July 2010 Archives

Today I'm bringing you an oldie. Scarpia's article about Application of Puzzle Theory. Dating from 2003 it's still as useful as it was then, as it covers some basic concepts on the different types of puzzles you can get your players into. It's focused on adventure games (point-and-click), but many of these puzzles have presented themselves in other kind of games as well, such as RPGs or games like Mass Effect, that somehow blend the genres.

I want to state that I just re-formatted the whole article and corrected a couple of typos. I haven't added anything, and I'm not claiming any ownership on the text.

It's OK, but not great.

The Whispered World is the latest game by Daedalic Entertainment (Ankh), a classical point-and-click adventure. In this genre, story and puzzles play the major rolee in the game, and The Whispered World does a good work on both, but it doesn't really nail them; the story is nice, for a while, but it gets a bit bland at the very end. Puzzles are great, or they would if we were in 1997. If you ever played graphical adventures, chances are you have already done at least a couple of them (the eight queens in a chessboard, yeah).

There aren't many characters in the game, and their voice acting is decent. A couple of them seem to be dubbed by the same guy, though. I've read some complaints about Sadwick's voice. I found it appropriate for the character, but maybe it's because English isn't my native tongue. However, he's one of the greatest emo-kids in history, and while the game tends to mock about it (even Sadwick himself), he may get on your nerves at some point.

The Whispered World shines when it comes to design; the graphics are gorgeous, in its huge XGA resolution (believe it or not, 1024x768 is even nowadays quite a lot for a totally 2D game). The animations and style resemble those by Disney... but for some reason they didn't seem to be able to give that touch to the cutscenes, that look... well... hm... bad. There just aren't good words for it.

The adventure is pretty long, and I found it, overall, pretty enjoyable. If you can get it at a reduced price it may be worth it. However, be warned, it's just a "decent" game. If you aren't very fond of point-and-click, you won't like it, and if you are, chances are it'll bore you at some points throughout your walkthrough.

As a final score I'm giving it a 5 out of 10. Standard. 15 years ago it would have been obscured by others, but there isn't that much to choose from at the moment unless you go indie.

At least that's what Cockroach Inc, a Swedish development studio, is trying to tell us with The Dream Machine. Yes, they are creating a classical point-and-click adventure game using claymation (picture!). Remember The Neverhood? This time it will make sense from the beginning. You can play the demo already in the official website, and I mean exactly that. As with Samorost and Machinima, this game uses Flash, so it's actually possible to play directly on the browser.

Also, they're running the Beta test for the first chapter. If you sign up you may be able to play it as well! I'm already looking forward to the release.

The title is actually incorrect, as there's only one of each. I've been trying to model the protagonist, Heiko, for some hours. Or at least, something that I can use until I get something better, to start learning about armatures and how to bring the models to Unity 3d.

Anyway, this is a quick sketch of how these people look, the K'zaai:

Click to embiggen

 

I finally managed to find the way to unwrap the UVs correctly. The problem is that Blender 2.53b doesn't allow to export them as TGA or PNG, only as SVG. Luckily it's possible to have different versions of the software at the same time (using the zip version instead of the installer) so, it was just a matter of using 2.49b to export the image through Python.

The results? A cardboard spaceship with some colors on top.

Once again, the result is not too impressive, but at least now I know how to deal with textures and UVs. Or, at least, I have a little more idea than yesterday.

I've tried several times in the past to model some stuff in the past. There was a point where I was in fact getting used to Blender, back in the days (I'm speaking of 3 or 4 years here), but then there was this update that changed the interface quite a lot. Adding that I was going through some personal stuff I just let it aside. However, I tried to get on it again a couple of months afterwards, without much luck. During the past two years I've been looking at it from the distance, sometimes downloading some modelling programs, but giving up soon afterwards. I was lacking the time to learn a new complex software, and I really wasn't thinking on any use for it apart from "learning how to model", which is good, but not especially rewarding by itself.

Anyway, these past days I was considering how to bring this idea I was commenting on the previous post (which goes beyond that image, obviously :P) and thinking in 2D engines, while I found Unity 3D sitting there in my quick launch menu. I thought I could give it a slightly deeper look than I did before. As I didn't see myself modelling, a game engine mostly based around 3D stuff didn't seem the best option. However, I took some of the tutorials and found that it's, in fact, as good as people say it is. And somehow I found myself watching some of the great video-seminars at CGCookie.

After a couple of hours of work getting used (again) to the shortcuts and new interface in Blender 2.5, this is what I got.

That's supposed to be one of the prisoner carrying spaceships. Untextured, as I wasn't really able to get the UVs working. Not that it would matter, because the mesh is a mess.

But, hey, even if this model is kind of crappy (just look at those random extra loops) I'm learning a couple of things already. Hopefully, in a couple of days I'll be able to create a similar model that, instead, looks good, is textured, and isn't modeled with the arse.

