Category: Games

What My Friends Are Doing

July 23, 2008
Cool PeopleGame DesignGame ProgrammingGames
3 Comments

Yes, it’s another “while you are waiting” post. Deal.

I’ve got a couple friends here at work whose websites are definitely worth checking out.

First, Patrick Rogers. He’s an avid Go player who recently hit traffic gold on his site by being the first person to post the complete lyrics to all three episodes of Dr. Horrible.

Second, Brandon “Rusty” Parks. Rusty’s a real character, as you’ll be able to tell when he starts talking about how the universe has a discrete pixel size and a discrete frame rate.

Third, Bobby Thurman…who I actually don’t work with any more and probably should keep in better contact with.

And finally, you know those people who keep coming into game development forums or IRC channels and ask how to program an MMORPG? Yeah, laugh at them. Go ahead. Because everybody knows that nobody can possibly write an indie MMORPG. And oddly enough, it’s being worked on by all three of the gentlemen I detailed above! What are the odds?!

Weird

July 10, 2008
Games
0 Comment

I had another game development-related dream last night.

In it I was at a booth at some sort of trade show watching a demo of a new tech that would make computer-generated characters look much more realistic. The tech simulated a colloidal substance for the characters’ skin, which fixed pointy-head syndrome, allowed for much more realistic skin tones since the top layer of skin is translucent, and – my favorite – allowed for much more realistic modeling of wounds. The demo showed characters getting stabbed, shot and slashed, with the wounds then “healing” in a realistic manner. It even showed wounds healing differently based on the medical care the character got.

The only downside was that when the characters talked, the colloidal surface around their lips would seal when their mouths were closed and then tear away when they opened, making everybody look like zombies. When I pointed this out to the guy manning the demo booth, he made a face. “Yeah, we’re working on that.”

Sniff

June 28, 2008
Games
6 Comments

You wait for a day to come for so long…and now that it’s here, you just don’t know what to say.

Dawn of the Company of War Heroes

June 26, 2008
Game DesignGames
3 Comments

Okay, yeah. Way behind the curve on this one. Terribly, stupidly behind the curve. But I’m not going to let that stop me.

The most recent darling of the real-time strategy game genre is Relic Entertainment, a Vancouver-based company that got off to a darn good start with Homeworld, gained a lot of publicity with Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, and finally struck pure, molten platinum with Company of Heroes.

But other than trying the Homeworld and Homeworld 2 demos back in The Day(TM), I’d never played any of their games.

So I was poking around Steam the other night and saw that Steam has some of Relic’s games, and they all have demos. Figured I’d give Dawn of War and Company of Heroes a shot and see what the fuss was about.

I loved Dawn of War.

I hated Company of Heroes.

Dawn of War is a superbly designed game, taking the base-building elements of Age of Empires, the resource gathering of Total Annihilation and the character of Warcraft III and blending them into a delicate tasting fruit smoothie.

Company of Heroes comes along and adds lots of crunchy, chewy bacon bits.

The thing I adored most about Dawn of War was that most of the decisions made took the emphasis off micromanagement. You don’t have to set up an ant line to collect resources; you get them automatically based on how many control points you own. You do have to manually build your buildings, but you can easily queue all that up and forget about it. And you can reinforce in the field.

Let me explain. Every time you create a “unit” of Space Marines (for instance), you actually get a squad of four. Clicking this squad reveals that you can add units to the squad wherever the squad is – no more making more units and then having to run them up to the battle. As long as one member of the squad is alive, you can create more wherever the squad is.

The end result of all these changes makes a game where it’s not nearly as necessary to micro. You don’t have to manually target your unit’s special weapons, nor are you constantly having to zoom back to your base to either defend your ant line or make new troops. My favorite tactic was to have one squad equipped with grenades and another with Storm Bolters. The grenadiers would knock the enemy squad down and the Bolters would make short work of them as they tried to get back up. It was pretty damn wonderful.

So how did Relic cock this system up with Company of Heroes? Simple, by adding back just as much micromanagement as they originally took out – they just added different micromanagement. You still don’t have an ant line and you still can reinforce in the field, but now each type of unit has at least one special ability that must be manually selected and manually targeted. Squads can come under fire and be suppressed or pinned. Control points you take must now be contiguous or they are considered “out of supply” and you get no benefit from them. And of course they had to add another resource to worry about – fuel.

The final straw for me was when I was directed during a tutorial to manually drive my tanks around so I could hit the enemy tanks in their weak rear armor.

