Birds and Video Games

For the first time ever, I own a smartphone. It's an HTC Evo something or other. I've found it has quite a few uses, such as checking my Facebook and email while at work. Texting my roommates about random stuff that happens at work. Reading various articles while at work. Checking Planetside 2 test server stuff... while at work.

Most importantly though, taking pictures of grackles while at work. Its uses in reducing productivity are immense. In all seriousness though, being able to check these sorts of things when I'm away from my computer and in a moment of not having much else to do, it is a very handy device, and saves me time. Run-ons don't even care! Here's a random screenshot of something!

This can actually happen.

There really are a lot of birds in DT3.

Those Extra Things
Gate 5 is almost all based on the level design with very few major things happening until near the end. It follows closer to Super Metroid's method of progression in simply letting the player figure out where their new power up would allow them to go. It's split up in 3 major sections plus a hub. The only help given is which of these sections the player should be in.

There's times when I feel something extra would greatly enhance the player's engagement, even if the extra bit doesn't really have any major purpose. For example, in Gate 5, there's a scripted scenario around getting the Morph Ball. That segment of gameplay could just as easily work with the player simply grabbing the upgrade and that being the end of it. How do you guys approach situations like this?

A Thing About This
Anyone played Fez? It was that little platform where you shift the world around 90 degrees. So the link above is a review that are my thoughts almost exactly. While the review is a bit satirical and overly hateful at times, it hits on my main issue with the game. I disagree with the bit about the music being bad though, the reviewer seemed like he was getting his hate on during that segment. I felt the ambient music fit well with the empty, shallow gameplay.

But that aside, remember Ys3? It was pretty awesome and this remix does well in reminding me of it.

And while we're on the topic of music, Smooth McGroove did this.

Writers Block

I can't hold off this post any longer cause I'd like to mention a new LP. Damn writers block. Does that count for blogging? I'll say yes. Before I go any further, I'll be out of town and unavailable this Wednesday, Thursday, and half of Friday.

Grackles
The male grackle mentioned in the last post is almost eating out of my hand. He has no problems running within a few inches of me now. What's fun and interesting for me, is after he's done eating, he'll stick around and try to communicate. This is a behavior I've found that's common with ravens and crows after having extended contact with a human. While we can't effectively communicate, I find it nifty they try.

Most of the birds around my workplace have paired up now. I don't know if the above bird found a mate yet, but often times when he approaches, so does a female, and it's the same one each time. He was also the first to greet me when I came to work yesterday.

A DT3 Demo LP
WhattayaBrian, who did a DT1 LP some time ago, has taken on doing a recorded run through the DT3 demo. It is mostly unedited, though at times, he'll bring the video to chipmunk voice speeds when repetitive actions are taken, such as failing to get an item or dying repeatedly. He does voice commentary throughout it and is easy on the ears. I've watched all of it so far, especially considering I'm in DT3 mode and seeing how someone plays (with commentary) can be the best feedback. Early level tweaks have occured due to his LP as well as implementing some of his good suggestions, as well as some minor changes due to my more asinine UI decisions.

In episode 8 of this, he streamed his gameplay to me while he was recording so we could do dual commentary. That was a lot of fun and it may happen again before the LP is over.

Sometime in the coming month, I should be doing another DT3 video, showcasing a few things.

Edited In (I've been meaning to mention this)
Some time after the trilogy is complete (maybe a couple months), I'll be giving out the project file for all 3 games. There's no reason to keep it to myself after I'm done with the game. But, and I'll say this again when the event occurs, I will not be supporting it. There's a lot going on with it and I will be giving very little help on how to use the project. I may have a document along with it that highlights a few tidbits, but that will be it. The code, specifically for DT1, is pretty bad. It's commented well. (Though that isn't consistent throughout.) I figure this question may come up, so there we go. Plus I've seen that people have searched for 'Distorted Travesty Engine'. There were 3 searches on that topic this month so far.

You will need to have the Standard version of Game Maker 8.1. The Lite version is not compatible with any of the DT games.

Progress Comes With A Voice

The birds are all back. My 3 birds that usually hung around my work are all running about their daily routines and periodically stopping by to ask for food. Even the bird that ate from my hand is back daily now, so that's really nice to see again. One of them doesnt approach too often, but she's often seen collecting materials for building a nest. Most of the times that I see her on the ground, she's got a beak full of grass. Even one of the males have opened up to me and been closing the distance.

