“You Are Upside Down in China.”

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 27, 2010

Here is a recent conversation here at my office. I was Engineer 3 not participating in this particular exchange, which gave me a fun perspective:

Engineer 1: Let’s go to Africa and see how you look.

Engineer 2: Okay, we’re in Africa.

Engineer 1: Straight and level, heading north. Looking good.

Engineer 2: We’re now turning west.

Engineer 1: Yes, that looks right. Okay, let’s go to China and see how you look there.

Engineer 2: Okay, we’re in China.

Engineer 1: You are upside-down in China. Why is that?

Have I mentioned lately how much happier I am working in the simulator industry than I often was in the mainstream video game biz?

Filed Under: Geek Life - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

Steven Brust’s Firefly Fanfic

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 26, 2010

I’m really not into fanfic (“Fan Fiction”), so I’m not exactly the guy to talk about it much. But I do know that, like Rodney Dangerfield, it gets no respect. It’s despised by some. However, for a lot of amateur writers, it’s about the only way to find an audience. Write a quality short story set in a unique urban fantasy world, and only friends and paid editors will read it. Write a short story of equally high quality set in the Harry Potter, Buffy, or Supernatural universe, and there’s a pre-built audience that may be hungry for what you are making.

Some professional writers, particularly SF&F, got their start effectively writing fanfic.

And apparently, some professional writers can’t resist taking a dive into those particular waters, either. In this case, popular fantasy author Steven Brust.

His subject? The short-lived (but totally awesome) Joss Whedon series, Firefly.

It’s been out a couple of years, so I’m a little slow picking up on it. But for the sake of other clueless folk like me, I figured I’d link to it now.  It’s free, under the Creative Commons license. I’m only a couple of chapters in, so I can’t vouch for its quality. But so far he seems to have a pretty good handle on the characters and language – though it’s a little odd seeing things from River’s perspective in a few spots. It takes place after the end of the series, but before the movie, Serenity. Anyway, for those of us who still miss the series after all these years, it’s cool to find another professionally-produced adventure – even if unofficial and completely non-canon.

Steven Brust’s My Own Kind of Freedom, a Firefly novel

Filed Under: Books - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

Tron Legacy – New Trailer

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 24, 2010

Awesome. Must be ComiCon time…

Tron was one of those strangely influential movies of my childhood. I was already programming and writing some games by that time, but the coolness of the idea of virtual worlds, I guess… planted a seed and inspired me to really push into game development. I wanted to BE Kevin Flynn. Not so much Kevin Flynn the User in the virtual electronic world, but Kevin Flynn the hacker, gamer, and coding wizard you see at the beginning of the movie prior to getting zapped into the electronic universe. Yeah, I knew it was goofy and didn’t make any kind of sense, but I loved it.

I hope the sequel kicks all kinds of butt.

Filed Under: Movies - Comments: 7 Comments to Read

Frayed Knights: More Artificial Stupidity

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 23, 2010

A real quick development note on  Frayed Knights (because I’m about to hit the road again for a few hours):

I’m working on some fairly simple artificial intelligence stuff right now – heuristic / weighting stuff for enemies choosing targets, etc. So they won’t try to, say, heal somebody who is already healed, or anything like that anymore. There’s still a bit of randomness involved in this current iteration, tentatively left in there to do something to keep the AI somewhat stupid.

Face it, if the enemies were really smart, the players would be dead in ANY dungeon delve. All you need is for the enemies to coordinate their defense, focus on the healers first (who effectively make up the “logistics” arm of the party, if you were to use a military analog), then burn down the other spellcasters (the “artillery” in a military analog) and finish off the rest of the party at their leisure.  There are some variants (maybe neutralizing the artillery-casters first, if the healers aren’t potent enough to keep up), but ultimately if I were playing the AI with a real desire to win and really, really hurt the party, I’d focus fire on killing or at least neutralizing party members one by one.

Knights of the Chalice – still one of my favorite indie RPGs – had some pretty evil, potent AI.  It could get frustrating, but it was fun too.  They weren’t exactly 100% optimized, but anybody who has played it knows that the game was all about protecting your wizard(s). One advantage to the AI in a class-based game is that character roles are very nicely defined, making strategy easier to implement.

In a more skill-based game, or a hybrid like Frayed Knights, it’s a little trickier to define.  And even so… does it really make sense to make the AI very smart and ruthless? One of the main tricks of a DM in a dice-and-paper game is to have the enemies back off a little on “finishing off” a heavily wounded PC to give the players time to avoid a TPK (Total Party Kill). Nearly wiping out the entire party is fun for all involved. Actually doing so – not so much.

