Old News: Commodore Bankrupt Again

Amiga sells

I found this store some time ago in a nearby town. Maybe this would be a more lucrative business for Amiga, since the company is in constant trouble ever since Commodore went bankrupt. And the current owner of the Commodore brand isn’t doing that much better either: they’re about to fold again – it’s the same old curse. I’ve lost count already of how many companies have owned the Amiga and Commodore trade marks in the last 14 years. At least Commodore is still a somewhat recognized brand, and I don’t think it would be too difficult to cash in on that by selling retro products, like the C64 DTV. That’s definitely putting the brand to a better use than selling PC towers with a C= logo slapped onto them.

Babel Babel Update and Mario Kart Wii

Babel Babel Screenshot

Babel Babel Screenshot

Babel Babel got a major graphical update yesterday, the lighting looks much better now, with shadows finally being visibly cast into the arena. Most of the time we were struggling with the usual problems you get when you’re exporting models from Maya for HL2. Textures not working, invisible props etc. We’ve had all these problems before, but somehow you always forget one of the 1000 possible solutions that you have to use this time. We also had a bunch of ideas on how to improve the look even further, so stay tuned for more updates in the future. You can take a look at a bunch of screenshots at the new website for the game here.

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Pixel Art Tutorial: Optimizing Tilesheets

This tutorial doesn’t have that much to do with actually creating pixel art, but it’s aimed at artists smaking pixel graphics for games. It will show you how to create the best possible tilesheet layouts, without wasting any space in the image file, which is especially useful for mobile phone developers where every byte counts.

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Blog recommendations

I actually don’t read that many blogs on a regular basis. In fact, there are only three that I find myself returning to more than once a week:

  • Your Webcomic is Bad and You Should Feel Bad – The name says it all. Four authors rip apart some of the worst webcomics out there. It’s not always funny. Their use of language might be debatable. Still, I find myself drawn to it every once in a while, to see what kind of abomination they managed to drag out of the ghetto of webcomics. I still would like to start a webcomic myself actually, I just don’t feel up to it, mainly concerning writing a story.
  • Paleo-Future – I’m a sci-fi nut. So naturally I have to adore this blog. It’s showcasing pieces of past visions of the future, both in written and visual form. Most of the time, it’s ridiculous. But every once in a while, there are relatively accurate predictions among the entries. Also, it’s a nice source of inspiration, thanks to the weird retro art posted from time to time.
  • Bernd Leitenberger(‘)s Blog – (German) While I may not agree with all of his standpoints, he does post interesting articles from time to time, mainly concerning space flight. If you can ignore the sloppy writing style, the articles on space probes and rockets on his website make for a really good read (for the technical minded) since he’s going into hardware details you will rarely find elsewhere on the web. Not that I understand all of it anyway, heh.

Half-Life 2 Deathmatch Tutorial II: Round Gameplay

Babel Babel Logo

This is the second in my series of HL2DM mapping tutorials. Today, I will demonstrate a way to restart your map in HL2DM, without losing the teams’ scores and resetting physics objects that might be scattered around your map. We needed such a game mechanic in our mod, because it’s based on “rounds”, where each team can score, and then the map should reset. This is very specific to our mod, but I think you can always use parts of the techniques explained here for your own map. Again, there might be easier ways to do this, but this one works for me so far.

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Half-Life 2 Deathmatch Tutorial I: Making Sure Players Are Ready

Babel Babel Logo

I’m currently working on a mod for Half-Life 2 Deathmatch for our game development course at the FHS. I’ve decided it might be a good idea to share some of the things I’ve learned creating the game logic with Valve’s Hammer editor. Since nobody in our team can code, we have to entirely create the game with Hammer. Of course, this severely limits our possibilities, especially since we’re creating a multiplayer mod, and Valve disallowed pretty much all commands to be executed on clients. However, I found out that there are usually always a couple of things you can do to create interesting and different gameplay in HL2DM nevertheless. If I’m motivated enough, I’ll make an entire series of tutorials to cover the creation of our mod, but we’ll see. The tutorials are aimed at people who already know their way around the editor.

