Zorful Games

Policenauts

noreply@blogger.com (zorful) — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 17:13:00 +0000

At long last, the Policenauts English Translation Patch is released. This is Hideo Kojima’s follow-up to Snatcher, and his most famous officially un-translated game.

This hack features:

1. Complete 100% English translation of all Japanese graphics and text to English. There is not one character of Japanese left in the game - including opening and ending credits.

2. Fixes to graphical glitches in the original game.

3. Fixes to a crash bug in the original game.

Translations - Policenauts

20 Years Of Evolution: Scott Miller And 3D Realms

noreply@blogger.com (zorful) — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 16:54:00 +0000

via Gamasutra

Max Payne is a really good example of that.

When I was working with Remedy back in 1997 and we were first brainstorming Max Payne, I had a big talk them about, "We need to be thinking bigger than just games, guys. We need to develop a game that has a strong enough character and story that Hollywood is going to come to us and want to make a film out of it." And so, we built the game with that idea in mind. Everything was run through the filter of, "Is this a good enough idea that Hollywood will like it too?"

The Max Payne movie came out last October, so that approach did pay off for us, and there is a Duke Nukem movie in pre-production right now.

20 Years Of Evolution: Scott Miller And 3D Realms

Retrospective: Space Quest IV Article

noreply@blogger.com (zorful) — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 12:57:00 +0000

via Eurogamer

There tend to be two angles taken on a retro piece. Either someone goes back to a game they love and explains why they love it, or they go back to a well-known game and point out how it was actually quite flawed. I intend to take a slightly different approach to this reflection on Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers. This is a piece about how it was actually quite flawed, and why I love it.

Retrospective: Space Quest IV Article

Buried somewhere inside is a link to an insightful interview with Scott Murphy, one of the lead developers of the series.

The bitterness I posses is at what Sierra and Ken Williams had become as they became more and more successful, and how the Space Quest 6 abortion came about after broken promises and the just plain fucking over I got from the people I'd worked so incredibly hard for. The more successful each game became, the worse they treated us and the less they wanted to pay us. I'm not talking about us demanding more money like some sort of prima donnas. They seemed like they were actually penalizing us for being successful for them. They didn't want to pay us as much, which wasn't a lot anyway, as they had for each of the previous games. We'd done well for them despite the fact that they spent virtually no money advertising the games, especially when you look at how much they hyped the King's Quests. I'm quite proud of how we sold despite that.

On Space Quest 2, I worked fourteen months and had only TWO days off during that period, but that wasn't good enough for them. I got called in and chewed out after that one and SQ3 for taking too long to get them shipped. SQ4 showed how dark we'd become as a result. SQ's 5 and 6 were abysmal in my opinion and I've felt some guilt about 6, even though I inherited a game primarily designed by someone else based around that person's game design around a lame joke on a title of another company's game series, which was about as stupid an idea as I've ever heard of. What a nightmare that was, but that's another story for another time, like maybe after the sweet angel of death comes to take me away. And I didn't even work on SQ5, so comments on "Roger Beamish" might be a little unfair, even though I didn't know it was even being made until I accidentally saw a beta version that had been sent down from Dynamix to one of the Oakhurst producers.

Now that does explain much in the Sierra eventual failure as a company and also why SQ5 and 6 mostly sucked.

Sim War 5

noreply@blogger.com (zorful) — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 22:07:00 +0000

via Pixel Prospector

Sim War 5 is a frantic top down shooter. The graphical style combines a 3D view with pixelated sprites. It has also a fine splitscreen co-op mode. I highly recommend to play this game with a dual analog gamepad.

Sim War 5

Disqus

noreply@blogger.com (zorful) — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 21:27:00 +0000

Disqus, pronounced "discuss", is a service and tool for web comments and discussions. The Disqus comment system can be plugged into any website, blog, or application. Disqus makes commenting easier and more interactive, while connecting websites and commenters across a thriving discussion community.

Disqus is a free service to the general public with absolutely no inline advertisements. A premium model is in development.

