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[ravuya]

Welcome to TIGS, dude.  It's always nice to see others making their way here from a Macintosh background, specially those who grew up on old school Macs -- before they regained their hipster cache.  :D   

I think that's cachet, you bourgeois information terrorist.

I still remember the smell of my LC I. It still works, too -- I added an ethernet card and a VGA adaptor, but haven't tested either of them out.

[ragathon]

MY NAME IS RAGATHON,
I AM A WARRIOR FROM THE FAR NORTH.

[Fifth]

'Hoy!

My name's Logan (though I go by "Fifth" for some reason); I've been lurking around for a bit, and figured it was probably time to register and post.

I've been playing video games (y'know, every time I type that word, it always seems like such a... mother's word?  I dunno... like "Oh, little Johnny's in the den, playing with his video-games", or something...) for as long as I can remember, and have been wanting to make 'em for about as long as I've been playing 'em.  My first system was an Atari of some sort, but I really don't remember a lot about it (aside from Dark Chambers and Tower Toppler).  My family later acquired a TI-99/4A computer, on which I enjoyed many games of Jungle Hunt, Hunt the Wumpus, and, of course, Tunnels of Doom (we still break this thing out from time to time; it's such a great experience hooking it up to a projector and playing it on a wall: a marriage of 20-some year old games with a state-of-the-art projector; pixels as big as your fist!)
Anyway, after that I kinda grew up on the Sega side of the 8/16-bit era, from Master System to Genesis to Sega CD.  At the time, I was always annoyed by the fact that so many great Sega-platform games were known and played by so few people...  Even today people so often associate "Sega Genesis" with "Sonic", and little else...

Anyway, I loved such games as the Wonder Boy series (Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap, Wonder Boy in Monster World, and Monster World IV), Alex Kidd (In Shinobi World, In the Enchanted Castle), pretty much anything by Treasure (Gunstar Heroes, Dynamite Headdy, Alien Soldier), a few Climax games (Shining Force 2, Landstalker), various Sega CD titles (Lunar 1 and 2, Popful Mail, Keio Flying Squadron) and, of course the Sonic series.  Amongst other things.  Even so, I was grateful for the occasional chance to play a Nintendo game at a friend's house.

My favorite genre happens to be the platformer (or "jump-around games", as I called 'em as a li'l-un).  I've kinda felt that the platformer is the closest one can get to the heart of the gameplay... of being armed with the moves of the character and rules of the game, and being pitted directly against any surprises the game has to offer... where you constantly have to assess the situation and act instantly, with the world compressed neatly into a 2-dimensional frame...

..Or maybe that's just a BS justification for why I like platformers so much.
Either way.

So, I was always most fond of the games that'd allow you to make your own levels, rare as they were during the old console days.  I'd waste hours playing Penguin Land (the only SMS game I actually owned at the time, the rest belonging to my older brother), making and playing ridiculous little levels.
I was ecstatic when I learned that Sonic 1 had a debug mode (Imagine!  Being able to place your own objects and enemies in a level!), but I didn't actually know the debug code for the longest time as a li'l-un (for some reason, my brother enjoyed keeping this a secret from me), and so I'd sit there, pressing random buttons on the title screen, over and over, until I heard that fateful chime... and all would be well.

When Klik & Play came out, I was hooked on the thing.  I'd make awful game after awful game, enjoying every minute of it.  Eventually I moved up to Multimedia Fusion, and have been creating progressively better games since.

I went to a college called Cogswell with the intent of getting into game design, but have so far had little success with actually breaking into the industry.  And so I spend my spare time making and playing independent games, enjoying the freedom that being a one-man team allows.  I've got a few different games in the works, but I suppose an intro thread wouldn't be the best place to post that kinda thing.

...And I've been visiting TIGSource for a little while now, trying games that interest me, and seeing what's happening out there in the indie game scene (before finding this site, I was only ever privy to the Click game scene, which, while providing some great games from time to time, doesn't really cover a great range of what's out there).
...And so I decided to finally register and post.
And that's what.

(And I apologize for my over-use of parentheses, semi-colons, and ellipses; it happens.)

[Melly]

Hey Fifth! Allow me to welcome you into the tiger's den with a meal of tea, french bread and TigerSauce while we adjust our monocles and discuss the meaning of life in the fastlane.

[Zaphos]

What is your avatar, Fifth?  I like it!

