When EA acquired BioWare in 2007, on the eve of its successful franchise launch with the original Mass Effect, I tried my hardest to reserve my criticisms until after they shipped a few more products, and we would start to see just how extensive the inevitable changes to the company would be. With BioWare's history of crafting superb games, it seemed like I owed it to them to at least wait for the dust to settle before making any judgments.
Three years later in 2010, I found myself generally happy with Mass Effect 2. The story was an interesting continuation of the epic set forth in the original game, and most of the conventions that made the first game fun were carried over successfully. Some things from the original game were shed away however, like the synth-heavy soundtrack from the previous game, and Mass Effect 2 definitely felt like a vision a little less realized (and a little more mainstream) for it. I found some other small changes annoying as well, like the end-of-level summary screens, and the (over) simplification of some of the RPG elements (weapons, armor).
I have no idea that these changes were planned additions by BioWare or the results of EA leaning on the team to try to make their game more appealing to the masses, but either way, they did nothing but dilute what would have otherwise been another grand RPG experience.
This week, it was announced that the upcoming Mass Effect 3 would feature a multiplayer element, and I find myself utterly disappointed. Why? Because this is just another step towards mediocrity for what started out as a really outstanding series of games. Instead of spending time working on improving the storytelling in the game engine, adding more side-quests and expanding, what I find to be, a very interesting universe for the upcoming game, EA / BioWare are squandering their time developing a multiplayer mode that will likely not fit within the canon of the story, or even be something that players want to buy the game for.
It's almost as if we've gone backwards a step. I really thought we'd mostly gotten past the days of executives trying to check off all the boxes, making developers create bolted-on, forgettable multiplayer experiences just so they'd have another item to highlight on the back of the game's box.
Maybe EA isn't to blame here; maybe this was BioWare's decision. Either way, I think it's a mistake, and is ignorant to all the things that made the series popular to begin with.
Mass Effect is a single player experience. If I buy the third game, it's going to be because I want to continue that experience. I want to play a game with a carefully crafted world, where story is king, and the game isn't interrupted by lag, idiots cursing at me over their mics, etc. I'm not going to buy Mass Effect 3 for multiplayer; I've got Gears of War, Halo, and Team Fortress 2 for that.
But hey, I could be wrong; Mass Effect 3's multiplayer could turn out to be just fine. From the outset however, it doesn't seem like a very fun idea to me.
Ultimately, I really just hope that Mass Effect 3 (the single player role-playing game) doesn't lose its edge because BioWare had to spend months tacking on a multiplayer component. It would be a real shame to end such a brilliant trilogy on such a sour note.
So the other day I was playing Team Fortress 2, and someone accused me of being a "free-to-play noob". I was chided as being one of the newbie players who only recently got into the game because it became free-to-play, despite my owning and playing the game since 2007.
But let me back up a little bit. I was playing Team Fortress 2 the other day, and having a less than stellar round. Some people on my team, who had been playing on the server before I got there, were using their microphones to play the game. These players were being too vocal, to the point that I couldn't concentrate on the game because of all the "mic spam". Being annoyed at my repeated effort and lack of results, coupled with the inane chirps and squeals of the mic spam, I did what any right-minded online gamer would do: I told them to "shut the fuck up".
Bear in mind, I merely typed this phrase into the game's chat; most of the time, these messages are either not read by those they are directed at, since that person is too busy playing the game, or it is swept off the screen quickly by in-game announcements. My message was immediately recognized by the person who I considered to be the primary offender, however.
What was seconds before only friendly banter and playful chatting suddenly became a shrill torrent of insults, disagreeing with my command and demanding that I "shut the fuck up" myself. The tone of voice degenerated into what I could only describe as "ghetto". It's funny how quickly someone's world can come crashing down at the slightest bit of confrontation.
So we argued a bit more, me click-clacking away at my keyboard, and the annoying mic spammer answering my few messages with an elevating level of shrieking. Another player said I should get banned.
Then, the original mic spammer decided that the best way she could deal with me was to call me out as a "free-to-play nub".