I so hope that Dawn of War II is actually going to be Dawn of War II and not Company of Heroes in the Warhammer: 40,000 universe.

The Obligatory Spore Creature Creator Post

June 19, 2008
Cool PeopleGame DesignGames
1 Comment

The Spore Creature Creator. Is it awesome? Of course it is. Why?

Well, for starters, I don’t think I’ve ever seen an easier-to-use piece of software. How easy is it?

My daughter Jewel made that. She’s three years old.

The other thing that struck me is that the creator has all the functionality promised by Will in his original presentation video. While other developers have been cutting features, resulting in software that looks nothing like their original presentations, Will and his team have been working hard to not only implement everything but even add features.

And if you’ve never watched that video, I strongly suggest you set aside an hour and do so. Here, I’ll embed it to make it easier for you!

Powermonger Map File Format

June 4, 2008
Game ProgrammingGames
5 Comments

This post is mostly for Arkiruthis/Mrthingy, but if the rest of you want to read it, feel free!

All of the map data for Powermonger is contained in the MAPDATA.DAT file. This file is 65,268 bytes long and contains 196 Powermonger maps. It’s broken down into:

* One header that is 196 bytes long. It’s possible this header was going to flag certain maps as being certain types, but since all of the entries are zeroes it probably wasn’t used.

* One hundred and ninety-six map files that are each 332 bytes long.

While I have not figured out everything each byte in a map file represents, I’ve figured out a lot. Here’s the map file for the third level (I picked this one because it’s more interesting than the first two). I’ve grouped the bytes into groups of four because…well, you’ll see.

First off, here’s a cleaned-up version of how the minimap for the third level looks:

The first 40 lines (160 bytes) contain data I haven’t identified yet, but I can say that most of these lines are exactly the same in all files.

   0    10   0  32
   0   250   0   0
   0    10   0  15
   0     7   0   2
   0     0   0   0
   0     0   0   0
   0     0   0   0
   0     0   0   0
   0    21   0  48
   0   250   0   4
   0    10   0  20
   0     7   0   2
   0     0   0   0
   0     6   0   0
   0     0   0   0
   0     0   0   0
   0    15   0  32
   0   250   0   8
   0    10   0  20
   0     7   0   2
   3     0 208   0
   0     0   0   0
   0     0   0   0
   0     0   0   0
   0    10   0  32
   1    14   0   1
   0    10   0  15
   0     7   0   2
   3   212   0   0
   0     0   0   0
   0     0   0   0
   0     0   0   0
   0    10   0  32
   1    24   0   2
   0    10   0  10
   0     7   0   2
   0     0   0   0
   0     0   0   0
   0     0   0   0
   0     0   0   0

Now things get interesting. The first three bytes of line 41 contain the values that are passed into the terrain generation algorithm. Altering them alters the terrain of the map. The last byte is apparently passed into the forest-creating algorithm, since changing it changes the forests without changing the underlying terrain.

   2    97  18   0

The first byte on line 42 (in this case, 0) is also apparently fed into the forest algorithm.

The second byte on line 42 (in this case, 6) appears to set the upper Z limit – raising and lowering this value makes the terrain hillier or flatter without altering the shape of the terrain on the map.

The fourth byte (32) is an X-coordinate offset. It won’t change the shape of the terrain, but it will move the entire terrain mass left or right on the map. The terrain mass will wrap around if necessary.

   0     6   0  32

The second byte on line 43 (48) is, you guessed it, the Y offset. It will move the entire terrain mass up or down on the map, wrapping around as necessary.

The fourth byte on line 43 (3) is apparently a terrain smoothing factor. Setting this value low causes the terrain to get very jagged; setting it high causes the terrain to smooth out until there’s nothing left.

   0    48   0   3

Now we can FINALLY stop guessing, because from line 44 until the end of the file, each four-byte group encodes one “object” that is dropped on top of the terrain after generation. The four bytes represent the X-coordinate, Y-coordinate, team of the object and finally the object type. The X and Y coordinates correspond perfectly to what pixel that object is in on the minimap (which is why I was able to figure these out).

The player’s team is team 1; all higher numbers refer to computer-controlled teams. Unfortunately I do not know what all the codes mean yet because I haven’t been able to access maps that use those objects. Here are the object codes I do know:

1 – Road Endpoint
2 – Tiny Village
3 – Medium Village
5 – Large Village
16 – Tower
17 – Road Segment

You will always see a “1 16” pair (a tower belonging to Player 1) in the list. This designates where the player starts.

