Yes, it's a bit twee. But please don't let that put you off. It's brill, honest!

Peggle is a funny one, part of a genre sadly known as “casual gaming” (simple games are not remotely casual – try playing Galaga for details) it looks a bit crap on paper – basically a pinball varient that, whilst entirely based on skill, feels more like it’s based on luck much of the time since it’s so hard to predict beyond a couple of bounces where the ball will end up. And yet its extremely simple gameplay, beautiful presentation and wide range of features make this a modern classic, easily for me one of the games of the decade.

The main reason that Peggle works is that it’s a highscore game. Unlike “hardcore” games which are often story-driven – all too often to the detriment of gameplay in the same way special effects films often spend too much time trying to dazzle and forget to tell a decent story (which reminds me, Avatar is out now) – highscore games are about achieving scores and either give the player a personal best to beat or, if they play with other people, an opponent to compete with and humiliate or be humiliated by.

And it’s in multiplayer mode that Peggle works best. Playing it on its own is like playing a high-tech version of an old-fashioned pinball machine; playing it with someone else is like competing in some kind of futuristic carnival game. It’s great fun aiming the gun and firing the shiny balls, trying to get the best angle to hit as many of the red pegs as possible whilst taking out as many blues as you can on the way; it’s even more fun when there’s someone else there to jeer as you bounce off a single blue and your ball careers into the gutter or gasp in annoyance as you hit dozens of reds and take out a cascade of blues before the ball makes a flukey landing in the bonus jar at the bottom for an extra ball.

Not everyone will like Peggle, some will be put off by its simplistic gameplay, some will dislike the somewhat “random” feel the shots can have if they’re not too good at judging how balls bounce. But I suspect most will see those as strengths, not weaknesses; a game that’s accessible and easy to play but takes real skill to master and yet is still a game where a novice can get a massive score with a lucky shot. There’s only one way to find out how you feel about Peggle and that’s to give it a try.

This is my character. He might look a bit tasty but he's called Snively Pickles. Really.

Morrowind. Oh, where to start with Morrowind?! Well, I can actually trace this back with my excellent super-memory. Around November 2005 I picked-up a second-hand X-Box from one of my local(ish) gaming emporiums. Then I took it back because something small and metal was rolling around inside, then I replaced it with a new one (with a noisier hard drive but I wasn’t willing to lug it all the way back across town again) and realised that GTA: San Andreas and Knights of the Old Republic II weren’t going to keep me going for the coming year or so. I needed more games!

Cut to a week or two later and I’m reading a forum on NOTBBC where someone is bigging-up a fantasy RPG I’d never heard of and waxing lyrical about travelling from town to town, atmosphere and a few other people chip-in saying how good the whole thing is. I think “hmm, I’ve not really got into a CRPG since my Eye of the Beholder days, I might give it a try”. So I picked-up a second-hand Game of the Year Edition of Morrowind, the said game, took it home and started playing a game which, four years later, I’m still playing, still loving and still feel like I’ve only scratched the surface of.

Fans of Morrowind will tell you that it’s a world in itself; when playing the game you get to know it, get to know its nooks and crannies, quiet settlements, frightening crypts and dank, monster-filled caves like you do your home town. And all this is true but it’s only the merest paragraph in the Big Book of Why Morrowind is Great.

The game is usually played in first-person mode. Here, my brother's character stops to chat with an orc at a daedric shrine. Awkward small-talk ahoy!

When I played Morrowind I realised I was playing the type of RPG that the genre had always promised right from the early days of The Dungeon Master and Swords and Sorcery on the Spectrum right through Eye of the Beholder and Fallout in the ’90s. Finally, here was a game where the player creates a character, has them dumped in a world and is pretty much free to do what they want. In Morrowind, the non-linear nature isn’t the result of side-quests which can be done at will to supplement the main quest, the main quest is literally an option. If the player wants they can ignore it and just concentrate on rising through the ranks of the Fighters’ Guild, or becoming an outlaw, or a vampire, or (in the expansions in the Game of the Year Edition) going-off to deal with the Dark Brotherhood in the capital of the Morrowind province, or help build an imperial colony on the frosty island of Solstheim. It’s literally up to you, Bethesda (the development team) have actually said there is no correct way to play the game and when you play Morrowind you realise they mean it.

Everything is presented first-person and, unlike games like Fable, there are no fixed “routes” to follow. Tired of wandering along the road from one town to another? Why not jump over the fence and wander off into the wilderness? You can do that, you can climb any mountain you come across (or at least try to), swim across (and under) and lake, river or sea you find; get the correct spells or potions and you can even fly high above the landscape. The landscape is so open that it’s actually possible to plan out a journey to the lair of the game’s paramount villain from the start and pick a fight with him (although a level one character doing so is sure to get his arse presented to him on a silver plate with a side-salad and a helping of chips).

My brother's character again, doing a spot of magical levitating over the daedric shrine. They want him to come down again "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!" he says.

And not only is the landscape open, it’s also full of things to explore and do. The game largely takes place on the island of Vvardenfell in the province of Morrowind and the island itself is split into regions each with their own flora and fauna and each run by a separate House of the Dunmer, the indiginous (and rather racist) population of the province. Exploring the landscape from region to region the architecture changes, different animals appear to menace (or just curiously observe) the player character, ruins and settlements are stumbled-upon and inhabited and forgotten caves and mines appear all over the place, often filled with as much hostile monsters and people as treasures.

