(I fell in love with) the Majesty of Colors

Have you ever dreamt that you were a gargantuan creature dwelling deep in the cold darkness of the ocean's bottom, reaching to the light above with your myriad of tentacles, observing these little warm creatures of flesh, maybe catching one of them and drawing down to the murky depths below?...

What? No, me neither, just asking.

Yet apparently some of us have this kind of dreams and take this matter one step further, creating a game that allows player to control such a creature. That's what "(I fell in love with) the Majesty of Colors" is all about - the process of discovery and interaction through three eyes of tentacled sea monster, all in delightfully retro graphics.

Note: I like retro visuals, but I am not too keen on pixel art abuse - just because it's easier to make blocky pixelated sprites doesn't mean the game is going to look good. Sometimes, however, pixel art really does become art (in real word, too, on rare occasions) and as a result right now I can't imagine "Majesty of Colors" in any other graphical form.


I don't want to spoil the pleasure of finding out how the game works, so I will not elaborate further on the gameplay itself. Remember, it's up to you to discover how to play it and what to do, and the outcome will vary depending on that.

This touches the subject I want to tackle in more detail here on Barts News one day, as well as exploit myself: games are an excellent medium to tell a story that has visual appeal, builds ambience in a cinematic sense and has one advantage over movies and TV - player interaction and multiple variants. Traditional storytelling cannot give you what games can - influence over story itself, pushing heroes to act more to our liking, ultimately achieving different endings in functioon of player's choices.

"(I fell in love with) the Majesty of Colors" is but a short little game, but it does exactly that - presents different story arch and ending based on player's decision. As simple and limited as it is gameplay-wise and story-wise, it has an original concept, innovative idea of playing, multiple endings and one or two brilliant moments, my favourite one being the opening, when a little baloon makes the creature see colors.

Go ahead and play it, the experience will be worth it. And if you are an aspiring game creator, read wonderfully detailed post mortem on GameSetWatch to see how the author made it happen.

Free As A Beer versus Budveizer Freemium

(I know that the title of this note is a terrible attempt at a joke, but I can't forget this one beer commercial with the name read in the funny voice...)

This note is a heads up on what's coming next, both in the sense of incoming posts on Barts News and on a larger scale in the gaming world. Two interesting free online games have popped up - Quake Live and Battlefield Heroes, each a bit different in the approach that they take, but also similar in one general aspect.

As I have mentioned in my note on rapidly changing times, we are seeing a lot of new things happening nowadays. Up until recently, for me and probably many other gamers online gaming meant two things:
- fully fledged commercial games, requiring moderate to heavy horsepower of your system, that player pays for (ahem, at least theoretically) and is playing them at home;
- casual flash titles, requiring just a browser and little to none requirements, that player does not pay and usually plays at work. Okay, so there are some people who play these for fun at home, still, quite a lot of bored office workers do as well.

Simplistic as this division may be, it worked - if you think I'm raving, tell me through comments. With the arrival of Quake Live and Battlefield Heroes, however, a new model is emerging on our eyes - 3D online games that are free to play, in which player joins and plays via browser (not entirely true in case of BH, but close enough). But how are their creators earn money, after all the infrastructure costs quite a bit? The revenue comes from either players paying for extra features (freemium) or from other companies buying commercial space within the game world (in-game advertising), or perhaps both. With that in mind, let's have a look at two titles in question.



Battlefield Heroes is cartoon-themed quasi-WWII third-person-perspective shooter that applies the first business model - freemium. Anyone can play the game for free, but for extra items such as fancy clothes for your characters player will need to pay up. When I started writing this note two days ago, I was bashing EA for being greedy, because I thought ALL extra things were to be bought, including gestures, stronger weapons and items. I even made the obligatory Penny Arcade reference.

Turns out, I just didn't get the system at first - there's points that come from, well, player's money, but there's also other kind of points (called Victory Points, abbreviated to VP) that come from playing game a lot, scoring objectives and undertaking special missions. So while you may not be able to buy that fancy pirate shirt without investing some real-world money, there's no fear that your battlefield veteran will look the same as that rich little bastard who paid instead of playing. Weapons can only be upgraded by spending VPs, so the system seems rather fair.

