blog archive 2006
23/11/06 - Gamepad Support...
Contrary to the gametunnel review Fren-ze *does* have gamepad and joystick - anything recognised as a directx input device in fact - support. Simply go to the redefine controls option in the menu and push the axis or button you want to use for each control, instead of pressing a key.
Having a review where the game gets marked down for not having a feature it actually does have seems to be pretty common. It's also very depressing. Oh well here are some other, better reviews.
[23/11/06-MattV]
19/10/06 - How to play...
Here's the first video showing how to play fren-ze:
It shows a perfect run through of the first level, every blue collected (55 of 55). It also shows some reflect strategies on the mini and big bosses to clear them faster. It took me ages to capture this vid because I'm pretty bad at fren-ze, I can get through the game but only properly perfect this first level. The designer should be recording videos for the rest of the levels.
[19/10/07-MattV]
28/08/06 - Fren-ze released...
So it's a week late but Fren-ze is out now. The full version is just $5 which won't be buying us PS3s (5 split 3 ways much?) but I think it's the fair price for a 4 level shooter.So I havn't really talked much about how the game works or the design process. That's mostly because I didn't do it, the game was designed by another fella over tortuous months. I can kind of sum up his work: it's a vertical shooter with LOTS of bullets (it's ace too). The very small amount of design I did on the game was to add a j-shooter style gimmick that helps newbies (because the game is rock hard) and also bonuses out show-off rights for expert players. Basically the score in the game (blues) can be spent on a shield, that lasts about one second, which reflects the enemy bullets. So new players can spend their score to get through difficult barrages. Expert players of course wouldn't want to piss away their score like this so if you're good and can reflect six bullets with one shield spend then you regain the blue score point it cost to activate the shield. This tactic works well on boss encounters where you can keep regaining your blues in the bosses huge bullet streams (plus the reflected bullets do slightly more damage than your bullets so you can finish them off quicker). It's the reason the boss practice and bossrush modes give you a single blue to use for reflect tactics.
Stuff coming up: A nice post on the history of fren-ze, how it came about etc. Some perfect playthru vids of fren-ze, i'll be trying to go youtube/googlevids with those although I need to get Antony to do them, I can only ace the first level. Probably will have to do some patches for Fren-ze (the beta guys did their best I'm sure).
Oh if anyone reading this can pimp fren-ze anywhere (forums, mags, websites) then *please* go ahead (but do so in a non-annoying way of course).
[28/08/06-MattV]
20/08/06 - That is unless...
Right, look, it's not down to me but I can't upload Fren-ze until the fmod license is sorted. So it might not be today now. Sorry anyone who's waiting.
[20/08/06-MattV]
18/08/06 - release date...
Recently I've really been trying not to say when a game will be released. Just go back through this blog to see the shamefull "out next week", "no, er, out *next* week", "er, probably out the week after next, maybe" type stuff i've posted in the past. So I thought it'd be better to not post a release date until I was really sure of hitting it. The problem with this is that I don't know until very late in the day when things are finished, a reflection on the sporadic nature of my hermit development time (hello real life job). So now I know and can say when Fren-ze will be released. This weekend. Yep, tomorrow or the day after.
There will be the buyabale full version (cheap) and a decent length demo online within the next two days.
[18/08/06-MattV]
26/07/06 - Scottish fellas...
They recieved a letter from America, walked 10,000 miles and now they love Nintendo: I'm On My Wii.
[26/07/06-MattV]
17/07/06 - music stuff...
Redpoint have released a nice free (!) ep called Stay At Home, a nice hermit-ey sentiment. It's a taster of their long anticipated first album Protect and Survive.
I found out the other day that the aphex tracks I linked to a few posts back were fake. Doh, taken in!
Lastly I've been quite enjoying this (music not video). after Stuart Campbell used it for some football flash thing. People I've enthused about it to have described it as "like bad karaoke", "it's a kids song right?" and "pants". What a great recommendation eh?
I did some more work on fren-ze over the weekend, bet you're fed up of reading that. Only 2 items left on the list now, until some more bugs are found.
[17/07/06-MattV]
15/07/06 - This Weekend...
This image here shows what i'll be spending a lot of my weekend doing, playing Loco Roco, the first PSP game i've actually liked. Actually that's not strictly true, I also own Wipeout Pure and like that a fair bit too. I just don't count Wipeout in my person-platform endorsement-game-list because I think the PSP platform really hampers what could be the greatest Wipeout game of all time. The small laggy screen and awkward controls really annoy me for something that I'd like to be all immersive. Thankfully Loco Roco avoids these problems by being nicely immediate, non concentrationist and not using any of the (hand hurting) buttons and nubbets on the face of the machine. It's great.[15/07/06-MattV]
22/06/06 - Fren-zE Feature Complete...
To borrow a Microsoftism: Fren-zE is now "feature complete". Now I just have to fix a few graphical issues and any bugs the beta testers find. We also need to decide about price and doing a demo etc.
The first decent PSP game is out tommorrow: Loco Roco. An EU release before Japan and the US too!
[22/06/06-MattV]
16/06/06 - Pom Pom Game...
