On this episode of the Monster Hunter Podcast: Kick It! We are joined by a the kick-ass kick-boxer Ramone to kick a Great Jaggi to the ground. This is the audio-only version of this episode.
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With the friendly help for mczonk I recently completed Goof Troop on the SNES.
It’s a interesting game that doesn’t receive too much attention. It is a goofy-themed top-down action puzzle game with a good co-op mode. It consists of 5 levels. Each level fells a bit more lengthy than a Zelda dungeon. The gameplay is quite similar to Zelda in general. The biggest difference is that there is no primary weapon an the focus is on picking up and throwing objects. Also, there is no overworld.
The co-op mode is really polished and it is a lot of fun to figure out things together. It certainly feels like the game was developed with co-op in mind. On the other hand, there are hardly any puzzles that require you to work together with the second player. I’m guessing that this was done to not lock out people, who play single-player.
The puzzles and challenges are a bit mis-balanced. The difficulty is all over the place. Most of them are really easy. But every now and then, a real mind-bender comes in. There was one room we couldn’t clear even after minutes of really hard work. We had to use a FAQ . It was getting late so we might have been not on the top of our game. But it certainly felt inconsistent at times.
There are bosses at the end of each level. While they are fun and imaginative, they suffer from hit-point sponge syndrome. The battles felt a bit drawn out. Luckily, we never had to restart a level because of them. But I think it’s only because of mczonk’s mad gaming skills.
On a more positive note, the visuals are very polished and the game mechanics a solid. Actually, I was surprised that the game only had 5 levels. It seems like there is enough stuff for at least 10 more. On the other hand, the short length fits perfectly for a co-op experience. We finished it in two settings. We could have made it in one.
Generally, we had a lot of fun. It is not perfect but it surprisingly good. As an added bonus, I finished another batch of 5 games! Which means I “deserved” the right to play GT5. Yay!
Well maybe not ALL of StarCraft but an important part nonetheless. If you are an avid follower of Day9 as I am, you might remember the amazing 100th episode. In this particular episode, Day9 tells the story of how he grew up with the game and how he witnessed and participated in the shaping of the eSports scene as we know it. Recently, this cool video surfaced showing one moment from that history.
Apparently, the filmmaker was at a very important tournament in which Day9, Tasteless and Artosis participated. The guys organizing the tournament didn’t have a clue so Tasteless basically just went up on stage and pretty much started everybody’s career right there. Also Day9 got qualified for a the biggest StarCraft tournament in Singapore.
But the filmmaker wasn’t happy with the footage so he couldn’t bing himself to edit it into a film. He just recently re-discovered it and finally got everything together. A wonderful piece of eSports history. I especially love the recap at the end. Feels like an 80ies movie.
I know there are a lot of good downloadable games lately. But I really wanted to plug one in here that deserves A LOT more attention than it gets. It’s TNT Racers from Keen Games!
I was working at Neon Studios once which became Keen Games at some point. I know some of the people working there and I respect and admire their dedication to polish and excellence. TNT Racers is yet another example. It’s pretty much a clone of the old Micro Machines but done right. It has the familiar mechanic where you goal is to get ahead of the opposition so far that the camera can’t keep you all at the screen at once anymore. Additionally, Keen have introduced some vital gameplay tweaks. Defeated players are able to participate in the race as ghost cars. Ghost cars can’t win the round anymore but they can still sabotage other players. Also, there are Mario Kart-style pickups with a good variety of effects.
Otherwise, it’s just awesomely polished racing physic and excellent track design. Especially when you have friends over, it’s a blast to play. Unfortunately, Keen is not a big studio and it seems like the title just doesn’t get any publicity. Considering it’s quality it just doesn’t deserve it. If you own a console, do yourself a favor and at least try the demo. Also, spread the word!
I know nobody really likes a crosspost but I’m trying to keep my workload overhead low as I wrap up TRAUMA. Besides, it’s video and everybody loves video!
