What I do know, is Path of King Arthur (80 MSP) is a very loose re-imagining of the tale, unless Camelot was actually defended ‘tower defense’ style by frontline units comprised of cats and dogs. I’m no historian, but I have my doubts. Sadly, those events would be infinitely more appealing to debate than playing out the theory in-game, as Path of King Arthur will quickly bore you into submission.

The tower defense aspect, despite a sizable array of units ranging from infantry to cavalry, healers and archers, to ‘unique’ options like knights from the Round Table, is done purely by the book (no pun intended). Units are introduced every few levels through some rather funny dialogue and backstory (Princess Guinevere’s bio is particularly accurate), and then you’re free to enlist soldiers with money earned during battles. Strategy and personal preference will guide your purchases, designing your army to meet the challenges (beasts and bandits) in each stage.

Playing as King Arthur, you can move about the level, using simple twin-stick controls to attack enemy forces while opening and closing ‘gates’ in the play area to funnel troops and adversaries where you please. Flipping these gates becomes quite important early on, as levels typically contain hazards that you must work around, including fire-tossing towers and spikes.

Unfortunately, the whole thing plays low-grade, and the ‘cutesy’ graphics / lack of battle animations sap the potential enjoyment. Money is usually tight, and there is a cap on the number of units you can have on the battlefield at one time, too, so there’s no way to simulate an unending feline army overrunning everything (…I have strange dreams). And though the idea of ‘gates’ is a sound one, especially in using hazards to thin the enemy herd, the AI isn’t incredibly bright. You’ll likely kill off just as many friendly units without an effective way to manage their movements.

As such, stages regress to finding (via trial and error and retrial) which units will cancel out the opposing side. Needless to say, this grows tedious, and the level design (more or less repeated throughout) fails to effectively maintain your interest, despite the fact that there’s 50+ stages to play through. The value is certainly here, the fun is not.

The finest parts of Path of King Arthur are in its dialogue and storytelling, which allow you to forget, only very very briefly, that you’re playing a sub-par, watching-paint-dry, tower defense / twin-stick combination that has little in the way of fun or engaging gameplay. Pass on this game and read a book instead, kids.

And I’ve just been handed a cease and desist order, as apparently someone else already had this idea and has made billions off it.  Huh.  You know, I thought I paid a lot of attention to gaming.  I’m not sure how that one slipped me by.

Actually, more than one person had this idea.  Sort of.  A wild XBLIG just appeared before me called Indiemon: Earth Nation.  Quick thought: if you remove the word “Indiemon” from that name, would it not sound like a reality show you would expect to see on Discovery Channel?  No?  Just me?  Okay, never mind.

Thank God they used up one of their four marketplace pics for a splash of the game. By the way, unless it looks different in an encounter, I don’t remember ever fighting the monster shown here. Unless it was one of the final two boss monsters the last guy you fight pulled out, both of which I killed in a single hit after about two seconds.

So Indiemon is just like my hypothetical game would have been, except you’re a dude dressed like a knight instead of a baseball cap and parachute pants wearing child.  Well, that just saps the whimsy right out of the concept, does it not?  I mean, why does a knight need to make animals fight his battles for him?  Wouldn’t he have, like, something pointy and deadly?  A sword perhaps?  A spear?  No?  So this guy in his fancy armor and  sequined cape is making animals fight his battles for him?

What an asshole.

Well, being a friend to animals (I make a point of eating under six a day), I decided I wouldn’t be a jerk about it.  Instead, I would only keep one Indiemon, a fuzzy cute little rabbit thing called Bunnidusk in the game and “Peter Cottonmurder” by me.  When I engaged in battles with Peter, I decided to forgo any unnecessary violence against those innocent creatures that I so cowardly refused to fight myself.  So, instead of going through all the fancy attacks that Peter had acquired through the leveling up process (which happens roughly every three to four minutes), I would just spend every battle selecting attack from the menu, then selecting the most basic attack I had available.  Of course, such a brazenly lazy tactic would lead to failure in my hypothetical cockfighting game for children, where battles would be based around a rock-scissors-paper style strategy, probably something incorporating elements or living environments.  But, in Indiemon, it worked.  I never once had to use any attack except the weakest one I had open to me.  I never had to capture a creature.  I never came close to dying.  I never once had to use any item to save a fight.  Eventually, Peter Cottonmurder evolved (totally stolen from my hypothetical cockfighting game for children concept) into a giant, muscular, humanoid rabbit thing, sort of like Bucky O’Hare’s roided up cousin, Stucky O’HGHare.  Tougher, stronger, and probably now possessing erectile dysfunction.

That’s him on the left. Who’s a cute little blood thirsty slayer of God’s creatures?

Not that it changed the game much.  I could still breeze past any encounter just by mashing the A button until the battle ended with me standing over the bloody, comatose body of some helpless animal.  I was amused that the game took time to note that any animal you beat-up is not dead, but rather “unconscious.”  Well, that’s a moralistic weight off my shoulder, I can tell you that.  Otherwise, you just walk from town-to-town, then go through a cave, and then meet an old dude at a dock, then the game ends, presumably to be continued at some point in the future.  Yep, there’s not even a proper ending here.  It just ends.

And thank God for that.  I sound like a broken record this week, but Indiemon is so awful that I am almost at a loss for words.  Thankfully, I have a thesaurus, and shall now list every synonym for awful: abominable, alarming, appalling, atrocious, deplorable, depressing, dire, disgusting, distressing, dreadful, fearful, frightful, ghastly, grody, gross, gruesome, grungy, harrowing, hideous, horrendous, horrible, horrific, horrifying, nasty, offensive, raunchy, repulsive, shocking, stinking, synthetic, tough, ugly, unpleasant, and unsightly.  Well, besides raunchy or synthetic, I think all of those work.

Really, the biggest sin of Indiemon is just how fucking dull it is.  There’s no original ideas on display here, which gives the game a boredom handicap right out of the starting gate.  But once some of the technical flaws of the game begin, it really starts to fall apart.  While going through the cave at the end of the game, it took me about five to ten minutes to find the dude who I needed to launch me on a ship in what turned out to be the “wait, that’s it?” ending sequence.  Once I got him, I think something in the game must have crapped out, because I got stuck in the cave for over an hour dealing with non-stop “random encounters.”  For a while, every single step I took led to a battle.  It took me over an hour to make my way to the exit of the cave.  Considering that this was the end of the game, I figured this was done intentionally to be the big finale gauntlet.  However, I talked to another player of Indiemon who experienced no-such diarrhea of the random encounter.  Huh.  You ever get the feeling a game was intentionally trolling you?  Happens to me all the time.