A little bit of history, before I continue: back in 2007, Team Fortress 2 used to come as a standalone inclusion in the Orange Box, with Half-Life 2. After that, it became possible to buy the game separately. Finally, as of June of 2011, the game became "free-to-play", meaning anyone could download the game and play with everyone else. Since then, the newest, greatest community-spawned insult is to call someone a "free-to-play noob", meaning they stink at the game because they've only recently begun playing, since the game was made free.
Obviously, I do not fall into this category, and I stated that plainly. Ms. Mic Spam backed off rather quickly after this, and was quite quiet after. And rightfully so, since most of my characters in Team Fortress 2 are outfitted with either The Proof of Purchase hat, my Primeval Warrior pin, or both. These items show that I bought the game back when it was still for sale, and that I have been playing since September 18, 2007, respectively. They are not tradable, and anyone who has them is very obviously not a Team Fortress 2 free-to-play inductee.
So what's the lesson here, other than that I like to have petty arguments with stupid people while I am playing games?
Simply this: if you're going to be an asshole and toss around the "free-to-play noob" insult liberally every time you disagree with someone in Team Fortress 2, make sure you know what the hell you're talking about first. It's not hard to check out people's loadouts first. Unless of course, you're some kind of noob.
Also, if you want to chat with people constantly, start up a private Steam voice chat conversation, or use Xbox Live, Skype, Ventrilo, TeamSpeak, or some other chat client. You can even play games while you're doing it. Just leave everyone else out of the conversation, because I assure you, we're not interested.
So Valve finally got around to releasing one of the two final Meet the Team videos - the newest being for the Medic, and arguably the most epic video they've created so far. Watch below!
Oh, and if you didn't bother to watch all the way through, they've also just announced that Team Fortress 2 is now free to play for all! A generous move, surely, though I'm not sure if there are many people left out there who are interested in the game and haven't gotten it yet. Still, this is great news for the continuing popularity of the game.
And if it's proof of anything, it's proof that sales of virtual goods must be a profitable business for Valve. This wouldn't shock me at all.
Anyway, it's a great game by a great team. Get it for yourself if you haven't already!
Another thing that happened while I was gone was that Team Fortress 2 got video capturing, editing, and rendering tools, and me and my buddy Dave used them to become YouTube sensations!
Well, the first part happened, anyway. The second part almost happened, but alas, not many people watched our video. I've taken the liberty of including it at the head of this post, if you're interested in watching a Pyro and Medic take on a handful of bad guys. Spoiler alert: lots of people get burned.
I used a combination of Team Fortress 2's built-in tools, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Premiere to create the video. Oh, and a little help from a tool called GCFScape.
One of the things I've been doing in the time since my last major blog post was dabbling with rendering some of my Minecraft exploits.
One of my biggest projects in the game (before I started "cheating" with INVedit and MCEdit) was Skull Island. Across a wide expanse of water from my original spawn and home base, I found an island with a large mountain near the water. It could be seen faintly from the water's edge near my spawn, and I thought it'd be a cool project to carve a large skull into the cliff face. After a few weeks of work (not always consistent play, but it did take a while), I was finished. It wasn't the best thing I'd ever seen made in Minecraft, but I liked the result, was proud of my work, and have decided to post the results here, for the curious.
In order to render my Minecraft levels, I first output them to OBJ format using mcobj, which is a great little tool. I used my old 3D standby, trueSpace, to do the actual rendering, and did a little work in Photoshop afterwards for some of them as well.
Here's the final render I did of Skull Island. The depth of field effect, which was part of the original render, gives it a nice little tilt-shift photography effect that I feel is very appropriate for Minecraft. I also did some post-process color work in Photoshop.
That line coming out of the water and going into the skull's mouth is actually my mine cart track that leads back and forth between the two land masses. On the way over to Skull Island, you come flying up a long incline and immediately see the giant skull looking ahead before your cart goes sailing between the front teeth!
I also did an alternate view from my home base area on the other side of the water. There's no sky output when you export maps from Minecraft using mcobj (and I don't see how there could ever be, really), so I had to make my own. The following two images show the render with and without my faux-Minecraft sky.
I also did a render of a small lake, to test water transparency / reflectivity and depth of field.
And finally, just for kicks, here's an image of my poor computer trudging through a rendering... the phrase "firing on all cylinders" comes to mind!