I havn't seen this mentioned anywhere else. PomPom (Mutant Storm, Space Tripper) have had one of their games (Bliss, was mentioned in the Edge article a while back) picked up by Codemasters. There is already an online playable version up here.
[16/06/06-MattV]
02/06/06 - Aphex Sofa...
Right i'm just about to settle into the sofa for the evening. I hope to finish off the todo list in Fren-zE this weekend but it's going to be quite busy, might not manage.
Anyway, off topic, if you like Richard James (the Aphex Twin, Pritchard D Jams, Quoth, AFX, Polygon Window etc..) there's a little something for the weekend. He's gone and entered an acid competition on a webforum, releasing 4 tracks before dissapearing again. The titles are "faucet trip track 31 31 bdtrk", "gower bit", "gower bit2" and "track48bit" and there were all posted by the user "cash madrid live" (one for anagram fans there). Here's a link to the forum thread in question, you'll have to trawl through the posts yourself. They feel wonderfully organic, homegrown and immediate for electronic stuff, kind of acoustic electonic. It's one of the qualities of RDJs stuff I love and something the recent Analord release lacked for me, sounding a little too clean without the "mistakes". It's exactly the feel I want for my games, warm digital, glitchy glowyness.
[02/06/06-MattV]
29/05/06 - more Fren-ze info...
The new scoring mechanism has gone in successfully and I've celebrated by putting a bunch of new screenshots online. The todo list is now getting dangerously small (unlocking, improve blues, fix complete screen) although I am thinking I would like to do something about the players bullets. They tend to clash with the enemy bullets, I think because they look so similar. This can get very confusing, especially now the game has the reflect mechanism that wasn't in the original. I need to come up with something that fits with the style of the game and looks brilliantly distinct, hmmmm.I've also managed to see United 93 (good, powerfull), See a "London Satire" exhibition at the Barbican (poor) and eat a Tiramasu (yumm/10).
[29/05/06-MattV]
29/05/06 - Fren-ze, Zee-3 and Brick...
Just settling into some coding, nice cup of analogue tea on the side. I'm fixing up the level-complete screens for Fren-ze. This means I also need to overhaul the way the scoring values and unlocks are done to match the new way the game works. Hopefully I wont break any of the working systems while I modify.
The Pickford Brothers have finally opened their new developer/publisher online venture Zee 3. You can sign up to the beta program to play their first game Naked War now and read lots of great adventures in game development tidbits in the softography section. Try not to get too depressed with the torrent of "game cancelled" and "publisher ripped us off, again" comments.
We went to see Brick yesterday. I think it's a hard one to recommend even though I really did enjoy it. If you fancy a twisty hard boiled 30s detective thriller transplanted to the social structure a modern day school but without removing any of things you might think that jarring transplant would require, then this is for you!
[29/05/06-MattV]
22/05/06 - Developments...
Back off holiday and happily decompressed into lovely rainy Albion. Italy was lovely but I'd miss a nice bit of drizzle every now and again if I lived there. Who wants to wake up to the same blazing sun every day eh? And of course the analog tea doesn't taste right in climates where the ambient temperature is above 20degs C. Oh and some travel advice: don't go to Naples. Just don't.
Robot Ron news! Yep Robot Ron is coming to a new platform, as you may have seen hinted and announced at on other sites. It's coming to the NUON thanks to the hard work of Mr Scott Cartier. I'll post further updates as work progressed, as will Scott on his own site, I expect. There might even be a little bit of other 'Ron related stuff coming this year too...
Anyway back to work on getting Fren-ze out there. It's only some bug fixing and UI hookups I really need to do now. I should be able to post some screenshots and maybe movies of the thing in action really soon.
[22/05/06-MattV]
04/05/06 - Fixed game links...
Unfortunately a load of the links to games on the site have been pointing to corrupted files. I only found out about this yesterday and don't know how long it's been like it. I've reset the troid and mariopac files, I think the only thing left still corrupted is the pm-erlin exe. I'll fix that tonight.
[04/05/06-MattV]
22/04/06 - Repel all bullets...
I think I have found the correct way to play the current project:
[22/04/06-MattV]
16/04/06 - Zmoose Poems...
Happy easter chums! I've stopped searching for eggs (6 found so far, although 3 are "just" creme eggs so don't worry I won't become massively fat, just mildly more so) and decided to alert readers to the further poetry zmoose has posted in the forum. I think he's hoping it'll encourage me to do some more work, which it might, but first I need to watch last nights Doctor Who and Sons and Daughters (newish US sitcom, not the early 90s australian ITV daytime soap) while eating this chocolate.
Recently played and enjoyed: Guitar Hero, the new Tomb Raider and Oblivion.
[16/04/06-MattV]
01/04/06 - twisted videogames...
The post-christmas games lull seems to be over, at my house anyway. Yesterday I de-rezed into Oblivion. I'm still not sure if I enjoyed running about with baldie from Star Trek and Sean Bean or not. The actual game mechanics are basic and fairly unrewarding beyond the manic RPG staple of leveling-up (play weak fanfare + particle effect). I'm not sure if I even want to think about the narrative saving it because that is fundamentally something I don't agree with, the narratologists are just wrong, ok. But anyway it is compelling. I'm going to pin the fun on the massive free roaming world and while the dynamics are weak they stay varied and allow you to feel like you're crafting your own story, rather than some narratologist ramming it down your feeding tube.