So I find myself trying to put these little heuristics and rules of thumb into Frayed Knights, as well. So, for example, the more wounded a target is, the more likely they are to be zapped by a direct-damage spell, up until a certain point where the weighting algorithm flattens out.  Little things like that. Effectively, I am making the AI pull their punches just a little bit to give the player a chance.

But don’t worry about this cheapening victory. But most of the heuristics thrown into the mix are designed to make the AI pretty nasty with its tactics. Damage-over-time spells will be focused on more healthy characters, to maximize their damaging potential. Melee buffs and debuffs get focused on front-line fighters (friendly and enemy sides, respectively). Heals (and revivals) go to them that need it. A battle against a “mixed party” of spellcasters and melee enemies should be should provide an interesting challenge.

At least, so I hope. In spite of my making them a little less ruthless than they could be…

Filed Under: Frayed Knights - Comments: 12 Comments to Read

Merchant of Venice, Citizen Kane, and… Din’s Curse?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 22, 2010

We’re in Cedar City, Utah this week. It’s home to the Utah Shakespearean Festival which is going on now, so we hit The Merchant of Venice tonight. It was my daughters’ first live Shakespeare play, and I wanted them to see a comedy rather than a tragedy.

I don’t think we could have picked better. Tony Amendola (Stargate SG-1, Zorro, Blow, Dexter, and a zillion other shows…) played Shylock. He was amazing. Shylock is already one of the best kinds of villains – very believable and almost sympathetic. He’s a guy who has borne all kinds of hatred and venom, until his pride and thirst for vengeance takes him too far. Amendola’s performance really infused Shylock with even more humanity. You can’t condone his attempted murder, but you can understand his pent-up rage.

Okay – bringing it back to games a bit. Kinda. I’m kind of a lousy critic myself, but it occurs to me that if The Merchant of Venice was debuting as a new play or film today, it would probably get nitpicked to death by real critics. I’m sure it did, back in 1597 or so.I guess after standing the test of time, and especially after surviving the death of your original critics, you get something of a pass by all but the boldest critics.

I am old enough to remember when Raiders of the Lost Ark was new, and remember all too well one review in a San Diego paper (I was visiting relatives at the time as a kid) that just trashed it, giving it a no-star (“turkey”) rating. I wonder if he ever lived that down, or if he went through the rest of his career proud of his slam on thw movie. I mean, yeah, you could drive a dump truck through some of the plot holes and silliness of Raiders. Photo-electric eyes that can detect the breaking of a beam of sunlight in the ancient temple? And how do you hide in / on a German U-Boat on a trip along the Mediterranean, exactly? I saw Das Boot – wouldn’t that be kinda like hiding in a VW bug packed full of teenagers on a cross-country trip?

But hey, it was a hugely successful movie and I loved it, in spite of it defying all logic. It’s not as immune to nitpicking as Shakespeare’s most famous plays, but it’s bigger than any critic. As it should be.

The same applies – to a lesser degree – to computer games. I’m reminded of a hilarious review of Chess if it were reviewed by the standards we apply to video games. (I also recommend this old article by Jessica Mulligan that explains how “William Shakespeare was the Aaron Spelling of his day” and how this relates to Games As Art). You won’t necessarily get ridiculed for pointing out the imperfections of X-Com or Super Mario Brothers – well, okay, you will, it just won’t be universal – but they are pretty immune to criticism at this point.  Ya just can’t mess with the classics.

You have people like Roger Ebert claiming video games don’t have the legitimacy of capital-A-Art, and others asking when we’re going to see the Citizen Kane of video games. But from my rudimentary knowledge of cinematic history, I think they were still looking for the Citizen Kane of movies years after Citizen Kane.  It wasn’t really recognized as a landmark event until about a decade or so after its release. I figure nothing’s gonna help the “legitimacy” of video games more than the simple passage of time.

And so I, personally, have a problem being objective about these things when it comes to games. And why I think I suck as a reviewer, even though I do try my hand at it from time to time. I have trouble setting masterpieces on their appropriate pedestal for comparison. Sure, I’ll use ’em for comparison and all – the benefit of them being classics is that they are well-known and usually well-made. But I have a tough time explaining why Diablo II is superior to Din’s Curse other than – well, it’s Diablo II, it’s supposed to be the best, isn’t it? In spite of some basic similarities, and a clearly bigger budget and higher production values for Diablo II, there’s a lot of apples-to-oranges comparisons going on there that are very hard to objectively quantify. Likewise, you can offer me a hundred reasons why Starcraft was superior to Rise of Nations, but it doesn’t change the fact that I played (and enjoyed) Rise of Nations tons more.

