Team Fortress 2 Spy & Engineer Update

 Martin · 16 years

While I simply haven't had time to devote to much Team Fortress 2 lately, that doesn't mean I haven't been interested in it. My game is up to date and ready to play, and I've been keeping up on all the sparse bits of official news, which have been released via the Team Fortress 2 Official Blog.

Their latest announcement reveals a few incoming updates for the Engineer and Spy, as follows:

  • Teleporters will be upgradeable to level 3. As the teleporter is upgraded, the cooldown will decrease.
  • Dispensers will be upgradeable to level 3. They will heal faster and generate metal faster as they are upgraded.
  • Spies will be able to recharge their cloaking ability by picking up ammo off of the ground.
  • We've made a bunch of minor changes by adding particle systems and upgrading the HUD to show things like deaths by critical hits, players that are overhealed, and giving more information to medics when people are calling for them.

The Engineer is my favorite class, so I'm happy to see him getting some love from Valve soon. I'm not particularly good at being a Spy, but it is one of the classes I generally have a lot more fun with, and I am happy to see this change coming, as this is something I have felt you should be able to do from the very beginning. With all other characters able to pick up dropped weapons for ammo, building, etc. it only makes sense to allow the Spy to pick up these lost armaments as well, especially since the cloak ability replenishes so slowly on its own.

I'm also excited to see the minor changes mentioned in the fourth bullet point. Playing as a Medic should be even better, and it'll be nice to see more information listed on the HUD for critical hits, overhealing, etc.

Just talking about these upcoming changes is making me hungry for some TF2. Maybe it's time to stop working on my new blog layout/games and start doing a little PC gaming again?

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Getting My Feet Wet With I-Fluid

 Martin · 16 years

After viewing an interesting trailer on Steam the other day, I finally got a chance to try out the demo for Exkee's I-Fluid over the weekend. Though I am not sure that I am ready to pay the modest $10 for the game, my experience with the demo was somewhat fun and I think the team behind the game definitely have something to be proud of.

I-Fluid puts you in the, er, shoes of a drop of water, and has you sliding around levels getting from point A to point B, doing time trials, and finding hidden petals. Levels for the game look very nice, even realistic, and are composed of various items like books, paper, pencils, paperclips, and a cornucopia of other office/school supplies which all serve to help or hinder your progress. Objects in the game react realistically thanks to the Ageia physics engine, and often you must traverse moving objects as they tumble around. Obstacles in the game vary from stationary objects, dry surfaces (like paper) which will suck your drop dry, and thirsty insects. You can replenish your small supply of water on any wet surface, and movement around levels is appropriately slippery.

As you can see from the screens, I-Fluid is actually a very visually interesting game. The high-resolution textures used on most of the models look as if they were derived from photos, and the depth of field effect really solidifies the macrophotography feeling of the game. Drops of water, and other transparent materials, refract the scenery behind them. Much of the game's various objects look tasty enough to eat.

The 2D aspects of the graphics, however, leave a lot to be desired. During the opening screens of the demo and even when the simple resolution configuration popped up before the actual game loaded, I felt that a lot more polish could have gone into the presentation. Once the 3D portion of the game loaded I forgot all about this, but loading screens and menus can be important, because they are some of the first impressions your users will have of your game.

I enjoyed gliding around a few levels from the demo, as everything controlled just as it should. I was slightly annoyed at the controls when, only seconds after being introduced to the jump ability, I found myself being forced to perform a difficult maneuver across a plastic protractor, suspended over a pit of notebook paper by a rolling glue stick. It sounds silly, I know, but the movement of the water drop depends largely on your control over momentum and the direction of the camera, and I had trouble sticking the landing with such slippery physics. Overall, I had fun playing I-Fluid, though I'm not sure if I'm up for the challenges I suspect will be present in the full game.

At the very least, I-Fluid did manage to pull me away from working on my revised blog layout for about 45 minutes, so I guess there is a small victory to be held somewhere in that. I think that for anyone wanting a simple, physics-based platformer with good graphics and a unique approach, I-Fluid could be a good fix, especially if taken in bite-sized play sessions. For me, I might just wait until it comes down to $5.

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Quick Reflect Competition & WordPress 2.7

 Martin · 16 years

I just wanted to post a quick note to tell everyone about two things, the currently on-going Reflect Games Competition and WordPress 2.7.

First, the Reflect Games Competition - it began last night, and is ending at midnight PST on December 21. The challenge is to make a cut scene in Game Maker, pretty much however you want. The rules are lax and the time is short, so read more about that at the Reflect Games forum, and consider throwing something together - you could win a little holiday fun in the form of Steam games, Amazon goods, or iTunes music!