DISQUS

Knee-Deep in ZDoom

noreply@blogger.com (zorful) — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 21:03:00 +0000

Stumbled upon something absolutely great while playing Skulltag the other day:

The experience of playing through Knee-Deep in the Dead is one that many gamers will never forget, but through the years the episode has become too easy for many to play through and enjoy the way they did the first time. Knee-Deep in ZDoom is an interpretation of Id Software's original groundbreaking production, Knee-Deep in the Dead. The team has focused on expanding the original episode by utilizing the power of Randy Heit's ZDoom port; adding new areas, features, and gameplay devices not possible under the original Doom engine. Knee-Deep in ZDoom is a new experience, but holds strong to the atmosphere of the original. Relive the fear. Relive the nightmare. Relive Phobos.

Realm 667 - Knee-Deep in ZDoom [KDiZD]

John Carmack - The Boot Interview (Outtakes)

noreply@blogger.com (zorful) — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 20:05:00 +0000

In this 1997 interview which I've found today, John Carmack and Brian Hook of ID software talk about the then current trends and developments. This is the Outtakes part, which has damn interesting stuff like this one:

Alex St. John: So what would you do with Direct3D if you were in charge?

Hook: Hold it, hold it. There's too much speculation here. Having talked to enough ex-Microsoft employees, I know it's a very political landscape. It doesn't matter how good you are technologically, because there are people up there right now who have the capability to solve this problem, but politically do not. So you don't need me to go up there--what you need is someone up there willing to dictate on strategy, end of story, that's it.

John Carmack: Well, I don't know if I agree. I undervalue the strength of politics. I am a technical idealist at heart and I think that if you put someone up there that knows what the hell is going on, and they have authority over the code base, they can fix it. The final word is what gets built into the executables.

Hook: I think a pretty much infallible case has been made for OpenGL

and Microsoft has effectively come back and said "Screw you."

John Carmack: [laughs] Brian's current conspiracy theory is that

Microsoft is investing in Apple to force them to adopt D3D or

something.

Alex St. John: That's not the most irrational thing we've heard. So,

what do you two think about Microsoft showing GLQuake running on top

of Direct3D?

...

Hook: And Microsoft didn't tell us they were going to do an emulation.

If they had simply asked "We're going to do this, do you mind?" We

would have said OK, because we're just into cool technical stuff.

There wouldn't have been a problem, but they didn't even do that.

Alex St. John: It was my job to get your approval, but they fired me

before I could do it!

Hook: Look, this is my view of the people who work at Microsoft. You

have a choice. If you're good enough, you have a choice of where you

work. You have to realize that what you're doing is bad for the

industry. And what you're doing is only good for your personal ego and

your personal power trip and your stock options. If you're doing stuff

that you don't even agree with and you do it for the money--we have a

word for that.

Alex St. John: So what's that word?

Hook: A whore. And I've never done that. I can sleep well at night.

Those people can't.

Alex St. John: Are there particular people that you have in mind?

Hook: No, I'm not even singling out the D3D team. I'm saying in

general that you can have a certain level of honor and integrity, but

not a lot of people exhibit that.

John Carmack: One thing the D3D/GLQuake demonstration did was draw the

lines of battle. Microsoft is always trying to be friendly and put on

a good face and saying "We're doing what the ISVs want" and

everything. But that's really just a front. There's a well-defined

agenda that D3D shall rule the universe; OpenGL shall crumble and die.

But Microsoft can't quite come out and say that. And I would respect

them a hell of a lot more if they actually did, but they're trying to

have your cake and eat it too. And it's just not that way.

Hook: Their D3D developer-relations guy sends e-mail asking if there's

anything he can do. And then something happens and he'll say "Oh, I

had nothing to do with that."

It's like "Fuck you! You work there." That's not my problem and I

don't respect you for coming up with excuses when you come down here

and start saying "Oh, we really want to work with you..." and then

pull a stunt like that. You come off as two-faced, you come off as a

hypocrite. If you want to work with us, pay attention to us. But it's

not what they want to do. They say "Try D3D--you'll like it," And I

kept saying "I don't want to use D3D. I have something else I like."

To me, the analogy was like going to a fast food place and saying "I

want a hamburger," and them saying, "We've got a really good chicken

sandwich."

You know, we're not supposed to do what Microsoft wants. Microsoft is

supposed to enable us to deliver content on their operating system,

but they're not doing that. They're flat-out ignoring us to a large

degree. And I've heard private comment from members of the Direct3D

group where they just categorically ignore anything John Carmack says.

Not because they don't believe in him, but because he disagrees with

them. It's not John Carmack, it's anyone who disagrees with them.

