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[Akhel]

I love The Hidden - Source. It's awesome.

[ghosted]

Yay, thanks dude.

In that case I'll let you in on a little-known secret behind the concept. It actually originated from a lan game of Counter-Strike which bugged out on us. Somehow, the game had spazzed out and one player was both completely invisible and invulnerable. Enjoying the bizarreness of the situation we all agreed to stay on one team with him on his lonesome (armed with only the knife) and it was simply a case of survival, if possible. We found great entertainment in being hunted like pigs (and that's how the secondary attack became known as the pig-sticker) and couldn't help but spray behind us running and screaming as we catch the sound of  the knife being swished around. Most amusing as we knew full well we couln't damage him but cotinued to shoot in panic regardless.

After a rather exhilirating, if pointles, session we started to consider just how feasible it would be to scrape our meagre abilities together and actually make a mod. Within a surprisingly short space of time we had the first prototype involving little more than a button to toggle invisibilty and agreed rules of 'only one at a time' and 'the invisible dude can only use the crowbar and grenades'. I've got fond memories of seeing players crouched in the middle of a courtyard, sneakily edging towards me with crowbar in hand and a murderous glint in their eye until being told they've fogotten to toggle their invisiblity on. Watching your would-be predator stand-up, apologise and then dissapear while turning tail meekishly was strangely comical considering the previously tense atmosphere.

[DrDerekDoctors]

Yeah, he's cack.

Ask him about programming ropes.

[Jrsquee]

Hey, I'm Jackson.  I've been floating around the indy community since about June, and thought now was a good time to register here.

I'm an aspiring artist that got sick of playing games, so I'm trying to learn a bit of C and Lua so I can contribute something that people might enjoy.  I like to play the piano, so maybe someday I'll try my hand at composing!

I hail from NE Massachusetts, and I think there's nothing better than standing in the middle of the street at 4 am during a snowstorm.

Well, I guess I'll see you on the forums!

[Urre]

Hello there folks! After making somewhat of an ass of myself, advertising a game without properly introducing myself, I was kindly redirected to this here thread!

Let's see...

My name's Marko Permanto, age 23, live in Stockholm, Sweden, with my kiddo and girlfriend. I got introduced to the wonderful world of video games by some random relative in Finland I've never met since. He showed me Pong, yes the original Pong with those awesome controllers where you twist a screw thingy to move the paddle, and I felt instantly at home. It'd take a while before I got to play videogames again, but next it was some model of Atari, playing lots of Asteroids (also a relative in Finland), and later on lots of various DOS games (this time a Finnish relative in Sweden!). Got my own system at the age of 7 (a NES), and from there on it's been nothing but in one way or another trying to get my hands on more and more games to play.

When it comes to creating games, I used to draw fake screenshots of my game ideas, and generally design games for as long as I can remember, usually just various alterations of my favorite games (lots of megaman-likes). Since there was no one around who quite understood how seriously I wanted to learn to make games and thus support me in such endeavours, I figured it wasn't possible (the logic of kids isn't always... logical), until I at the age of 12 got introduced to homemade Quake maps by a friend of mine...

From there on, I've been trying to read it all, learn it all and do, well, a lot. I generally prefer modding over creating from scratch as my attention span is so short, I usually never finish anything. I will have to be bold and say (hopefully without jinxing anything) that my discipline has grown over the years, so my current RTS project won't die (as fast) as my previous ones. Nothing to show yet, just programming stuff so far.

Wonder if I have a picture of myself lying around on this computer here...


It would seem like I did!

Wow, I really love to talk about myself.

[trash]

Hello there folks! After making somewhat of an ass of myself, advertising a game without properly introducing myself, I was kindly redirected to this here thread!

Let's see...

Seems like usual bussiness here

Soo ... I'm Arnd, 20, student from germany and somewhat new to the indiegame scene. Not that I never played indiegames before - of course I have and as the programmer I am I often thought/read/learned about how those fancy games get done, which mechanism are used, etc. but till now I never really made one by my own.
But lately I have the urgent desire to change that. And after getting in touch with XNA I feel like I'm finally in the state to start.