  52    24   1  16  - Tower belonging to Team 1 at 52, 24
  14    65   2  16  - Tower belonging to Team 2 at 14, 65
  17    41   3   3  - Medium village belonging to Team 3 at 17, 41
  41    66   3   3  - Medium village belonging to Team 3 at 41, 66
  44    99   2   5  - Large village belonging to Team 2 at 44, 99
  35    78   3   3  - Medium village belonging to Team 3 at 35, 78
  54    77   3   3  - Medium village belonging to Team 3 at 54, 77
   8    77   3   3  - Medium village belonging to Team 3 at 8, 77
  41    66   1  17  - Road segment belonging to Team 1
  54    77   1  17  - Road segment belonging to Team 1
  55    91   1  17  - Road segment belonging to Team 1
  44    95   1  17  - Road segment belonging to Team 1
  37    90   1  17  - Road segment belonging to Team 1
  35    78   1   1  - Road segment belonging to Team 1
  35    85   1  17  - Road segment belonging to Team 1
  26    94   1  17  - Road segment belonging to Team 1
  22    94   1  17  - Road segment belonging to Team 1
  19    86   1  17  - Road segment belonging to Team 1
  16    75   1  17  - Road segment belonging to Team 1
  11    72   1  17  - Road segment belonging to Team 1
   8    77   1   1  - Road segment belonging to Team 1
  48    40   3   3  - Medium village belonging to Team 3 at 48, 40
  26    52   3   3  - Medium village belonging to Team 3 at 26, 52
   0     0   0   0
   0     0   0   0
   0     0   0   0
   0     0   0   0
   0     0   0   0
   0     0   0   0
   0     0   0   0
   0     0   0   0
   0     0   0   0
   0     0   0   0
   0     0   0   0
   0     0   0   0
   0     0   0   0
   0     0   0   0
   0     0   0   0
   0     0   0   0
   0     0   0   0

Notes:

Yes, the road segments belong to team 1 (the players’ team). I’m not sure why.

You can easily beat any Powermonger map by finding the data for that map in MAPDATA.DAT and changing all the villages to belong to team 1. Next time you load that map you’ll be instantly declared the winner.

When the terrain generator drops these objects on the map, it creates terrain underneath them if there isn’t already some.

And finally, here is the source for the program that can scan the original MAPDATA.DAT and split out the map files.

And now as a special bonus! These are some notes I took about how the village simulation in Powermonger works. They are kind of rough, so I present them as-is 🙂

Notes on Powermonger:

Powermonger allows the two triangles in a cell to be different terrain types. Thus, you can have half be beach and the other water, half be farmland and the other mountain, etc.

Speaking of farmland, it’s not marked on the map, but all the clear, flat tiles (or half-tiles) around a village is considered farmland.

By the same token, all the water that is at least one square from a beach is considered “fishable”.

While there are only two official “jobs” (farmer and fisher) there appear to be five things a walker can do in Powermonger:

Gather food from a farm (this REQUIRES the job “Farmer”).

Gather food from the ocean (this REQUIRES the job “Fisher”).

Gather wood (no specific job required).

Bring a sheep back to the village center (no specific job required).

Defend themselves when attacked (no specific job required).

(Units also make things, but since that is all handled internally there is absolutely no way to tell what unit made what and why or how they chose to make that particular thing.)

Farming and fishing cannot happen during the winter. Walkers usually gather wood or make things in the winter. If a walker has no supported job, he simply stands in the center of the town.

Hard to tell how often units “eat”, but it appears they consume 2 food every time they do.

When walkers encounter sheep (which is pretty random, since the sheep walk around randomly and the walker must get near the sheep in the course of doing another job), they bring the sheep back to the center of town. It APPEARS that as long as the sheep is near the center of town, the village gets a constant low food income. But the sheep will continue to wander off, and thus will have to be brought back again.

Towns cannot die off. Ever. If you take all the walkers from a village and the last walker is about to starve, then five men from your army will leave your army, become walkers, and rejoin the village.

“No. There Is Another.”

May 18, 2008
Cool PeopleGame ProgrammingGamesPlanitia
2 Comments

It’s not just me! I’m not alone! The thing I like most about this is that he’s taking a completely different tack. He’s doing as straight a remake as possible, whereas I, in my Yankee arrogance, have decided to actually try to improve on the original game.

I can’t wait to play it.

