I hate when people mess up sprites with shitty pixel re-scaling. I made some proper ones. Adventure gets my love for its attempt at persistence, emergence and free roaming.

I just found out about Startopia. It looks interesting. I like games where I'm more of an observer. Screenshot from me playing the demo. I might pick it up. It's $5 now.

I start out with the idea that there must be girls in tiny panties, then I construct the entire game idea around that premise.


btw.
http://www.graftgold.com/
These guys made Paradroid and some other games back in the day. Go to Writing games and there's a little rant about game design.

I think several RTS games have had artificial restrictions like only-one-at-a-time units. Maybe CnC:TibSun had it? Ah yes, GDI "Mammoth Mk. II".

Of course in TA and Herzog Zwei you kinda were the super unit.

I'd argue that there hasn't been much innovation in the RTS genre. The ideas have been there all along (and are thus not really 'new'), but it's only recently we've been able to do some of the stuff. They're more like 'recently implemented or polished' rather than new.
See pretty pathetic list:
http://archive.gamespy.com/top10/january01/rtsinnovation/

Maybe it's semantics, but when I think of innovation I think of surprise and minds being baffled. Maybe this kind of innovation doesn't exist though.


I've been playing Herzog Zwei recently. I'ts often credited as being the 'first' RTS game. I'm sure it was just an increment of something earlier though. However, it is surprisingly feature packed.

There's land and sea units (and air including the player ship).
Units need Ammo and Fuel, which means you need to keep supply lines running (using a supply truck, or you can refuel and repair at base).
Tanks have turrets which turn.
The Defense turrets have double weapon systems, land and anti air.
A destroyed tank might leave surviving crew.
You control the game via a commander which is a morphing land-air unit, which also can work as a dropship for unit deployment.
The units can drive under building layers/roofs.
Infantry can capture bases.
Some 6 different orders, including Patrol/Circle area, Guard, Guard&Intercept.
There's 8 different maps, each with an unique terrain style and layout, such as rivers, islands, barriers.
Terrain matters to the movement of the units. There's deadly lava, an abyss units can fall into, tar pits slowing units down, slippery ice.
Play splitscreen or widescreen, against a computer or a friend, or just watch two computers duke out

Maybe it was DuneII which introduced construction of buildings and tech trees.

Well, I do think abstract sculpture is a justified art form, I've been to enough exibitions to have seen good examples of it. Clever, charmy, witty stuff. I just said it's unfortunate that if you say you're an artist here, people might think you're doing that stuff, and probably badly. Also, I would argue that given the nature of abstract art... although arguably there are less fail states than in figurative art, you really can get away with murder. The whole peer review process seem to be lacking. There's just some dudes doing stuff, and brand/name recognition seem to be much more important than the art itself.

I happen to know one of the people who make some of the local public art. He's completely batshit insane. Recently, they put up a new... thing down in the public space at the harbour here. No one likes it, and everyone thinks it's a waste of money. Except the few involved naturally.

Personally, I'd rather see classical nude women, Megaman, Albert Speer stuff or Pretorian Stalkers. Seriously, it doesn't get better than Pretorian Stalkers.

Gojaro rules!

Gojira is about as powerful as an Independent Day ufo or something. Probably immune to nukes aswell. In Final Wars he shoots stuff into orbit.

I think Biz was involved in a few games:
http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,121167/

Gods is not on that list, but I think he might have been involved, atleast in box art.
http://www.mobygames.com/game/amiga/gods/screenshots
http://www.mobygames.com/game/gods/cover-art/gameCoverId,74988/

Loaded and Re-Loaded had a biz style of sorts, but I think it was someone else.

I love his and Kev walker's stuff.

Semantics again.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=art

It would seem a lot of things can be art since it's a very broad umbrella term.

I would even argue that games are so crammed with art (from nearly all subsets thereof) that they are in fact more art than anything else we do. They're highly immersive, multi spectrum experiences.

If anything fails to measure up against the definition of art in the dictionary, it's the 'art' seen in hanging on the walls in some galleries.


Trickier in Sweden though. Our word for art (konst) (maybe it isn't a word for art anymore, but a subset) has already been completely hijacked by people who... weld iron scrap together, then sells to the goverment (who pays with tax money of course), then the crap ends up in parks and public places. "Interpenetrational relationship in C-moll" - a steelbar intersecting a granite block at an angle.

Charles Dickens? No, this thread is now about rape.

Here's some stuff I made in 1993, possibly earlier if the date was from a backup. Not particulary impressive, but I was glad to see that I actually saved some of my old Amiga DP stuff.

Also, sprites from a game I started on fairly recently, meaning a year ago or so. Whack, a roguelike. The characters are like dress up doll, and you can find themed sets of stuff.

Also, a screen form my Icarus project. Had a little neat WASD+mouse thing going on, but never got further than a tech test.

Tons of more stuff elsewhere of course, on my site and stuff for Cortex Command.

Nowdays I mostly paint large then scale down and clean up, noodle around. Not sure if that can be called pixling. A fraction.

What about id software's and Apogee's early stuff? Commander Keen, Duke, Doom guy, etc.

Maybe some old Amiga PD stuff would qualify aswell? Maybe not. It's hard for an indie dev to establish iconic game characters because methods like merchandise, comics, cartoons and promo can not be pushed as agressively, if at all.

