Taylor

That twitter account doesn't belong to anyone who worked at Irrational Games. It's a kid trying to troll everyone. For the sake of less exposure you might want to remove it from your comments. 

Yeah, I know. I think it's clear from the link it's not someone from Irrational.

I think this is a change that we are bound to see happen more in the industry as we shift from large 100+ sized teams into more manageable 15-30 sized teams. There's three reasons why I think this.

A lot of companies strip down to a core team once a game is out. It's why I've not seen another full-time position since I first entered the industry 7 years ago - everyone is on contracts now so you can get rid of them at the end of the project and avoid scary headlines.

Also, here's something fun: https://twitter.com/visteps/status/436100945668096000

Edit: Clarity

Brick Force

Brick Force is a bad clone of Breakout for The RR Cassette 50 One Screen Remake Mini Competition, where the objective is still to remake a retro title in a flawed way parodying compilations like the original Cassette 50. Unlike the above I didn't go off on a weird YouTube Slender Let's Play angle and it's my actual entry.

Brick Force is a rather terrible rendition of Breakout for many reasons, but mostly the fact that if any of your multi-balls exit the screen it's game over - making it basically impossible.

Web Player | Download

I promise the next thing I make will not be intentionally terrible.

While we're on the topic:

http://www.gamezebo.com/news/2014/02/12/king-has-bought-old-trademark-and-youre-not-going-how-theyre-using-it

I thought it was the Red Bull clone that was being accused of manipulating the app store?

I'm not really convinced it was a clone in the spirit of Zynga. It's similar to Piou Piou or Helicopter Game but it's not a reskin of those titles and it's certainly not in league with the 100% copies in the original post. Kind of worried we're going to get to the point where the whole genre is marked off-limits because Scramble on the Atari did it already.

His official reason for taking down the game was attention like this: https://twitter.com/EliLanger/timelines/432588181611892736

There are some major sour grapes. The Kotaku reporting has been particularly bitter although obviously they are also trying to stir up a shit-storm because that's the Gawker MO.
 

This character kind of looks like two Mario characters combined! That's pretty much the same as ripping the graphics straight out of the rom! And this pipe! Well, it's green and pipe shaped. Look we put it next to the original Mario pipe so you can see that it's... an original asset.

 
They also reported on the $50k a day as $18m a year as if this wasn't going to be a flash in the pan. Also stupid are the comments, "The only issue [with Flappy Bird] is that its basically dark souls for casuals." I would greatly appreciate it if the Internet would stop comparing fucking everything to Dark Souls.

Don't hate the player hate the game.

Except in this context player means the developers and game means iOS trends.

That's confusing.

For fucks sake Alex stop making rubbish games.
 
3D Horror Maze

This game started as an entry for Arcasfifonscreeremminco (The RR Cassette 50 One Screen Remake Mini Competition), where the objective was to remake a retro title in a flawed way parodying compilations like the original Cassette 50. However the game massively deviated from this premise as it developed. I'm not going to enter it.

Instead I ended up remaking 3D Monster Maze as if it was a horror game Let's Play on Youtube. Complete with stylised static, an ending links screen, and even web-cam support so you can see yourself pretending to be scared.
 
Web Player | Download

http://iwantaclone.tumblr.com/

my only problem with this is the alien AI design - it's just Amnesia? it doesn't feel like an alien - just a big clunky monster that walks around and doesn't seem to so much as hunt you as just wander around and let you run 5 metres behind it?

 

maybe it makes it more atmospheric and perhaps even makes for better design and more "hilarious" amnesia-like youtube reaction videos but it just doesn't feel like an actual alien so far..

There's no saying it's done the Frictional Games way. I'm thinking more like Clock Tower 3 with modular scare moments.

Thanks peeps!
 
I also made another game today but it's kind of intentionally bad (this time, ZING). It's for the Candy Jam, which is for making games that infringe on King's trademark because fuck 'em. It's basically just match 3 only I forgot the grid.
 

 
http://tayl1r.itch.io/saga-candy-hd-remix

I'm sure Streets of Rage will get its ill-fated Streetwise soon enough

Thanks! A lot of people get to the temple and think it's a lot more complicated than it actually is. Some of the solutions people are trying I wish I had thought of! I've put together a playthrough video and it's annotated with the answers to things. Obviously this also spoilers the puzzle side completely.

Music is not mine, it's by a guy named Spiff Tune who had dropped it on /r/gameassets.

I deleted my site at the start of 2014 so it was just a portfolio and not some weird portfolio + blog hybrid that was never updated or visited, but I forgot I was using the wordpress images so I've kind of nuked half this page. Oops. But it does mean all my tat is now arranged nicely at: http://alexandertaylor.net.