Morrowind’s “open” RPG experience was developed in its prequels, Arena and Daggerfall (now available as freeware) but Morrowind removes some remaining restrictions. No longer, for example, are certain character classes restricted in what armour and weapons they can use. The move from the mixed sprite-and-polygons “two and a half dimensions” to full polygon-based 3D also removes the graphical restrictions of the original – no longer do monsters and objects’ perspectives go all “funny” when looking at them from above or below.

I’ve not even started on the many reasons I love this game. I haven’t told you about the sheer atmosphere – the beautiful night sky, the changing weather conditions, the excellent sound (I still don’t like going into Dunmer crypts when playing the game late at night, those whispering voices!), the little touches like characters walking around with torches when you enter a town at night. I haven’t mentioned the extremely complex and self-configurable magic system which allows even non-magic-using character classes to commit themselves to learning a little magic if the player is willing to put the time in. I haven’t mentioned the way the Dunmer Houses gift you a home if you rise high enough in their ranks and how you can fill your new home with trophies collected on your travels turning them into a personal museum. I haven’t mentioned the game’s customisability on the Windows version of the game whereby players can change and mod certain aspects of the game to make it more realistic or more challenging. There is so much about this game that you need to find out for yourself and if you don’t have a copy (and the Game of the Year Edition probably costs peanuts these days) and you’re willing to invest time in this type of game then there’s no real reason not to.

Of course, Morrowind isn’t perfect; the combat system is a bit wonky and there are a few features I didn’t care for (like NPCs spending all night wandering around the place and never going to bed, although the game lampshades this in conversations with some characters) but overall this is simply the best RPG I’ve played in over twenty years of gaming and which I’ve been playing on-and-off for four years and could well be playing for another four. It’s for that reason that it’s the first of my ten games of the decade.

Things you need to know about Pineapple Apocalypse RPG:
You are a robot.
The apocalypse has occurred and/or is occurring.
Some pineapples have mutated.
Pineapples do not like robots.
Humans do not like robots.
No one and no thing likes robots.
Walking up to a building door repairs you for some reason.
Use WASD or the arrow keys along with the space or enter key to control yourself.
Plot is irrelevant.

Tons of updates from the previous post. I’m not going to bother getting into listing them off. Its still not exactly a complete game but its complete in the sense that I wont be updating it anymore (if I do feel the urge to make more of this style of game I’ll likely scrap what I have and start fresh). There is no end point or winning. You cant save your progress. What enemies you encounter is completely random and many of them are far over powered meaning that survival is often based on whether or not a random number generator decides whether you successfully run away or not. It is functional though and that is good enough for me for now.

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Made some improvements. Leveling up and combat are still incomplete but are fairly functional now. Made some changes to how bumping into things when walking around works.

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The game is probably more obviously jankie then ever but you can consider it (or more specifically its current incarnation) complete. I raised the enemy count to 50 and they now move around. Both you and they can now be hit by blasts. When they get shot 10 times they die and when you get shot 20 times you die. There is also now some minor amount of animation for the enemies (they twitch when they get shot and lie down when they die) and comparatively better but still noticeably incomplete animation for you. You can now crouch with the Ctrl key. The first person camera takes your animation into account and follows your head. Thats all for now. Bye.

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I got around to doing a bit more and you can now rewind at double speed or even make time move forward at double speed. Really any time speed works now but just for the sake of making it displayable on a progress bar or whatever you call it I capped it at -2 and +2. The game was already setup in a way that I could have made it rewind at any given speed already but it took a little more work getting time to move forward at a speed faster then regular real time well still having what happens during that time rewindable at any speed. It actually didn’t take any time at all to figure out how to do it but I got stuck on a small detail when implementing it which I’m still not sure why it was a problem. Anyways it works now.

I also made a bunch of other improvements though I don’t completely remember for sure what I did before and after the last time I posted so I might be forgetting things or mentioning stuff that was already in the game. Whats probably most noticeable is that slow rewinding is smoothed out and it doesn’t look like your watching a slide show anymore. I reworked the camera (again) so when in first person you can see your body/feet like you could at first and the third person camera is over the shoulder now so your character doesn’t block your view of your aim. The transition from first to third works a bit better also. I had to rework how the direction of your blasts where decided to make it functional with the over the shoulder camera which in turn improved first person aiming a bit (you might have noticed before that along with the intentional inaccuracy your shots also always hit lower then they should have). The time line is now a complete 30 minutes. Run speed is a bit faster. I think everything else was mostly just little tweaks.

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2D FTW!

Just a quick post to let you know that a demo version of Machinarium is available to play online. It’s a point-and-click adventure/puzzle game for Windows, Linux and Mac by Czech indie company Amanita Design and, according to Wonkypedia, the money to finance the project came out of the developers’ own pockets.

Gameplay-wise, it’s a mixture of the Monkey Island games and the old Gobliiins series on the 16-bit machines but the really striking thing about the game is the visuals which look absolutely gorgeous even though they’re mostly of robots and things that look like they’ve been made out of scrap metal. Music and sound are also well above-average and, as is common in games of this type these days, there’s an enormous amount of character in the protagonist and the various other machines he meets.

Play the demo version on its website and, if you like it and you’ve got the readies to spare, buy a copy so that Amanita can refill their pockets and we, hopefully, can see more of this kind of thing.