They've done this with hardware people. "Yeah, even though they're the

fastest, they don't have enough volume. We don't really need to work

with them..." And they do that across the board.

Alex St. John: SGI can't make much money licensing the OpenGL

technology, so they really need to make an NT deal with Microsoft. How

does that make you feel?

John Carmack: This is where I can just be righteously indignant and

disgusted about them. I am a technical idealist and the wrong things

are happening. I understand the reasons why some of them are happening

and I'll probably learn to live with them, but it doesn't keep me from

being pissed-off about it.

Alex St. John: So even if OpenGL dies, will you remain its torchbearer?

John Carmack: No. We're not going to crusade off a cliff. I am

pragmatic at the end; there is a limit as to how much I will let

idealism damage me because I can adapt to whatever is necessary and

Direct3D with Draw primitive doesn't suck.

D3D sucks!

There's just nothing charitable you can say about it. Over the years,

Microsoft will make D3D suck less, but they're dragging us through the

mud along with them as they figure it out.

But in the end, if SGI did give up on OpenGL, we would give it up. I

suppose the gentlemen's bet would be that they're not going to bow out

in the next couple of years.

John Carmack - The Boot Interview (Outtakes) (Nov 25, 1997)

ID software in 1993

noreply@blogger.com (zorful) — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 17:23:00 +0000

Stumbled upon this old VHS video of ID software uploaded by none other than John Romero himself. It's mostly Romero playing first few levels of the first Doom episode but there are other interesting tidbits there. The levels are not in final state and the sounds are taken from Wolf3D SNES port. Also there's a sizable chunk of Bobby Prince showing off Commander Keen music and more.

A Visit to id Software from john romero on Vimeo.

Retrospective: The Dig

noreply@blogger.com (zorful) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 15:06:00 +0000

via Eurogamer

I like to take my time. I'm not in any rush. I don't need to be hurried along, pushed from behind, or told time's running out. Let me wander at my own pace, I'll get there in the end. Adventure games let me do that. They're in no hurry. They've a story to tell, and they'll tell it to me in my own good time.

Retrospective: The Dig Article

The Nameless Mod Post-Mortem Part 3 feature

noreply@blogger.com (zorful) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 14:43:00 +0000

via ModDB

Third part of The Nameless Mod Post-Mortem is up on ModDB.

In and of itself, "don't eliminate pre-production" may seem like a pretty obvious piece of advice, but what we were actually trying to do, in hind-sight, was iterative design. We were experimenting with the engine and the tools at our disposal, testing the capabilities of our team, and throwing our every idea at the game with no sense of restraint in order to see what worked and what didn't. The approach could have worked out a lot better than it did if we'd made a conscious effort to evaluate the decisions we made and deliberately pick out the elements we wanted. Our team size and structure was even quite suitable for an iterative design model; we had around ten highly dedicated people working on it back then and there was no management or budget to worry about. We were free to mess around and distill the useful ideas from the poor.

The Nameless Mod Post-Mortem Part 3 feature

Loli Strippers Legally Bare All

noreply@blogger.com (zorful) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 11:22:00 +0000

via Sankaku Complex

American law enforcement is befuddled by the fact that schoolgirl strippers as young as 12 can legally bare all in the strip clubs of a number of states.

A case in point is the state of Rhode Island, where police were to find that although state law bans minors from a variety of dangerous work, as long as they do not work past 11:30PM they can freely put on erotic performances for the benefit of paying patrons.

Loli Strippers Legally Bare All

Brick Thieves Die Horribly as Building Collapses

noreply@blogger.com (zorful) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 11:17:00 +0000

via Sankaku Complex

A pair of ladies who had been stealing bricks from a building were mortally surprised when the building fell on top of them, killing them and crushing a further 13 as it toppled into a neighbouring restaurant.

The thieves, apparently a group of five farmers who had migrated into the city of Liuzhou in China’s southern Guangxi province, had turned to stealing bricks from a derelict building nearby, digging into its walls to extract the bricks for sale.

Brick Thieves Die Horribly as Building Collapses

Hikikomori

noreply@blogger.com (zorful) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 10:51:00 +0000

via Danny Choo

A collection of hikikomori apartment photos.