If you play Minecraft and you don't mind getting your hands dirty with some simple 3D work, rendering your worlds is a pretty fun way to make the whole experience a little more artful. There's a good sub-reddit for mcobj at r/mcobj, and people have also written up some decent tutorials for creating renders with Blender too, so there are lots of resources out there to help get you started if you're interested in all of this.
Thanks for reading, and if you have any tips, tricks, or other things to share about creating Minecraft renders, be sure to add them in the comments below! And of course, if I create any more interesting renders, I'll be sure to post 'em here on the blog!
Two or three weeks after I quit my full-time job at Minecraft, Team Fortress 2 got a massive update in the form of The Mann-Conomy Update. Not only were all of the new items from the Polycount Pack included, but also a new store in which players can buy items for their roster of characters. Now, rather than having to play for hours and hours, hoping for the right random drop or collecting enough raw materials to craft, players can plunk down a wad of cash from their Steam Wallet and buy what they want, straight away. So I started playing again.
I was a bit apprehensive at first, but overall, the in-game item store is a good idea, really. It helps monetize a game that, even after 3 years out, is still going strong online, making it more sustainable for Valve to continue updating it (and for the community members creating the content, apparently). For players who don't want or can't afford to purchase items from the in-game store, the old item collection system is still in place, so they can continue to earn rewards the old-fashioned way. And for now, store items cannot be traded, so found or crafted items retain lots of value among players.
Aside from a few small balancing issues with the scout and soldier, my biggest complaints with the update revolve around Mann Co. Crates, boxed items that can be randomly "found" while you play, which require the player to pay $2.50 for a virtual key to open. Sure, the broke player can trade the crate items to others who don't mind paying to open them, but it still bothers me that they require real money to open.
And that leads to my other gripe. Unlocking crates grants players a mystery item, one of the items listed on the box's description. This includes an assortment of normal items, hats, and "unusual" rare items that don't spawn very often. This is all fine, and I understand why Valve did it; it serves to keep the money flowing in as people gamble on the contents of crates. But it further bothers me that even while paying $2.50 for every opened crate, there is still a very good chance that you're going to receive a normal item that could have cost less in the item store, or which could be found or traded for free.
I understand that there is a balance to how good the loot in the crates can be versus how much you pay to open them, but there is a premium that comes along with paying for content, and it's lame that people are receiving tons of ordinary items when they are opting to pay for the very chance to receive an item in the first place.
Other than all that, I'm enjoying the update a lot. It's nice to be able to pick up cheap items for a buck or two, instead of having to wait for days or weeks to get them as a drop. Team Fortress 2 is as fun as always, and the mayhem is only further exaggerated by all the crazy items people have.
And just for kicks, you can check out my backpack here if you like.
Continuing my string of posts about things that I wanted to talk about during my hiatus, following is a list of stuff that happened in the world of video games that I found interesting or noteworthy. And addictive. Horribly, horribly addictive.
A couple of months ago I was browsing Reddit, and I happened upon a submission about a game in its Alpha phase that people were absolutely salivating over. I posted a comment about how I'd never buy a game in Alpha, because it's bound to be bug-ridden or possibly never even finished. I was ridiculed, but held fast to my opinion.
A few days later I was lurking around Reddit again and looking through my message log. I found my anti-Alpha post, and since I was bored, decided I'd check out the game's website and possibly give it a try, if a demo was available.
That game, of course, was Minecraft.
And nothing, not even a lengthy stint with World of Warcraft, could have possibly prepared me for the vise that slowly wrapped itself around me as I loaded up the free, browser-based client and started playing around with it.
I moved around the game world. I liked the blockiness of it. Then I clicked and accidentally removed a block. Amazed, I did this several more times, and then figured out how to make blocks. Looking at the vast landscape generated before me, I quickly realized that this was a game with almost limitless possibilities.
I spent the next hour or so building a massive tower with a door in the back that led to an underground tunnel. Building was easy with infinite blocks and no enemies around.
Curious to learn more about this game, I checked out the feature set for the single player for-pay Alpha client. The prospect of building massive structures with limited or mined resources sounded daunting, but I wanted more, so I quickly made the payment, took a quick moment to note my hypocritical nature, and then plunged into a gaming obsession that lasted for weeks.