360 Games First Reactions!

May 12, 2008
Games
3 Comments

GRAND THEFT AUTO IV

Pros:

In 300 Yards, Turn Left – Driving is far easier in GTA4 than in previous versions. Your accelerator is now the right trigger, which makes it easier to pick a speed other than “stop” and “full throttle”. This by itself makes the cars easier to drive; I noticed I was sideswiping and dinging a lot less than I used to. You can also look at your map and drop a waypoint anywhere that the computer will dutifully guide you to with a helpful yellow or green line on your minimap. These two features by themselves were worth the price of admission to me.

Superior Cap Popping – Shooting is far better in this game than in previous versions. Locking on is much easier, and the bug in previous GTAs that had you shooting straight into the air when targets were very close appears to be fixed. I’ve made it clear in previous posts that I despise having to aim a reticle with a thumbstick; GTA4 allows you to lock on to do body shots and then tweak your aim with the thumbstick to go for specialty shots like headshots. I love it. This feature by itself was worth the price of admission to me.

Oh, Wow, That’s Pretty – Holy crap this game looks good. When you’re driving around Liberty City it can easily look like a movie. I’ve had several moments already where I had to just stop and look around because the graphics were so pretty. (I’ve even failed missions because of this. “Come on, Niko, Darden’s getting away!” “Yeah, but Roman – we’re driving by the bay and the sun is setting!”)

And You Thought San Andreas Had A Lot To Do – There’s even more optional content in this game than in San Andreas, and I never came close to exhausting that game. Now you have TV stations. You have a carnival full of minigames and rides. Plus there’s the “standard” compliment of radio stations, dating games, collection quests, etc, etc, etc, etc. Frankly, I don’t understand how they managed to fit all this on a DVD with only slightly more storage capacity than the one GTA: San Andreas came on (7 GBs versus the PS2’s 4.7 GBs).

Cons:

Two Days in the Valley – All of the characters faces are right smack-dab in the middle of the Uncanny Valley. CJ and Sweet from GTA: San Andreas were more convincing actors than these characters. I know I’ll get used to it, but right now it’s hard to take Vlad’s ragings seriously when he looks like a damn plasticine doll.

I’m RUBBERMAN! – The ragdoll physics engine GTA4 uses can produce some very interesting results; getting hit by a car usually results in Niko doing some spontaneous yoga. Frankly, I hate ragdoll physics and was very disappointed when practically every game gave up the concept of gibs in lieu of them. I was very, very happy when Team Fortress 2 brought back the gibs in spades. I guess Rockstar hasn’t gotten the memo yet: gibs > ragdolls.

Realistic Cellphone Mechanics – A lot of the functionality of the game is now accessed through your cellphone, which is just as confusing to use as most are in real life. The first time I tried changing radio stations I got the cellphone instead, and I accidentally initiated a multiplayer game when I just wanted to listen to Lazlow.

Dunno Yet:

Who Am I? – In GTA you played a nameless bank robber. In GTA: Vice City you played Tommy Vercetti, a mobster. In GTA: San Andreas you played Carl Johnson, a gangbanger. What do these people have in common? They are all self-professed career criminals. Thus, controlling them as they committed crimes felt very natural.

In Grand Theft Auto IV you play Niko Bellic, an immigrant from an unspecified Eastern European country. He fought in the Cold War and ran afoul of some loan sharks back in the Old Country and fled to Liberty City to get away from all that. He is not a self-professed career criminal, thus it felt kind of weird when the very first thing I did when I got control of him was jack a car. Weird, but interesting – I definitely want to see where this storyline goes.

Overall: This is the game that convinced me that it was time to get a 360 and so far I’m very, very glad I did.

NARUTO: RISE OF A NINJA

Pros:

Konoha Never Looked So Good – Seriously. It looks better than the show. It’s another jaw-dropping 360 game.

Konoha Never Felt So Free – You can go just about anywhere in Konoha you want at any time. Frankly I don’t know why people still make linear, level-based action-adventure games when sandbox games just feel and play so much better.

Surprisingly Deep Combat – There are four basic moves in melee combat – vertical attacks, which try to keep the enemy close, horizontal attacks, which try to push the enemy away, throws and blocks. But out of these four moves the designers have developed a deep combat system. Chaining moves in certain ways causes some hits to become unblockable and can also cause hits to do knockback, setting up your opponent for a jutsu. It’s much deeper than the previous Naruto fighters I’ve played on the GameCube.

Kage Bunshin No Jutsu! – There really is nothing like being able to do the Shadow Clone Jutsu or the Sexy Jutsu yourself. And the mechanic the game provides for doing them really makes it feel like you are doing them yourself – you push both thumbsticks in different directions to do the different hand signs necessary to start the jutsu. If you’re doing this in combat you can be knocked out of your jutsu attempt by an attack or a thrown kunai, so it’s best to hit your opponent with a normal combo first and knock them down, then attempt the jutsu while they are getting up.

