Posts by ReNo

Warby: It's pretty easy to get into mate! For making Xbox Indie Games all you need is a retail Xbox 360, and Xbox LIVE Gold Account (£40 per year) and a subscription to the Creator's Club (£60 per year IIRC). After that you can use Visual C# Express for free to do your programming, and whatever tools you normally do for your asset creation. XNA is a pretty powerful platform for developing but it's also really easy to use as programming APIs go. Getting your games published on the indie games marketplace is as easy as passing through a peer review system, and provided you do you then get 70% of any sales that your game makes. It's still a bit too small a market to reliably make good money off - most games sell between 100 at the most disappointing and 10,000 if they do well (the top sellers are around 100,000) - but it's definitely one of the more interesting markets around at the moment.

dux: I had to look up Wetrix, looks fun though, so who knows We've a few projects up our sleeves that we'd like to work on, but for the time being we're taking a wee break as one of the team has just gotten married and is off on his honeymoon. I'll be sure to let you guys know what's next when it's nearly done

Thanks for the kind words guys, hope anybody who tries it out likes it, though let me know if you have any thoughts as we're always happy for some constructive criticism!

I knew I was gonna be snapping up Limbo as soon as I saw the first trailer; it's easily amongst the most beautiful games I've ever played. Anybody with an Xbox should play this game, and even if it isn't to their taste in terms of gameplay they should absolutely grab the trial just to experience the visuals.

That said, the gameplay is top notch too. Some head-scratching puzzles in places but never cheap or frustrating, and although I do have to agree that it relies on trial and error quite frequently, it is through those inevitable deaths that I found much of the emotional impact of the game. You see it coming but only just, and it's that split-second of panic - that realisation of impending doom - that got me every time. I found myself tip-toeing forwards in places, fearful of what was coming next. Seeing a button embedded in the floor and thinking "I know I have to step on this...but I don't want to!". For me, that is ultimately the emotion that sums up Limbo. Dread. You don't clear a section and think "ah, relief!" like in so many other games. Instead you think "oh shit, it's only going to get worse!".

It's also a great game to play with a non-gamer. My girlfriend isn't into games at all, but when I showed her a trailer for Limbo a while ago she instantly took a liking to it, so we played through most of it together. She had a lot of fun just soaking in the atmosphere and helping with the puzzles, without ever touching the control pad. She's now asking if there are similar games that I can show her, so I have an excuse to introduce her to Braid and Ico soon

And in reference to those games, I'd have to say that Limbo *almost* surpasses both, but ultimately fails to. It absolutely lives up to their atmosphere and gameplay, but despite undoubtedly managing to evoke strong emotional responses through its gameplay, visuals and setting, the minimalistic story left me surprisingly cold.

SPOILERS!!!

The problem for me was that the storyline didn't build in any meaningful way. At all. I had no idea I was approaching the end of the game when all of a sudden I hit the credits. In fact, the game actively misleads you about your progress by giving you a "cleared" percentage that DOESN'T RELATE TO THE GAME LENGTH. How cheap is that? You finish the game at 80%, and then suddenly realise they included getting all the achievements in hitting 100% completion. I'd seen my clear percentage right before the end scene, meaning I watched it thinking "still 20% of the game to go", and as such felt horrendously robbed when the credits rolled. I don't mind the short length of the game at all, I'm happy to pay for short, high quality games, but that ending and the deception in their progress percentage really knocked me for six.

Not only that, but in many ways it feels like the maliciousness of this "limbo" diminishes as the game goes on, which is the opposite to what you'd expect. That giant spider was surprisingly early in the game, and then the attacking boys with their darts or arrows or whatever around a 3rd in. After that, although the puzzles got harder, there was basically nothing beyond environmental hazards to deal with. I kept expecting some other "foe" to face in a similar manner to the boys or the spider, but nothing really came. Those weird bug things that clamp into your head don't count

/SPOILERS

Anyway, enough said. Great game, highly recommended. I'll probably play through again to try and gleam a bit more from the story - I think there's more hidden in the environment than I appreciated first time through.

