SiN

Thanks ThunderPeel! After working on it for a year+, it gets kinda difficult to remain objective, but going on the feedback I've been getting, I apparently know a thing or two about designing games. And lets not forget to thank lovefcs09 again, who was kind enough to remind you to try this out. SiN

Hey man, he's giving us FREE GOLD, and he got ThunderPeel to have a go at Smiley. Back off! SiN

Yes! Thank you! Misse & Murre was the one. I kept thinking it was "Bessy", but that's probably because I thought you were launching a cow. Okay, so having played it for a bit the game is actually pretty lame. I'm doing a bit of research on physics-based games, and for some reason, this one came to mind as one I wanted to play. So even though I didn't enjoy the game, this was all a big success in the end. Thanks Noyb! SiN

NMH is good ... ish. Style-wise, it's awesome. Gameplay even, is pretty awesome for a while. But after a while, it all gets very mind-numbingly difficult, tedious and flat-out dull. Still, it's great while it lasts. And the story and dialog are surprisingly fun. NHM is definitely a game that needs to be experienced, so I'd say that's a good purchase. SiN

Metroid Prime Corruption is rather good. Also, Smash Brothers Brawl. SiN

Crackdown was amazing like that. I kept going, "alright, it's getting late, I should go to slee ... WHAT, ANOTHER AGILITY ORB?!" *stomps away* SiN

Where is everybody? Busy playing Smiley's Shooty Adventure obviously! Right? RIIIGHT!? I've been playing GTA IV and writing video games. GTAIV has been good, but not the OMG AMAZING game that everyone has made it out to be. I mean, yeah I love it and all, but it is - for the most part - still using the same formula that GTA3 pioneered, and after playing 4 or 5 of those games, I was hoping IV would do things a little bit differently. But still, wonderful game. SiN

@Noyb: Yeah, I noticed that. Very bloody pleased, especially as Kieron wrote the piece ... I'm a bit of a fanboy, you see. And he wrote it in his "NGJ" style, which made it even better. Also, I love the last comment, "it is awesome". Maybe I should put that on the site. @ThunderPeel: Thanks! Yeah, I've been doing this for more than 10 years now, and it's still quite a challenge to get a game done. My decision to go indie just made things harder. I put tonnes more polish into this than I normally do for my games, plus all the work setting up the site, getting the paypal system going, registration, etc, etc. Glad that's all done now though. SiN

Glad you enjoyed it! It's a funny thing about shmups ... it's one of those genres with a billion different control schemes and everyone has their own preference. If you find the mouse movement a bit laggy, maybe try the "Keyboard+Mouse 1" control scheme, where you move with WASD and shoot with the mouse. The movement feels a bit more direct, but ultimately yeah, there is a smudge bit of lag. I guess that's how I designed the "physics" of the game. SiN

There's no reason they couldn't do an isometric camera ... change the render camera from perspective to orthogonal, fix the angles, and you're done! Honestly around half-a-dozen lines of setup code, but you know, much more to actually make it work. But does it really matter? What's the difference between "high up there" and "isometric"? Apart from being able to say, "it's isometric, just like the old Fallout games." SiN

Awesome story there twmac! SiN

My gamecube copy came on two discs. Maybe you're confusing it with the ps2 version? That would have been one disc because dvd's have a higher capacity than the gamecube discs. Shit game though .... SiN

Try cleaning out the edges with a cue-tip dipped in (medicinal) alcohol, maybe? SiN

Not so sure. I think that as long as the xbox maintains a respectable market-share developers will continue to use it as their primary dev platform. Why? Simply because it's the best development platform. Their IDE (program you use to write code in), debugging tools, and toolchain (the chain of tools required to go from code to executable) is top-notch. Microsoft is a software company, this is what they do best. Sony & Nintendo don't have a chance at matching Microsoft in this regard. SiN