[Fifth]

Eh-hey, many thanks, Melly!
...Does the TigerSauce go in the tea or on the bread?

Zaphos, my avatar is a boss from a game I'm working on (or it will be a boss, once I actually get to making him).  He was once supposed to be the first boss, but has since been bumped to the third boss.  Or a possible third boss, I guess.

[Paolo Victor]

Hi.

I'm Paolo Victor (really? No s***!). A brazilian compsci graduate that is trying to get the hang of all this "game development" stuff. Almost a decade ago I started making games using a little program called "The Games Factory", which I promptly booted when I started college.

Gaming influences?

- The usual suspects: Megaman, Zelda, Mario
- Capcom and SNK fighting games
- Pokémon (No, really. It has taught me the manipulation power of stamp collecting games)
- Half-life series (THAT'S how you tell a story)

[Mailman]

Hello!

My name over there is Mailman, but you can call me by my real name: Liam! I am currently in high-school, learning things, however today we had off! But yes...I am a player, hoping to be maker of games, I have an idea, btu it's under wraps for now...

Gaming influences eh, Steven?



Well, it all started with...

Sonic the Hedgehog 2!
I played it for a good time when I was around 4-5...

Then I noticed a interesting system with an interesting game!

Yeah, it was Kirby, and yeah, it was the NES..

Zelda was another huge gaming influence...

Especially this one!



Marvel vs. Capcom 2 was probably one of the first games I was hooked on...



I've just recently discovered MOTHER...

...and I think this has mostly influenced me.



I have many other favorite games, I just can't name them all...



Well, I hope to meet everyone and be great friends!


                                                        Wannabe Programer,
                                                          -Liam

[grickmin]

Well. My name is Nils and I'm 15.8 years old. I really love games by Tim Schafer such as Psychonauts and Grim Fandango. Banjo Kazooie and Age of Empires 2 are also two awesome games.
I`m the creator of Somiumstrike which is my first finished game with MMF2. In the past i was mostly experimenting with Game Maker.

Please visit my forum: www.grickmin.proboards104.com

[JeffWeber]

Hey All.

My name is Jeff Weber. I currently live in Appleton, Wisconsin (USA)

For the last 6 years, give or take a year, I've considered myself an indie game developer hobbyist.
Recently I got my mind right and started taking the steps to nix the 'hobbyist' part.

Over these last 6 years I've developed a whole crap-load of demos, experiments, prototypes, and unfinished games.
 
I've spent the last year, give or take a year, getting more focused and actually completed development of a free open source 2D physics engine called the Farseer Physics Engine.

The physics engine was just a necassary pre-cursor to my ultimate goal: make some damn fun physics games! Which I'm doing currently.

My games will not be AAA, have jaw-dropping art, or win a pulitzer for story, but they will ooooooze physics out of every orfice!

As far as playing games goes, I'm sure to be in the minority. While I'm obsessed with game technology, development, and the industry as a whole, I don't play a ton of games.

I do play some, though, and here are three that have had the biggest impact on me:

Another World
Ski Stunt Simulator
Elasto Mania

Here's a small screenie of the game I'm currently working on. It's called 'Diver'. I should have a playable Alpha version ready in mid to late March. It's being developed for Microsofts new Silverlight platform.



You can vist my website/blog for more info about me and what I'm up to. (see sig. for link)

Finally, here's what I look like when I'm riding a donkey with my 1 yr old son.



This post concludes my 'ManBaby' status.

See you around!

[James-Kond]

damn console gamers around here
Also: Hello my names is James-Kond im an student and run my own little site: http://archgamer.blogspot.com/
I have been looking at tigsource forever.. (like Indie Blog better but heh..)
You guys seem to be more of an community based site (mods, maps etc)so i like that.


so lets start I think my first game was:

Super Mario Bros. ofc..

But i think the game that had the most influence on me was:

Diablo 2, the best game ever made..well maybe..


and maybe another good contender.. Warcraft 2


And ofcourse, being orignal, my favourite indie game is..

CAVE STORY!

ugh..im out..

[Zaknafein]

Fish just told me that an unwritten (whoops, just read it) rule around here is to introduce ourself here before anything else, so here goes!

I'm Renaud Bédard, I've done all the coding on Fez and before that I've been (still am) running a fairly technical blog called The Instruction Limit about shaders, TV3D samples, little tools I wrote and whatnot.