BOH

noreply@blogger.com (zorful) — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 08:38:00 +0000

via TIG Source

A fine retro-style game with somewhat clunky controls (apparently you can't strafe and run forward at the same time). Also, it was a bit difficult at the start of the only real mission available in demo despite author saying that it's made to be "Tougher and Tougher". The first gun is underpowered compared to the amount of monsters running at you. Full version is 10 euros for downloadable ISO, 12.5 euros for a boxed CD. And make sure you try a Castle theme which totally changes the graphics of the game.

BOH (an Italian phrase roughly translating to “I have no idea”) is a new top-down shooter by Simone Bevilacqua that was originally released for the Amiga but has since been ported to the PC and Mac. The goal of the game is to progress through missions made up of a number of smaller levels, or phases. At the end of each phase is an Evil Master that must be summoned and destroyed to open the exit.

BOH homepage

Parasite: Fresh Nitrome Goodness

noreply@blogger.com (zorful) — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 13:39:00 +0000

via JayIsGames

You are the Parasite, a squelching land squid from the stars who sees profit opportunities where a less sophisticated alien might see bunnies and butterflies. Your goal in this new platform game from Nitrome is to destroy all of the world's tree spirits (played here by the supporting cast of Princess Mononoke) and replace them with mining structures. Your space ship is a cross between a hot rod and a coal boiler. Your weapon of choice is zombification. You strut when you walk, you break wind freely, and you feed on the life-blood of planets. If you had bones, you would be bad to them.

Parasite

Island Commander Prototype

noreply@blogger.com (zorful) — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 12:00:00 +0000

via Game::Programming.class

Point your browser to http://onlinegameplanner.no-ip.org/games/islandcommander.cls and strap yourself down (Java needed). Keep in mind that's more of a proof-of-concept though it does have a nice potential if the balance is done right.

0 A.D. Now Open Source

noreply@blogger.com (zorful) — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 11:52:00 +0000

via Free Gamer

What are you doing?

Switching from a closed development process to open source: making the code available as GPL and the art content available as CC-BY-SA, and encouraging external contributions. We've been working on 0 A.D. in our free time for years, and now we want to show what we've achieved and make it easier for more people to get involved.

0 A.D. is a very complex and ambitious project. A lot of work has been put into it, but a lot remains to be done. We're not releasing a playable game – you'll have to wait until much later if that's what you're interested in. There are plenty of major missing features and bugs and rough edges. We're releasing this as a work-in-progress, pre-alpha project, aimed at developers who might be interested in this kind of thing, in the hope of sharing resources with a community that would otherwise be excluded from our development process.

0 A.D. Open Source Release

Interview with Sean Barrett

noreply@blogger.com (zorful) — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 22:12:00 +0000

A fairly recent interview with Sean Barrett (Thief 1 and 2 programmer).

There’s been a lot of interest in the Dark Engine source code in the Thief community for obvious reasons. Do yo have any idea what happened to it, or who might still have a copy?

Nope. The only thing LGS source code I sneakily kept was “mfdgames.c”, which had the source code to “Wing 0″, a minigame I wrote for System Shock. I don’t think there’s much demand for an up-to-date port of that, sadly.

Interview with Sean Barrett

Daggerfall for free

noreply@blogger.com (zorful) — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 10:09:00 +0000

via Slashdot

Bethesda announced that for the 15th anniversary of the Elder Scrolls series, they were releasing The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall for free. They aren't providing support for the game anymore, but they posted a detailed description of how to get the game running in DOSBox. Fans of the series can now easily relive the experience of getting completely lost in those enormous dungeons. Save often.

Bethesda Releases Daggerfall For Free

The Great American Bubble Machine

noreply@blogger.com (zorful) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 22:52:00 +0000

A damn good article detailing USA financial bubbles and their subsequent bursts from a particular viewpoint.

So what caused the huge spike in oil prices? Take a wild guess. Obviously Goldman had help - there were other players in the physical-commodities market - but the root cause had almost everything to do with the behavior of a few powerful actors determined to turn the once-solid market into a speculative casino. Goldman did it by persuading pension funds and other large institutional investors to invest in oil futures - agreeing to buy oil at a certain price on a fixed date. The push transformed oil from a physical commodity, rigidly subject to supply and demand, into something to bet on, like a stock. Between 2003 and 2008, the amount of speculative money in commodities grew from $13 billion to $317 billion, an increase of 2,300 percent. By 2008, a barrel of oil was traded 27 times, on average, before it was actually delivered and consumed.

