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All the hubbub about the new X-COM game (er, XCOM game) has stirred up interest in the original, and I've seen lots of people say stuff like "I have it in my Steam account but all the buttons are intimidating." The Idle Thumbs livestream cured a lot of Idle Thumbs fans, so that's cool, but I thought it would be good to have some videos available to walk everyone through the game since it's so awesome. So I made one. I'll be making at least two others too, but on the off chance that 1) you missed the livestream and 2) you want to get into X-COM but it's too intimidating, well, have I got a video for you!

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I'm making a shoot-em-up beat-em-up, and I came to the slow and painful realisation this week that "space-egyptians" is a boring and well-covered aesthetic that has apparantly been done a million times, and isn't as cool or fun as I thought it was.

If I release my game where the enemies are robot pyramids, nobody will care. I think.

So I splashed around looking for a new theme, and I THINK the closest thing to what I already had, and what makes the most sense, is "space-cops". For a dozen reasons I won't list. So here's me slowly re-building what I had:

jaj8Ss.jpg

DGJoKs.png

Some embarrassingly bad ones, but y'know, that's the point!

At first I was getting really frustrated because I was thinking in terms of bullet-vests and Robocop and SWAT teams, and they all look really bulky, and I hate fat robots. So I started looking at like space FBI, and higher government police stuff, and that seemed more slick, but wavered over into Men In Black territory. Then I got really happy with these old blue n white country police, and I gave em a little belt and a little gun-holster sihlouette, and I'm KIND OF happy with where I am now. It's a lot more fun and has less baditude.

Moving forward into making all the animations and re-designing the dozen other guys is scary though, cos it's kind of a big decision that changes everything. Like this is a thing I have to work with, and wear, and talk about for the next year. So I'm TENTATIVELY, slowly moving forward with this, and switching all the enemies over from space-egypt to this blue/white toy-cop style.

I don't have a second person to bounce this off or anything.

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We decided to try something different from usual with our podcast The Monopod. We set up an actual topic - artistic intent (I know, art, games, groan, but I think it turned out okay and sorta different from the usual fare maybe?) instead of just rambling. I think I like it better. We still suck at intros and outros - we still really suck at intros and outros - but it gives us a bit more structure. Tangents still exist, but we try to reel it in a bit more? I dunno.

http://www.monopodcast.com/2012/10/06/the-monopod-12-we-are-all-psychopaths/

If you're at all interested, give it a listen and critique it. Thanks!

If anyone ever gets tired of me posting this multiple times in the thread, let me know and I'll stop. I know it ain't much compared to the good video game podcasts that already exist. X:

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Hey I'm about half way through. It sounds alright! It sounds like an actual conversation, and that's good. Took a while to get there, but y'know, whatever.

It's kind of a shame to spend the first 15 minutes talking about whether or not games are art, cos that's a topic that everyone's pretty sick of. It sounded like I agree with half the stuff said, but the conversation lapped around itself a couple times so I'm not even sure.

The actual topic of artistic intentions, and which games they come through in, and how much different designers lean on em, and whether or not they matter is a fairly good topic though.

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Another tournament being run, this time UK only, but it should be really cool. We have one pro signed up already Ourk who is in the top 4 British players. Info:

A while back I ran a few small on-line tournaments, I took a break but I've been asked to bring these back so now I'm making it more official and advertising around and the like. I want to give the UK players a place where they can meet up and play regularly in a tournament setting and have the possibility to win actual money outside of iSeries. As such this is intended to become a monthly thing, hopefully running on the last Sunday of each month (barring any personal/financial problems).

VocTer Gaming's UK Open #1

28th of October, starting at 13:00 GMT (This is the day we turn our clocks back, so don't be late!)

(NB: This tournament is a single elimination tournament open to UK players only on the EU server)

Max of 32 players, starting maps indicated below, and in the case of Bo3 or more it becomes loser picks.

Round of 32: Bo1 on Entombed Valley

Round of 16: Bo3 starting on Daybreak

Round of 8 (Quarters): Bo3 starting on Ohana

Round of 4 (Semis): Bo3 starting on Metropolis

3rd place match: Bo3 starting on Antiga Shipyard

1st place match: Bo5 starting on Cloud Kingdom

Map Pool:

MLG Antiga Shipyard - Cross Spawns Only

MLG Cloud Kingdom

MLG Daybreak

MLG Entombed Valley - No Close 3rds by Ground Spawns

MLG Metropolis - No Close by Ground Spawns

MLG Ohana

MLG Tal’darim Altar - All Spawns Allowed

Your admin for this tournament is Patrick Carter, add him in-game at Patters.809 more admins are welcome to help him out, just PM me and I'll sort you out with bracket access etc.

Prize pool is a total of £40 to be split as follows:

3rd - £5

2nd - £10

1st - £25

(All prizes will be paid via PayPal within 24 hours of the end of the tournament. Be sure to contact Patters in-game to inform him of your PayPal address upon placing in one of the top three spots, these will be passed on to me.