Observations:

• It is really fun to play so far. It is a little rough around the edges, but so far playing it has been highly enjoyable.
• Vehicles are fun to ride, but this part seems somewhat unbalanced - planes are bloody useless, tank can't trip a road sign and explodes way too easily. But driving a car packed with your team mates is like a high-school road trip, with that "yooohooo!" feeling and added shooting.
• It runs smoothly on my gaming rig that is rather mediocre (2GHz proc, 2Gb RAM, NVidia 9600GT, Windows XP). It might be more heavy on hardware requirements than Quake Live though, what with all the fancy cel shading effects.
• It is a bit simplistic gameplay-wise - in Enemy Territory there were more classes, more objectives, more mission types. So far all I have seen in Battlefield heroes are three classes and gameplay based on controlling a number of control points.
• ...but there's plenty of so-called Missions to do (adding some extra objectives in order to score more points), skills system, different weapons and other things to keep player busy.

I definitely will write a full note just on Battlefield Heroes in near future, but so far it's very good and I like it. Also, on a related topic, I encourage you to read more on freemium here and here.



Quake Live applies different business model - playing the game will be free in all aspects, or so I understand from the information available, but there will be billboards in game which will act as virtual advertising space (in-game ads). The focus is not on customization and milking players for it, but rather on advanced matchmaking and statistics system.

As for the game itself it is pretty much good, old Quake III with slightly graphical overhaul - quick, fast-paced, visceral shooting. I have always been more on the Unreal Tournament team, but Q3 is still worshipped by many and remember with nostalgy by others. Last time I have seen it in action was some two weeks ago in my company - some chaps have been playing it (after working hours, of course). So while it is nothing particularly new or fresh, it uses a formula that is considered as a benchmark for online gaming in conjunction with web-2.0-like community and statistics.

Observations:

• none so far, since for three days I haven't gotten to play as much as the training level!

Hence, a word of complain - if you venture to set up any online venture, be sure to at least try to assess the load and infrastructure needed to handle it. I know it is not easy, but come on, you should be able to guesstimate order of magnitude of the the level of interest and provide some scalability.

I am working on a daily basis with systems that are processing more requests per second than world-wide credit card systems (I believe I have completely exposed my secret identity, because there are not that many in the world) and for heaven's sake, we do deal with this kind of issues. There are numerous load-balancing systems out there, hosting companies that will provide flexible amount of space and bandwidth based on the need, so in that context this emo sounds slightly pitiful.

Okay, now that I have vented my frustration, let's give Quake Live team benefit of doubt. They are aiming for something new, and new things are always difficult to pull off in the beginning. The weekend lies in front of us, I do hope all the kinks will be ironed and I will be able to write glowing review of the game and associated services.

Genetically Modified Musician

Some of the sweetest of my childhood memories are the ones related to gaming - wrapped in a comfortable cocoon of synthesized sounds, covered in delicate shinining of monochrome monitors, I was threading the virgin grounds of 8 bits entertainment, which then smoothly became 16 bits. But even though game music evolved to the point where it can be released as a regular album and no one will notice, I still have a soft spot for retro chiptunes, as you can infer from some of my posts. So in this note I will recommend a bunch of delightfully retro music, which, additionally, is free of charge and can be downloaded at your leisure - another thing that is a definite plus in my book.

The first retro music project that caught my attention was Ugress. I can precisely pinpoint the moment when I first heard about it - it happened on Wojciech Orliński's blog, in comments section to be precise, Anno Domini 2007. I downloaded Makina Fifth, because its description ("Commodore 64 discotronics with Therese Vadem") caught my eye. Five minutes later I was already in love and furiously downloading all other free tracks. Some of these songs were a bit too weird for my taste, but some have gained unpassing place on my MP3 player - and that is a lot.


Some time has passed and through random googling and link surfing I have come across Shadow of the Beat, quirky musical project with the name related to a certain Amiga title. I barely noticed that the project has the same man behind it as Ugress - I tend to forget things I don't find useful very quickly, so I just didn't care (the definitions of "useful" that my mind applies are somewhat peculiar, though, which becomes obvious when you talk with me and I give you accurate description of some 80's game third level).