So the Cologne Game Lab team is currently at GDC (without me – Bastards!) and they are recording wonderful videos there. I thought I share them with you:
I especially love this one. It’s a spontaneous interview with Tracy Fullerton!
The team will be there for the next few days so I’m hoping there are more such magnificent videos coming down the pipe. I’m certainly looking forward to them and will post any news on here. More random interviews please!
On this episode of the Monster Hunter Podcast: The Milkman Rings Twice. We are joined by Shepard’s (evil?) twin and finally move on to Monster Hunter Portable 3rd.
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I can talk about Space Shuttles and old gaming Hardware all day long. But the reason I’m here is to make games and this one game in particular has been in development for too long. The next semester is about to start at CGL and so I decided to take it slow at work for a week to concentrate on TRAUMA. This week should be enough to finish the last tweaks.
Speaking of tweaks, I already crossed out a couple of small ones. I increased the legibility of subtitles on white backgrounds, and tweaked the duration of some of the subtitles.
Polish subtitles in action. The shadow improves legibility on bright backgrounds.
I fixed a couple of near-plane glitches and removed my thumb that was visible in one of the photos. As you can see, the issues are spectacularly unspectacular and they will just continue getting less and less important from here on. So I’m looking forward to an unspectacular week. Hopefully that will get me distracted from all the GDC noise.
It’s a known cliché of men spending hours in their garages restoring old cars or motorcycles. The modern, dorky version of that is restoring old gaming equipment. My Non-Finite Electronic order arrived today. The GameBoy Classic I got on eBay also just happened to arrive today. So I spent most of my day finally opening up my two vintage GameBoys and tinkering with them. I don’t have all the equipment yet to install the backlighting, so I focused on cleaning them.
And there was a lot of cleaning to do! The GameBoy Classic was in horrible shape. Actually, I felt almost a little ripped off. The case was really dirty and yellowish. The buttons were extremely worn down. The display was heavily scratched. Using the new tri-wing screwdriver I got from Non-Finite, I disassembled it and put the case it in a bath. That helped a lot but there is still a visible yellowing of the case on the front. I presume the device was left in the sun for longer periods of time. I did some research and found this fascinating recipe for reversing this kind of aging. The website even has a detailed breakdown of the chemistry behind it! It seems like a dangerous and complicated procedure. So of course I’m eager to try it!
But for now the bath shall suffice. There is not enough sunshine to make this work and I don’t want to buy a UV lamp. The scratched screen lens and the worn buttons is not something I can repair. But I already ordered a replacement lens and I will order the replacement buttons some other time.
Moving on to the pocket, things didn’t go so well. The pocket was actually in good shape. The only thing I wanted to clean out were the battery contacts. Apparently the previous owner had a battery leak and the contacts had some residue. I had sometimes troubles to turn it on. Also it didn’t look so hot, especially with the transparent case. So I disassembled the case and put this one in a bath as well. I didn’t have any battery cleaner so I thought I will go with oven cleaner. After all, the contacts were metal, right? Well, that turned out to be a very, very, very bad idea. The oven cleaner not only removed the bater residue. It also basically dissolved the metal. Half of it crumbled and broke away. All that was left was just a rusty stub. Oh fffffffffffuuuuuuuuuu…..!!
I thought I would try to put a drop of solder in there. However, my last results with the soldering iron weren’t actually encouraging. Fair enough, I epically failed again. I was having some serious problems even melting the solder. I’m pretty much convinced that it’s all not my fault, my soldering iron just sucks big time. I got a drop of solder out eventually but since I wasn’t able to heat up the contacts as well, there was no good connection and the drop broke away when I tried to put everything back together. Along with the drop, even more of the contact broke away and I decided to give up on soldering. I simply bent the remaining metal of the contact into a weird shape that would reach all the way up to the battery. Thankfully, that worked! But for the long run, I will need a better solution in there.