No, I don’t know why the pictures are cropped this way.

So Indiemon is boring and unoriginal and technically problematic.  That’s not even mentioning how loose and busted the movement controls are.  Whatever you do, don’t use the analog stick to walk.  You’ll zig-zag around like a drunken knight who makes animals fight his battles for him like a total pussy.  Character design is, well, I suppose no more lazy or absurd than your average new Pokemon is these days.  But, I can’t even recommend Indiemon as the cheap dollar store knock-off that I suppose it has positioned itself to be.  It’s just too bland.  It actually manages to completely miss the point of what made Pokemon work.  Remove all strategy from that series, make the artwork more crude and amateurish, and take away the childlike sense of wonder, and you would have a game ill-suited towards teaching kids the kind of skills needed to be the starting quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles.

Indiemon: Earth Nation was developed by RicolaVG

80 Microsoft Points think a Pokemon parody, similar to Doom & Destiny or Cthulhu Saves the World, could work as an XBLIG in the making of this review.

• Objectives and a system of unlock-able weapons so the player starts of with just a pistol and as they progress through the game they unlock new weapons by completing objectives. There are currently two types of objectives: 
  • Kill X enemies with current progress shown next to the objective.
  • Move to X/Y/Z position with distance from the objective shown as the progress. (future work – possibly add a waypoint marker as the desired objective location).
• An objective Handler which controls the firing of a given event for each objective upon completion this may be as simple as moving on to the next objective through to playing a cut-scene, giving the user a new weapon or any other action possible within the limitations.
• The current weapon held up on the screen with different positions to show hip fire and aimed firing
• Constantly spawning enemies so they player must now complete they key objectives to be able to finish the game.
• Enemies now have a chance to drop pickups for the player such as; Health, Ammo and in the near future a low chance of dropping weapons.
• Enemies now make sounds when they are within the range of the fog.
• Sounds have been added to the weapons when fired they play their respective gunshot sound.

I am also currently working on adding:

• Different states to my game to facilitate a menu, options, credits, game over and playing states.
• Trees and environment objects (houses, barrels etc etc), trees will be added at random with their type based upon the ground on which they are placed (snowy trees on snow etc).
• Movement constraints and path finding to stop entities within the game being able to climb vertical walls or anything above a specified angle.

Somewhere underground, in caverns and an abandoned city powered by ancient technology, a robot with a love for flowers is trapped. Levels mix Portal‘s idea of physics and navigation with magnets to have you attracting and repelling your way through a stage’s puzzles (think of the magnets as your new ‘Companion Cube’). Such is the premise of Tripleslash Studios’ Magnetic by Nature.

Though the visuals and tone seem somewhat Limbo-ish, and there’s been confirmation of the robot losing its head at some point (hey, new ways to attract!), expect a lighthearted tale and puzzles that (hopefully) don’t stray into frustration. The goal of any game is to stay fresh and allow the player to have fun, of course, as the developer explains below.

.

Magnetic by Nature is set for release in May. For updates and adorable art featuring MbN‘s robotic protagonist (I want a plushie!), you can follow the Developer here.

And though it won’t affect the XBLIG version (which is now subtitled ‘Awakening’), Tripleslash Studios is currently running a Kickstarter to fund an ‘expanded’ PC version. If you’d rather hold out for that edition, or just feel like giving money away, feel free to check it out.

Width = GraphicsAdapter.DefaultAdapter.CurrentDisplayMode.Width;
Height = GraphicsAdapter.DefaultAdapter.CurrentDisplayMode.Height;

This is a big problem because Width and Height are variables I use to determine the resolution of the device. So first thing to do is stick this code in a pre-processor directive

#if WINDOWS_PHONE

Width = GraphicsAdapter.DefaultAdapter.CurrentDisplayMode.Width;                         Height = GraphicsAdapter.DefaultAdapter.CurrentDisplayMode.Height;

#endif

graphics.PreferredBackBufferHeight = Height;
graphics.PreferredBackBufferWidth = Width;

This will ensure that the Android version will never reach this code.

But how do we figure out the resolution now? Well after many google searches I found a way. In our Activity1 class we’re going to add a method that sets the resolution. Make sure you have

using Android.Views and the method looks like this.

public void SetResolution()
{
Display d = WindowManager.DefaultDisplay;
Game1.Width = d.Width;
Game1.Height = d.Height;
}

Since Width and Height are static variables I can access them through the Game1 class and set them in Activity1.cs. Now we just have to call this Method in the OnCreate method in Activity1.cs

protected override void OnCreate(Bundle bundle)
{
base.OnCreate(bundle);
Game1.Activity = this;
SetResolution();
var g = new Game1();
SetContentView(g.Window);
g.Run();
}

Now we have our resolution let’s fix our orientation. In Activity1.cs make sure that ScreenOrientation = ScreenOrientation.Portrait,

And in Game1.cs constructor make sure you add the following code

graphics.SupportedOrientations = DisplayOrientation.Portrait;

So now with our SetResolution() method in Activity1.cs our Game1 constructor looks like this

#if WINDOWS_PHONE
Width = GraphicsAdapter.DefaultAdapter.CurrentDisplayMode.Width;
Height = GraphicsAdapter.DefaultAdapter.CurrentDisplayMode.Height;
#endif

graphics.SupportedOrientations = DisplayOrientation.Portrait;
graphics.PreferredBackBufferHeight = Height;
graphics.PreferredBackBufferWidth = Width;

Could be twins!

Well, I plunked down 80 Mystic Syrup Ponies for Seeds of Ralark, so I figure I might as well play it.  Or attempt to at least.  Seeds is the type of game where you almost wonder if it’s meant to be played at all.  It’s a platformer without jumping.  I think the aim of the developer was to be like Bionic Commando, because gameplay revolves around walking around as a gecko, moving from platform to platform by way of a grappling hook.  Or, in the case of Seeds, a sticky tongue.  Positive thing out-of-the-way first: the graphics are pretty.  That’s the only nice thing I can say about Seeds.  The play control is atrocious.  Aiming the tongue is too loose, and the physics don’t want to cooperate.  In a short play time, I even found some little quirks that make me wonder.  Like, how come platforms don’t swing back and forth once you’ve moved them?  You can use the tongue to grapple onto a platform, but move the platform you’re standing on by using sticky feet.  However, when you let go with your tongue, the platform goes back to its starting position and locks into place.  That’s just nonsensical.

