TorqueL, the Rolling Box 2D Platformer

I originally posted this on April 18, 2013 on my blog on Gamasutra. Cross-posting here because this game looks great. It’s on Steam Greenlight Concepts with a demo available, and I urge you to check it out.

Overcrowding at BitSummit meant that in the short time we had for looking at game demos, there was no time to see them all. I did see quite a few, and while most of the games I saw interested me in one way or another, a simple platformer named TorqueL took first prize for being fun to play.

TorqueL’s concept is simple. The developer bills it as the 2D rolling box platformer, and that description basically sums up the game. The only thing that sets this game apart from other 2D platformers — and the only thing it needs — is that player movement has been completely rethought.

What Ludum Dare has Done for Me

I originally posted this on April 9, 2013 on my blog on Gamasutra. Cross-posting here, as I should have done before.

I first learned of Ludum Dare last August. I wasn’t in time to participate, but I was able to play a wide variety of interesting games. That got me fired up — I definitely wanted to participate in December’s 48-hour compo (hereafter LD48). I hadn’t programmed in years, really, but I was signed up for an Intro to Computer Science MOOC and was pretty sure I would be capable of pumping out something come December.

Participating in Ludum Dare #25

When December and its LD48 came around, I was not at all confident in my abilities. I had successfully brushed up on basic computer science concepts and learned some new things, but the MOOC had been taught in Python instead of the C/C++ I originally learned in. I could do some things with Python, like perform computations and output things to IDLE, but I had no clue how to do things like play sound and draw graphics. To make things worse, I live in Japan, which meant that the event would be starting at noon on Saturday for me. In order to be functional for work on Monday, I needed to get to bed around midnight on Sunday, leaving me with only 36 hours to make my game. In short, my limitations were many.

The Soul of BitSummit

This was originally posted on March 9, 2013 on my blog on Gamasutra. I really should have cross-posted it here in the first place. BitSummit is awesome and I am proud to have helped out with it. I fully intend to help again next year.

So, BitSummit happened on Saturday. It was a one-day event organized by James Mielke and Q-Games with the goal of helping Japanese independent game developers expand their reach. Epic Games, Unity, and Valve were in attendance to promote their tools and western media representatives from outlets including Wired, IGN, and GameSpot came to see what the game developers already had to offer.

The presentations were mostly informational, but James Mielke had the opening speech, in which he talked about his reasons for organizing the event. With the world of independent game development expanding, he feels that it’s a shame that talented Japanese independent developers see less recognition for their efforts. Japanese developers have a different pool of cultural expectations and experiences from which to draw, he pointed out, and the games they make reflect that. Mielke believes independent game developers in Japan have a lot to offer the industry, and that’s why he put BitSummit together.

The BitSummit T-shirt back was deliberately designed to include not just video game icons, but references to other parts of Japanese culture.

Sims 3 Legacy Challenge Scorecard – New Link, Suspended Indefinitely

Greetings, all. It’s been a while since I made any mention of this thing. Last time I did so was in a response to a comment. 4shared now requires a signup to download the file; I said I would get it back on Google Drive and promptly forgot to do so. I have done so. The sheet is now available here. Hopefully the link will work for everyone.

That said, I have decided that I will never give EA my money again. I also plan to refuse any gifts of EA products. This means I will not be playing any more Sims games than the one I have, and the current version, 2.00 (good up through the Showtime expansion), is the last to come from me.

At some point, someone commented asking me for permission to update the spreadsheet since I wasn’t. I granted that permission, but have no link to share with you guys. If someone knows where to find the version being upkept by someone else, please tell me so I can spread the word.

(Up)Dated User Interfaces

I have fond memories of a lot of video games. I used to go back and play those old games fairly often, but as time wears on this happens less and less. There are a few reasons for this. One is incompatibility with modern gaming systems. If you can’t make the software work, you can’t play it. One is lack of time to do everything I want to do anyway. If I have 15 new games stacked up waiting to be played, I’m far less likely to go back and play one I’ve already beaten, especially if I’ve beaten it 3 or 4 times.

The biggest reason these days, though, is that game design has advanced so much that those old games’ control systems are just so darn clunky. I would love to play WarCraft or WarCraft II again, but trying to make your units do anything when compared to the ease of doing things in WarCraft III is like pulling teeth. My favorite Harvest Moon game is Back to Nature, but the controls for that one are so ridiculous that I stopped playing it within 5 minutes last time I tried.

Over the years, game developers have figured out how to create smoother gaming experiences such that the controls don’t interfere with the actual gameplay (or interfere less). The changes have been so gradual that we don’t usually notice them. Sometimes we do; I, for example, was elated when I was finally able to automate workers in a Civilization game. But in general, all the changes become most apparent when we try to go back and play the old games and find that controlling anything that happens is just more trouble than we want to deal with.

So what about ports of old games?