Don’t get me to compare Citizen Kane with pretty much any of my favorite movies, either. Or Merchant of Venice with The Foreigner. I love ’em both, but my enjoyment and appreciation of them isn’t in proportion with their age or critical acclaim.

Filed Under: General - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

RPG Alternate History Game Jam – August 9th – 15th

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 21, 2010

RPGDX has a new not-a-contest going in about 3 weeks. Make an RPG in a week with the theme “Alternate History.” This sounds really, really cool. Dunno if I can afford to participate or not, but I really want to.

Details here

Start dreaming up ideas for “What If” scenarios now…

Filed Under: Game Development, News - Comments: Comments are off for this article

“Mindie?” No Thanks

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 20, 2010

Alistair Doulin writes on both Gamasutra and his own blog (they are the same article) about bridging the gap between mainstream and indie game development… what he jokingly (I hope) refers to as “mindie.”

It’s actually not a bad article. I did enjoy reading it. By his definition, most of the games I mention here are made by “mindies” – occupying a middle space between “mainstream” and “indie.”  But I reject his original hypothesis.

He paints a caricature of both indie and mainstream development. Mainstream is represented as soulless factories of formulaic sequels, and the indies are pretentious bearded bohemians.  Yeah, these stereotypes have been pushed by the media. Some of the antics at the IGF and comments by big publishing execs haven’t helped dispel these exaggerations. So we get stuff like this:

But I don’t buy into this. I don’t see these necessarily as extremes of a single, narrow continuum, but simply as exaggerations of certain subcultures or philosophies within a much broader spectrum.  To me, the “mindies” that Doulin talks about are just plain ol’ indies. The “fringe” that really gets into the “more indie than thou” arguments (and take them seriously) are just that – fringe. And I’ve been in mainstream development long enough to know that many of those talented folks cranking out the sequels really do chafe under the constraints they are given, and really try to do more. But yeah, unfortunately, I have noticed a trend among younger game developers to believe the marketing hype they grew up with, equating improved gameplay with more flash and bigger guns. Hopefully they’ll learn, over time…

So anyway, I really take exception to the co-opting of the term “indie” to apply only to a certain fringe, or that there’s a need for a third group to bridge the gulf between the two.  The indies are a wild and diverse lot, mainly because they aren’t constrained to fit any pattern that matches the conventional mainstream game business cycle. You have amateurs and professionals, experimenters and mainstream wannabe. An overwhelming majority do it out of love for gaming, though there are a few “microstudios” out there (I’m going to start using that term courtesy of the Develop conference, I think) that are simply chasing the latest fad in pursuit of making the big bucks (and maybe not staying small very long in doing so… *coughZyngacough*).

I reject the whole “more indie than now” thing as any kind of serious argument, though I don’t mind playfully indulging in it once in a while.  But for me, indie is defined not by what someone is, but rather by their choice to take one of many roads less traveled. It’s a really big tent, and I think the pragmatic, professional (or at least professionally-minded) indies are smack dab in the center of it.

Filed Under: Biz, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 6 Comments to Read

The “F**k Off!” Heard ‘Round the World…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 19, 2010

So the story is now last week’s news, apologies have apparently been extended and accepted, hug-hug-kiss-kiss there’s nothing more to see here, move along… But I think it’s interesting in hindsight to see what happened with a slightly fuller view of the story.

According to Cliffski’s blog and a couple of other sources, it kinda went like this: At a game developer’s conference in Brighton, UK, there was a panel on “microstudios” – tiny flea-spec (and generally indie) developers talking about how to make it as a tiny studio. In the middle of the panel discussion, a major figure from a major, mainstream, big-freaking-studio in the front row insultingly interrupts and starts going off on how they are doing it all wrong, effectively muscling his way onto the panel for the final few minutes of the discussion.

Many hours after-the-fact, one of the indies in question (Cliff) finally puts his thoughts on paper, and tells the guy to “F**k off!”  And while it’s directed to the specific mainstream business guy, I feel it’s also a little bit of a statement to the entire mainstream biz that feels – now that indies are becoming a very real aspect of the market terrain – that they have the right to get into our business and dictate how things should work.