Cons:

This Sounds Familiar – The only beef I’ve got with Rise of a Ninja is the fact that the storyline covers the first couple seasons of the Naruto anime, starting with his failing the Genin exam and ending with his fight with Gaara. This is stuff that is going to be very, very familiar to any Naruto fan so it’s kind of disappointing to hear it again. A new storyline would have been much more welcome.

Overall: I’d been hearing that this game was winning over converts who actually hate Naruto with its great combat and open-ended gameplay, so I wasn’t surprised when I ended up loving it.

MASS EFFECT

Pros:

Whoa, Look – ACTING! – After seeing so many games (including GTA4) completely fail to render realistic characters convincingly enough, it was nice to see a game that does it right. The characters in Mass Effect both look and move very well, and have nice lipsynching. The overall effect is great, and it’s a good thing too, considering how much dialog this game has.

Conversation System Designed By God – Mass Effect has the best conversation system ever created for an RPG. Not only does it quickly and easily let you direct the flow of the conversation so that they happen in a realistic manner, the wheel setup also lets you easily see which options will move the conversation to a close and which wont, as well as which options will get you Paragon points and which ones will get you Renegade points. It’s so good that I immediately invested points into maxing out my Charm skill so that my character would have more dialog options in conversations.

Pretty Is Now Standard – Once again I was blown away by the visuals produced by the Xbox 360. It’s all so shiny! I want to live there!

Look, Mommy! An Alien! – I am very impressed by how well the different facial/body structures of the aliens in Mass Effect work. Early in the game Nihlus, a Turien, sees a transmission showing that a human colony is under attack by the Geth, an evil alien race that hasn’t been seen in 200 years. He doesn’t say anything and his mouth does not open, but the flaps of his cheeks widen in surprise – and even though he’s an alien, you can tell that it’s surprise he’s feeling because of how well it’s blocked. Excellent stuff, and there’s even more later in the game.

Cons:

Way To Go, Mass Effect, You Hit My Number-One Pet Peeve – Class, what’s my number-one pet peeve on consoles? That’s right – aiming a targeting reticle with a thumbstick! Mass Effect’s combat is real-time action-adventure-style combat, but with no targeting lock-on. Yes, you must aim your weapons manually, and yes, I have had so much trouble with that. Fortunately you can set the level of tolerance in the options, so that your aim can be a little off and still hit (raising your weapon skill helps with this too). So it’s not going to be fatal like it was for Resident Evil 4…but man it’s annoying to see such a good game make such a huge mistake.

ding – This is the first RPG I’ve ever played that didn’t make a big deal out of you levelling up. If there’s a level-up indicator I’ve never noticed it, only discovering when I went into the options menu that I’ve gained two levels and have skill points to distribute. The game also doesn’t do a good job of letting you know that you have to allocate skill points for your other party members as well.

Smaller Than Advertised – After struggling through the first combat sequence on Eden Prime the game presented me with the Citadel, a huge, beautiful futuristic city. My first thought was, “Mass Effect, if you will let me run around that entire city at ground level then all is forgiven.” But that’s not what happened, of course. While the area to explore isn’t small, it is limited to only the locations where Plot can happen. That’s kind of disappointing.

Overall: I will struggle through the combat because the rest of the package is soooo good, but I wish that weren’t necessary.

Guess What I Bought Last Night?

May 10, 2008
Games
3 Comments

My first Achivement was “Off the Boat” from Grand Theft Auto IV. I like that 🙂

I really had no choice but to buy it. One of the reasons I haven’t had much to talk about on the site recently is because I haven’t played a new game in months.

Guess What I Forgot All About?

May 5, 2008
GamesLudum Dare
2 Comments

That’s right – the Ludum Dare. Once it was over I completely forgot about it, which means I forgot to play the other games of the competition and vote for them.

And now the results are out! I can hear you out there squealing, “Viridian! How did you do?”

Well…I came in Fifth in “Best Timelapse” 🙂

Here are my results. The comments are actually pretty kind; it’s just that the game wasn’t outstanding enough in any area to merit an award. Ah, well, it was my first time. I loved the “Women Are Monsters” award; it didn’t even occur to me that the symbol I was using was the “female” symbol…I can never remember which one is which anyway.

Oh, and I’m glad MrFun won best overall. I played his game, it was awesome.