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[Spengler]

Hi everyone,
man this is place is much friendlier than......
...another forum I won't mention.

The name's Shaun, 23 from Australia. My Dad has always been close to the game industry and so I've been lucky enough to always have some consoles.
Started with the NES. I remember playing the original Mario Bros, Duck Hunt and Double Dragon 2 to begin with.
But then I got SMB 3.

 

To this day, If a copy of that game is at my disposal I can pick it up and play it through and enjoy the hell out of every minute of it.

I have always been more interested in films than I have in videogames so naturally games like the oddworld series and others with cinematic stories have appealed to me.

I've only recently gotten into independent games.
It's really exciting. I've played some amazing stuff so far and it's really gotten me into the mood for designing my own game.

There's a flaw.... I know almost nothing about programming. I consider myself a decent enough artist and animator but programming is something I'm here to learn for.

I'm working on something right now, so hopefully some kind people here can steer in some right directions.

[Hempuli‽]

Welcome Spengler!

[Vitamin Powered]

Hello everyone!

I'm a 27 year old programmer currently living in London. My main language is C++, in particular MFC and win32 (hey, it's what I'm paid to do... ). Like many here I suffer from "if only I could sit down with an idea and work away at it until it's done"-itis, but I'm hoping joining this forum will help me with some of my motivational issues.

Game wise I haven't actually released (or completed) anything yet (see previous paragraph), but I do have experience with OpenGL, procedural landscape generation and shaders. I've been slowly teaching myself DirectX10 as well (everyone will have Shader 4 cards and Vista+ one of these days, right? Right?)

I stumbled onto TIGSource from RockPaperShotgun, or possibly due to the Beatnik guys mentioning that London TIGJam thang.  Who knows? A few months later I decided to join the forums, and a week or two later I finally got around to making this post. Oh, and I plan on writing some tutorials on Perlin Noise (and potential usages) sometime soon for you.

Games that influence me are numerous, but here are some of the major ones:

Civilisation - Even though a lot of my thoughts on build-an-empire strategy games wander from the civ series, I still use the series as a basis to compare.

Rome: Total War - There's something about the world map setup that just resonates a lot more than the Civilisation one; building everything (roads, farms etc.) in the city menu, the little visible trade routes etc.

Shadow of the Colossus & Ico - Haunting and beautiful. And, gameplay wise, simple as well. Definitely up there when my mind turns to landscapes.

NOLF 2 - One of the first FPS games to have a decent sense of depth and actually being inside the game world. So many games, even modern games, make me feel like a midget that's wandered into a torture chamber designed to send me mad. Not NOLF 2 though. That there isn't a NOLF 3 should be a criminal offence. Sneaking around a russian base, rustling through filing cabinets has never been as much fun.

Homeworld - Is it because it lets me duke it out with ships from the cover of 60's pulp sci fi novels? Or the soundtrack? Or the crispness of the models? I'm having trouble deciding whether I actually liked the gameplay, or whether I merely put up with it to play in its world.

FFVI - I must admit to the sin of never having finished the game. But I look back fondly (as I do to FFX incidentally) to the first part of the game, and it's excellent atmosphere and ambience. As with all FF games though, the later parts tend

HalfLife 2 (and episodes) - How to polish a game to perfection. And you may have noticed, I'm an absolute sucker for atmoshphere. There are a few moments in these games that somehow manage to pull my strings in exactly the right way, and

Supreme Commander (and TA) Both for their highs (so many units, and the art of making a well-tuned war engine) and lows (all those units, yet so few differences between sides, and so many units feel about as unique and different as any other).

[Leroy Frederick]

It's really great reading post's like these, this thread is oozing with gaming passion

[Michael Todd]

Hi, I make indie games in Toronto. My sites are www.akithgames.com and www.spyeart.com. I tend to be at GDC, and most Toronto indie events. My real name is Michael Todd.

[Morre]

Hello, My name is David Scatliffe. I've been making games for about 2 years now. I have a blog, and I post about either new or underrated indie games (It's been the source of 2 posts in the widely known, Indiegames.com The Weblog)

Why, hello there! I like your blog. I also approve of the games you're posting about...

[UtopianGames]

My Name is Darren Spencer 38 year old oldy and i own and run www.utopiangames.co.uk, I make with the help of freelancers casual downloadable games.