Now, said mainstream guy (Mark Rein)  is from a company (Epic) that was, fifteen years ago, one of the little “microstudios.” So he gets a little bit of slack. But they haven’t been there in a long time. While his information may have been useful fifteen years ago, the market has changed significantly since they were fighting their way out of obscurity.

Now, I wasn’t there, so I have no more much right to interject opinions here than Mr. Rein did. But I’m going to wallow in my own hypocrisy a little from my comfortable sideline position. The event and Cliff Harris’s response touched off something of a crapstorm in gaming media, making it something more than just an isolated incident at some panel that most people (even most indie developers) would otherwise have not even heard about.

The generalized furor in the news and blogosphere that erupted following Cliffski’s blog post underscores what I feel is an uneasiness in the industry about the relationship between the mainstream biz guys and the indies. Once upon a time, indies were so insignificant as to be completely ignored. That’s not the case anymore. Years after the small, basement / garage / bedroom development studio had been declared dead and buried by the mainstream studios, it has been resurrected as a force which is at least indirectly, in a small way, a viable competitor to the big studios. It has certainly turned the heads of some publishers.

A couple of thoughts: First,  Cliff “Cliffski” Harris left his mainstream game development job was that he’d figured out he could make as much (or more) money doing his own thing as an indie. That’s certainly NOT the usual story, and I imagine his success as an indie developer was a major reason he’d been invited onto the panel in the first place. While being an indie means giving up the steady paycheck, he’s been forthcoming enough with his numbers that I suspect that while he doesn’t make anywhere near the kind of money the principles at Epic (including Mark Rein) makes, he probably does a lot better than your median employee at Epic. Plus he gets to work in his pajamas. There’s something to be said for that. Something I’d love to hear about, as an indie. Something I’d have attended this panel to hear about.

Another thought: I do think it’s dumb to disregard thoughts and suggestions from guys who’ve been there before us. Even if their approach is out-of-date, if their audience was different from our own, and they are being an obnoxious bozo. So while Rein may have been speaking out of turn, I’ve little doubt there was something of value in what he had to say, and would like to read more. At the right time, right place, I’d love to read or hear his advice and what he thought his studio can offer for indies. But hijacking a panel of indies? Bad form, definitely. It makes him – and the mainstream, AAA industry he now represents – come off as a bully.

And Cliffski calling him out on it? You know, I think it needed to be said.

Cliffski’s “F**k off!” is pretty much the indie thing, the whole indie attitude wrapped in a concise shell using language I try to avoid using.

It’s not that indies – or, I think, Cliff – have any sort of burning hatred towards our mainstream brethren. Well, okay, most of us don’t, and while I know Cliff has some scars that still pain him from his years in the mainstream biz, from my communications with the guy I don’t feel he’s ill-disposed towards them – or even towards working with them – in general. He got his start as an indie doing a project for Maxis / EA, after all… a contract that helped him pay the bills while he made the transition. It’s more that nowadays, he has little use for them.

That’s what being “independent” is all about. They simply don’t matter.

Taking his statement to a far more general level than I think Cliff really intended with his post, this is a statement towards mainstream interference in the indie world. And yeah, awesome history aside, Epic is as big and as mainstream as they come these days without being owned by EA or Nintendo. By very definition, indies reject having their business dictated to by the mainstream world.  That’s what makes them indie. Cooperating with the mainstream companies is fine.

But having them come in and try to force their way upon us, no matter how well intentioned? Um, yeah. “F**k Off.”

UPDATE: Added link in first paragraph to Mark Rein’s official apology.

Filed Under: Game Development, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

Profound Disappointment at Monkey Loss

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 16, 2010

I picked up (well, downloaded) the new Special Edition of Monkey Island 2. On the X-Box, I’m afraid… I figured it should be a family thing. One of my daughters was getting into the first one.

The Special Edition of the sequel doesn’t seem quite as spectacular as the first, but it’s probably because the graphics for the original release were a bit better than in the first game. Funny how going from 16 colors to 256 colors can do that. Still, it’s way awesome, and Monkey Island 2 is otherwise pretty timeless and one of the best graphic adventure games of all time. I think it’s awesome that it can be made current again and offered to a new generation of gamers.

I also enjoy listening to the developer commentary throughout the game. Maybe it’s only because I’m a developer, but… it’s way cool.

But when we played the game, my wife was struck with profound disappointment. “Where are the monkeys? The dancing monkeys? The ones in the logo screen are cute, but they don’t count!”