By day, I dreamed up new and unusual ideas for structures to build, and by night, I built them. I went from putting in a good deal of Team Fortress 2 almost every night to putting in a ton of Minecraft, exclusively. I created a modest safe house, a massive network of mines, a two way mine cart system that went deep underground and underwater, a huge lighthouse, a giant stone skull carved into a mountain, and the beginnings of a second home, an underground lair with trees and deep shafts carved into the hillside above for light. I even crafted a replica of Uncle Scrooge's Money Bin. Yes, I played a ton of Minecraft.
But then I just grew tired of it. I still had my massive plans for construction, and still had plenty of inspiration from the official Minecraft forums and Minecraft's home on Reddit. But I'd log in and I just didn't want to spend hours and hours mining all that stone, moving mountains, and chopping wood. To put it in short, I ran it into the ground.
I'm still looking forward to the October update, since it includes so much cool new stuff... but I'm otherwise pretty much over it. I've got too many other games that I haven't put much time in with yet, and I need to get them out of the way to make room for the holidays.
A lot of other Game Maker-related events have happened since I last blogged, as well.
New Admins
Another big development over the last few months is that I am now an admin at the Game Maker Community forum.
Following the sudden retirement of longtime community leader KC LC, the GMC needed admins. Chronic, who was pretty much the sole active admin after KC LC's retirement, needed help. Xot and I talked with YoYo Games' Kirsty Scott about this, and within a few days we were given promotions. We've both previously served as global moderators, and earlier, simply moderators. And I'd also like to think that we both bring something fresh to the community's leadership.
I guess it all sounds a bit silly when you write it out. But I am happy to be a part of the community, and glad that YoYo Games trusts many of us enough to help guide the forum into the future.
Game Maker on PSP & iOS
Speaking of the future, a lot more information has come to light recently (and over the period of time where I didn't update the blog) on the continued development of Game Maker's runner.
The PSP runner wasn't as impressive to me, simply because I knew that even if they did work out all the kinks, it would never truly be easy to release GM-made games on the platform. There are simply too many hoops to jump through. For that reason alone, the iOS runner seems much more promising to me. I hope that I might get a chance to help push out some games for it early on, depending on how YoYo Games plans on publishing user-created content.
I still hate saying "iOS" out loud though. Eye-oh-ess. Does not roll off the tongue.
Oh, and I've also been really happy with all the information Mike Dailly (YYG) has been posting on his blog about the development of upcoming Game Maker releases. It's been a good read, and I like that someone so experienced is heading up that project.
Discovery Competition Entry is Go. Er... No.
A much smaller blip on the radar was the Discovery Competition entry me and some buddies (Matt "Lethalanvas" Griffin and David Perritte) were working on. It took off at tremendous pace, and then we all got a little too busy and we stopped working on it.
Originally, we wanted to keep it a secret, so there wouldn't be much hype about it if we didn't finish (good thing, right?), but now I figure we might as well show off what we've done.
Basically, it's a game about a ninja assassin type guy who's lost his memory and who wants to stop the world from collapsing around him. It features a robust platform engine, coupled a ton of slick animations by yours truly, which lets you run, slide, grapple ledges, swing from ceilings, and eventually a lot more. The gist of it was to create a story-driven platforming experience that gave players a lot of difference challenges at once, so they could work on levels in whatever order they liked, to an extent, depending on their skill level.
If we can all find the time, I wouldn't mind working on it again sometime next year, actually. We all put a lot of work into it, and although there isn't much to do in the game right now, there is a lot of stuff that we have done, including a written story, an awesome platforming engine, some killer graphics and animation, and some cool tunes. I don't want to see it go to waste.
I'll try to get a demo or something up eventually. Like I said, we don't have much of the actual gameplay hammered out yet, but it's fun to play around with.
Just wanted to throw down a quick update here, since it's been quite a while, and I'm sure many people out there are sitting on the edge of their seats, wondering if I'm lying in a gutter somewhere. Many sleepless nights were had, courtesy of my lack of updates, and I am sorry.
Fear not, however! I am alive and well, and have just been busy with a lot of work and, of course, a lot of play.