Is Tux (Linux penquin) indie? I think he made it into games.

MMORPG is theft? In a way perhaps. They're doing something to the game in order to make you want to subscribe for years, and I bet it's not all Gameplay-MegaFun^(TM) enriching your life. Fun alone can't account for the excessive amounts of time some people spend on these games. The Fun has to be dilluted and rationed in order to last for months or even years. This is where grinding comes in, and loss of time.
I know people who've lost their education thanks to... well, it's hard to know where to place the blame when it comes to addiction. But they lost something.

(I have a lvl 51 Runescape character.)


SC 2 is beginning to grow on me in some areas. I like the secondary abilities of the units, it's not all Gun-Health-FlyOrDrive. RockPaperScissor aspect still drives me nuts though. I'm not sure why, maybe I just don't like artificial 'mapping' (of what's good against what -only cuz the game says so).

[Edit:]

Herzog Zwei. Splitscreen. Each player controls a Ship/Mecha transformer which is also a drop ship used when placing units. It has limited fuel in fly mode. If it runs out of fuel or get destroyed by enemy fire, it simply respawns at homebase after a brief delay.

The player can't build bases or buildings, but there are two main bases and smaller capturable bases around the map. You capture bases by sneaking infantry into them. Each base can build units, refuel the ship, and also gives resources for construction. Units are built by hovering over a base with the ship then going into a build menu (which also has a mini map and some strategic data).

The units has different orders. You give orders when building, but you can also pick up units with the ship and reprogram them. The orders are the usual stuff, Guard, Patrol, Attack enemy main base, Capture mini base, etc. The Ship is pretty much your mouse cursor.

The units run out of fuel aswell, so you either have to fly them halfway to the enemy base, or capture bases along the way to the enemy base and build the units in those bases. You can't really micromanage all that much due to the limitations of the player ship logistics.

The ship can help out in battle aswell, either as ship or as mecha. Most ground units can't shoot on the flying ship. In mecha mode you can duke out with the tanks and stuff. The player is a super unit of sorts, and can be used to turn the tides of battle, but doing so takes precious time away from construction and management.

Edit:

There's a bunch of gameplay videos on youtube.

As for 'hate' (or dislike, or unwillingness to favour), it can be premeditative or a consequence. It might be a good gamble in some cases to premeditatively disfavour something, as long as you have sufficient data to construct a solid trend. Given that we have finite resources, I think it's a viable strategy to have certain biases. Although... there's always the chance that you can learn to like what you dislike, or ultimately, going into a state of perpetual delirium by watching dutch clog dancing.

SC2 looks pretty nice so far, but I still fear I won't be able to enjoy it. Its design philosophy is the antithesis of where my preferences lie. Pity.

Herzog Zwei predated Dune II aswell. Not sure about its influence though.

Influential can mean many things. Maybe an unpopular game inspired a very popular game, which, since popular means money, spawned a lot of imitators. Also, game concepts mutate slowly, progressively, and pretty much everything can cross breed, so it's hard to put your finger down anywhere.

It becomes an excercise in finding the game which added the most to the gene pool  and/or was the most successful in spreading its genes. Maybe we could also include games that revitalize old sleeping genes.

Outside games, Star Trek, Star Wars and Doctor Who had a lot of influence. In 198x there were Tie Fighters, Enterprises and Daleks in nearly every sci-fi game. Dungeons & Dragons probably influenced a lot of role playing games too.


Many of the games which I wanted to be influential never became so, or atleast they didn't pass on the traits which I liked.

Is that a shield on the marines?

There's probably a fairly large group of conservative fans since SC has been popular for so long.

Yeah, SC is one of the few games which has FMVs I can actually sit and enjoy, or even look farward to seeing.

I figured it was SC2 that was announced. I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of koreans suddenly cried out in joy.

StarCraft was kind of OK. It relies on few components and extreme polish and balancing (it's called 'Vanilla' maybe?), rather than what I prefer: tons of components and a 'fuck it' mentality towards game balance (which preferably should be self emergent because of how the universe is defined).

I wonder if the cancelled Ghost chick is gonna make a cameo... I think we can bet on that.

It'll Sell. On a similar note:

BloodWrathLord Vendetta contains over 40 minutes of full FMV, featuring Sniping, Pump shotguns, Headshots, Continuous case ejection.....and much more!!

 
Story:

Lt. RawFist is a cool muscle fortress with a stone face.

His muscles are incredibly getting bigger day by day, easily recognized even under 4 inches thick armour. I found a part of his battle armour torn, where his muscular arms can bee seen!!

Obviously, it is his adrenalin... Why? Why the hero has such a heroic body?

What will be happening to a hero who became a target of a generic evil force plotting to destroy the world!?

 

- In ammo feeding scenes, blood gushes out from dismembered bodies in detailed real motion!!

- Case ejection scenes are even more enhanced!! A lot of cases flows forth from his oversized guns!

- Cross-section image of weapons is equipped for the first time!

- Full voice! Exciting sound effects!

- Comes equipped with Album mode and Movie Control that enables you to see what you want to see instantly!

Heh, why are there Playstation buttons on the monitor? (Edit: Ah, the screen folds around, but why Playstation?) It would make it larger than the Lynx as a handheld.

Yeah, a game contest for this would be interesting, since the audience would be a bit different.