It’s true. The intro credit sequence was gone. The music was there in the menu, and you could view the credits in a completely re-done, more sterile options screen. But the totally awesome cinematic opening titles were nowhere to be found. And for my wife, the game was all about those dancing monkeys in the opening credit. The game is diminished significantly because of the monkey loss.

So – anyone – if you know if they buried that intro sequence with the dancing monkeys in the Special Edition somewhere, please let me know. Because apparently, it’s just not Monkey Island 2 without the monkeys. It’s just… I don’t know, “Island 2” or something.

For those who don’t know what I’m talking about… Here it is in all its 1991 awesomeness:

Filed Under: Adventure Games, Retro - Comments: 11 Comments to Read

Is That All You Do, Play Games?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 15, 2010

It was a little bit of a shock when we had to go to the hospital a week after I graduated from college. I almost automatically wrote down, “Student” on the form when it asked for my job title. I realized – holy crap! – I was actually “unemployed.”

My wife was teaching second grade at a nearby elementary school, but she was also pregnant with our first child. The whole thing with her being the principle bread-winner wasn’t going to last much longer. I had to find a job. But for the immediate future, we had the luxury of having a few weeks for me to search for the “right” job, not just any ol’ job for a fresh-faced graduate with a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science. And – bizarrely enough – I was trying to hold out for what I’d considered a “dream job,” – a job as a videogame programmer.

At one point, I’d made some tentative calls to Origin and asked about what kind of qualifications they were looking for (almost immediately before they were acquired by EA and … well, slowly destroyed…) After reading some articles, I’d known that besides a degree, I need to have some proof of my game-making ability. I needed a portfolio of game projects I’d worked on.

I’d started working on them before I graduated. One, a game called “Armorena,” was a 3D multiplayer tank-game I’d written as a project for my final course at school, a class on networking. I say, “3D,” but it was flat-shaded polygons. This was 1994, after all.

I also had an incomplete strategy game inspired by the board game Supremacy. I had a cyberpunk action RPG (back before they were cool) that I’d STILL like to finish one day, where you played a Neuromancer-style console cowboy hacking through computer systems and uncovering a global conspiracy.  And I had a dumb little fighting game with custom sprites doing fighting moves. A friend wanted to help, and had added some cartoon characters to the mix. We had Homer Simpson doing martial arts in that game. It was silly. Terrible gameplay, but I was never a huge fighting game fan. I think it had more in common with the old arcade game, Karate Champ than Street Fighter II (which was still very popular at the time).

Fortunately, there were game companies locally. And so I started my search locally. Through my Teaching Assistant job, I’d learned of a new game start-up being put together in Salt Lake, and had been in contact with them, though they were still trying to get funding together. They eventually became SingleTrac, my first job out of college and the beginning of my game-making career. But I also sent my resume and interviewed at other places.

While I was working on these games and trying for the “dream job” first before – or so I thought – having to “get serious” with a more ordinary job – I was also playing games. I’d write, I’d play. I’d look through the Wanted Ads.

During this stretch, my wife’s grandparents paid us a visit for a few days. I was knee-deep in making and playing the games, now out of school, and my grandmother-in-law apparently did not approve.

“Is that all you do, Jay, is play games?” she finally asked / accused one afternoon, on the second day of their trip. I had a job interview at a game company scheduled for the next day. But, as I was still unemployed about a month out of school, the words stung.

I didn’t know how else to answer, other than to say, “Yes, as a matter of fact, that’s all I do.”

Video games have fed my family for roughly half of my career, now. I guess I’m pretty well vindicated by now. But I still get angry when I think back on that incident.

Filed Under: Geek Life - Comments: 7 Comments to Read

Indie Interviews: Thomas Riegsecker and Annie Mitsoda

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 14, 2010

A couple of great interviews with indie RPG creators Thomas Riegsecker of Basilisk Games (the Eschalon series), and Annie Mitsoda (formerly Annie Carlson) of Doublebear Productions (Zombie RPG).

First off, Thomas talkin’ to Mishmash Magazine about Eschalon series. It’s a pretty straightforward little interview offering some more insights into the brain of a developer, but one gem he offers here is a great one:

“Bugs are always a problem, especially when trying to develop any kind of AI. The funniest bug is actually still present in the game because it was just too awesome to remove: if you approach a friendly NPC and attack them, they become agitated and will attack you back. Casting a “Charm” spell on them returns them to a friendly state, but if you attack them again at this point they go mad with confusion! They begin to attack themselves until they commit suicide! This is a completely unintentional AI reaction, but upon discovering the effect we decided it was just too funny to change.”

