The first of many are on his youtube page, and I'll link them here real quick, as well as his page.
Friday, December 16, 2011
SC2 Casting
I actually finally have someone that is good at casting, casting my games from Starcraft 2. His alias is Nomix. He's my cousin, but I'd like to think his casting is actually really good, and that I'm not biased just because he's my cousin.
The first of many are on his youtube page, and I'll link them here real quick, as well as his page.
The first of many are on his youtube page, and I'll link them here real quick, as well as his page.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Project Zomboid Code Stolen! (And what is to come)
I'm a little late on posting this, mostly because I've been busy + lazy, but figured I might as well post on it.
A couple weeks ago, the leader of IndieStone was robbed, and the only two copies of the up to date code, was stolen with the two laptops in his house. Of course, it sucks to be robbed, but seriously? No off site back up for something you are making to feed yourself with? I'm not going to go and call him out and say bad words to them other than the obvious truth that they should have had an off-site backup.
Here we have a blog post from the devs, with a very cool and collected response to the community, letting the community know it is not the end as some have stated. I'm not a personal fan of business and personal life interconnecting, which is why I don't think it was a good idea for their lead dev to get drunk and post drunk twitter posts about it. Here is a screenshot of some of the things that were said. There were many more nasty things said, but if you want to find those, you'll have to look yourself because it really isn't that great to read when you want a game to progress.
Obviously, after that night, Project Zomboid looked grim. With the blog statement on their site though, it's clear they are not giving up, and honestly, that is all we should have seen. That statement from their writer about what is going on. Which is why I don't like it when companies use personal online profiles and talk about business, and vice versa.
Not too long after the original post from the IndieStone writer, they posted this update, stating that they had a little bit more backed up than they thought, but not nearly as much as they had hoped. At first they were stating they had to start back up from the last patch, but in that post they stated they had a bit more than they thought.
On top of that, the promised save on quit, and map changing features that were about to be released are now delayed even longer. As they stated, "We intend to pepper the NPC update with a few fun recipes and new items to compensate or, at least, compensate as much as we can." So, they're trying to work on something they can throw out faster as an update, compared to just doing what the had originally planned. Which is okay in my opinion. The community is very hungry for any update at the moment.
On top of all this, they were actually able to find someone else to help with the community. Hopefully they do their job nice and well, because honestly, the community face so far from IndieStone has not been the best. There are reasons why companies are very silent when things happen, and only post what needs to be known. Not everyone knows this, and it can take some painful lessons of community backlashes to learn it.
I still support Project Zomboid, and can't wait for more work to come out from it! =)
(Obvious joke is obvious)
A couple weeks ago, the leader of IndieStone was robbed, and the only two copies of the up to date code, was stolen with the two laptops in his house. Of course, it sucks to be robbed, but seriously? No off site back up for something you are making to feed yourself with? I'm not going to go and call him out and say bad words to them other than the obvious truth that they should have had an off-site backup.
Here we have a blog post from the devs, with a very cool and collected response to the community, letting the community know it is not the end as some have stated. I'm not a personal fan of business and personal life interconnecting, which is why I don't think it was a good idea for their lead dev to get drunk and post drunk twitter posts about it. Here is a screenshot of some of the things that were said. There were many more nasty things said, but if you want to find those, you'll have to look yourself because it really isn't that great to read when you want a game to progress.
Obviously, after that night, Project Zomboid looked grim. With the blog statement on their site though, it's clear they are not giving up, and honestly, that is all we should have seen. That statement from their writer about what is going on. Which is why I don't like it when companies use personal online profiles and talk about business, and vice versa.
Not too long after the original post from the IndieStone writer, they posted this update, stating that they had a little bit more backed up than they thought, but not nearly as much as they had hoped. At first they were stating they had to start back up from the last patch, but in that post they stated they had a bit more than they thought.
