A Post to End All Posts

We're a year old now. Can you believe that? I can't. In contrary to usual human policies, I'm going to be honest with you all for a bit. Here at Space Walrus I have many jobs, this I don't mind, because it means every couple of weeks I get to give myself a ridiculous new title - my current, and favorite, being 'Creative Director of Creativity and the Creation Thereof' - one of these jobs is to act as an outspoken prophet, bringing words of a divine nature to the populace at large. This is both my favorite and least favorite job, because it means that occasionally I have to make admissions like the following:
We have been here for just over a year now, and have basically nothing to show for it, and probably never will. All of us have long since moved on to new projects and ditched this one. All we have is some back end work and some (pages and pages and pages...) writing. If you were to compile and run Zombietopia it Will boot to a plain cornflower blue screen and will accept two inputs, the Esc key of the back button on a 360 controller. Both inputs close the window.

Consider this a confirmation that a Space Walrus Game will never happen. Very sorry for wasting your time. Any post following this will likely be a plug for one of the aforementioned other projects. Oh, and, happy holidays.

Thank god it's fatal

Of Deception and Addiction

Once again I have been deceived by forces unseen, but very real, the promised shipping of posts hasn't arrived. I spoke to the mail couriers this morning on the phone and they insist that no packages of a wordly nature have been handed to them. Despite this I will do my best to forge ahead.

The problem is that I know exactly why this situation has arisen. It is well documented that me trying to quit World of Warcraft is like throwing cold sausages at a ceiling. I may try and try, but it never sticks.
This time around, rather than venture into Azeroth alone I finally managed to coerce my compatriots into taking the plunge along with me. So now the entire Space Walrus team are hooked on the thing. I don't mind this, I for once actually have a number of people that I can group with on a regular basis, but it does mean that very few people are doing... well, anything. I'm not even sure that anyone other than me has logged into our wiki in about a month (this is, admittedly, not a departure from the norm, but it sounds bad to people who don't know that).

Thinking of you closing the bar down

Only What You Have Come to Expect

It's been quite a while, hasn't it? This feels odd, but as I construct a needlessly long sentence like this, and extend it further with a comma like that, well, I just have to admit that it's all coming back to me now.
I'm a criminal, I know.

According to powers that be, it is my sacred duty, and mine alone, to resurrect this blog after each of it's many hiatus hiatuses hiatii extended periods of outage. So here we are. I'm assured* that after this ritual has been performed the flood gates will open, Balai will release a barrage of posts that have been chambered for quite some time, and this blog will, once again**, become a vibrant and content rich place.

*Read: don't expect this to come to fruition
**I am willing to accept that this may be pushing it slightly

In a couple days I'll post something with meaning, I have some of the good old 'games as art' topics swirling around in my head. It might be nice to get those out in the open. As for now, this is your lot.

I want to push this beyond a peaceful protest

So little time

Well, I finally found time to post. Not that I blame anyone or thing (other than myself) but, on with what I've been up to.

I suppose I should start with something related to Space walrus games, so I will. Iced has the most recent version of the code currently but, this hasn't hindered me from tinkering with C# and XNA.

As far as I can tell most of the games that come out of XNA generally have a fairly short development cycle. I say this because it would seem that a lot of games that have come out of XNA seem to be primarily sprite based and while this isn't bad it makes for mostly 2D or simple graphics games. I have no particular problem with this but, I hope our game can use quite a lot more than the average stuff (whatever that may be).

Moving on.

I've also been playing many games as is my way. The short list includes the following:

X3:Terran conflict, Sword of the stars, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. shadow of Chernobyl and Clear sky, Bioshock, Shadowrun and Mass Effect.

There are of course more than that but, I cant be bothered to go through all of the games I play.

'nyways ( What a weird way to start a sentence) I have quite little time and yet still have time to be bored. I was going to rant about something but, I've forgotten what now and couldn't care less about whatever it was now anyway.

I need a cup of coffee.

That is all for the now.

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

Blasting the Past

Lately, I've been playing some games, I'm running out of time to make a post this week, so lets talk about them, feel free to feign interest, it's all the same to me.

First off, I've been playing some of Freelancer's multiplayer, something I've mentioned in passing before. For those interested my server of choice is the void (look out for IcedInferno, as usual), not for any reason other than it was at the top of one of the server lists I looked at. The Void has a pretty cool sounding mod tied to it, although I haven't seen much of the new content. The only two things I've seen so far I encountered within minutes of play. Immediately after launching from the starting planet I was greeted by a giant space billboard welcoming me to the void, the second thing was a gargantuan warship, roughly the legnth of the average planets' radius, doing battle with a number of rogue ships. This ship, was player controlled, and I was sure as hell glad that it was on my side. I also found out that I could dock with it, essentially using another player as a resupply base, that is inherently cool.

The other game, which is simultaneously very old and a little old, is The Ur-Quan Masters, a port of Star Control 2 from Dos to modern operating systems. Star Control 2 is a game that does nothing to alleviate my belief that as time has passed the quality of story telling in games has gone down, and that only recently people have restarted making decent attempts at even narratively justifying the events in their games. Star Control 2 is really deep, the graphical quality may be exactly what you'd expect from something originally intended for Dos, but the hours and hours of recorded dialogue and heart and soul poured into the universe more than make up for that. You know what else? It is completely free, so you have no excuse not to try it.
The only caveat is that the game doesn't do a very good job (read: any) of filling you in on the controls. Oh, and also, it is as hard as balls.

That is all.

I just need a little therapy

What's this? Two posts in a row?

Golly gee whiz Mister, however did this happen?

The answer is: bacon and eggs. I sit here eating a lovely fry up at twenty to six, and I am not complaining.
Right, well away from the tangent that I inevitably (and confusingly) start on, I implore you all to send me your copies of Prototype.
It's not that I really want this game, it's just that LOVEFiLM has sent me Just Cause instead, which is not a bad thing per se but I was planning on writing a quick review for you all on how the game is. Because that's what my self proclaimed job is now, reviewer. Instead of some interactive mutant madness, I will instead leave you with a quick glance over Transformers.