I can’t really squeeze a full review out of Ralark because I didn’t even finish the tutorial.  I put about thirty minutes into trying, but Seeds of Ralark had already become one of the most painful gaming sessions I had ever experienced.  I guess this is being passed off as “difficult” by the developers, and I suppose that is the case.  Of course, piecing together a broken statue with super glue might also be difficult, but even if you manage it, that doesn’t change the fact that the statue is broken.  If Ralark handled better, it might be fun.  Might. As it stands now, it’s one of the worst games I’ve ever played.

Seeds of Ralark offended my platforming fandom, and also gave me a desire to dump Geico as my insurance carrier.

How does a game this bad come along, and how does a developer not realize it’s a problem?  In the case of Seeds of Ralark, I’m guessing this is a simple case of a developer becoming the best at their own game, not realizing that others are going to find it to be a frustrating, joyless chore to play.  After all, they had no problem with the controls.  The ones they designed, and know all the stupid quirks of that nobody else in their right mind would take the time to learn.  And then you have a game like Rise of the Ravager, where the difficulty spikes so dramatically that any lingering fun is sapped away.

Ravager is a decent concept.  A gallery shooter sort of like Galaga, only with the colored-bullets gameplay of something like Ikaruga.  Sounds good, and at first, it is.  Of course, Ikaruga is insanely difficult with just two colors of bullets.  Ravager has four colors to worry about.  For the less coordinated of the populace (raises hand), that alone could be enough of a turnoff to make Ravager easily skippable.  But, the action was decent enough and showed enough promise that I felt I should continue.  This lasted until I encountered the first boss, which was too spongy for its own good.  I tried reshuffling my experience points into other categories (by far the smartest move the guys at Gentleman Squid did here) but still struggled.  After roughly a dozen attempts, I finally beat it.  But, by this point, I was fatigued by this less-than-exciting sequence and was just anxious for the game to be over.  I call this Steven Seagal Syndrome, because I feel the same way when watching his movies.

This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but with giant colored heads raining down from the sky. Just like the Mayans predicted.

My boyfriend would like me to note that I’m not this game’s target audience.  I try to be as unbiased as possible, but I also generally dislike shmups and have a tough time warming up to them.  Having said that, Ravager has problems that extend beyond its genre.  The color system requires skills that are typically a cut above what an average gamer possesses.  I can handle it up to a certain point, but when you have different-colored enemies coming at you from different sides, with a couple of waves following right behind them, it really can be a bit overwhelming, to the point of being demoralizing.  I also thought there were a few flaws in the upgrade system.  Some of the upgrades are too expensive.  You also get upgrade points by not taking damage on levels.  However, to do so often requires utter perfection.  If you could go back to previous stages and attempt to earn those points you missed (just the missed points, so as to avoid mindless grinding), this would be a great feature to have.  But you can’t go back.  Thus, those upgrade points that the majority of the gaming population really could use will be unobtainable.

Put it this way: let’s say you put me in a foot race with Usain Bolt.  He would absolutely smoke me the first race.  Now let’s say that because he beat me, I have to run the next race with my shoelaces tied together.  Hey wait, shouldn’t HE be the one running with his shoelaces tied together?  That would make for a closer, more exciting race, and I, the person ill-equipped to do well in such a task, would have a better chance of staying competitive.  And that’s what is wrong with Ravager.  Those upgrade points are out of reach for those who are in need of them the most.  Being able to go back and get those points would take the edge off, but the developers are worried that their game might get too easy.  So I guess that’s that.  If only gaming was a medium where, and I’m speaking hypothetically here, you could have adjustable difficulty levels to cater to players of all skill levels.  I know, there I go again, spouting off pure fanciful crazy talk.  I still hold out hope that my insanely absurd “adjustable difficulty” crap will become a reality.  Maybe the 720 or PS4 will have the processing power to pull of such a radical space age innovation.

I probably should also put out there that the developer was anxious for Brian and I to experiment with the co-op stuff, so we did.  Brian jumped in at level 13.  Again, not wanting their game to be “too easy”, the game features what they claim to be “scaling difficulty” that increases with the number of players.  Thus, once Brian jumped in, the game suddenly had what seemed like three times the amount of enemies you would normally encounter, and those enemies took more bullets to kill.  The dudes at Gentleman Squid based this off Diablo 2.  Which you’ll note is a dungeon crawling hack-and-slasher, not a single-screened gallery shooter with limited movement.  Scaling difficulty they say?  I say the amount of shit two people had to deal with seemed more in line with something meant for four players.  I actually shudder how much shit could be in a four player game.  This was not well thought out.

Rise of the Ravager didn’t do much for me, besides make me want to go back and watch Legends of the Hidden Temple. I’m partial to the Orange Iguanas myself, although the Silver Snakes were not without charm.

I’m sure there is an audience for Rise of the Ravager.  It has decent enough play control, pretty graphics, and a nice hook.  The fact that I came close to enjoying it might speak volumes of its quality.  But, based on my own subjective opinions, I can’t recommend it.  It’s just not for me, in the same way that hiring someone to tie me to a bed and beat me with a bullwhip isn’t for me.  Some people are into that kind of shit.

Seeds of Ralark was developed by Escapism Entertainment

Rise of the Ravager was developed by Gentleman Squid

80 Microsoft Points apiece noted that the Leaderboard’s ranked percentage is the lowest now that it’s ever been in the making of this review.  Pick it up, guys.

Right away, I noticed the game was somewhat improved.  Enemies still come out you in boring, mindless waves, but they hack up pretty good.  Levels felt shorter, power-ups more plentiful, and boss battles were fun if unspectacular.

And then I encountered this fucking thing.

