Project Magma Version 1.8

March 14, 2014
Games
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Project Magma, as I’ve mentioned before, is the fan-maintained version of Myth II: Soulblighter. I wasn’t aware, but last year they released version 1.8 of Myth II and it is frankly awesome. A video is (literally) worth a thousand pictures, so here’s an overview of everything in it:

The far zoom when playing a replay and the motion interpolation are the best features, IMO. With these, the more modern RTS controls and the ability to quickly quit and restart games, Myth II has all the features of a modern RTS – perhaps more. Indeed, if it weren’t for those damn low-poly models and billboards the game could be released commercially today and would almost certainly be a big hit.

If you try this and like it and decide to play online, the current most popular hangout for Myth II players is Gate of Storms.

I Miss Austin

March 6, 2014
PersonalUncategorized
1 Comment

I’m feeling a little maudlin today.

I’m sure this will come as no surprise, but I miss the hell out of Austin. We’ve been gone for three years now and it feels like an eternity.

Our move to Michigan could not have been more ill-advised. I’d been out of work for months and we were getting kind of desperate but I still shouldn’t have done it. The company I went to work for was well-respected and making interesting games and I still shouldn’t have done it. I should have held out.

Because there really is more to life than money.

I didn’t realize how good I had it in Austin until I left. Michigan is a cultural WASTELAND. Dragon’s Lair? Nothing like that in the entire state of Michigan. Alamo Drafthouse? Nothing like that in the entire state of Michigan. All those quirky little shops on South Congress? Nothing like them in the entire state of Michigan. Half-Price Books, dozens of quirky different restaurants, the Broken Spoke, Einstein’s Arcade, the beautiful UT campus, Barton Springs…not only does nothing like these things exist in Michigan they sure as hell don’t all exist in the same city. Austin has so much awesome crammed into it that I’m surprised it hasn’t spontaneously combusted.

Hell, Michigan only has one game development house and I’d already been fired from it so after the first year I didn’t even have that.

And you may say, “Well, Austin has a lot of that stuff because it’s a college town.” Nuh-uh. I went to Ann Arbor several times for job interviews; it was just as sterile as the rest of the state.

And let’s not even go into Detroit. I sure as hell wish I never had. On the day we moved in someone broke into our house and stole both our TVs, my Xbox and my PS3. Welcome to the fucking neighborhood, suckers!

But now I’m in Boca Raton; that’s better, right? Well, yes. I’m employed. There aren’t any more gunshots outside. I don’t fear for my family’s life. I don’t feel like our house could be broken into any time. But…

Boca Raton’s a retirement town. It’s beautiful and the weather is temperate but it’s almost specifically designed to not be overstimulating. So all that stuff I mentioned earlier? Boca doesn’t have anything like it either.

So I’m seriously homesick. It’s gotten to the point that I’ve taken to using Google Maps to zoom around Austin and look at all the places I’m missing.

And then I realized…

This must be what it’s like to be dead.

You yearn. And you can look down from above and see, kind of. You can hear what certain people are saying and doing, to a limited extent – especially the people you really care about.

But you can’t participate. And as hard as you might try to pretend, you aren’t really there.

So to all of my friends who are – enjoy it. Please. For me.

PTFSD Update: Week 1

February 28, 2014
PersonalUncategorized
2 Comments

Weight Loss: Week 1
Previous Weight: 403.4
Current Weight: 395
Loss: -8.4 Pounds
Total Weight Loss: -8.4 Pounds

This week was probably the toughest I’m going to have, and it wasn’t THAT tough. The really bad part was when everyone else got to eat Boston Market last night. But I persevered and I feel like I was rewarded for it.

Name That Game 97: Remembering the Unrememberable

February 26, 2014
Name That Game!
4 Comments

Video game characters are often shallow, 2D, cardboard cutouts. And sometimes they have names to match. Video games somehow get away with giving their characters names that would be laughed out of the literary or cinema realms. Probably because video games don’t have editors.

The worst part is when a character endures and is finally given a decent backstory and gets a fan base…because now you’ve got a cool character attached to a cruddy name (I’m looking straight at you, Solid Snake).

So here are eight of the worst video game chracter names I’ve ever seen. They’re either generic, unassuming, rote, trite, hackneyed, overly macho or just completely inappropriate. Can you name the games they are from? And remember – when you cheat, you only cheat yourself.

1. Blake Stone

2. Cutter Slade

3. Edge Maverick

4. B.J. Blazkowicz

5. Sol Badguy

6. John Dalton

7. Lo Wang

8. Royd Clive

Bonus: Chet Awesomelaser

Good luck! If you win, I’ll put you in my game and I promise I won’t use the Random Character Name Generator to name you!

Amazement

February 24, 2014
PersonalUncategorized
3 Comments

Okay, I know I’m not supposed to give this update until Friday, but I mentioned in my previous post that I couldn’t weigh myself because I was over 400.

I weighed myself this morning: 396.6.

Promising.