Hey BigJKO, I'm not sure if you need this, but I'm going to ramble on about circle-square collision for a bit ... I know a bit about how it's done. Let me know if you need some more specific help. Okay, I assume your using a delta-time based system. So we have the ball moving from (ox, oy) to (nx, ny). Since it's delta based we don't actually know how far the ball will move per frame. If you use a fixed time-slice, this becomes *much* easier. So what you want to do is cast a couple of rays, starting from the following positions: ox + cos(ang)*rad, oy + sin(ang)*rad ox + cos(ang+0.5*PI)*rad, oy + sin(ang+0.5*PI)*rad ox + cos(ang-0.5*PI)*rad, oy + sin(ang-0.5*PI)*rad So thats from the front of the ball, and one from the left and right side of it (relative to the direction we're moving in) ... thats where they start ... you want to cast these rays in the direction we're moving in, with a length of infinity. Now, we intersect these rays with all of the boxes in the level. For each intersection we find, we only keep track of the one with the shortest distance from the start of the ray to the point of intersection. This distance is the furthest your ball can move in that time-slice. So instead of moving your ball to (nx, ny) move it to ... (ox + cos(ang)*shortest_ray_dist, oy + sin(ang)*shortest_ray_dist) Done and done! Okay, that was a total rush-job because I need to get to class RIGHT now! Let me know if you want me to explain anything, or go over the harder case where the boxes and ball are both moving ... SiN

Haven't you heard? Here in North America we don't have DVD drivers! Or at least that's what publishers seem to think. It's very annoying. SiN

Let me preface this by saying that I haven't played Space Giraffe yet.* However, I'm a big Minter/Llamasoft fan, and as I've been following what Minter has been saying closely, I feel I should comment. * End of the semester though, I'm so getting a 360 along with this (and Bioshock). First, this isn't your typical wussy hold-my-hand-through-half-the-game game. It's *hard*. It goes back to "the old days" where arcade games were genuinely difficult. If you want to get into this game, you're going to have to dedicate some time to it. Next, and this is an issue that has been brought up many times, is that well yeah, it is a bloody "visual clusterfuck". Minter himself doesn't disagree. But the idea is that you shouldn't be watching with your eyes ... you should be watching with your senses. I know that sounds like a bunch of wank, but everything has a cue. Everything. I've been playing Tempest2K a lot lately, and even then, Minter stuck a video/audio cue in for every little event. So you need to have all your senses "active" and ready. SG should be playing like Rez should in this sense (alone, dark room, loud speakers, etc). Watch/listen out for cues and remember them, map them in your head. Soon you should be able to know what's happening on the board unconsciously. I know it sounds a bit crazy, but it's true. All this comes down to "give it some more time". Play some of the early levels again. Try to get a higher score. Get a better feel for the cues, and for the mechanics. Speaking of which, do you understand all that bulling/powerzone stuff? (the tutorial I watched wasn't very clear). Basically, it just might take a while for it to click with you. A friend of mine who has been a Minter fan since the 80s got SG and didn't really like it. A couple of days later, it just clicked with him. It might be the same case for you. Or not. Who knows? All I know is, give it a bit more time and dedication, and you just might end up loving it. SiN

Answer: I'm not sure about this, but could they possibly be from the Double Fine Action Comics? SiN

I don't know about the wiimote, but the nunchuck would do that if the calibration was off. That is, if you turn on the wii (or controller I guess) with the analog stick not being in it's "neutral" position. SiN

But it is an AO game. That's the ESRB rating, it doesn't matter what Europe rated the game. If a game is rated AO by ESRB it doesn't get approved for consoles worldwide, not just in the States. SiN

I think I've got about as far as Miffy has. I agree with him on most points. I can't agree on the graphics though. Honestly, there have been a couple of cringe-worthy moments where I was like, "uhhh, okay I see what you were trying to render there, but no. Nice try though." In particular, the explosions in some of the cutscenes are terrible sprite-o-vision stuff, and the ice-trail with one of those hunters is quite horrible looking too. For the most part it looks good though ... haven't seen much of the world yet, but I'm hoping the environments are beautiful enough to make up for the occasional less-than-stellar effect. The controls are great. I could definitely see the likes of Quake 3 Arena working on the Wii. Took me a little longer to get used to (under an hour) but they work really well. What I didn't like though, was the fact that minus and 1 are mapped to reasonably common actions. Minus is mapped to visor-switch, which is really quite irritating as I like examining stuff alot, but I find myself doing that less often because of how out-of-the-way the minus button is. I wish Nintendo had put the -/+ buttons higher up, close to the A button. It's more combat-focused that I would have liked, plus there hasn't been much exploration, but I get the feeling that once the game opens up and lets me explore a bit more it'll turn out great. SiN

