I'm not just saying that because you're my friend, but this game is mental.

Everyone should play this thing. I really dig the axe's physics, it bounces around pounding enemies and yet you get a clear sense of weight coming from it. It's so satisfying when I get multiple combos with the side of the screen.

On top of being genuinely funny and a super addictive arcade action thing, that game is honest and asks you for a fixed price and you get the whole game. No in-app purchase thing, no ads, just a one-time ridiculously low price for a game you'll be playing for weeks.

Audio is lovely spot on, I must add.

Thanks for your answer.

I'm already using view_current, but I find that when I draw my player sprite in view 1 instead of 0, for some reason the background also is drawn on view zero, thus making view_angle useless (since now both background and player are affected by it).

I'm just looking for the simplest, most elegant way to have unrotated sprites on top of a rotated view. "view_angle" is nice because it rotates all objects and collision within the view.

Thanks!

Hi there,

I'm trying to get the background to rotate (using "view_angle") while sprites would not rotate. I managed it at first by simply rotating the sprites the inverse amount I was rotating the view, but this seemed overkill and not an elegant solution.

I'm trying to do the same effect by simply drawing the sprite and the background each in a different view, but that's not working so far.
It seems the background is always drawn in whatever view I draw my sprites. Is there a way to draw the background(s) in the view of my choice ?

Thanks!

I suck at it but this is probably the most powerful abstraction of a game ever made. Brilliant.

I've just posted this in "Announcements" http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=23920.0
I've just released the soundtrack to Squids:



The download is free for 2 days, then it'll bounce up to a "support-your-indie-devs-and-musicians" price of $4.
Listening to the full album from the page is, and will remain, free.

Cheers!

Hi there,

I come here to shamelessly plug my newest indie game soundtrack: Squids!
You can get it here: http://thegamebakers.bandcamp.com/album/squids-ost



It's free for 2 days (click "buy" and simply enter "0" as a price). But if you dare spare a little money on it, that's greatly appreciated too of course. In 2 days the price will be set to a minimum of $4, so get it free while you can.

For those who missed it, Squids is an action RPG game set underwater made by my friends at The Game Bakers, the art is wonderful, and the game has been generally very well received. Some say it's a cross between Final Fantasy Tactics and Angry Birds (I don't . The game is available on iOS, but is coming super soon to Android, PC and Mac (yay!).

The music is kind of a mix between classical JRPG and more lighthearted stuff, to keep it from becoming overly serious. I consider it to be my very best work yet (I know, who gives a s...). Also, the download comes with a complimentary booklet that includes hi-def game artwork, a few liner notes and a couple photographs.

Hope you enjoy listening to it and help spread the album!

Romain

My favorite aspect of your games is how even the way you initiate play is inherently coherent with the core gameplay itself. To me, this is what makes your games stronger works.

Other than that you know I'm a sissy when it comes to playing high stress games. But until you finish KungFu, Square is my favorite of your games.

Congrats on getting the game on Kongregate too, that's a nice step forward I think! I hope it brings you a little money for your trouble.

Stay indie !

This looks amazing.

It was that awesome. Finish it or I will rage like the raging dragon deep inside my spirit...

I love how that dude clapping looks somewhat related to the game's character (also Etienne's avatar right now).

+ 1,000,000 karma for using Bloodsport's music as a temp track.

This is a terrific example of gameplay emancipating itself from all disruption.

Welcome here!

Show us what you got man.
And don't be shy.

Hey there François !

The two buttons only controls are MUCH more interesting! (not to mention perfect for touch controls too). I say you're on to something.

Now of course it's a bit slow and boring as is, but with this simple control scheme you're in for a fun little game if you tweak thrust and gravity well and the levels are interesting.

(Boy, isn't that "10%" at the top of the thread optimistic )

Also, touch controls for tablets are something very specific that will (should) affect your game design. Ideally your game is built around them, it's not made in a arbitrary way and then "let's just change the controls for touch".

If you want to do this on a tablet, I would advise that you do the touch/motion controls first, and now.

That is, unless "touch /motion controls" for you is just displaying HUD buttons on the tablet to mimic the keyboard.
(*cough* lame *cough*)

Hey Fra

To me it's difficult to judge the controls because there is no goal to achieve. If there was a clear goal of say, "don't touch the walls" or "land on the marked spot without bringing your ship's shield to zero", then it would be easier to say whether the controls allow you to do that with a fair amount of challenge.

