Viridian Games

In this episode of Let’s Play Starflight, we finally get our ship out of the Suck Zone and even meet an alien!

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This one is one I wish I’d had a chance to play. It’s by a very cool company that not too many people know about.

Name and developer, please! Bonus points if you can tell me what famous game the developers could have made if one of them hadn’t shot his mouth off at the pitch meeting.

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My youngest, Jewel, is cementing her knowledge of “big” and “little” by wandering around and dubbing everything one or the other.

She likes to come up to me and say, “You’re the big daddy!”

At which point I say, “And you’re the little sister!”

“That’s right!” she beams.

I don’t think she gets it.

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Worked on Planitia. I now have two different computers (as opposed to client and server on the same computer) connecting and swapping data. They are playing a multiplayer game! The only problem is that they are not playing the same game. I’ve got synchronization problems, but I knew I was going to, and I’m pretty sure I know how to fix it. Fortunately Planitia is much, much simpler a game than most.

Played Castle Crashers. If you’ve got an Xbox and you don’t have this game, fix that. The game is just a purely fun side-scrolling beat-em-up (remember those?) with RPG elements on, and it’s exponentially more fun the more people you get playing. It also has that one brilliant design decision that makes for superior games…something that other games don’t do but seems completely obvious once a game does it. And that something is that gold, weapons, and pets are shared between the characters on your account. So if you start a new character, you’ll be able to buy all the potions, sandviches, and bombs that you need. You’ll also be able to immediately switch out your starter weapon for something better and pick up a pet, one of which helps you level up faster. My god! It’s like they actually asked themselves, “How can we make it less tedious and more fun for players to level up multiple characters?”

Of course, you can also shine levelling up multiple characters and just put all your time into one…which Megan did, getting to level 45 over the weekend. Of course, even with maxed-out strength and defense, Insane Mode is still kicking her butt.

And finally, played Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus. I’d heard about these games but I’d never tried them out.

(See, I just don’t get this. Why didn’t I? I was all over the Jak & Daxter and Ratchet & Clank series of games like white on rice…why didn’t I get into Sly before now? I can’t explain it. Sucker Punch should be right up there with Insomniac and Naughty Dog…but they aren’t. I mean, the games were successful enough to merit sequels and the company is still going, but they weren’t the huge breakout successes they deserved to be, in my opinion. It doesn’t help that their first game, Rocket: Robot on Wheels, was one of the best platformers for the Nintendo 64…and nobody ever heard of it.)

Anyway, the game has a great style with some interesting characters. Sly’s a thief, but he only steals from criminals (claiming that it’s too easy to steal from regular folk). When Sly was a kid, his family was attacked by a group of criminals called the Fiendish Five, who stole the Thievius Raccoonus, the book Sly’s family had recorded all their thieving techniques in. The Fiendish Five split the book up into five parts and now Sly, all grown up, wants to get them back.

Which is just an excuse for some very smart platforming and collecting. While I was initially annoyed that Sly is a one-hit wonder (no hitpoints - one hit kills him) I was then gratified to see the game immediately move to mitigate this. Collecting one hundred coins gives Sly a “lucky charm”, which will allow him to get out of one jam - and it will even allow him to recover from falling into water or off the level, something I’ve never seen a game do before. There are also places where you can simply pick up lucky charms, and you can store up to two of them, effectively giving Sly three hitpoints. If you’re having trouble with a certain segment of the game, the game will start spawning Sly with a lucky charm on him - a good idea.

Plus, in the second world (of five) you can find a page of the Thievius Raccooonus that allows Sly to fall into water without losing a lucky charm, making him even more durable. So they do a good job of making Sly appear initially weak so that the player understands that this is a sneaking game, but then almost immediately mitigate his weakness so that things aren’t too hard.

Complaints? Well…the jumping seems a little “floaty”. Sometimes Sly will kind of hover in midair while the game seems to decide his fate. About half the time this actually works in the player’s favor but it doesn’t really make me feel like I’m in control of him. And it’s a bit of a shame since the control is tight otherwise. Also, the camera controls are backwards from what I’m used to and you can’t swap them, you just have to get used to them.

Still, that hasn’t prevented me from enjoying the game. I’m on the third world now, and things are toughening up - and getting kind of creepy, since the boss here is a big fat green voodoo priestess. I’m looking forward to finishing the game and moving on to Sly 2…and I need to find a copy of Sly 3 somewhere.

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Now, see, if I didn’t suck so bad, this installment would be the anniversary edition of Name That Game!

But I do. So it isn’t.

