My favorite modern controller is probably the Xbox 360 one, although I really don't like the directional pad on it. Apparently Nintendo owns a patent on the icon plus shape or something?

For PC gaming, I borrow my roommate's Logitech Chillstream, which isn't quite as nice as the official Xbox 360 controller, but it's a decent substitute.

I really hate Playstation 2 style gamepads. The analog joysticks are in the wrong place, my fingers slip around on their rubberized surfaces, and the controller feels too small; it just isn't very comfortable to hold.

There's also an unending. That's in the demo where you escape from drowning and float forever in the middle of a vast ocean.

So I come in here expecting to see some hilarious train-wreak of a game, and now I find out that you guys gave him an extension? Where's the fun in that? What if I wanted to vote nay?

Super Joe, I will be counting the number of games Cactus releases in your time-period. It will be like the number of games released since Duke Nukem forever was announced, except that isn't a fair comparison because Cactus is insane and you doesn't count. Additionally, if your game does allow me to shoot people in the face, I will be very disappointed!

So, hey, this was in the Blueberry Garden thread,

as an example, glum buster (a recent 2d game) uses about 500-600 mb of ram, just to store its sprites. it's a "simple" 2d game, but many 3d games don't require that much ram to store their own bitmap data (textures mainly).

The author of Glum Buster could easily reduce RAM usage. The issue is, he's loading every single sprite (and probably the sound effects and music as well) into RAM when the game starts. It's the default, rather unnecessary, and it makes load times longer than they need to be. This is common in a ton of Game Maker games; though it only really becomes a major problem in large ones. Hopefully, future versions of Game Maker will do a little automatic optimization when generating executables.

It isn't like the whole atmosphere is based on the single-screen mechanic.

Well, you're sort of wrong about that.  Niff has specifically said that when creating his level he paid close attention to the composition of each room, like composing a piece of art.  There are some significant rules in visual composition theory, and by adding scrolling and a smaller view you've just gotten rid of every composition Nifflas has created.  You may as well not have different rooms.

A lot of people don't take the composition approach to games, but if done right, games done in that style can be far more successful visually.

So, in a way, the whole atmosphere is based on the single-screen, composition mechanic.

Although, I guess a dual-screen setup without scrolling just wouldn't work for Knytt Stories.

Not for our currently created PC levels.  What Annabelle and I (and I think dessgeega) are suggesting is a brand-new DS centric Knytt Stories (there would be a modified level editor on the PC).  It would be a dual screen Knytt Stories with compositions that filled both screens.  There is a large enough community that we'd have a pile of levels made quite quickly, and because the compositions would now be more vertical than horizontal, the game would feel quite unique from it's PC counterpart.

From a purely gameplay point of view, allowing the player to scroll the scene back and forth with the left and right triggers would be good.

But yes, you're quite right. A vertical-centric Knytt Stories wouldn't feel the same at all. One possible solution is to have DS-only stages while maintaining compatibility with the PC stages.

1-a new, download-only console

Wait... does this kill homebrew?

I know nothing about Monkey Island, aside form that it's supposed to be the cat's pajamas. This remake looks interesting.

Who dares me to make a basic Pong game this weekend called "Edge of Edge of Edge: The Tim Langdell Story"?  We could start a pool to see how long until I get sued!

I want to see this!  Now!

Coming this Summer

A game... about a man... who lived so close to the edge... that he fell off it.

   Tim Langdell
         in
Edge of Edge of Edge

Rated T for Thor

Oho, yes!

Wait, what is this? It appears to be a J-rpg knight fighting veolciraptors on a playstation game, but that's about the limit of my clearly extensive knowledge on the topic.

This is written in Java? I dunno...

Cross platform compatibility is a big thing for us, something Java makes a whole lot easier. I know there's a lot of debate about Java's 'speed', but this is not a game or any other such graphics-intensive software, but a desktop application. Java suits the intended use of the application perfectly, 's all cool! 

Well, yeah. But there are other ways of doing cross platform software (though I won't deny that Java is one of the easiest), and Java takes up a lot of resources to do very little. I'm not amazingly happy to have something as memory hungry as Steam idling all day to begin with, and Java takes up ~50 mb of RAM just to show a window. It's too bloated for me to leave it running in the tray, and it takes too long to initialize if I'm just going to be starting it to play games. 

This is written in Java? I dunno...

Is it going to track time spent playing each game so I could aggregate it to a website or something? That would be pretty spiffy.

Super Secret Ninja and Warning Forever.

The former might be a bit *too* simplistic, but it's deeper than it seems at first glance. Also, there's a fun trick to it.

Off-road Velociraptor Safari and Minotaur China Shop might be good candidates. Flashbang also has some Jellyfish game, but it might get a bit old.

Xwung is really great, but you might get carpel tunnel from moving the mouse in circles for hours. 

Edit: Squid Yes: Whatever Whatever mentioned above is also a great game.

This thread was actually degrading into intelligent conversation on the latter half of page 43. Can't let that happen now, can we?

I played Turrican 2 once. It seemed really rather ridiculously difficult at the time. I didn't enjoy it much. That Turrican fan game was pretty ace, though. Not that either can hold a candle to the masterpiece which is Vectorman 2 or anything.

I never played Halo but this looks really fun!  Reminds me of this game, but looks much faster.  I love the art, as always.


davidp, looking good!  Really cool lighting and debris in that second screen, I recognize it from the video!  That's such a good feeling when you're about to finish something.  I'll be watching for it

Wow. I really like the small rooms spaced out on a much larger plane. I don't think I've seen architecture like that in any other games. They're like little space stations or something. Hmm...