It was shit.

I liked the first one, it was OK, not the best film in the world, but it did it's job at entertaining. Now, I'm not going to give you a complete run down of the events of the film, at risk of repeating already said material. Basically if you like explosions shoved down your throat every second, slow motion boob running and cheap testicle jokes, this film is for you. If you like a compelling storyline, twist and turns around every corner and the kind of humor only someone with a monocle can understand, stay away. Michael Bay seems to not understand that 'less is more' when it comes to things like explosions and closeup shots. I'm being serious, I do not think that the film has more than 10 minutes in it where there isn't a single explosion. The man went mad. I didn't stay behind after for the credits, but I'm pretty sure that the number of compositors working on the explosions alone must have doubled the crew list and then some.

Needless to say, this is more so something you should watch drunk and when it comes out on DVD in several years time when it's in the bargain bin.
Hey, I'm not saying don't watch it!

Also I would like to add that I would play D&D with inferno if he pays for the equipment and has truthfully come up with that world of sentient trees he mentioned.

Primetime < Clobberin' Time

What the hell are you doing here? You know there's a war on, right?

I played in the very first UK edition of 1 vs 100 on Xbox Live primetime. I went in knowing that this, like PlayStation home, is a product intended for an audience who are the collective antithesis of myself, but like any good nerd, I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to complain about something.
I'm not going to explain the fundamentals of the game, if you aren't in the know and would like to amend that status wikipedia is more than willing to fill you in. The game was fun enough for half an hour, but I couldn't bring myself to sit through all three hours, especially not with the Battlefield 1943 community challenge starting at the same time. There seemed to be some form of glitch when I was playing that caused me to be unable to hear the games' live host as I played with the exception of the first five minutes of play, after which he turned mute, and I was unable glean any information from my attempts at lip reading his avatar.
Also nine tenths of the questions require no knowledge whatsoever, and can be deduced by simple guess work. If I can answer a football question on your quiz correctly, your quiz is too easy. Finally I never got to be the one or part of the mob, this is 1 vs 100s' greatest folly, for which it cannot be forgiven.

A little while ago a made a not so subtle hint that I wanted to try Magic and D&D, it appears that a couple of people took this is a challenge and declared that if I could concoct a story set in a world ruled by trees then they would gladly play the latter. I haven't got round to asking if they would seriously do this, because my mind has managed to synthesize such a world, a world were mortal men such as you and I toil away in subservience to ever unpleasable sentient saplings. And a mind flayer. Minds must always be flayed, my brothers.

On my graph paper maps

Where the Time Went

Two of your flesh mortal months ago I mentioned that much of my time was being siphoned away by some delicious but unnameable force. It appears that recently that force has revealed itself to the world.

I am to Battlefield Heroes what a pig is to mud, the devout consumer. I've been sampling this game at regular intervals for months now, alone and friendless, but now we may all bask in its' glory together. The full release version of the game has been slightly nerfed from the beta version though, I especially missed the "Get cash items for free" feature, that was a personal favorite.

Really, I'd recommend everyone to try it out, remember to add IcedInferno* to your friends list. Hey, why not? It is free.
To make me seem like a little less of a fanboy I'll concede that there a few foibles here and there that I am contractually obliged to present:

• Purchased weapons and items last for either a week or a month, no permanent unlocks
• At least in Vista the games' launcher can be very temperamental
• The team I'm playing on generally starts losing when I join
• Royals always seem to lose (See point 3)

On the bright side Dice's latest trailer makes me happy.

*I'm not sure if the friends list goes on character or account names, if it is the former add Georgefrey instead

Run away with my heart

A Game of Cards

Sacred 2 arrived at my door a few days ago. In this post I had originally intended to inform all of you that I wasn't hooked on this game. It is good, do not misinterpret my words, but I could turn my console off without an intervention. Everything was cool, I was wandering around, a member of the nearly extinct race of cyborg Anubis tribute acts, fulfilling my destiny as a grisly envoy of the end with enthusiasm and vigor, but then it happened. A friend of mine, one of the ones who had touted this game as digital crack, encouraged me to create a new character so that we could play together, and do it from level one. From that moment onwards I started describing Sacred as addictive. Also, High Elves ftw.

The deeply intuitive among you may have tapped into the force and guessed that there is another heavily opinionated paragraph chambered and ready to fire. You may have also guessed that it is on a different subject. You may have guessed that it is about being able to play as Johnson in Halo ODST. If you guessed that last one, you guessed wrong.

Magic: Duels of the Planeswalkers is a game targeted directly at me, in fact if I look north at any time, I become blinded by the laser sight trained upon me. I am the kind of person who seeks to become a nerd in every way possible. Magic, like Dungeons and Dragons, is a game that I would whole heartedly like to sample, but due to a lack of friends willing to take the plunge with me, I haven't been able to. Duels of the planeswalkers emulates the willing friend fairly well, its' tutorial did an excellent job of explaining the game to me (although admittedly I have played multiple similar card games before, so I do have an advantage over regular newbies) and has delivered a satisfying, yet upsettingly short, roster of foes. The only thing missing is the ability to weave your own decks out of whole cloth, rather than just editing pre-made ones.
Still, if you've ever been curious about Magic: The Gathering I'd recommend this, but expect to have your arse handed you the first few plays, experienced Magic players will probably be underwhelmed though. Not that I'm an expert on Magic players.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go get molested by the love child of a sea urchin and mighty Cthulhu.

It’s a kind of magic

Hello

In keeping with Inferno's once a week policy, I am here to make a post that has nothing to do with the game.

And to make it bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky bulky by copying and pasting.

:D oh, I really have nothing to say.

One Return, One Game, One Space Walrus

Rejoice my children! My time-table is no longer full of twisting, time devouring juggernauts. I shall make it my first order of business to return this sorry page to its' former glory, expect at least one post a week again - and let us get this straight, if there is only a single post in a week, it will be large enough to be easily viewed from space.

