Monthly Archives September 2007

Halo 3

I've got a little piece of paper resting comfortably in my wallet right now. It conspires with recent purchases made by my credit card; it conspires to completely undo my productivity. You read about the damages to my productivity last week with my scribbling about Team Fortress 2... now brace yourself for the monster that this little piece of paper will unleash upon my free time. This small snipped of ribbon paper has printed upon it proof that I have paid the $5 pre-order fee at my local GameStop. Halo 3 will be in my hands this afternoon.

I could have picked it up last night. At about 10:30 PM, I called GameStop to see how many people were standing in line, and at only about 40, it seemed the wait would not be unreasonable if I headed over at around 11. When 11 came, however, I felt a sudden urge of sleepiness... and since my girlfriend was over for the night, and I did not want to leave her alone at my apartment so late in the night, I decided I'd skip the midnight release, and instead get plenty of rest, so that I may enjoy the game to it's fullest this afternoon. And so I plan on stopping at the very appropriately titled GameStop on my way home from work, picking up Halo 3, and playing through the campaign on co-op with my brother and a friend.

I'm actually somewhat excited at the prospect of playing Halo 3, which is surprising because a week ago, I was not. After being talked into a pre-order by my brother I knew I would enjoy the game, but since I thought the first game was only above par, and have never even played the second game, getting pumped up about the third seemed a bit ludicrous.

When the reviews started pouring in, I read them... and I think that amidst all the Halo soda promotions, commercials, and media hype, they were what most got me in the mood to play. As I have read, not only does the game have four-player cooperative play, something that will probably make the game worth it for me in itself, but it also has some really neat customization and replay features which will be great to play around with, if they are anything near what they are cracked up to be.

I am a PC gamer at heart, so the lack of customization in console games has always kept me from getting too close to many of my favorite games... and while Halo 3 will still be short of a full-blown level editor, it is taking a step in the right direction with the Forge, a kind of mini level editor, which allows you to change elements in levels, add and remove objects, etc. - all while people are playing the level! The replay system I mentioned sounds as equally cool, where everything you do in Halo 3 is recorded to a replay file, which you can view later on, using different camera angles, speeds, etc., and which you can then upload to the internet for others to watch. Sending my friends video clips of my shooting them in the face will never get old, let me tell you.

So all that, combined with my growing love for Team Fortress 2, and then the eventual rest of Orange Box coming in soon, makes for a very large chunk of my free time being eaten up by pure entertainment. Of course, I won't let every one of my priorities drop - I've really got to get to work on the update to Reflect, and continue one of my many game projects - but still... it's gonna be difficult to divvy up the time!

In any case, it's good to be a gamer right now... so if you play Halo 3, maybe I'll kill you online sometime! Thanks for reading!

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So Tired!

Martin · 16 years
Team Fortress 2

Man, am I tired. I got up this morning at the usual early hour, got dressed, made my lunch for the day, and then toyed with the idea of crawling back in bed for about a half hour... until I realized that I had not yet eaten breakfast. After leaving for work, all I could think about while driving on the freeway was just letting my head roll back and dozing off. Now I sit at work, still feeling droopy, but with a slight re-invigoration from a half-finished energy drink. I vow to go to sleep early tonight; almost as soon as I get home, even. But then, for the same reason as last night's lack of sleep, I doubt that I will.Maybe some of you went through a similar experience? You very well could have; I know I wasn't alone last night. Far from it... in fact, I'd wager I was joined in my insomnia by thousands of people. So what caused this mass exodus from sleep last night?

Three words. Well, three words and a number.

Team Fortress 2 beta.

Now I can't say that I was one of the die hard fans of Team Fortress 1, who have waited a decade for this remake of their game to come into reality... nor can I say that I even particularly liked the first game, for that matter. I did, however, fire up Steam the other day and pre-order Orange Box, which I was delightfully surprised to see includes Half-Life 2: Episode 2, Team Fortress 2, Portal, Peggle Ultimate (or something like that), and the opportunity to play the TF2 beta this week. All for only $45 - less than the cost of a full game!

Since I had always planned on purchasing HL2: Ep2, and have been intrigued with TF2 and Portal ever since I've seen some of the fantastical screenshots and character videos, it seemed reasonable to just swipe them all up at once and take advantage of Valve's offer. I figured that the beta of TF2 would give me a good idea of how the game will be when it finally comes out, and at the very least, would give me something to do until Halo 3 comes out next week. So I pre-ordered on saturday, and waited patiently for the monday release of the TF2 beta.