Second, I installed WordPress 2.7 RC1 a few days ago, and all went smoothly... I'm not even sure that I had more than about 30 seconds of downtime. Today, the official release of WordPress 2.7 was released, and I got my first chance to try out the automatic upgrade function. So far, I love it! Instead of having to download, unzip, and upload a bunch of files, I can now upgrade the entire blog at the push of a button. The WordPress team deserves a resounding "good job" from everyone who uses and supports their software for this - they really did an excellent job.

Anyway, I'd better get back to work for now, but thanks for stopping in to see what's going on, and good luck with the contest if you decide to enter it! The raffle for Marty Blog is still being planned, so don't miss these two opportunities to win some stuff!

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The Weekend Rental

 Martin · 16 years

Late Friday afternoon my girlfriend and I found ourselves wandering around Blockbuster, suffering from that affliction everyone gets when they go into Blockbuster Video without a real idea of what they want to get - slack-eyed, drooling, wandering slowly, aimlessly, watching endless amounts of videos scroll by as you move around the perimeter of the store.

I stumbled across a whole shelf where at least a hundred copies of Love Guru were supposed to have gone.

I spotted a growing plague of Blu-Ray movies. I'm going to stop going to Blockbuster if they ditch DVD's in favor of that trash.

And then, just as I was nearing the end of the alphabetically arranged wall, I spotted Wall-E, and remembering I had wanted to see the movie, snatched up one of the few remaining copies. My girlfriend couldn't find anything herself, so we snapped out of the delirium, paid, and drove home.

We had a quick dinner, took care of the few things around the apartment, and settled in to watch the movie.

From the opening montage of a trashed earth to the film's glorious finale, I was both moved and impressed by Pixar's latest film. I won't discuss the plot in detail, since I don't want to spoil the movie for anyone. If you haven't seen Wall-E yet though, go out and rent it - it's worth the monetary, physical, and emotional cost of visiting Blockbuster (or whoever you rent movies from).

I went into Wall-E not knowing anything about the setting, the characters, or the plot. I'd not read anything about it, save for a few minuscule complaints (and counter-complaints) about the "message" within the plot and something about the Apple noise being played in the film. The few ads I'd seen on TV were vague. Being a fan of Pixar films though, I was intrigued by the look of Wall-E despite having no real exposure to any media surrounding it.

The story follows Wall-E, the last surviving Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class robot as he goes about his daily routine helping to clean up a ruined Earth, his friendship with another robot with a much different directive, and their adventure as they do all sorts of robot-y things to help make the world a better place to live. One thing I found really refreshing in all of this is that the two robots communicate almost entirely with gestures, as neither has the ability to perform advanced vocals of any kind. Through much pantomiming you learn a lot more about Wall-E, his friend, and their plight than you might have if the film had included more traditional dialog between the two bots, and this mechanic of storytelling really helps you feel the same sense of curiosity that Wall-E feels as he travels around and discovers new things.

The story is complimented by some of the best visuals I've seen in a Pixar movie to date, as well as a musical score that speaks to the same inquisitive nature of film's protagonist. I could go on and on about how much I enjoyed the visuals and host of sounds in the movie, but I'll cut that short and simply say that I was impressed, and I really think Pixar went above and beyond with Wall-E. This movie was fun, entertaining, and has a great message about the future, about friendship, and the rewards of teamwork, and it's got my complete recommendation.

After finishing Wall-E, I continued my bonding experience with the couch and watched some other movie on one of the time-limited movie channels I have, and then went back to my computer to play around with Terragen 2 sky boxes. I finally figured out why those seams were showing up on the edges. It was a good night.

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WordPress 2.7 Looming

 Martin · 16 years

With the upcoming release of WordPress 2.7, I'm considering redesigning the look of this blog - especially if the current theme fails to be compatible.

The official release of 2.7 will be in 5 days (on December 10th), but I'll probably change over to Release Candidate 1 before that, at which point I will disable themes and plug-ins so as to determine which will work and which will not without affecting the uptime of the site too much. So if Marty Blog goes "vanilla" and reverts back to the default WordPress theme for a while in the coming days, don't worry - it's just Marty tinkerin' with the new WordPress.

It's funny how these sorts of things grow on you - a few years ago I had neither the time nor the interest in maintaining a blog. When I finally came around and felt it might be an interesting endeavor, I entered into it a bit timidly, and spent lots of time trying to figure out which software would be the most versatile, and the easiest to use. WordPress had a nice, clean look to it, and looking over the feature list and stumbling upon many sites that used it helped push me over the edge to try it out.