During our extended interlude I missed my chance to talk about many things that I would love to discuss in detail here, the death of the Duke, E3 and... well, those two are the main ones really. But both are sprawling subjects, and have both been discussed to death, as previously stated, I have missed my window of opportunity. Instead of dwelling on that, I decided that I would steer this post in a different direction, don't worry it will be completely unrelated to work being done here, as per usual.

Sacred 2 has been recommended to me by quite a few people whose opinions I trust, they admit that it is a really buggy game, that the occasional ability is useless, and that the restrictions on the Co-op that usually prevents you playing with your friends is annoying. But they still talk about it so enthusiastically, I look into the eyes of these men and I can tell that talking to me is hurting them, that every moment away from that game is like a punch in the eye. Every moment spent in the outside world is nothing but a test of strength for these people, the reward for passing being another slice of the drug that they crave so dearly.

Observing the effect on these people, people who are much less inclined to get hopelessly addicted to any single game, I concluded that I really shouldn't pick Sacred 2 up. None of these men even felt Word of Warcraft's terrible grip, they dipped their toes into the pool and managed to withdraw without an intervention, satisfied with the experience but not looking for more, whereas I start jonesing for a hit of it roughly every four months.

Having come to this conclusion it was obvious that I had but one choice, I made my peace with my deity of choice and ordered the unholy disc from Amazon. You can tell it hasn't arrived yet because I'm writing this post instead of slowly rocking to and fro.

This post could use even more tangents, lets create some.

I'm sure that admitting that I've never played any of the Diablo series, which Sacred is quite obviously imitating, is just another way of saying that I'm letting the side down in entirely unforgivable ways, but I have at least sampled a couple of its' tribute acts. An old Westwood studios game, Nox, is the first to come to mind.

Nox was great for many reasons, but the one I want to explore is its' multiplayer offerings, which were surprisingly robust considering the how old it is, and its' genre. You would expect it to feature only some form of half -arsed Co-op and maybe Deathmatch. It also boasted a few others though, my favorite being named oddball (Think football/soccer with more knights and hell demons), but Oddball isn't really what I want to talk about, I just wanted a chance to inform everyone of the following; remember the dick who summoned the carnivorous plants in front of the goal? Yeah, that was me.

What I really want to draw your attention to was the obligatory half-arsed Co-op, which was surprisingly not half-arsed. Nox Quest, as the hip kids called it, was an infinite dungeon of sorts, that up to sixteen players could band together to tackle, to balance out the huge number of potential players the difficulty ramps up pretty hard, by level twenty five the game had started populating the dungeon with obelisks which every thirty seconds spawned a copy of the single player campaign's final boss.

The coolest thing was the players in that game, In a safe zone once I mentioned to another player how I was saving up to buy a particular spell which was pretty expensive. The other player immediately informed me that he had a spare of that spell book and gave it to me, for free, bare in mind that this was a spell book he could trade for a fair bit of coin. This is a genre of game notorious for its' selfish players, who happily scoop up all of the loot on a level, regardless of whether their class can use it, but on multiple occasions on Nox I had people pull me aside and have conversations along the lines of: "Hey man, I notice you keep summoning stone golems, you may want to give this steel golem scroll a whirl, don't sweat it, just have it." (I played a Conjurer, because I don't like dying and the force of nature is the single greatest thing since time itself).

This happened to me so many times that it was a practice I got into once I started getting a fair bit of money or finding loot that I couldn't use, I would even buy extra lives for players running low occasionally, I'd give away any repeats of spell books I came across. The people I gave to, or at least quite a few of them, then started to do the same, then those who they gave to followed suit, etc, etc.

The point I'm trying to make is that a friendly player base is self perpetuating, as a designer there isn't much you can do to keep the bad apples away, but there are things you can do to encourage the good ones. What started as a couple of guys handing out free spell books in Nox turned into an entire legion of players making sure that each of their allies is as good as they can possibly be, these are the people who are going to see the high-end content, the jerks never will, and the jerks will fall off the band wagon.

This was a long post. Possibly the longest ever made here. I went off on many tangents, then a tangent or two within those tangents, so to summarise:

• I'm back, but I can't speak for the others
• Sacred 2 could be the end of me
• Conjurers ftw
• Good player bases are self perpetuating

I'll come crawling on back to you

The O$hit Bunker

We really need a steady source of updates don't we?


Well I saw Wolverine, finally and I actually think it's pretty good. If you don't go in expecting something fantastically true to the source material that is. It is a brilliant action film, and for all those ladies out there, and the guys with the secret man crush on Hugh Jackman (guilty) there are some nice nude scenes in there.
Now, as a huge fan of Wolverine (him being my favourite comic book character of all time) I was sitting in the cinema picking out those little things they did wrong. But, as I kept reminding myself, I went in for a good time. I know that comic book adaptations, and book adaptations will never live up to the source material's level, so for all those I see I go in with an open mind, not expecting an amazing masterpeice, but merely going in for a good show. A good example is where the Harry Potter film franchise started going really wrong. Prisoner of Azkaban. I am putting aside the fact that they didn't bother to correct Daniel Radcliffe's eye colour (his being blue, and Harry's being green as Rowling made painstakingly clear and put huge emphasis on in the books) digitally.
Back to Wolverine. Brilliant film, worth seeing, but don't expect it to be a word for word adaptation of our favourite clawed hero's golden days in print.

Quite frankly my bowl of Cheerios was too... cheery.

Right, we do seem to be posting very little recently, and what we do post generally does not have anything to do with Zombietopia. I assure you we are all working very hard.

And this post follows the tradition of not giving any news on the homefront! I'm just here to remind you all (yes all 3 of you!) that we are, indeed, still alive and kicking.

That's al folks, until next time on the nail biting adventures of SPACE WALRUS GAMES DEV TEAM!