Ficha Técnica:
Fabricante: Rockstar North
Lançamento: 2009
Idioma: Português
Midia: Dvd
Padão: Ntsc
Tamanho: 22 Gb
Tipo: .rar/.iso
Sistema Operacional: Windows XP/Vista

Sinopse/Descrição:

Em 1997, um grupo de desenvolvedores que mais tarde se chamaria Rockstar North e Rockstar Games lançou seu primeiro título “Grand Theft Auto” sem esperar muito do público. No entanto, o jogo foi um sucesso, baseado na jogabilidade irreverente, humor e estilo politicamente incorreto – um fenômeno nasceu.

Hoje, alguns anos depois, o jogo se encontra entre um dos mais jogados do mundo, com grande número de vendas, versões 3D cheia de novidades e muita ação para consoles e computadores, enfim, um sucesso sem precedentes.

Qual a fórmula do jogo que encanta os jogadores?

A magia é muito simples, em vez de controlarmos o moçinho, em GTA somos o temido vilão. Podemos assaltar carros, lojas, fazemos o trabalho sujo das ruas e etc. A mente humana necessita ver um pouco de violência e nada melhor que descarregar essa necessidade em um jogo.

Grand Theft Auto: London 1969

O “novo” Grand Theft Auto: London 1969 na verdade não tem nada de novo. Este jogo é, na verdade, um pacote de expansão para o Grand Theft Auto original. O cenário traz algumas mudanças, como, por exemplo, dirigir do lado esquerdo em vez do direito e músicas e gírias da época. Fora isto, o jogo continua o mesmo e com os mesmos objetivos, que são roubar carros e cometer alguns crimes.

Prepare-se usuários de PC! O jogo mais vendido de 2001 para o PlayStation 2 está chegando ao seu micro.

Terceira versão de uma das séries mais controversas de todos os tempo, Grand Theft Auto III está cheia de detalhes. A cidade em que o protagonista vive, Liberty City, é representada com bastante vida. Há trânsito de pessoas e de carros pela cidade toda. Você pode ouvir as pessoas conversando, entrando em prédios etc, enfim vivendo. E em Liberty City, o jogador recomeça sua vida no mundo do crime.

Cada carro que aparece pode ser controlado pelo jogador. É carro de passeio, ambulâcia, táxi (aparecem até passageiros querendo entrar), etc. Cada um deles possuem 17 pontos que podem ser danificados e influem no desempenho. Se o motor for atingido, o carro fica inutilizado. Pior, vai explodir! Na chuva o negócio é dirigir bem devagar pois a pista fica escorregadia.

A diferença da versão PC são os controles. A tradicional combinação teclado com mouse proporciona mais agilidade. Também pode-se adicionar skins ao personagem e colocar seus MP3 preferido para tocar no rádio do carro. A resolução também é bem maior: até 1600 por 1200 pixels.

A liberdade que Grand Theft Auto III dá ao jogador é muito grande. O jogador, se quiser, pode ficar simplesmente vagando pelas ruas da cidade sem fazer missão alguma. Mas para chegar ao final ou abrir novas áreas para explorar só mesmo realizando as missões.

Polêmico jogo permite que você seja um mafioso roubando carros e cometendo crimes numa cidade fictícia.
Quando a DMA criou a primeira expansão para “Grand Theft Auto” (ainda em sua versão 2D), eles decidiram fazer algo estiloso: ambientar o jogo na Londres da década de 60 para ressuscitar o charme de filmes como “Um Golpe à Italiana”. Agora, continuando a tradição do terceiro game, a empresa levou o título à brega Miami dos anos 80.

Você controla Tommy Vercetti. Recém-saído da prisão, o criminoso trabalha para os irmãos Forelli. Desta vez, o protagonista terá voz e falará durante o jogo (ao contrário do anti-herói mudo da versão anterior) e será dublado por ninguém menos que Ray Liotta (que interpretou Paul Krendler em Hannibal). Tommy também está cheio de novos truques: novas armas, conhecimentos de artes marciais, um sistema de mira que deve facilitar a vida dos jogadores e, é claro, uma camisa com estampa florida!

Além de dirigir carros, Tommy poderá roubar também motos, um helicóptero e até mesmo lanches em suas aventuras. O jogo terá mais de 100 missões (contra as 75 do anterior), que prometem ser mais longas e complexas. Além das tradicionais missões periféricas de táxi, ambulância e polícia, o novo jogo trará uma nova variedade de passatempo: entrega de pizza em moto!

A nova versão apresenta um grande salto de qualidade gráfica. Além de adicionar detalhes de brilho e reflexão nos automóveis, agora será possível visitar e ver o interior dos prédios. Outra grande mudança é que a cidade inteira estará disponível desde o início do jogo, ao contrário da versão anterior.

Tudo nesta continuação promete ser colossal. A cidade terá o dobro de tamanho, haverá quase o triplo de armas (150 no total) e o triplo de músicas. A parte sonora, por exemplo, terá nada mais, nada menos que 90 músicas licenciadas, que serão divididas em 10 estações virtuais. Espere por muitos clássicos da década de 70 – The Message, do grupo Grand Master Flash é uma delas.

Apesar de gigantesco, “Vice City” ainda guarda lugar para detalhes. Pneus que estouram, gangues que roubam carros e a inclusão de skatistas que reagem a ação são algumas das novidades que devem adicionar charme nas missões. E a Rockstar deu uma melhorada considerável na Inteligência Articial que controla tudo isso.

A Rockstar quer aproveitar bem a escolha de local e época, algo que fica claro pela escolha dos carros – alguns modelos esportivos da década de 80 serão destacados, por exemplo. Ambientes como o hotel Fontainebleau (famoso por sua aparição no remake de Scarface) marcam presença nesse estiloso jogo.