It won't let me sleep.

Yeah, I almost forgot. Please update your feed reader!

The new URL is http://feeds.feedburner.com/Dungeoner!

Then you may also like 0 A.D., as it certainly has some similarities. Apart from a non-existent year in proper history where the first A.D. was actually... the first, this is, the number one (1), 0 A.D. is the name of the latest game by Wildfire Games, still under development, and still in Alpha. It's not really playable yet, so I can't really tell you whether it's good or not. Still, it's worth giving a look. Why?

Because it's Open Source! And it's looking for voluntaries to help with the development! If you are interested in 3d modeling/animation, programming, sound mixing, or... well, anything related to something that could be useful in the development of a videogame, 0 A.D. could be one of your best options right now.

The project is already looking quite good (and has been in development for 9 years, so a solid development base is likely to be found there :P). It may not be the next Starcraft, as that will probably Starcraft II, but hey, it may become "the RTS game for Linux". Not that it's not going to be ported to Windows, but you know, if you're trying to create some sort of curriculum for a place in the videogames industry, this may  be one of your best chances to work for something that will reach quite some people!

So... this isn't really about gaming, but as games are opening the gates to [more] social environments (MMOs mostly, but also all those communities built around gaming), and the line separating our real life identity with our virtual ego is becoming thinner, the old statement "there're no girls in the Internet" is turning obsolete. The Internet is full of people, and yeah, it's possible to find 70 year old grannies playing World of Warcraft. Asia Carrera used to play Unreal Tournament, and even had her own server.

For many, Internet has become the perfect tool to socialize, helping them find people with common interests, and, in not so rare cases, even love. There are loads of dating services around, even gamer oriented (as if gamers had special needs).

Still, while people often have no problem in giving quite some personal details about themselves that would allow anyone to even pinpoint them in a map at any given hour, it's funny to see how many portray themselves in peculiar ways when it comes to certain specific aspects of their appearance/life in general. Even if the lie would be blatantly noticeable in a real life meeting; this is, obviously lying and saying you're 1'85 instead of 1'67 would probably make your virtual identity a tad more desirable. But what for? You could think "this is nonsense". Well, it's not that obvious most of the times, but apparently people are used to give themselves 2 extra inches when explaining how tall they are. Sizes of other bodyparts don't seem to be relevant in the study I'm referring to, although I'm pretty sure the exact same rule applies. I mean, two inches more, two inches less...

If you want to read about the whole study (made on OkCupid), you can do it in Gizmodo:

>> Gizmodo - The big lies people tell in online dating

Really worth giving it a look.

Arvoesine is the latest work by Alastair John Jack, who, I must admit, I had never heard of before. So... what's it all about? Platforming? Check. Sidescrolling action? Check. NES graphics? Check. Horrible difficulty until you learn the patterns the enemies follow? Check. No continues? Check. Just one live? Check.

So... we have one of those great games from the early nineties, just... today. OK, the game is fairly easy once you learn the patterns, bosses and level design, and it can be beaten in roughly 8 minutes. However, reaching that point is a lot of fun, and means dying a couple dozen of times.

I was thinking on describing the game with a bit more depth, but I think it's better if I just show you a short video of the first two levels of the game recorded by myself. Yes, I failed as hard as it looks in the second stage.

• Arvoesine Gameplay (Video - 17MB)

Still here? Go buy this game now! Probably the best $5 you're spending today!

Back in the days I wrote a short blog post about this artful port created by Michael Rennie. Somehow I just remembered it, and thought it would be a nice idea to add it to the games section. Why? Mostly because it rocks. Yeah, I know about Quake Live. I know about Unity player. I know there are just so many browser based 3D shooters (or, well, at least "some"), but looking better doesn't make them actually greater game experiences.

Quake is a piece of the history of videogames. An important one. Hell, do you like totally 3D FPS games? It was the first one moving from sprites to actual models, back in 1996, and it made us all shit our pants. It was terrifying back then. I remember being kind of unable to play it long enough when I was younger. I actually completed it later than Quake 2.

And now, here it is, in an 8.6MB flash file, embedded in a browser.

Play it directly through this link or select it on the Games! section.

Hopefully getting updates every now and then. I'll still post some short (or long, it depends) review of any game I'm putting there, but at least now it won't be necessary to crawl through the archives to search for a specific game posted nobody knows when.

Enjoy!

Singularity is Raven Software's latest FPS experience, released for PC, Xbox360 and PlayStation 3. Before I go on explaining the pros and cons of the game, I'll say I'm a huge fan of Raven. Hexen, Wolfenstein, Heretic, Jedi Outcast & Jedi Academy, Soldier of Fortune and Quake IV are amongst my all-time favorites. However, I wasn't following the development of Singularity; didn't even really know about it until late June, so I was hype-free. No expectations at all.