Sign-ups are hosted by Challonge at http://challonge.com/tournaments/signup/ro56xjjhqq we will be closing these either 12 hours before the tournament begins, or once we hit a max of 32 players.

Tournament will not be streamed, but replays of the final two matches will be casted and uploaded towww.youtube.com/voctergaming as such you are welcome to stream your own games throughout the tournament.

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Hey I'm about half way through. It sounds alright! It sounds like an actual conversation, and that's good. Took a while to get there, but y'know, whatever.

It's kind of a shame to spend the first 15 minutes talking about whether or not games are art, cos that's a topic that everyone's pretty sick of. It sounded like I agree with half the stuff said, but the conversation lapped around itself a couple times so I'm not even sure.

The actual topic of artistic intentions, and which games they come through in, and how much different designers lean on em, and whether or not they matter is a fairly good topic though.

Thanks for the feedback! It's kind of frustrating 'cause when I listened back to it later, there was a lot more stuff I wanted to mention, but we never got around to it.

And yes, we're horrible at intros. We tried not to say "are games art", though. We were more going for "does it matter" or, more specifically, "which parts of the game do we want to talk about in this context", I think. Just defining the topic for ourselves, rather than defining art for the rest of the world.

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I write about games and other media here, we're actually looking to focus more on independent games in the relatively near future, so stay tuned for that. I'm also really enjoy podcasting. There is a Pixel Response podcast as well as "Top Down Perspective" which is exclusively about game-related stuff. Mostly what we're playing, but we take a look at news stories and answer the questions we get, etc. You know, podcast business.

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Thanks for the feedback! It's kind of frustrating 'cause when I listened back to it later, there was a lot more stuff I wanted to mention, but we never got around to it.

lol yep! I always do that. It's like you KNOW all this cool stuff, but then when it comes to actually having a conversation it's just filed away i the back of your mind somewhere.

Pluggin this: I compiled a list of game designers talking. I figure that'll be a good plug on this forum.

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All the hubbub about the new X-COM game (er, XCOM game) has stirred up interest in the original, and I've seen lots of people say stuff like "I have it in my Steam account but all the buttons are intimidating." The Idle Thumbs livestream cured a lot of Idle Thumbs fans, so that's cool, but I thought it would be good to have some videos available to walk everyone through the game since it's so awesome. So I made one. I'll be making at least two others too, but on the off chance that 1) you missed the livestream and 2) you want to get into X-COM but it's too intimidating, well, have I got a video for you!

Well, that was super helpful and funny as fuck. I'm a poor piece of shit so I'm definitely going to be playing the old XCOM in lieu of the new one until BF at least. Thanks!

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Well, that was super helpful and funny as fuck. I'm a poor piece of shit so I'm definitely going to be playing the old XCOM in lieu of the new one until BF at least. Thanks!

Wellllllll as long as we're talking about me and saying that my video was helpful, here are parts 2 and 3:

I am 2/3rds of the way through the song you linked, LaCabra, and it sounds nice.

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Just interviewed one of the principal Black Mesa: Source level designers, as part of a general effort to generate more original content through my community rather than it just being a forum. There're a lot of devs on the forum so it's really exciting to be finally putting some of those links to good use. :tup:

Interview with Jean-Paul Jarreau, Black Mesa level designer

If anyone wants to be really awesome, retweet this:

https://twitter.com/mapcore/status/260849967697125376

Just noticed the pink dancing smilie is gone. ;(

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Just interviewed one of the principal Black Mesa: Source level designers, as part of a general effort to generate more original content through my community rather than it just being a forum. There're a lot of devs on the forum so it's really exciting to be finally putting some of those links to good use. :tup:

Interview with Jean-Paul Jarreau, Black Mesa level designer

If anyone wants to be really awesome, retweet this:

https://twitter.com/...849967697125376

Just noticed the pink dancing smilie is gone. ;(

JP is a rad good, good interview. retweet'd

Also, pluggin' my level in here

8118620855_5d31e37f71_b.jpg

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I podcast with a couple other guys (Kraznor, a member of the forums here, is one of them) on a show called Top Down Perspective. It's a weekly video game podcast where we discuss anything game related going on at the moment that deserves some conversations. Always looking for more feedback and user interaction! We're also on iTunes if you'd rather just search us up there to have a listen. Thanks guys!

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I drew a thing. It occurred to me that as far as illustrating and drawing comics and all that, my notebooks are full of that shit but I've never really tried to make anything to publish, so I'm trying to go ahead and make all the mistakes. Anyway this is a little comic I drew. Dunno where I was going with it. Wasn't trying to be profound. Just had and idea and drew it.

tumblr_mcgy2jWU8F1qbpx0ko1_400.png

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Pretty cool, Luftmensch. It's got a touch of Perry Bible Fellowship, but in a different way. Less comic, more pondering.

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