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Reply to Elemental – polishing for Alpha 0 in Elemental Dev Journals Stardock Forums

Thanks for the kind words, dudes and dudettes. Once I get settled in my new digs, I'll start joining our beloved IRC room again. :D

Reply to I’m speaking at GDC, feel free to drop by in PC Gaming Stardock Forums

I sure wish I could attend. :|

Reply to The Official Demigod Change Request Thread in Demigod Journals Demigod Forums

Scroll of rebound. $250. Upon use any spells cast on that player or area around player within the following 2 seconds are rebounded upon the caster. and Ring of rebound. Instant cast time. Upon use, any spell cast on that player or area around player within the subsequent 2 second are rebound upon the caster. I still don't really dig this idea. If something is reflected, then it should be for a portion of the damage; not only is reflecting allowing one per

F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin in Gaming Stardock Forums

What is most astonishing about F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin is not its poster-child of horror: that Gothic-looking nine-year-old child look is about as familiar to anyone who has seen any of Hollywood's reinterpretations of certain Japanese Horror flicks . Nor is it astonishing that F.E.A.R. 2 fails, like so many sequels recently, to convey any

Flower in Gaming Stardock Forums

Flower is a rare video game. For one thing, it has flowers. For another, no one dies. It's a game where the player controls the wind that guides a lonesome flower petal (and its eventual flock of follower petals) through a game world in need of nothing more than some attention, love, and nourishment. Flower is also a game that is difficult to explain. <img src="http://polycat.net/g/d/6

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 2 in Real-Time Stardock Forums

Over the last few years, Relic has been crafting and evolving their very unique take on the real-time strategy genre with every new title they have released. Their shift in focus from a game like Homeworld to their, now, action/RTS genre blend was most apparent in Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War (2004). Dawn of War introduced the concept of cover as an actual game mechanic that players had to think about and plan a strategy around. The game also provided players with a lower unit count than mos

Reply to Mirror's Edge in Gaming Stardock Forums

HI CHARLES.

Mirror's Edge in Gaming Stardock Forums

Mirror's Edge is a game that was heralded by a marketing campaign that wanted gamers to think of Mirror's Edge as a game that was innovative and, more than that, different. It had a heroine that was markedly different from another well-known leading lady . The scenery is comprised of a bright, pronounced color palette that was primarily composed of white and bright shades red, blue, green, and orange. And, more

Reply to Question to Developers Regarding Islands and Start Locations ... ? in War of Magic Elemental Forums

I'm not sure exactly what I can say other than that we are definitely planning on having very large worlds with numerous continents/islands. That is part of the reason why Scott's screenshot existed at all; having a map generator that's smart enough to determine valid locations based on any number of continents and islands is a bit rough to do so it's requiring a great deal of testing.

Magnetic Butterfly in Game Developers Stardock Forums

As I indicated in my brief update last week , I did indeed get a Unity Indie license after some time with the free downloadable trial. I've never been good at constraining myself to the feature set found in a given game engine or game development toolset before but just a few hours with Unity made me a very strong believer in the power the engine had. On the Saturday of this past weekend I

Reply to How I Got Into Games in Game Developers Stardock Forums

Ross has relayed many a story about Digipen; you haven't relayed many a story about Full Sail yet. That's the required entrance exam, obviously .

iPhone Game Development Stuff in Game Developers Stardock Forums

It's been a while since I've just written a generic sort of site entry, but this seemed like a fantastic time to do just that. First, I want to thank everyone for all the awesome responses I got on the site, IRC, Twitter, and other mediums to my last entry . That was actually intended to be a useful piece to serve as advice to people looking to get into the game industry but I got carried away with my personal hi

How I Got Into Games in Game Developers Stardock Forums

Every now and then it's nice to talk about game development; how to get into it, and what it's like to actually be a professional game developer after years of being a part of game development communities on the Internet. This post was inspired by a blog entry by the ever-fantastic Steve Gaynor . The entry is titled "Informative" and he discusses his approach to getting into leve

Reply to I STILL love my ThinkPad T400 in Personal Computing Stardock Forums

That sounds like an absolute beast. I just got my first laptop ever, a macbook (partially because I've been gone a lot of weekends lately and partly because I wanted to do iPhone development), and I've been absolutely amazed by how much I use it. It's so handy to be able to have the same data at work and home along with, well, being able to write and program on a couch.

