Well, shit.

its harder to make followers look like fools when you make your statment obvious

Well that's just as pretentious as the people he's making fun of, which makes the whole thing fall apart.

Perhaps maybe my criticism goes deeper than simply "lol art games"?

But if the message is more than just "lol art games", you made an art game to get the message across.  Or am I missing something?

i believe thats the point, hes making fun of art games, by making and art game that makes fun of art games. he's basically using the same manipulative tactics most designers use in art games to wow people to show you how easy it is to make an art game that gets people takling.

so on the outside its "lol art games" but really while mocking hes making a very thought out statement on how easy it is to manipulate people seeing abstraction as deeper meaning... thought i could have just been manipulated into thinking this from his art game.

This art game is playing us like a fiddle.

its harder to make followers look like fools when you make your statment obvious

Well that's just as pretentious as the people he's making fun of, which makes the whole thing fall apart.

Perhaps maybe my criticism goes deeper than simply "lol art games"?

But if the message is more than just "lol art games", you made an art game to get the message across.  Or am I missing something?

My girlfriend definitely knows about my indie game dev activities (usually is the form: 'When are you coming to bed?'). She is supportive, even though she really doesn't play games. Occasionally she'll play just to show she's interested in what I am interested in. Rarely is she involved in the creation process, usually I ask he opinion on character designs, etc.

Ditto.  Except my girlfriend also loves Animal Crossing and Zelda.

Hah, I didn't read the artistic statement (forgot to go back to it after).  That's probably my problem.

I think a lot of the problems in Versus mode that Valve patched could've been fixed by not locking the difficulty to Normal in Versus mode.  That's what made it a joke.  I played on Advanced in versus mode and that was a blast because teams barely ever survived, and then Valve patched it.  Playing L4D on normal mode pretty much just lets you sprint through the entire game without any worries, so then they start "fixing" things like adding the melee cool down.  Playing as infected, I never really had problems attacking survivors before the melee cool down was added.  If a lone hunter went in against 4 green survivors, yeah he's going to get his ass kicked, but organized attacks worked just as well.

I think normal mode Versus is fine now with the melee cooldown.  Honestly, after I learned the power of melee I could take on any amount of simultaneous Hunters alone in Versus (just hold M2 and look at them and they can't touch you).  And if you have a teammate with you (which any competent player would), Smokers can't touch you either (melee breaks the tongue grab, and pre-patch Smoker didn't do any damage unless he pulled you all the way to himself).  And forget about Boomers.  They can puke on you fine, but as soon as puke touches any survivor all 4 huddle into the nearest corner and merge their hitboxes and hold M2, making them impossible to touch.  The only way you could do damage was if a Survivor was alone - but the majority of matches I played had the entire Survivor team literally crouch-walking across the map, holding M2 and trying their best to keep all 4 hitboxes merged the entire time.  The best we could do is maybe get a slash in with a hunter (if we timed it perfectly in a gap between melee swings).  Not fun (for either team).

I played it.

It was fun and the visual/audio blurring was cool but I feel like the point of it was way over my head?

I believe melee weapons are temporary equipment like gas cans. You drop them by switching back to a gun or item. Could be wrong, but I believe that's how it works.

Well this still implies they're nerfing or removing the standard weapon melee (otherwise why would anyone ever pick up a melee weapon?)

Seriously, melee in the first L4D was so broken they had to introduce fatigue in Versus mode to make playing as Infected bearable against a melee-savvy team.  The fatigue is still missing from the normal campaigns though, and I can understand why - such a huge change to a core mechanic could completely throw off the balance of the game.  Levels would have to be redesigned, boss zombie AI changed, etc.  As it stands, any campaign on Expert mode would be impossible with melee fatigue.  So the standard campaigns are pretty much ruined - everyone just ruins into a closet and holds M2 whenever it gets rough (then comes out for a quick second when a Tank spawns, but since melee doesn't use ammo the Tank won't stand a chance against 4 auto-shotties).  I'm praying the melee weapons are Valve's way of fixing this for the sequel.

[you?]

*bangs head on keyboard*

Until i saw this thread, i thought that all regulars on the boards at least have SOME degree of intelligence.

Seriously, for someone who likes indiegames, you have a serious "follow the majority"-issue, Paul. And i do not just mean this regarding this thread - your "ideology" is a constant theme in your posts. "Empiricism over analytics", "Dont innovate, repeat what has been done before", "Everything is subjective", "Gender-roles are based on biological 'instincts', and santa actually exists"... why with such a mentality, you are an indiegamer, is something i really dont get at all.

Whoa.  Who the hell are you?

