2010 4:56 PM

Remigiusz Michalski is some short of weird idol for me. His only previous appearance in this blog was when I spoke about his previous game, Downfall, that horrible, horrible game (in a good? way) still giving me nightmares.

Apparently, and thankfully, Downfall won't be his last trip to videogames development, and he's already working on his next title, The Cat Lady (beware! OST autoplay when visiting that link).

This time, we'll be guiding the actions of Susan Ashworth, a 40-ish year old widow that has a thing with cats (that's where the nickname comes from), and tried to commit suicide. Tried, and failed, as a friend found her about to die of overdose. She gets resurrected on her way to the hospital. But in the mean time, while walking the sharp edge between life and death, she learns something; even though life doesn't mean anything anymore for her after her husband's death, there's a person who still wants to help her. There're also four persons who want to harm her.

Again, we'll be diving in a psychotic mind's surreal world in a (quite probably) rather sick adventure not suitable for sensitive stomachs.

Once again, the tool chosen for the task will be Adventure Game Studio, luckily with a bit better feedback than Downfall, when it comes to inventory handling, for example. As far as it looks for now, the graphics style will keep in line with the previous title's, although, greatly improved, especially in terms of smoothness.

The game is currently scheduled for mid-January. If you think you have the guts, just keep an eye on the official Harvester Games webpage!

New section on the blog - Resources

By volsung on January 5, 2010 5:20 PM

Just announcing the creation of a new section on the blog, resources, containing (at the moment not much) information on Open Source and Freeware tools and, well, resources (such as graphics, sounds, etc) as well as some mirrors for these. It's still on its first stages, so, it's basically empty save for a couple of programs, but will be growing with time.

So, if you're searching for ways to start your project, some inspiration or whatever, you might find the section handy. As always, you can find it on the sidebar.

I want to believe

By volsung on January 4, 2010 10:02 PM

But I think it's not going to happen. For those who don't get it, that receipt, dated 2001, is for the preorder of Duke Nukem Forever, the game that would "come out when it's finished", officially cancelled not so long ago (when 3D Realm's development team said goodbye).

So, good luck, Slash000

Source:CrunchGear

The Game Prodigy - Playtesting your game

By volsung on January 3, 2010 3:37 PM

Just a short video by The Game Prodigy on playtesting videogames, do's and dont's, to get the best out of your game. Enjoy.

Death Raiders - The Power

By volsung on January 2, 2010 7:07 PM

A couple of days ago I slipped a picture of what, at that time, was a work-in-progress fireball effect. As promised, today, I'm going to write about Death Raiders' magic system, or, how we are calling it, The Powers.

Let's start from the very beginning; as I mentioned before, there are no classes in-game, which means powers aren't limited to one type of character. However, some characters may have a natural predisposition to magic, and be able to control it better than others. SuperNatural (SN) is the important attribute here.

Again, it's not only the total level what matters, but also the points you spent on it when creating the character, as these will cap the level of your powers. Don't worry, with a couple of formulas, everything will make much more sense:

Maximum Power Level = Initial SuperNatural Level
Basic Energy Points = Total SuperNatural Level x2
Power Energy Cost = Power Level

OK, so maybe I should explain now what Energy is, and what's that level thing. Energy is Death Raiders' version of the classic mana points. Not much to explain here; characters start their adventures with a pool of energy points and spend them as they cast their powers. There are certain ways to replenish this pool, although it won't regenerate by itself. Draining and transferring energy will be an option.

And the level part? Well, each power has 5 levels, the higher, the more powerful the effect is. As I said before, depending on how many SuperNatural points your character starts with, you'll be able to reach the highest levels or not. A common character should have two or three points in SuperNatural, in the best case, so, a character with 4 or 5 could be totally considered a wizard, or a cleric, or even both!

Now, the system might look quite standard. Of course, we like to go one step beyond. Powers are random. Does this mean they have to be searched for in dungeons? Yes, but it also means they can have different stats, as in, the same power being able to affect more characters, or doing more damage. We're using a variable called "Intensity" here, that means different things depending on the power. A healing power might cure IntensityD hitpoints, for example, effectively healing 1D hitpoints with Intensity 1 and 4D with Intensity 4. Normally, the higher the spell level, the higher the Intensity. But remember, a spell could be better (as in "more suitable for your game style") at lower levels than that same spell at higher levels depending on your luck!

