Scribblenauts

It seems to me that some of the most creative games come with a -nauts suffix. Tenseiga advertised this game throughout the office today. And man, I am really thankful to him for that.

The objective of this game is to collect all the starites (basically, just stars) in each level. And you get these by solving some puzzles. But these are no ordinary puzzles. As a scribblenaut you have a notepad capable of bringing to life anything you write in its pages. Need a mischievous goon out of you way, try summoning police. Or a gun, if you dont mind blood on your hands. And if you want to get really nasty, type dinosaur or serial killer.

We ended up doing some crazy experiments today. Just for kicks, tenseiga summoned a time machine. And we could actually use it to go back in time? and we got a different level each time. I wonder how many such 'back in time' levels does the game have. And I wonder where a space ship will take me. (note to self: try this out tomorrow).

Next, we had a series of bouts between Jesus and Satan, Zeus and a Titan and a Ninja and a Samurai. Then we summoned a serial killer who bumped off everyone on that level. And being the nutcase that he is, tenseiga brought together a nuclear bomb and a terrorist in the same room and the expected happened. Next up was a black hole which sucked everything in.

By the end of it my jaw had dropped to the floor. How many things had the developers thought of. Their hard work and dedication is clearly visible. This little game, available on Nintendo DS can clearly put most, of not almost all of the mainstream titles to shame. A must play, even if you are not a gamer.

November 2009: Mois D'or Pour Gamers

If you are wondering what that means, it's french for "Golden Month For Gamers." This month is so special for us unsocial, nocturnal beings that I had to make it sound exotic. :P

If you are a gamer, you'd surely know what I am talking about. If not- there are tons of huge titles coming out this month. Borderlands has been out for a few days, Dragon Age: Origins and PES 2010 were released this morning and Modern Warfare 2, Left for Dead 2 and Assassin's Creed 2 must be getting ready to ship out as I type this post. To make things even better Fifa 10, Torchlight and Risen were released just a few days back. Now that's easily more food than one can chew. But I am not complaining ;)

How many of these have I played so far? Borderlands, Risen and Fifa 10. I was mightily disappointed with Fifa 10 for omitting some content for PC,which made its console versions such a blast. Risen is your average RPG. It is heavy on content, has a slightly disappointing combat system, good quests presented in a bland manner and is definitely not for newcomers. What pissed me off the most was the lack of an dynamic, interactive map. I have quite a tight work schedule and can't spend hours memorising every nook and corner of the game world or trying to figure where to go next. Why can't they just tell me where to go??

One game which has really made a huge impression on me is Borderlands. I had heard some hype before its release but wasn't expecting too much out of it. But everything in the game, right from the toon shaded graphics to treasure hunting and fighting crazy bandits and high level beasts is immense fun. As IGN so aptly put it- "Borderlands is for gamers." I would say this is a perfectly designed "Shoot-em-up RPG". What is that? Ever heard of a "Hack-n-Slash RPG"? The like of Diablo and Dungeon Siege? Well this game is exactly that except in first person, futuristic time zone, different planet and has guns instead of swords and spells. But the core game mechanics i.e. "get quest, kill, loot, kill, kill, loot, kill, loot, complete quest, level up, invest skill points" remain unchanged. And trust me, this is a lot of fun. Do yourself a favour and give this game a shot.

But what pity, Dragon Age: Origins is out today. I believe, and gamespot has confirmed it, that this game is a must buy. I have started making rounds to all video game vendors in the city, and the moment I find it somewhere, Borderlands will be put on the backburner for a while.

Signing off for another round of "kill, loot, kill, loot, kill, loot, kill, loot."

Div

IGF main competition entries are in

The Main IGF competition deadline is over and there are 306 entries (a "little" less than the 500 I had predicted). This doesn't include the student games yet, that is scheduled to end by the 15/11/09. Have a browse through them and support the games you like! I've had a quick look through the list and found some interesting games; here's the list of those games (in no particular order):

Quanta and the Quanta youtube video.
Algodoo
Amnesia: The dark descent
Red Remover
Auditorium
Ludicrous
Mon & Bot
Rocketbirds : Revolution!
SUPER MEAT BOY!
AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! -- A Reckless Disregard for Gravity
AI War: Fleet Command
FATALE
Hazard: The Journey Of Life
Igneous
LIMBO
A New Zero
Proun
Closure
Cogs
Color Symphony
Grafighters
Lylian
No Quarter

I'm definitely looking forward to seeing the student games.