Some time later Last.FM, Pandora or some other music service suggested to me PixxelTyger, which I instantly liked. Yes, it bore some resemblance to Ugress, and no, I didn't give a damn. Lots of things sound like other things, if you excuse the generalisation. I downloaded the track, of course, but didn't bother to check the project website until recently, which resulted in not reading more about who made it.

In December 2008 I got one click too far and discovered Ninja 9000, yet another retro project composed of two releases, each of them sounding like a soundtrack from non-existent 16bit games. Commander Moira is yet another track that I am listening to a bit too often, but it's so incredibly well executed that even my girlfriend likes it, despite not being a fan of 80's electronica.


All these things came together like a fractal puzzle, the pieces of which were spread across my brain (and incidentally time as well), after having read this post by Weirdnik. The post is in Polish only, sorry, I tried Google Translate, but it massacred the text beyond any recognition - anyway, the bottom line is that Weirdnik wrote about his own soft spot for chiptunes and all the projects listed above (plus one that I have missed so far). This actually caused some bits of my mind to finally fuse together and I realised that for good part of last two years I have been listening to music made by one man without even being aware of it...

The mastermind behind all this music is the talented individual, known as Gisle Martens Mayer (hence the title of this post). He owns his own label, Uncanny Planet - a good place to start browsing his numerous projects. The funny thing is that since the beginnning of 2009 I have been toying with the idea of writing a post about cool music available for free on the internet - it turned out that roughly 70% of the list would be GMM's different projects...

My top three GMM's tracks so far are Kosmonaut (thanks to Weirdnik I realised it has its own communist webpage), perhaps somewhat influenced by this retro game, the other two being Diurnal Entropy and Commander Moira. I have ideas for animated music videos to all of them and will realize them if I only I manage to get two months of free time and enough money to pay my mortgage rates in the meantime. Ah, it's good to dream.

So there you have it - a solid portion of free, retro-stylized, game-like music. You can buy GMM's music through here and if only you are not total douchebag cheapskate, you will throw a coin or two to this great guy who is not afraid to share his creations for free.

Half-Life The Movie

...unfortunately not a full movie yet, but a full-blown, professionally made episode of science-fiction action set in City 17. Watch it for free on Youtube:

If you follow any major gaming news blog, you must surely have come across this, but I am posting it here because I want to take this opportunity to announce that I find it absolutely brilliant. Atmosphere, visual effects, ambiance - it's all there. Of course, the people behind it are professionals, but I have seen professionals do much worse than that. If you want to know more about behind the scenes, read this interview that provides some background info.

[via Kotaku]

On a related subject, Black Mesa mod for which I have been waiting for far too long now will probably be released this year - read more about it here (includes some cool screenshots, too).

Another Geometry Wars PSP clone found!

The title says it all - just when I have completed the post on Geometry Wars clones, I have stumbled upon another one. It would have fit perfectly in the previous note on the subject, but I have decided not to edit it too much, adding a new note instead.

To put it short, Polygun Wars (I wonder if the pun is intended) might not be excellent, but it's very good. The gameplay is well done and graphically it is almost spot on, featuring even cool animated background that gets distorted as bullets fly over it, just like in the original. Please give it a try, just be sure to download the most recent version, because what I tried at first was looking like this:


while the last revision looks (and plays) much better:


Also, I have found that my idea of comparing Geometry Wars clones for PSP was not that original, as Jackal Bytes has actually done something similar long time ago.

I guess this sometimes happens.

Geometry Wars clones for PSP

I believe that everyone who calls themselves a gamer knows what Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved is. If not, hand off you gamer licence and go educate yourself. While there exists a PC port available on Steam, it arrived long time after the original hit Xbox360. In the meantime a bunch of clones were created for PC to make PC users' life a bit less miserable. The best one was undoubtedly Grid Wars. Even though the author got amicably threatened with a lawsuit and took it down from his page, the game can still be downloaded from here or from here (includes a really big and detailed review). End of the story.

But what about PSP? Do we have any Geometry Wars ports available? A-ha! Let us leave calm PC waters and venture into uncharted PSP homebrew territory.

There actually exist three clones of Geometry Wars that exist for the PSP. None of them does actually reach the level of the original or even Grid Wars, but they provide some entertainment, are free and allow us to see how different people implemented the same gaming idea each in their own way.