Games of 2008: Wrap-Up in Gaming Stardock Forums

Every year I realize I don't really like writing lists or articles which end up sounding more like game reviews than critical analyses. So, to close out my list of 2008's best games, I offer the best of the rest: Valkyria Chronicles Sega's Valkyria Chronicles uses its pseudo-World War II setting to the best of its abilities, presenting everything from the blitzkrieg of an "evil empire" to the concentration camps of a group

Games of 2008: Ninja Gaiden 2 in Gaming Stardock Forums

It's easy to be disgusted by a game like Ninja Gaiden 2. Team Ninja's (now former) director, Tomonobu Itagaki, makes no pretense for a fair display of gender differences. The game makes no attempt to convey an intelligent and thought-provoking story through its occasional and concise cut scenes. And the game makes no attempt to further the integrity of video gaming as a medium. Within the first five minutes of the game a player is treated to pints of blood being splattered across the entirety

The Point of No Return in Gaming Stardock Forums

Around the time when I got my Nintendo DS along with Square-Enix's 3D remake of Final Fantasy III -- it's now cool to refer to Final Fantasy games without specifying the use of the Japanese numbering system, right? -- I experienced a gaming phenomenon more clearly than I ever had before. At that point I was already a couple dozen hours into the game and the finer aspects of its mechanics, character classes, and general progression of the game were all as well-known to me as they were ever lik

Games of 2008: Metal Gear Solid 4 in Gaming Stardock Forums

Metal Gear Solid 4 is a strange game to discuss. As a long-time fan of the series it is both a superb gaming experience and an absolutely infuriating one. The game presents itself to players as being almost two separate entities: the one the player is engaged in and the one that Hideo Kojima wants the player to watch. For a game like Metal Gear Solid 4, franchise history is of paramount importance to any discourse regarding the game. Metal Gear Solid is a franchise that got its North

iPhone Development Fun in Game Developers Stardock Forums

I've been plugging away on my iPhone project over my vacation and it's been pretty rad. which I'm actually developing using an iPod Touch but shortening it from iPhone/iPod Touch to just iPhone is so much easier. I do want to record just how absurd application deployment to an iPhone/iPod Touch is, though. Once an individual pays the $99 fee for a development license he/she is given access to the iPhone Development Portal. And in order to get a working xcode project from the <a href="http://w

Games of 2008: Far Cry 2 in Gaming Stardock Forums

Shortly after I started my first game of Far Cry 2, I was treated to an on-rails taxi ride where my driver pointed out some of the unique sites of Africa. There are groups of civilians wandering in hope of escape from their country, varied wildlife, the spreading of a flash fire spreading from a patch of dry grass to a nearby tree, and more than a few angry-looking mercenaries. Functionally, this segment did nothing for me that Half-Life's tram ride didn't do back in 1998. Though, the tour di

Games of 2008: Introduction in Gaming Stardock Forums

It's been a superb year for gamers. There have been such a vast number quality major releases across any number of genres that the idea of a given gamer feeling "left out" is near unthinkable. The major, well-received releases can be categorized as a 4X RTS or simply a great 4X turn-based game. There are open-world shooters in Africa and two types of open-world games in the vein of Grand Theft Auto. Superb cooperative games involving things like zombies, chainsaw-mounted assault rifl

iPhone/iPod Touch Game Development in Game Developers Stardock Forums

The iPhone/iPod Touch is a pretty rad little platform. It has vastly more powerful hardware and a far greater ease of development than I would have ever expected going into it. The biggest problem for me at the moment is that I don't actually have a Mac to call my very own. Someone deemed me responsible enough to borrow a Mac for the course of the Christmas break so I could finally make good on my long-desired and very loud-mouthed wish to see what kind of independent development environment

Games as Art (as Games) in Gaming Stardock Forums

Esquire's Future of Video Game Design is considered required reading in these parts from today onward. And, given this revelation, Jason Rohrer's Passage is also now considered required playing. The Esquire piece brings about one of the game industry's favorite set piece discussions (along with digital rights managemen

Mechanics 7: Heart of Darkness (Far Cry 2) in Gaming Stardock Forums

I just got another mission from the unnaturally quick-speaking warlord of the African UFL -- one of two warring factions in Far Cry 2 -- when one of my buddies gave me a call on my cell phone telling me to meet them if I wanted to make my mission take twice as long as it would if I simply followed orders at no real additional benefit to me. I guess I could just do it, though. I mean, my buddy Nasreen is, apparently, one of the only two women in all of Africa. It wouldn't hurt to ende

Reply to Cubegasm Source Code Release in Game Developers Stardock Forums

[quote who="CaesarsGhost" comment="1"] never give up your hobby projects... they can sometimes turn out more fun then the game itself.[/quote] The, like, day or two I spent on Brain Snack have me more excited than Cubegasm ever did. The problem with Cubegasm wasn't just that I didn't have the proper XNA framework to really make the game (though it was getting there), but that the core game design was lacking. Making a simplistic RTS isn't fun.