blog archive 2004
04/12/04 - Whip up a Fren-zE...
Official Playstation 2 Magazine this month features the brilliant vertical shooter Fren-zE. It's a secret option on the disc, simply hold L1, L2, R1, R2 buttons down in the menu and it will appear in the Comedown section. See the forum or the official Fren-zE site for more information.Apart from playing Fren-zE I have been working away on a several new hermitgames things which should be out soonish, honest.
[04/12/04-MattV]
11/11/04 - Caterpillar up a belfry?
Bah, colds eh? While eating soup and moaning a bit today I watched this brilliant documentary about the british games industry in the 80s. It excellently shows the demise of, then powerhouse, Imagine. Right down to being there as the staff get locked out of the office by bailiffs. It also features some hilarious discussions and several people in charge making it up as they go along. It's like a games industry version of The Office.
Thank goodness the games industry isn't anything like that these days, eh?
[11/11/04-MattV]
16/10/04 - Um Bongo, they drink it in the....
Who'd have thought banging a bit of plastic and clapping in time to bad cover versions of already cheesy songs would be so much fun? Well I suppose I had an idea it might be, why else would I have carried a big Donkey Conga box home with me on friday? Anyway it made me grin my head off even more than I'd hoped, which is good because after the fun (read NOT fun) I've had at work this week I was in dire need of hitting a bongo in time to The Impression That I Get. And I managed to start this post with two consecutive rhetorical questions, high five!
Just in case people havn't spotted it, there is now a 'troid fullversion hiscores thread in the forum
[16/10/04-MattV]
12/09/04 - Pikmin 2 Vs Burnout 3...
I've been playing sequels this weekend, Pikmin 2 by Nintendo and Burnout 3 by EA. Both excellent games, but unfortunately one of them seems to have been finished and then spunked on by Satan. Where Satan in that previous sentence is EA and beelzebub's love tadpoles are a whole host of moronic presentation and operational decisions. Awful whiny American "music" bookended by the most annoying frat-boy DJ imaginable, I named him El-Twatarino to stop myself putting my elbow through the TV. MTV style music artist/trackname overlays that COVER UP VITAL PARTS OF THE HUD. An utterly retarded implementation of Xbox Live that misses the point of an online service completely and redirects you from the well implemented and functional Live servers onto EAs inadequate and shite servers. Extremely patronising unskippable tutorial videos, voiced of course, for you pleasure, by El-Twatarino. Forcing you to view the "you've won a new car, here's an unskippable flyby of it" five or six times in a row after winning a multi-race event. This list could go on but I can't be bothered, you get the idea and the actual game is really bloody excellent, as has been noted by Way of the Rodent, Edge, GamesTM and every other games x on the planet. Which conveniently saves me from having to mention the good stuff, just read about Burnout 3 on any other media outlet.
Pikmin 2 also suffers slightly from corporatisation, my heart sinks a little every time I uncover a new piece of treasure and find it's a branded 7-up bottle top or a Duracell battery rather than something interesting and stylised from Mr N. Tendo-Designer, there's an excellent opportunity here for some satire which instead they've sidelined into the names the assistant spaceship chooses for the items. At least in Pikmin the placement has a context within the game, it's similar to the difference between watching TV and going to the cinema. In the Nintendo offering you feel like you are inside a consistent game experience, in EAs you're dropping in and out of the game, t rapped in EA wankspace for the rest of the time. And no EA, calling the map screen a "Crash-Nav" isn't creative consistency.
In other news 'troid is entering larval metamorphosis, expect a Street Fighter to Street Fighter 2 scale change here, at least thats where I'm aiming.
[12/09/04-MattV]
30/08/04 - sheeparoids returns...
Firstly: welcome Edge readers! I have not yet seen the article as of writing this, but I hear 'troid has been featured. As celebration I've done some updates to the demo, the best of which is a whole extra level, yep, for free! It's a modification (made easier) of the level in this screenshot on the left, a minefield of rocks patrolled by two nasty j-fish. There's also a nice new pause menu that lets you restart/quit the level quickly plus some bugfixes. I've rolled the updates into the full version, people who've aready bought the game should be getting an email soon with update details.I spent some of today experimenting with mouse control for 'troid in the testbed. I did this right near the beginning of development, but decided to drop it. The main problem is it affords people using the mouse (or even better a spinner) a hefty advantage due to the analog rotation possible. I think I will add it back into the released versions fairly soon as a switchable option, but make it taint the scoreboard, so mouse controlled games cannot be submitted to the same online tables (which are on the way soon).