I’d never tried that. But now I must! Anyway, the full interview can be found here:

Mishmash: Interview with Basilisk Games

And then we have RPG Codex’s interview with Annie Mitsoda, who apparently realized they could economize as indie developers by marrying her business partner. 🙂 Yeah, I don’t think I followed the causality of that one quite right, either. Her mainstream design credits include two of the Neverwinter Nights 2 expansions, and now she’s working on an RPG about zombies which – dude – I’m so there. The interview is anything but generic – RPG Codex is notorious for being rude, crude, and contentious, and Annie comes out swinging and talking about her career and ideas with frankness and with a lot of fascinating side-journeys. And about surviving a zombie apocalypse. While well, nothing’s “typical” as indies go, but their journey to indie-dom sounds pretty familiar:

“DoubleBear is really Brian’s brainchild – I’m a part of it, but I must admit the real impetus was Brian’s own experiences in the industry, and reaching a point where he really didn’t want to work on something he either wasn’t passionate about or something he was passionate about that stood a chance of getting cancelled. It’s something I’ve been through as well, and it’s demoralizing to have happen to you, and it’s actually happened to two games that Brian and I have worked on together. When Vince proposed working on a game with us, at first we thought we’d just become part of Iron Tower – then when Brian brought up making his own company, I was absolutely all for it. It seemed to make the kind of sense that is made when people propose combining two things that are delicious, like chocolate and peanut butter or rum and anything that might be fruit or fruit-related.

“We’re physically based in Seattle (insofar as DoubleBear is Brian and I at the moment) and although right now it’s just Brian and I, we’re working with multiple folks from Iron Tower Studios and other peeps who are spread out around the world. We’d like to grow DoubleBear, and definitely we intend to keep making more games, but that’s something we’re not focusing on yet – ZRPG will get finished first before we figure that madness out.

“Brian’s working on ZRPG full-time, while I’m working on it part-time. My full-time job is as a designer at ArenaNet, who very kindly are totally cool with me working on DoubleBear stuff. So I’m bringing in the outside cash, while – like most start-ups – our savings are keeping DoubleBear running. We’re not paying wages, but we’re doing a profit-sharing split with the key people working on the game – while others have volunteered their time and work simply for credit and out of the goodness of their hearts, which is so awesome and kind and rad that it knocks me right on my ass.”

Please read and enjoy more here:

RPG Codex: Annie Mitsoda’s (nee Carlson’s) Zombie Baby

Have fun!

Filed Under: Interviews - Comments: Read the First Comment

California’s Twice-Failed Anti-Videogame Law Goes to the Supreme Court

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 13, 2010

Jeff Green, former editor-in-chief of Computer Gaming World and Games for Windows, and now designer at EA, puts aside his usual hyperbole and fart jokes to focus on a serious matter – the resurrection of California’s atrocious anti-videogame legislation to be taken to the Supreme Court.

Why You Should Care About EMA v Schwarzenegger

I guess I should be grateful, as the law is likely to be struck down a third time, and a SCOTUS ruling should pretty much put an end to these garbage pieces of legislation that keep cropping up in years when state legislatures aren’t as busy trying to concoct ways of staving off bankruptcy. But there’s always the chance that this time, the court will have a lapse of reason, and decide that somehow this chilling piece of government overreach is somehow okay.

Just a short stab at some of the reasons its not okay:

• It violates the first and fourteenth amendments to the Constitution.
• It’s vague and more likely used as a political or commercial weapon or threat than to “save the children.”
• It will have a chilling effect on the industry as a whole
• Numerous studies have failed to provide any substantial link (beyond natural tendencies common to all entertainment and media) between videogame violence and real-world violence… it’s a massively dangerous and economy-destroying bill whose only purpose is to solve a non-existent problem.
• More on the non-problem thing: Retailers have improved substantially over the last ten years in checking for IDs for M-Rated games. It will never be 100%, even with this law, but the law fails to accomplish anything that isn’t already being done.
• It propagates a massive double-standard between games and other forms of entertainment media that has finally begun fading over the last few years.
• It propagates a myth in pop culture that has also finally begun disappearing that video games are intended for children.
• It puts indie game developers under massive threat, as they cannot afford ESRB ratings (and if they could, it would drive ESRB ratings prices through the roof or delay releases of games for YEARS because of the demand) — which seems to be the only reasonable defense against this law: to have “an independent ratings board gave it the seal of approval!”
• The government is very poorly equipped to deal with the enforcement of this law in any reasonable manner, and I really don’t see that changing or being very different from state to state. It’s another ridiculous nanny-state law that is more likely to be used to persecute by those who know how to twist it rather than to prosecute.