My new game Bumps is being released very soon on BFGs, Oberon and Real Arcade.

Love all the old 8 bit stuff and still remember walking out of a shop with my Master system under my arm all those years ago.

Fav games - Monkey Ball (Gamecube), SSX snowboarding (ps2), House of the dead (Dreamcast)and many many Sega made games.

Darren.

[gradgames]

Hey-

Mike here.  I'm mostly a programmer/game designer, but I do a lot of art stuff too.  I've been into indie gaming for about 3 years now, but for some reason never registered here at TIG.  I'm really bad at the whole marketing thing, but have learned a lot over the years.

This past year, I launched the Indie Game Mag in hopes of raising the profile of indie games and giving the community a magazine to read. It continues to grow and hopefully will start making money soon.

I've completed 2 indie games, Storked was my first and looking back on it...it is certainly flawed.  I just finished my second game, The Magic Toy Chest which is a homage to the Incredible Machine and features a physics sandbox to toy around with.

I look forward to becoming involved with TIGsource, especially since I am working on a free downloadable game prototype.

[moi]

My Name is Darren Spencer 38 year old oldy and i own and run www.utopiangames.co.uk, I make with the help of freelancers casual downloadable games.

My new game Bumps is being released very soon on BFGs, Oberon and Real Arcade.

Love all the old 8 bit stuff and still remember walking out of a shop with my Master system under my arm all those years ago.

Fav games - Monkey Ball (Gamecube), SSX snowboarding (ps2), House of the dead (Dreamcast)and many many Sega made games.

Darren.

Hey dynokid welcome, I thought you were younger than that lol. I hope you'll find these forums a bit more welcoming than the indiegamer ones, albeit a bit younger in spirit...

[Kopavel]

Greets,
Enviro-Bear 2000: Operation: Hibernation http://www.indiegames.com/blog/2009/04/freeware_game_pick_envirobear.html pushed me towards this forum. Enviro-Bear gave me and my colleagues lots of good mood!

So heres the post I've made at Announcements thread about my latest creation:
http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=530455

Here's accompanying web-site: http://www.spin-tires.uuuq.com/

Waiting for your response!

[apegomp]

Hello. I am a 21 year old FPS gamer. Volume graphics is my passion.

I like the TIG source community because there are so many talented and creative indie game developers here.

[frezned]

What's up awesome dudes.

I'm Tom. I live in Melbourne, Australia. In forums I frequent I'm very much lurker-type but I've been hanging out a lot on #tigirc over the last few weeks.

I cut my gaming teeth on my next door neighbour's NES, followed by the Amiga 500. Magic Pockets, Superfrog, Blues Brothers, Turrican; these games nostalgia me up to no end. I remember how Monkey Island came on four floppies, a sure indicator of quality.

When my family moved to Indonesia in '96 I went to an international school where the IT tech was completely clueless. We went rampant installing games that he had no idea how to remove. When Starcraft got released things got really awesome for a while, especially amongst the sizable Korean contingent at the school.

About this time people were getting N64s as well, so again, lots of time spent at the neighbours' houses, except now it was Mario 64 and Ocarina.

First experience with making games was probably hacking together Choose Your Own Adventures on HyperCard on the Mac when I was six, making me strongly identify with MYST when it was released.

From there I branched out to Director (back when it was still made by Macromind!) and then eventually Visual Basic in early high school back in Australia. I stuck with VB for a few years mostly because it was installed on the school computers, but also dabbled with the TI-83+ later on.

Games were meant to be banned on school computers, but "it was made by a student here" got around it, so a few of my games got pretty popular. I'm sure they're still around on a hard disk somewhere but blown if I can find them.

I studied engineering at uni, majoring in robotics and artificial intelligence, but eventually got bogged down in how much I hate electronics. Switched after 2.5 years into IT, majoring in games development. Breezed through that on account of I was already a C++ wizard.

I've still got 2 units left that I'm studying off-campus, because I figured with only one class a semester I may as well get a job.

So, I'm currently programming for Endgame Studios, which is full of awesome people. It's primarily code-for-hire stuff but I enjoy it. Also, we've completely rebranded the fat-kid-with-a-laser game, so if you look at the site, just pretend he isn't horrible.