DT3 Progress
Gate 5 development has started recently, and like the times I started other gate levels, I actually put the progress on hold for about a week to address other problems with the game or just things that have been settling for awhile. On the Gate 5 stuff, I've had a lot of help from Ano0maly on making the Samus set more interesting, but without overpowering it compared to the Megaman set. He's been a lot of help and I'm sure his input will be great for the rest of the gate level.

Acapella
I don't really like it, but like all things, there are a few exceptions. A youtube user who goes by SmoothMcGroove does acapella for video game music and it sounds really good. For me, the best goes to his parody of a song by Fall Out Boy. This is something pretty awesome and fun to listen to. I guarantee it'll bring you a smile.

Something I've Been Asked on Occasion
Has been about my background with game development or multimedia in general. My first 'real' dive into games was with C++, which after having messed with quite a handful of languages, I feel it is a horrid language to start someone with. The progression the class went was:
- Hello World
- Variables, Strings, Input, Output
- Structs
- Classes
Compress this all into about 6 weeks in a class intended for people who have never seen a line of code. There's a few small details mixed in the list above, but those are the main points. For people this class was intended for, it went far too fast for most of us to understand what we were really doing. Going into object classes, it wasn't explained well what that was really doing or the power behind object orient programming. Having taken a look at the curiculum at a later date, I realized it wasn't the instructor who was giving us hell.

Visual Basic, or even Javascript, (to me anyway) is a better language to start someone with.
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After that, I went into art... yep... It was world modeling and texture painting. I really enjoyed texture painting, though this was before the days of normal mapping, parallax mapping, and all the millions of other layers we have today. I enjoyed painting the diffuse map. A lot of my 3D days were spent in Unreal, making maps and scripts for that and trying to make the Karma math engine not suck. (Unreal Engine 2.5) I enjoyed making maps that featured a series of Tomb Raider like traps, one leading into the other. I'd upload those maps with the associated scripts here, but those have sadly long been lost into digital nothingness.

After that, I discovered the magic of frien scripting. And that's where we are now.

Stuff About DT, Finally

The DT trilogy isn't easy as we've all seen; The difficulty is one of its notable aspects. It's planned to have the finale be the hardest over all, though I hope for the right reasons. That aside, an interesting topic came up about things like the Death encounter in DT3. Based on fan input, it has been very well recieved, which I'm super happy about. It's the highlight of the DT3 demo. (To me anyway.) It's been said by pretty much everyone that the only way to get through that boss fight is through skill and practice, there really is no substitute. This is what I was going for. There has been one critique on the fight though, but it isn't about the execution, it's about what to do when you have a player that simply can't keep up with the precision it asks for. NegativeZero said one of the great things about DT1 is it had ways of getting these players through the game. The system and mechanics were more open to experimentation. There was the easy mode that was a good fallback if someone needed. Healing (while lame in my opinion :P) was an option mid bossfight. There were many other indirect ways in DT1 of getting around obstacles that DT3 does not allow.

It wasn't to say that DT3 was bad for this, nor was it that DT3 was limiting. However, DT3 was designed to be more focused than the first, and it does give the player less options in that regard. The discussion was leading to things that could be put into DT3 to assist with moments like the Death encounter that could be a major roadblock.

Jerry's day is about to suck.

And look what's back in the sand. No worries, your retribution will come... eventually.

Talking to Fans
I'm still trying to get the hang of this. I used to think it would be good to be transparent to the players, but I've found the more I talk with people, the better they respond to the game as well.

I found this talk to be really awesome and interesting. Not in how she makes money, but in how she interacts with her fans. It's really neat.

Side Bar
On the garbage section, 'Music Credits' has been added that takes you to the music credits list for all three games. These will continue to be updated.

Video Postings

Edit: (March 17, 2013) This needs just a bit more to reach its goal. :]
There Came An Echo

Edit: (Same day) Look below.

I'm getting even less creative with post titles.

Ever since I accepted Slit08's challenge of doing a no damage run of 'Think & Act Fast' others had latched onto seeing that happen too. I had done it way back during its first creation, but I don't record my playtest sessions. Well here it is. 33 attempts of agony and despair only to realize that it is completely impossible to do. The video will definitely prove to all the haters of that map that they were indeed right. Wait no, that's not what it does.