It could very well be the most boring boss I’ve taken on in an indie game.  It very much reminded me of the final boss in Sonic 4.  Too spongy, takes too long to open itself up to attack, and made me question whether or not I had died in a horrific traffic accident and had gone to gaming hell.  The first time I fought it, I was low on health (I seemed to be taking unaccountable damage in the stage leading up to it), but it took me a full ten minutes to slip up.  The second time around, after over 15 minutes hitting presumably the weak spot on the boss, it still wasn’t dead.  I was though.  I paused the game, casually got up, turned the power off, and decided to go watch some TV.  I think it was a documentary on tape worms.  Vastly more entertaining than that boss was.

In short, this needs to be fixed.  And it will be.  The developer assured me of it, under penalty of torture by honey and fire ants.  Until then, you can spend your time with the two minigames included.  I just realized I never actually played them.  Let me give them a shot.

(15 minutes later)

Oh dear God, what horrible shit.  I’m not waiting.  Break out the honey and fire ants.  This developer needs a good torturing.

Retro Arcade Adventure Remade was developed by SIACTRO

80 Microsoft Points liked Smash TV years ago but don’t think it’s possible to be good in this day and age so prove me wrong indie developers in the making of this review.

Why, in a time when so many great games exist on every platform, when a dollar can buy you hours of entertainment, do we continue to see half-realized (a kinder word for it, half-assed is what it really is), completely irresponsible releases like Uproar!? And that’s not meant to be an interrobang, but a legitimate interrogative.

A 2D beat ‘em up with 3D assets and environments, the game masquerades as some kind of poor Double Dragon / Final Fight homage, with thugs conveniently waiting in line to be throttled by our Hero Pugilist, working without a backstory or motivational event to explain why he’s punching and kicking the expressionless crud out of every white person with a shaved head that crosses his path. City in Chaos! screams the box art. Really? I saw one car on fire through four levels of urban / rural blandness. If that’s the definition of chaos, then what’s considered Armageddon? Two cars on fire?

Uproar! is a laundry list of troubles. Despite all of the action taking place on asphalt, the character moves like he’s been dipped in molasses and slides to a stop as if he’s on ice. The controls are equally questionable, with button inputs that only work some of the time (try alternating punches and kicks; it’s like the game has to invent the animation on the spot). To make matters worse, our protagonist seems to suffer from a recurring phantom pain, taking invisible hits outside of combat that drain his health. No idea what’s happening there.

The odd behavior continues with the enemies as they wander into frame, blocking the view and punching the air randomly around you, practicing for their death animation or just hoping to create a tear in the space-time continuum so Elizabeth (BioShock Infinite reference) can pluck them from their current reality and re-seat them in a world where Uproar! never existed. My money’s on the latter.

Difficulty, too, is nonexistent. You’re never in any serious danger so long as you button-mash, which can interrupt most enemy attacks. A few basic combos will help, and utilizing a dropped weapon is basically a license to win, though beware; the cherry on top of my time with the game was encountering a Code 4 during the last level’s boss fight, while carrying a hammer. Granted, it only takes about twenty minutes to reach that climactic battle, but I refuse to pummel my way back to that point to see how it ends. I know too well the in-between, and that’s bad enough to have committed to memory.

The only uproar that Uproar! is likely to cause is a riot among wallets at having been swindled out of three dollars, and the shame that very public knowledge will bring when forced to admit it. And ‘swindled’ is indeed the operating word here, as you are receiving nothing in return.

So you cannot do that. Not in Delphi, not in .NET, not in Cocoa, nowhere (:

–jeroen

via: delphi – “Additive” text rendering on TCanvas? – Stack Overflow.

Other work includes lots of new audio and sound effects, and also combat has been fine-tuned and much improved. There’s been lots of great feedback from playtesters, and the game is getting closer and closer to completion every day!

It appears that there is no intentions for a Dream.Build.Play 2013 competition, but after much deliberation, it looks like Dawn of the Ronin will make an appearance on Steam Greenlight, once it’s closer to finish and a suitable video trailer is made to showcase the game.

Levels (13 in all) are more maze-like than straightforward, and can be obtuse to start, shrouded mostly in darkness until you approach and ‘feel out’ the boundaries. Every stage contains a number of individual cells, closed off areas accessible only through warp gates or locked doors. A minimap in the top left corner greatly improves that navigation, showing you said warp points and enemy threats, big and small. Despite the implied complexity, though, you’ll follow a mostly linear path. Clear the way, then move on. Bombs, EMPs, health, and keys can be discovered along the way in hidden rooms, provided you punch the corresponding switch. Some of those are found out in the open, others hidden behind enemy spawners. This is where the ‘twin-stick’ comes in.

Part of the beauty in Smatter is that you can play in two different styles— the ‘slow and steady wins the race’ way, hoarding your health, or the more rigid, challenging line to the exit that rewards tactical elimination of the ‘spawners’, placing them above the far more numerous ‘smatter’ they create. Call this style Mind over Smatter, and chuckle at your own invented cleverness. I did. And it’s more than a (s)matter of tactics. Yes, your survival (and progression) depends on the elimination of everything within a given stage, though real ‘progression’ is determined via a novel (and confusing, after you’ve read my explanation) ‘combo system’ for handling the scoring.

The basic gist is how many smaller enemies are destroyed between ‘spawner’ kills, and in keeping their numbers low in that interim. The counter below your total score represents a multiplier. The higher the number, the better you’re doing. Biding time and wiping out too many ‘smatter’ will decrease that number. Thus, being aggressive is generally the way to go, as killing anything gives you energy to use a focused or wide fire to quickly dispatch the stragglers and / or miniboss types, before they can overtake you or reduce your multiplier to zero. Doing so raises your score and awards badges at the end of the level (only used as a visual distinction on the leaderboard, higher scores still determine your placement).

Hard to tell in a still shot, but this is you winning.

It’s all in knowing where to strike first, moving from one ‘spawner’ to the next, opening up passages where applicable to restock and heal. Using bombs and EMPs also come down to timing and the situation, often the difference between a high score and merely a passable one. Replaying previous stages is encouraged to familiarize yourself with the layout / most optimal run, and results in improved scores, which will of course make you the bigger man in the eyes of the global leaderboard.

Thanks to an intelligent scoring system and smart design that favors finesse and demands skill, Smatter gives more meaning to the twin-stick genre than you’d expect. Its controls are spot on, the visuals polished to a sheen, with no real faults to speak of. Well worth your time and currency.