A console tards' lament

If you own the PC version of Teamfortress 2, it's celebration time! Both the Sniper and Spy packs have been released today, you also probably aren't reading this post, and are, in fact, already playing with your new weapons and attaining your new achievements. If you own the Xbox 360 version of Teamfortress 2, it is not celebration time, we still have nothing. If you own the PlayStation 3 version of the game, then I feel really sorry for you, you have been well and truly shafted.

I guess that this video will have to tide me over for now. Stupid, awesome Valve.

Those bods are being bad

Filler deprivation, you say?

I have, over the past few nights- nay months- nay years, been suffering from sleep deprivatoin. It is due to no fault of my own, I fear I may have a slight case of insomnia. BUT! As any sane person would do, I have decided to make this an experiment.

My findings are as follows: no sleep = me no happy.

Enjoy this filler.

A writers' tears

You may be surprised to hear that the hardest part of writing these posts, at least for me, is coming up with songs for the end of them. Especially if I plan on taking a couple of lines which through a convoluted form of alchemy, may be linked back to something earlier on in the post. My self-imposed limit which permits me to quote any given artist only once doesn't help. Especially considering that it is becoming more and more obvious that each and every one of my thoughts can be summed up by lines from MC Frontalot songs. Specifically that one about grues.

You may also be surprised to hear that this post doesn't actually contain any interesting content and is just filler, although that isn't very likely.

Whistle your favourite tune

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

Nice 'n quick

I haven't got long, but I can say that without doubt progress is being made.
No, I still have little to show you all but, hopefully that shall all change and we can all be one big happy family...
Maybe not.
Anyway like I say not got long so this is just the quick update to let you all know that SWG is still alive and flipping.

Survivor? I hardly know 'er!

I don't know what the boards look like on the PC version, but on the 360 there are apparently people who can last in Left 4 Dead's survival mode for over 1100 minutes. And I was proud of just seven minutes. Call me crazy, but I have a feeling there are a couple of undiagnosed bugs still in the system allowing people to not get hit. At this moment in time ascending the leader boards isn't about surviving the undead menace, it's about exploiting a bug and taking part in a wholly meta competition, the winner of which is the owner of the Xbox which red rings last.

Don't get me wrong, survival mode is definatly fun, teams I play with are commonly treated to elaborate fireworks displays as I lay out all of the explosives on the map into convoluted chain reactions, resembling a fourth of July remix of the game mouse trap.

I beat The World Ends With You yesterday, I say beat, what I really mean is finished the main story. I swelled with a great feeling of pride as the end credits rolled, still not entirely sure how I managed to beat those last three bosses, but secure in the knowledge that I had attained ascension. At this moment a charming dialogue box informed me that I had, in fact, accomplished nothing so far, that I had merely passed the entry exam. Now was the time for the obstacle course, which consisted of nothing less than every other level with additional objectives and bosses added. At this point any sane mortal man would put the DS down and pretend that they had never read this final message, living out long and fulfilling lives. But this dialogue box offered a very special treat, the kind I enjoy even more than experience bars: additional story, back story in this case. Put the ambulance on standby, I'm diving back in.

Keep on survivin'

Once more into the fray

The Left 4 Dead survival pack releases tomorrow, allegedly. I say that because absolutely every release date for downloadable content on Xbox Live seems to be off by a day, but we'll see. Regardless, I look to forward to any excuse to jump back into Left 4 Dead, I was sadly distracted by some shiny object or another and put the game down earlier than I would have liked. It's not that I didn't get into it, heck most of my favorite gaming stories I have in my arsenal pertain to it - the biggest being the time that me, Tetris and Myke discovered the hard way that Tanks can punch safe room doors down - but well, I think I need a new paragraph.

I have a disorder of sorts... no, that's wrong, let me start again.
I have many disorders of sorts, one of which being an unnatural attachment to experience bars. I for the life of me do not know why, but I love them, and every once in a while* they cause me to get carried away**. Left 4 Dead doesn't have any of these exquisite, yet largely meaningless, bars, and as such I played it like crazy for a few weeks and now hardly ever pop the disc in.

*Read: with great regularity
**Read: turn into a jibbering addict

This time will be different though, the survival pack shall be the salvation of my people, there will be undead masses to be slaughtered and leaderboards to ascend and... wait sorry, The world ends with you has how many distinct experience bars? And that many equipment slots, including one for food?

feeling pretty psyched

No, I don't need your Help.cab.

As I type this 3DSMax Re-installs, but for some strange reason the longest part of the installation seems to be copying and writing the Help cabinet files.
Well, I suppose it's a big program with many features, but that doesn't excuse that:
1. Most of it can be found on the Internet and better,
2. Blind luck can be used for the rest.
Now that that's out of my system I can get on and say that soon (no, not by Valve time this time!) we should have something to show, don't go getting your hopes up though, it's unlikely to be any of our arsenal of unreasonable weapons those are for later. Kind of like desert, but way more destructive.

Complete Protection From The Living Dead

Too long has it been since my last post, and little to no reason to I have for this. However, in my recent absence I have come across The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks. Although still in the first few pages of the book, it is making for an interesting read. It first came to my attention when my brother, Phil, brought the book home one day. Glancing through the book I read the differences between 'real life', voodoo and Hollywood zombies. After he had finished with it, the book found its way into my possession, so while I am out in the country tomorrow I will have a good delve into the watery depths of this, without a doubt, extremely helpful book. Who knows; some of it's 'teachings' may wind up influencing Zombietopia in small ways.

-I was sent by the Gods.