On top of all this, they were actually able to find someone else to help with the community. Hopefully they do their job nice and well, because honestly, the community face so far from IndieStone has not been the best. There are reasons why companies are very silent when things happen, and only post what needs to be known. Not everyone knows this, and it can take some painful lessons of community backlashes to learn it.
I still support Project Zomboid, and can't wait for more work to come out from it! =)
Monday, September 26, 2011
Scott Pilgrim vs the World (The game)
I watched the movie around the time it came out at a friend's house, and I thought it was fantastic. Although, it was a fail at the box office, and it didn't do that great, Universal stated that they were proud of the movie, even though it was considered a failure. Here is the quote, "(Universal was) proud of this film and our relationship with the visionary and creative filmmaker Edgar Wright.... Edgar has created a truly unique film that is both envelope pushing and genre bending and when examined down the road will be identified as an important piece of filmmaking." (http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,2010830,00.html)
There reasons for the movie "failing" actually make sense. I read somewhere that made full sense of why. They stated "People under 30 don't get it" and "People over 30 don't get it", among other reasons (http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Box-Office-Bob-omb-5-Reasons-Scott-Pilgrim-Vs-The-World-Failed-To-Find-An-Audience-20168.html). While I sort of agree that I personally missed out on a couple references, that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it. It makes logical sense why it wasn't that great of a success, but it's a shame, because it has a lot in the movie that just made it fantastic. Hopefully we might see more from Edgar Wright like this. Even though it "failed", as stated, Universal was proud of it. So that brings me hope to see more.
Now I'm a little late on this, but I have reasons. I'm mostly now saying just how much fun the video game is. The game came out around the same time as the movie (same month), but when that was happening, my ps3 was in the corner gathering dust. It actually has been doing that until recently when I picked it back up to take to a friends house to play for the weekend. I downloaded Kill Team (another fun game on consoles), and figured I would download the Scott Pilgrim vs the World game. Mainly because we just watched the movie again the weekend before.
The game is FANTASTIC for a couch game. It has no online co-op, only same console "couch co-op" with up to four players. Right off the bat, I fall in love with the game based on music and visuals. I absolutely LOVE the art and music style they went. The art has the old school pixely graphics and sounds, but with a twist. The graphics are all in HD. The colors all look fantastic, it's what I've wanted every old school game to look like. It's all that nostalgia look, with the "now" hd look with it. On top of that, animations are all nice and smooth, and all the effects look fantastic.
The music itself is absolutely fantastic. I just cannot stop listening to it on my computer or in my car while driving. I feel like the 10 dollars itself is just worth the soundtrack in the game. It has all the old school drums and sound effects, but put together like the best of everything. It's like the artist knew exactly what I loved about old school music, put in some new, and made a collaboration of some of the best game music I have ever heard. Each of the zone's music are unique, and great.
Each and every song is different and gives you a nice feeling for the zone you are in. One of my favorite songs from the soundtrack is called "Bollywood". I'll give a link here from youtube. It just sounds like grade A old school boss music (spoiler, it's boss music). From old school generic NES music, to the revamped Japanese influenced music with NES sounds, all the music and sound effects in the game are fantastic.
There are little RPG elements splashed in as well, which is a very fun and interesting addition to the game. On top of being different characters (you all pretty much use the same moves, but they are all presented graphically different based on your character), you have 4 stats you can level up by spending money on food items in various stores. You receive money from killing people in the game, and they turn into coins. Don't worry if you end up picking all the coins up, in the stores you can press circle to give money to whoever you are standing next to. That way if someone accidentally picks up most of the money, you can all share.
The way you spend your money in stores depends on the item you are buying. There are "snacks" that work as one time uses when you die to bring you back to life depending on the "snack" you had. Otherwise, you just spend money on items to replenish health, gut points, and increase stats. There are 4 stats to level up, Strength, Defense, Willpower, and Speed (or something along those lines). Strength increases your melee damage with normal hits, increases damage from throws, and increases your chance to critical. Defense increase your amount of health points, increases your resistance to damage, and makes it harder to be knocked down. Willpower increases your gut points and the effectiveness of your special attacks (R1). Speed increases your movement and attack speed.