I don't think I'd posted the above picture on the blog yet, so there it is - a tree painting I'd done some weeks ago for a contest and auction for the Sacramento Tree Foundation. Sadly, it didn't get accepted into the limited space of the show, but I'm glad to have made it, and I have more ideas for some other paintings in this style.
This painting was done in acrylic paint and paint pen on a 15" x 30" canvas. Here's the sketch the painting is based on (ink on 5.5" x 8.5" sketch pad):
During my time away from the blog, I got to go up to my parents' house for a bit one weekend, and went out on a small vacation to Sonoma with my girlfriend too. I had a great time with both, and the time away from doing work has been refreshing.
Speaking of work, I've got more work lined up for No Love Skateboarding - along with the rat image I posted a while ago, which was used for a shirt design and then reconfigured for a skateboard design, I've done a Denver cityscape and have a few other projects for shirts and boards on deck which I'll post here eventually.
I'm also working on a disc label and CD jacket for a friend of my dad's, Johnny "Guitar" Knox, who is a local blue guitarist in the Sacramento area. That project is going a bit slower than originally planned, but it's getting done slowly.
I've also got a logo to design for my girlfriend's cousin which I have yet to start.
And finally, probably the biggest time sink of them all, I've finally completed Dragon Age: Origins, after about 60 hours of play. The game was good, long, and fun. I'm glad I finally got into it. I've already started another play-through, but I think I'm going to take a break for a while so I can finish on my aforementioned projects, as well as re-acquaint myself with some of the other games I've neglected over the months.
After the somewhat botched Gears of War 3 announcement last week, I've been thinking about running through Gears of War 2 again on Insane difficulty, so I can grab all the collectibles I missed and have some more action-oriented fun for a change. I also want to sink my teeth into some of the Mass Effect 2 DLC that came out while I was playing Dragon Age, but I'm just not in the mood for another epic gaming marathon right now.
Anyway, thanks for checking in, hope the lack of posts hasn't kept anyone away, and (again, I know!) I shall try to be better with the updates.
After being barraged by a flurry of game announcements on Steam the other day, I decided I'd try out the demo for one of the more interesting looking titles, Torchlight.
I was pleasantly surprised with the game, however - what initially looked to be merely a poor man's Diablo 3 turned out to be a fun and addictive, if somewhat simpler, dungeon crawler. After playing the demo for an hour or two, I purchased the full version, and have since descended into the mines many levels below the village of Torchlight, in search of fame, experience, and of course, fantastic piles of loot. Read on for my quick review!
Anyone familiar with Blizzard's dungeon-based role-playing franchises (Diablo, World of Warcraft) will be right at home with Torchlight. Just as in Diablo, you click to move your character around, click (ad infinitum) to attack, you can add items to numbered slots and trigger them with the numbers on your keyboard, and as you play you earn experience points that allow you to increase the base skills of your character, as well as select talents from a tiered tree of abilities. Quest-givers are indicated with floating exclamation points and question marks, items come in different levels of rarity and some can be slotted. And scrolls can be used to identify new items before you can use them, as well as create town portals for you to bounce back and forth between the village of Torchlight and the dungeons below.
At times, things can seem almost too familiar. But if you enjoyed the Diablo games and are aching for Diablo 3, that's not always a bad thing. Runic Games borrows elements from Diablo and WoW liberally, and works under the mantra "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."
So as you might expect, the game progresses pretty similarly to Diablo games; you begin the game in the town of Torchlight, you're informed of a growing menace originating from the mines below, and then you spend hours and hours going into the mine, click-fighting a bunch of bad guys, and occasionally returning to the surface to empty your bags and replenish your potions. Thankfully, Runic Games has made a few appropriate changes to this formula, which have improved the classic dungeon crawling experience immensely.
One of the biggest changes you'll notice appears right on the character creation screen: no matter which class you choose, each one comes with a pet (either a cat or a dog). This computer-controlled companion has two primary functions. First, he (or she, depending on your naming preference) will attack any enemies you encounter, helping you punch through waves of bad guys with ease. Your pet also has a separate inventory from your fighter, so you can use him to store your excess items, and even equip a few items for extra effects beyond those offered by your main characters' gear. That brings me to the second, and arguably more important function of your pet — using the extra pet inventory, you can send the little guy back up to the surface to sell your extra junk while you continue to fight through the dungeons. This prevents you from breaking up the action every few minutes to empty your bags, so you really only need to go back up to the town whenever you want to turn in a quest or buy new supplies. Along with other changes, like the ability to remove slotted gems, and upgrade gems and spells, your pet is a great example of how Runic Games has streamlined the classic dungeon crawler formula in order to make the game more accessible and more fun.