Aproveitando o tempo extra desde o lançamento para PlayStation 2 (e aproveitando o poder das novas placas 3D), o game poderá ser rodado em resoluções mais altas e ainda assim rodar suave.

San Andreas é cenário do simulador de máfia que explora a comunidade negra em uma paródia da Los Angeles dos anos 90.
“Grand Theft Auto” nasceu como um jogo 2D no PC e vários dos elementos existentes hoje já haviam sido delineados no game original. Apesar do sucesso no videogame da Sony, os novos jogos série mantêm a tradição de homenagear fãs dos computadores e não será diferente com “San Andreas”.

A trama acontece no início dos anos 90. Carl Johnson abandonou Los Santos há cinco anos, foi parar em Liberty City, mas resolveu voltar ao lar e encontrou sua mãe assassinada, sua família despedaçada e seus amigos de infância em apuros. Enfim, o caos completo. Seu irmão mais velho, Sweet, o culpa pela morte acidental do caçula.

Em meio a tudo isso, Carl é pego como bode-expiatório de um assassinato praticado por policiais corruptos. A solução é dominar San Andreas à força, para salvar a si e sua família.

São três as principais cidades do game: Los Santos, inspirado em Los Angeles; San Fierro, que faz paralelo com San Francisco; e Las Venturra, representante fictício de Las Vegas.

Os cenários de subúrbio dão a tônica, com suas gangues, traficantes, policiais corruptos e toda espécie de escória. Os grupos estão fortemente armados com submetralhadores que lembram a israelense Uzi. As gangues chinesas e mexicanas são alguns dos problemas que Carl terá de enfrentar. Como sempre há um sem número de carros para dirigir, adquiridos de forma legal ou não. Bicicleta também faz parte dos meios de locomoção neste novo “Grand Theft Auto”.

A missão básica é formar uma gangue. Desta vez, pode-se fazer as missões de carro com até quatro integrantes. “Grand Theft Auto” permite muita liberdade ao jogador. Se tiver muito sucesso, poderá até abrir um cassino em Las Venturra. Esta versão é de quatro a seis vezes maior que o antecessor e o interior dos prédios são incrivelmente detalhados.

Uma das muitas novidades desta edição é que o personagem tem uma barra de Stamina, que difere do medidor de energia normal. Para recuperar a Stamina o personagem precisa se alimentar.

“Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas” já foi lançado para PlayStation 2 e foi confirmado para PC e Xbox.

“Grand Theft Auto” acostumou-se ao sucesso e às polêmicas e, na geração encabeçada pelo PlayStation 2, conseguiu firmar-se como um dos maiores games de todos os tempos. A quarta edição continuou a trajetória de sucesso: foi o maior lançamento de entretenimento da história, de acordo com o livro Guinness de recordes. Com essa credencial, agora espera também espera repetir a dose no PC.

O protagonista é Niko Bellic, um imigrante do leste europeu que veio aos Estados Unidos para perseguir o sonho americano e, influenciado pelo primo Roman, acaba por envolver-se em atividades criminosas. Na verdade, Bellic não é um bandido, e leva uma vida até tranqüila, mas aos poucos, para resolver seus problemas, é obrigado a tomar decisões pouco ortodoxas.

Toda a Big Apple é recriada, com direito a trechos de New Jersey: em “GTA IV”, novamente Nova York é Liberty City, enquanto o Brooklyn vira Broker, Manhattan passa a se chamar Algoquin, Queens transforma-se em Dukes, o Bronx torna-se Brohan e New Jersey é rebatizada de Alderney.

Os espaços em branco praticamente desaparecem, dando lugar a uma cidade densa, tanto horizontal quanto verticalmente, no projeto que é seguramente o mais ambicioso da série. Nos PC mais turbinados, o jogo se beneficia da melhor resolução e mais “draw distance”, ou seja, pode-se ver locais que estão mais distantes. Com isso, o visual do game está mais detalhado. A edição para computador também tem a funcionalidade de gravar e editar vídeos, além de ter um modo multiplayer mais rico que as versões para consoles.

A máfia aparece por Liberty City, embora sem papéis fundamentais na trama. Já os personagens de versões anteriores ficam de fora. O protagonista utiliza um telefone celular para falar com seus contatos, não ficando limitado apenas a receber ligações. Como se trata de apenas uma cidade, os aviões ficaram de fora, mas, por outro lado, os helicópteros estão garantidos.

O jogo utiliza a uma versão da Rockstar Advanced Game Engine, mais conhecida como RAGE, empregada em “Table Tennis”. Para as animações de movimento, a tecnologia é a Euphoria, da NaturalMotion, que torna as ações dos personagens mais coerentes e fluídas – variações no terreno, por exemplo, influenciam no modo de caminhar. Com certeza, é uma mudança e tanto em relação às animações pré-desenhadas dos antecessores.

Configurações:

Pentium 166
32mb RAM
CD-ROM
SVGA com 2MB
Windows 9X ou DOS

Ou

Pentium 166
32mb RAM
CD-ROM
SVGA com 2MB
Windows 9X ou DOS

Ou

CPU de 450MHz, 128MB de memória RAM, 700MB de espaço disponível em disco, placa de vídeo aceleradora 3D e DirectX 7.0 ou superior instalado.