Wait, wait, wait, System Shock 2 has multiplayer? How does that even work?

Internet multiplayer cooperative game.  When I played through it with a friend, we had him play the Psi-Cop-style spook and my player was the tough marine hacker - just a little bit of role-playing to liven things up.  It really changed the way the game felt, less 'you're all alone in the dark' and more 'I gotcher back, buddy' movie style.

See, that's not really a two player horror game, though. The presence of a second player make it less frightening. The proper way to do things would be to hint to each player individually that their partner might be planning on backstabbing them. Give each player slightly different mission objectives, so they'll be playing the game slightly differently and making the other player suspicious. This is an online game, right? You can even have the players be briefed with different objectives in the same room from the same person at the same time.

Better yet, give each player a motivation to off the other; warn them that it's too dangerous to go alone the whole way through, but hint that there's only room for one in the air lift at the end.

Finally, after they're good and paranoid, close them both off in a room and flip off the lights. When the lights slowly flicker back on, surprise! You're alone in the room with a monster! Both players appear to the other as the monster, of course. If this is too easy, prep them for it by separating them and having an identical earlier encounter with a real boss version of the monster. OR do it vice versa, and have the real monster encounter second. After killing the monster, it shifts into the corpse of your partner! "He was trying to backstab me all along!"

The possibilities are endless!  :D

I got SysAdmin, which is pretty much completely incorrect, aside from how I never get past making basic half-finished game engines. :-/

The original article is a bit more interesting and deserving of time than that quiz. Going from the descriptions there, I pretty much try to go for Experiance/Skills.

Your best bet is to learn how to program. Sorry! 

I recommend Python (which is likely already installed on your Mac) and PyGame. If you want something easier, LOVE is also good.

A Linux release at launch? I salute you, sir!

Having a tool like this around will increase the number of games available on the platform by like, a lot. Good work.

What ho, everyone!

I am James. I have a website here.

I'm a computer science student perpetually chasing the elusive technology which will allow me to realize The Game. I'm sure everyone here is familiar with this phenomena, though I may have it pretty bad. The Game has been in rough sketch and design for about eight years. When eventually put down into electronic form, it will be the best thing you've ever played. It will run on all major platforms and operating systems (including Linux! Which I run and love). Also, it will be 3D.

Right. So, I'm nowhere near that level. I was a master of Game Maker 5.0. I made quite a lot of rather bad games with it which I am too embarrassed to admit to. Then my father informed me that it wasn't actually "real" programming, and made me feel a bit like I was wasting my time. So I learned QBASIC and made an obligatory Tron clone. Then came C. I've dabbled in C++ and SDL a bit. I can use PyGame[1], I suppose. At one point I went through a zombie roguelike phase[2] and learnt a bit of nCurses. Then there was the messing around with Dev Kit Pro[3]. One of my latest endeavours has been messing around with LOVE. Oh, right. I've only just started prototyping a vector-based game engine in Cairo[4].

I may need to stick with something long enough to learn the ins and outs of it and actually make something small, fun, and playable.

1. Badly.
2. It's a randomly generated city with a mall, the Kingdom of Loathing item combo crafting system and ZOMBIES!!!11one
3. I wanted to learn in hopes of porting Spelunky to GBA when it was eventually open sourced. Then I got a look at the source and decided it wouldn't be much fun.
4. Can you say, Geometry Wars clone? Actually, that would be fun to port to GBA. No source code, and tons of seemingly insurmountable limitations. Assembly everywhere! :-D

---

So, anyway. I'm a PC gamer. My machines are always stylishly obsolete on the graphics side. My only non-integrated video card is only slightly better than an Intel X3100.

I'm also cheap. I end of playing lots of games five or six years after they come out. I play a lot of free indie stuff.

My favourite genre is the humble platformer. Much of my childhood was taken up by the PC Sonic games. My younger self put hours into the triple digits playing Sonic & Knuckles collection, Sonic R, Sonic CD, and Sonic 2. Super Mario All-Stars + World, and Megaman X are also in my collection. (Say what you will; I emulate. I own the carts, too.)

The first indie game I played that would be recognized here is probably Seiklus. I really love Clysm's stuff, and he needs to release more of it.

Cave Story was also pretty great, but SEIKLUS CAME FIRST! :-D

I'm a longtime fan of Kenta Cho's games of bullet insanity.

I've always really liked the general idea of NetHack, but I can't bring myself to play it enough to enjoy it on a regular basis. Unlike Spelunky, which is amazing, epic, and deletes my save file every time I reinstall Windows. D: Dwarf Fortress is a massive wall that I can't climb. I've gone through the tutorials, it just doesn't grab me or make any sense whatsoever.

Lyle in Cube Sector is pretty rad, and fun in short bursts. I'm positive I'm within 30 minutes of the end, but I've forgotten where to go.

The Knytt games are ace.

Super Secret Ninja is a masterpiece of simplicity and fun.

Miracle board is the only good indie 3D platformer I've seen. It's also in Japanese and ancient. Someone needs to remake it badly.

---

So, yes. I am here. Don't expect me to release any games in the next year. 

---

Edit: Oh, if you want to see some (boring) code I've actually written, released, and I'm proud of (a rare combination!) go check out AbiWord. I wrote the multipage functionality last summer.

My personal opinion was that the game was boring, the opposite of fun, and not a great commentary on much of anything.

I do not feel that my life has been improved by finding out this guy's opinions. He could have at least made them entertaining, unlike that thing I just played.