So hopefully the VGNGC will help me with this little dream I have ;P

[lllililillililillilililll]

.,.:.;........
::::;:;:;:;::::::;::;::;:;::;:;::;;:;:;:;::;:;::;:
Nice to me you.
I know very little English.
I'm making a game, website, sound, and etc.

,.......

*..........................

I got culture shock overseas indiegames.
esp, Knytt.
still persist then impact.

.:    ,;..,

'     '  ',,,,,,

I want you to play my game,
and I want to play more, oversears indiegames.

..,

Thank you for reading here.
bye.

;;;;:*;*;;,,;.;:,..

:::::::::::%::;:::::::::::;::::::::::::::%,::::::::::%:::::::::::::::::,;.:::::::ひーひーふー:

[Greater Beast]

Hello all,

I've been a tigs "viewer" it seems forever, but the timespan I'm sure is not more than a year or so.  Like Golds, I graduated from Eastern Illinois University with a Bachelor's in Computer Science, but I am now in my final semester as a Graduate Assistant at EIU studying Mathematics.  I started posting on the TigSource forum while I was working on "Space Barnacle" with Golds and now I finally decided to post to the undeniably obligatory introductory thread. 

My first experience with gaming came when I was about 4 years old in the form of a Colecovision machine.  I became proficient at "Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom"



 and "Richard Scary's Best Electronic Word Book Ever" although the latter title (maybe Buck Rogers as well) was only available on the ADAM computer, a Colecovision add-on.  My next gaming experience was on my father's Zenith "laptop" if indeed you could call it that (although it might be better termed a "luggable" as it had TWO 5.25" floppy drives) in the form of the classic DOS version of "SPACEWAR."  This game was so cool on many levels: first, it was multiplayer and one of the ships looked vaguely like a klingon bird of prey; and second, the gravity of planets would suck you in and kill you.  I mean, the whole game is just an intergalactic shoot-out: sweet!  Oh, yeah...and you had a random hyperjump that would either save you or lead you to a fiery death.  Oh, SPACEWAR, my first mistress, how I miss you.

As gaming became more mainstream in tthe early nineties, my parents refused to buy me the new consoles: first NES, then GENESIS.  Although I would play favorites such as "Mario 3" and "Sonic the Hedgehog" at my friends' houses, I was *restricted* to the (hundreds) of games my father bought for me for our DOS machine.  The games weren't as pretty as the games on the Nintendo or the SEGA Genesis, but I must have logged tens-of-thousands of hours perfecting my favorites.  Then came the advent of CD-ROM.  And the likes of Apogee.  Commander Keen, Duke Nukem, etc.  At the time they were fun, but looking back, they were pretty bad.

It wasn't until middle school that I finally bought an N64.  It was my gateway to freedom.  I've played every classic '64 game ever.  And I played all the classic Playstation games of the period too: my favorite being the Bushido Blade series.

And by the time the next console generation was to show itself, yes, the consumate gamer that I now was, I purchased all three.  (not simultaneousy! ) 

But the reality is that I still love the games I grew up with.  (including those I was unable to play as a child).  So now, my aesthetics might swing a little old-school, but I still love innovation.  Especially when it comes to new forms of gameplay.

So think of me thus: a developer trying to bring innovative methods to games designed to appeal to both the old-school guard and the new generation of gamers who have respect for the old methods.

So finally, here's a MacBookPro Photo Booth photo: (I'm just about to score some kickass chiptunes--hence the headphones)


I'm currently working on "Fantasy Croquet Kid" and "Atomic Zombie Death Squad"

[joshg]

Here goes an introduction while awake at 2am after having had too much caffeine before trying to go to sleep ... oh crap this is going to be a train wreck.

My name's Josh Giesbrecht, I heart games.  I've been coding for a while (got one of those friggin' computer engineering degrees a few years ago) and been trying to find some way of making it non-boring.  Game coding helps; coding up some art is also fun, and I keep some of my work here:



I am totally allergic to putting pictures of myself online but maybe someday I'll cave in and update this with a self-portrait.  We'll see.

