Archive for March 3rd, 2010
8 items.
So I just read a post from an indie developer talking about their brand new release having already been pirated. I’m not going to mention which game or which developer, largely because I don’t wish to exacerbate the issue. But I did want to take a second to share my feelings on the piracy of independent works.
First, lets take a second and get the usual justification bullshit out of the way. Yeah I can understand the rationale behind pirating some things. Maybe its because it isn’t available in your region. Maybe its because you hate all the vile DRM that pervades modern publishers games. Maybe, just maybe its because you’re a poor bastard with entitlement issues and aren’t willing to fork out upwards of fifty dollars. Whatever, I get it.
What I don’t get is in a circumstance where a game is none of those things and is pirated. In this case the game doesn’t have crap tons of DRM, isn’t made by an evil empire, and it will only set you back £5.99 or in non posh monies about 9 dollars. Thats right you went to the trouble of pirating a game that would have set you back a whopping one and a half hours of flipping Whopper Jr’s. And to make matters worse you don’t even have the ability to cower behind the ideals of fighting the man.
The MPAA, RIAA, and Uber Publishers are a bunch of douche bags for destroying individual creativity and marginalizing media into the mainstream garbage all for the sake of profit. But you don’t have that argument to fall back on here, and you’re just as bad because you are doing the exact same thing by not supporting those who have taken on the challenge of being creative and carving out their own piece of the pie by making a game you obviously want to play. I would go so far as to say that the damages rendered by those of pirates ripping off indie developers are substantially greater than those perpetrated against major corps due to their inability to absorb such unforseen costs regardless of scale.
Who knows maybe I just have a Robin Hood complex, but I can’t get over thinking the rotten individuals perpetrating this are a bunch of bitches.
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Lifehacker, repository of all amazing things hack and life related, posted a reader’s desktop with a theme featuring indie favorite Cave Story. Check it out, see how it was made, hack the planet!
Yeah, your guess is as good as mine. Kind of hilarious though. Just think you can never get those 120 seconds back, ever. Unless you build a space ship that travels at great velocity and dilates time, but lets face it, you don’t have that kind of motivation. We know because you’re the type of person that just watched this instead of working.
So I guess with Missle Command and Asteroid already getting the wonky silver screen treatment it’s time for Space Invaders to have a go. My only real hope is that an all Rush Mix Tape is released as the sound track. Here’s a bit from the LA Times article:
With a movie version of Missile Command essentially set up at Fox and an adaptation of Asteroids in development at Universal, it was only a matter of time before a studio decided to take on the grandfather of all video games, Space Invaders.
And now it looks like one could.
Warner Bros. is negotiating to acquire feature rights to the landmark shooter from Taito, the Japanese company that originally manufactured the game. If the rights issues all work out, the project would bring on Hollywood fixtures Mark Gordon, Jason Blum and Guymon Casady as producers.
Old eccentric GuyBob, everyone thought he was mad. That is, until the evil Dr. Slug came to this world and GuyBob’s sons, Guy and Bob, were called upon to plow through 100 dangerous creature filled levels and save the world. And thus, the stage is set for Kris Steele and company’s platforming shooter Nasty.
Gameplay
Nasty, a traditional 2D platforming shooter, consists of 100 single frame levels. These levels are filled with various combinations of monsters that will require slaying in order to unlock the door to the next level. There is also a point system that, in addition to granting bragging rights, will give additional lives every 10,000 points. The extra lives come in handy because this game (I’m looking at you when I say this Level 70) is quite challenging.
The creatures’ behaviors vary and understanding them is essential to making your way through the levels successfully. Some creatures will simply walk forward until they run into something and turn around, others will bounce off a surface and continue in a new direction, and more yet will display an intent to kick your ass by continually meandering in your direction. The creatures of Nasty also differ from difficulty mode to difficulty mode. An example of these differences is the accountant ghost. In easy and normal mode they simply chase you around until either you die or they die. However, in hard mode once they have been destroyed, they split into four little ghosts who then proceed to resume the chase.
Did I mention the clock? Yeah there’s a clock and, of course, it ticks down! Once the time on a particular level runs out you won’t simply lose, that would be dull. To keep things exciting Nasty will deploy Doom Bolt, a giant ball of spikes that chases you unabatedly until either he impales you or you clear the stage of enemies.
When it comes to death Nasty is seriously retro as it relies on a finite number of lives and a limited quantity of continues that it is all eager to relieve you of. The game has a tendancy to be challenging and at times down right frustrating, but manages to balance it out with a pretty decent death system. This balance is one of the systems used to differentiate between the three difficulty modes. You will receive five lives and fifteen continues on easy, three lives and five continues on normal, and three lives and three continues on hard. On top of this system all modes allow you to save progress every 10 levels by establishing a check point. Once you wipe out all your continues you can start a new game from the last check point you unlocked. This was the first time I had seen these two style systems work together in such a way and I found that I really appriciated them as they managed to balance a sense of penalty for death without really preventing you from progressing through the game.