The stat system brings up plenty of possibilities the play the 4 (5 with dlc) characters. The "call down" (L1) that brings Knives Chau down all have different effects, and costs gut points to use. From proclaiming her love to Scott, dealing damage and knocking down all enemies, to appearing with a giant tea cup for Ramona giving everyone "rage", there is a lot of strategy that can be used with them.
Another great thing about the game, is how it deals with death. You have your HP, when it reaches 0, you are alive until you are knocked down (a benefit of high toughness). When you are knocked down, you eat your snack if you have one and get back up. Otherwise it takes your gut points, up to 50 and turns it into health. Once you run out of both health and gut points, you have a countdown of 9 seconds until you actually die. A friend can come over and revive you within those 9 seconds, but it isn't easy when a bunch of enemies are on screen trying to kill you. Should you lose all your lives, you appear as a ghost and can "steal" someone else's extra life.
The difficulty is there, and it can be challenging, even for a full group (it adds more mobs on the screen the more people playing). The game really seems to have been made to play with at least two people though. Trying to play the game solo on even the easiest difficulty can be hair pulling hard. If anything just for the cheap shots, and unbreakable combos from bosses/enemies. Using a life on a boss, only to get locked into a combo and constantly being knocked down the second you get back in the game calls for some balance issues... but it's okay with 2-4 people. The bosses become much easier with at least 2 people playing. This can be a problem though, since it's only local multiplayer.
Overall, the game is fantastic. From the soundtrack to the graphics to the light rpg elements, the game is definitely worth the $10 asking price, and the DLC is pretty cool. It adds some new game modes for multiplayer, and adds in Knives Chau as a playable character. If you don't at least try the game, you're missing out on a lot of couch co-op fun. Which feels hard to come by these days with every multiplayer game focusing on lobbies and online multiplayer and leaving out the basics. Oh, and before you play the game, I'd recommend you look at the "How to play" to give you info on extra moves and little tidbits of information like playing as a band to destroy everything on screen.
There reasons for the movie "failing" actually make sense. I read somewhere that made full sense of why. They stated "People under 30 don't get it" and "People over 30 don't get it", among other reasons (http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Box-Office-Bob-omb-5-Reasons-Scott-Pilgrim-Vs-The-World-Failed-To-Find-An-Audience-20168.html). While I sort of agree that I personally missed out on a couple references, that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it. It makes logical sense why it wasn't that great of a success, but it's a shame, because it has a lot in the movie that just made it fantastic. Hopefully we might see more from Edgar Wright like this. Even though it "failed", as stated, Universal was proud of it. So that brings me hope to see more.
Now I'm a little late on this, but I have reasons. I'm mostly now saying just how much fun the video game is. The game came out around the same time as the movie (same month), but when that was happening, my ps3 was in the corner gathering dust. It actually has been doing that until recently when I picked it back up to take to a friends house to play for the weekend. I downloaded Kill Team (another fun game on consoles), and figured I would download the Scott Pilgrim vs the World game. Mainly because we just watched the movie again the weekend before.
The game is FANTASTIC for a couch game. It has no online co-op, only same console "couch co-op" with up to four players. Right off the bat, I fall in love with the game based on music and visuals. I absolutely LOVE the art and music style they went. The art has the old school pixely graphics and sounds, but with a twist. The graphics are all in HD. The colors all look fantastic, it's what I've wanted every old school game to look like. It's all that nostalgia look, with the "now" hd look with it. On top of that, animations are all nice and smooth, and all the effects look fantastic.
The music itself is absolutely fantastic. I just cannot stop listening to it on my computer or in my car while driving. I feel like the 10 dollars itself is just worth the soundtrack in the game. It has all the old school drums and sound effects, but put together like the best of everything. It's like the artist knew exactly what I loved about old school music, put in some new, and made a collaboration of some of the best game music I have ever heard. Each of the zone's music are unique, and great.