It turned out that my investigating paid off - and I've been enjoying WordPress for over a year now. The number of updates and the quality of the plug-ins available has always impressed me, and I hope that I can say the same moving forward into the big changes with version 2.7 over the coming weeks.

If you're interested in blogging, I recommend giving WordPress a shot. You'll probably like it!

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Back From Thanksgiving

 Martin · 16 years

I'm finally back from my Thanksgiving holiday at my parents' house, and I can hardly believe it's already December! Where has this year gone?

Anyway, I had a couple of things I wanted to post today.

A recent episode of The Simpsons took Apple down a peg, as Springfield mall got its first "Mapple" store. It was quite enjoyable. Of course, all the YouTube links are gone now, so you'll have to find the episode yourself.

The next thing I wanted to post, also a video, is a new trailer released yesterday for the Black Mesa mod - a Half-Life 2 mod that is looking to recreate the original Half-Life with the Source engine, but with more content, higher resolution textures and models, and environments that take better advantage of the engine than Valve's original port of the game. Normally I don't get too excited over Source engine mods, since they rarely make good on their promises, or even get finished for that matter, but the amount of polish that has gone into this trailer makes me hope otherwise for Black Mesa. You can view the trailer below and find out more about the mod at the official site.

I played through a huge chunk of Half-Life 2 this holiday weekend, so I guess I'm a little bit excited about Half-Life in general again.

I'm glad to see that people found my recent set of examples interesting too, and I hope to get a fixed GM6 version of the 3D Rain example up sometime tonight. Sorry about the slow rain example, I'll play with it and see if I can get something up that's a little easier on the older machines soon as well!

That's all for now - thanks for reading, and I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving (or just a good weekend if you're not from the U.S.)!

Update: I've made a new GM6 file that should run better than the previous rain example, and which should load correctly in GM6. The area that the rain covers is a bit smaller than the original example, and the rain is a bit more sparse, but you should get the idea.

You can download the new example at the link above!

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Marty Moved

 Martin · 16 years

Over the last week I was busy boxing up all my stuff and trying to coordinate all my services (cable, internet, electricity, etc.) to have things ready for my move, and this weekend I got everything moved over - I am now officially moved out of my old apartment, and living with my girlfriend at the new one. There are still a lot of boxes to sort through, but the computer is set up, the Xbox is up and running, and... I've got no internet yet!

You see, me being the master planner that I am, only called up AT&T to transfer my existing phone and internet service on friday of last week. This translates into my landline being moved today and my internet being reconnected on Wednesday. Not an entirely raw deal, as I can go about most of my business without it - I've got plenty of games that need playing, and the aforementioned boxes to unpack. Still, it has been an inconvenience when I've needed to get phone numbers and other information which I normally collect from the internet in about 5 seconds, but now have to obtain either by searching the phone book or calling up 411, both of which are expensive prospects in time and money respectively.

At first, I was tempted to activate my cell phone's limited internet capabilities (by adding a $5-a-month charge to my plan) but being through the bulk my time without the internet now, I think I'll just wait it out.

Being without the worldwide time sink that is the internet, I've also had some time (between games and unpacking, of course) to think about some of the GM content I want to release here on my site in the near future, particularly of the example and tutorial flavor. I still want to put together a simple tutorial about how to make that animated water texture I introduced in my 3D example, as well as an example for the fire particles I used in Sun Sun Der, and a few other small things. I should have plenty of time to work on a couple of these over the next few days, so we'll see what I can come up with. If anyone has any ideas about what they'd want to see, please let me know in the comments below.

Anyway, I just wanted to write a little about where I am with my GM work and offer an explanation as to why you might not have seen me on AIM/MSN/XBL/GMC/etc. over the weekend. Thanks for reading, and again, please let me know of any examples/tutorials you might want to see, preferably graphics oriented.

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Reflect Games Celebrates 7,000 Members

 Martin · 16 years

I want to announce that Reflect Games has reached (and passed) the 7,000 member mark!

As I've said in the past, I am still very much surprised and excited about the success of the Reflect Games community. And though I haven't had much time as I want to devote to updating things and creating games, I'm going to try to re-focus and start planning periodic updates as soon as the holiday season is over.

I've still got a lot planned for updates to the Reflect site and community. The site update of old has been folded over into a much larger group of changes, which will hopefully include a complete re-write of the Reflect system and website. I'd like to make Reflect Games a lot more user friendly, for both developers and players, and this will be a big step towards that goal. I've written up a long list of everything that needs to be done and have already bitten off a chunk of it - hopefully I'll be able to continue plugging away at it, however slow I might be, until it all gets done.

