Whatever you do, make it awesome.

The Dark Mod is RELEASED!

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 19:51:56 GMT

For the past few years I've been intermittently helping out on The Dark Mod, an awesome Thief-inspired total conversion of Doom III.

Today, we FINALLY released our first public beta. Go download it already! (NB: Full copy of Doom 3 required. The retail and Steam builds both work.)

Here's the full announcement:

Broken Glass Studios is proud to announce the first public beta release of The Dark Mod, a medieval steampunk stealth game inspired by the Thief series.

The Dark Mod team started work on the project in September of 2004. Their goal was to take id Software's Doom 3 (id Tech 4) engine and completely transform the sci-fi / horror shooter into a medieval, steampunk, stealth experience.

With the release of The Dark Mod: Beta 1.00, we are offering the modding community a powerful, easy-to-use editing suite for creating stealth missions. All the assets and resources necessary to build playable missions are included, plus a customized editor called DarkRadiant. A branch of GTKRadiant, DarkRadiant has been designed specifically to cater to the needs of Dark Mod mapping.

In addition to the editing tools, the release also includes four playable missions (including a Training Mission) to help demonstrate the full potential of the mapping kit.

The Dark Mod is in a beta release stage at this time, which means that some minor bugs and incomplete features are to be expected.

To see screenshots, or to download The Dark Mod, please visit http://www.thedarkmod.com/ . Or visit our forums at http://www.modetwo.net/darkmod/ .

We hope you enjoy it! :)

Tetris, atmospheric phenomena on Mars, and late-night epiphanies

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 06:40:25 GMT

Interesting article on Gamasutra about a guy who was involved in licencing Tetris for consoles. However, the really interesting part of the article is the bit about his four long-term goals: weaning the world off fossil fuels, ending war, creating a "backup" of the Earth by terraforming Mars, and ultimately discovering how the universe ends. Heady stuff. Worth a read.

There's a link in the article comments to these fascinating pictures of atmospheric phenomena on Mars. Clouds, dust devils, dust storms... for a place devoid of life, it's pretty dynamic. Of course, the really amazing thing is that the human race managed to build a bunch of robots and send them over to take photographs and do science. Some day humans will walk there. And this guy has the serious ambition of terraforming it!

You know what? We could bloody well do it, too. I mean, just really think about that for a minute. This is not just science fiction. We can terraform Mars if we want to.

OK, so it's late and that probably makes me more susceptible than usual to being blown away by insights which are really quite obvious and somehow mundane, and y'all may just be saying "yeah, so?", but... we can terraform Mars if we want to. How cool is that!

As a species, we really can do anything. Our time starts yesterday. What are you waiting for?

Stop reading this and go do something awesome!

OMGWTFBBQ DDoSed?

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 17:01:21 GMT

So apparently my site came under a DDoS attack about 7 hours ago. Don't bother clicking that link, it's down.

The first thing that comes to mind is puzzlement. Why on earth would anyone consider my site worth DDoSing? I'm not aware of anyone I've offended. My pitiful cash flow hardly warrants any ransom money. Just what is the motive here?

Must be some uber-pathetic script kiddie testing out their new toy. If they're hoping for some kind of angry reaction, they'll be sorely disappointed. All I'm feeling at the moment is withering apathetic disgust. Honestly - what kind of a snivelling loser would you have to be to lash out mindlessly like that? Lame, lame, lame. Grow up.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to get some productive work done. (Ooh! Productive work. What a novel concept. Watch and learn, kiddo.)

Bushfire appeal follow-up

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 22:44:23 GMT

In February I announced I'd be making a little "company donation" of sorts to the appeal fund set up by the Australian Red Cross to help victims of the bushfires that were ravaging the Australian state of Victoria back then. In short, I promised to donate 50% of the proceeds received by yours truly from sales of this game between Feb 7th and March 14th to said bushfire appeal.

Due to the inevitable lengthy delays involved in getting money from distributors and having it wired overseas, this little thing I've got going on called "final year of university", and me not having a particular fondness for doing complicated accounting (this was harder to sort out than you'd think), I hadn't done it until today.