This game was a pretty good Wizardry!-inspired RPG that was best known for having awesome box art.

Name and developer, please! If you win, I’ll let you try out my new virtual reality system! Of course, it’s kind of buggy…you can only turn ninety degrees left or right and every time you take a step you jump forward three feet.

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Um…I’m not going to mince words here. This game looks awesome. Red Alert has got a couple of defining aspects, and one of them is that the developers understood that they couldn’t do “good” FMV. No matter how hard they tried it always came out cheesy. And if they tried to fight this and Take Themselves Seriously, they produced nigh-unwatchable stuff…like Command & Conquer 2.

So the Red Alert guys just decided to turn the Cheese Knob until it broke off, and Red Alert 3 continues this tradition with pride.

“Are you ready to send those commies runnin’ back to their mommies?” Yes. Yes, I am. And frankly, that’s a hell of a cast. Tim Curry, George Takei, J. K. Simmons, Jonathan Pryce…and the best part is, they’re into it. They understand that the scenery here is meant to be eaten. The only downside is Jenny McCarthy as Tanya. Yes, I know, Kari Wuhrer wasn’t available…but could they have at least dyed her hair? Tanya is not a blonde! I guess it’ll come down to how well she can yell “Shake it baby!” Given her background…probably pretty well.

And fortunately the gameplay looks like it’s going to have some interesting quirks as well (plus some of the best-looking water I’ve ever seen):

Building bases on the ocean? Amphibious engineers? Transforming mechs? Artillery that shoots soldiers? DO WANT.

Oh, and a quick Braid update: Megan has completed the game and is now searching for the secret stars. After finding one yesterday she raised her hands in triumph and exclaimed, “Yes! I am the master of space and time!” I think it was worth buying the game just for that.

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That’s right. After weeks of work and a near-full engine rewrite I have multiplayer working in Planitia. Now, right now everything has to be hardcoded - number of clients, the IP addresses, everything. So I can’t release a demo yet. I’ll need to at least bang in some code so that clients and servers can find each other on a LAN before I do.

I’m just terribly, terribly excited. I did a ton of research for this (and of course I’ll be Writing An Article) and it paid off tremendously - everything is working exactly like I expected it would once the system was implemented.

Now, that’s not to say it’s perfect. The system is updating an average of six times a second, which means that right now units jump across the map and there’s a bit of lag between clicking a button and having something happen in the world. Both of these can be made to look better with interpolation and prediction, though they don’t actually change how the game plays.

If you guys want to get a leg up on finding out how I did the multiplayer, you can read the following articles:

For making your engine multiplayer ready:
Instant Replay: Building a Game Engine with Reproducible Behavior

For implementing network multiplayer in an RTS:

1500 Archers on a 28.8: Network Programming in Age of Empires and Beyond
“Real-Time Strategy Network Protocol”, Game Programming Gems 3 page 496 or Best of Game Programming Gems page 459, by Jan Svarovsky

Teehee! I’m so excited!

Oh, and the next installment of Let’s Play Starflight will be delayed a day. For some reason.

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The journey through the stars continues, weeknights on NBC.

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Braid was the first game I ever bought on XBLA. I did so at the behest of Megan, who played through the trial and loved it. I had also enjoyed the trial version even though I thought some of the puzzles were too hard to execute (of course, she benefits from having the reflexes of a thirteen-year-old).

So we’re playing Braid, right? We’re having a good amount of fun figuring out the puzzles and unlocking new worlds and seeing how time changes in each world. Some of the puzzles are just ridiculously difficult, but the game isn’t that long so if you keep at it you’re sure to finish it eventually. It’s going pretty good.

And then it ends.

I guess it’s just not possible for an indie game to have a satisfying, upbeat ending. While the maudlin text throughout the game alerted me that the ending was probably going to be a downer, it didn’t prepare me for the game becoming a lecture on the evils of the creation of the atomic bomb. No, seriously. I am not making this up. Johnathan Blow even includes the director of the Manhattan Project’s famous “Now we are all sons of bitches” line in the ending, which came as quite a surprise to me and Megan. Lest you think I’m spoiling it, believe me - it’s pre-spoiled.

If I want to be lectured on the evils of nuclear weapons, I’ll…you know what? I grew up in the 80’s. I’m never going to want to be lectured on the evils of nuclear weapons.

So overall: excellent concept, fairly well executed, with an ending that gives Metal Gear Solid 2 a run for its money. Hopefully Blow will realize that propaganda is the enemy of art and his next game will be more satisfying.

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