Um oh yeah, I worked for Electronic Arts for a while; they beat me up and stole my lunch money treated me okay, actually I spent most of my time there on a team that were smart and avoided the whole "crunch time" (ie. soul-sucking overtime) insanity.  But then just as I was finding something there I could do well, they laid me off.  Their loss, suckers.  Then I mucked around with TGE for a bit, then did contract coding for Persuasive Games, then mucked around with Flash for a bit, and now I'm looking for something to do that pays moneys so I can pay bills and then get back to making fun stuff.  I get kind of bored working on things solo so I am hoping that hanging out here will turn indie dev hackery into less of a loner-fest so that I don't get cave in so quickly.

I also write too darn much about stuff I think about games.  Occasionally.

I have been gaming since my parents brought home a Tandy TRS-80 CoCo2 or whatever it was called.  I sort of learned to program on it but mostly I put in the cartridges and played some weird cave-exploring game, and then we got a tape deck for it and I could play POOYAN!  Which rocks because Pooyan is still funny to say even now that I'm grown up.



POOYAN!

Oh yeah.

Then we got an XT PC clone and I have been rockin' out to PC games ever since.

PICTURE HIGHLIGHTS

Space Quest!


FALLOUT FTW OFC


Thief, possibly the only game ever where the zombies were the worst part


X-Com also of course but if I hotlink that alongside Fallout and Thief then I will have achieved the PC GAMER GEEKERY TRIFECTA and the post will implode so just imagine my soldiers getting mind controlled and shooting each other.


Ok also remember back when Apogee was actually a more commonly-known gaming brand than id software?  And we were like "HEY WHO'S ID WHATEVER APOGEE MADE SOME COMMANDER KEEN GAME LETS PLAY" and it turned out to be awesome and then we went back to shooting stuff in Duke Nukem (IN TWO DIMENSIONS)?  Yes those were good times.


Arcade games used to be awesome too!  What the heck?


******SUSHI******

True fact: I used to live in the prairies and totally didn't even recognize that most of the bonus point objects were in fact sushi.  Now I'm all West Coast Canadian and occasionally go on rampages shouting "GIVE ME RAW SALMON AND DYNAMITE ROLLS".

Yeah, that's probably trainwreck enough for now.

[craigp]

Hey there, my name is Craig. My snarky, recently-exploding blog is http://projectperko.blogspot.com/.

I do prototypes and art when I'm not working for http://www.orbusgameworks.com/blog/ on http://www.indiemetrics.com/.

... not really much else to say. I'm kind of hoping to get some of you on board, but I'm not advertising. 

I'm experienced with Flash, Ruby on Rails, and every variant of Torque. If you need hints or tips, feel free to ask me.

-Craig

[shockedfrog]

I'm Gary, 21, unfortunately stuck in Scotland, getting back into coding and reviewing again since my will to do stuff is finally returning after the soul-sapping experience that was college. Don't have a great deal to say here right now, mainly posting to avoid the first reply to my competition entry being someone telling me to go post here.

[Erik Svedäng]

Craig - your blog was very interesting. The heated discussion about randomly generated content for games was my best read today! 

[Hideous]

Craig - your blog was very interesting. The heated discussion about randomly generated content for games was my best read today! 

I hope you're Swedish. We need more Swedes.

[craigp]

Craig - your blog was very interesting. The heated discussion about randomly generated content for games was my best read today! 

It got out of hand...

And I'm about a quarter Swedish.

-Craig

[Robert]

Hi there, I'm Robert from the other side of the world AKA New Zealand. Any day now I'm going to post in the VGNG thread with the name that the team I'm with has chosen, that is to say once we work out what we're doing!

Anyway, I'm a coder, came up through Uni with a comp sci degree, then got a great start in the industry by getting a job with Sidhe Interactive and worked there for a few years on Rugby League, its sequel, and Melbourne Cup Challenge. Then my brother (also a Sidhe boy) and a co-worker left the mothership and founded our own games company, Wandering Monster Studios which any day now is going to release The Next Big Thing. Well, at least once we get time off from doing websites to pay the bills.

