Mommy, where do heroes come from?

EA would have you think that it was the Battlefield, but in fact they have much humbler beginnings.

You see, every hero was once like you and I, scared lost and unsure of their surroundings. Let me explain what I really mean, in open world games almost all of the time you will finish the tutorial and get booted out into a huge world unsure of your place in it, unsure of what to do, what you're capable of doing, and, most importantly, where to go.

When I got Oblivion it was the first game I owned that featured a massive sprawling expanse of a world, with one notable exception (Don't judge me). I felt really lost as soon as I stepped out of those sewers and into the real meat of the game. Sure, it had given me a direction, but what if I hadn't wanted to follow the main quest? Plus, how was I supposed to get there? Take a direct route on foot? See if I could pick up a horse somewhere? (I would sadly not discover the wonders of fast travel until much later.)
Games that are large, open or sand boxy are very daunting to new players. This doesn't affect the 'hardcore' contingent as much, but you can't assume everyone paying for your product necessarily is already familiar with similar games.

When people feel daunted they may feel put off from delving deeper into your content, and then they don't get all they could out of your game. Everyone deserves the opportunity to derive all the enjoyment that they can from your game, they have all had to pay for it, after all.

I don't have a perfect solution to this problem, but I do know that this is the kind of thing you have to design with Joe Everyman in mind. I have a couple of imperfect solutions rolling around in my head, but nothing firmly nailed down. I'll let you guys know what I come up with at some point, maybe we could bounce some ideas around between us. That could be fun.

Everybodys' got their problems

Oh that's some good coffee...

It early. Way too early. But I noticed this morning that we had a post every day for about 4 days, and then the chain broke! SO I'm basically dumping this one from my shitter this morning because... Well just because.
Progress HAS been made with Zombietopia guys, albeit small progress. Although they are important little things. Now if you'll excuse me, I must leave for the un-ending monotonous abyss that we like to call the workplace. I may update with another entry, or edit this one, when I get there.

EDIT: Hey, I'm back again, managed to get to a computer. Actually have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing. Sure hope a supervisor doesn't read this blog. I apologise sincerely about the lack of updates on the Wikidot site, but we are really, honestly, working diligently do get more things on there. I'm sure that Balai is working to get the most awesome of awesome models up on the weapons page, and that Tetris is recording sounds and stuff. I, myself am constantly updating this thing, so I'm excused. :D

SECOND EDIT: Right, none of you can see the Wikidot site, as Inferno pointed out to me this afternoon. So... Yeah, we've been working really hard.

Cogs and gears and spiky flails, now THAT'S what little boys are made of.

In the name of the King

His name is Norbert. He likes ponies.



So, here begins the war of minds. The battle of the unconscious, the decade of madness known as: Iced Inferno vs Myke. I do believe you have insulted my masculinity for the last time Inferno, for your nose is beginning to swell at an alarming rate. Like Pinocchio. Except you have no penis. I have 2. One is on my nose.

Forthwith, I challenge you to a duel. A duel of epic proportions, one that may tear the space/time continuum, the fabric of reality - causing the Apocalypse, the end of things as we know it, the time when the Space Walrus, with his holy flippers of justice, forgets we are there and accidentally sits on Gaia.

Now, I'm sure that if we start exchanging pleasantries over posts it could end up with hilarious results, but I will save time and tell the tale of the glorious battle that ensues, using the pseudonyms Sir Dickface Thrumsuckler and Señor Awesomenitude. For Iced and myself, respectively. For all those grammar Nazis out there, I don't really care if it's supposed to be 'Iced and me'.

It was a glorious day one September, an eve that no one could forget. The sun was about to set - blood red in the sky. There wasn't a soul that would have thought this was foreshadowing of events yet to unfold.

Rising from the shadows. Sir Dickface Thrumsuckler stood tall, his single brow raised in contempt towards the world. His one purpose was to cause chaos, yet bring the non-believers to justice. Sweet, unending justice. Tasty. Anyways. Where was I? Oh yes.

Rising up, back on the street. He took his time, he took his chances. He went the distance and now he's back on his feet. He's just a man with his will to survive. So many times it happened too fast, he set his passion for glory. He lost his grip on the dreams of the past, and he must fight to keep them alive. It's the eye of the tiger, it's the thrill of the fight, rising up to the challenge of his rival. He's the last known survivor, stalking his prey in the night, and he's watching us all in the eye of the tiger. His pet tiger, Benny.
Benny and Sir Dickface Thrumsuckler had just finished eating their tea when Benny noticed something strange. He had no stripes!
"Oh, woe is me! I have no stripes!" He cried, "What kind of tiger am I to not have any stripes!" Tears began to well up in his eyes and his shoulders sagged as he began an eternal wail.

"Do not worry my little orange buddy!" Exclaimed Dickface. "For I have just the idea to get you your stripes! For you see my grandmother, an octopod of sorts, has a magical elixir that will give stripes to any being! Be he tiger, or leopard!" He jumped forward as he thought of the outstanding idea. "That's right! We will quest for many a day, dive headfirst into mortal peril in such a way that someone could write about it, when we could have easily flown on the back of some giant avian creatures." Bird is the word.
And so Sir Dickface Thrumsuckler and his pet tiger, Benny, set off into the sunset, not knowing whether they would return or not, but altogether a little happier now that they had found something to do besides complain about the badger that nested in their kitchen. Try as they might, they cannot get him to turn his darned music down.

Merely hours into the journey, Dickface and Benny found themselves a problem. The bridge they needed to cross a canyon had recently been devoured by wood-eating antophiles!