I honestly found out about the indie gaming scene (and TIGSource) about the same time I started to get involved with Fez, so maybe 6-8 months ago. So I downloaded every indie game I had the time to try, and I've loved all of them. Cave Story, Synaesthete, Flywrench, Knytt, Space Barnacle come to mind.
But I'm mainly an Xbox/Xbox360 and MS fanboy, I love C# and the .NET framework, and I believe that Mass Effect is the greatest thing that's happened to RPGs since Lunar. Or something.

And that's me!

[Corpus]

Welcome, Fifth!

Howdy, PaoloVictor!

A lovely explosion of images you have there, Mailman. EarthBound is awesome. Best RPG ever. Apparently MOTHER is pretty much a poor version of its sequel, so, uh... play EB.

Good day to you, grickmin.

Hello, JeffWeber. Diver looks lovely, at least graphically.

Hi ho, James-Kond. Mods, maps etc.? Are we on the same website?

Renaud, you have a cool name and are about exactly as skinny as I am. Fez looks amazing.

My work here is done.

[MekanikDestructiwKommando]

An Introduce Yourself Thread?
You mean, instead of random people trying to show each other their games, we're one big indie-games family?
That is, an amazing idea. My new Indie-games family - I love you all!

Ok, so I am MekanikDestrukiwKommando. (Yes, the same era as Magma). I am a talented game designer, who has just started going Indie. I am 20 years old. I've been designing things no paper for years, random scatter brains. I used to host Star Wars and Paranoia XP RPGS in my hometown, and everyone said I was the best GM they had

I stopped going to college in my first semester, because earlier that year I had secured a job interview to work for Australian game dev company m1cr0f0R TE as a Junior Designer. I met the CEO at a Christian Game Dev conference on Oregon, I asked him for advice and got a job offer a month later in an e-mail. Brought a sample design document to Austin GDC that year, and then had an hour long Skype interview with the ld. designer in Sydney, and we grilled each other about various design philosophies.
The most influential (and only) piece of "formal" training I have is reading Rules of Play four times.

First game was playing Sonic on rented Segas. I dont think I ever got past level 3 or 4 or something, but it was great fun.

Years later I saw a friends sister playing Metroid on an NES, and I instantly fell in love (with Metroid, not her). I found it on ROM 4 years later after tryign hard to remember "that game I played". SMRPG was my first rom, after seeing a friend's brother playing some Mario game on the computer.. it was also the day I saw him MSN a friend on how to beat a section of MGS. I gamefaq'xd MGS and read walkthroughs. My young brain did not understand most of what I read, but I loved it. I have played every single MG game except for the PS1 VR missions. I got online/router working too late for MGO, the servers went down within a few months of me playing. The best game I've ever played was MGO. And tbh, I loved the outdoors, wild jungle of it. I don't know if MGO2 will be able to refill that love of the wild in my heart.. but I'm damn sure going to be saluting and shooting when it comes out.

Earthbound 0, brilliant.
Fallout 2, brilliant.
Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes. Then MGO3, then MGO, then MGS2.
Super Smash Bros. Melee. Perfect Dark. All have been powerfully influential on my LIFE.

And then Sydney, I moved to Australia as for that job offer^. Being a Junior Designer is alright, but I decided to become Indie in my spare time, later. But first,

The life altering, soul shattering, eye opening and scary scary "this is real."



Marathon changed my soul.

Well, Indie gaming.
I'll start with Cave Story. A friend of mine imed me months ago and said "hey, try out this 8-bit ish game". And so I did. I liked it.

I stumbled upon Tigsource, I don't remember how. About 2 months ago. Wow. It's brilliant.

I found Cactus' games, and donated a bit with an e-mail saying hi. We talked a bit on gtalk, he introduced me to Mulholland Dr. and Twin Peaks, which have been incredible. His creativity and genius encouraged me that "yes, I can do this too". A month and a half ago, me and a friend began work on our own game. We have a fully playable first level, and I have added a second level that is mostly complete. A lot of time has been spent tweaking the gameplay. It involves.. swords, drugs, walljumping, cops and grenades. Yeah.  . My friend did the pixel art for the game, and now I'm using colored rectangles to draw buildings because I just don't do visual art that well.

Found Nethack last year. I lost.. a certain amount of "work" productivity to that. I got past Medusa and have reached the Castle once. Stopped playing it as much when my friend (mentioned above) stopped as well, to work on our game. He is currently.... well he's gone AFK for important reasons for a while. I'll hear from him again if he survives.