This is looking totally friggin' sweet! I love pirate games, I love blue skies, I love stylised cartoony graphics, and I love seeing a bunch of guys as talented as you lot taking the plunge into the indie scene

As mentioned the anims are holding back the presentation a little in their current state, but they're perfectly adequate for a prototype. Everything else is looking spot on. What is your plan of action with this; are you guys still employed elsewhere or is this now a full time effort for you?

I think what you guys have done so far is looking absolutely ace, and I wish you all the best of luck getting that Unity Pro prize!

Hey fella's! It's been a long while! I feel bad showing up after such a long while with, surprise surprise, something to pimp out, but maybe that's better than a random "hi" with nothing to show? Either way, I hope you won't mind too much

Some of you might remember that I released a game on Xbox Indies called Crate Expectations late last year. Well myself and the other 2 guys at Haiku Interactive have just let our 2nd game loose on the world!

This time around we decided to make a game to fill a niche that doesn't get filled too often, and with so many people clamouring after a new Pilotwings title we figured hang gliding was a good bet. We also wanted to make a game that was relaxing and approachable for people of all gaming skill, but still presented a good challenge and good competitive potential through online scoreboards. Finally, we wanted to make a game that uses the Xbox Avatars, because we don't have an in house artist to make our characters and we're not blind to the fact that the market on the Xbox Indies channel seem to love Avatar games

So we present AvaGlide! An avatar-based hang gliding game featuring 4 game modes, 3 levels, selectable time of day variants, online scoreboards, medals to earn, local multiplayer, 2 control styles, and...well I guess that's about it actually But hey, it's only $1!

TRAILER...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=

Wow, nicely done Ginger, glad you found somewhere, and somewhere totally sweet at that! Split/Second is looking ace, and I really enjoyed Pure too.

No love for Trials HD on mapcore? I've not done as much gaming as I'd have liked this year but this game, like it's predecessor Trials 2, ate up a whole lot of hours. If anybody here plays it and wants somebody to compete against on the leaderboards then add me on Xbox Live - ReNo84.

I'll also give a nod to...

- DJ Hero for making me give a shit about rythm action games, which I normally don't get much fun out of. Haven't played it all that much yet but I've really enjoyed the times I have.

- Storage Inc for giving me some faith in Xbox Indies, as well as showing me that the forklift truck driving genre didn't die with Shenmue.

There's plenty of others I'm sure, and I've enjoyed plenty of the big games too (MW2, ODST, AC2, etc...), but in a way they are kind of a given.

Edinburgh is a lovely place to visit - a lot of history to enjoy and some beautiful views when the weather is good. But then, the weather is very often not so good It's a nice compact city that is easy to explore on foot, and there are loads of nice little traditional bars to pop into. Once again this is a biased hometown suggestion, but that doesn't make it any less worthy of consideration

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You can remove me from Outerlight - I left at the start of December. I'm now working as a designer at a new startup called "Haiku Interactive". We're also based in Edinburgh, UK.

I don't see how it can. The whole point of this is that it is rendering the game for you. Therefore it needs to react to your input, render the results of your input, then send it back. You can't just have a buffer to deal with that because what are you going to buffer? The rendered video that has resulted from an input you haven't even made yet?

Are you using materials that are meant for models on brushwork? You shouldn't be using "VertexLitGeneric" materials on any brushwork or you'll get weird lighting issues that sound a lot like what you're describing. To fix it you can either switch it out for a different material that uses a suitable shader for brushes, or if you really want to use that texture and there isn't a LightmappedGeneric version of it available, you can create your own LightmappedGeneric material that references the same texture(s). Apologies if you've already checked for this, just sounds like a likely candidate.

Quote from Taylor

I think "controversial" is maybe too strong of a word.

Yeah you are right. I wasn't really meaning to claim they spark controversy, simply that they tend to split people's opinions. I guess a better term would be divisive.

I guess these sort of games are always quite controversial. Some love them for attempting to use the medium to tell a story or convey a message, rather than simply an excuse to shoot at things. Other people hate them because they ignore one of the fundamentals of the medium - gameplay.

