Archive for August, 2007

29 August, 2007 | No comments

Free Game News: Punikin Escape

Punikin Escape is a Japanese Room Escape game in which you will have to collect many items.

The game is all in Japanese, and I have the feeling that this one could keep you busy for a while.

Have fun!

Update: Punikin Escape walkthrough in comment #9 (thanks pOlo!)

29 August, 2007 | No comments

GameZebo: Jane’s Hotel Review

Anyone who's seen hit British comedy series Fawlty Towers will know that running a hotel is anything but easy. Of course, having an accident-prone manager at the helm, supported by a cast of clueless misfits is hardly the recipe for success. So you'll no doubt be pleased to know that in the management game Jane's Hotel - in which you must transform a bedsit into the plushest hotel in town - the only person responsible for success and failure is your good self. Phew!

29 August, 2007 | No comments

Game Producer: 7 Requirements For Becoming a Master Complainer

Master complainer skills aren’t something most of us aren’t born with. Luckily there are many people who can help you to become a professional complainer. These people aren’t hard to find. Simply check out some popular discussion forums, and I’m sure you’ll find some of them.

Here’s seven guidelines these Master Complainers follow almost every day:

#1 - Practise the art of whining
Whining is good. Whenever you heard anybody saying anything start pointing out irrelevant reasons why he is wrong. Whine until the other person starts to call you names. After that, continue whining.

#2 - Interrupt whenever possible
Every Master Complainer knows that you have to interrupt others to make sure your complains will be heard. Make sure to interrupt people often enough. Complain that the other person talks too much if nothing else work.

#3 - Ignore everybody’s talk
When he other party has finally said what he wanted (after being interrupted several times), ignore everything he just said and start complaining. This improves your status as the Master Complainer, and ensures that next time this person won’t waste your time.

#4 - Meetings are for meeting people
In meetings, complain about the agenda, complain about the place of meeting, complain that some people are late (rather than actually doing something to ensure that it won’t happen next time), complaing about something. Complain lack of time and money whenever somebody suggests something. After all, the reason for having meetings is to meet people and complain - not to decide anything important.

#5 - Focus on problems
Master complainers know that focusing on the problems makes sure everybody knows about them. If you spot something wrong (like an empty coffee mug on your table), make sure to bring this horrible incident to everybody. Complain the next two weeks and I’m sure the problem will be solved by somebody else. And if it insn’t, spend two more weeks complaining until somebody fixes it. After all, it’s not your job to clean other people’s mess (nor figure out solution for their problem) but make sure to bring the issue public.

#6 - Make sure to come up reasons why something couldn’t possibly work
Do this when somebody is suggesting a plan to solve a problem. Instead of focusing in the solution, try coming up with the reason why the plan cannot possibly work. Make sure to complain about every possible incident that could happen. If the plan is innovative and new, make sure to point out that’s not how you’ve worked in the past. If the plan is old, then complain and say that you should have a newer option.

#7 - Wait for things to go wrong and complain
This is something that really separates Master Complainers from others. When you are working in a project that doesn’t progress as you wish, complain as the time passes. When finally the project is finished - and hopefully not successful - start complaining by telling others “I told you that it wouldn’t work”. this will guarantee that your expertise will be noticed by others.

With these seven helpful guidelines, I’m sure anybody can become a Master Complainer. And - as we all know - it’s good for the project to make public every tiny little detail that is wrong. Especially if they can be pointed out over and over.

If you liked this entry, feel free to visit GameProducer.net to read more similar articles.

29 August, 2007 | No comments

GameDevBlog: TDD: I just can’t stop talking about it!

Jamie, how closely do you adhere to "official" TDD practices, Soren Johnson asks.

Short answer is: not very.

Although I tried to be rigorous at first, putting a test around every function I wrote or every change I made, the number of false positives was disheartening, and I eased off to where I was just testing things that weren't likely to change.  I slacked off too far, and some bugs crept in that could have been prevented, and now I've found an equilibrium.  And the other coders on the team are less rigorous than I, but I'm not being a fascist about it.

Do we write a test for every bug, at least?  Again - no.  I haven't figured out a good way to test multithread bugs, for example.  I considered a test where we'd spawn the troubled function on two threads - but it would behave unpredictably.  A broken function could pass just by luck. 

