Lately I have gotten a bunch of Emails from people who want to help me and as grateful as I am, I don’t really know what to do with them since I know i can do the job myself.
Taking on the world, now that’s a lifestyle. And doing it as an auteur too. He says the game is called Love because that’s why he’s making it. It’s not about money, just the love of the game. Seems to be a major theme he has going. Not a bad one. (more…)
It’s been a while since I updated on the old Liberty Engine so here it is with a lot more polish than the last demo. You still can’t modify the objects or forces just yet, but I sharpened up everything else. It’s running much more efficiently, with stats, an improved console and new keyboard commands. It also includes a “Help” button that will explain all of its functions on mouse-over.
Here is a swf copy as well as an exe. I haven’t seen much of a performance difference between the two:
The default “memory” setting is 60 seconds, so if you play more than 60 seconds it will begin deleting old data. This is meant to prevent the program from filling your computers memory and lagging or crashing. However, you can set the memory value to Infinity and see how much you can hold without slowdown. I found a loss of about 2 or 3 fps with 1 hour of data. I average about 6 or 7 calculated seconds per actual second (Scalc/S) so you should be able to set the rate of time passage to as high as 6 without playback time ever passing up calculation time. But play around with it and let me know how it runs on your machine. I could use the feedback!
With your time rate set to 6, you can get through an hour of simulation in 10 minutes.
So far everything has been derived from the Major Scale, but now I have some new scales to introduce. These are foreign and exotic scales with fascinating new sounds!
After RM1 as a proof of concept, RM2 introduced the Major modes and RM3 explained how they work. Now RM4 will introduce new scales and–guess what?–RM5 will explain how they work. This episode also includes a bit more information on chords.
You have to understand that I can rarely complete a conversation on games without bringing up the Contra series, and most importantly, Contra III: Alien Wars. I played the previous big Contra games when I was a kid and had fun with them, but when Contra III showed up, it exploded my brain. You have to understand this if you hope to imagine the excitement I felt when Contra 4 was announced for the Nintendo DS.
Needless to say, I’ve played the game and it’s great . . . but I have my complaints. (more…)
Books are the most rich source of information and inspiration that game players don’t use. If you’re looking for some new resources, you may be interested in a short list that I’ve compiled. Each one is worth its own review and maybe someday I’ll do just that.
These books are guaranteed to give players a greater appreciation of their games and help developers make better ones. (more…)
Flash games all around but some stand out much more than others. Yesterday I discovered Kavalmaja by Tonypa, a pretty amazing game. He describes it as a “kind of adventure-puzzle game”. That’s pretty much what it is.
Kavalmaja by Tonypa
In the game you wander around a maze trying to figure out what everything does. It uses only the arrow keys and you don’t fight anything. The game uses abstract pixel art and offers no upfront explanation so you have to play around and interact with objects to progress in the game. The artwork is pretty clever and makes symbolic use colors. For example, a gray block is a door that can be opened by a switch or a key and a red object will hurt you. You’re wandering through the maze as you attempt to figure out what these objects do and when you think you’ve figured it all out, it throws in a new surprise for you.
What I found was that my view of what the game actually was changed constantly as I played, as I learned the new rules. That made me curious to find out what it was all about and if I could solve the puzzle!
It’s an simple and clean game. It auto-saves at every screen so you can pick it up and play it any anytime. I think I’m close to finishing it! The perfect game for a mid-core gamer.
But that isn’t the only game to catch my eye recently…
Faxanadu might be one of the best games you’ll never play.
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Developer: Falcom
Publisher: Nintendo
Release: November 16th, 1989
“I’ve been on a long journey. I came back to my home town to
find it is almost deserted. The gate is closed, people are gone, and
the walls are crumbling. I wonder what happened?”
You’re a worn warrior returning to your home of Eolis, a village just outside of the World Tree. You have nothing but the ragged clothes on your back. You discover that the home you return to is not how you remember it. The lakes have dried up and it has become a monster-infested wasteland.
Sounds like the beginning of a grand adventure to me.
It’s great that they’re exploring the area of player government, but it sounds like they’re being somewhat timid about it. The players don’t seem to have a tremendous amount of power and the governmental system within which elections are occurring was constructed and is enforced by the developers rather than emerging organically from the players themselves. It’s not a bold step, but a step nonetheless.
This has prompted me to publicize some of my own experiences in regards to player governments. Anyone I’ve seriously spoken to about games has heard all about these because I’ve found them to be unique and tremendously valuable.
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess continues to mesmerize me. I jumped into the game directly after finishing Super Mario Galaxy a couple weeks ago and I’m still loving every minute of it.
What’s great about this game is that it’s full of surprises. Adventure. And as anyone that’s played Zelda would know, adventure is what Zelda is all about.
Robot Music I proved that a pleasing song can be randomly generated under the right guidelines. Those guidelines stuck to a 4/4 rhythm and the C Major Pentatonic Scale.
Robot Music II proved that the C key could be replaced with any other (changing the root). It also showed that the Major Pentatonic Scale (5 notes) could be expanded to the Major Scale (7 notes) without harming our method. And most importantly, this section covered modes and demonstrated that shifting a song’s mode can significantly change its tone. Knowing that the tone can be changed, how can we control it?
Robot Music III introduces the Circle of Fifths. It is a basic musical tool that will help us predict the impact of a mode of the Major Scale. With it, our Robot can place notes along 2 dimensions (Consonance vs. Dissonance, Dominance vs. Sub-Dominance) and estimate the emotional impact of a note according to an arbitrary algorithm based on personal tastes.
This installment is the first to go into the perception of music. To begin, we must discuss aural perception and some musical fundamentals. That technical information will be related to our previous musical concepts by the use of the Circle of Fifths. And finally, a demonstration of mode relationships and some discussion of their popular uses.
You probably already know some of this, so I’ll try to move fast.