If however software could be built to hep model the chemical processes, as well as visualize the DNA interaction through computed aided design, we potentially could reduce by order of magnitudes the cost of such manufacturing processes. A computer model of the final XNA could then be sent to existing 3rd party DNA companies that would then create the actual molecules and the chemical environments in which the XNA could replicate.

That fabrication process would not be meant initially for long and large molecules, like more complex living organisms,  but rather for small custom made bacterias that could help prevent some viruses or help break down other materials (like an oil spill for instance).

The beauty of such manufacturing software will rely as much in its ability to create new DNAs as well as update it very fast. For instance, a new synthetic bacteria is designed to decompose an oil spill but the decomposition is not going fast enough for a given environment, say cold weather. We would incorporate back the environmental conditions into the DNA modeling and send the updated molecules to a production, with immediate shipment back to the field, all in very short turn around times.

Over time, proven libraries of synthetic DNA libraries could be built to help create new DNA “applications” for a given requirement.

The reasons software is such a powerful enabler for those bio-tech industries is because the chemical processes can be modeled, molecules visualized, and most important because DNA is a sequence of byte codes, and therefore a higher level human language can be built to help generate that code with meaningful logic, libraries, etc…

Think for instance of a molecule that could be “revisioned”, “expired”, “with new features” much like we think today in terms of software… the creative imagination is the limit here.

Since biology experimentation is mostly a trial and error process with results verification, it will be important to tie the software to robots in order to improve the turn around time, therefore accelerating the development of new molecules by several orders of magnitude. Liquid Handling robots already exist in the biotech industry, however their software interface might not be advanced enough for this kind of software to hardware integration, therefore creating reasons to create new robot controller interfaces. The current life & sciences industry is vested in selling robots so expensive to labs that they usually can only afford to lease them therefore creating a lock-in. It is not clear the existing players will want to disrupt their own significant revenue lines in that respect. Innovations toward a Moore’s law like productivity gains will likely come from new players of either integrated software/hardware solutions or fully programmable robot hardware.

One of the ways by which this could be made a viable enterprise would be to license the integrated software suite  to pharmaceutical or energy companies and take a small % of the drug sales or new energy products that could be built based upon it.

If you are interested in this field, drop me a note, and we can deepen the discussions.

IMHO, In the 21 st century, besides renewable energy, developing new molecules of primitive life (bacterias, microbes) are most likely bound to become some of the major new developing industries and are green fields at this point.

Mono for Android http://xamarin.com/monoforandroid

and Mono Game https://monogame.codeplex.com/

I won’t get into what these are for here, you can read about them on their respective websites.

To begin the port we need to add a new project to our solution, right click on your solution in the solution explorer and select Add > New Project… and select a blank MonoGame template for android. We can remove the Game1.cs from the template straight away as we’ll be add our own. Rather than copying and pasting our .cs files straight over we’ll be adding them as links. This way when we make changes they’ll be made to both projects. To do this right click on your new project in the solution explorer and select Add > Existing Item… then browse to your XNA projects folder and select all the .cs files except Program.cs and add as links.

Next we need to add our content files. Rather than add our images and fonts directly we’ll copy over the .xnb files. These are located in your project’s bin folder and can be copied and pasted over to the Assets > Content directory in your Android project. That’s it for now, your project is all set up for android.

Extending that analogy further, Quiet Christmas is an overcooked cookie. If it had been bundled with the original as a freebie, I could have appreciated it more and probably bumped up Quiet’s standing on the leaderboard.  But it’s not, and I can’t.  The real problem with Quiet Christmas is it’s very much the same game, only with a small handful of new puzzles.  It takes place in the same house as the original, features the same cast, and the logic of the puzzles is largely the same as before.  It would be like buying a DVD for $20 and being told that you can get the alternate ending for an additional $20.  No, that should have been on the DVD in the first place.

Once again, my warped brain conceived horrible things to do to my family. I figured I would grease the floor with butter to cause my hyperactive brother to slip and knock himself unconscious. Not making that up. I watch too much YouTube.

If you played the first Quiet game, you’ll breeze through this expansion.  I used a stopwatch.  Ten minutes, thirty-seven seconds was my time.  And, because it’s the same location, there’s no surprises here for players.  I think this could possibly become a series of games, but not like this.  Keep the family around (I suspect the parents are both drunks and the brother is hyperactive) but send them to new, exotic locations.  That works!  Look at Home Alone 2.  Same movie.  Same plot.  Same characters.  Different location.  $360,000,000 at the box office.  By the way, I didn’t actually know how much that flick made until just now.  Wow.  I think I’m going to start cutting myself.

Quiet Christmas was developed by Nostatic Software

80 Microsoft Points got a lump of coal in their stocking in the making of this review.

Eh, it can be wrong. The art style and eccentricities do make a return, along with the main character from Battlepaths (here representing the ‘Gunner’ class). He’s complimented by three additional allies / classes (Rogue, Mage, and Priestess; all equipped as you’d imagine). Naturally, each character comes with his or her own boosts and shortcomings to stats, and their very own special attack (grenade drop, spike trap, etc.) in two forms; a standard casting to provide some room / temporary relief, and a stronger, wider version of the spell that requires a full bar of mana.

Modes come in Classic and Survival. While the latter plays out exactly as it should (fight until you die), Classic takes the… ahem… classic approach to wave variations, sending lines of zombies and other monsters for five rounds, throwing in a hulking boss type, then repeat. Killing anything that’s walking / flying around will occasionally leave behind health and mana, keeping you focused on the hordes and continually stocked.

You’re additionally buoyed with temporary powerups (spread shot, speed) and permanent stat-boosting upgrades (by swatting at the sack-carrying goblins between rounds) that will gradually transform your chosen avatar into the epitome of a zombie slayer. All stuff you should know from prior experience. Enemies cover the familiar spectrum as well, from classic shamblers to those with ranged attacks, brutes that take more damage, etc. A boss round every few levels further distinguishes the zombie ranks, though even they’re just larger brutes to go with a larger area of attack (or a cheap bomb spread, grrr). …It’s a zombie wave shooter. You’ve seen this all before, and you’ll start to feel remarkably blasé within the first fifteen minutes of booting it up.