Work at M1 c==r0fo4te is alright. We're making an MMO with the b1g==w==0rld technology (one company owns the other).. it's alright. there's some coolness, but some  as well that's not really anyone's fault so much as it is.. we're making a commercial game and the average commercial gamers are pansies.

HEY I SPELLED IT WRONG ON PURPOSE I DONT WANT TO BE TRACED SO DONT QUOTE WITH THE CORRECT SPELLING

So where do I stand now?

I am flying to the USA on Holiday March 5. I will be in SAN FRANCISCO from March 5-8. I'm staying with a friend, but if anyone wants to chill with me while I'm there, PM me! I'd love to meet you, even if you are an owl. (which after watching Twin Peaks freaks me out).

The platformer I'm working on (since my friend is in hiatus). Progress: 5%, or 10% for a shorter game. Will need: my friend to do more pixel art.

Now, something else I'm working on. This is pretty big, so please read. I've created a working fighting game engine in Visual Basic 6. I should probably make a new thread for it,  but I'll give a quick rundown:

--stun prevents you from attacking, not blocking. No automatic combos.
--linking requires momentum and is move specific. MoveB12 always requires at least 5 momentum to link to, and can only be linked to at certain windows in MoveA20 and Move C13 and MoveA18. The better you time your blocks, the more momentum the attacker loses, thus preventing them from continuing a string of attacks. If they reach 0 Momentum they cannot attack for a short time (a second and a half or so). Input accepts quarter circles, half-circles and has three attack buttons. Now, why am I saying all this? I'm not trying to brag. I need ARTISTS. And if the Indie Games Art community wants to pool together, and animate badass looking characters with different moves.. I want to put say, 12 of these into my fighting game engine.. and release the most kickass fighting game ever. Because it's damn FAST and requires TIMING and REFLEXES to play. I'll make a Topic about this somewhere else, but I wanted to put it here for everyone to read since it's the biggest IndieGame thing on my mind right now.

That's it! I love you all, my new family!

[dont think im a softy.i drink taurine to prevent psychopathic events from occurring and promote creativity]

In San-Fran March 5-8!

\MEKANIKDESTRUKIWKOMMANDOH
 

[FrostedSentry]

I'm David. A wanna-be programmer with a learning disability that makes me wish I would have just stuck with something easy... Like Business.  Or something.  But the voices in my head don't tell me to go into business.  They tell me that being a programmer is achievable with enough determination and will power.  So hell yeah!

Pimps Site: http://www.david-mcgraw.com

I actually got started with gaming back in the NES days.  My mom finally had enough money to put one on the kitchen table, with a nice 12 inch television screen that I could use to play Mario on.  After dinking around with the NES, I got my hands on a personal computer. One of those 386dx types that boasted 4MB of ram, if you were lucky. 

My first computer game was a really bad ass simulation game by Impressions Software called Detroit.  The goal of the game was to build cars, sell them, upgrade to build better cars, buy more land, and completely beat the living tar out of your competition by raking in a ton of cash.  Many mornings spent on that game before school.

After that, I got into Star Wars: Tie Fighter.  Which was awesome, and really presented me with the value of Rewards.

And then... Power Rangers, I think. Which totally sucked. ;|

And then... Many, many more.

And then... EverQuest.  Which blew my mind and really allowed me to see the sort of freedom that you can give players...

Alright. I'm rambling.

Anyway. When AOL was just a baby, I used to write programs to torment chat rooms and the e-mail system. 

I continued to play games, but after high school I decided to join the Marine Corps.  For some ungodly, unknown, and freaking crazy reason. Well. I survived, kicked ass, and didn't die.  So that has to increment some sort of programming stat in my life codebase.

Right before I got out of the Marines, I started to think about what I wanted to focus in on with programming.  I pretty much knew it right away.  Programming and Games just interests me 10000000x more than programming some sort of heart application that keeps old Wilma alive for 2 more days.

I'll spare the details of why I want to program Games.  We'll leave it at, it kicks ass and watching a community grow around your game, while being able to be personal with your community, rocks. Among other things.

So. In 2005, I started to pick up and learn C++ while I was learning Java in school.  I joined a development team that worked on a game called Morning's Wrath (RPG/Action Adventure Hybrid) that was released in late 2005 and sold around 500 copies.  I beta tested the shit out of the game, and provided some design feedback when I could.  After that game the main programmer from Morning's Wrath and I started up his second game, the Lost City of Malathedra, an Adventure game.  I programmed a little, designed a little, tested a little, and then I went off to do some of my own things.

