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Entries for tag "games", ordered from most recent. Entry count: 49.
# Tower Offence - Compo Entry from IGK-7'2010
Thu
15
Apr 2010
I've published the game we made at IGK-7'2010 conference for Compo. It was created by our 4-person team during 8 hours. It's a small PC game from "Tower Defence" genre but with a hero directly controller by player who have to approach a place to create a tower and can also shoot by itself.
Screenshot:
Comments | #igk #warsztat #events #productions #games Share
# Block Wizard - My First Flash Game
Tue
06
Apr 2010
Just like tourists visit new places and see new cultures, programmers like to learn new languages and API-s. I've been recently coding in Flash and here is my first game made in this technology. As most of the Flash productions, it is available for free and can be played online via web browser.
Screenshot:
Discuss @ forum.gamedev.pl [pl].
Comments | #flash #productions #games Share
# My First Flash Game
Tue
09
Mar 2010
I'm currently coding a small game in Flash (ActionScript 3.0). I've decided not to make an "engine-like" game with moving objects and precise collisions, but to start with something based on a grid, with turn-based gameplay. Up to this point there is no menu or nice UI and I don't even have a name for this game yet, but I already have much of the gameplay mechanics with many interesting features and perspectives for enabling many levels, as well as some interesting spells that can be cast when enough mana is available :)
Comments | #productions #flash #games Share
# I Recommend Mass Effect 2
Tue
09
Feb 2010
In the past week I bought, played and finished Mass Effect 2 (on PC) and I want to strongly recommend this game. It's really great. I generally like RPG games. I also played and finished first version of Mass Effect and liked it.
Version 2 is much better though. Graphics is better, more detailed. They've removed all the annoying things like long elevator travels or driving "Mako" on the planet surfaces. They've introduced some nice minigames instead - gathering resources from the planets (quite boring but I liked it), hacking electronic circuits and hacking code (which are great ideas). As a main gameplay, they've taken all what's best in modern RPGs (like lots of talking, hard moral choices, nonlinear story, personal history and problems of characters) and shooters (like cover system, aiming, boss fights). Game is quite long (it took me 9 days to finish it), but as for RPG it's an adventage.
As a summary, I strongly recommend Mass Effect 2 to anyone who likes RPGs and/or shooters. I can't remember when I played any game so passionately since The Witcher, and I played dozens of great of games since then. I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks Mass Effect 2 is great - professional reviews and sales indicate it's generally very successful.
Comments | #games #shopping Share
# Few Words about Interactive Fiction
Thu
17
Dec 2009
My today Google-Wikipedia "research" was about interactive fiction. I've only heard about MUD-s before. MUD (Multi-User Dungeon) is a text-based, multiplayer game genre that precede current MMORPG games. Interactive fiction are also text-based games where player reads descriptions of things (like "You are in ... now. You can see ... here.") and types console commands (like "go west"), but they are single-player and more story-oriented rather than being about the mechanics of combat and magic.
The history of interactive fiction is older than me, as it started in 70's long before personal computers era. There have been some commercial games of this genre released in the past. Today interactive fiction is still alive thanks to the Internet community. (BTW: I didn't know before that the famous metasyntactic variable "xyzzy" originates from math, where it helps to remember the way of calculating cross product of 3D vectors :)
From more technical perspective, all sources I've read agree that it makes no sense to start coding a new platform for interactive fiction, as there already are some great ones out there. For example, there is this Z-machine standard (see The Z-Machine Standards Document) that is still in use despite being very old and has interpreter implementations for numerous platforms. One could think that it's kind of a description language like XML, but it's actually a virtual machine with opcodes etc.
It's also worth seeing some of the tools interactive fiction creators use. I've read a bit about Inform 7 - a free, multiplatform IDE with its own language to develop IF games (and also debugging functionality). Rules of this system remind me of Prolog at first glance. There is much built-in mechanics already available, like visiting rooms or taking items. But at the same time it's very flexible, so e.g. there is an extension available coded in this language that introduces metric units. The syntax of this language is totally weird as it looks like... English language. Just see manuals. Programming here is like writing a book (much like the Shakespeare Programming Language, but this one is not esoteric). Sample code: "The Gazebo is a room. The wood-slatted crate is in the Gazebo. The crate is a container.". Parsing player commands is also very sophisticated to resemble using natural language. Everything here is like reading or writing a novel - even compiler errors :)
I've always dreamed about writing a platform for text-based games that would be so general, flexible, powerful and would model the world so comprehensively. Now as it turned out that systems like this already exist and evolve for decades, there is not much to do here for a programmer like me. Especially as I don't feel like writing a novel, even interactive one. But anyway it's nice to know what interactive fiction is.
