@LowBitLovecraft     Morgopolis Studios                                                 Good Stuff! About

Thursday, March 31, 2011

I Must Show You My Sexy New Toy



Now all I need is a 3DS game.
Do they have those yet? Good ones?

I guess it's no big deal. I've got an easy, 3-step process to make my 3DS launch the best system launch ever.

And it can work for you, too!


Monday, March 28, 2011

Deadwood

I'm pretty sure there's a gland in my brain that prevents me from enjoying period fiction but Deadwood is the exception. It's this insane combination of complicated, witty 1800's dialogue peppered with the foulest, most belligerent language you've ever heard.


I really like this show. It hasn't been cancelled or anything, has it?

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Rocket Science

Dev Blog time.

Played Missile Master? Wondering why those stupid little 2D missiles never hit their targets? Allow me to enlighten you.


Saturday, March 26, 2011

I Want To Play This Game

Neat, huh?

I don't know what's going on, either, but it looks like so much fun.

The original flash version is right here; so, technically, I can play it, and it's funny as hell, but keeping the mouse tucked onto the tiny screen and the very, very unforgiving physics makes me want to play the real game, the one with the trailer and dual analog sticks (They're suggesting a possible console release on their site, but PC is getting it first this Summer). The Newgrounds version is just a concept test.

(You don't really have to play No Time to Explain on Newgrounds to enjoy it. Just sit there and listen to the guy in the crab claw scream out random, ridiculous shit and you're guaranteed entertainment).

Friday, March 25, 2011

Goodbye Poop Blog, Hello Dev Blog

I'm in the mood for making a video game.

A good one, too (with a very specific influence in mind). There'll be explosions and bosses and an extra-hard difficulty setting.

Did you play Missile Master? That was a concept build, and not a very successful one, either. The core of the game, the missiles, couldn't decide where they were going (whoops), the secondary feature, the boost, was never used, and everyone that played just wanted a gun like in every other shooter.


So for the past few days I've been gutting Missile Master and tossing in new features. The ship now has a gun that sprays death using a very accurate ray hit detection (XNA comes with a library of useful tools. Who knew?), and the missiles are already twice as reliable (soon to be 100% after I put in a new guidance system that highlights your target and then goes in for the kill).

And the entire game is now also fully compatible with the XBox 360 controller (and those analog sticks feel sooo good). The game is a hell of a lot better than what I uploaded.

So yeah, Jet-Girl. The original title was Jet-Girl Jenny, which is even sillier, but it looks better with just two words.

I'm terrible at text, by the way. I don't know what head-math is involved that allows people to make letters look all nice and neat but it's a function that I don't possess. I took forever just on that crap image you see above.

Expect Jet-Girl in a few months, wedged somewhere between this and that.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

In The Pit

So you've beaten all of the X-Box 360 games on your shelf and downloaded every X-Box Live Arcade game you could find, but now you've run out of entertainment and the slow, silent pulse of inactivity is forcing you to question the meaning of your existence.

Fear not loyal Microsoft consumer, for there are games left to play.

If you're brave enough.

If you're man enough.


Monday, March 21, 2011

Stool Time

Let's get real honest and personal for a second...

I've been telling myself for a long time that I enjoy writing this blog, and maybe that's true, maybe I do enjoy it.

But I knew there was something missing. Something that every self-respecting blog has. You know what I'm talking about: that personal, almost magical, connection with the reader. That barrier I've erected between me and you; it has to come down.

And it's coming down right now.



We're going to talk about my last bowel movement, and boy, do I have a doozy to share with you.

Here, read on...


Sunday, March 20, 2011

Man-Eating Crab Aliens

First Contact...
And mankind is on the menu!

That's what I saw when I unearthed Prador Moon from a pile of forgotten paperbacks and flipped it over. So of course I bought the book more or less to humor myself (pretty-much the same reason I picked up The Cross and the Switchblade).
This book is about how mankind finds an alien race (their very first encounter with intelligent life from beyond the stars), and invite the aliens to meet up at one of their space stations, maybe talk to their ambassador, do a few photo ops.

But what comes out of the shuttle are a bunch of enormous crab monsters armed with rocket launchers who almost immediately start fucking shit up.

And eating people. It's hyper violent.



Entire paragraphs (entire pages!) are devoted to heavy, heavy sci-fi jargon; like explanations for how brain-computer-implant-thingies work and excruciating detail for all of the epic space battles. I like sci-fi but I kind of surprised myself by how much fun I had reading about the advanced diagnostic programs of brain augs. Neal Asher loves his craft. That's the only explanation I have for why I enjoyed this book so much.