Well, now I have. Which means I can reveal how much money we raised:

$1,055.02. That's one thousand and fifty-five dollars. And 2 cents. In Australian dollars - it's "only" about $837 in flimsy-green-paper-money* - but still, a grand is a grand! And this is a pretty grand grand! Cue rimshot. Lame puns aside, I'm seriously impressed it got that high.

(For the record, the sales curve shows that, as expected, my sales did not double during Feb 7th-March 14th - they merely continued their steep post-Steam-release decline - meaning that I now have less money than I would have if I hadn't done this. I did it for its own sake, not as a nefarious capitalist stunt as some people have claimed.)

Unfortunately the bushfire appeal which I was intending to donate it to actually ended before I received the money (doh!), so I rounded up to $1,100 and donated the money to the Australian Red Cross's "Where It's Needed - Australia" category, that being the closest available. Mea culpa. I hope nobody is too disappointed with the category switch.

And here's my receipt for proof (somewhat redacted, for all you stalker types out there - wave to the internet stalkers, everyone!), complete with nice form letter:

* Funny story: The first time I tried to put a US bank note in my wallet, I nearly shredded it in half by accident. It was a $50 note too! Didn't even notice until I pulled it out and tried to use it. The cashier was not impressed, but I brazened it out.

50% of Mayhem Intergalactic proceeds to go to bushfire appeal until the end of February

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 21:50:50 GMT

So... DarkView reminded me that I hadn't posted about this here yet. Oops. My bad!

Here's the deal. Unless you've been living under a rock (and hey, that's kind of fun sometimes, so if you have been then that's totally cool with me) you've probably heard of the bushfires that have been ravaging the Australian state of Victoria. The official death toll is 181, but that's expected to rise to between 200 and 300 once authorities manage to locate and identify more of the bodies. (Apparently people don't get added to the toll until they've been positively identified.) 1,800 homes have been destroyed making around 7,000 people homeless. Hundreds of people were injured; and remember "injuries" includes victims of severe burns.

It isn't over yet, either; today marks a week since the fires started, and some are still burning.

That's why I'm pledging 50% of the proceeds from the sale of my indie game, Mayhem Intergalactic, towards the Australian Red Cross's bushfire appeal fund. Details on my Inventive Dingo news blog.

DarkView rightly points out that this is incongruous given the subject matter of the game (ruling the galaxy with an iron fist); but hey, even bloodthirsty galactic overlords need a change of pace sometimes.

Mirror's Edge mini-review

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 04:57:05 GMT

The bad:

* Falling to your death is un-fun.

* Falling to your death happens a lot.

* Combat is occasionally irritating.

* Checkpoints instead of a proper save system? What is this, a second-rate console port? Oh wait.

* Runner vision (red = interact with me) is sometimes not implemented well. It's not always present, and sometimes it's downright misleading. For example, there's a bit where you're running away from ninjas and a wall highlights red, inviting you to wall-jump up it. I was killed by ninjas several times while trying to follow that instruction. Turns out it's a lot easier (and less lethal) to just climb onto one of the structures next to it and then jump across. The only reason to ever use that wall is if you're on a speedrun, IMO.

* Quicktime Events. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, WHY? Does anyone actually like them?

(For the uninitiated, a QTE is when you're viewing a cutscene and a cue flashes up "press the button now!" and if you fail to press the button immediately - which you will, because the fact that you were watching a cutscene lulled you into a false sense of security - then you are judiciously punished by having to watch the whole boring cutscene again. Because you deserve it. So sayeth the game "designer".)

* Notable lack of pirates, despite suitable dock level.

The good:

* Striking visual design; good aesthetics and theming of environments, nice artistic uses of strong colours, realistic character design. I'll put in a special mention here for Jacknife's swaggering cutscene animations; they sell the character very effectively. (Also, in his final scene, I honestly wouldn't have remembered who he actually was if not for the animations! Seriously. I forgot who Miller was in his final appearance, and his design is fairly striking, up close at least. Though it didn't help that he'd only been seen in cartoon cutscenes before that point.)

* Parkour is fun. When you're not (A) flailing around like a moron or (B) falling to your death.

* Ninjas.

* Really nifty falling-to-your-death visual effect, and the most gruesome bone-crushing impact sound I've ever heard. (Which, although extremely well done, makes falling to your death even less fun than it would otherwise be. But I'm supposed to be talking about good things here.)