The Odds

February 20, 2014
PTFSD
2 Comments

Okay, so according to this episode of Penn & Teller’s Bull…pokey, the success rate for any self-improvement plan is about five percent. This includes Weight Watchers, Alcoholics Anonymous, or going it alone.

Which means all I have to do is try twenty times and I’m golden! The odds are in my favor!

So my focus has returned to Planitia again. I’m ditching my own networking solution and going with RakNet, which is free (as long as Planitia doesn’t make $100,000) and incredibly full-features. How full-featured? Peep this video:

And it integrates with Steamworks, so should the clouds part and THAT ever happen I’ll be able to take advantage of it.

This means that I may be able to have a public…alpha of Planitia soon. I’ll be running it through my own forums; if you’re interested in trying it out contact me.

Game Center CX

February 14, 2014
Cool PeopleGames
2 Comments

As I mentioned on my Twitter, I’ve been watching GameCenter CX (in the US it was retitled Retro Game Master). It’s a show where a Japanese comedian is tasked with beating old, hard, and/or terrible video games; it’s also interspersed with interviews with developers and trips to Japanese game centers.

Here’s a sample episode for your perusal. In it our hero, Shinya Arino, must complete the original NES version of Ninja Gaiden. He’s never heard of it before.

(Anyone who has actually played Ninja Gaiden is probably chuckling already.)

Now, I love me this show a lot. It’s got humor, game history and interviews with luminaries of the Japanese gaming scene.

But at the same time it makes me wistful. Why? Because the punchline of the show isn’t that a 35-year-old man is playing games. It’s his reaction to being locked in a room with a terrible (or terribly difficult) game and being told he can’t go home until he finishes it that’s funny. When Arino visits game centers there are just as many adult players as children.

As you watch the show it becomes clear that gaming in Japan is not stigmatized like it is here in the United States. Nobody cares that Arino plays games; hell, everybody does it! There isn’t a single person in Japan that is Arino’s age that didn’t play a Famicom at some point in their childhood, and continuing to play games into adulthood isn’t seen as a failing but as perfectly normal.

I just wish that were the case here.

I leave you with Irish comedian Dara Ó Briain’s take on the social stigma of playing games here in the West (warning: salty, hilarious language).

Name That Game 96: Pure Poetry

February 3, 2014
Name That Game!
7 Comments

Of course, as soon as I post the last entry I have an idea for a Name That Game! Behold! Hints in haiku for your perusal!

i read your passport
please face the scanner because
you don’t look female

a big, epic quest
ruined by bad RNGS
and dumb time limits

they scream “assassin”
but when I save the empress
I don’t harm a soul

my gun shoots lightning
and sets bandits on fire
ooh! a purple shield!

a robot hero
fights through a cold asteroid
to stop endless war

only turn-based game
where you’ll hear the players say
“halflings are OP”

don’t get too attached
to your soldiers; aliens
will hit even with low scores

Good luck!

Deep Space Settlement

January 6, 2014
Cool PeopleGame DesignGame ProgrammingGames
0 Comment

And now on to something else. I found another indie developer who also has a long-standing project she is obsessing over, and from what I’ve seen it looks like it could be really good.

The project is Deep Space Settlement. Your job? Turn a colony ship into…well, you get it, and then defend that settlement from anyone or anything that tries to harm it. The kicker is that the game uses RTS mechanics even though it’s more of a build/strategy type game.

The game manages to give off both Homeworld and Sins of a Solar Empire vibes, which resonate deeply with me. And despite the plurals on the home page, the entire game and its underlying engine have been written by one woman, Stéphanie Rancourt. So she’s working on a labor-of-love project that’s probably way too big for her and writing everything herself from scratch. I’ve found my French-Canadian distaff counterpart!

Borderlands 2

January 6, 2014
FamilyGames
1 Comment

So! A while back I mentioned Saints Row 4 and how much I enjoyed it. Since then a lot of DLC has been released for it and while I haven’t bought all of it, I have paid attention.

And that’s how I saw this.

Now, despite laughing at the trailer, I had no idea who that girl was or what “Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin'” was. So I went to the Tubes of You to find out. And that’s how I found out about Anthony and Ashly Burch.

And then I ran across an episode of HAWP (gotta use the acronym to prove I’m hip, dontcha know) where Anthony talked about writing Borderlands 2.

Which reminded me that I’d picked up Borderlands 2 during the Steam summer sale and never touched it.

So I touched it.

For about thirty hours.

Borderlands 2 is a great game and I’m very, very sad I didn’t play it sooner. I should have just dumped that pretentious, jumped-up Bioshock Infinite and gone for this. It’s fun, it’s funny, and it’s got one of the best villains in recent gaming memory with Handsome Jack.

I actually bought another copy for my daughter and she convinced her friends to buy it and it’s like Catan where it’s always good but at its peak when you’ve got four people.

(I think I may have mentioned in the past that I think co-op multiplayer is the only good kind of multiplayer? Yeah, this game proves me right. Again.)

So if you like FPS games and/or you like to laugh and/or you like playing games with your friends, definitely check it out.