Also a priority for the next version is the unlockable 2d original/prototype game sheeparoids, which I always intended to be the reward for game completion. It's how 'troid started out, as a simple port of the GBA game I wrote to test some alpha shadow code. Of course I got carried away and it became what it is now, but the 2d sheep-heavy prototype is still quite fun.
[30/08/04-MattV]
03/08/04 - new demo...
I've stuck a new demo up for troid, just made level 2 and 3 a bit easier for people to handle. I should also make it clear that the level 2 and 3 from the demo are not level 2 and 3 from the game, they are levels 18 and 24 respectively. I wanted to give a flavour of what the whole game offers. The difficulty in the full game ramps up at a much more human pace.
[03/08/04-MattV]
31/07/04 - 'troid online, go get it...
Yep it's online NOW! You can finally all download the demo and even, if you feel like it, buy the full game. I'm going to take a bit of a break now, play a bit of GradiusV maybe but actually I feel like having a rest of shooters.By tomorrow tho I'm sure I'll be ready to start work on the next project, and to begin a few things I want to put into v1.1 of 'troid.
[31/07/04-MattV]
28/07/04 - psschooooowwww...
New screenshots and movies online for 'troid. Product links hopefully later today and demo verrrry soon after that. Arg lots ot sort out, online forms to fill in. Stuff to tweak, things to remove, things to add :)
When I've finished this I can finally play Gradius V, which from my initial few goes seems absolutely brilliant.
[28/07/04-MattV]
03/07/04 - whats up...
Jon pointed out in the forums I havn't stuck a blog on here in an age. I've been so busy finishing off 'troid I hadn't really noticed. So anyway my current optimistic estimate is to have some kind of full version up for sale by the end of the month, with a demo just a little bit later. Not long to wait now...
[03/07/04-MattV]
17/05/04 - Chronic Logic do it again...
Back from my NY excursion (see the forum). I've mostly caught up on the E3 news (see below) and had a few jetlag naps. But the most important thing is Gish has been released by Chronic Logic, the makers of bridge builder. It's a very innovative 2d platformer with decent physics where you play a ball of tar that can squish, deform, bounce, stick and get heavier. There's a demo ready to download now.
My E3 thoughts: DS - buying one. PSP - fake. New Zelda - very dissapointed I won't get a proper Wind Waker sequel, I thought the cell graphics of WW were the best thing that ever happened to Zelda giving the game a timeless perfect implementation of it's design with no visual compromise. I am still looking forward to the same stuff I was before E3: GradiusV, FourSwordsUS and Pikmin2. Overall too much smoke and mirrors not enough substance.
[17/05/04-MattV]
08/04/04 - end in sight...
'troid development has become increasingly painfull over the last week as I try and finalise the two new boss enemies. Once they are done the game will have enough functional elements for me to be happy with it so I can get on with polishing the graphics (fun) and fixing compatibility (not-fun). The main brain-shock inducing problems have been balancing the spinner between far-too-easy and to-hard-to-even-test-the-bugger, designing interesting representations for the new enemies and the loud whooshing sound made by the estimated second beta deadline as it flew past several times. Certain parts of making games is really fun, the initial implementation phase and a few months after release once all the initial teething problems are out of the way, but this end of the race slog bit for 'troid is making my metaphorical calves burn.
[08/04/04-MattV]
28/08/04 - sunday spinners...
Spending this weekend adding in two new boss enemies, playing Geometry Wars and drinking tea. I'm building the new enemies in an organic implement/test cycle, one of the advantages of working alone. Using simple spheres and lines to test effects, the aim being to force the player to manouvre in the most dynamically interesting way.
linkage:
Way of the Rodent - more excellent new games journalism. There's a great Speccy Vs C64 issue going on right now, and the serialised History of Lllamasoft is a good place to start in the archive.
Consolevania - Brilliant new games TV show. It's like the TV equivalent of Stu Campbell's Between Planets, conceptually and literally.
TUMIKI Fighters - Another excellent ABA game, shoot giant toy things then stick em to your ship as a shield.
[28/08/04-MattV]
24/03/04 - beta news...