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Dear Screenwriters

I have been reading a couple of modern hard-sci-fi novels lately (which is pretty much the only thing I read anyway, in book form at least) which I think had new ideas I’d really like to see in sci-fi movies. Sunshine was a step in the right direction, although there’s of course a lot to criticize with that film, mainly the inclusion of a “monster”-character, which I found totally unnecessary. In my opinion, Blindsight by Peter Watts (you can even read it online for free) should definitely be made into a movie. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I found it to be one of the most fascinating modern sci-fi novels I’ve ever read, mainly because I thought the actual reason for the alien attack was a very interesting and radical thought concerning our own evolution. There are things I disliked as well of course, especially the Vampire-race, which didn’t sound believable at all for me and kind of ruined the relatively plausible technology of the rest of the book.

Other authors that I think should get a movie treatment (yes I know, usually movies derived from books suck. But I just want more sci-fi movie material!) are Alastair Reynolds (Revelation Space series) and Charles Stross (Singularity.) I don’t think their books should necessarily be adapted 1:1 for the screen. But their works contain futuristic ideas, technologies and extrapolations from our current society that are both conceivable and frightening. Nothing like that has been shown on the big screen yet to my knowledge. Of course, it might just as well be that this sort of sci-fi is not suited for the theater because not enough people would care for or understand it. But one can still hope.

I’ve just finished reading my last book, so I’m in need of new sci-fi material. If you have any recommendations, send them my way please.

Games to get

Here’s a list of games I’m planning to get this year, in no particular order.

  • Smash Bros Brawl (Wii) – I’ve never really played a SB game. (Insert rant about the as of yet unpublished European release date here)
  • Mario Kart Wii (err, Wii) – I’ve never really played a MK game. (ducks)
  • No More Heroes (Wii) – The reviews I read were not very favourable. I really liked Killer 7 (although I never even got to the 2nd disc) though, so I feel like supporting the developers.
  • Odin Sphere (PS2) – I’m not entirely sure what kind of game it is anyway. It’s just another case where I want to buy a game just to support the developers, see above. This time because it’s all 2D.
  • flOw (PS3) -I was highly addicted to the Flash version. It seriously is one of the main reasons for me to get a PS3 someday, along with that other downloadable game. You know, the shmup with the guitar sounds? Can’t remember the title.
  • Spore (PC) – I’m not sure if it’s going to be a fun game. I hear people talk about it being overhyped. This may very well be. I still want to have it.
  • Lost Odyssey (X360) – RPGs are everything but my favourite genre, but I doubt I can resist a game requiring four DVDs for very long, that’s massive.
  • GTA IV (X360) – You know, I’m not such a big fan of all the crime and violence portrayed in the GTA games. But what I really liked about the previous installments was the free-roam aspect. I’d just like to have a game where I can cruise around the town and country, possibly obeying traffic laws. Yes, I am a very boring person. However, I’m not alone on this, as evidenced in a recent Kotaku article I can’t find anymore right now.
  • Raiden IV (X360) – Well, shmups are my favourite genre. I hope this is going to be released in Europe, because I doubt I’ll be buying an Asian Xbox just for one game.
  • 1942: Joint Strike (X360) – It’s a shmup. Also, I really liked the original 1942, despite being a very repetitive arcade game. There was a time when I was having a highscore battle with a friend of mine and we were pushing each other to achieve a new score each time. It’s a very manly honour thing. I still should have the screenshot with my highscore around somewhere on the net, can’t find it right now though. It was only somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000 though.

I’m pretty sure there are more games I’d like to get, I might add them later.

The Dreaded Red Arrow

Ok, this is the last one for now, I promise. Not that anyone cares anyway.

I have been thinking about the purpose of MS Paint. Yes, it’s nice to have a primitive way of quickly creating something graphical when there’s no “real” software installed. Yes, I know you can actually do awesome pixel art with Paint. Yes, I am aware of The Power of Paint. However I’m pretty sure that 97% of the time, MS Paint is used for one purpose and one purpose only: slapping crappy, waggly mouse-drawn lines in glaring 0xff0000 over photos, screenshots and maps, usually padded with gigantic JPEG artefacts. Most of the time, it’s an arrow.

Call me guilty as charged.

The Dreaded Red Arrow

PS: Yes it’s actually 0xff7e00, I know.