So now I have a GameBoy Classic and a GameBoy Pocket. I must say although the Pocket is smaller, better looking and uses less batteries, I’m kinda drawn to the classic one. Because it’s so big, I can hold it better. The screen is smaller and has poorer contrast but due to it’s greenish hue, it somehow looks better. The reflector at the back of the GameBoy Pocket’s LCD sparkles a little. This creates a lot of visual noise. The GameBoy Classic produces a sooth, clean image. At least as far as motion blur goes, both are equally bad.
I ordered some more supplies, among those a new soldering iron. I’m dedicated to build in the backlight in one of the GameBoys. I’m not quite sure which one to do first. It seems like there is less to lose with the original GameBoy and it would be technically easier. On the other hand, the GameBoy Pocket would look much cooler and I’m would be more interested in playing it backlit. Decisions, decisions…
Space Geekout! I love watching stuff being launch into space. It’s spectacular, exciting and educative at the same time. Science just doesn’t get more kickass than this.
But yesterday’s launch has a bittersweet subtext. The Space Shuttle program is close to being shut down. This was the last launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery. There will be only 2 more Space Shuttle launches: the last launch of Endeavour and Atlantis. So we will be back to just rockets very soon and we don’t even have too many options. Pretty much the only viable way to get people into space will be the good old Soyuz. If you just compare a Soyuz to a Space Shuttle orbiter, it becomes clear that we are performing quite a downgrade.
Shuttle vs. Soyuz: “You came in that thing? You’re braver than I thought.”
On the other hand, there is no need to be too sentimental about the Shuttle. It was a beautiful but ill-conceived system from the get go. The initial idea was to create a plane that would go into space cheaply. That idea was lost during the many compromises and iterations. This website gives a fantastically detailed insight into the entire process and the many, much more intriguing designs that were rejected along the way. Generally, you will find that early designs tried to focus a lot on re-usability. What came out was just a very complicated, almost completely not re-usable rocket with a gigantic, heavy, fragile, plane-shaped capsule strapped onto it.
Early Space Shuttle concept. Note that every part of the system is re-usable. The booster rockets are shuttles themselves. They are all based on the same design to reduce the number of replacement parts.
Of course, that huge capsule sure had it’s advantages. The vital Hubble Mission and the ISS wouldn’t be possible without it. But the maintenance costs were pretty much sucking away all the NASA Budget for years. I do hope that we will see an increased interest in the robotic exploration of our Solar System now that the Shuttle is going away. It is a much cheaper and incredibly effective way to go where no man has gone before.
There is not much going on recently and I’m swamped with some boring work. But look at this cool poster I found:
It is a beautiful chart illustrating the evolution of video game controllers. I’m especially fascinated by the upper part of that chart. I have never seen an Odyssey but the weird controllers already caught my attention before. The Odyssey was a far cry from a “real” video game so it’s fascinating how much it resembled a console superficially. The idea of a hand controller was kinda there. But it was just an awkward box. The designers didn’t seem to have any clear idea how people would use it. At least it’s not obvious. A good review of the Odyssey I can recommend is the one by the Angry Video Nerd. The “Nerdy Turd” bit may not be his finest moment but the video gives a very good idea of the Odyssey and especially it’s controller.
Another interesting controller is the one from the Intellivision and ColecoVision. The interesting part is that both controllers are very bizarre, yet very similar. They both feature a numerical keypad which I’m guessing was a standard module that could be bought in large quantities. The Intellivision one features a weird rotating disk. There are some additional buttons but they are all over the place. Again, as with the Odyssey, it seems like the people that came up with them had a clear idea on how players are supposed to hold them. As with the Odyssey, the Nerd has a video on both, the Intellivision and ColecoVision. I recommend both.
Intellivision (left) and ColecoVision (right) controllers.
Technically, the process shown by the poster isn’t evolution. Evolution usually refers to a process without a conscious designer. On the other hand, design was as still is rarely recognized as a vital consideration in the creation of products. In many ways, the process has an unconscious, random quality to it. We’ve come a long way, baby.