Right now we have already a bunch of powers (more than 20) ranging from Resurrection to Flight (although you don't actually fly, just move a hell lot faster), and lots of them are waiting to be implemented, from all the different spheres. I'll talk about them on a future post (as I don't really remember all of them now, shame on me).

Plus, I'd like to mention that the idea behind the system is that powers are needed, and important, even for common characters (you can always find handy a low level frenzy power, or a low level heal), and some enemies, like the specters, won't be easily killed without magic. It's your decision whether you learn the powers yourself or get surrounded by proper wizards, but some Light sphere powers will always be important, believe me. And, of course, somebody able to resurrect your otherwise permanently killed character.

The Art of Game Design - A Boook of Lenses

By volsung on January 2, 2010 3:39 PM

I do like to read. Normally, I'm limited to novels, as I don't have the will to go through a thousand page monster full of technical stuff, especially if this technical stuff is in English; while I can read it just OK, it takes me more time to understand what I'm reading than the time I spend on actually thinking about it. That's one of the reasons that basically have prevented me to finish reading any book on game design. However, recently I just found a pearl on the subject; easy to read and understand, but full of knowledge, The Art of Game Design - A book of Lenses, written by Jesse Schell, has been the book appearing on the screen of my ebook reader for quite a while.

The book is split in several chapters covering all the aspects of game design, from team-work to community management, and, even if it's focused on videogames, some of the chapters are valid for most kind of games, and some of them even appeal to a wider field, such as psychology and human interactions.

The book also asks questions, questions any game designer should make himself (or herself), about the game being designed. These are the lenses the title makes reference to, and among the 29 of them, there are around a hundred different questions. There's also a deck with these lenses, sold separately, I want to get my hands on.

Definitely a good read, if you're thinking on designing games. And even if you're not, you'll find tons of interesting things just from a player's perspective. Recommended!

Pornophonique - 8bit lagerfeuer

By volsung on January 1, 2010 8:39 PM

WTF? So, now you review music too?

I've mentioned it already, I love 8bit music. It evokes all those special moments from a gamer's childhood, playing game consoles with 16 colors on the screen and gamepads that were related to ergonomics as much as they were to geopolitics. When the 32bit consoles came out, and CD became common, only the portable consoles kept using the low-bit midi soundtracks and effects. Currently, games feature renown composers, such as Jeremy Soule, or Harry Gregson-Williams, which is awesome, as now you can have that truly epic chorus with drums and trumpets and everything when your party of heroes arrive to the evil citadel of Random.

However, when I think of music on videogames, I still remember Simon's theme from Castlevania (or the theme from the first stage of Game Boy's Castlevania Adventures), far better than most of the current titles'. Plus, they remind me of the plain fun I had while playing games as a kid. It doesn't need to mean they are better (or worse), but, at least to me, they are "special".

And that's why I simply find superb that there's this group of artists, who probably also grown up listening to those squeaky tunes, still creating that kind of music, in most cases licensed under Creative Commons, for everyone to listen.

And that's why I'm bringing Pornophonique here today. Two German guys mixing a C64, a GameBoy and a Guitar, creating what would be 8bit electronic-rock-something. And, hell, they get it just right. 8bit lagerfeuer is their first album (not exactly new), and, although short, each of its 8 songs is made of pure unique awesomeness.

And thanks to Jamendo I can even post here the full album, ready to listen or download, as you prefer.

(If Flash is not your thing, you can listen the album directly in Jamendo here)

Review - Little Wheel, by OneClickDog Games

By volsung on January 1, 2010 7:51 PM

It's been a while since I posted a review, so here we go. Today, I'm bringing you Little Wheel, a short flash adventure game by OneClickDog. Think of Machinarium, remove the inventory, and put in some Jazzy background music, et voilà! A nice short adventure that won't be any challenge for any experienced player out there, although it doesn't mean it won't be enjoyable.

We will guide a small robot, called Little Wheel through some easy puzzles and challenges, where you're basically told what to do (as any clickable part of the game will be highlighted).

The game features some really awesome art direction, with smooth animations and a very nice visual style. It surely will keep you entertained for the 10 or 15 minutes it takes to finish the game.

Enter the 011111011010!

By volsung on January 1, 2010 5:13 PM

In A.D. 2010 a first-post was being written.

2010 is coming with lots of good stuff, at very different levels. New objectives, promises and opportunities. 2009 was good, but 2010 is going to be teh shit, believe me.

Let's try to get the best of this year, and then get some more! Pointing at the top, there's nothing such as failure!

For Great Justice!

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