Take a look at this very impressive effort by few guys… This is the 5th development blog for this game, a spiritual sequel to 2010’s “Under the Garden”…
Very neat stuff there!
You can check out the game and contribute to the development effort (which gives you access to the Alpha, it seems) at their website.
This is one of those posts that have a bit of everything, so no decent title for it… 
Anyway, as you might have seen in the Spellcaster Studios blog, me and Rincewind gave up on the Indie Speed Run, mainly because of scope issues… We went a little wild with it, Rincewind because of lack of 48-hour compo experience, and me because I thought that without needing to do graphics I could do much more…
Anyway, it was a good exercise, and I’m definitely finishing this one, not because it is brilliant, but it’s great to figure out bugs on SurgeEd and SurgePlayer, which I used for the game. Already figured out some nasty bugs which would have taken a lot of time to fix on the “Grey” scripts, specially one that only seems to manifest in specific conditions…
If you’ve been following this blog, you know I’m using Lua to drive the game logic, and specifically LuaJIT, and I found an odd behavior…
The offending piece of code was something that tested a condition and acted on that:
function do_something(param)
if (ffi.C.test(param)) then
change_object() end end
test is a function declared on the FFI, that returned a bool:
ffi = require("ffi")
ffi.cdef[[bool test(const char* str);
]]
Which had a C counterpart like:
extern "C"
{ bool __declspec(dllexport) test(const char* str) {
bool b=do_some_test();
return b;
}
}
Simple enough…
Problem is, “change_object” was never reached… First I thought it was the “do_some_test” function that was failing, and I added some tracing to it (writing to the logger) with the output, and it turned true eventually…
Then I added some tracing in the “do_something” function, and mysteriously, it started working properly… After a lot of tests, I found that if I used any function that called normally bound functions before the “ffi.C.test” call, the system worked properly… But if I added FFI based functions, it wouldn’t work!
This was driving me crazy… then I had a silly idea… “bool” is a C++ type, not C type, so I changed the declaration of the C function (not the FFI declaration) to “int __declspec(dllexport) test(const char* str)”, returning 1 if “do_some_test” was true, and 0 otherwise… And now the system worked properly!
So, I arrived to the conclusion that you can’t output “bool” directly from the C code (although you can declare it that way on the FFI declaration, to get a proper bool and not an int). I imagine the problem was the size of a bool and the stack manipulation of LuaJIT, which caused the system to access corrupted memory (that was probably zeroed before being used, and that’s why the function apparentely always returned “false”, although the C output was “true”).
Anyway, 2 hours of my life getting to the bottom of this… Had to change all the functions that return a bool to return an int instead…
Anyway, on other news, take a look at this Hamnasya game… It’s a cross-media kind of game, where you’re reading a book, but you can affect the outcome and fight battles à lá RPG… Very cool stuff indeed, and has an excellent trailer:
I haven’t picked it up (I had too many pending games at the moment), but it looks pretty good…
If I don’t write anything in the meantime (highly likely), Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Hi guys!
I’ve been absent, but so you all know that I’m still alive, I’d like to share some links I’ve found around the interwebz!
First off, something awesome: A link to a Gallifreyan translator! For those that don’t know, Gallifreyan is the language of Gallifrey, Doctor Who’s home world… Yep, this is a geek as you can get… Gallifreyan looks pretty cool… Here’s my name:
Awesome, isn’t it?! 
I know the language is basic alphabet substitution, arranged with some mathematical logic inside a circle, but it just looks gorgeous!
Link number 2, a game: Skrillexquest. It is endorsed by the dubstep artist Skrillex (which I quite enjoy, I admit), and it features his music mashed up with a 3d Zelda concept, in a corrupted 8-bit world… I actually like the aesthetics more than the music (although I like Skrillex, I don’t think the music fits that world). It’s a quite short game, and you can play it on the browser, so go for it!