Power ups and points are sprinkled throughout the world and come in various shapes, sizes, and effects. The power ups persist until death and can, in some cases, be required to finish a level. So don’t die because the power up won’t respawn unless you use a continue which is is less than ideal. The list of power ups is quite extensive; they can stop time, improve your offensive ability, increase your jump hight, or make you invincible. The points are all over the place and don’t require much explaining, go get you some.
Bosses appear every twenty levels or so and are mostly of fairly simple design. They will typically make use of minions and mechanics present in other creatures in the game. One of the bugs I experienced during my play through of the game was during the Hell Snake boss, the segments of the creature would break apart into little minions and fly off in a pattern. If these segment are destroyed while bouncing off the ground the minions will tend to become stuck and difficult to destroy. On a more pleasant boss related note, a character who plagues you through the entire game shows up as a boss and presents you with the opportunity to have your sweet revenge.
There is a cooperative mode as well as a battle mode, I unfortunately didn’t have an opportunity to test these, as I have no friends or enemies, but if the cooperative play is anything like I would expect it is, it’s probably pretty damn fun in that double dragons sort of way.
Audio Visual
As previously noted, Nasty is a retro game and, as you’d expect, the visuals are retro as well. The sprites look good and are animated well as are most of the enemies. The levels are decent looking with some nice background art, though there aren’t really any opportunities for any parallax to show it off since the camera is stationary.
I’m not really sure why, but for some reason the ghosts don’t feel quite right visually. This visually awkward feeling goes for the boss Hell Snake as well. I’m not sure if it’s that they are so large and simple in design that they feel as though they lack detail, when compared to the densely detailed smaller sprites, or what. That said, I found the simplest solution to the problem was to shoot them. Oh maybe they could have little green accountant visors? I did mention they are accountant ghosts, right? Don’t be so surprised, according to A Christmas Carol one in four ghosts are accountants.
On the issue of level design, there were some repeats, which is to be expected in a game with 100 levels. I just felt it was worth noting.
How does it sound? It sounds pretty good. The start screen theme is decent, although the game soundtrack gets a little repetitive during marathon play. The sound effects are pretty generic retro, which is a given considering the style of the game. So in essence the sound all works fairly well for the game but it won’t make you weep with joy.
Summary
Nasty costs 80 Microsoft Points on the Xbox Live Indie Games store. Thats a dollar for a game with 100 levels, 3 difficulty modes, cooperative play, and a battle mode. The normal modes have a solid 4 hours or so of play through time. All that said the game is retro and will appeal to mostly retro fans, if you don’t count yourself among such fans I would recommend trying the demo before giving it a buy. The demo is pretty representative of what you will experience in the game and should help you make the right call.
edited 3/5/2010 for grammar
Playdead, a small game studio located in the center of Copenhagen, Denmark, has announced that their highly anticipated IGF finalist Limbo is set to release this summer on Xbox LIVE Arcade. It’s currently nominated for awards in both Technical Excellence and Visual Art in the IGF competition. The puzzle platformer is expected to make a playable appearance at GDC. I am socking Microsoft pretendy points away as I write this.
source: IndieGames.com
Steam just put up their Midweek Madness deal and it’s full of indie goodness, you’ll find seven games for $2 a pop or buy the whole bundle for $9.99. Me personally I am picking up Bob Came In Pieces. There isn’t any listed offer expiration date but given the nature of the “Midweek” name, id guess it wont be around long, so don’t miss your chance!
Included in bundle:
The future of gaming is… well. Amazingly bright, or glumly dim, depending on who you talk to. One of the biggest bones of contention in this debate is the looming presence of motion controls for every major console. Nintendo’s Wii was first to manage something remotely usable, a classic “tv remote” form factor controller featuring accelerometers and an infra-red detecting camera allowing it to determine orientation relative to the screen. Microsoft unveiled their Project Natal at E3 2009, comprised of primarily a 3D camera system capable of tracking human bodies with a high degree of accuracy with low latency. Finally, Sony is also developing a motion controller, reputedly called Arc, consisting of a “wand” device capped with a colored ball which is tracked by the existing Playstation Eye camera. Only time will tell the true outcome of this war of motion, but as an indie developer and a gamer, I think I have an opinion that might surprise some people: Microsoft’s Project Natal will win, and I’ll tell you why.