And though enemy variety is always appreciated over rote waves of twin-stick nothingness, some of those types can be grating to single-players. Depending on your character and / or reserve mana, you can quickly find yourself surrounded by bats or explosive spiders that like to box you in before detonating, dealing huge amounts of damage you really have no defense against. This would be less of an issue with the local multiplayer (to spread out targets and damage among), though solo runs won’t benefit from the friendly intervention.

Pretty, yet familiar.

Despite competency, solid controls, and some fun moments, Undead Legions is still just a Battlepaths-themed version of every zombie wave shooter that’s ever been released. To be fair, taking it on with friends would no doubt extend the enjoyment (add points accordingly). Maybe worth it if you’ve somehow been living under a rock all these years, but it’s otherwise the same type of game you’ve seen over and over again, with precious little to separate it from the zombie pack.

public static void WriteData()
{
IsolatedStorageFile savegameStorage = IsolatedStorageFile.GetUserStoreForApplication();

IsolatedStorageFileStream fs = null;
using (fs = savegameStorage.CreateFile(“data”))
{
if (fs != null)
{
byte[] bytes = System.BitConverter.GetBytes(UnlockedLevels);
fs.Write(bytes, 0, bytes.Length);
}
}
}

public static void ReadData()
{
using (IsolatedStorageFile savegameStorage = IsolatedStorageFile.GetUserStoreForApplication())
{
if (savegameStorage.FileExists(“data”))
{
using (IsolatedStorageFileStream fs = savegameStorage.OpenFile(“data”, System.IO.FileMode.Open))
{
if (fs != null)
{
byte[] saveBytes = new byte[4];
int count = fs.Read(saveBytes, 0, 4);
if (count > 0)
{
UnlockedLevels = System.BitConverter.ToInt32(saveBytes, 0);
}
}
}
}
}
}

We’ll call WiteData() whenever a level is cleared that will convert the integer UnlockedLevels to a byte stream and write it do isolated storage. ReadData() does the opposite and will be called in the Game1 constructor.

http://monogame.net/

So, thanks to the team MonoGame, XNA is not dead rather it just got adopted by another parents. In a couple of days, I will be posting about how to set up MonoGame and how to port XNA game to android. Cheers!!

Much like how Milkstone Studios has successfully aped both The Binding of Issac and Slender (Sushi Castle and White Noise, respectively) for console audiences, UK developer Neuron Vexx looks to do the same with its first title, Dinora. It really doesn’t don much of a disguise, presenting itself exactly like a cheaper homage to Terraria (which is itself a very fun 2D homage to Minecraft).

Players can expect the requisite combat, boss battles, endless crafting and resource mining, though Dinora puts extra emphasis on the NPCs in its game world, allowing you to foster relationships with them. Get married, have children, watch them all age and then leave behind a boatload of loot. The developer hits all the major bullet points below.

• Randomly generated world   
• Dynamic systems: NPC aging, relationships, day/night, plant growth, hunger 
• Variety of ecosystems: area specific friendly/aggressive creatures
• 6 bosses    
• Combat: Melee, Ranged and Magic   
• Elemental Combat System: Fire, Ice, Venom and Shock   
• NPC Development: Relationships, Occupations, Marriage, Children, Inheritance    
• Resource Collection: Farming, Mining, and Treasure Hunting   
• Crafting: Basic and Advanced (unique elemental weapons and armour)      
• Building: Shelter, Properties to Rent   
• Open world game play with underlying story arc

While it remains to be seen how original the game will end up being, it should at the very least offer up the same ‘massive time sink’ gameplay that other crafters excel at, for a very low price.

Dinora is currently slated for a late April / early May release, and will cost you 80 MSP. You can follow the developer here.

.

]]> http://philliphamlyn.wordpress.com/2013/04/05/large-scale-terrain/ Fri, 05 Apr 2013 09:59:42 +0000 Phillip Hamlyn http://philliphamlyn.wordpress.com/2013/04/05/large-scale-terrain/ The basic problem of displaying large scale 3D landscapes is that the size of landscape visible to the camera is exponentially larger, in terms of area, the further the visual field goes back into the Z axis. This is why even “open” games like Oblivion and Skyrim which seems to give vast views need to use a complex set of backdrops and “blue screen” effects to give an impression of distance.

There are three principal techniques used to produce a reasonable scale of landscape. Others do exist, but they are mainly used for producing static renders of photorealistic landscapes (vterrain). The three main concepts are

• Dynamic Level of Detail (DLOD) and Continuous Level of Detail (CLOD)
• Landscape Tiling
• Geo-Clipmapping

Ultimately all these are techniques for reducing the number of triangles visible to the camera while maintaining a tolerable level of detail close to the viewer for fine detail. This can be avoided by adding fogging to your view, and arbitrarily reducing the viewers depth of field, but this is very noticeable. A very clever fogging technique is to create such a crowded near field view (forests etc) that the viewer doesn’t realise they have a restricted field of view.

Dynamic LOD

This technique makes use of the gradual decomposition of triangles into larger and larger triangles based on some measure of utility – typically a measurement of how near two adjacent triangles are in terms of their gradient or slope.

A really good example is Dustin Horne’s C# based tutorial here which illustrates how you can start with a dense grid of regular triangles and merge the triangles progressively using some deterministic method until you have a mesh of variously larger and smaller triangles which is optimised to the degree you are after. Dustin achieves this by simply determining that triangles further away are bigger than nearby triangles.

A problem with this approach is that all this work is done on the CPU pretty much every frame render – although you could do the culling work every n’th frame its still pretty hard work for the CPU and leaves your GPU sitting idle.

A second issue is that the CPU must have access to the original highly detailed mesh, wipe it clean, and re-decompose it every time – this means there is a definite and quite small limit on the size of the terrain that can be processed this way.

An alternative approach is to pre-simplify the terrain mesh using some algorithm that identifies adjacent triangles which are similar in slope, and merge these. This approach is termed “mesh simplification using quadric error metrics” and many implementations of this exist, along with many, many, scholarly articles. This does get limited in the end though; it does not take into account the need for the viewer to perceive a high level of detail and in fact is just a pre-processing step before you get to the real meat of rendering your landscape. You might reduce your original triangle mesh by 50% using this; but your non-linear problem still exists.

The above triangle mesh has been simplified to eliminate all adjacent similar triangles.

In all cases of dynamic LOD the mesh describes the landscape in its three dimensional form – each point on the mesh indicates a real point on the landscape.