Finally, me and Rincewind are probably going to take part in the Indie Speed Run 48-hour competition. While similar to the Ludum Dare competitions, it has some differences that are interesting (you can use previous code, you can choose the 48-hours you’re going to work on the game which prevents scheduling issues), but best of all, it’s going to be judged by the likes of Ron Gilbert (Monkey Island), Markus Persson (Minecraft) and Ben Croshaw (Zero Punctuation), amongst others I don’t know that well… So I’m excited about that, and I’m trying to clear 48 hours of my life for this…
Catch you guys later!
I’ve said last blog post that I’d write in the near future… more than two weeks ago…
Well, “near-future” is always a subjective measure, eheheh…
Anyway, been busy busy busy, work has not relented as I’d expected, and the new hires haven’t started yet, so when I get home I’m beat and without any energy to do anything but relax on the couch playing WoW, or watching TV…
Oh, and playing “X-Com: Enemy Unknown”, which is awesome!
For those like me that worshiped the original “UFO: Enemy Unknown”, this is indeed text-book on how a remake/reboot should be done!
First of all, there’s been a lot of naysayers on the web, saying this new XCom isn’t as good as the original one, and while I agree with some of it, I think most of it is due to fear of change… The original XCom was indeed an amazing game… But this one is also an amazing game, fun and accessible… The original one was a game for hardcore players (it was very hard and unforgiving), this one is more accessible… But does that make it worse?! Although I find the recent trend of dumbing down games to appeal to a larger audience, I think the streamlining process that XCom underwent really brought the best of it out…and if you want a challenge, playing on hard in classic iron man mode should provide you that… and if that’s not enough, multiplayer will probably keep you busy and challenged!
For those that don’t know, this game is the remake/reboot of an old 1994 classic strategy game, in which you control “X-Com”, a semi-secret organization that’s dedicated to defend the Earth from an alien menace. For that, you receive funding from several countries and have to keep them happy (i.e. deal with extraterrestrial threats on their territory). You’ll have to research new tech, build facilities, etc, to prepare yourself to the center-piece of the game: the turn-based combat system, in which you select a team (from your soldier pool) of up to 6 elements and have to deal with the aliens. Those team members can level up and gain new abilities, and you have a certain degree of customization available in terms of abilities.
The soldier leveling up is part of what makes XCom a good and challenging game… It takes 15 to 20 missions to have a top-tier soldier, so losing it in a bad move hurts a lot… specially if you play it like I do and name all your soldiers so that you attribute a human dimension to them… Of course, you can just load and erase your mistakes (except in iron man, see below), but it still feels like cheating, which adds a certain tension to the game.
This one has all the improvements on the original we would expect (better graphics, simpler/streamlined UI), and lost very little (in my opinion).
I’ve finished my first campaign a couple of days ago, in normal difficulty… and now I want to play the game in ironman classic mode, which doesn’t allow for save games… which adds a tension that’s very cool in this type of environment! Now, every time I lose a soldier, it stays lost… I’ll have to deal with the fact that my super-sniper can be lost in any mission, which will bring out the tactics aspect of the game high…
For example, when I was in a hurry to finish a mission (which happens specially at 1am when you know you have to go to sleep, but can’t stop playing because “one more turn!”), I would just move my soldiers forward, detect the enemies, and then reload a save game and move planning for those “hidden” aliens… Yep, that’s cheating! 
Anyway, in ironman classic, you can’t do that, which will make you think every play you do before you do it!
Of course, there’s no perfect game… this one is very buggy on the PC (with abundant camera issues and more), the multiplayer could have been much better (both in terms of options and matchmaking), the game is too unforgiving of mistakes made early in the game (very hard to recover from some losses mid-game) and other small gripes…
But all of these are swept aside by how much fun I’ve been having with it so far… The game is really good, and if you’re a fan of tactical/strategy games, it will hook you from start to finish, even if you rant at some of its shortcomings!
So, for me it is a definite buy!