Comments | #history #web #games Share
# About the Guy Who Made Love
Sat
22
Aug 2009
Today I want to talk a bit about what's the dream of almost every passionate game developer. It seems very hard or almost impossible to achieve, but younger amateurs still hope that they will manage to do it someday. Of course I'm talking about making a 3D MMO game.
As it turned out for me today (thanks for the link KriS!), it actually IS possible. I'm talking about the game called Love written entirely by one person - Eskil Steenberg. He have coded all the software from modeling tools through network protocol and renderer until game mechanics. To see it working I recommend watching these videos. The game is powered by his engine called Quel Solaar, which is actually available for download.
I must admit I haven't been impressed so much for a long time. I suppose the amount of time and passion that had to be put into this code is enormous. Graphical style and gameplay, as well as the user interface of his tools are very unusual and surprising. And all of this is made by one guy...
I recommend watching his lecture from this year's Assembly party titled Developing the technology behind "Love". You can see many technical details and if you don't want to watch the entire one hour video, at least watch the beginning (where he talks about his "smarter way of doing things") and the ending (where he expresses his thoughts about the value of good tools).
BTW it's also nice to watch new videos from GC 2009 of the CryEngine 3. "What you see is what you play" and instant asset update (including textures) - that's how good game editor should look like :)
Comments | #software engineering #networking #web #rendering #games #events #engine #demoscene #philosophy #tools Share
# World of Goo
Sat
22
Nov 2008
Gry w stylu Indie mają swój urok - oryginalny gameplay i zakręcona fabuła to zupełnie co innego, niż fotorealistyczna grafika i epicki rozmach produkcji AAA. Pisałem już kiedyś chyba o tym, jak fajny jest Gish i Darwinia. Teraz skończyłem przechodzić kolejną wciągającą grę - World of Goo.
Ci, którzy śledzili Experimental Gameplay Project pamiętają pewnie jedną z najpopularniejszych produkcji z tej strony - Tower of Goo. World of Goo to rozwinięcie tego pomysłu w grywalną produkcję logiczno-zręcznościową 2D opartą na fizyce, w której jest do przejścia wiele etapów i w której autorzy zastosowali masę ciekawych pomysłów (różne rodzaje kulek!). Humor i fabuła też robią swoje :)
PS: Ścieżka dźwiękowa z gry też jest warta posłuchania. Leży w plikach OGG i ma w sumie ponad 20 minut.
NOWE: Ścieżka dźwiękowa jest dostępna do pobrania za darmo: World of Goo Soundtrack.
# Mass Effect - polecam!
Sun
24
Aug 2008
Mass Effect to osadzona w przyszłości i w kosmosie gra RPG z elementami strzelania TPP (kamera jak w Gears of War), w którą gram od pewnego czasu i którą chciałbym wszystkim gorąco polecić. Jest świetna! Po pierwsze, to jest prawdziwy rasowy cRPG, a nie żaden Hack'n'Slash. Jest dużo dialogów, dużo eksploracji świata, dużo zadań pobocznych, dużo przedmiotów do zebrania, trudne dylematy moralne itd. Po drugie, fabuła jest bardzo ciekawa i powinna się spodobać każdemu miłośnikowi Science-fiction. Po trzecie, gra jest zrobiona z prawdziwie epickim rozmachem. Wszystkie dialogi są nagrane jako dźwięk (i przetłumaczone na polski). Duże wrażenie robi możliwość odwiedzania różnych układów słonecznych i planet w galaktyce czy jeżdżenia po powierzchni planety. Takich ciekawych rozwiązań jest w grze więce.
Oczywiście Mass Effect nie jest idealny. Pisząc o wadach trzeba wspomnieć przede wszystkim, że "śmierdzi konsolą" - choćby w kwestii sterowania i celowania. Grafika też jest jakości średniej, a niską jakość tekstur i ogólną sterylność lokacji twórcy spróbowali zakryć dodając na cały ekran... szum. Moim zdaniem to jest cios poniżej pasa. Na szczęście można go wyłączyć w opcjach. Tak to wygląda w powiększeniu:
Mimo tego grę polecam wszystkim miłośnikom komputerowych RPG i nie tylko.