Hilarious article

I was browsing for something related to the discussion i was having with hank and Joe about changes to the game mechanics when (I'm not sure how) i ran into this hilarious article posted on cracked.com. Its not an article as such, but a photoshop contest where contestants were invited to send in photoshopped images related to the topic. This topic was 'If video games were realistic'. The article is here. Hank and myself did!

tenseiga.

Too many games and too little time.

Hopefully this comic strip is self explanatory.



Please comment on how good or bad this blog is.

Another note about piracy

Close on the heels of Hanks note about piracy I'd like to bring your attention to a small initiative by 2D boy, the creators of the most awsome World Of Goo which I highly recomend you buy if you havent. What these fine souls did was, put up their game for sale, and asked the buyer to pick their price without restrictions. The final results have been posted here: They've added a few metrics to even see the breakup of price by country. What has happened here is quite a few people prefered to pay 1 cent for the game and happily downloaded it, a few people paid 3$ for it, which considering the volume of sales works out ok for 2dboy. The problem with this approach is that it generates a lot of 1 cent sales that, you know, will never lead to anything more. Those people might as well have pirated the game.

I have an idea for another payment system for any game i'm involved in. The idea is, when downloading the game you can either pay the (nominal) price for it right then and there... or give us an IOU note for it. You'd have to give your email address and verify it to download it but nothing else, no credit card numbers or anything. Now if you owe us money we'll send you emails every once in a while to please pay for the game you bought from us. I at least was in a situation where i couldnt pay for a game simply because i didnt have any money, yet those were the best gaming years of my life. I did have an email address though, and today since I am earning money I'd gladly put my money on those games that gave me so much enjoyment. How long will we keep sending IOU notes? Effectively forever I guess, its a pretty harmless email every few months. If the money does come in, awsome! If it doesnt, well those people would have pirated the game anyway.

Thoughts?

Pirate disease

Do you download (full) games for free? Then you might be a pirate. This is a contagious disease which spreads fast through the use of the internet and through the air. If you think you are infected or know someone who maybe infected, then go out and buy a few games. Keep doing this until you no longer download games. Please note, if you live in a country like India then there is no cure for you yet. You're local developers are working hard to make craptacular games that will hopefully cure you from the pirate disease.

I really like what Apple has done to save the music industry, no longer do i have to buy a full CD with songs that i don't want. Why is it that the games industry doesn't do the same? I mean, not everyone wants to play the multiplayer mode which has been implemented into the game. Why isn't there an option where one can just buy either the single player or multiplayer versions of the game? That would lower the price of games, right?

In India (or other countries where you get paid peanuts) games still retail at a price equivalent to £40! WHY?! When GTA4 came out for the PC in India it sold for Rs 400, that's around £5. That was a smart move. Unfortunately, people who had already caught the pirate disease still went out and bought a pirate copy for around the same price. If games are priced at a fair price in these countries then eventually more people will buy a real copy.

Pair Programming

Hey all,

Tenseiga sent me a link to an interesting article: http://gamecareerguide.com/features/760/a_day_in_the_life_three_slices_of_.php?page=2. Unfortunately, i'm a programmer who doesn't really know much about the artists or designers daily work routine so i can't comment on those but i thought the programmer part of the article was very cool.

Apart from, what sounded like, the best lunch, i really liked the idea of sitting down and working in pairs. I've had experience in this style of working at my previous company. A colleague would come and ask for some help, sometimes he was just too tired to see the error but most of the time it took some time to solve. We used to work together on these issues and not only did we fix that particular error but we often found other areas of the code which could be changed to work more efficiently. Sometimes we'd argue about what was the right coding practice for a particular if statement. Another thing is that pair programming is a really good way of bursting ones ego, thus it is a good way of making my code into our code (again a big issue at my previous company).