At the moment I'm working on mostly iPhone stuff, but we just landed a pretty sweet contract for an Android port so I've been put on that. In my spare time I'm putting together a puzzle-platformer for XNA that's coming along pretty nicely. I'll put up some stuff about that later when it's a bit prettier.

Also at one point I was a youtube celebrity. I still kind of am I guess? But I haven't made a video since last year. I always kind of intend to make another one but never get around to it.

Anyway, hello! I hope to be best friends with all of you very soon.

SOME GAMES:
Deus Ex
Half-Life et al
Portal
Okami
Shadow of the Colossus
N, back when it was underground
Natural Selection pre-Combat mode
Braid
Abe's Exoddus
Kingdom of Loathing
Soul Calibur 2
Pikmin

Mario 64 was the best Mario.
Majora's Mask was the best Zelda.

[RadLab]

Maxime here, from Québec, Canada.

I can't even remember the first time I made a game. My oldest memory is about a mix of hopscotch and random adventure game about knights and dragons I drew with colored chalks on asphalt around the age of six. Since then, I never really stopped: modifying, creating and testing rules has always been one of my hobbies.

This way of life seemed so obvious to me, so "destiny-like" that after finishing my art studies, I refused to continue that way. Well... it took me two years before getting back to it, during wish I was still creating game rules and concepts.

My fields of study so far: Art, psychology, game programming and game design.

I love my girlfriend Émilie.
I like storms and the sound of rain, wind and lightnings.
I dislike headlights and street lamps while walking on the streets at night.
I hate when it reaches -40 Celsius (-40F) and under outside, especially if it's windy. For people who never experienced that, just imagine a wind in your face that is so cold that it burns you and freezes your tears right in your eyes.

First video game ever: Super Mario Brothers
Last one played: Patapon

It's my second day here, Go introduced me to this forum. A nice place with wonderful people from what I've seen so far!

[Chris Pavia]

Hello!  I've been lurking around here for a while, and finally decided to start being active in the community.  My name's Chris (as if you couldn't tell!), I've been an Artist/Designer in the industry for a little over 4 years at various small studios. If anyone's interested, you can check out my art portfolio at www.chrispavia.carbonmade.com
I participated in the Global Game Jam a couple months ago, where I had the chance to meet Edmund briefly, and had my eyes opened to the indie scene.  It wasn't long after that I came up on this forum and was amazed at how tightly knit the community was.  Oh, if anyone's interested in playing our GGJ game, its at
http://globalgamejam.org/games/ultra-sumo-penguin-yokozuna-taisen
It's 2 players at 1 keyboard, so grab a friend!

Soon after I started learning ActionScript 3, and getting more familiar with GM so I could start working on some of my own small games.  And the timing couldn't have been better, for not long after the GGJ the economy came down hard on my studio and a bunch of us were laid off.  So now i'm putting more time into flash, working with a friend on his puzzle game, and designing a 3d exploration/puzzle game of my own(which hopefully I might be able to find a programmer on here to work with me on!).

Some of my favorite games are:
Odin Sphere
Shadow of the Colossus
Rez
Spelunky!!!!
Cave Story
Final Fantasy 2/4, FF 3/6 (these 2 had a big impact on me when I was young)
Fallout
Masters of Orion 2
Mario 3
Little Nemo
Dwarf Fortress
.. and plenty of others I can't think of at the moment

Looking forward to meeting some people and making some friends!

[Matthew Doucette]

If you are a fan of shoot'em ups, you might know me from those forums already.  Here's the breakdown:

Matthew Doucette, of Canada, of Xona Games.  Working on an upcoming dual play 2D shooter for the Xbox 360 called Duality: ZF:



















screenshots from:
New Duality: ZF Screenshots
http://xona.com/2009/03/31.html

Here's our latest videos (currently outdated, but that should change soon):
http://www.youtube.com/XonaGames

Dual play is one player controlling two fighters at once.  We support dual play in 4X multiplayer for eight fighters at once.  Plus our weapon is a duality system... thus, Duality: ZF.

The game should be out April 2009, but please do not make any life changes based on that and come back to blame us if we fail to make that date!

So that's what I do, not so much who I am.  Hope I didn't miss the point.

So... greetings!