Geometry Wars Portable

The first clone is the on that in my opinion gets the closest to the original. It does not even try to hide which game it is ripping off - titled Geometry Wars Portable, it is precisely what the name suggests, an attempt to make a portable version of our favourite geometrical shooter. Gameplay is far less polished than the game it is mimicking and graphics are suffering from lack of anti-aliasing, but GWP is fun enough to spend some time furiously shooting and it resembles Geometry Wars the most. Download it here.

Trigonometry Wars

The second clone does not look to spectacular, but is a relatively faithful rendition. Oddly enough, despite being more similar to the original gameplay-wise, its dark and less flashy visuals make it slightly less fun to play - an important lesson to all game developers out there. While graphics might not be all that counts, it also contributes to the fun factor. Download the game here.

Vector Infector

The third clone is barely related to the original and gives you idea what could have happened if the creators of Geometry Wars were on acid. Sprites are the same and there is shooting involved, but it has more to do with one of the levels of Everyday Shooter than Geometry Wars itself. Also, this game is using copyrighted music (Andy Hunter "Wonders of You") - shame on you, game author. It's one thing to copy an idea, but it's another thing to steal music. You can download the game here if you really must.


On the closing note, it is worth a mention that the original remains head and shoulders above its impostors. There is more to the game than just geometrical retro graphics, flashy special effects and simple shooting rules. The case study of Geometry Wars versus its lookalikes clearly goes to show that balancing game mechanics is not an easy task and out of the crowd of its clones, only one of them gets relatively close (Grid Wars). It still remains noticeably different despite a good deal of work put into mimicking the gameplay and allowing for further customisation.

So don't be fooled into thinking that you can have the cookie for free - the games I have listed here will give you a portable substitute to amuse you for a quarter or two and the PC clone will give you close enough experience, but if you really want to feel the retro charm of Geometry Wars, you will have to cough up and buy it - with the price tag of 3.99USD you have no excuse not to.

EDIT: I have just found yet another Geometry Wars clone for PSP - read more about it here.

256 Posts

Just a quick heads up - Barts News has just crossed the magical boundary of 256 posts. Celebrating 100 posts is for noobs, in here we think in Hex. Now, if you just started counting those posts, don't be surprised if you see less of them - some are still in production, but the overall post counter (including draft ones) has just risen over the 8bit threshold.

What has happened during these two and a half years it took me to produce these posts?

I have been to Tokyo Game Show as official representative of CD-Action magazine, met Jessica Chobot and grabbed a beer with Kotaku's two Brians. Maciej Miąsik noticed my post on his old XLand games and port of Heartlight PC to PSP, so did Avi Munchuk from Aviary (even though he did not reply to my comment). I got linked to from some more popular blogs and websites.

How did it all begin?

I originally started Barts News as a therapeutic kind of thing: I was very ill at the time and could not do anything more active. It turned out to work just fine and I am happy to announce that I feel fine enough to train martial arts, dance salsa, work, study Japanese and lead a normal life on my own. Running blog turned out to be so much fun I actually opened another one, this time on old books.

How many visits do you usually get?

On the best day I've had about 3,500 visits and on average day pageloads vary between one and two hundreds. It's not that much, seeing how the site has been around for more than two years now, but it's not too bad either. At least someone is reading the damn thing.

What do people search on your blog?

Most popular post has been the one on little programs to help you with Japanese and most popular searches usually are related to PSP, especially PDF on PSP and Bookr. Strangely enough, the posts I am most proud of somehow don't get that much appreciation, except maybe the one on Wipeout Pure and in-game ads. Also, short referral fun for you to see some of the weird searches that apparently lead to my site:

how to sacrifice Ubuntu - with obsidian dagger, of course!
nazi girls - not here, my friend... oh, wait
how are Greek and Japanese goddesses similar? - they have breasts
spank Chobot - some do realize this fantasy in the real world, not me though
gameboy games for girls in firefox - my imagination just switched off
how to be strong enough to finish "dungeon siege" - I suggest doing push-ups and taking cold showers, if these don't help, then face it: perhaps you are just too weak to finish Dungeon Siege

Any final thoughts?