Other TDD 'best practices' we ignore:
- no file I/O - your file I/O should be mocked out, because it's too slow.  Bah.  It's not that slow - the easiest way to test saving/loading for us is just to save & load and make sure it's the same.
- fast tests - our test suite takes a few minutes to run.
- only one assert per test - whatever.  The asserts catch their prey whether they're clumped or not, and we can do less copying-and-pasting this way.

A good book, by the way, on TDD, which Noel Llopis recommended to me, is *Working With Legacy Code*.

My recommendation, if your code is buggier than you'd like (and whose isn't?), is to try it!  Be rigorous at first, and then find your sweet spot.

And here's something to think about - although it was "just barely a win" for us - we're a bodaciously small team (one full-time coder, two part-time) writing in a high level language.  Not a very bug-prone environment!  Lots of coders and designers working together in a mixture of C++ and your-game-scripting-language-here are going to introduce a lot more bugs than we do - making TDD all the more desirable.

29 August, 2007 | No comments

Jay Is Games: Tower Bloxx

Tower Bloxx is a captivating action/puzzle game originally created for mobile phones. Using the mouse button you must drop pieces of a skyscraper from a swinging crane at the top of the screen. Stack the blocks neatly or you'll be in for a tough time as the building reaches toward the sky and sways in the wind. A quest mode lets you build an entire city one building at a time and also adds a little strategy to appease the more hardcore gamer in you. It's a near-perfect blend of casual and serious gaming that everyone will enjoy.

29 August, 2007 | No comments

tres cool

Having come into some credit recently, i am considering buying a new computer so i can profitably spend all my free time playing computer games. At present, my machine is so old it could just about handle Pacman. Deo volente, that will change, and many will die, at least in the strange other-world of first-person shooters, my opiate of choice.

i came across this hilarious review of the game Blackhawk Down on Amazon, which i feel captures something of the puerile pleasures of the genre:

If the film rocked your world and your still hankerin to halt the genocide in Somalia then you must buy this game.The weopons are varied and the missions are tres cool.I love it, foinstants one mission when you climb into a blackhawk and the pilot lifts off, turns and shouts "man the mini gun" you know your in for some wicked skinny bashin.

i was drawn into this terrible world in 2000. A bearded sociopath studying first Psychology and then Theology, and then getting kicked out of the university, found a way to install Delta Force & Quake 2 on the college computers, and we would commandeer the computer room between about midnight and dawn, playing each other with zeal and violence. That this was a Christian college and one of the players was a Puritanical Fundamentalist Xian only added to the fun.

Delta Force, which obviously looks ludicrously crude in 2007, was tres cool back then, both on single-player & multi-player. Although it had bad AI, so enemy soldiers and one's nearly-useless team mates would run around shooting at trees and the sky, or just press their faces against walls and run on the spot, it had great landscapes, great guns, and very well thought-out missions, with a tres cool mission briefing. It was a good example of how a game that is in many ways utterly unrealistic - one mission had me alone against 60 'terrorists' (the umbrella term for anyone you kill, extending even to Spesnatz) - can maintain some internal coherence, and having this internal consistency, becomes imaginatively real, to anyone dumb enough to suspend their disbelief.

The weapons were pleasingly well-balanced, with a choice of the huge .50 Barrett sniper rifle, a M4/M203 assault rifle/grenade launcher, silenced MP5 submachine gun, a SAW machine gun, or a light-weight Remington sniper rifle, with a handgun (silenced or not) and - of course - the Ka-Bar combat knife. Also grenades, Claymores and LAWs (surface-to-surface rockets), though Claymores didn't work on my version. Since one couldn't swap weapons, the initial choice determined tactics. Being a sneaky voyeuristic patient type, i often went for the Barrett with a handgun for close-quarter work. It meant a lot of manoeuvering on my belly, trying to pick off targets from half a mile away (outside the range of their AK47s), then going into buildings with the .45 handgun.

The mission briefs would suggest a particular weapon, but looking at the map and terrain, building clusters, etc., one would often disagree. One of the pleasures of Delta Force was trying the same mission with different weapons, and so different tactics. i tried a few all-out assault missions with the silenced MP5 submachine gun, taking twice as long but killing everyone without being seen or heard. i remember with a smile another mission - a hostage rescue - where i had to crawl like a serpent for about a mile, taking down roving patrols with a silenced .22 or Ka-Bar, then sneaking into the camp & opening up with the SAW (a kind of combine harvester of a gun, loud & brutal).

Imagine my joy when i first had to ambush a convoy! It gave me a fine excuse to launch a LAW at the lead truck then pepper the rest with M203 grenades, before dispatching the survivors with the M4 and hand grenades.