Each and every song is different and gives you a nice feeling for the zone you are in. One of my favorite songs from the soundtrack is called "Bollywood". I'll give a link here from youtube. It just sounds like grade A old school boss music (spoiler, it's boss music). From old school generic NES music, to the revamped Japanese influenced music with NES sounds, all the music and sound effects in the game are fantastic.
There are little RPG elements splashed in as well, which is a very fun and interesting addition to the game. On top of being different characters (you all pretty much use the same moves, but they are all presented graphically different based on your character), you have 4 stats you can level up by spending money on food items in various stores. You receive money from killing people in the game, and they turn into coins. Don't worry if you end up picking all the coins up, in the stores you can press circle to give money to whoever you are standing next to. That way if someone accidentally picks up most of the money, you can all share.
The way you spend your money in stores depends on the item you are buying. There are "snacks" that work as one time uses when you die to bring you back to life depending on the "snack" you had. Otherwise, you just spend money on items to replenish health, gut points, and increase stats. There are 4 stats to level up, Strength, Defense, Willpower, and Speed (or something along those lines). Strength increases your melee damage with normal hits, increases damage from throws, and increases your chance to critical. Defense increase your amount of health points, increases your resistance to damage, and makes it harder to be knocked down. Willpower increases your gut points and the effectiveness of your special attacks (R1). Speed increases your movement and attack speed.
The stat system brings up plenty of possibilities the play the 4 (5 with dlc) characters. The "call down" (L1) that brings Knives Chau down all have different effects, and costs gut points to use. From proclaiming her love to Scott, dealing damage and knocking down all enemies, to appearing with a giant tea cup for Ramona giving everyone "rage", there is a lot of strategy that can be used with them.
Another great thing about the game, is how it deals with death. You have your HP, when it reaches 0, you are alive until you are knocked down (a benefit of high toughness). When you are knocked down, you eat your snack if you have one and get back up. Otherwise it takes your gut points, up to 50 and turns it into health. Once you run out of both health and gut points, you have a countdown of 9 seconds until you actually die. A friend can come over and revive you within those 9 seconds, but it isn't easy when a bunch of enemies are on screen trying to kill you. Should you lose all your lives, you appear as a ghost and can "steal" someone else's extra life.
The difficulty is there, and it can be challenging, even for a full group (it adds more mobs on the screen the more people playing). The game really seems to have been made to play with at least two people though. Trying to play the game solo on even the easiest difficulty can be hair pulling hard. If anything just for the cheap shots, and unbreakable combos from bosses/enemies. Using a life on a boss, only to get locked into a combo and constantly being knocked down the second you get back in the game calls for some balance issues... but it's okay with 2-4 people. The bosses become much easier with at least 2 people playing. This can be a problem though, since it's only local multiplayer.
Overall, the game is fantastic. From the soundtrack to the graphics to the light rpg elements, the game is definitely worth the $10 asking price, and the DLC is pretty cool. It adds some new game modes for multiplayer, and adds in Knives Chau as a playable character. If you don't at least try the game, you're missing out on a lot of couch co-op fun. Which feels hard to come by these days with every multiplayer game focusing on lobbies and online multiplayer and leaving out the basics. Oh, and before you play the game, I'd recommend you look at the "How to play" to give you info on extra moves and little tidbits of information like playing as a band to destroy everything on screen.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Space Marine
The game "Space Marine" that came out ~a week ago is pretty fun. The campaign was fun, even though they made it pretty clear you can't be 100% melee. Grabbing a thunder hammer for 99% of the game was more punishment than anything. At least on hard difficulty it felt that way. I'd either plow through a spawn no problem with the Thunder Hammer, or have to restart it 5+ times because it's hard trying to melee everything.