I really think that this style of working should be used in more games companies, especially when it comes to teaching freshmen how to code for a living. When i joined my previous company, i was told to look into documents and once i had done that, start fixing bugs (I was put on a porting project, which in my opinion should be given to experienced/senior programmers). There were so many questions going through my head and since there were no senior or technical programmers at the company i just sat and tried to figure out what the other programmers did. What i soon found was that there was no methodological process to coding, there was no coding standards set by the company, no guidance at all and worst of all the internet was available through one laptop shared by the whole programming department.

Okay, so there were quite a few other problems at my last company but if i had been told to work with another programmer then the transition from student to employee would have been better, and maybe i'd still be working there.

Yellow fever

Games Dev - My Desk

In the next couple/few weeks/months i plan to write a little about what i think makes a good games development studio. This is 100% my own opinion so i hope to have some nice/bad comments on how you agree/disagree with me. I'll try my best to keep all these opinions fresh and not contradicting each other. Also, i'll be randomly writing about whatever i can think up at the time of writing... i'm a programmer :P.

Today i'll start the series by talking about the work environment.

The location of the studio is very important. I feel that a nice quiet, clean town (which isn't too far from a major city or has good transport routes to a major city) is the best place to setup base. You'll probably find that the rent is pretty cheap and that the only people who are going to bother you are old people who walk too slowly.

The layout of the office is probably one of the most important things about the work environment. If there are multiple projects going on then the teams should be grouped together and within the teams the groups should be split up into an artist area, programmer area and designer area. The leads, seniors and management shouldn't sit in there own cubicles, they should always be interacting with the minions and keeping up to date with what's going on, otherwise there won't be a good relationship between the masters and minions and so an awesome game will not be made. Also the layout of the actual desks is very important. I hate it when organisations shove as many desks into the office, stop being cheap! Maybe a circular formation would work. Between the different team sections, there should be lots of space for comfortable seating (bean bags) so that people can discuss, share ideas, argue, sleep and play games through out the day. There should be enough room to make your desk personal. Adding figures, random models made out of office equipment and posters really help.

There should be plenty of light. Did you know that by opening the curtains and letting in as much light during the day will save on the electricity bill?! Not only is it good for the pocket but it's environmentally friendly. For some reason, a nicely lit office space helps people stay awake and keep focused.

Don't fuck around with stupid colours. Nice light and warm colours, like white and peach, are good. Plus the posters of beautiful women and great games stand out.

Add plants! It's not homosexual or anything else related to inserting objects in wrong holes. I used to have a pepper plant, it was great! I had to get some pollen from another pepper plant to pollinate my pepper plant; peppers grew! It probably also helps keep the office smell fresh and look clean; comes in handy when girls come to the office.

Have a nice canteen or lunch room. If there's no canteen, then it's probably a better idea to let the guys and gals eat wherever they like. That way they don't miss out on the gaming tournaments during lunch time.

Hmmmm, a good start me thinks, there's a lot more things that can benefit the work environment though. Write your suggestions down in the comments and let the world see!

From what seemed like another life..

Working changes things, we all know that. Working in game development probably changes a lot more. The last few days i had a few strange things happen to me that helped me remember how different the life before i joined the hellish work place was. The day before i got home around 2:30 which was something that was beyond unusual. The only other time i got home around that time was when i had to attend a wedding at my last job. Now, as i walked to wards what was my home for the last 24 years I looked up. It had been raining off and on the last few days, but this particular day the sun was crisp as a cucumber, shining through the trees, creating perfect volumetric light and god rays against the dust of my small neighbourhood. It was kind of surreal that i realised i hadn't actually seen my house like this in years and was gripped by the urge to take a picture. Not only would i have looked stupid taking it, but it wouldn't have captured the essence of what i felt anyway. The only reason i did manage to get home so early was because the powers that be decreed that i did not need to stay anymore, considering i had spent the last night working. Truth be told they expected/told us to stay.

The work scenario repeats itself again. Only this time i had the good fortune to have a book with me (Princess, recommended, but not for the faint hearted). However this time i left later, around 4. As things would have it i hadn't slept in 36 hours and on my way back i got caught in a severe traffic jam. Luckily i had the rare luxury of a place to rest my derriere and read my book peacefully. A short while later i realised this was the first traffic jam i had been in in at least a year, in mumbai no less. However i was not inclined to walk inspite of the bus moving no more than 50ft in the last half an hour. However the gentleman (and i use the term very loosely) beside me released a scent, from an which orifice of his anatomy i cannot fathom, caused me to reconsider my resolve to read my little book till i got home even if it took an hour longer. Not that i was a bed of roses myself, as mentioned i had been at work for 36 hours. So i got away and walked until i was clear of traffic to take an autorickshaw home.