Work’s still very hard nowadays, but I’m hoping it’s almost done (this phase at least)…
Anyway, I’ve only had time to play one game lately: World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria…
Anyway, not going to do a review on this one, since basically it’s the same as Cataclysm: no big changes, just a streamline of small details… The storyline is interesting enough, and the only step backwards (in my opinion, of course) is the over-reliance on daily quests, which kind of consume 2-3 hours of time each day, if you are to do them all… And you need to do them to have access to valor point gear at the faction vendor, since Blizzard removed the possibility of gaining reputation with a vendor wearing the tabard on heroic instances…
Other than that, it’s just “more of the same”, which isn’t exactly a bad thing… after all, there’s not much you can really innovate in a 7-year old MMORPG without breaking the matrix of what makes it’s 9+ million player base keep playing…
That said, it’s notorious that WoW is finally losing ground in the MMORPG war (although it’s clearly the winner by a large margin)… Numbers of subscribers keep declining, and sales for MoP don’t seem to have been that great as previous expansions; of course, I don’t think Blizzard is overly concerned, since they’re already working on a successor (Titan), although that’s probably still a couple of years away.
In another topic, to keep my “game-making” bone alive while I don’t have time to return to programming, I’ve been designing a new game (just for kicks)… It’s like UFO/XCom:Enemy Unknown, but with more focus on survival; finding bullets, food, medicine, etc, is as important as actually fighting the enemies…
Anyway, bye for now, I’ll post again in the near future!
Although it seems that way, I’m not dead… More shake ups in my personal life, and professional life is quite intense with the deadline for 3 projects looming… I love the sound of deadlines as they woosh past me… 
Anyway, for the sake of an update, check out this small game, done for a LudumDare 48 hour compo (think it was #22), which is quite interesting: /follow
The game is simple and well built… I’ve tried it back then and I liked it, but I was cleaning my bookmarks and found it and decided to share with you guys…
Next weeks will be very complicated as well, so don’t expect many updates here…
As most forms of entertainment, the game industry (and I include indies in this) are driven by fads and moods… And apparently, there’s two huge forces in this regard at the moment: zombies and RPGs…
Let’s start with zombies: there’s hundreds of games and mods with zombies in it… for some strange reason, zombies are the monster du-jour everywhere… The reason for this eludes me, but it is probably because I like more cerebral monsters (like vampires, demons or robots) than the mindless concept of zombies…
Anyway, zombies are here, and apparently they’re here to stay!
![8-suspicious-events-surrounding-the-Miami-zombie-attack[1]](http://shadowcovenant.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/8-suspicious-events-surrounding-the-Miami-zombie-attack1.jpg "8-suspicious-events-surrounding-the-Miami-zombie-attack[1]")
I’m guessing that what makes zombies terrifying is the fact that they can’t be stopped except in very specific methods (usually, blowing their heads off), they can’t be reasoned with, and they always outnumber the player… This makes them perfect for games, specially action-packed titles.
To be honest, I’m tired of zombies… every week, a slew of titles come out that either are zombie-based, or have some zombie-like DLC. There are interesting titles in this arena, though… Day-Z is a great example, since the concept of it is amazing. It captures the essence of zombie-movies: survival… I found the execution a bit lacking, but it still has its merits! But for each good zombie-game, there’s one million of just mediocre titles that jump onto the zombie bandwagon… I find amazing the connection: “I love zombie-stuff, so I’ll buy anything that has to do with zombies”, but it seems to be the current trend! At least, I don’t see people ranting against zombie-stuff as much as I do…
Another fad that’s rising is RPGs… It seems that every indie is making a rogue-like, every big company is doing a RPG or adding RPG elements to their games…
Since I’m a big fan of RPG, I should be thrilled by this, but the feeling I have is that we’re ending up with mediocre games – most roguelikes don’t bring anything new to the table, most RPGs have the same tired tropes over and over again, some games have RPG elements cooked into them for bullet-point value only, not adding anything to the game itself (in some cases, actually detracting)…
Don’t get me wrong, there’s amazing work being done (and on the horizon) by indies (Legend of Grimrock, Frayed Knights), medium companies (Shadowrun Returns, Wasteland 2), and big companies (Mass Effect, Skyrim, Project Eternity, World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2)… But again, for every one of these, there’s loads of mediocre and pointless titles…
What it sounds amazing to me is that I haven’t seen (doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist) a zombie RPG!