Some History
The existing motion control solution, Nintendo’s Wii, has been both cheered and derided. For many, it has become an entry into the world of gaming that so called “casual gamers” can pick up and play. Game play is generally found to be intuitive but for some, intuitive means “easy.” For all the same reasons that the casual gaming crowd has latched onto the Wii’s control mechanics, the older gamers and the “hardcore” have seen the change as a dilution of their favored hobby. Technically speaking, however, the Wii’s controls are lackluster when attempting to perform fine motor functions, bringing rise to the term “waggle” in reference to the gross movements generally used to play motion controlled Wii games. Because of both these reasons, both Natal and Arc have been similarly derided by those who follow the progress of the gaming scene. They believe the upcoming solutions will both also inferior to the controllers of old because it will cater to a less gaming experienced crowd, as well as be an inaccurate input method. Unfortunately, these ideas can possibly be supported by the information presented by the gaming media to date, where demo games for both systems have been shown which are simplistic and “gimmicky,” as well as players reporting feeling “detached” from the play experience when trying to play them.
Departing
And this is where I depart from the general consensus. While I do believe that the initial crop of games will fall prey to the “gimmicky” and “casual” traps, it is where the capabilities of the technology branch out from there that will prove Natal the winner. Here is the key difference: While both the Wiimote and Arc use accelerometers to measure motion of a handheld controller, Natal uses its 3D camera system to track full body movement. As such, the Natal technology can accomplish a few tasks the other solutions cannot.
Natal Doesn’t Replace the Controller
Natal supplements the controller. Yes, most of the initial Natal development will overzealously attempt outdo Nintendo by doing away with a physical controller altogether, but I believe that this tact will fail in general, especially among the more experienced gamer. Instead, I think the true power of Natal will lie in utilizing available input methods in tandem to achieve results. A racing game for example, could have the steering motion read by Natal while the controller held in the hands would be used for its far more accurate button presses for gas, brakes and other input. Don’t like the feel of the default Xbox controller? No problem with Natal, you can use whatever controller you like, unlike Wii or Arc which locks you into the wand form factor. (No. Plastic pieces of crap you stick on a Wiimote do not count.)
Natal Can Do Head Tracking
And head tracking is awesome (at least for a single player). Way back in early 2008, I was amazed when I watched a video by Johnny Chung Lee, then a student of Carnegie Melon University, using Wii remotes and some homebrew software to track a location in 3d space. This location, namely the head of a single user, was then used by a simple program to draw a 3D demo scene in such a way that when viewed by that user, the scene would appear incredibly immersive. In fact, you can still see the video on YouTube.
Johnny Lee is now a researcher at, you guessed it, Microsoft, so you can tell that someone thought what he was working on was very interesting and applicable, and I have no doubt his research will be a part of the Natal toolkit.
To exemplify this point, imagine playing a First Person Shooter with the parallax head motion effect for amazing realism, or even utilizing it for something like looking around a corner without moving the character’s body position. Even 2D games can make use of the parallax effect for a more captivating motion dynamic.
Natal is a Budget Performance Capture Studio
One thing that Microsoft has prided itself on with the Xbox 360, is the ease of development for their platform, and their heightened focus on indie games. Their XNA Game studio is wildly popular for hobbyist and indie developers, and there is no doubt that eventually it will include libraries for interfacing with Natal. Not only does this open up Natal development to the general public and to independent developers, who can be far more clever than “professional” developers at times, it also opens up the stream of data captured by the Natal device. As such, while a professional motion capture studio is prohibitively expensive in purchasing both hardware and software, Natal can be used as an extremely cheap performance capture solution on a limited basis. It’s powerful enough to recognize a human body without the usage of a suit of capture points, so imagine what someone could do with the hardware, and a little helpful homebrew software to interpret signals into recorded motion capture. Especially since this can be accomplished on a PC (where the processor limitation doesn’t precisely exist), and saved where it could later be used for either export to 3d modeling software and applied to a bone solution for replay, or using the Xbox’s content pipeline for easy import and usage for replay in games.
It wasn’t too long ago that rendered 3D art and console development were far from the reach of the modern artist. And before that, professional level music creation and distribution, as well as movie making. Advances in technology can bring out revolutions in democratizing art when we least expect it, and I think Natal will be one avenue of opening up another level development possibilities to the average person at home.
Closing
How will this all play out? I can’t say for certain. But it’s been interesting to me that in paying attention to the gaming media as all this information comes out, that they have chosen to focus on some aspects of the forthcoming technology that I think will fail. There are a lot of smart people working on these projects right now, however, and I can only hope that they’re smarter than the media that reports on them. I for one can’t wait to try an FPS with head tracking, or play with developing some game content using cheap motion capture.