The whole adventure moves really fast and ends with tons of people shooting missiles and getting blown up. In a lot of ways it felt like reading a Salvatore book. Sure, it doesn't come with some deeper moral message about our contemporary society; sure, even the characters in the book admit that man-eating crab aliens is fucking ridiculous; and sure, it isn't Old Man's War; but it's fun.


If I'd been twelve years old (with little exposure to the greater spectrum of fiction) and read Prador Moon then I'm positive that I would have spent the next ten years focused exclusively on science fiction.

Saturday, March 19, 2011

Secret Warp Macazoni and Cheese

Verti-Goat and Cata-Cow.

Butthole lemonade.

Sexy Shoggoth.

Blumb (A deceptively small word, it's almost a mile long when you put it on your tongue).

I just thought I'd share what I sometimes do at work to keep my brain occupied. If I can cook up a really good word then that's at least half an hour of solid, giggle-worthy entertainment.

Of course when you strip these words down and present them under the harsh light of a blog post they probably lose a bit of their luster. I'd recommend doing something menial and pointless for four hours straight without the warmth of a single entertaining thought and then see how much fun it is to say butthole lemonade.

According to the internet, blumb is a word.

Friday, March 18, 2011

Missile Master

Download your very own copy of Missile Master right here!

Almost a month later and the 24 hour game is finished!


Since I'm pretty new to this I'd appreciate any comments on problems you might have in trying to run this game.

After you've played it hit the read more for a text-heavy, in-depth look at Missile Master.


Thursday, March 17, 2011

Guardian Legend


Guardian Legend fan art is awesome.

The game was unique, really unique, and it never got that sequel it deserved. How many games in the NES era (or any console generation) sported shooter stages, a free-roam on-foot world, shops, level-ups, secrets and tons of bosses?



I think this energy morph is much cooler than the freaky contortionist animation on the NES


Guardian Legend also had some odd game mechanics that, as far as I can tell, are entirely unique. For instance, when you run into an enemy both you and your opponent take damage (except for bosses). It's an odd design because shooters, especially shooters today, don't rely on life bars. They're all about bullet hell and one-shot-one-kill and single-pixel hit detection for the player.

Guardian Legend is less about finesse and more about desperately scrambling away from danger.

Wasn't too wild about the hitbox though. It literally was a box, and since you were flying a triangular ship there was a lot of airspace that counted as vulnerable.

I also was never too wild about the random health power-ups that would pop up in the shooter stages. You could be at next-to-nil health and then a power pack would show up and you're back to 100%, just like that. It was like some kind of gambling mini-game.





If I could remake one game, just one game, then it would have to be Guardian Legend.

And maybe I should, at least in the spirit of the game mechanics. Missile Master already follows a number of design philosophies found in Guardian Legend (like a health bar and collision damage) and the code could certainly be transfered over to a larger project.

I'm not the only one thinking remake, either. Check out this guy's idea. It's the perfect blueprint from an annoyingly talented artist.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

The Expo Floor



Ever wanted to be in the middle of an enormous crowd that's moving by in every direction imaginable?


Monday, March 14, 2011

PAX EAST 2011

I just returned from PAX in Boston, and it's sort of hard to describe.
I mean, I know there are gamers out there. Somebody has to keep the video game industry out of the red, right? Somebody has to kill all those Merlocs. Somebody has to set off their sticky det charge right when I walk by in TF2.

But when you actually see all those gamers in one, collected spot, running around and playing games; it's a little hard to digest, like you're encountering some kind of self-realized clone army, and all of them are sitting at these endless rows of tables playing Dungeons and Dragons.






Wednesday, March 9, 2011

You'll Laugh if You're an Asshole

Let's Play videos is a sort of Youtube genre where gamers post videos of themselves playing video games, usually with their own commentary. These videos can be informative, impressive, (usually) boring or terribly sad.

And sad Let's Play videos is where Retsupurae comes in. Retsupurae (sound it out) is a small group of like-minded individuals who take these depressing videos and repost them, but with one added feature: their own commentary.

So they're doing a commentary of a commentary on a video game.

And the following isn't even that. The Let's Play creator of this video never recorded his voice; he only typed out everything he wanted to say and posted it onto the screen.

And Retsupurae never bothered with a commentary; they only read what was already there.

I love this video. I'll understand if you don't.


I think I could watch this all day.