Ou

800 MHz Intel Pentium III ou 800 MHz AMD Athlon ou 1.2GHz Intel Celeron ou 1.2 GHz AMD Duron
128 MB RAM
8x CD / DVD drive
915 MB espaço livre na HD
32 MB na placa de Vídeo
Placa de som, compatível com DirectX 9.0.

Ou

Intel Pentium 4, ou AMD Athlon XP processor (1.4 ou superior) 256 MB de RAM
16x CD / DVD drive
1.55 GB de espaço livre na HD
64 MB na placa de Vídeo, com DirectX 9.0
DirectX 9.0 compatível com sua Placa de som
Gamepad (USB or Joystick Port)
Keyboard & Mouse

Ou

Processador: Intel CPU Pentium 4 ou Athlon XP
Memória: 384+ MB RAM
Placa de Vídeo: Nvidia Geforce 6 Series 128+ MB
Disco Rídigo: 4.7 GB de espaço livre em HD para a instalação completa, incluindo as rádios
DVD-ROM: 16x speed

Ou

Processador: 1GHz Intel Pentium III ou Athlon
Memoria: 256 MB RAM
Placa de Video: Nvidia Geforce 64 MB
Disco Rídigo: 3.6 GB de espaço livre em HD para instalação mínima, rádios ficam no DVD
DVD-ROM: 8x speed
MegaUpload

Lista De Links

Senha para descompactar: ExiliaEths

The game now has slow motion.

There is another bar on top of the timeline one that you can dial up and down using the mouse wheel to increase and decrease the speed of the game. All the way to the right means your playing forward at full real time speed, dead center means the games paused (there is a line down the middle to make it clear where that is), all the way to the left means your moving backwards in time at the same speed and anything between will make the game go at the appropriate speed (75% of the way down the line will for example leave the game moving forward at half speed).

Just like with rewinding there are some small and likely unoticeable things that arent yet being properly handled when messing with time but its pretty much fully functional and should take me to long to deal with the last few loose ends.

I increased the cap on the time line by 50 so you can play non stop for roughly 28 minutes and rewind all the way back. I also fixed up the transparency of the impact effect that shows up when a blast hits a wall which previously didn’t work correctly during a rewind. I also made some little changes and tweaks to gravity and shooting and a few other little things and added a cross-hair and reworked the camera a bit.

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I know it took longer then it should have but here it is. Release number 12 of They Do Not Die.

The game can now use multiple levels and there are level selection screens to facilitate that before you start up the game or the level editor. The “create new level” option at the selection screen before the editor doesnt work yet but just dropping a blank file into the savefiles\maps\ with a .dat extension should work fine or you can just copy and past one of the preexisting levels and rename the duplicate whatever you want your new level to be called.

The level editor itself has also been improved a bit. Its now a bit more visually representative of how things will look in game, the name of the level your editing is displayed at the bottom of the screen, you can place safe zones (they have no effect right now in game but they will show up), you place solid walls (there treated the same as building walls but they aren’t stuck to the grid and can be placed at any location and any rotation like any other object can) and can now place multiple kinds of zombies (at the moment they aren’t customizable and all behave the same as generic zombies with even the size difference only being superficial at the moment), and there are now buttons to reset all of the tiles to grass and remove all of the objects (visually the objects don’t get removed when you do it though so for now you will need to return to the main menu and then reload that level in the editor to see the difference).

As for the actual game itself along with the stuff previously mentioned (multiple levels, new walls, non effective safe zones, etc) you can now shoot from inside a car and there is a score multiplier that goes up whenever a zombie dies but gets reset whenever your hurt or a human dies. the in game pause menu is now somewhat functional. You can use it to return to the main menu to use the level editor and change settings but there are problems with starting a second game because not everything gets properly reset so there are invisible walls and zombies and things left over from the previous game so right now your still best off just exiting the program and restarting it.

I also added a few new characters to the sprite based text and fixed some problems with the sound effects. I think that’s pretty much everything.

Download

Here’s a little something from that traditional 2D RPG I started working on. Combat system isn’t setup yet (if you run into someone just hit space or enter to auto win and end the fight) but you can walk around (use WASD or the arrow keys) and although there also isn’t a properly setup environment yet since I haven’t built a level editor to construct one with yet so by default everything is water but you can place land yourself (just hold down any mouse key and patches of grass will be generated wherever the mouse is and it will automatically determine what if any second layer tile to use for the shoreline). I’ve also decided that its going to be set in a fictional future and your playing as a robot. I know that conflicts a bit with traditional retro RPG conventions but I’m not really very into Dungeons and Dragons types of stuff and the setting wont change the game play.

I’m going to go back to working on They Do Not Die and Time Frack for now and maybe even get back to doing a bit more for The World Drowns.

Download

Screw it. I’m not really in the mood for writing tutorials and besides I’m not especially good at it. If anyone wants help with making a game just ask me in the comments. Now on with the game. Neither you or the other characters can be harmed yet but you can shoot and so can they and all of the movement collision detection is setup and most importantly rewinding time is functional.

For controls use WASD to move, hold shift to run, tap Q to switch from first and third person views, Hold E to rewind time (You cant rewind past the beginning and similarly the game wont let you play past the end of the time line which is visible at the bottom of the screen) and use the mouse to aim and any mouse button to shoot.