This allows you to concentrate on the finer points of dungeon running, like loot. Loot drops often, and lots of time is spent comparing new gear to old. Enchanted gear can affect a great number of attributes, and the game contains gear sets that offer bonus attributes when you equip multiple pieces of the same set. Gear names are also color-coated according to rarity (the same color coding as seen in World of Warcraft) and as mentioned above, newly found gear often needs to be identified before it can be used.
Gear is one of the few things I have to gripe about with Torchlight, however. While there is indeed a huge variety of gear, multiple gear sets, and a great number of possibilities granted by gem slots, I find it slightly annoying that I have to mouse over each one to know what it is. Games like Diablo or World of Warcraft use naming schemes to hint at the abilities gear can offer. Any piece of armor in World of Warcraft that has the suffix "of the Monkey," for example, will grant the player increased agility. Armor with the suffix "of the Whale" grants spirit. "Of the Bear" grants strength, and so on. Though the naming scheme in Torchlight shares some characteristics with this system, it's not quite as precise. The result is that sometimes, you'll find two pieces of gear that have similar (or in one case I've encountered, identical) names, and yet the stats for the item will be different. It isn't a deal-break by any means, but it's not good, either.
The only other gripe I have about gear is that there don't seem to be enough different models/textures for all the stuff you pick up. Supposedly, Torchlight only had 11 months of development time from start to finish, so I suppose this can be overlooked. It's a shame, but most games with the amount of different gear to be found as Torchlight suffer similar limitations, so I guess I can't complain too loudly.
The graphics in Torchlight seem a little cheap at first, but they get the job done, and once you get into the action and the camera pulls away from your character, you'll completely forget how simple they are. If you squint your eyes a little, it even looks a bit like all the Diablo 3 screens/videos we've seen so far, and that's definitely not a bad thing. It's not going to wow your friends like Crysis might, but the graphics are consistently good, and that's what's important. Player and enemy models are nice, and have a broad range of animations. Color is used well and spell effects are appropriately awesome. The cartoonish graphics are nice to look at, and the world is vibrant and detailed. Actually, sometimes it's so detailed that you might lose some of the dropped loot in the background of the dungeons, but luckily Runic Games included another all-too-familiar feature, which lets you toggle nameplates for all the items on the screen. I should also mention that the game runs great on my machine.
Sound and music are nothing to write home about, but get the job done as well. The music is dungeon-ish and serves its purpose; it fills in the gaps between sword slashes and enemy grunts. And speaking of sword slashes and grunts, those effects are decent as well. There is even a little bit of voice acting sprinkled here and there, between levels where the story progresses, as well as when you talk to merchants in the town.
This is yet another area of Torchlight that crosses dangerously over into Blizzard's realm. Some of the music, like the town theme and the library theme, actually sounds like they were lifted straight from Diablo. And the first time you leave the blacksmith behind, and he yells "watch yer back" in his Scottish accent, you'll wonder if Runic Games didn't cast the same guy who did all the dwarven male for World of Warcraft. All of this makes the game seem, again, familiar to anyone who has played these other games, but I still wish Runic had gone the extra mile and not been quite so blatant in lifting ideas from Blizzard.
I've not beaten Torchlight yet, but I've spent many hours with it so far, and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. It's not entirely original, but everything it's borrowed from other games adds to the experience so well, it's really hard to complain about it too loudly. At only $20, with three-character classes to play, and a near infinite number of levels to play through, thanks to the random level generator and upcoming level editor, Torchlight it a great value. I'm not sure if the game will last me until Diablo 3's eventual release, but it should be good for at least partially filling the gap we've been in since Diablo 2. The Torchlight MMO that's in development might also be good for filling the void, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
For now, go try the Torchlight demo. If you like these types of games, or if you're a loot whore in training, you'll probably like it a lot.