* Ninjas!

* Checkpoints are actually reasonably well-implemented, and you do get an enhanced feeling of accomplishment after beating a checkpointed stage. The roof area in the Shard chapter with the snipers comes to mind.

* I honestly applaud the AAA industry for trying something this innovative.

Total points made: 14
Total good: 7
Total bad: 7
Final score: 50%

I enjoyed it anyway. When I wasn't unbearably frustrated.

(Like my scoring system? I made it up on the spot. Hardcore.)

Former BYOND Game now on Steam!

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 16:51:49 GMT

I mentioned this on my previous post, but I think it deserves a post of its own: Mayhem Intergalactic, the game formerly known as the BYOND game Yet Another Generic Space-Age Conquest Game, is now on Steam!

Please check it out and help this former BYONDer hit the big time with a splash. :-)

You can view the HD gameplay video or get the demo on Steam. Or, if you're not a Steam person, you can always get it direct from me.

Wage war on your friends and enemies in this simple and engaging strategy game. Easy to learn and quick to play, Mayhem Intergalactic is surprisingly strategic. Play against the computer, or duke it out with friends over the internet. The universe shall be yours!

Key features:

This uniquely streamlined take on the classic "4X" (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) genre provides your strategy fix in minutes, not hours.
A stirring dynamic soundtrack spurs you on to glorious victory!
Randomly-generated and hand-crafted maps offer interesting and varied tactical situations.
Create your own galaxies, then conquer them — or share them with friends.
Simple rules, emergent strategy. Blitzkrieg or defense-in-depth? Power on through the front lines or sneak around the back? Attack with full strength and leave yourself open to counterattack, or split your fleet and risk total annihilation? Dozens more tactics await discovery.
An alien wearing a monocle!

Hunter-conservation group pals up with game developer of hunting sim

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 03:44:24 GMT

I promise not to make a habit of posting press releases, but this cracked me up a bit (emphasis added):

Emote Games will work with North America's oldest and most recognised conservation organisation to offer the most realistic online gaming experience that promotes the Boone and Crockett Club's core values of hunting and land ethics, as well as the Club's widely recognised and accepted big game scoring and records keeping program.

[...]

"It is important to the Club, and many others, that hunting video games portray the activity as the time-honored and ethical pursuit that it is," said Keith Balfourd, the Club's Director of Marketing. "Nothing will replace the lasting enjoyment of being active outdoors [...] Who knows, maybe even those 'gamers' who have not had the opportunity to hunt in real life may learn something valuable about hunting and conservation, and wish to experience hunting for themselves."

Gasp! It's all a diabolical plot to get us "gamers" out in the "fresh air" and "sunshine"! Bollocks to that, I say! To arms, gamers; you have nothing to lose but your dignity in the eyes of a bunch of outdoorsy types!

I love the way they put "gamers" in quotation marks. Doesn't it just make it sound like the guy's voice is dripping with disgust? Gamers. You know, those pimple-faced nerds still living in their mother's basements because they're too pathetic to get a real life and shoot life-forms that actually exist.

... Nerds.

Speaking of basements, Mayhem Intergalactic ~~is due to come out on Steam within the next 12 hours or so~~ is now on Steam! Hooray! And it's on sale for 50% off (this week only). You should totally go buy it.

(In case you're not a regular reader of my blog, Mayhem Intergalactic is a totally awesome indie game which I created all on my lonesome. And then published on Steam.)

ModDB's Indie Game of the Year 2008

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 22:44:37 GMT

ModDB has just announced their 2008 awards competition. If you'd like to support a BYOND alumnus striking out in the "real world", or if you've played and liked Mayhem Intergalactic, please vote for my game!

Thanks! I really appreciate it.

At the core of the World of Goo

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 20:27:22 GMT

Awesome video here about an equally awesome indie game. Check it out! I didn't fully appreciate the genius behind the game until I watched this video. There are so many subtle little touches that come together to make it all sing.

If you dig it (and you will), digg it!

(Shameless plug: If you're an artist, check out my last blog post for your chance to get $$$ and a credit in a game on Steam!)