It's hard to deny the latter point. There is no "fun" to be had in holding right until you are prompted to press space. There is no challenge, no risk, and arguably no reward. But does every game need to fulfill that?

I remember a friend and fellow game developer say something to the effect of "if you're putting story above gameplay, then you should be making a movie not a game". I can't say that I agree with that statement. I think that it depends entirely on what it is you are trying to achieve. I find games like this one interesting not because of the gameplay, but because they present a story, or a message, in an interesting and novel way. The interactivity can be an integral part of the storytelling, such that you can't just say "might as well have been a movie" because by making it so you'd be detracting from the experience. I strongly believe that watching this play out automatically wouldn't have the same effect. By making the player themselves decide to rebel against the monotony of the daily routine the game becomes a far more personal experience than you could have as a spectator in a movie of the same events.

I can see why some people wouldn't enjoy the game, as if you approach it looking for a gameplay experience you're pretty much destined to leave disappointed. I personally like seeing projects like this, however, for showing the potential of games as a truly unique way of presenting a story.

Very neat indeed. Really nice presentation, music fits it perfectly, and although it is hardly the most challenging of games it does give you a little "oh cool!" kick each time you find one of the changes I really enjoyed it.

Cool thread, I've just ordered a few of these as a result.

My contribution is "Dark Hour", or "La Hora Fria" to give its original name. It's a 2008 Spanish horror/sci-fi movie about a group of people who are forced to live in some kind of bunker to avoid the threat of the "strangers" and "invisibles" - 2 different types of entity that are extremely dangerous to the survivors. The film joins this group after they have clearly been living in the bunker for some time, and follows their daily routine and fight for survival.

It isn't perfect - some of the acting is mixed, and the action scenes can be a bit poor - but it presents a hugely intriguing world that really makes you wonder about the backstory. Where are these people? When is it set? Are they the only survivors? You're left to figure out your answers to these questions as the movie goes on rather than being spoon fed all the facts about the situation, and I found it to be really quite captivating. I'd highly recommend it.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0484273/

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Aww christ, they go and add this right when I'm done working with Source. I would have KILLED for this feature a couple of years back. I resorted to horribly contrived visgroup structures to mass change lighting/entity setups and therefore achieve something approximating the same effect, but obviously that was never applicable to geometry. Not only that, but hammer even had trouble with visgroups - add too many and you end up with the whole visgroup system of your map breaking and the need to manually remove visgroups using notepad to get them working again!

Still, nice development for them to add. I guess they're not quite done with source yet then...

Just popped along here to post about that trailer actually, I was very impressed I'm looking forward to this even more than I expected to, and I say that as somebody who genuinely liked the first game.

It's an unfortunate problem, but I think it's less to do with game dev's being purposefully lazy or harsh with optimisation, and more to do with them being ignorant to it being a problem. I've played through Dead Space twice with no problems whatsoever, and until reading this thread I wasn't aware that low FOVs are a cause of motion sickness for some people. I can appreciate it's a really frustrating problem those that suffer from it, but it isn't something that is all that well documented or known about. I reckon it's more of a game design decision than anything else, typically. I imagine it normally comes down to somebody deciding what suits the game rather than anything else.

It's a good coop game, but I don't imagine it retains all its charm in single player. Some very cool and memorable levels and scenarios though. I certainly didn't regret my purchase - my buddy and I enjoyed it very much.

Was really glad to see them going through with the sequel, as I actually really enjoyed the first game despite its flaws. I hope this version corrects some of the niggles in the last game, particularly the basic "feel" of the aiming and shooting, which I was never happy with until I heavily tweaked all the sensitivity options. I guess at least there WERE all those options that you could tweak, but I'm happy to just accept the defaults in most shooters. Doing so in K&L left it feeling very odd I felt.

Not really sure why you think MW2 is a more "justified" sequel to L4D2? It adds new maps and weapons/perks but otherwise essentially sticks to what the first game did. Which is a good thing, since that was ace. Like L4D was.

I'm not gonna sit here and say I wouldn't like to see more improvements in L4D2 over it's predecessor, but I'm just glad to have a whole bunch more content to play through with my mates without having to wait years for it.