I also do other geeky things like playing boardgames, some wargaming, avoiding going outside, etc etc.

[Radnom]

Hi there, I'm Robert from the other side of the world AKA New Zealand. Any day now I'm going to post in the VGNG thread with the name that the team I'm with has chosen, that is to say once we work out what we're doing!

Anyway, I'm a coder, came up through Uni with a comp sci degree, then got a great start in the industry by getting a job with Sidhe Interactive and worked there for a few years on Rugby League, its sequel, and Melbourne Cup Challenge. Then my brother (also a Sidhe boy) and a co-worker left the mothership and founded our own games company, Wandering Monster Studios which any day now is going to release The Next Big Thing. Well, at least once we get time off from doing websites to pay the bills.

I also do other geeky things like playing boardgames, some wargaming, avoiding going outside, etc etc.

Always good to hear about other NZ game programmers :D and working with Sidhe is pretty impressive..

Your site doesn't give away too much information... whereabouts in NZ are you?

[Erik Svedäng]

I hope you're Swedish.

Yes, I am.

[dustin]

Hey I'm dustin.

I'm a Computer Science student living in the san fransisco bay area.  I like to code with c++/sdl and more recently java/slick.  I also like coding for the DS using c/PAlib.  Anyway I just joined because I'm entering the new competition but I love indie gaming in general and so will probably be sticking around.

I also like comics, juggling, footbag, arcades, and a bunch of other dorky stuff...

[aeiowu]

Hey Tiggers!  I guess I should introduce myself.  I've been lurking for quite a bit, and don't have time to pump a post count up to a respectable level, so my posting will probably be infrequent, but I love this community, it's made of awesome.

So I'm Greg, I'm 24, live in Iowa, look like I'm 34 and co-founded intuition games with three other chaps (ted, mike & josh) in the fall of 2007.


Me not paying 0.25 per minute to play shitty battlefield clones in the Denver airport on the way to GDC 08!


Ted, me & infinity.


all of us in our hotel room in SF

As far as games I've worked on, it's mainly dinowaurs, i've done some simulation stuff with the U3 engine for a virtual reality thing at Iowa State University.  I've also done a few projects during school that amounted to no game (due to no programmer) but a lot of art...
A semester or two ago we got a little something going in torque game builder, it was called YOMI... it's not much, but whatever.

http://intuitiongames.com/portfoliopages/yomi.htm

I went to school at ISU for four years studying graphic design (in my last semester now) and before that I pursued creative writing at the University of Iowa, and before that I wanted to be a chef.  I still like cooking and writing, ideally i'd like to write/design games, but i enjoy the visual arts as well and find programming really rewarding.  I still consider myself a student and probably always will, and i love learning from all of you guys.  GDC was especially awesome.

i have some recipes (if hungry) and other work up on my website at www.gregwohlwend.com which includes my blog from when i was studying abroad in Rome last semester, it was a blast.  I'm here to feel the powerful passion and spirit of games made out of love instead of green paper slips.  I'm not happy with the current market of video games and I feel it's my duty to be part of the solution.  I think it's a great time to be an indie developer, a kind of renaissance will emerge out of us, i know it.

My favorite games of all time are Baldur's Gate II, and FFVII, FFII (cecil and kain, I know it's supposed to be IV or whatever, i played II on the SNES, suck it.) link to the past, kid icarus, bionic commando, mario 3, oh yea, and trial by fire: quest for glory II (ESPECIALLY AWESOME game by sierra, also could add in DIG, and robin hood: conquest of the longbow and other SCUMVM).  right now i'm having a ton of fun with n+.  Go raigan and mare!  I don't get to play enough games nowadays, but that's why TIGs is so awesome, i can taste them and get back to work.

[craigp]

So I'm Greg, I'm 24, live in Iowa, look like I'm 34 and co-founded intuition games with three other chaps (ted, mike & josh) in the fall of 2007.

Congrats!

I did the same thing...

-Craig

PS: link is busted. HTTP outside of quotes.