After getting off work yesterday, I fired up Steam, and checked the status of the game. Still unreleased. A quick jump onto the crawling Steam forums gave me the impression that the game was likely not going to come out until the very last minute of the day. So, even though I have to get up at 5:45 AM every day, I made the decision to stay up til midnight, check out the game for a few minutes when it's finally released, and then hit the sack, still getting about 5 hours of sleep. I spent some time updating the next version of the Reflect Games website, and playing a bit of Sam & Max: Episode 1.

Finally, at about 11:45 PM, I decided I'd take a shower and be all set for bed by the time the beta was released. I had already pre-loaded the game on saturday, so as soon as the Valve was to hit the "big red button," I'd be good to go. When I got out of the shower, the game's status had changed to "Updating," but was stuck at 0%, so I restarted Steam. Upon restarting, the game finalized it's pre-load, decrypted it's files, and then reported that all was ready to go. I excitedly pressed "Launch" and watched as Steam began preparing to start the game. And then... nothing. The small window which had appeared to inform me that the game was launching had mysteriously disappeared, and a quick check of the computer's processes told me it was not coming back.

After about 5 minutes of vain attempts to get the game to launch, I disappointedly brought myself back to the forums to see if my situation was the rule, rather than the exception. Sure enough, it seemed nobody was able to play. I spent a few minutes posting messages, and went back to the bathroom to brush my teeth. Having to wait through an entire day of work to try again while the rest of the world played wasn't sounding too great to me.

So I sat down at my computer, resigned to this terrible fate, ready to shut down and go to sleep. When I went to close Steam down, however, I noticed a telltale sign in the taskbar; the little green lights of internet activity were flicking back and forth, and I had no other programs open that would be triggering this activity. Suddenly completely ignorant of how late it was getting, I tried launching the game again, and was met by same the small launch window... which decided to fulfill it's promise this time. I set up my play options, found a server, and joined the fray.

All I can say is that this game is completely awesome. I didn't go to sleep until about 1:30 AM, and despite the fact that I feel completely exhausted, it was worth it.

If you get a chance, try this game out - it's really a great experience. Just try to do it at a time that won't affect your ability to stay awake the next day, hehe.

I'll discuss the updates to Reflect Games later in the week... right now it's back to work time for me! Thanks for reading!

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Beware: Big Bad Blog Begun!

Martin · 16 years

Alliteration is a good way to kick off a blog, right? No? Crap.

Well anyway, greetings everyone, and welcome to the first ever blog entry on my first ever blog (discounting 64 Digits, EO, and those other... things). As I have been quite a scatterbrain lately, I thought creating a blog would be a helpful, organizational exercise for myself, while also providing you with an exclusive glimpse into the random string of events that make up my existence.

But I don't come into this blog thing without my reservations. I'll be honest; I don't particularly care for these "deep" blogs people write. That's not to say that what I plan on entering here will be shallow, but that I'm hoping to keep this as down to earth as possible. And I absolutely refuse to use the word 'blogosphere.' That word was created be a being of sub-human intelligence.

So now that introductions are over with, let's get down to it. As some of you probably already know, I run Reflect Games (for those who don't, it's a website which provides online services for Game Maker games), and we just got done with our first game creation competition about a week and a half ago. The goal of the competition was for entrants to create an arcade game in a month and overall, things went pretty well - we had 6 entries when all the dust settled, and an equal number of judges, which turned out to be a great combination. I'm happy with how it went, and hope to continue with another contest starting October 1st.

As far as games go, I've also had some time to sit down and look over some of the code from Falcon Squad, and also begin (yet another) game. This new venture will be a departure from my "normal" game; it will be heavily sprite-based, and will be 2D. I can almost hear the gasps!

Being a kid who grew up on games like Mario World, Sonic the Hedgehog, Earthworm Jim, and a slew of other platformer games, I have had a very hard time suppressing my urge to try to create one this long. I guess my love for 3D really got the best of me at first, but I ever since I first laid my hands on Game Maker, I have wanted to make a platformer game... and the time draws nigh that I embark on that goal. Not too much is currently planned out in my mind, but I have begun spriting the main character, and the results have been great so far. There are many elements of past games that I have played that I would really like to incorporate into this game, but I will discuss it a little more in depth at a later time. Needless to say, it will probably be quite a bit of work, but I am looking forward to spending some time getting back to my spriting roots. All those hours of Mario Paint might finally count for something!

Other than all that (and playing through BioShock on my 360 a second time... gotta get those achievements!), it's been pretty much business as usual for me. Which means going to work every weekday, and squeezing every last possible amount of enjoyment out of the weekends. I'll have to talk about that stuff another time though, because I think this blog is starting to approach "short novel" territory.

So to whoever did, thanks for reading... to whoever didn't, I'm very disappointed in you. But since you didn't read it, you don't know that. Gah.

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