(Woah. I just got the most wicked deja vu. I totally feel like I posted exactly this post before. Do you ever wonder if, like, you're in Data's situation in Next Gen where you've just realized that you're reliving the same day over and over and if you don't do something different then you'll just end up suffering the same fate you've probably suffered a thousand times before? Like, if I was living the same day over and over where I posted about Retsupurae and laughed at some assholes making fun of someone who might be/probably is a ten year old kid then maybe I should do something different before it's too late and my metaphorical Enterprise blows up. Maybe I should, like, not post this or something.)








(Nah.)

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

This is Why I Lurk


The forum topic was the 3DS.
Comments are never informative, they're almost always radically biased and 99% of them are stupid as hell, but I wouldn't have it any other way. Comments threads are the Mako energy of the Internet.


Writing up a big post would be really fun right now but I'm still piecing together my "24-hour" game.
I have a new respect for shooters. I always thought of them as the simplest genre there is, and while maybe that's true there's still a ton of depth and nuance that can be injected into their design.
I'm totally in the polish phase of Missile Master and there's a lot I'd like to go over concerning the game's design, but I'm not saying a word until I upload the damn thing.

Well, except for the sound design. I'm pretty sure I unintentionally included knock-off versions of every NES game I ever played into the sound files. The game over sound in Missile Master is very close to being a combination of the game over sounds of both Mega Man and Doctor Mario. When I made the sounds I just felt they were right for the game, but now I realize that my 8-bit childhood hard-wired certain noises right into the pleasure centers of my brain.

(Omigod. speaking of hard-wired noises, I left that Mako link on in the background and now I desperately want to play FF7)

Saturday, March 5, 2011

These Are Going Up In My Living Room




(Look closely and you can see Teddy's Duke Nukem belt buckle)

Friday, March 4, 2011

24 Hour Game... 1 Week Later


A full-screen mode is on my list of things to do. Right now, on a high-res monitor, it's like playing a game in a pop-up ad.

I am really looking forward to completing this game. Completing games isn't something I do very often.

Or ever.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

More Music From PrototypeRaptor

Why am I so obsessed with PrototypeRaptor's remixes? Well, why not?!

First listen to the source material. Not everyone has played Kirby 64 (I know I haven't) so this'll be a bit of a treat.



So yeah, pretty intense, right? Very fast. Very aggressive. Perfect for a boss fight.

Below is the remix. This is heavy, heavyheavy, D&B, by the way. If that ain't your genre then this will not be your tune.

(That's Vincent Price laughing at the end, in case you were thinking that guy sounds familiar...).




Missile Master is technically finished and you can technically play it, so I'm technically finished with the game, but that doesn't mean it's as fun as it should be (which is a lot more important than a due date, right?). I've heard that you don't ever know how fun your game is until you can actually play it. This is very, very true.


Gimme a few more days to tinker with the code. I've thought up some great improvements with the core game elements--stuff that requires very little extra content to work.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

The M Word

I saw it again. The M word. It was right there, sitting on a forum post where everyone was discussing what they thought of a recently released video game. There was, of course, no other content to the post. There never is.

You know what word I'm talking about, right?

Meh.


I hate it. I even hate writing it. There's so much wrong with those three letters, from the pathetic sound that's made when it's spoken to its vapid, pointless definition. It's a terrible, wrong word, like a tongue growing out of an asshole.

Who does that? Who writes something like that? Meh (Jesus, I hate that word) has no point. It's the exact opposite of an opinion. It's the declaration that you have no declaration. Why would you share that with everyone? Why are you even on this forum? Did you even play the game? Did it fail to entertain you and now you've gone to the message boards to meh all over the place? Tell me the game is shit. Tell me it's great. Tell me about your fucking dog, just don't meh!

And the word is so god-damned apathetic I want to scream until blood geysers out of my lungs. Every time I see the word it's like, for a moment, I get to witness the pure essence of this person. Like their empty, digital message is a spiritual anchor onto which I can grasp and reach out, peering through the aether to witness the naked, grey little things that they truly are. My mouth fills with bile.




Are you really going to meh? You do know you're the antithesis of life, right?

Well I'll take your meh and raise you bat-shit crazy! How do you like that? How does it feel, huh?


Do everyone a favor and log off, then swivel around in your chair and stare at your empty, vapid meh room and your meh house and your pointless, fucking meh life.


Or how about you contribute something, instead?



(Okay, I feel a little better, now. I think I'd better stay away from the forums, though)