"God damned splicers!" Exclaimed Dickface, his face as red as a strawberry. "Now we have to find a different way across!" He thought for a second. And then a second more. Finally he came to a decision. "I know! We shall use maths to get across!" So he set about calculatin the exact route of trajectory he could use to launch himself and Benny over the canyon using a homemade slingshot out of bubblegum and rice. When he stood up from his notes, he noticed Benny was missing. "BENNY!" He shouted, worrying his friend had wondered off and gotten hurt. "BENNY!"
"Over here!" Benny was on the other side of the canyon! "There is a cable-car service just over there!" He pointed to a building just behind Dickface. "You silly-billy! You wasted time being nerdy when common sense was just around the corner!" Dickface blushed red, and quietly sulked over to the cable cars.

A nerdy little man stood at the toll booth for the cable cars. “5.50!” He squeaked in an incredibly nasal voice, that could only really be achieved by beings whose whole face is a nose, like a horse. “5.50 of what?” Dickface was confused. “And why should I pay you 5.50 of my precious whatever they ares?! I actually do stuff for my money. Mostly stealing and selling on, but that’s beside the point!” The nerdy man wet himself at such ignorance and fled the scene before the police could arrive. “That was strange…” Dickface crossed the canyon in his magical cable car of dreams, and embraced Benny in a slightly homosexual way, realising the gayness of this display, he stopped and put on his ‘I am a man’ hat, and apologised.
Strangely the woods behind them were quiet… *OVERUSED PHRASE ALERT* Too quiet… *OVERUSED PHRASE ALERT* But that didn’t bother them. So they set off, once again, into the sunset, for a scenic end to a possible future short animated television special. Skipping a long walk, I will now introduce a new character! Caterpie the Arboc! He is purple and snake-like, but his name is Caterpie to throw enemy trainers off. Benny used Roar! Caterpie’s attack fell. Benny used Fury Swipes! It hit 4 times! Trainer Dickface used 1 ultra ball. Caterpie was caught! “Hot nads, I have a Pokémon! I didn’t even know that these things were in this story.” Dickface jumped for joy. “Now that we’ve magically teleported to a desert, I see a sandstorm coming!” So he pulled up his purple hood, and set into the storm with Benny close behind.
Soon the inseparable duo came across a hut in the storm. “Quick into the hut!” Mumbled Benny; scared of opening his mouth for getting sand in it. “Yes, what could go wrong?” Dickface thought aloud. So they entered the hut to find a feast awaiting for them. Several elves where surrounding the table, summoning them to the feast. Roast turkalops, basted chickelions and sausages and mashed potatoes – POTATOES – where laid out on the table, amongst other things. The turtle-shell two thought that the table’s tongue tied too much. Rufflers.
Dickface and Benny awoke the next morning with no arms. The fled the scene immediately, and came across a cybernetic implants laboratory. “How oddly convenient” Said Benny, rather confused. Benny and Dickface quickly hired scientist to graft cool looking cybernetic arms onto them. “Yay!” He exclaimed, when it was over.
Suddenly, a flash of lightening clashed and who other could it be but Señor Awesomnitude! “Your reign of terror shall never happen!” He yelled, throwing back his luscious hair, his sparkling white teeth flashing in the sunlight. “I will take you down!”
And with that the 2 engaged in a furious battle, in a very Nacho Libre style. With masks and spandex and everything. With a lot of BOF!s and POW!s the dust finally cleared, both fighters dead from multiple blows to the head. “Oh dear.” Sighed Benny, and he set off into the 3rd sunset of this short story.
Benny thereafter found Dickface’s grandmother and her unholy 8 legs, and bought the Elixir of Stripes from her using a soul he won in a poker game a few weeks before this story began. Benny got his stripes back, Señor Awesomenitude and Sir Dickface Thrumsuckler are both dead, and it is an ambiguous ending if ever I saw one.

So that concludes the tale of Señor Awesomenitude and Sir Dickface Thrumsuckler (and his pet stripeless tiger Benny).
Basically, that is how the battle will unfold. Sorry for the spoilers there everyone, but thats just how it is. THE END!

Shove it, duuuuuuude!

A compendium of minor news

Generally speaking, the density of posts made this year has been lacking of lustre, I mentioned this to Balai recently and he pointed out that I was the source of a significant percentage of last year's blog-related content, and that I had been slipping as of late. The trouble is that there hasn't been any big news lately, at least not any I feel inclined to talk about, there have been a couple of minor things here and there though. So, how to overcome this obstacle? Just talk about severall minor things in one go instead! Or talk about kittens for three paragraphs, either way.

-> I, like Myke, saw The Unborn yesterday, if you haven't seen it I highly recommend you thank your associated deity. It isn't scary or anything, just really, really bad. Half way through I had started to wonder if I had actually walked into the wrong screen, I wasn't watching a horror film, I was sitting in a documentary on this arsehole.

-> Lately I haven't been keeping up with Xbox Live Marketplace content as much as I normally do, so I'm probably about to start talking about old news, sorry. I played the Dark Athena demo yesterday and, well, it wasn't bad it just... it just didn't suck me in. This is an unequivocal tragedy, I have enjoyed the Chronicles of Riddick films thoroughly thus far and a good game based on them would be nice.

-> He may make claims to the contrary but Myke is most certainly not a man, there are a few pre-requisites (three of them to be exact) you must meet before being allowed entry into this exclusive club, these standards he doesn't live up to.

-> Back to some old news. Lost Planet 2. Yes please. That co-op footage looks like it will be a riot. I never played the Colonies expansion pack for the first Lost Planet, but the Akrid hunter mode certainly sounded great, if they include that mode in the sequel then I'm sold. Not familiar with Akrid hunter? Let me fill you in: one player is a giant death insect, everyone else dies.

I've been living underground