Paul's ideology is a constant theme through his posts... but since when does having a strong opinion make you un-indie?  If anything, having a strong opinion is incredibly indie.  Not to mention he was just borrowing gender stereotypes to attach arbitrary labels to two gameplay styles; not claim that all females prefer one type of game over another biologically.  What is un-indie is you trying to force your ideology on him.

Anyway, Team Fortress 2 sprang up in my mind when I read this thread.  The Medic and Engineer classes heal and support the team with teleporters/sentries and could be classified as female classes much more than any other classes in the game.  However, they're still not close enough to games like The Sims or Animal Crossing for me to declare TF2 a true male+female game.  Good medics and engineers will be in the thick of combat and must defend themselves quite often (both have firearms and melee weapons).  Still, on a spectrum of male->female gameplay, TF2 would be much farther toward female than any other FPS I've played.

Am I wrong in associating 'female gameplay' with 'grinding'?  The most female aspect of TF2 I can think of is the Engineer's desire to upgrade all his structures to the maximum level and keep them there.  The female aspect of RPGs is the levelling, which, without the male aspect of tactical combat, would be simple grinding.  Also, I see Animal Crossing as quite possibly the most female game I can think of, and much of it is simply 'grinding' to find the right furniture or fossils, etc.

The melee weapons could be cool.... but they replace the main weapons >.< I'd rather have a shotgun in a zombie rampage than a bloody frying pan.

I'm hoping they either remove melee from the standard weapons or severely weaken it.  That would make this their solution to the melee problem of the first game (melee solves pretty much any problem in L4D.  If you're ever in trouble, just hold M2).  They could be forcing players to trade a main weapon for the ability to spam M2 which is a great design decision in my books.

I was brand new to Flash development when I wrote my engine, which is similar to Flixel.  I didn't even know of the 'direct' method you speak of which is used in Chup.

I haven't run into any performance problems, but I'm not doing anything all that taxing either.  I'll probably give the other method a shot too for my next game, just to see the differences.

What's the license on this?

Looks great. 

But you have to remember that doing an actual sequel lets them sell another boxed XB360 game.

That's probably a big part in why they decided to do a sequel over tons of DLC like TF2 (L4D is a perfect fit for the XB360 IMO, even though I play it on the PC).

I dunno, sounds like it's good enough for a sequel to me.

I wouldn't expect Valve to add 4 new characters (with all new voice-work), a whole new set of environments with new color palette(s) and possibly art direction(s), new boss zombies, melee weapon support, new guns, randomized level layouts, randomized weather, and even more maps than L4D already has as free DLC.

Guess I'm easy to please?

The original feels very complete to me, and I'm not bothered by this news at all.

[Sandbox of God]

Not sure if these have been mentioned here.  Some awesome old GM games:

Sandbox of God by Vertigo Games (Mr. Chubigans):
http://www.vertigogaming.net/game/sandbox

Seiklus by Clysm (wourme):
http://autofish.net/clysm/art/video_games/seiklus/

RunMan (the original + 3 sequels) by CoolMoose (Tom Sennett):
http://wherecouldtom.be/games.php

Wally: Land of the Wallows by Messhof:
http://www.gamemakergames.com/?a=view&id=48

Wally is really good just to see a different side of Messhof.

And I'm not sure if the old Jumper games count as "classics", but they're certainly old so I'll slip a little shameless self-promotion in here for Jumper 1 and 2: http://mattmakesgames.com/games.php

Bring on the oldies!

I'm thinking of doing this for my next game, but it's a bit of a different situation.

The game is embedded within its own site (and indeed, the site itself is part of the game), so I'll (hopefully) be making money off ads on the site.  The tiered release part comes in when I release updates TF2-style, adding new content to the game in chunks and occasionally releasing balance/bugfix patches.

I think tiered releases is especially useful if your game relies on having an active community of players around it.  With constant content updates, that community will be kept alive much longer than usual.

Matt Thorson: 1540.  It's not a terribly uncommon name though.

Innovation is over-rated anyways.  Or maybe not innovating is under-rated.

Either way, there's nothing wrong with not innovating as long as your game is fun.  All this obsession over innovation (I think the Wii started it?) just seems to be missing the point almost as bad as the graphical arms race does.

in all honesty tommy and i are pulling out all the stops to make Super Meat Boy as fun as we claim it will be.

everything about the flash version will be greatly improved.. i mean this is tommy refenes we are talking about here!

and yes jumper is awesome.... hint hint

Can't wait for this!  Bring on the pain

I just got the Fedora for the Spy last night (!!!).  Also, since the update I already have 250 backstabs toward the 1000 for the SpyMaster achievement.