On the Origin of Species

Everything has to come from some where, every tree was once a seed. As game designers this is occasionally a fact we have to acknowledge, as tempting as it may be to just say "It just is" or "It's there because I want it to be" to everything. It's OK if you just shrug off gratuitous health pack placement because a player is about to fight a boss, "It may not make sense for there to be a pile of bandages outside this mobster's little hell hole, but if there isn't one the player will probably feel completely overwhelmed inside, and it does give them a heads up that something big is going to happen, so what the hell? let's just place a bunch there." but you can't do that for everything, and in my opinion this applies to one thing more so than anything else:

The antagonist

Specifically these key points:

• Who/what they are
• Their motivation(s)
• Where they came from or how they came to be

With zombietopia we've got it pretty easy for the most part. Our antagonists are zombies and their motivation is a desire to engorge themselves on human flesh. Simple enough so far, but where did they come from? How did they become zombies?
Once again, that isn't necessarily too hard, there is a multitude of tried and true answers to that question, the main ones being: Disease, Black magic or Brain Parasites.
We plan on trying something a little different though, I'm not going to let the metaphorical cat out of the metaphorical bag quite yet, but I'm sure at some point down the line we'll tease you all with little nuggets of our plans suspended from fishing wires.

As always, we aren't married to anything yet, which is the beauty of the early stages of a project. Also as always, if anyone wants to talk about their own idea for a possible 'zombie origin' or about how it's been done else where, feel free to leave a comment or shoot me an email.

brainwashed and cold

Happy 61st post

Well, as I logged in I noticed that this would be the 61st post made by us here in the office. Surprisingly not made by Iced or Myke, but by me.
This of course is not really a cause for celebration as most of these posts have contained little less than our musings during the week. Well, in any case HAPPY 61st POST SWG DEV BLOG.
Ahh that's better.
Now to my musings, I've been working hard and writing up a storm. Well not actually a storm, but rather the model loader. As far as I can tell it will load models, but it currently can do little with them.
That's it really from me for today, but I'm sure Iced is seething in knowing that I have Posted once more this week...

A debt repaid

Generally speaking, if Balai has made two posts in a row, I'm not doing my job properly. Not that this is actually my job. Although in a perfect world...

It appears to be that every consecutive week we have that features a decent volume of posts is followed by just as many ones that are devoid of all life. This also seems to coincide with the undulations of business on my schedule, there always seems to be more posts when I'm not tabled in for getting things done. Speaking of getting things done, I haven't been able to get any Zombietopia work done myself so far this week, which is regrettable. I've had plenty of other things to be dealing with, which cannot be helped, but still makes me feel indescribably guilty. What free time I have had has been spent playing [Redacted] and Henry Hatsworth. Just a heads up, when I die, there is about a 90% chance it will be directly related to super secret game X.

I've mentioned my good friend Henry before, and am pleased to say that my initial thoughts were correct, Henry Hatsworth is, indeed, pimp. It also happens to be the only game that I am simultaneously balls and the balls at - yes, yes there is a distinction between the two states. As soon as I reached the second world my ineptitude at platformers caused me to start hemorrhaging lives. Still, the game's a hoot, and I would recommend it to all twelve of our readers. Even the whole two I haven't met in person.

For my final paragraph of the day, I thought I'd transition from games that are pimp to our own unofficial pimp. Good friend of the team, Alex has linked us silly in all sorts of places, and our reciprocation is long overdue. Go and read his stuff.

my dearest friends

More like 'Cryawesome'

Recently Crytek announced their latest game engine, Cryengine 3. This only perked my interest a little as Crytek is notorious for releasing games that set your computer on fire and getting bitchy about piracy (with good reason though I suppose) However they really caught my attention when they decided that they would release their next-gen (Take this literally) engine on PS3 and Xbox 360.
As a developer, this is excellent news. Not only do consoles receive an excellent engine, developers are able to work on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 all at the same time. I suppose this brings me onto it's performance and I'm sad to say that it's quite obvious (to me) the difference in power between the Xbox 360 and the PS3. Don't get me wrong, it's not because I dislike the PS3 it's just I know that with the release of Crysis 2 (not official) a shit-storm will hit the coast and leave many fanboys injured or dead (and somewhat smelly I guess).
Other than the many fans of their respective consoles who go to war each other most others will on look with a sad tear in their eye as they know that the damned PC fans are sitting and doing nothing with their moon PCs and next-next gen graphics.
Sauce and source.

Would you like to see my jar?

Edit: Well, oops.
They say you learn something new every day and I just learnt that pressing Enter after typing the title publishes the post.
This means that for some time this post will show up only as the title.
Anyway the title, as perplexing as it may be, is spawn of something Iced said while pointing out that my post rate is abysmal. I suppose this post is just to make sure that you (all of you) know I'm alive. I'll wrap up by saying that for the most part my inactivity has been mostly attributed to working on models and coding model loaders.
Farewell for some time, I'm going back to my workplace now. That is all...

My childhood in one hour

Due to geographical limitations, I've never been able to attend PAX, but I have always enjoyed playing the home game - watching as more information then I could ever digest an entire lifetime trickled into my Google Reader.
There are people that I know that have yet to pass what I've decided is a nerd rite of passage. A rite of passage that was recently mentioned in passing somewhere, bringing it back into the forefront of my mind.

Those three sentences were related, bear with me. At 2007's PAX Wil Wheaton - official geek king - made the keynote speech. If you have listened to this before (or were there in person) pat yourself on the back. If you have never listened to this before, I strongly urge you to download it onto your MP3 player of choice and tonight, when you lay your head down on your pillow, rather than whipping out a DS, listening to music or, you know, actually going to sleep (god, I envy you people who can fall asleep at will), listen to what Wil has to say for an hour. I promise you it is time well spent.