If anything, I would highly recommend you do not go into the final boss fight with a thunder hammer. It was way too hard, and I had to rely on stupid A.I. to beat the game, rather than using the weapon correctly. There is a lot of ranged, or at least of lot of burst. So it's really hard to just melee through it on hard, even with fury.
The game was lots of fun though, and I loved fighting the bosses. The game's difficulty seemed to suffer from spikes. Some parts were fly through easy, others were so hard I had to restart some parts 10 times or more. I think half that is relying on the Thunder Hammer for the game, but they should make it possible to use that most of the game... There are certain parts where you have to shoot people down, and there are no two ways about it. You can't run up some path behind them, or climb the walls in front of them to punch them in the face. Nope, just have to shoot them down. Which can be a pain if all you have is a bolter, pistol, and thunder hammer.
Multiplayer is fun too, Melee feels broken though. It's either really easy, or really hard. Player skills can make playing melee a joke as well. Tactical marine sees you, gets to a better position, (even without this first part they can do the rest), you jump down and are either in his face, or close to. If in face, he has a second to action roll away. Now you are useless. If you're close to him, he can just action roll away if you get close enough to melee. He can just continue to kite you around until he kills you, or his team picks you off. Also, some Devestators/Havoks (big gunners) can kill you in their own face before you can kill them with melee. This is due to being more resistant to melee damage, having the ability to stomp and stun you, and then unleashing tons of bullets in your face that you can't do much about other than not be there. Yeah. Melee feels broken.
Melee rants aside, the game is great, runs pretty nice, looks pretty enough, and is worth it if you're a 40k fan.
(screenshots are of some of my customizations.) I might do a real review later of it, if people actually ask me to I will, otherwise I'm not sure if I would.
If anything, I would highly recommend you do not go into the final boss fight with a thunder hammer. It was way too hard, and I had to rely on stupid A.I. to beat the game, rather than using the weapon correctly. There is a lot of ranged, or at least of lot of burst. So it's really hard to just melee through it on hard, even with fury.
The game was lots of fun though, and I loved fighting the bosses. The game's difficulty seemed to suffer from spikes. Some parts were fly through easy, others were so hard I had to restart some parts 10 times or more. I think half that is relying on the Thunder Hammer for the game, but they should make it possible to use that most of the game... There are certain parts where you have to shoot people down, and there are no two ways about it. You can't run up some path behind them, or climb the walls in front of them to punch them in the face. Nope, just have to shoot them down. Which can be a pain if all you have is a bolter, pistol, and thunder hammer.
Melee rants aside, the game is great, runs pretty nice, looks pretty enough, and is worth it if you're a 40k fan.
(screenshots are of some of my customizations.) I might do a real review later of it, if people actually ask me to I will, otherwise I'm not sure if I would.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Project Zomboid small update!
First off, http://projectzomboid.com/blog/index.php/2011/09/zomboid-0-1-5c-released/
Edit- New post on another fix, http://projectzomboid.com/blog/index.php/2011/09/project-zomboid-0-1-5d-released/
It seems the team is actually pretty hard at work, and they have a changelog of what's been done this small update.
Optimizations
Various bug fixes.
Multi-stage barricades
I haven't really had enough time or supplies in a game to create "real" barricades instead of just barricading the doors and windows. It sounds interesting though.
Slowed down horde movement.
Edit- New post on another fix, http://projectzomboid.com/blog/index.php/2011/09/project-zomboid-0-1-5d-released/
It seems the team is actually pretty hard at work, and they have a changelog of what's been done this small update.
Optimizations
A lot of fps issues appeared with the last few updates, so this is nice
Less rain.
It rained too often in the update. Pretty much more than half the time it was raining. This is also nice.
Various bug fixes.
They didn't seem to specify anything about this, but hopefully I no longer have zombies spawning behind staircases.
NPC tweaks
They are attempting to make npcs less "hostile" towards you, and tried to make what they do more varied. Not sure what else an NPC is going to do, but we'll have to see what they have in plan down the line.