So... in Singularity we'll be controlling Captain Nathaniel Renko, an American spec ops leading a mission in an abandoned Soviet base that goes horribly wrong. What makes this game special? Time! The aforementioned base is placed in the only island in the world containing the element 99 of the periodic table (E99). While Einstenium does exist in real life, it's certainly quite different in the world of Singularity, where it's the most kick-ass energy source ever conceived. It's so powerful it can actually be used to blend time and space... and able to produce heavy mutations in both the flora and fauna of Katorga-12 (the island). Now, what does this imply on the game?

Soon in the game we'll start messing with time. We'll travel back to 1950, alter the past just a tiny bit and provoke a catastrophic series of events that will create an alternative timeline where the world is dominated by an Evil Dictatorship ®. It would have been really awesome if stuff like this kept happening throughout the game. Sadly, until the very end we won't have any more chances to mess with the timeline. However, we'll be getting the Time Manipulation Device, or TMD, that allows us to use the E99 to blend the laws of physics in a smaller scale, as well as letting us travel back in time when we find a breach provoked by the Singularity.

OK, the TMD is actually quite cool, short of mixing the gravity gun from Half Life with some TimeShift. We can age a person so fast it becomes dust in front of your eyes, or repair some broken stairs sending them back in time to when they were... well, not broken. We can only use this with E99 impregnated stuff and blackboards (don't ask), which made me feel at the beginning of the game that the maps were not very good; everything you cannot use your TMD on is just too solid. Even most of the glassy stuff is immune to your bullets. One thought crossed my mind. Console shooter. Luckily I gave the game a chance.

The story isn't really that well knitted, and it has some holes, but it does help to carry the rhythm of the game. The action is easy most of the time. In fact, once you get the autocannon it may be just a bit TOO easy. There are some bosses in the game, but their routines are easy to learn and it's unlikely you'll die unless you're missing a hand. There's a moment, however, when you're forced to do one of the most stupid things you could think of: crossing a battlefield on a defenseless platform moved by a crane another guy is controlling. You're also given at that point the most useless weapon of the game, just in case you really enjoy being sodomized. Luckily, you can still leave it where it is and equip a real gun.

The game features a leveling system; you can level up your weapons and some abilities. Near the end you'll be pissing on your enemies' skulls. The overall feeling is enjoyable, although maybe a higher ratio of difficult enemies in the last part of the game would have been better (the heavy troopers are a bit scarce). The leveling system kind of reminded me to Bioshock... a little. The game has something in common, I cannot really state what. Maybe it's just the general mood of the abandoned place inhabited by crazy stuff, maybe it's another thing, but there was always that "thing" in the back of my head whispering "Bioshock". Anyhow, if I have to put a seal on this game, it's going to be Raven Software's (<< short video!).

Overall, it was a pleasant and fun experience. It took me around 9 hours to complete the whole single player mode in normal difficulty, and I wasn't able to test the multiplayer. There are some cool-sounding modes, like creatures against soldiers, although I wouldn't expect it to be the next Q3A. 

My final score... 7/10. A pleasant, fun and solid game experience, with some nice mechanics (that could have been exploited a tad more) but with little to none replayability. The multiplayer may be interesting, but it will only last... while it lasts.

I'll be brief.

The game features a guy that climbs up a ladder while another guy speaks to him about saving the world or sending it to hell. We can only see the boots of this other guy. The action reaches its climax when we're about to get to the final steps of the ladder and see where are we heading to.

Spoiler: Then you see your desktop.

PD: Those anonymous boots looked awesome in DX10.

It took me some time, but it's done. When the game came out I couldn't really play it as I didn't have the time it required. And since then it became the burr under my saddle. Tempus fugit, and last Thursday I found the game on sale on Steam for a reduced price. Started playing that same night... and I have barely done anything else until today, noon.

I patched and downloaded every single DLC piece, and played through the whole thing. Right now, I have only a couple of exploration missions left (although technically I have finished the game... saving everybody!). This time I hope to be more lucky with my savegame so I can export it to Mass Effect 3... as my original Mass Effect save was lost back in the dawn of times.

Anyway, it's hard to say anything about the game that hasn't been said yet, and probably all of you know it more than well already, so there's no point on reviewing it just for the sake of it. I'd just wanted to say that these 30 hours it took me, have been the most epic thing in the whole month... probably year. I was literally trying to make it last longer with all my strength. Luckily for me, I was able to get the DLC with the points I got in Dragon Age, so Project Overlord was basically free.

Anyway, I'm glad I can finally mark it as done in my to-play list. At least until the next DLC pack, heh.

On a sidenote, hopefully, I'll have Singularity's review posted tomorrow!