The Good Book

I've been reading Well Played 1.0: Video games, Value and Meaning. I'm about half way through the book and would recommend it to people interested in game design, and possibly games journalism (although them as much). It breaks down a huge range of games across multiple platforms, genres and levels of obscurity, including Super Mario, Portal and something called "Parrapa the Rapper". Anyway, it's all interesting stuff.
The good news is that this book comes in two delicious flavours: tangy lime and paperback, and zesty orange free PDF.

As you may have guessed I'm very tired, so this is all you get as far as posts this week. I'm very sorry.

And, by the way, if one day you happen to wake up

A word of warning

For the last couple of weeks there haven't been many posts. This is a post to warn you guys that this dry period will probably last several more weeks. The blog and associated project aren't being abandoned, but this a busy time for everyone here right now, so please, bear with us.

Rest assured that soon we will be back to our old schedule and we (I) can talk about the new Wolverine film, what games we've (I've) been playing, that thing we've (Balai) been working on (Zombie hotel or something, right?), and how ashamed I am that I only saw Nerdcore Rising for the first time this weekend.

We'll carry on

Internal organs digitally remastered

Well,
I guess that you may have noticed that it is I who has suffered this insufferable bug and not the one they call Iced.
Rather, however, than describe my guts to you in glorious detail, I shall provide you with the enlightening issue that is PC gamers.
They cheat. Yes I said it, me the one who constantly tries to fight for these disgusting and hateful people.
Actually to use the words hateful and disgusting is probably taking it too far when I consider what Iced, Myke and Tetris must put up with but, still. Why would you want to cheat on something as trivial as an achievement, worse yet an achievement on the PC where there is no discernible gain other than the new weapons and even those are balanced so you end up with no real edge.
Moreover there isn't some kind of arbitrary number that some 13 year olds believe to be exactly correlated to the size of their penis.
Well now I've got that off my chest let's talk about some thing more interesting shall we.
For a start we have Quake live which seems vaguely interesting and could be worth a shot (sorry I just needed that one) next we I have just found out that Steam -unsurprisingly- is supporting EndWar (and more I'd imagine but, I can't be bothered to look).
Lastly I'd like to apologize to the rest of the team for not being in today but, you'll live without me.

The floor is made of wet

I didn't even make a single post last week. It was strange for me. Was it strange for you too?

I can explain, these posts are usually generated after conversations between me and Balai, not many of these have taken place over the last week. This is because right now in England the tarmac has been removed from every single road, and replaced with several inches of ice. Fun.
It's getting better now, I can now leave my house without aid of a spade, but I do still live in constant fear of slipping and falling on my arse.

We haven't been able to talk much over the last week (Balai is notoriously difficult to get a hold of sometimes), work has continued though, Balai has been putting together some weapon models, one of our as of yet unintroduced cohorts - who is within safe walking distance, even with the presence of snow - has been passing me art assets at regular intervals, and I have been coding up some stuff, some stuff that if it works correctly you guys will never ever see. Currently that is the case, although you also cannot see anything else either. Horray for build errors!
Hell knows what the other two have been doing for the last week.

Speaking of other people, I blame the snow for the absence of introductory posts.

Oh, Where did we disappear?

Internal organs redux

In a strange reversal of roles I've managed to go an entire week without posting and Balai has made an update. Scary, I know.
Don't worry, though the title may suggest otherwise, this isn't another post that will feature me talking you through my digestive tract and its' various ills. Instead, I have taken the liberty of distilling a long story into shorter, more easily digestible one. I spent Friday night and the wee hours of Saturday morning in the hospital.
And there you go. I told you. Short version.

What was I doing the rest of the week? Isn't it obvious? I'll give you another short version: DLC for Castle Crashers was released.

Whomsoever I've cured I've sickened now

Of plug sockets and feet

Some people have clumsy hands, I have clumsy feet. I have spent the last half an hour or so getting down some ideas in our wiki about instrument based weaponry, which I'm fairly sure I have mentioned here before in passing - don't ask - then, somehow, I managed to kick the plug socket under my desk. BAM! Everything gone.

Oh well, I'll have a sulk for a bit then just redo it all.

It appears that we are currently still having trouble breaking the two posts a week milestone, I blame my cohorts, who spend way too much of their time diligently working on content and no where near enough time on forcing their unenlightened opinions on anyone and everyone willing to read them. Slackers.

I don't like to brag - which, as we all know is a synonym for: I do like to brag - but I recently figured out that 70% of the posts made on this blog in 2008 were by me. Conversely they only make up 20% of the relevant posts made on this blog last year.

Jessie is a friend

Have a status update, you've earned it

Happy yesterday everyone, especially you Rob, I hope you had a good birthday.

I don't actually know anyone named Rob, and certainly not one who had a birthday yesterday, but I would like to hope that maybe, just maybe, someone out there named Rob read that and is now very worried. Also I wanted an excuse to say happy yesterday once more, I enjoy doing that now.

So, as of today, holiday time has concluded, everyone is over their respective debilitating ills and work is once again in progress*. We can now hopefully return to a schedule where more than two posts are made a week as well, that would be nice.

There is a new post on the Left 4 Dead blog, detailing more of Valve's art decisions, it's interesting reading for anyone remotely interested in game design or Valve.

*OK, so Balai's Internet connection is still hit and miss, but you can't have everything, can you?

don't write yourself off yet

My internal organs: A life story

There haven't been many posts this week, and what has been called forth to this bleak manifesto has been posted when I have been... improperly equipped to make fair or impartial judgements. There has also been a total lack of relevant content, which is not to be unexpected when I am the sole poster for a week.

For all of these things I blame Balai.

You see, Balai has been ill for the whole week, the local news indicates that his dwelling has been infiltrated by a modern day analog of mustard gas. Not so much that he couldn't make a public appearance yesterday, but enough to put him out of commission for the rest of the week, today included. Then the bastard had the cheek to take the time I saw him yesterday as an opportunity to propagate his foul lurgy, so now I've spent both today and yesterday groaning and clenching my stomach.

It actually feels like the left side of my brain and my small intestine have been having an affair with each other, and have now decided to run away. My large intestine has given chase of course, that's what he does, it is all he knows. Meanwhile, the remaining, right half of my brain is busy sulking in a corner, and constantly reporting to my consciousness that is actually on fire, regardless of what my eyes are telling me, because 'Screw them man, our eyes have always been liars'. He does have a point there, I will give him that.

We had hoped to have a rough outline of zombietopia's tutorial done by the end of this week, this hasn't been achieved, I'll leave the details down to you guys.

You should have seen the curse that flew right by you