So yeah. I’m a hatah. Cross fingers, scream at your governor and congressfolk if you live in California for wasting your taxpayer dollars defending this piece of idiocy, offer monetary support and / or moral support to those organizations working to fight it, and regardless of the outcome, keep working to prevent this kind of obscene overreach from ever happening again.

Good luck to us all.

Filed Under: Politics - Comments: Read the First Comment

Game Announcement – Deadly Sin 2: Shining Faith

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 12, 2010

I had some good things to say about the indie RPG Deadly Sin when it was first released. Solid story, fantastic musical score, inventive tactical twists on a turn-based combat system, solid graphics. It’s a solid title that I recommend checking out.

The release of the sequel, Deadly Sin 2: Shining Faith, proves that the original was no fluke. Deadly Sin Studios is proving itself a master of the RPG Maker platform, and what I’ve played of this sequel is seriously impressive.  It was only the presence of a pretty frantically-paced “to do” list that kept me from devoting many hours to this game over the weekend.

Deadly Sin 2: Shining Faith begins with playable teaser with the characters in a desperate situation, culminating in a cliffhanger. Having provided a grim sneak preview into the later story, the game rewinds to the past to happier-but-tense times with trouble on the horizon, letting the player learn first-hand how things grew to become so dire. It’s a formula worthy of a Hollywood movie, but it’s better executed than far too much of what passes as standard Hollywood fare these days,

Original? Maybe not, but it works, and is done pretty well. And as in the first game, the original musical score is really impressive. And I say this in an era where many indie games are raising the bar on musical quality.

You can change the names of the principle playable characters, if for some reason a main character named “Carrion” is as cringe-worthy for you as it is for me. I don’t know if there’s a reason the principle PC is named after rotting flesh, but I found that to be a little distracting at first.

But of course, good storytelling and production is only half of the story. The game mechanics are – as far as I have seen – very similar to the original game, which were pretty solid. The skill system runs pretty deep for a jRPG-style RPG Maker title.  There’s a threat system in combat that influences the enemy choice of target. The player can manage of this value in combat to manage how damage gets dealt. It’s also a reason why you may not want your mage to just go all-out on the enemies with the most powerful damage-dealing spells.

While it’s labeled Deadly Sin 2, it seems to be a little like the Final Fantasy games as far as sequels are concerned.. While there may be some connections between the two games later on, so far I’ve not seen any direct relation beyond the similar game mechanics. I’m probably overlooking something, as it’s been a while (and a lot of games) since I played the original, but suffice to say that as far as I can tell, it’s not a direct sequel and so there’s no need to play the first game to enjoy this one.

And I’m enjoying it. I’m looking forward to playing it some more.

You can grab a copy of the free demo from here at Rampant Games. The demo gives you the first hour for free. So you don’t have to take my recommendation at face value – just download a copy and check it out for yourself.

DOWNLOAD DEADLY SIN 2: SHINING FAITH

Oh, and here’s a little trailer for your amusement:

Have fun!

Filed Under: Game Announcements - Comments: Comments are off for this article

Mardek RPG Chapter 3 Released

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 9, 2010

Mardek Chapter 3, a Flash-based RPG, is now out. Its predecessors have also received an update.

Mardek Chapter 1

Mardek Chapter 2

Mardek Chapter 3

I haven’t played these games before. Yes, me, the all-knowing guru of all things indie RPG and stuff (HAH!), missed this one. But after hearing about the release of Chapter 3, I went back and played through some of the first chapter. It won me over after I was done “beatening” the dragon.

It’s cute, funny, and is both homage and parody of classic jRPGs of the 16-bit console era. But while it pokes fun at conventions and may have NPCs named things like, “Sidequest Priest,” (I especially enjoyed the description of the healing potion), it’s not dependent upon these little jokes and asides to be fun – a very important thing! Each chapter can take over ten hours (or so I have read), so these aren’t quite the “quick fix” Flash games.

And they are free Flash-based games, so … you know, FREE. Be sure and play and visit sponsors and stuff to help support the developer, Pseudolonewolf.