Life... Sucks.

The land and I are one.

tenseiga.

The inconvenient truth

While I was busy typing my last post, Hank changed the blog's theme and now the background is some obnoxious shade of green. Have to get it changed before someone sues us for intentionally causing blindness.

Have been playing a lot of games lately. However most of them have been old titles. One game which I would like to talk about is "S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl". It is a post apocalyptic first person shooter with some RPG elements. Sort of a dumbed down, highly unpolished cross between Fallout 3 and Black (PS2 and XBox) with lame ass quests and 9487372 bugs. I've been playing this game for a few hours now, and I haven't been able to clearly understand the plot, which is presented through notes and messages on the protagonist's PDA and of course, in game conversations. Most of the game's dialogue, apart from random comments in russian and some spoken dialogue by the game's few main characters, is presented solely through written text. Though someone like me, who has completed planescape torment several times, can live with it, most new age gamers (including new age RPG gamers) might find this a little annoying. Especially if you take into consideration the length of a few conversations.

There are plenty of gameplay bugs as well, first one being insane difficulty of the first few gun fights. Shooting is hardly any fun. And even the haunting atmosphere created during the night by piercing howls of mutated dogs is marred by recurring audio bugs. Many a time you will find yourself frantically looking for a dog who growled right behind your back, only to spot it some 100 feet away. And by the time you realise this, some bandit might've already punctured your torso.

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that this is a bad game. Just that it is a highly unpolished game which had the potential to be a 9/10 title. I guess this is where a lot of game developers and publishers go wrong. They kind of get used to the shortcomings in their games during the course of development and either stop noticing it or label them as insignificant. And towards the end of production cycle, it is usually too late to iron all these quirks out. Especially gameplay bugs. Publishers are a bitch when it comes to extending a deadline.

I just hope we can somehow take a more sensible approach by identifying most of these game destroying issues during development time and not have to deal with millions of bugs post testing.

Last... as usual

It's 2:30 AM, and Hank finally convinced me to write my first post on this blog.

We happen to be video game developers in a country where the only games most of the self confessed hardcore gamers have played post the NES (aka media and samurai) era are GTA, Need for Speed and counter strike. Therefore, both the games industry and gaming in general is hardly talked about. Hopefully that will change in the near future. We hope to share insights and recent developments in this industry on a regular basis. That is if Tenseiga is not too busy playing DOTA or getting his rangers slaughtered in company of heroes and Hank isn't too busy fixing shadows or coming up with conspiracy theories. ;)

ciao,

div

Its my turn now!

You would probably be surprised to hear that all games are turn based in some form or the other. Even the ones that say they are 'real time' really at the end of the day are turn based. The code ploughs through everything that it needs to plough through, asking everything that needs to be asked what it wants to do, what it wants to do. Seeing as code cannot ask more than one thing at the same time you could say each time it does its little update it could be a turn. Why bring up such boring detail when you could be beating down a hooker without knowing? Well mostly because of the question of whether or not one could view life in the same way. Life being a series of infinitely small turns, the universe continuously polling us, as we make our moves, as we roll cosmic dice to try to get a girl to go out with you (watch out, critical miss = kick in the beans).

Which brings us to the title of the blog. Why turn based stupidity? I don't really know. Maybe the prospect of idiots going "you be stupid, i be stupid, you be stupid..." into an infinity of initiative rolling would make worthy blog material. Sadly it probably would not and at this point of time it is simply a cute name to start a gaming, game development and ... whatever blog. I do hope you will find here all manner of useless trash posted by the three of us to be whatever it is that will cause you to leave a comment/become a follower and hence shed some awsomeness into our sleep deprived lives.

This is tenseiga,

There is no distance between us.

I am a General!

So, here i am. One of the first to write a blog. Actually i am the first blog poster. YEAH!

My name is Ankur Agarwal, my nickname is Hank and i'm currently living in India. I'm a programmer working in one of the "many" games companies in India. It's a tough life, especially if you work in the games industry :P I'm also working on a game at home.