But for now, the "stabilizer" works, and I can feel it removes some of the "frustration" that there could be already. But why are you talking of frustration right from the start? Frustration is a bad word and a bad thing. It should never emerge from your controls, it should never be there. In the ideal game, if the player fails, they should not feel frustrated about this ("unfair"), they should understand why they failed and the challenge is fair (even if it's freaking hard).

As usual with game controls, I think you should design them on their own in an empty or almost empty level, until they feel really nice and fun (they're already pretty responsive which is cool). Then when you're set on the controls you design levels AROUND those controls. A concrete example in your case: If in your game touching walls is bad, then there's probably a certain width of passages below which you probably shouldn't go. This width is going to depend on the controls. If your ship is super fast it will be impossible to play if everything is narrow, and reversely if your ship is super slow, it will be boring and un-challenging to play if everything is wide and large.

So first question, what's the goal of the game?
- is it to land safely anywhere?
- is it to land safely only on a give spot? (and you lose if you land somewhere else)
- is it to race to the exit without dying?

The answers should affect your controls, I think.

In case you folks had forgotten that he exits, our favorite "trademark champion" (as they call him in this excellent and often hilarious article), has some news going on. He just lost a another ruling, this time against Future Publishing (publisher of EDGE magazine).
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/06/16/tim-langdell-loses-in-future-edge-trial/

This made my day.

That's 75% off.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/37500/

Here's the thread presenting the game: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=8887.0

[Koji Kondo]

Although I like many things from many places, in video game music I find myself loving what the Japanese do more than anything.

I think Nintendo have made themselves a pretty kick ass collection of composers who understand game music to the finest level, and that must be thanks to Koji Kondo's taste, who most likely hired them. So here are the Nintendo guys I love:

Koji Kondo (obviously)
Hiro Tanaka
Taro Bando
Soyo Oka
Kazumi Totaka
Naoto Ishida
Yumiko Kametani

Then of course, Hitoshi Sakimoto who I think is probably the most clever arranger in game music, Yasunori Mitsuda, who's been often copied. Masaya Matsuura is pretty fucking out of this world too, the music from Vib Ribbon is a work of absolute genius.

For the non-japanese composers: I loved the music from God of War 1 and 2, and also what Greg Edmonson did on the Uncharted games.

I also want to name of few Canadian composers who you have never heard about and who are to me absolutely unsung heroes: the in-house composers at Gameloft Montreal, you can trust me, I hired them back when I was head of audio there haha.
If I must name only a few, I'd say Arnaud Galand, Matthieu Vachon, and Alexandre Jacob. Alex wrote the soundtrack to Gameloft's iPhone game "Castle of Magic", and I'm not kidding when I say this is some of the most fun, playful music I've ever heard in a game. The game itself is so-so, but god the music! Arnaud Galand wrote the superb soundtrack to the XBLA Prince of Persia Classic. He's a guy who was a pop/jazz pianist touring with bands all over Europe for 15 years, and got interested in game music by the beginning of the 2000's. You wouldn't think because of his background, but he really did his homework (I like to think that I helped a little:), and now you can hear him say things like "the music from Chrono Cross is fucking awesome".

Jake "Virt" Kaufman was once part of the team, if that tells you anything about how good these guys are. Virt is also on my list of game composers extraordinaire, everyone was always impressed at the endless number of styles he could study and execute perfectly. Over the years, in-house composers at Gameloft have produced quite a few game soundtracks that I think are as great as they are unknown, and the company seems unable to understand that they could make an additional profit by selling those on the side.

Also, let us not forget that Michael Giacchino started as a game composer. Which I think is awesome. But I admit I've never played any Medal of Honor game, or any game scored by Giacchino.

EDIT: How could I forget Tomas Dvorak aka Floex ? The music from Machinarium is most refreshing thing I've heard in years, not only in game music. It's incredibly innovative, fun, and beautiful.

3 fresh 3D engines:

-neo axis

-GameCore 3D

-Game Start 3D

The first two have some sort of gratuity/indie license (as it's soooo trendy   )

The third one is still vague on the license, but there is a public beta.

Suck on this TigSource.

+1 for Game Start 3D. It's an amazing piece of software made very expertly. I had the privilege of using it on 3 commercial games (two of which were released) thanks to private deal with the author, it's really powerful and fast. Kicks butt to lots of similar engines in terms of performance and visual quality, download the beta if you can.

A bumb, to reflect the edit on the first post: I added a link to Eric Chahi's hommage page to Christian.