I’m really happy with the movement. I did a few things a little bit differently then I usually do and I’m really happy with the results. It probably isn’t particularly noticeable (though it likely will be more so later in slow-mo) but there is real momentum to your movement. So if your moving left and then start moving right it has to first slow down your momentum going in that previous direction and then build up more in the new one. Even completly changing directions doesnt take to long and the controls still feel responsive but when you compare it directly with another game that has exact controls it really does feel more natural. Also rather then leaving you in complete control of your movement well off the ground or making it based completly on momentum when you first jump/fall its actually a little bit of both (took a few tries to get the balance right but I think its good now) which i think worked out really well. Pushing enemy characters by bumping into them works fairly well also.

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Part 2: Media

I’m not going to go into detail about making 3d meshes or textures right now but I will supply you with some to use.

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Now lets get back to working on the game and use those art assets. Open up the project again and here’s what you’ve got to do in Main.cpp to load up everything and get your character moving round. I commented the hell out of it so even if you just copy and paste it all at once hopefully it will make sense. It will be easier to read from within the IDE.


//include DarkGDK and Sparky's collission detection which well be needing for later
#include "DarkGDK.h"
#include "SC_Collision.h"

//now declare the variables that we are going to need to use.
//I want to play in fullscreen without changing the resoltution and GetSystemMetrics is a good way to find out what the current desktop resolution is.
int screenx=GetSystemMetrics(SM_CXSCREEN);
int screeny=GetSystemMetrics(SM_CYSCREEN);
//dark gdk identafies 3d objects by a number and you cant assign multiple objects to the same number so I number them by the order there created in so you can check what the next available number is by keeping track of how many objects already exist.
int objcount=1;
//your going to want to remember what the object number is for your charecter since your going to be moving it around.
int youobj;
//isnt really neccessary but I like to record keypresses as variables
int up;int down;int left;int right;
//keep track of your movement speed and what angle your heading in.
//using double rather then int essentially means that it can deal with decimals rather then only whole numbers.
double movespeed;double moveangle=0;
//you will want to have a few multi purpose variables
double x;double y;double z;

void DarkGDK ( void ){
//now to start with the rest of the pre game setup.
//set the game resolution to the current desktop resolution which we found out before.
dbSetDisplayMode(screenx,screeny,32);
//since the games in full screen people probable wotn see this but its good to label things.
dbSetWindowTitle("TimeFrack");
//set it to full screen.
dbSetWindowOff();
//set what color will be shown on screen where there arent any visisble objects.
dbColorBackdrop(dbRGB(0,0,0));
//throutle the frame rate to a predetermend rate (in this case 30)
dbSyncOn();dbSyncRate(30);
//keep DarkGDK for doing anything anoying with the camera.
dbAutoCamOff();
//turn off the mouse cursore.
dbHideMouse();
//start up Sparky's collission detection.
SC_Start();

//now we start loading those objects.
//load the room.
dbLoadObject("media\\map.x",objcount);
//load the texture.
dbLoadImage("media\\tile.png",1);
//apply the texture.
dbTextureObject(objcount,1);
//update the object count so we know not to assign that number to anymore objects.
objcount=objcount+1;

//load your charecter model.
dbLoadObject("media\\person.x",objcount);
//keep track of its oject number.
youobj=objcount;
//update the object count so we know not to assign that number to anymore objects.
objcount=objcount+1;

//now we run the loop that the actual game occures in.
while ( LoopGDK ( ) ){

//update the charecter object and camera rotation based on mouse movements so you can turn and aim.
dbRotateObject(youobj,0,dbObjectAngleY(youobj)+(double)dbMouseMoveX()/5,0);
dbRotateCamera(dbCameraAngleX()+(double)dbMouseMoveY()/10,dbObjectAngleY(youobj),0);

//check what keys are down.
up=dbKeyState(17);down=dbKeyState(31);left=dbKeyState(30);right=dbKeyState(32);
//now if more then one key is down we need to change your movement direction and speed based on what combenation of keys are being used.
if (up+down+left+right==0){
movespeed=(movespeed*4)/5;}else{movespeed=(movespeed*9+2)/10;
if (up==1)if(down==0)if(left==0)if(right==0)moveangle=0;
if (up==0)if(down==1)if(left==0)if(right==0)moveangle=180;
if (up==0)if(down==0)if(left==1)if(right==0)moveangle=270;
if (up==0)if(down==0)if(left==0)if(right==1)moveangle=90;
if (up==1)if(down==0)if(left==1)if(right==0)moveangle=315;
if (up==1)if(down==0)if(left==0)if(right==1)moveangle=45;
if (up==0)if(down==1)if(left==1)if(right==0)moveangle=225;
if (up==0)if(down==1)if(left==0)if(right==1)moveangle=135;
}

//update your position and reposition the camera just behind you.
x=dbNewXValue(dbObjectPositionX(youobj),dbObjectAngleY(youobj)+moveangle,movespeed);
y=dbObjectPositionY(youobj);
z=dbNewZValue(dbObjectPositionZ(youobj),dbObjectAngleY(youobj)+moveangle,movespeed);
dbPositionObject(youobj,x,y,z);
x=dbNewXValue(x,dbObjectAngleY(youobj),-25);
y=y+25;
z=dbNewZValue(z,dbObjectAngleY(youobj),-25);
dbPositionCamera(x,y,z);

//update the screen.
dbSync ( );
//complete the loop.
}
//exit the game (by default DarkGDK automatically does this when the esc key is hit).
return;}


You might have noticed there seemingly random numbers being used when checking what keys where being pressed. It isn’t actually at all arbitrary. Each key on a keyboard is assigned a scan code and the dbKeyState() command returns a one if the specified key is being pressed down and zero if it isn’t. Here’s a nice little diagram to check anytime you want to know what the scan code is for a key.