“Play as the ZOMBIES or as the SURVIVORS, in this fantasy/sci-fi world in which the evil technomancer Darklordius unleashed a magical virus that infects live people. When a survivor die with the virus in them, they become zombies… But redemption is available for the scientists of the White Citadel, led by Doctor Maximumgoodguy… A zombie can be put through a painful process to become human again, with little loss of ability!”
I’d say it would be interesting… Survivors had to survive (so no silly war machine kind of gameplay where a single person kills hundreds of zombies), get food, water, fortify their houses, etc… To keep things balanced, Doctor Maximumgoodguy could only unzombify a certain number of people per day… And maybe each time a survivor died, it gained a stacking debuff… when it reached a certain value, then it would become a zombie, with some incentive to “switch side” again, but to play as well as he could as a zombie to be able to gain that possibility…
So, this idea is free, Internet… Make it happen… If my calculations are correct, if you launch this within then next couple of years, you’re sitting on a money pile! 
Played this one on my vacations, and it was sweet!
Zombie side-scroller, which kind of reminds me “Shadow Complex” (much simpler and without the backtracking )…
It’s a super-polished work of Tequila Works, that pits a man in search for his wife and daughter against hordes of zombies.
Visually, it’s very impressive, contrasting a silhouette foreground with very detailed 3d scenarios… From a gameplay perspective, it shifts from heavy action driven moments (for example, running from collapsing building) to a slower moments, while trying to bypass some zombies, solving puzzles or just taking in the atmosphere…
While it is a very short experience (circa 5 hours of gameplay), it’s a very rewarding one, since it doesn’t feel like it has filler…
The only thing that kind of disappoints me is the story being so deja-vu (come on, how many games can you make with a man searching for his family?!), and not even the twist at the end is enough to cover for that failure… That, and the fact that the storyline cutscenes are done in a “comic/cartoon” style that clashes with the super-polished visuals of the rest of the game.
All in all, a cheap and very enjoyable game which I highly recommend! 9/10
This was a big pleasant surprise… I wrote about the original Alan Wake, and one of my big complaints was the fact that I saw Alan Wake (the character) as too empty… While I enjoyed the game, I didn’t see myself playing sequels or DLC based on it (specially given the crummy ending).
So, when a friend of mine convinced me to give this a try, I wasn’t expecting anything good, specially because it was a downloadable title… but boy, was I surprised…
“Alan Wake’s American Nightmare” really exceeds the original… Heck, this should be the original, with this kind of format, pacing and length!
Most of my original criticisms (animation in general, done-before story) are gone, replaced with a tighter game, with a much more focused experience!
The atmosphere of the original is intact and surpassed by the narrative hook of making the whole game seem like a “Night Springs” episode (the Alan Wake equivalent to “The Twilight Zone”). The story is also more interesting and is more successful in investing the player in it.
The addition of new weapons and more enemies makes the tension drop a bit in the combat sections, but at the same time it doesn’t make them into a chore like in the original.
Apparently, you don’t need to have played the DLC to make sense of the story, which is also a good bonus (I haven’t played it, and besides some references that may or might not be explained in the DLC, there’s not even a big connection to the original game).
All in all, I hope they’ll make more games like this one… a short, compact experience (circa 4 to 6 hours) that corrects the flaws of the original game and gives something new to the player… 10/10
Yep, another big hiatus, and this post doesn’t have any encouraging news…
Vacation time for me means that work just piles up, and I’m doing my best to get it under control, before I can actually resume writing on my blog…
I managed to play some cool games on my vacations, I’ll tall you all about that in the next posts, I just don’t know when I’ll have the time/motivation to write them…
Anyway, this is not dead yet, it’s just an extended leave!
Games I’m discussing in the near future (so you have stuff to click on):