Super zoomed out look at T&AF.

There will be more videos posted periodically now. I need to learn to project my voice through the mic better though. My voice tends to trail off and that's not the mic's fault, I just suck at talking apparently.

DT3 Stuff
So here's a screenshot.

This is a really boring screenshot.

This is a work in progress shot of a new desert zone on the mainland. In the final version, you'll actually (like most places) be able to get a sneak peak of this area very early on, as it connects to the Magical Hills. (Area east of Central City.) In this, the player will have to contend with the heat. If the player doesn't find a water source after a certain amount of time, it's game over. Of course, for gameplay and plot convenience, there will happen to be various pools of water that one can hop into cause deserts totally have random pools of water just strewn about. This is another 'feature' from a game I made way back in the day.

Another thing that game had was a snowy level that used this same mechanic, but with keeping warm instead. The player's temperature would rise much slower, and hostiles tended to hang around the campfires where you would have to stay warm for a moment, making them somewhat confined combat areas that you had to fight over. That effect wasn't achieved very well though. In that game, having the character temperature reach an extreme wasn't instant death like in DT, but HP dropped at an extremely fast rate.

Slight Content Cut
This isn't nearly as significant as the other, and if it wasn't mentioned, no one would even know content had been cut. Throughout the game world is a place called the 'Cave Network'. One of the entrances can be found in the demo, though it had nothing in it. It has 4 entrances, and although they are all connected, all 4 must be found in order to fully 'complete' its challenge. Each entrance had a few set of challenges before the connection to the rest was made, eventually the place can also act as another way to quickly get around the world. The number of entrances has been cut to 3.

The reason one was cut is it doesn't have a place in the set of challenges I have set for the place and is redundant. One focuses heavily on platforming, another on combat, and the last on puzzles. (Mind and math puzzles, no worries, we won't get too crazy with that.) The fourth was going to be exploration based (and have a mix of the 3), but this is very unnecessary to have. The entire game has this focus as well as the fifth Gate, which I'm sure you all know about. Exploration can simply be blended into the other 3.

An Article
This article.
I found what he said interesting and true of not just shooters. This is the feeling I had when playing Brawl after coming from years of playing Melee. A lot of the skill and competitive aspect that I loved in Melee was sadly missing from Brawl.

Video & Audio

So I didn't do this with the last blog post. Since I have a new computer and can record again, I wanted to upload something. It's nothing special, but here it is. All stuff that wasn't in the demo, but no story spoilers. Yay for being able to record again!

Amnesia
I finally got around to finishing Amnesia and I highly recommend it if you love horror games. I think I'm one of the last few who hadn't played it that was into horror. It actually got to me unlike most other horror titles. The only other games to really freak me out were the Silent Hill games. I'm into the horror games that get into your head, where the game doesn't actually have to put you in danger, but makes you think you are. Where you don't want to turn around, because you're afraid something might be there. Amnesia does a really good job of this.

It's a game that I actually preferred to keep the lights on, which I don't like doing with these games. This is the first horror game I've played on a PC, at least with headphones on. Most of the time, I'm on a TV, 10 ft. back with standard speakers. I find there's a different level of immersion when you're right in front of your monitor with decent headphones. The sound in Amnesia was phenomenal. When timed with the subtle actions in the game, it was chilling.

Your character has a sanity level. (Like Eternal Darkness.) When he sees unsettling things or is in the dark for too long, his sanity drops. Staying in the light, progressing forward, or solving puzzles would keep it up. Staying in the light, however, means that you can be seen. When your sanity drops too low, your view blurs and the controls become slippery. If he continues to decline, he'll simply fall over for about 10 seconds and will only crawl, mixed with a high pitched sound that cuts out the rest of the audio in the area.

I've found it's scarier when you don't know what's chasing you. The unknown is always more frightening, and Amnesia was well aware of this. Simply looking at the monsters in the game will blur the view and drop your sanity significantly. There's a section where you have waist high water and of course something is in there. You can't see what it is, but you know it's moving around as you can see the splashes and hear it as well. Sometimes a shadow will follow you, which of course, that is hardly visible, but you know it's there, and you know you have to get away from it.