Multi-stage barricades
I haven't really had enough time or supplies in a game to create "real" barricades instead of just barricading the doors and windows. It sounds interesting though.
Increased sound muffle effect of being in/out buildings or different rooms
Some more realism is always nice. Being immersed is a great thing about this game.
Slowed down horde movement.
I found that I died a lot faster than I used to in the demo since the update, I actually like this. Some people may not.
They then leave a comment at the end
"teehee I love my spiked baseball bat, SQUISH, SQUSH, hehehe SQUISH, SNAP oh…"
"teehee I love my spiked baseball bat, SQUISH, SQUSH, hehehe SQUISH, SNAP oh…"
If I had to guess, this is hinting to Item Durability.
All in all, a nice quick update with a few additions and some nice fixes and tweaks. They stated they are working on implementing saving in the background while releasing these small updates and fixes. So hopefully new areas and save games aren't too far off.
Edit- It seems they have another update that just came up that fixes a bug where you would infi-sleep. Obviously a game breaker. They also changed some perks and how uncooked food works. All in all, another nice quick patch.
Edit- It seems they have another update that just came up that fixes a bug where you would infi-sleep. Obviously a game breaker. They also changed some perks and how uncooked food works. All in all, another nice quick patch.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
My dad changes a light.
A vid of my dad changing the light for Kevin Fowler's tour bus. He drives em around.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Project Zomboid Alpha re-released!
The people over at Indiestone have finally brought back out their paid version, and with many new features! From the character creator, to basic npcs, they are showing even more progress than before.
The first post came out yesterday evening letting people who have bought the game test the new alpha. Of course there were the few who felt entitled to a complete version, when they specifically stated that this was a buggy version. Even though some people had that mentality, most people actually provided useful bug reporting for the devs. As you can see here, within less than 24 hours, Indiestone has shown their dedication to creating the game and making it as enjoyable as possible by patching out a lot of the bugs and issues that were found.
Now, if you haven't bought the game yet, you can still play the out dated demo to see if you are at least interested (That demo itself was enough to make me drop the measly 5 Euros [About 8 US dollars]). If you are interested, you can still buy from google checkout and you are e-mailed your password to login. Should you not want to use google checkout, you can now use Desura and pay with paypal to purchase. If you've already bought it before, and now want to use Desura instead of the standalone downloads, you can activate your game on Desura. Steam support is currently not out, but they have stated multiple times you will eventually be able to activate your copy of Project Zomboid on Steam to receive updates.
Indiestone are currently using the same approach that Minecraft has, with the current price only for the time being, and then increasing the cost as more updates come out.
Here is my current character in the creator, I tried to give him the same attributes I would have (other than the job itself). Click for full size.
The first post came out yesterday evening letting people who have bought the game test the new alpha. Of course there were the few who felt entitled to a complete version, when they specifically stated that this was a buggy version. Even though some people had that mentality, most people actually provided useful bug reporting for the devs. As you can see here, within less than 24 hours, Indiestone has shown their dedication to creating the game and making it as enjoyable as possible by patching out a lot of the bugs and issues that were found.
Now, if you haven't bought the game yet, you can still play the out dated demo to see if you are at least interested (That demo itself was enough to make me drop the measly 5 Euros [About 8 US dollars]). If you are interested, you can still buy from google checkout and you are e-mailed your password to login. Should you not want to use google checkout, you can now use Desura and pay with paypal to purchase. If you've already bought it before, and now want to use Desura instead of the standalone downloads, you can activate your game on Desura. Steam support is currently not out, but they have stated multiple times you will eventually be able to activate your copy of Project Zomboid on Steam to receive updates.
Indiestone are currently using the same approach that Minecraft has, with the current price only for the time being, and then increasing the cost as more updates come out.
Here is my current character in the creator, I tried to give him the same attributes I would have (other than the job itself). Click for full size.
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