Landscape Tiling

If you break up the original vast mesh of triangles into discreet portions you can apply either mesh simplification techniques and/or triangle reduction techniques to each tile in turn, either at runtime or at preparation time, and render that specific tile at the given resolution as required.

This is a very common technique and has advantages in terms of terrain surface texturing, because each tile can have its own distinct set of textures to be applied. One disadvantage is the need to manage the LOD of each tile while moving through the landscape, and this must be done on the CPU, but this is a relatively small load.

Two common problems which occur are

• The need to stitch tiles of dissimilar detail together to prevent gaps between the tiles appearing
• Each tile needs a separate render call and ultimately this is the limiting factor

Tile stitching problems can be overcome with three techniques

• Drop a vertical “skirt” around each tile so the gaps are not visible (they always occur in the vertical plane). Nasty, but effective. This covers up the problem rather than solve it.
• Make sure that adjacent tiles can only be one LOD resolution different from each other and calculate and draw a series of “bridging” triangles that match up tiles from the various LOD levels. This requires that the terrain tiles have been simplified in a regular form, not using a CLOD algorithm.
• Make sure that each tile edge always forms a tessellating edge to the next lower resolution and accept that high LOD tiles adjacent to each other have a slightly lower resolution join between them for the sake of being able to join seamlessly with a low resolution tile further away,

As with dynamic LOD the points on the resultant meshes indicate real points in space with the X,Y,Z coordinates providing a real-world sample of that points height.

Geo-Clipmapping

(I use this term to describe my technique, although its not quite an accurate term – but it does share some characteristics with the GPU Gems geoclipmapping reference below).

A version of this technique is described in the excellent free online resource GPU Gems and a variant by SkyTiger in his blog.

I use a slightly different approach, the key of which is a doughnut or annulus of triangles

(the heavier weighted lines are an artefact of my picture and are not significant).

If you ignore the centre square you can see that this shape can be scaled by a factor of 2 and the larger mesh will fit neatly over the smaller mesh – like this;

and this transform can be repeated until you get the size you are comfortable with and that your GPU can accommodate.

Each time we add a new annulus we are not creating any new geometry – we are just redrawing the same geometry at a different scale. Taking this one step further, its clear that there is no need to store the entire annulus and draw it – it is symmetrical in both axis, and so we only need one quadrant; we can then scale and rotate this to make the entire mesh.

Because each annulus exactly fits the previous smaller scale they don’t need edge stitching like the landscape tile technique and there is only one render call per annulus, each of which doubles the depth of field viewed.

Unlike the previous techniques the mesh itself is just a structure for displaying the landscape on top of it – the X,Z points do not represent any specific point in the landscape model. In fact, because the viewer never moves in relation to the mesh (they are always camera locked to the centre of the progressively larger annulus meshes) each frame it is likely that the X,Z coordinates of any one vertex represent a slightly different point than before – the mesh is not a model of the terrain – it is a structure on which the terrain is rendered.

A good way to visualise what is going on here is to think that the viewer is surrounded by some massive skirt of triangles, spread out into the infinite distance, with each triangle getting steadily more coarse as it gets further away from the centre. As the viewer moves, their “skirt of triangles” moves with them, flowing over the lumps and bumps of the underlying landscape, getting higher or lower as the underlying terrain forces the skirt up and down.

So what makes the individual triangles go up and down ?

Unlike other techniques this absolutely relies on being able to access the Vertex Texture Fetch feature of HLSL Shader Model 3.

The height coordinate is supplied using a heightmap texture (i.e. a grayscale texture where the blackness of each point provides the measurement of how high it is). The texture is normally 4096×4096. As the viewpoint moves, for each triangle vertex, a calculation is made as follows

• Where is this point in world space ? This is the difference between the vertex X,Z coordinates and the viewers X,Z coordinates.
• Where is this point on the height map ? This is simply scaling the world coordinate obtained above to the heightmap resolution.

The resulting pixel location on the heightmap is sampled and the height is scaled from the 0->1 value held in the texture coordinate to the appropriate real-world height scale. This is then used to provide the Y coordinate for the vertex.

This is more tricky than it sounds because we are juggling multiple different coordinate systems, but outcome is a fully scaled terrain system.

A real catch here is that many triangles will map to a single height map pixel, and this will naturally lead to a Minecraft blocky landscape. In reality the vertex shader must sample the four nearest points to the calculated pixel and blend the heights between them. Normally HLSL would do this for us through the magic of Linear texture sampling but Vertex Texture Fetch does not support this and you have to do it manually. The manual LERP is shown here on Catalins blog but this implementation has a flaw that is only evident when doing geo-clipmapping; the example assumes that the texture POINT sampler is based on a round() (nearest whole integer) when in fact it is a floor() calculation (i.e. lowest whole intenger) . This took me a long while to work out why my landscape was doing some peculiar gyrations. Heres my long winded solution;

//
// Bilinear LERP of a map. 
// 
float4 tex2Dlod_bilinear( sampler heightMapSampler, float4 uv, float texelSize)
{   
    
    // Must round down to the nearest whole texel because thats what Point Sampling does.
    float4 truncUv = float4(
        trunc(uv.x / texelSize) * texelSize,
        trunc(uv.y / texelSize) * texelSize,
        uv.z,
        uv.w);
                
    float4 height00 = tex2Dlod(heightMapSampler, truncUv);         
    
    float4 offsetHeight = truncUv;
    offsetHeight.x += texelSize;
    float height10 = tex2Dlod(heightMapSampler, offsetHeight);         
    
    offsetHeight = truncUv;
    offsetHeight.y += texelSize;
    float height01 = tex2Dlod(heightMapSampler, offsetHeight);         
    
    offsetHeight = truncUv;
    offsetHeight.y += texelSize;
    offsetHeight.x += texelSize;
    float height11 = tex2Dlod(heightMapSampler, offsetHeight);
    
    float2 f = float2(
        (uv.x - truncUv.x) / texelSize,
        (uv.y - truncUv.y) / texelSize);

    float4 tA = lerp( height00, height10, f.x );        
    float4 tB = lerp( height01, height11, f.x );        
    
    return lerp( tA, tB, f.y );
    

}

In the above you can see the annulus working in wireframe, and the watertight mesh that results once textured.

