Posts by Minos

  • Now playing 2010

    Quote from Furyo

    I've been on a PSN demo streak lately, trying Mini Ninjas (which I thought as simple as the design was, the game really was doing what it was going for rather well), DeathSpank, Earthworm Jim, NBA 2K11 and Lego Harry Potter. Still got Mafia II to go through.As for entire games, God of War III has been absolutely magnificent. I'm done with Hades now so I'll be looking forward to finishing this game this week

    Mini Ninjas is awesome, if only it was polished a bit more...

    Spent the weekend playing the new Prince of Persia on 360, really great stuff!

  • Now playing 2010

    Quote from Warby

    i just played through rainbow six vegas 1+2 in coop ! the game is fun but kleins textures really take a beating in splitscreen coop they are only loaded at like the lowest mip level D: this shit is more lowres than doom1 !

    I was browsing ubi's 3d objects bank for Rainbow Six Vegas assets the other day and it was quite easy to spot klein's textures.

    <3 my luka~~

  • Sonic back to 2D!

    Quote

    ":3eg4u5g3]

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  • Medal of Honor

    First reviews are up. This is definitely turning to be the biggest flop of 2010...

    Quote

    Creutz says that with the game positioned as a challenger to Activision’s (ATVI) Call of Duty franchise in the first-person shooter genre, he was hoping for scores in the 85-90% approval range. “Failing to achieve this target would be a bit of a black eye for EA management given the amount of focus and hype they have placed on the game,” he writes. “We believe the mixed reviews could impact the title’s legs as it will likely be competitively disadvantaged once Activision releases Call of Duty: Black Ops.”

    http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdail ... hoobarrons

  • Minecraft

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  • Congrats Zaphod/Nimblebit

    Quote from zaphod

    I agree that ZG had a lot of untapped potential, unfortunately we were completely tapped out personally just getting it to the point it was at and we didn't have the drive to continue on with the amount of work it would have taken to explore it's full potential. I really want to set it free at some point, I just don't know when that will be exactly due to some other complications.Jumping into any market with the expectation of earning money on the first shot without building up experience in that market is probably a little foolhardy.

    I feel like that is what we did with Zero Gear on Steam, and I see lots of developers doing the same thing on the App Store. You can't just drop in one fishing line and then give up when you don't come up with a fish in that spot.

    We have made plenty of games that didn't make much money on the App Store, and have gained enough experience from all of them to have a clearer picture of what works and what doesn't on the App Store as a result.

    I think the days of a game just expecting to make money because it is on the market and looks nice is slowly coming to an end. There are some places where the supply of games is artificially limited like console retail and XBLA where they only release so many games a year where you can probably still ride that scarcity to steer a certain amount of people towards your product, but I actually relish the challenge of being in a giant sea of other games and having to work our asses off to get them to rise to the top.

    How many of the people you know making iPhone games simply toss it out there, and then are befuddled when the dollars don't start rolling in? It is a common mistake to think that since you see so many obviously crappy apps going gangbusters on the App Store, that if you just put out something of any quality at all it HAS to just rise to the top on it's own!

    Thanks for shining some light on this subject.

    If you don't mind answering, how did you get people to know about your games in the first place?

    I'm asking this because 2 friends of mine worked their asses off on a kickass iPad game and even though the game is clearly above average of what you can find on app store however they are having a really hard time trying to get some exposure on AppStore. They tried to place some ads on an iPhone games site but the are no slots available until October next year!

    I don't know, I may be talking out of my ass, but maybe it's a mix of luck, hard work and if you know anyone at Apple. Of course this is their first release and it's a just matter of time until they are experienced in this market.

  • Congrats Zaphod/Nimblebit

    I was sad Zero Gear's issues weren't properly addressed after release. The game never lived up to its potential in my opinion... Imagine that game with some social networking integration, better physics, better proportions, more content released often and it could slowly become a hit. Maybe you could had even made an stripped down free version to attract more attention at the time?

    But yeah, it's nice you are doing fine with iPhone games. You deserve it after all the hard work. You are probably an exception on this market though. Everyone I know making iphone games rarely reach break-even.

  • Pirates of New Horizons

    wow guys!! This is just a prototype but what is there already I can see as a great start for something huge. I loved exploring the island, not many games these days let you explore the world on your on pace and this is very nice! I also love how the city has different areas and stuff, that will allow to some nice NPC interactions in the future. You should definitely check out The Misadventures of Flapjack, it's my favorite cartoon atm and could steal a lot of ideas!

    At first I thought the camera movement was a bit weird but I got used to it quickly. I didn't play the game with a 360 controller though, I'm not at home now. The game sorft of reminds me of Mini Ninjas, and I don't know, perhaps this is the structure Mini Ninjas needed to be more fun? I mean, having a hub where you can go back to anytime a-la mario galaxy?

    Areas that need improvement imo:

    - The text boxes/NPC conversation system look a bit ugly. I think you could try something akin to Animal Crossing: The camera zooms in showing both the player and the NPC facing each other with text balloons on the bottom of the screen:

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    - I missed some atmospheric effects on the city. Fog, volumetric effects on the distance, wind gusts etc... the city itself feels a bit sterile because of the lack of such effects.

    Congrats again you guys are hugely talented and games like that renew the faith that I picked the right career for my life! I can't wait to see where you guys are going to take this!

  • nDo - Normal creation toolkit

    Quote from PhilipK

    Might as well post a new example I made for the tutorial here as well.Added another example .PSD to the tutorial. Just a photo based one this time where I used hand masking a bit together with my nDo-generated normals (strangely the .PSD is ver large in filesize. I had originally planned to release it in it's full res (1024x1024) but then it'd be around 200MB...)

    [Blocked Image: http://philipk.net/tutorials/ndo/tools_example_03.jpg]

    PSD: http://philipk.net/tutorials/ndo/Example_03.psd

    Tutorial: http://philipk.net/tutorials/ndo/ndo.html

    Wow that's impressive!!