The Great American Bubble Machine

The Red Faction Tech Interview

noreply@blogger.com (zorful) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 16:08:00 +0000

via Eurogamer

From Digital Foundry's perspective as a commentator on game tech, Red Faction: Guerrilla is one of the most interesting releases of this generation, simply because the core technological concepts are intrinsically tied to a gameplay experience that is quite unique. I was determined to track down Volition and get them on the record about their techniques and achievements. The result was this feature published on the Eurogamer home page last weekend. But as with our Burnout Paradise tech retrospective, there was so much source material that we had to omit a lot of great stuff. So, here's the complete interview, split up into two parts.

The Red Faction Tech Interview: Part One
The Red Faction Tech Interview: Part Two

Early on in development it was common for buildings to fall apart shortly after being added to the game because they were structurally unstable. Without tools to analyse what exactly was going on they would have had to blindly guess and spend way too much time using trial and error to stabilize the building.

Gaikai: Cloud Computing Gameplay That Works?

noreply@blogger.com (zorful) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 22:05:00 +0000

via Eurogamer

Is this the most low-key debut for a new gaming system yet seen? On Wednesday, Gaikai's David Perry posted a video of the first in-game action of his company's "Cloud" computing gameplay system. No hype, no fanfare: just one man, his PC, a wireless headset and a copy of FRAPS. No claims of one millisecond hardware video encoders, no talk of seven years of "stealth development", just a transparent demo captured at Casa de Perry of a streaming gameplay system that seemingly just... works. Amongst other things, it showed World of Warcraft and Super Mario Kart running in a common or garden browser with no plug-ins required. I think it looks authentic, it looks like it might work.

Gaikai: Cloud Computing Gameplay That Works?

In short, there is no Gaikai subscription as such. The service is financed and run by the publishers, using Gaikai tech. "Publishers use our service to get their games onto their websites and they buy our server time to make that possible," says Perry. "This means our servers are going to be used 100 per cent of the time, and we will only add servers based on demand. If there's no service available, the button that pops up to let you play the game doesn't appear. We're a scaling solution. We only buy servers based on demand."

Retrospective: Vampire: The Masquerade

noreply@blogger.com (zorful) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 21:31:00 +0000

via Eurogamer

I love the sunshine, and I've rather a taste for garlic, so I've decided I'm probably not a vampire. It's taken a while to be sure, though. The world of Bloodlines is so arresting, so marvellously cohesive, that it's difficult not to be entirely taken in. Despite the ageing visuals, the places and people of this gritty, gothic Los Angeles are frighteningly real.

Retrospective: Vampire: The Masquerade

Iran’s Cedar Show, A.K.A. Don’t Get Excited

noreply@blogger.com (zorful) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 16:22:00 +0000

via The Exiled Online

The Exiled Online has a damn good writeup about this whole Iran-Twitter-Democracy thing that's been going on for the last two weeks or so.

Which brings us to Iran. Iranians aren’t Arab, but they are Shia, and excitable. Keep that in mind. Different countries explode at different temperatures. There are places where yelling is a declaration of war. If a Norwegian raises his voice, Hell is about to break loose. If a Canadian yells at you, get a restraining order. But Iranians will scream at each other over how to cook an egg, and be all chummy and laughing the next minute. They used to keep that hysterical side in control with opium–the whole country was on the pipe until the sixties–but it’s harder to get now, so they just keep yelling.

Iran’s Cedar Show, A.K.A. Don’t Get Excited

Even if he fell, the IRI, the real system, would barely wobble. The President is a mouthpiece; the real power is purposely divided up by a half dozen creepy Islamic gangs that never talk to the BBC or CNN. All of them are seriously armed; they’re mixed up in everything from religious seminars to land deals; they’re sleazy but smart, a bunch of mean old survivors.

China says no to virtual economies

noreply@blogger.com (zorful) — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 19:44:00 +0000

via Net Effect

China has announced new rules that prevent "virtual currencies" like Linden Dollars and QQ coins from being traded for real cash.

...China's ruling does not prevent gamers from purchasing virtual money. It stops the cash flow in the other direction, meaning online-only money can't be converted back into dollars or yuan, an online statement from China's Ministry of Commerce says.

China says no to virtual economies