I’m stuck getting something working in They DoNotDie (I can read the file names of everything contained in a folder one by one and I can load map data from a pre determined specified file but I cant get the freaken thing to load from one of those files that I just read the name of which means unless I’m going to cap how many levels you can have and use predetermined names for all of them then I have no idea how to go about having multiple maps in the game) and getting kinda frustrated. Anyways I’ll go back and work it out later but right its got me feeling like starting something new so I figured I would make a basic shooter with some time controls (I always felt like Time Shift was cooler then people gave it credit for being) and I figured I would in the process write a game making tutorial showing how I did it to help anyone interested in making games get started. Basically everything here is based on the assumption that you want to make a 3D game and you want to make it with DarkGDK and I doubt there will be much that you can learn here that would translate to anything else. Also I should point out that this is how I do things which isn’t necessarily ever the ideal way to do things. Anyways lets proceed.

Part 1: The setup

First up if you don’t already have it then you should download and install Microsoft Visual C++. You can get the express edition free at the address bellow. You can use DarkGDK with other IDEs/compilers but I seriously recommend you get Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Express.

http://www.microsoft.com/express/vc/

next up download and install the DirectX SDK

http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/3/f/33f1af6e-c61b-4f14-a0de-3e9096ed4b3a/dxsdk_aug2007.exe

Apparently there are problems with Using DarkGDK if you install it before compiling something so first open up visual c++ express and click file/new/project at the menu bar. Then under Visual C++/Win32 select Win32 Project and enter whatever you want for a name and select ok and just hit finish for the next window the pops up. then go to build/build solution (or hit F7) and it will compile the project that was just generated. Now you can exit out of Visual C++ express and if you want even delete that project.

Then go download and install DarkGDK.

http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=7708310

Open up Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Express again. Hit file/new/project. This time select wizard then Dark GDK – 3D Game and name it whatever you want to name your game (I’m going with Time Frack). Then go to build/configuration manger and set it to release. Now open up Main.cpp (it should be listed in the sidebar so just double click on it) so you can start making changes and your also probably going to want to read through it once to get a basic understanding of how to do things (anything with // before it which shows up as green will be ignored by the compiler and in this case that ignored text very well describes what everything is).

Now since DarkGDK’s built in collision detection is terrible if you want to check for collisions with 3d objects then your going to want to use Sparky’s collision detection which is pure awesome. So just slap #include “SC_Collision.h” right bellow #include “DarkGDK.h” near the top of into main.cpp.

Unfortunately it wont work now because SC_Collision.h doesn’t actually exist or at least not on your computer. So go get it. Remember you want the DarkGDK version. I think your also going to need to make an account at the Game Creators Forum to get the download but if anyone wants me to I’ll upload it here.

http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=74762&b=5

Once you have gotten the download and extracted everything from the rar file your going to want to put the SC_Collision.h file (found in the include subfolder) and SC_Collision.lib (found in the lib\VS8 subfolder) somewhere and leave them there undisturbed. Personally I just took the include and lib folders and dropped em into my Time Frack project folder (which in my case is at C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Projects\Time Frack\Time Frack\). Next up your going to want to tell your game where it can find those important files. So hit project/Time Frack properties. Then under Configuration Properties/ C/C++ / General your going to need to add the folder that SC_Collision.h is in (in my case “C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Projects\Time Frack\Time Frack\include”) to Additional Include Directories. Next you need to do the same for SC_Collision.lib only this time under Configuration Properties/ Linker / General and add the address to Additional Library Directories. Then hit ok and then file/save all.

For now I suggest just leaving everything else as is and first hit build/build solution so we can compile the game and see if everything is working. In my case the compiled and ready to use executable was generated at C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Projects\Time Frack\Time Frack\Release but that might be somewhat different for you.

If that newly compiled executable works and when you run it some round polygonal shapes spin on screen then do a little celebratory dance and be happy knowing that your at least as smart as the average modern day child and can successfully install pre made software. If that executable doesn’t work or wasn’t generated or you got stuck on anything I said to do then feel free to vent your rage in the comments and I’ll do my best to calmly apologize for my mistakes or poorly phrased instructions and try to rectify the situation. This is getting a bit long so I’ll stop for now and continue tomorrow.

OK, I finally have time to finish the tutorials I promised a week ago.

First up is the Tic-Tac-Toe tutorial. Instead of writing a bunch of code and making things much more difficult for my readers, I’m going to upload the complete solution (58kb) online where anyone can download it.

The download link is here: http://sharebee.com/0e0d3c34

It’s fairly easy to follow along and you’ll learn things like Casting, Foreach Statements, Boolean Flags.

I really hope you enjoy it. Please feel free to leave some feedback and let me know what topics you’d like me to cover.

Happy coding!

Eleventh release. Not a massive update. Fixed a few problems with cars (most noticeably getting out of them now works correctly and doesn’t leave you trapped in the hollow space inside them). your custom made map is now saved as one unified file. If you want to keep using one you made with the previous editor then just open up the map file and the object file in notepad and copy paste the info about object placement into the primary map file at the end. You can properly place zombies with the level editor now. Just like with the boxes and cars the zombie count in the menu is how many will be randomly spawned in addition to the ones placed in the level editor so even if you set the zombie count to zero the zombies you place will still show up. Once there spawned when the game starts all zombies are treated the same though so if you have zombie repositioning switched on (as it is by default) any zombies you place in the map that are too far away from your character will get zapped closer by. You can pickup the broken shards of wood left from boxes. Still cant use them for anything yet though. There are sound effects but I’m not really happy with them. You can lower the music and/or sound effect volume from the menu and it will actually have an effect now. Fixed up a few other things relating to the menus and added a few new options. Started working in the in game pause/death menu. That is essentially everything. Mostly just minor stuff.