The really nice thing about this technique is that its all carried out on the GPU – the same mesh is used, unaltered in every frame, and the GPU just distorts it up and down based on the arithmetic of where the viewer is in relation to the heightmap texture.

Because the geometry does not represent any real world locations it cannot be used to store Normals, Tangents or Bitangents or any of the other useful information that terrain meshes normally have. In order to use that information in the shader each must be computed into a texture and loaded into the shader, and sampled using the same arithmetic as the heightmap.

• Characters
• Items
• Separate Item Page (to view stored items)
• Save/Load State
• Levels in a databased file eg: .json, xml, csv or Excel
• Enemys

I’m thinking a turned based where emery’s move every turn that you move.

The first step was creating Tiles and Drawing them as you can see below I have a good setup for that.

The Game Entry Page

Tiles Area

public LevelClearScreen(Level lvl)

{

Type = “LevelClearScreen”;

this.score = lvl.Score;

}

This doesn’t work though. The value that is returned is the value from the Level constructor, ie, Score = 0;

After some research I determined that rather than passing a Level by value, I need to pass it by reference. So my new LevelClearScreen constructor now looks like

public LevelClearScreen(ref Level lvl)

{

Type = “LevelClearScreen”;

this.score = lvl.Score

}

Then when I call it in Game1.cs it looks like

currentScreen = new LevelClearScreen(ref lvls[CurrentLevel]);

Despite each monster / alien / bug falling into one of four color categories, there are multiple enemy types (dive bombers to bullet sponges) and flight patterns, patterns that get harder to follow as the number of targets onscreen increases with each level. Initially, you’ll have one turret at your disposal. You’re able to withstand three direct hits on the ground your turrets cover, and given a rechargeable shield. More than enough, you say, though the stages accelerate the pace and drop speed quickly. Mercy isn’t in its vocabulary.

Thankfully, Rise of the Ravager has seen fit to allow you some turret customization. Upgrade points are awarded after the level, with further points to be had for flawless runs (shield damage is okay, but no direct hits) and / or hitting color-coded spy ships. Given how many points you’ll have to sink into the higher upgrade tiers, nailing these optional objectives early will prove vital later. Upgrades run from your standard gains to fire rate and shield repair, to more tangible goods like screen-clearing bombs or extra turrets (all but required for single players).

Much like March to the Moon did before it, the idea of buying and resetting upgrades between each level becomes more than a matter of preference. Instead, it’s a necessary talent you’ll need to hone in order to survive. A setup that works in one stage might not hold up in the next, as the levels themselves can be unpredictable, throwing hundreds of bug fodder your way of varying order and speed. There’s also the multi-form bosses that will have you swapping bullet palettes every other second. They’re chaotic and nerve-wracking, like any good boss battle should be.

Though the biggest surprise to the game is also my lone critique; it’s really fucking hard. The game is clearly balanced with local multiplayer (up to four) in mind. That’s always an odd decision when it comes to indies, considering most of its prospective audience will be playing alone. Some households will have two controllers, but the four the game is hoping you have, with the warm bodies to back them up? Probably a rarer occurrence. This is where the ability to swap turret powers in and out at will becomes essential, as you’ll most likely need to make boosting the number of guns and / or purchasing an auto-sentry your top priority after the first few levels. Even then, you’ll have to mentally adapt to faster and more complicated enemy waves just to stand a chance.

In the end, though, the various skill combinations (and option to refund), multiple levels, and New Game+ (ha, more like Difficulty+) make it easy to recommend as a shooter. Just be forewarned that Rise of the Ravager’s slick presentation masks a hardcore attention to detail that may turn off some looking to tackle it solo. But, if you find you’re up to that challenge and love a good ‘end of the world’ prophecy, this game will reward skilled hands and quick-thinkers.

.

Review on Indie Gamer Chick

The sequel takes the idea in a completely different direction, plucking Shelly (and her bikini) out of the water and dropping her into a quasi-Resident Evil (lots of dead bodies, stiff controls, diary / journal entries just left laying around) ‘Secret Lab’ somewhere in the middle of the sea. It seems the men in the facility have mutated into sharkmen… wearing pants, the result of an experiment to create supersoldiers gone awry. Now they stalk the halls with a taste for blood, yada yada, and once they’ve grabbed you, your head is lunch.

Shark says ‘Nom nom nom’.

You can counter this, somewhat. The QTEs from the original game return, conflated with a baffling stealth mechanic. While you find a knife early on, there isn’t any actual combat in the game. Instead, you’ll need to watch the patrol routes of the sharkmen in each room, then sneak up behind them and stab. Moving too early or botching the approach results in them chasing you before entering into a QTE to temporarily stun them and escape. Theoretically.

The problem begins with the entire idea of moving stealthily. In the crouched position you’re required to use, you’re naturally slowed. The sharks, however, continue to walk at normal speed, pausing only briefly in their routes before moving to the next point, making it virtually impossible for you to match their movements and pounce without alerting them. The QTE stun moves are a pain as well, leaving you only a split-second to press the right button (it alternates with each attack). Couple this with a stuttering framerate and a bad camera around corners, and you’ve got a recipe for unnecessary frustration. Probably not what you want to base the whole of your gameplay on.

More times than not, though, you can simply wait for an opening and run past (yes, it’s neither pretty nor sporting). This would seem to be the best policy until you reach a quandary about six or seven rooms in, where you’ll encounter a locked door, only to be told your salvation (read: keycard) is laying on a body… back in the cafeteria. Which is the same cafeteria you’ll remember from the beginning.

Horror Rule #17: Never waste a grotesque human experiment behind a glass wall.

The intention seems to be a very large middle finger to the audience and a completely dirty trick to extend the length of the game. Oh, so you really expect me to be a trouper and trek all the way back through that shark gauntlet to retrieve a keycard I should have been able to pick up from the start? …Fine, I’m miserable enough already. There and back again, initiate a self-destruct sequence while being chased, dodge more sharkmen, and you’re done, one of the worst hours you’re likely to spend as a gamer. Nary a redemptive quality to be found.

Any pair of rose-tinted glasses, any angle you choose to view it from, Dead Sea II: Mutation is a travesty in digital form. A trap waiting to be sprung, a bad idea that should have never gestated into reality. Unfortunate as that is, and all its issues aside, let it serve as a reminder to other developers, a template on how not to make videogames.

.

Review on Indie Gamer Chick