Also, I've made a new game: Last Word

Reactions are mixed! I will do a video walkthrough in a bit and annotate it with explanations, but basically I've not really done a puzzle-focused game before, people are tripping up a lot, and it's probably my fault...

Web Player | Game Jam Page

Also, First Hour Superpower did so badly in LD28 it didn't even place, so that's fun! Apparently you need to hit a minimum vote threshold and I didn't. This is mostly my own fault for not voting enough. Speaking of failure here's how MetritronHF did last year.

I'm thinking maybe I should move this thread over to Games Discussion if I'm going to keep prattling on. Is that vain? I mean they are, ostensibly, games. idk! Play Last Word!

Nothing annoys me more when job searching than games companies general reluctance to respond. Sometimes you're waiting for months, sometimes you don't hear anything. If the choice is not responding to everyone but giving detailed feedback, or responding to everyone and giving useless feedback, I would rather take an e-mail that just said "nope.avi.".

Probably because I generated hundreds of hours "played" by slowly watching every worlds final and qualifier match while I worked :]

I had some real shockers yesterday, but finally had another good game on Spectre and actually had a peaceful solo queue game as Lich (Outside of Lion getting annoyed I was kill stealing. Which I was).

I don't watch League of Legends much any more but I caught bits of the LCS finale. I do notice that in competitive games 50% of the picks/bans will be from the last 10 or so released champions and everyone has at least 1, if not 2 or 3, mobility moves. But they finally cracked down on mobility creep by adding a guy who can dash every half a second and jump full screen to anyone airborne. Hurrah.

Lulu, Orianna and Riven are probably the most fun champions for me, and are distinctly League specific, so I would say Xypherous. I find Guinsoo's champions are generally limited in "play making" potential, although I used to play Annie and Evelynn a lot (the latter until they killed her ultimate).

I've played a whole 47 games of DotA2 making me some kind of expert (I like that my most denies is eight). I only queue with friends but we're still exposed to Russians calling me a bitch or people who leave as soon as it goes south, but it's still fun I guess. My biggest problem is in our group I'm always some kind of carry, so I basically have no idea how to support, mid or off-lane. Or carry.

I've finished A Link Between Worlds but I've started again on Hero Mode. Pretty much everything I said before was WRONG and I read it back with shame. As soon as you get past the introduction it's full-on LTTP fanservice and dungeon design gets much better. Item renting always feels a bit weird, but seems like the best way to handle the more freestyle nature of the game.

I searched the Internet to see if ALBW not handling death by popping you back at the last door you went through as if nothing had happened meant it was basically Dark Souls. The Internet did not disappoint, although it was mostly comments and a lengthy IGN preview. Incidentally I died 5 times on my first play through and I wasn't tryharding or anything: it's not hard, it just sucks more if you die. Which you won't. Unless you play video games for a living, I guess.

Also playing Super Mario 3D Land which I got free with Zelda, which is the 3DS one (so not Super Mario 3D World). It's really good and I love the way Mario and Zelda just drop in little stage and dungeon gimmicks you could make an entire 20 hour game out of (ideally with a narrator firing every other step), so on one level platforms are synced to the music and on another there are platforms that change whenever you jump. I like it. There are some annoying jumps due to him taking a while to get moving though? Maybe I'm just being crap.

La-Mulana is £2.99. Highly recommended if you like fun.

I hear this is the best block moving game.

I think he does have another target combo that hits crouching and starts from a medium, but it won't go into all the fun stuff his Final Fight chain does. I reinstalled this today to see if I've still got it and after an hour trying to do super jump cancelled dashes on Ibuki I realised I probably don't. Drying it up on Ryu is always an option, though.

Yeah, I guess the 1-frame links are really 2-frames if you can p-link, except on lights unless you modified your stick. For execution I like Akuma, Evil Ryu and Sakura in this because their combos are visually pretty cool. Learning needlessly awkward links to do extra normals and sweeps is kind of meh, especially if screwing them up is a mashed 3f DP in the face and 50%.

If you remove the link from the url it should embed. Maybe the Ultra posts in Now Playing could be brought over into this one?

Execution in this game is really... weird. They did lots of things to make it accessible like auto-correct, reversal windows and the most relaxed motion inputs you could have, but then it has massive amounts of 1-frame links, arcane option selects and double motions with triple button inputs.

You don't think it would be a little too easy to apply pressure if you can command grab without any frame penalty and no EX usage?

It's how she worked in Third-Strike. I certainly would like to see more pressure in this game.

Also Cammy in a Vega mask? :X

One of the leaks for the fifth character is Decapre, another Cammy clone like Juni and Juli, but who has yet to be playable. She fights with a Vega's mask and claws. She's my favourite of all the rumours because she's copy and paste job.