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Went back and did a bit more for that action RPG Zelda style game I started a little while ago. Still not really anything that should probably be considered a game at this point but its getting better. Visually its been fairly majorly overhauled. It looks somewhat like it jumped out of Super Mario Galaxy now. It also played in full screen but whats especially nice is that it doesn’t use a preset resolution and instead checks what your current desktop resolution is and goes with that. All of your character’s animations have been redone though they mostly look roughly the same as before. You can attack (or at least play the attacking animation) even well also running and/or walking now. There are now multiple monsters (all of the same kind) and they are now treated as solid objects. Tons of other little tweaks where made.

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Here is the tenth release of the top down zombie shooter I’ve been working on. The titles been changed / shortened to “They do not die” which I’m fairly content with so that’s likely what I’ll always be referring to it from here on out.

The level editor has been significantly improved. You can replace tiles and drop objects into the world like before but its been majorly fixed up. The game now properly uses that data as it should and best of all your custom made map and the placement of objects in it is now automatically saved when you return to the main menu. I’m also pretty happy with the editor’s new GUI. Its not amazing but it isn’t completely fugly either and its easy to use and even at 640×480 it doesn’t fill too much of the screen. Your visual settings (screen resolution and that type of thing) are also now saved externally so you wont need to reset them every time you start the game. The boxes that are marked as being explosive now actually are. There where a few other changes but really I think the editor was the only major thing.

If you make a good map in the editor then post the map.dat and objects.dat files here (you can find them in the savefiles folder so just upload them to rapidshare or someplace and leave the download address in the comments) and if I like it then it might show up as one of the levels in the final game.

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Its really kind of sad when I think about how long I’ve been working on the game. Even if you don’t count that a lot of it was recycled from stuff I worked on even longer ago (like most of the 2D artwork which was intended for a similar Wii home brew game) Its been roughly three months since I started. I haven’t really gotten much done of it and its not like its a very complex and impressive game.

But anyways its better then nothing and at the least I’ve made a frack ton of updates in the last few days. The flame thrower works on boxes and they catch fire just like people do. The menu system has been significantly improved. Still by no means perfected but a lot closer to what you would expect from a video game menu. You can break boxes open manually if your near them and facing them. You can make humans follow you and they make an effort to get behind you as apposed to just being near you (so they stay out of your line of fire). You can drive the cars. I tried setting up the camera to match the rotation of the car when driving (I hate having movement directions being relative to a character rather then the screen) but it just seemed oddly disorienting but I’ll probably stick that in later as an optional thing for anyone who wants it. Text also shows up informing you of a few other interactions that aren’t implemented yet. The text displaying frame rate can be turned on and off now and defaults as off. Health and energy regeneration is no longer a binary on off thing but rather the variables in the menu change how much they regenerate (it will work better once the menus have been fixed up to let you edit past the decimal point). There are progress bars on screen now that you your health and energy which makes it a lot easier to check then reading the text. Health is already really well communicated by the zoom of the camera and the red border on the screen but this definitely helps for energy. I’ve also made some other tweaks to make running more useful. The default run speed is higher, default max energy is higher, how much energy you lose from running is less and how much health you lose from running well out of energy is significantly less. There is also no a level editor. You cant save your creations and the user interface sucks but you can edit the map perfectly well and once you start the game it uses your edited version. You can also drop object in the editor and it records there position and rotation but the game doesn’t yet use that data when setting up the world. I’ll be shocked and amazed if I don’t see screen shots of genitalia or swear words drawn with cars by the end of the month. You get a game over screen just like the pause screen when you die. There have been other little tweaks but I think that’s everything that’s noticeable.

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The Dead Do Not Die Gently is a truly fracking stupid title. But if you feel you can think of something better then post it here. No one word stuff though and no placing “the” at the beginning does not bump it up to being a two word title. That really only works well if your making something major and with proper funding. Ideally I would like to be able to refer to the game as something that people could actually be able to find on google. There is no way the first results for something like The Outbreak or Surrounded will ever lead to my humble little blog or any other place this may show up. Do a google search for The Dead Do Not Die Gently in quotation marks and (at the moment) there is not a single result which means that at some future point in time if someone where to go looking for the game by that phrase/title there likely to actually get results that are relevant to there search.

Anyways here is yet another updated version of the game. There is a settings menu that comes up before the game starts. It isn’t perfect but its definitely a good start. The in game text is also now shown the same as it is in the menu complete with smooth outlines and a light drop shadow. You can’t get much more generic then Courier New but I kinda like the look of it and it helps that its mono space. At the least it looks better then the text did previously. There is new music playing as mentioned in my last post. Corpses are blue rather then green now. It definitely helps to make it easier to differentiate them from still active zombies but they also seem to stand out more and personally I never really had much trouble telling whether a zombie was still moving or not. What do you think about the color swap? Your flamethrower has a limited amount of ammo now just like your gun. Have fun messing around with different numbers of zombies and max health and health regeneration and things like that. If you find a sweet spot where the right variables just make the game seem better to you then let me know about it.

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