Nah, nobody is getting the original version. Remember that Microsoft and Nintendo won't allow AO games on their consoles. So Take2 can't even legally manufacture the discs, let alone distribute them. SiN

Yeah, I totally caught that when Carmack was talking about it. When I heard "two dev teams", and them calling it "Quake Arena", I put two-and-two together and figured they were turning Q3A into a franchise. Very. Friggin. Pleased. :) :tup: Q3A is high up in my top10 list. It's honestly the best deathmatch experience. Sure, UT always had more options, and the UT2Kx games have vehicles and stuff, but nothing really matches the fast-paced thrill of a Q3A match. Reading through that interview, one of the subtle, more interesting quotes was this: I'm hoping they end up doing something bold, like changing the art-style to match this contrast issue. Wouldn't it be incredibly neat to have high-detailed player models contrasting a minimalistic, flat-shaded, Rez-like background? [edit] Hmm ... on second thoughts, perhaps Rez wasn't the right game to go for. I'm thinking more like another Sega game, Jet Set Radio. [/edit] SiN

I'm guessing: shooting and driving. Yeah, you're totally right though. There isn't much to go on, but incase you haven't noticed, I'm a complete id software fanboy. I'm excited! Absolutely! I don't think he'd deny that either. But that isn't to say an id game couldn't be "artistically innovative". Look at Doom RPG as an example. He designed the engine & gameplay, and handed it over to Fountainhead for the actual content. I see the same thing happening at id. Sure he might be a part of the general gameplay discussion, but when it comes to the storyline, art and such, he leaves it to the pro's on the id team. Reading that eurogamer preview, it looks like they are putting in a bit more effort this time. I like that they're doing the mission structure in a half-life-esque way. Obviously though, it would be silly to put too much faith into Rage having a deep and engaging storyline. It's just not what id are about. I'm getting excited purely on reputation. We know id will put out a good game. Done when it's done, right? The story may end up crap (a la Doom3) but I have confidence that they won't release Rage until the gameplay is solid. Mo

I'm super excited about Rage. Just looks great. I love the post-apocalypse setting, I love the open environments, and I love the idea of a game that *actually* does arcade-style racing and FPS equally well (no, GTA doesn't count as the combat was shit!). Definitely high up there on my "most wanted list". As for the discussion on "Carmack, the game designer". Honestly, I don't think people give him enough credit. He's not Molyneux, or Sid Meier, or Wright, but like Lama said, I think he has a very good understanding of the "keeping it simple" school of game design. Remember that Q3A was his concept. The idea of a multiplayer-only FPS was unheard of at the time, to the extent that even the guys at id weren't quite sure what they were going to produce. The "no use key" feature in Doom3 was something that Carmack specifically pushed for. In a sense, there was a "use" key, but no "fire/attack" key ... left-mouse-button was a context sensitive action key. That combined with the computer terminals was ingenious design. It's one of those little innovations that I'm a bit surprised hasn't been used by anyone else, just because it's so simple and makes so much sense. Finally, id's mobile stuff was Carmack designed too. Doom RPG isn't innovative, but it's excellent design. It's a game designed specifically for the hardware it was intended to be played on. Which sounds so simple it's ridiculous, but Carmack succeeded in this where many "real" game designers have failed. But wait, there's more! Let's talk "Carmack, the engineer". elmuerte, what makes you doubt his engineering skills? I mean, have you even looked at his open sourced engines? If you haven't, I'll save you a bit of trouble. I had to go through the Quake 3 Arena source at my job (it was my best assignment, EVER ) and it's very well designed. Got a week-long job done in 2 days, because the design was so nice. SiN