When God left the ground

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

Porphyric Hemophilia

Checking out the latest news as I do, and some archaeologists have recently dug up a female skeleton with a brick lodged in her jaw. The article claimed it was because of medieval ignorance to how diseases spread. I'm completely fine with medieval ignorance. If it weren't for their ignorance, we wouldn't have all this folklore. Without that folklore, we wouldn't have such genius films as Lesbian Vampire Killers.
Anyways, I thought I ought to tell you that I have been wearing slippers all day. Interesting little fact there. Oh and I watched The Unborn yesterday. Now, I'm not going to completely slate the film... but it was terrible. I mean, as a film it was ok, but it tried to take itself as a horror. In a good horror film, you aren't meant to see the scary thing. If you do, it must be nanoseconds. Sorry for the spoilzors here, but toward the end of The Unborn it started to feel like a Jewish version of Ghostbusters. Without the funny.
Unless you lust after Odette Yustman like a horny dog after your favourite pillow, then I wouldn't suggest seeing it. Oh, and the dog the rabbi sees is so adorable! I want one. One with it's head upside down, that was cute. Ye gods I'm sounding like a girl... I once bent an iron beam like the ones that make up the internal structure of skyscrapers. Also I can bite a hole in the Yellow Pages. Oh yeah, I'm a man. Ignore anything Iced says in later posts.

War out guys!

Labels and more

It would seem that while Myke was ranting he had forgotten to add the commas between labels, this has generated what I consider to be the best label of all time.
So all together now.
1.2.3.
Thanks Myke

Well now that's over I'm sure I should carry on with something far more interesting, like what's happening over here at ye olde workplace.
In short, loads.
I will be done soon with a couple of my models but, you'll all be happy to know that we're finishing some features up soon and that we should get to work on some other stuff fairly soon.
Anyway that's all from me, and yes to answer the question dying to ask me, I will sign you.
Lastly, get off my damn lawn you kids!
*cough* Clint eastwood and I'm hungry for cheese burgers and star wars lightly marinaded with BBQ sauce *cough*

Would you like to buy some DeathSticks?

You don't want to sell me DeathSticks. You want to go home and rethink your life.
So, after my brief diversion via correcting the life of this bug-man at a bar, I am now on my laptop somewhere in Coruscant, ordering a glass of White Tuskan. Frankly, at the moment I'm jonesing for a Burger King (XL bacon double cheeseburger, large meal with Pepsi and BBQ sauce). Anyone willing to post one to me?
Right. Onto business. Balai is sitting here with me, and will give me inspiration for a rant... No? OK. Well, I will now go onto some random ramblings instead. For your enjoyment here is EPISODE 2 OF MYKE'S RANTS!
Gran Torino. It is a good film, I urge you, the general viewing public, and you, the weird people who actually read this blog, to go and see it. Plenty of bandwagon awaiting within. Like the scene where some gang members are trying to abduct the boy who lives next door to him, good ol' Clinty comes out with his rifle (from back in the days of his service in Korea) and aims it at one of the gangsters using the age-old old dude line: Get of mah lawn. He manages to make it sound so hardcore, you can hardly keep yourself from jumping up from your seat yelling 'Yeah! You tell that bitch!'.
Another scene from the film has Clint pointing his finger (in such a way to insinuate that his hand is a gun) at some more gangsters. You are just waiting for him to say 'You gotta ask yourself one question. "Do I feel lucky?" Well do yah, punk?!' Much to our disappointment, he did not however emit this line from the orifice de la Masculino he calls his mouth. Despite this he did say 'Pow', which was utterly hilarious.
Last note on the film, the song Eastwood wrote at the end is terrific. His vocals aren't anything to be desired, but it is a really nice song. The film is worthy of the praise it is getting.

I think, but I'm not sure, that I am now finished for today. Maybe I will post another rant when I get home, but that's not a guaranteed. Good morning to all, and to all a good day.

Stealing ideas from Iced is hilarious.

Lessons of life

Sometimes lessons need to be taught by teachers, other times they need to be taught by parents.
However in a few cases lessons must be taught by royally fucking up, this leeds me nicely on to a story which I shall now tell.
Come along gather round now, that's better.
It all started when I was playing around in some of the lesser known areas of the operating system I was using. This place was dominated by complicated text strings and dangerous path files but, I tread carefully to be sure that I did not trip up and accidently break something.
Anyway long story short I tripped.
Yeah you heard me, I accidently broke an important path file in the registry system.
Not to worry though, it would seem that Ijust broke the way in whihc my computer saved thing and subsequently have now failed to get a project in to Iced.Twice. It's fixed now so I should be able to keep on track and get it into Iced by about wednesday. Also I'm going to break a tradition by saying happy today everyone.

A distrubution of wealth

Not real wealth mind you, just that silly fake wealth. Sorry.

As a designer/writer/programmer/anything else working on a video game that features an entire layer - Video games are a lot like onions you see, not cakes - comprised solely of pop culture references, I feel it is my duty to accrue a vast knowledge of things that are "now" and "happening". Not all of these "hip" treasure troves are game related, so please forgive me if you can't bare to be exposed to non-interactive content. Now, allow me to unload a few entries from my mental Rolodex of things that are good upon you.

I, and I'm sure various other people, saw Gran Torino yesterday, a film that to my chagrin had nothing to do with Gran Turismo. It took me a while to get into it, but in the end I ended up really enjoying it, there were several moments that are absolutely fantastic, including one where an old-as-the-hills Clint Eastwood gives a young gang member a lesson in fuckology, the first rule of which is: "Don't mess with Clint Eastwood".

If The statistics are correct, and I have no reason to believe that they aren't, if you know what the Internet is, you have also heard of The Adam Carolla Podcast, but I thought that I would mention it, just in case. Speaking of podcasts, the Penny Arcade & Co. Dungeons and Dragons podcast has returned, but once again, you probably already know this. I'm ashamed to say that I bought into the whole "DnD sounds dumb" school of thought until the first round of these podcasts emerged, but now I really, really, want to try it. And yes guys, that was a hint.

That is all for now, I made a post yesterday that mentioned Command and Conquer but didn't make my "song of the day" a Frank Klepacki one so I've decided today's will be. Protip: hovering over song quotes at the end of my posts reveals further, exciting details.

(Soldiers marching)

A week of revelations

This week I have discovered an awful lot of, universally speaking, important things*.
*Two not especially important things.