The first 'troid beta has gone out and been well recieved, lots of stuff for me to fix and improve now :) The game, like the first version of Mario Pac, will require DirectX 8.1 and some kind of 3D graphics card, i'm working to make the minimum spec somewhere aound a Pentium 300mhz with a Nvidia TNT graphics card. Hopefully that won't exclude too many of you.
[24/03/04-MattV]
18/03/04 - anniversary 'troid...
No new game today I'm afraid. I had really hoped to get 'troid finished by today (the 1st year anniversary of MarioPacs release) but unfortunately it's only just coming up for beta. I have put up a new page for 'troid with a couple of screenshots and some gameplay info. At least you get something, I'm working on the rest.
[18/03/04-MattV]
23/02/04 - New forum...
Theres a new forum for hermitgames now. Based on the invision board software it's much better than the gamers.com board we had before. The only ads are banners at the top of the page, no popups or popunders, plus your email info will be safe from spammers. Join up and post something...
Work continues on Balf and other projects, I'm really hoping to have something out before the 1 year aniversary of MarioPacs release.
The latest (and last) UK Official Playstation Mag is out now and features both my Robot Ron and Roller as well as 18 other excellent Yaroze games. Very definately worth £5. Remember to switch your pad to analog mode BEFORE you launch the Yaroze games from the disc menu by the way, there's a little bug in the launcher app.
[23/02/04-MattV]
28/01/04 - plaaaasma...
So I'm adding little red spark thrust particles to the thing I'm doing at the mo ('troid, coming soon). I'm half way through and I hit compile, just to check there are no errors really. I start a game and press the thruster button. A georgeous red trail of plasma arcs off accross the screen, feeding back as it crosses itself, fading into the background.
Thats staying in as it is I reckon :)
Cool freeware news/hosting/linking site that recently reviewed Mario Pac: www.freestyle-freeware.co.uk
[28/01/04-MattV]
20/01/04 - another mag for the disk...
Yes buy another magazine just for the disk, in this case Official Playstation have featured pingping, one of my games. If you can't figure out how to burn an ISO, or don't have access to a gold disk playing PSone, this is a nice easy way to get hold of the game. And contrary to whats written in the paper thing that comes with the disk it's called "pingping" not "Ping Pong", and it isn't a rehash of Pong, it's a completely original game.Also on the disk is Katapilla which is a groovy climbing game by fellow multi-opm-featured-yarozer Ben James.
[20/01/04-MattV]
06/01/04 - buy a magazine for the disc...
This months UK Official Playstation Mag has two excellent yaroze games on it's coverdisc, either of which are well worth the £5 cover price alone.
Timeslip by David Johnston & Mike Goatly is a platformer within a truly 4 dimensional gameplay environment. It predates Blinx by a hefty 3 years and outclasses it 10,000 times. Plus: you play a snail! Truly one of the most overlooked but interestingly ironic of all the anthropomorphic forms.
Squeek by Ben James is a tasty, fruit based, version of Diamond Mine, Bejeweled or, my favourite: Zoo Keeper. Travel to your newsagent now.
[06/01/04-MattV]
01/01/04 - Deadeye...
I've been playing lots of the Deadeye Demo. It's a brilliant new shooter brimming with strategy and innovative ideas by two top ranking llamasofties: Sickboy and Fuseball (with gfx by Bog). It's finger-achingly good and you'll be scanning WOTR and yakyak daily for news of the full version once you're hooked.
[01/01/04-MattV]
16/12/03 - I am not santa...
I want to point out I am not Santa, Kate W is Santa unless there are children reading in which case she isn't (but she is). Anyway I am definately not Santa whether there are children reading or not, either way, I am not Santa. Here's some proof:
You can see me quite clearly in this picture that Mary took, which is why she isn't in this one. So aaaah to all those people who though Santa was me. It's not. Aaaah.
[16/12/03-MattV]
14/12/03 - we had a visitor...
Santa come last night during a christmas film showing at the shack (It's a Wonderfull Life and Gremlins). He (she) brought us many wonderfull (tacky but good) presents. 
[14/12/03-Mattv]
16/02/04 - shack piccies...
If you want to see what shack station earth looks like have a look at the new about page. There are some nice black and white grainy-o-tastic images of where I'm sitting right now typing this. There is also a load of old waffle all about this site and hermitgames in general, ping!
[16/02/04-MattV]