I've created a few small games which you can find on my blog, and I've also helped another team with a software project that wasn't game related (Testing, Design Feedback). 

So that brings me to today.  I'm working on a vertical scrolling shooter game that I just started.

I'll be graduating from KState this coming December, and hopefully I can find an independent team to join up with.  There's something about indies that appeal to me a lot more than the big wigs.  Probably because they focus way too much on perfect, pristine, and eligant 3D graphics while spending millions of dollars.  Where as an indie can come in and work their asses off, with little to no funding, and come out with a spectacular game that caters to the community.

And I like that.  Community.

Here is a mug shot of my bad ass days.

[

img]http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee295/AOC_Ethanael/1077618849_l.jpg[/img]

If you are at the GDC this week and recognize me.  Say Hi. Because I can't seem to say Hi first.

[MekanikDestructiwKommando]

This is so awesome.
David, I recommend you try the following drugs: Taurine and Marijuana. Both of those always keep me clear thinking, creative, and even friendly. Plus they keep the nightmares away. Sometimes. Oh, and copious, copious amounts of badass music, videogames and people.
I played X-Wing Vs Tie Fighter ages ago.. incredibly fun. Running it on a modern computer ran worse for some reason

Code:

I can't wait to meet you people!

[carbon]

Hey there. My name is Joel and I'm 19. I'm currently attending college in New Jersey (a small school that specializes in engineering and research), majoring in Computer Science. My life and hobbies are all over the place: programming (C++ and Python), video games (a whole bunch), music (guitar), sports (tennis) but most importantly Christ.

I've played video games as far back as I can remember (earlier than kindergarten). I played Super Mario World on the SNES as my first game ever, I think. I quickly moved onto RPGs after having seen my friend play Earthbound, Final Fantasy 6 and Robotrek. He then started playing a MUD and sucked me into that as well. Around 7th grade we moved on from the MUD to EverQuest, resulting in me being an MMORPG addict until 12th grade.

I've spent the past few years studying various programming languages both on my own and in school. I no longer like MMORPGs as much as I did before. Instead, I prefer games that can be started quickly and played on a whim (without massive loading) and games that are LAN- and party-friendly.

Some of my favorite games:


Counterstrike 1.5


Super Smash Brothers Melee


BaboViolent 2

[MekanikDestructiwKommando]

Sweetness, welcome.
What is Destrike?

[carbon]

Destrike is a game inspired by BaboViolent 2 (the only game that I really play lately). It's going to be a top-down multiplayer shooter, similar to the screenshot of BV2 in my previous post, but with a heavier focus on individual tactics and team strategy instead of random spray-and-pray. I'm trying to replicate the competitive aspect of Counterstrike in a separate genre from FPSs.

I haven't really thought about whether the idea is unique or even appealing, but this is also my first real game project after the usual Pong | Tetris | Snake clone so I figured I'd make a game that I would enjoy designing and coding. If it flops, oh well.

[Acid]

Hi, my name is Shaquille and I'm fourteen years old. I have been into video games since I was little, about four years old, and have stuck with them ever since. The first couple of games that made a mark on me before I became an avid gamer were (in chronological order as best I can put them): Most of the Atari games (my dad still has his), Sonic the Hedgehog, Mortal Kombat, and Golden Eye 64.

Then, when I played my first RPG (which wasn't even a particularly good one - Monster Rancher for PS1) I knew I was a gamer. From then on I got hooked on these games: Final Fantasy VII (when I first played it I didn't understand it, so I hated it... but now it's one of my favorite games!), Metal Gear Solid (I played a demo of this and then my cousin let me play the full game on his PS1... now I've beaten ever MGS game created.), Mega Man (I've been a fan of the Blue Bomber for a long time now. I used to watch the show on TV when I was little too. XD), and much more. Mostly RPG's.

Recently, in the last two years, I've spent more and more time playing indie games and  wanting to get into the industry. I've been creating with GameMaker, which most people don't take seriously for creating and developing games, but have decided that I will need to be able to use something more powerful if I am going to continue to strive to become an indie game designer. So, this year, I've decided to teach myself C++ from scratch. Any good tutorials and help would be much appreciated.