First off, playing Command & Conquer games with a graphics tablet is significantly harder than you may think. I now have a list of two games, which are regrettably not pen friendly. Damn, that was a poorly constructed sentence.

My second discovery, would be that when you try to run multiplayer in Freelancer it attempts to connect to a global server which has long since ceased to exist, this means that our daily 'Freelancer "Fridays"' may never see the light of day. Admittedly we are all horrendous nerds here, so even if this event did go ahead it would never see any actual light anyway, especially not from that terrifying ball of fire we are constantly circling.

That's all for now folks, work is continuing on as usual here, I leave with this one final thought: Henry Hatsworth looks pimp. I guess you could argue that this would be a third discovery, I'm an insufferable liar, I know.

I win in the long run

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.

Dreaming in Red

Needless to say, I am not allowed to say what I was going to say about certain people for legal reasons. I'm thinking that, maybe, I might copy and paste my 'Bored Log' over from my files on my work-place network, just to fill out a post: and most of them are quite funny. Most of them. But surely, a supervisor will come across this site and I will get screwed over or something. I don't know, maybe I'm paranoid.

Aparantly, netherworld narcoleptic dick pods yearn for butter. Whether you are a monstrous stupidly carcass of epic proportions, or a lame kangaroo of an indigo colouring, live your life using all your life savings as a support.

Anyways, try to prosper from my random ramblings. Beware of giant bear-like marsupials, and bears that used to be disguised as raccoons. I'm just trying to flesh out my posts, because Almighty Typealot seems to think that my lack of typing means that I overuse the enter key, as I've said before.

In short, I'm really, really bored.

Rolling on a surfboard of awesomenitude. Pandy yearns for butter.

Hay....

Anyone want to send me a free copy of Freelancer? I'm strapped for cash and I'm being threatened by Iced and Tetris- I mean, I really want to play it.

Also my cocoon is very much like a luxury condo, I have a 60 inch plasma TV, if you guys bring the food, I'll make sure we can watch Iron Man II on it.

A little like Frank West

It seems that every other post I make is constructed whilst I'm afflicted by one malady or another, this post included. If the trend persists I may have to investigate to see if there is a correlation between the two, maybe if I stop posting all my ills will miraculously disappear and never bother me again. But I would never allow this blog to fall into disarray, or worse, the unguided hands of Myke and Balai.

The Hawx demo came out on xbox live a while ago, but until recently I was the only one who played it, Balai not owning an xbox, Tetris currently having Internet issues and Myke either asleep in his impenetrable cocoon or not caring. A few days ago me, Myke and Tetris found ourselves all contained within the same four walls, we talked, naturally, but upon mentioning the existence of this demo my hard drive was briskly confiscated by a heavily sweating Tetris.
The boy, you have to understand, only has three different dreams stocked within the movie cinema of his head for his mind to play when he sleeps. One involves him flying a Harrier jet and playing a guitar solo at the same time, the second is similar but features an X-wing in lieu of the harrier. We don't talk about the third dream.

The drive was appended to the very top of Tetris' box and quickly transported him to a place of glee. I'm rarely excited by a flying game, I have nothing against them but they all seem very same-y to me, yet I found this demo very enjoyable. This is probably due to the inclusion of an experience bar, one of my many Achilles heels. Myke, on the other hand, said that assistance off mode (cinematic camera mode essentially) was cool to watch, but the game in general didn't make his happy place... well, happy.

The demo did bring back very fond old memories as well, of better days, of days when a game called Freelancer was installed upon my computer. If you ever see this game in a bargain bin and like things that are good I would strongly suggest giving it a whirl. There is currently a small contingent of us pushing to have a company server set up, and then start having "team building Fridays" where we would all play together. Also, from this point onwards, every day is now a Friday.

We sat around laughing

Them some cool lookin' claws, Wolverine, can I touch them?

Ah, Pepsi. A delight to my taste buds. I've recently got back from Sainsbury's and got some Pepsi on a deal, which is great in the current economical 'crisis'. In response to Iced's irritation at my use of the enter key, I will type the rest of this post without proper grammar, punctuation or the enter key: enjoy the eye-rape.

thenewwolverinegameislookingwellasiwouldbehopingtheyhasessentiallycraftedbodyofwolverinedowntobonesasihearingwhichwilbefuntowatchthebulletsflyintow
olverineandtoseehimhealfromtheminrealtimereplacingthehealthbarinawaythateveryoneimsurewilllovehopefullythiswillhelpfansseewolverineinamoremanlylight

OK, I lied, that is hell-hard to do. My eyes were hurting just typing the damn thing! But yeah, the message was simple: Wolverine Origins: The Game looks pretty good. I'm also looking forward to the film, will post here for anyone that actually reads it my impressions of the film when I go to see it.

So, as I sit here now, with a bowl of peanuts and a distinct lack of beer, I bid you all - adieu.

A return to tradition

As some of you may have noticed, I have a valid excuse to wish everyone a happy yesterday again, and so I shall do so later on in this post. I'm not sure why, but god I love doing it.
I probably should have warned you all about Myke's near fetishistic love of both the enter key and the new post button. Regardless, it is good to have him here on the blog.

We I joke a lot to the contrary, but I wanted to clarify that Tetris does actually get work done, and him not wanting to post here isn't a good reason to deny him the credit he is owed. He has been diligently working away in his little cave manufacturing the noises and sounds that mean that you guys don't have to listen to me shouting "bang" loudly into a microphone in place of a gunshot noise.

Here is some good news for people that like things that are awesome. I know that at least 80% (4) of the people working on Zombietopia sunk major amounts of time into AVP2 multiplayer, if anyone on the team for this game have any iota of sense they will bring back that old multiplayer legend, leaving the core game intact and building upon it with gusto.
If, for example, they even consider giving the marine team a feasible chance of ever winning a round I know many people who would want their blood. That games' multiplayer wasn't about winning or losing, and nobody really cared, in fact it was better for it. It was a given that either the Predators or Aliens would win, it was just the Marines' job to try to take an enemy or two down with him. For every five or so times he died. Getting a two to five Kill/death ratio as a marine in that game was once an entry requirement for the mysterious group of gamers who refer to themselves as the "1337", although this requirement has since been dropped, because it meant that only about four people qualified and they were getting a little lonely.