The game that made want to come online and type things though is Warioware Twisted. I've put off getting this one so long it's actually coming out in the UK soon! Like a good middlecore I imported it to avoid waiting, avoid paying twice as much and avoid supporting useless NintendoUK in any way. It's Brilliant, even better than the original Warioware. The use of rumble gives the turning an excellent tactile feedback, it's like nitching round the mouse wheel or adjusting my thermostat, except I'm dodging meteors, slicing leaves, penning in dogs, ironing clothes and drifting cars. If spinning my GBA around is a taster of the tilt-tastic Revolution then I'm going to continue to check my preorder every day.
If I get time between playing those two I might de-shrinkwrap Metroid Hunters and give that a go. I might even post my friend code in the forum. I might also get time to post up the new fren-ze beta. I might, on the other hand, wait a bit longer to get even more bonkers poetry out of Zmoose.
[01/04/06-MattV]
10/03/06 - Joining the future...
I have an RSS feed now, for all you people living in the future.
Some friends of mine are about to release an album, the same fellas responsible for Deadeye. They've been working on it for several years now and put out a track in one of the Neon promo vids. They're kind of like an electro Boards Of Canada. Samples are available here.
[10/03/06-MattV]
09/03/06 - my little corner...
Sometimes I think it might be better if I stopped looking at the interwebernet. I only find things to disagree with, currently the quality of Black and the recent Poliakoff dramas on BBC1. I think they're great and quite good respectively, conversely internet opinion on both seems to be very negative. Everyone seems to love Resident Evil 4 as well, and I was bored after the first hour. Don't even mention Metal Yawn Solid. This might all sound boring and negative but it's actually a recommendation for Black and Poliakoff. I can't wait to see everyone slag off LocoRoco (the PSPs great squishy hope in my opinion).
On the other hand, the internet isn't all bad
[09/03/06-MattV]
21/02/06 - Laying down a fren-ze...
Putting together this PC conversion of Fren-ze is quite fun, apart from coding the boring windows alt-tab type stuff of course. Chalk (the original author of PS2 fren-ze) and I are trying out a modern-shooter style "gimmick" at the moment that will hopefully make the game easier and more hardcore at the same time. I remember trying to add a gimmick, or rather a second gimmick, to 'troid after I had released the first version and it being absolute hell to get working. In the end I had to ditch the 'troid gimmick, losing a lot of hard effort in the process, so I did worry that this would suffer from the same problem. Being a finished game crowbaring in a new gameplay mechanic it wasn't designed for is a risky business. But testing a prototype implementation so far has been quite fun so I'm hopefull it'll work out this time.
There was a slight panic over at rllmuk (a gaming forum I read/occasionally post to) yesterday when someone reported an IGN article that seemed to indicate the Upcoming Xbox Live Arcade version of Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting was based up on the Megadrive version rather than the proper arcade original. This would be quite disatrous, the MD version was gash in comparison to the real thing. Anyway after looking at the screenshots on IGN I can definately say it IS the arcade version, or at least much much closer to it than the scabby MD port. The problem is with IGN getting someone with bugger all knowledge of the series to write a hands-on, the fools.
[21/02/06-MattV]
15/02/06 - Ranting at Bol...
"When I try to get videogames turned into movies, and get videogames accepted as [the equivalent of] best-selling books for the younger generation, I get only sh** from the videogames press - what an asshole I am, what a criminal I am for doing these movies, whatever, instead of being happy that there's a movie getting made of a game. This is what's confusing me."
- Uwe Bol, http://eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=62906
Hey, Uwe Bol, people don't like films because the name on the poster is the same as a videogame they own. They like films because they're, SHOCK, good films. In fact if you make a shit film concerning a universe that people have invested a lot of themselves into then don't be surprised when they come after you with pitchforks. Hope that clears it up for you.
I have posted a beta version of Fren-ze to the beta forum for those people signed up as beta testers (++Points for excessive use of the word beta). As zmoose has noted it is *hard*. We should be able to release the game in the next few months.
[15/02/06-MattV]
06/01/06 - still here...
I am still about and doing things, playing a bit of live arcade, finishing off Z**L****M, going to Cornwall and Canterbury and Dundee, drinking analogue tea.
Analogue Tea is a secret and guarded method of brewing. It was devised back in dark days on a coacoa-scum scented wasteland. It was then revised in a forgotten space on a failing film studio lot. Arcane code was put into place to decide who should undertake it's concoction. The creation of such a powerfull potion caused time and space to warp, sometimes resulting in Analogue Tea's evil and disgusting alter ego Living Tea. Analogue tea is the future. It is also nicely refreshing.
I can't belive I havn't mentioned that Alien Abduction has gone shareware. It's like PomPom did a defender remake, so grab the demo if you havn't already.
[06/01/06-MattV]