Filed Under: Free Games, Game Announcements, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

Underworld

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 8, 2010

I’ve been a little negligent in talking about an indie RPG that’s been out a couple of months now, which embraces the “old-school” western RPG style of the 1980s. Entitled Underworld (or more fully, “Swords and Sorcery Underworld” – to distinguish it from the Ultima kind, I imagine…), it draws inspiration from the early Might & Magic and Wizardry titles.

This is a seriously old-school Western RPG by author Charles Clerc. We’re talking 2D first-person perspective; party-based gameplay (with “floating” membership as you can swap characters in and out of the active group); turn-based combat; costly leveling-up; food and water requirements; class-based character development; the works. If those words make year pulse quicken just a little bit with fond memories of old classics, you owe it to yourself to check out this game.

Part of my reticence in talking about it was I wanted to have a good chance to play it and get a feel for it, first. I still haven’t played nearly enough to speak with authority about this game, but I can say without reservation that it does have that addicting quality for me where a quick ten or fifteen minute session can easily stretch out into an hour.  My post Monday about character creation was, in part, inspired by my going back and creating a new party for the latest version of this game. (Recent experiences doing the same for some retro-gaming and playing Eschalon: Book II and Din’s Curse also figured into it.) It may fall a little shy of the classics it seeks to emulate, but it is both an impressive and entertaining reminder of what made those games such classics in the first place. It’s fun, and has a solid old-school vibe… but without some of the old-school annoyances.

Visually, it’s a little rough around the edges, but the upcoming version 1.03 (pictured here) makes another stab at improving the overall quality and smoothing out the roughest spots. One issue is the use of pre-rendered 3D art for some of the content, and hand-drawn art for others.  It’s a problem of consistency that I am all too familiar with, as are many other indies who don’t have the budget for artists to create custom content in a unified style. I worry that this might turn off some potential players who will dismiss it early without giving it a chance.

There are some other issues I have, too, such as the save game available only in an inn. But this is almost entirely remedied by a “bailout” button which will auto-save your game as it quits.

While it embraces the retro-hardcore western RPG style with a vengeance, the “bailout” function isn’t the only concession it makes to modern audiences.  Like Bard’s Tale and the early Might & Magic games, the streets of the starting city are not safe for newbie adventurers.  However, unlike the frustratingly challenging early game of Bard’s Tale, early encounters aren’t quite as likely to prove immediately lethal to your fledgling characters. A game mechanic I really like is that characters get a “second chance” when otherwise fatally wounded.  Another hit while they are thus disabled will kill them fer real, but a quick healing spell can come in handy to save the day. This really helps make death a bit less random, but fights remain challenging and dangerous.

I also like that the game features a colorful automap. While there’s a part of me that fondly remembers my careful use of pencil and graph paper to play the old games, I can’t say that it was a part of the old-school experience I’d like to see return.

And – so far as I can tell – Underworld is Big. It’s not something you are going to conquer in a couple of days. I’m not many hours into it, and I feel like I’ve just barely scratched the surface (though I have played through a bit of the beginning twice now). Besides lots of combat, there is a liberal assortment of puzzles and quests to make sure it’s an interesting time. Charles’ game really is a response to those folks (like me) who complain about how they don’t make ’em like they used to, and those old games were fun, dangnabbit. It’s an impressive freshman effort; I’d really like to see more of this. But not right away – I’ve still got many, many hours of dungeon-delving to do in this one first.

You can find out more information about the game at the official site, ClassicGamesRemade.com. Give the demo a try and see what you think. Like most indie titles, there’s a free demo, so you can try it out with no risk to your wallet. The currently available version is 1.02, but it is completely save-game compatible with the soon-to-be-released version 1.03. Be sure and provide feedback – it will help improve a sequel which is already in the works.

Download Underworld!

And, as always, have fun!

Filed Under: Game Announcements - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

Staying Motivated When Making Games

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 7, 2010

Cliff Harris is one of the more successful true indies out there. It’s comforting to know that even he has problems staying motivated sometimes. But he’s kindly offered a set of tips for indie game makers about how to stay motivated.

How to Stay Motivated Whilst Programming a Game

This is not new territory for most veteran indies. In fact, most of us have figured out these lessons the hard way. But they bear restatement, because they do work, and I find my own productivity suffers when I ignore them.

And no, I don’t think this only applies for programmers.

Filed Under: Game Development, Programming - Comments: Comments are off for this article



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