Oh, and happy yesterday.

She's not your typical girlfriend

Happy Valentine's

To all and to all a good night.

Much well wishes to Iced Inferno and his girlfriend, and Balai with his secret girlfriend. :D
Tetris229, don't drink too much today.

Now as we all know, Valentine's day is a moneymaking scheme invented by holiday card distributors to get more money. Or is it the lovey-dovey day for couples? It's your choice.

If it is the first one and you're in a relationship, fellas: good luck with your girl today, you're going to need it. If, however you are single and beleive this to be the case: here are 10 things to do on Valentine's day.

1. Find another single friend and blitz Left 4 Dead for several hours.
2. Complete DOOM on Nightmare difficulty.
3. Order in a pizza (or several), get some friends over and watch all of the Lord of the Rings films, Batman Begins and Dark Knight, and then some over-explosive, over-done action flicks.
4. Cake. Today, it is not a lie; endulge yourself. (Hot cross buns will suffice.)
5. Go out and buy yourself the latest video game, you deserve it because you are so awesome.
6. Go out on a motorised scooter! If you don't have one, get one. Or make your own!
7. Masturbate.
8. Watch every episode of Scrubs released so far.
9. Design a weapon of mass destruction.
10. Build a fort. Doesn't matter what kind of fort, although the best kind is made with pillows, duvets and boxes. Lots of boxes.

Hope this has helped all you single lads out there this Valentine's day, have a good one!

It's free from Valve, with love...

So while perusing the nets, as some do, I came across an interesting article that could have Iced quite excited. This article contains only some news that shines light on the Left 4 Dead update/DLC. PC gamers will sit there and think;
"Yes, I'm waiting Patiently for my FREE DLC."
However it would seem the time is nigh as according to this source it's quite possible that XBox owners will also receive the maps and game modes for free, "good for them" I say because, there really isn't any good reason why they shouldn't at least get this free, Right?

Yay the end of the world is coming!

It's not really, I may save that post for when the Large Hadron Collider is back up and running.
Also, apologies for the three posts in a row, I'm bored.

BUT, I have done a little messing around with some old art stuff I found and whoopee we have some art for Zombietopia. Not necessarily concept art per se, but it is art nonetheless.

HIT IT, STEVE!

I will now repent for my sins (the rainbow lettering and the 3 posts)
May the Walrus be forgiving.

Newbie; I re-heally don't have time for this!

Mario sucks balls and Sonic is now very much like Mobius' equivilent of Kate Moss... without, of course, the boobies and the modelling career... Mostly in a way that both of their careers have declined so much as nobody really cares anymore.

Ok, video game reference over, I may now rant on whatsoever I like.


TODAYS RANT OF INTEREST: MY BAD INTERNETS!

It keeps crashing.




What? It's my first rant, it's allowed to be sub-par.

I promise to yield better crops next season.

Yet another new guy. Stupid interns...

Hey all, I'm Myke.

That's about it. What? Did you expect my life story?



Too bad.
Now get out.

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?

Some games

Some games are bought by me.
Some games are bought by Friends or family for me.
Some games are free online games.
Other games are bought for me by the US air force.
That's right people, you heard me right, the US air force sponsored a certain game (Area 51) and was released on the nets for free. Now those with good memory may say "hey that's a pretty old game, isn't it?".
Why yes it is but, it's free so who cares. There's a plethora of games that are old and free so why let them go to waste.
Actually there is a word for these kind of games Abandonware.
Anyways I've hada lot of fun playing Area 51 and now that it's free there's much less excuse to get it.
Also linky to said game here.

Confession Time

Unlike Business time, confession time doesn't have a specific type of socks associated with it, I'd like to hope that the sock pioneers of the world are working tirelessly to fix this cultural error.

I have to admit something to you, dear Internet, and it isn't all that pretty. You see, we have been writing as if we are a small operation of a paltry three mortals, when in fact this is, and has been for a while, a fabrication, a soft woolly fabrication sheared from the finest sheep of deceit, but it is still a lie regardless.
We are actually a small operation of a paltry five mortals. I know, this deception cannot simply be excused, but you must understand our intentions were pure, and it isn't as if these extra, thus far unidentified, interlopers were here from the beginning, they're relatively new additions - I swear! constantly.

I'm not sure what their blogger accounts are called yet, so I won't provide their handles in case they choose ones that go against their respective norm, but within the next week or so I should have managed to coerce them into making an introductory post each. After that they may post on a regular basis or do a Tetris, either way.

But I don't wanna talk about it anymore

Buckminsterfullerawesome

Well. What to say?
So far this week has been pretty slow, although I did notice the good job on the logo appearing inconspicuously at the side there.
Hello Mr. logo how long have you been there and I haven't noticed I wonder?
I guess you can tell this has been a pretty slow week in development really, this is mainly because, me and Iced were rushing to do other slightly more deadlined things and in true Valve time it should be done shortly.
Although by that same standard it may feel like' Zombietopia' is coming soon.
Worry not though as this is untrue, work is slow but, progress is being made and as I speak I'm installing more software that I'm quite likely to un-install soon anyway (that is to say that the program is useless not that we'll suddenly stop work).
On the subject of Duke Nukem Forever though it would seem from my very reliable sources we may possibly could might get a glimpse of game play of DN:F this year. I'm excited for it personally.
Now mostly to keep up a tradition, there has been an update on Nvidia Geforce drivers be sure to check thems out.
Lastly I found out that Ultrahard is in fact a word, once again according to my most reliable sources.
Oh yes I can see that going places now...
Oh and before I post this, I just found out that if you type Nvidia into firefox's address bar it takes you straight to Nvidia's site. It's those kind of features that make me happy.