I'm actually interested in releasing my to-do list here to get feedback and see what everyone thinks, perhaps I'll do that soon. In the meantime, if you have any suggestions about future updates/functionality to Reflect, feel free to drop them here - I will read and respond to everything.

Anyway, I kind of went off on a little tangent there for a bit, but I just wanted to thank everyone who has helped make Reflect Games a success, and I hope that you will continue to support Reflect into the future!

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New Xbox Experience Brief

 Martin · 16 years

Before hopping into my car and heading off to work this morning, I powered up my Xbox to chance a brief encounter with the New Xbox Experience, a brand new dashboard for the three-year-old console. Based on my short time with it, my only complaint is that I wish I had gotten up earlier this morning. Well, that and I wish I had a bigger hard drive on my Xbox.

Updating to the new dashboard was easy and much faster than I thought it would be. Upon booting up, my console showed me the normal update blade informing me that I a system update was available, and that I had to install it in order to continue using Xbox Live. I accepted, the download took only a few seconds, and the Xbox restarted.

When the power came back on, a new update screen awaited, this time telling me that the NXE was downloading, and giving me the option to cancel the update (which I was relieved to see, because at this point, I still wasn't sure if I'd have time to check it out before leaving for work). The progress bar began moving, and the onscreen text changed to reflect this - 5 minutes remaining.

I was quite surprised at this. Not only did I expect the update to be quite large and subsequently take 10-20 minutes to download, but I also assumed the Xbox Live network might be bogged down by all the traffic. Not so. Not at six in the morning, anyway. I hear the Xbox Live Marketplace is having trouble today, however.

I ducked into the bathroom and did my usual morning grooming, and returned with only 2 minutes left for the download. I watched the progress tick by. When the NXE was finished, I was treated to a neat intro video featuring the familiar Xbox 360 sphere taking different forms, flying around all sorts of games and media, and finally coming to rest in the corner of the screen where it resides in the new dashboard. I wasn't able to hear any of this unfortunately, since I didn't want to wake up my girlfriend, but I can say that the visuals were neat.

Once the video was over, the NXE prompted me to select a profile, and then to create an avatar for it. A selection of random avatars rushed onto the screen, and I was given the option to use one as a base for my own or to usher in a new group. I randomized the group a few times, found one that looked like a good place to start, and began crafting my virtual Xbox self (pictured above).

The avatar editor is easy to use, loads everything relatively fast, and was quick and responsive. I fiddled around with it for a few minutes, leaving a lot to check out later today when I have more time to play with it. My avatar actually looks kind of like me, but only when you see him from an angle, since he's got a pony tail.

I spent the remainder of my time buzzing through the menus just looking at stuff - which was quite confusing. It's probably going to take me a while to get used to the new menu hierarchy, but the system seems so much more responsive now, especially in the guide, I think I'll manage with that just fine.

As I mentioned above, the only thing I really feel like I need to do now is pick up a larger hard drive. The 20gb hard drive that came with the system has served me well, but with the new NXE option to install games, I'd like a little more space than what I have now. I can't see myself installing every game I own, but newer/frequently played games wouldn't hurt.

Aside from that minor gripe however, the NXE is looking to be a great improvement over the blades of old, and I'll be using it and writing about it more soon. Thanks for reading, and hopefully your Xbox update is as enjoyable as mine was, however brief it might be.

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When It Rains…

 Martin · 16 years

My apologies for the delay between this and my last post - I've been at jury duty for the last two days, was sick for about a week before that, and have begun the long, arduous process of moving all my material possessions from old apartment to new.

I've also been working my way through Fable 2 for a second time, having a blast playing co-op / horde mode in Gears of War 2, and slowly leveling Totino up to 80 in Wrath of the Lich King.

So yeah, I've been a little busy.

As I've made my way through all the new games though, I've been feeling more and more like getting back to some of my older projects and making them into something new, and better than before. Chiefly, Hover Tank 3D 2 (as Yourself urges me to make a multiplayer mode where you steal resources from enemies to build up a base) and Falcon Squad, which I feel like I am almost ready to return to with a complete engine rebuild and graphics injection. I'd also like to get that robot battle engine finished, so we can finally have a new competition over at Reflect Games.

I know I keep returning to these projects over and over, but one of these days... well, you know.

Anyway, I'm going to get going so I can start moving more of my junk. Just wanted to check in and let everyone know that I'm not dead, just WASD-ing through the mire of many planned, random, and seasonal events. Thanks for reading, and I hope you are having a healthier November than I am!

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