GBGamesI learned that Frozen Bubble 2 has been released.
The graphics have changed, most notably to 3D, but I’m not sure yet if it is for the better. I think the most interesting feature is a new online multiplayer component.
If you have never played Frozen Bubble before, it is basically an open source Bust-a-Move clone. It’s been ported to various platforms, and you can play the original Frozen Bubble here at GBGames!
Steve Pavlina announced that he has shut down Dexterity.com, his shareware game development business which he has run for about 12 years.
Unfortunately, he hasn’t transferred his articles on game development practices. Some of his articles have been updated and are in his articles section, but some, such as “Zero Defect Software Development” and “Shareware Amateurs vs Shareware Professionals” are nowhere to be found.
I’ve personally found these articles to be a great resource, and in fact they were the reason why I was inspired to start my own indie game development business. It would be a shame if we could only access them through archive.org or Google’s cache.
EDIT: Some of these articles are in the Association of Software Professionals newsletter archives, available to members only. If No Independent Developers Are 100 Times Smarter Than You, Then Why Do Some Get 100 Times the Results? is a free article.
This year I am dressing up as myself from two years ago. Scary!
Every year I tell myself that I am going to plan my costume months in advance, and every year I am almost always trying to scrounge together a costume at the last minute. I just never make it a high enough priority. Still, sometimes the last minute costumes are the best and most creative. One year I was the World Wide Web.
Anyway, I was thinking about playing some horror-themed games, and besides mainstream titles like Resident Evil 4 or Eternal Darkness, I couldn’t of many. I remember playing a great Flash game called Found Lost that was pretty spooky even though it had unrealistic graphics.
There is also Penumbra, one of the games in the running for IGF 2007. While I haven’t had a chance to play it (it’s Windows only), it promises to be a scary game.
How many other indie games out there are in the horror genre? What will you be playing today?
I learned that linuX-gamers.org has formed a non-profit organization in Germany, which is where it is located. I’ve found linuX-gamers to be a great source of news about games on the Gnu/Linux platform.
Major parts of our work will involve the support of communication, free exchange of knowledge and the linuX-gamers.net community through the linuX-gamers.net portal. We will care about developement and free distribution of open source software. Furthermore our work will cover organization of and participation in public events to make information available to a broad spectrum of people and to strengthen educational and scientific work on linux gaming related topics.
I don’t know the details of such work, but if it helps to improve the state of game development on Gnu/Linux and increases the number of games we can play, I welcome it. Good luck, everyone at linuX-gamers!
“YOOOOOOOOOU are listening to the Indie Game Development Podcast Show…” I don’t know why, but I really like that intro.
Anyway, Action posted a new podcast, this time featuring an interview with Anthony Flack of Squashy Software. Anthony is well known as the creator of Platypus and the upcoming Cletus Clay, each utilizing the latest in Clay-Based Graphics Processing.
Especially interesting are Anthony’s thoughts on character and game design.
It is the first part of the interview, which is readily apparent when it cuts off at the end, leaving you wanting more.
I am writing this post from DeLan, the largest and longest LAN party open for students only (although I distinctly remember being at some more intimate parties that lasted two days). It started on Saturday at 3PM and goes until 9AM Sunday. There were a number of firsts for me.
One, this is the first time I have ever paid to be at a LAN party. It was $5 to get in, and another $5 for tournament play. It’s not too much, but it’s still different.
Two, I never played Counter-Strike before. We played in a double-elimination Counter-Strike Source tournament, and my team had one other person who had never played. We played fairly respectably, all things considered, and we were eliminated in the third round. In the first round, I saved the team. We were playing as terrorists, and I decided to take a completely different route compared to my teammates. Well, something happened, and I was the only one left alive. I had to go back, get the bomb, then find an area to prime and set it. Apparently the counter-terrorists thought I was going to go where the rest of my team was heading, so it took them longer to find me. One killed me, but the bomb was set, and my team held our breath as we waited to see if they could disarm it. My heart was actually racing, and then BOOM! We won! High fives, lots of “w00t!”, and general cheers went around to the rag-tag team, Psycho Squad. Yeah, I wasn’t too happy with the name…
Unfortunately, the second and third rounds didn’t go so well for us.
Three, it is the first time I get to try out my new laptop at a LAN party. I bought a Dell Precision M90, which is a desktop replacement more than a laptop. I named her EsmereldaGB. So far I had installed games on it, but I haven’t played any of them yet. There were machines specifically provided for the tournament, so I haven’t had a chance to play on this new machine yet. I will, however, be playing Total Annihilation, which is a game I haven’t played in earnest in a year or two. There are apparently some fans here, too.
Four, I had Bawls for the first time. It’s not bad, but it isn’t as good as Red Bull.
I’m hungry, and my food just arrived.
Oh, and by the way, I finished the basic gameplay of Pong before I left. Today is a good day.
Since I’ve decided to start with the basics and create a simple Pong clone, I figured I would do some research. I found quite a few tutorials and other articles, but the following is one I wish I would have found months ago: But Can You Make Pong?
Well, there it is. The good old game Pong can be quite a challenge, and certainly not something you finish in a day or two. And this is exactly the reason I believe Pong is the perfect game to test your skills as an all-round developer and/or studio. It’s not overly ambitious, yet it requires a good amount of discipline. Look at it this way: If you can’t finish a simple game of Pong, do you truly think you are ready for the big games?
I have already worked a couple of hours on my Pong clone, and I can see it taking multiple days, and knowing how I seem to like to underestimate myself, probably a couple of weeks or months. Yeesh, that’s a sobering thought: Pong requiring many, many hours to complete.
I’m not too intimidated. I mean, even with my lack of experience, it is just Pong. It’s not even Massively Multiplayer Pong. I just can’t claim to have made such an “easy” game.
I did a bit of research, thinking I could find some simple tutorials. I found some C# ones, which do me no good, but I did find some general Pong physics tips which might come in handy later: ball physics and Pong “physics” .
The gold mine came from the LinuxDevCenter at O’Reilly: Retro Gaming Hacks, Part 1: Clone Pong, Using Only SDL (and Your Brain) by Josh Glover, a contributer to Retro Gaming Hacks. It’s basically a step-by-step tutorial on writing a Pong clone using SDL. I am not too happy with the example code, but it is called a “hack” for a reason. My goal is to implement Pong, but I will use this tutorial as a guide rather than try to mimic the code very closely.
These days I am generally trying to catch up with all of the weekly reviews I haven’t been doing, but I received a bit of news in my inbox that caught my eye: Game Console Vulnerability Identified.
Apparently it isn’t completely new news as the PSP has had security vulnerabilities before, but wow! How long will it be before someone finds something similar on the XBox?
Cliffski has posted a Kudos game design post-mortem.
Witness the powers of Johnny Depp and Mel Gibson as they help to develop the concept and UI for one of the most anticipated indie games of the year! Cliffski noted that GUI design is especially tough when you are creating something that is different from anything else out there. While the article is short, it does provide some insight into the design process of a successful indie game developer.
Action has published another indie interview. Josiah Pisciotta is co-founder of Chronic Logic, creators of innovative games such as Gish, Bridge Construction Set, and Triptych.
Josiah talked about how he got started in game development, how he handled the business of running Chronic Logic, and how he and co-founder Alex Austin developed various game ideas. I thought that it was especially interesting to hear about the evolution of Gish.