Picture my delighted grin when, making my way over a mountain, a background buzz suddenly became the roar of an armed helicopter, bearing down on me like a malignant giant fly. Having never seen one before, i watched it with an amazed grin as its machine guns tore my chap to bits. Great moment.

The multiplayer was as much fun, if not more. Nothing quite like laying low in some dip in a hillside, shaded by a bush, and zeroing in on some foolish American. The joys of murdering characters controlled by 'real people' is a great and holy one indeed.

i shall return to my kingdom soon. And it will be tres cool.

29 August, 2007 | No comments

Iwonbingo.com the best bingo site!

Mi name is Adi and I visit www.iwonbingo.com . I think is a great bingo website and I would like to know your opinion of it??? Go check it out!!!....and let me know if you like it? If you think it is easy to get in to? If you like the games? The chatroom? In general… what do you think???

28 August, 2007 | No comments

Jay Is Games: Knytt Stories

The main focus of Knytt Stories is atmosphere, environment and exploration, not complex gameplay and a barrage of media. With Knytt Stories you'll spend most of your time wandering around sparsely populated worlds looking for a few rare items, enjoying the beautiful visuals and ambient music the whole time. It's a unique experience in gaming and will pull you in from the moment you start playing.

28 August, 2007 | No comments

Game Producer: 3 Simple Guidelines For Making Better Hardware Purchases

I got a brand new monitor yesterday. 20.1″ ViewSonic was bit more expensive than I had initially budgeted, but I’m happy with the purchase. The wide screen view is something I haven’t got used to (yet), but switching from TFT monitor to LCD one sure has improved my working conditions. My eyes like the sharp screen (at least I’m brainwashing myself to think that way - perhaps it’s true), and that’s one of the main reasons why I got the new screen.

I have some rules that I follow when I do purchases, and here’s three of them:

I consult people smarter than me
I check with some of my geek friends who know more about hardware than me, and also check out some magazine reviews before buying. I also hear the salesperson and compare his talk with what I’ve heard (it’s pretty easy to spot those who are more interested in selling rather than serving.) I also try the product at the shop if possible. By doing this I hope to get a better picture about what products are worth buying.

I don’t buy “bit more expensive version” over and over
It’s easy to spend $300 on some gadget, just to notice that with “only $50″ more I can get a bigger gadget. And with “only $1002 more a premium version of the bigger gadget. There’s no limit. That’s why I set up some budget, and try to stick with it. I simply set some limit. If I want a widget that costs $300, I don’t spend $450 because “it was such a good deal”.

I don’t buy cheap
Well, at least I try not to invest in cheap. Basically I don’t buy the most expensive gadgets, but definitely not the cheapest. While in some products it’s a matter of perceived value, it can be said that really cheap products come with less quality. Investing some extra often means better quality. In the end, cheap might end up costing more in terms of time and money. They might go broke and time is wasted with returns.

I don’t suggest that a higher price would automatically mean better quality. That’s something you can find out by asking for recommendations and learn by trying. I simply mean that getting the cheapest version isn’t necessarily a wise move. Sometimes it might be a good thing, but I tend to put some extra to ensure quality.

The new monitor costed bit more than I planned, but by simply thinking how important the quality of the monitor can be for my eyes - I have no doubt that it wasn’t a good purchase.

If you liked this entry, feel free to visit GameProducer.net to read more similar articles.

28 August, 2007 | No comments

Anawiki: Runes of Avalon at a glance…

…and new level pack preview!

Marko from Hookedgamers made a really nice review of Runes of Avalon. It is two pages long, so I’ll just quote a little bit:

Runes of Avalon offers surprisingly polished gameplay … from a small development company. Reminiscent of such classics as Tetris and Coloris, but much improved. A must have!

Read full review at Hooked Gamers.

If you like Runes of Avalon I am sure you’ll be thrilled to here that we’re finishing the works on first add-on. It brings a whole new quest containing cleverly desinged 51 levels. While it’s hard to believe they are even funnier than levels in the first quest. Just take a look at that Giant Runes level! There is a lot more magic in new levels (and they come with 6 new backgrounds).

The new quest is expected to be ready as soon as tomorrow. Meanwhile, feel free to check out first quest in Runes of Avalon.

Feel free to visit ANAWIKI GAMES Blog to read more similar articles.

« Next entries Previous entries »