There is a little box on the right that says Follow This Blog Barts' Minions - I would be very grateful if you clicked it, it will boost my ego and show the world that you are following this blog. Thanks!

We're living in exponential times

Recently I stumbled upon this video and was stunned:

Or awoken, I don't know. Indeed, shift happens right now.

My mother said it's terrifying. I don't agree. I believe that finally technological advances have gained momentum to change the world as our parents know it and what's more, to do it rapidly, over the course of years instead of centuries or decades.

I consider myself a child of the beginning of this digital era, blessed with the privilege of riding on the first wave of technological changes. I was a witness to the process of nowadays computers hatching from crude 8-bit machines, I was there when first mobile phones size of a brick became fashionable, I saw them shrink in size and grow in numbers, I observed the rise of internet, through dial-up connections at first (ah, the BBS era), fixed lines later and recently wireless. I have been following all these changes misty-eyed, because for me they were sci-fi dream descending into my own grey reality of post-communist block country, transforming that reality to more and more colourful and connected to the outer world, the part of which we fully are now as a member of European Union. I wrote more about that times on Slashdot three years ago.

The magazine with tiger on the cover is the one that begun my digital journey

On the other hand, I am part of the last generation raised in the world without internet access everywhere, where children still knew how to have fun without digital crutches. When kids would try to be on time, instead of lazily sending text message "I will be late" and going back to their computer game - among other things, because being trustworthy meant something. The imagination that we had developed while playing our games without computers or other devices is something that I fear might be gone soon... or not, perhaps I'm just growing old and senile.

I still remember the reaction of my Father, when as 13-year old kid I told him I wanted to make computer games - he was unhappy and asked me if I wouldn't consider studying in order to find a real job. I know he meant well, but video games are now a multi-billion dollar entertainment sector, something he could not envisage back then. Similarly, when in 2007 I told my parents I was blogging about games, it took my Father couple of months to finally grasp that blogging might not mean just writing about my private affairs. When he finally checked Barts News, he then said "Hey, this actually looks neat and professional." and added "I didn't know there even was such thing like blogging about games..."

I sometimes am surprised that my parents don't follow the technology rush. I believe that this results not so much from the amount of changes in their life span, but more of the approach. People that are curious and interested in the world in general and new things in particular seem to be on much better terms with changing realities and emerging technologies than thos who adapt conservative approach. Curiously, this is also the case of my Grandfather.

When my Grandfather was a nine year old child, he was asked to go and accompany guests from the train station which was one day from their house. He took horses, carriage and drove all the way to the station, picked up the guests and then came back. During his life, he has seen the change from XIX century technology and mentality to total cyberpunk of XXI century (also, two wars, three prison camps, independence of Poland, fall of communism and atomic bomb - not bad for just one life) and no wonder some things are hard for him to follow.

Unfortunately, I have not managed to teach him how to use computer and internet, something that I bitterly regret now, because it would make his last days much more interesting now that all his friends are dead and times are almost alien for him in how futuristic it has all become. Main reasons was his Parkinson disease and vision problems, but not the lack of understanding or interest. When I was showing my Grandparents computer games on laptop, he was genuinely interested. He actually liked Morrowind, a game that he called a great adventure and compared to reading a good book (sic!).

Image courtesy of Penny Arcade

Even though due to his physical limitations I did not succeed in bringing my Grandfather to PC community, I have explained to him how things work and shown XXI Century to him. And oddly enough he seemed to mentally adapt to it much more smoothly than my Father. Hence my conclusion, that this is not so much related to age, but to approach and mental flexibility.

Coming back to the animation that started my torrent of thoughts above, I feel that I have been given a unique chance not only to live between two distinct eras, not only to witness the rise of technologies that have changed the face of the world as we know it, but most importantly to live in rapidly changing and evolving new reality, where our creativity, ideas and open mind are our primary assets further boosted by tools, software and hardware, where connection with other people from all around the globe is easier than ever, where the technology gap between countries is constantly diminishing thanks to decreasing cost of computers.

Supposedly, there is an ancient Chinese curse: "may you live in interesting times." It was meant as a curse, but interesting times can also be a blessing and I believe that this is the case, because as a sentient species we now have more possibilities at hand than ever before.