Flood the Chamber

When I was a kid, I would draw huge labyrinths full of different traps, monsters and strange devices. Now that I think of it, it was a childish training to both graphical and game design. I didn't have a computer then, something that from my nowadays perspective might have made me a better person. Of course, I have grown, gradually started drawing more normal things, such as big robots and naked ladies, got meself a computer and eventually stopped both dabbling in art and being creative.

This screenshot is at the same time the map of the whole game,
not that it will help you in the slightest.

Some of us seem not to have grown from this particular kind of entertainment, though, is what I thought when I first saw Flood the Chamber. The premise of the game is simple: get through the labirynth, avoiding all unpleasant sharp and/or heavy (sometimes both, actually - see that gigantic sword on the right?) surprises waiting for an unfortunate explorer. Game creator clearly hates his small pixelated protagonist, because other than all sorts of sadistic traps on the way, the labyrinth is getting slowly flooded.

Flood the Chamber is a lovely retro platforming game with appropriately hardcore difficulty level. I gave up after couple of minutes, but fans of the genre will surely appreciate it for the masochistic entertainment it brings them. Play the game here, if only to see how child drawing labyrinths can grow into an adult drawing labyrinths.

[ via IndieGames ]

Truckers delight [NSFW]

I have to admit I had some serious doubts about posting this little movie that I had found some time ago. Its author claims that it is "très funny, très dirty, très sexy" and I am inclined to agree, the problem being the middle part - it is very obscene indeed and however libertine I might be in my private life, I try to keep Barts News at some level of decency. Nevertheless, my buddy Marceli advised me to go for it and tackle the subject from the angle of 8 bit pornography, the idea I have embraced after some pondering.

One of few relatively tasteful screencaps from the video in question

Therefore, before the main dish you will be served some interesting entrées on early digital erotica. Historically, one of the very first 8bit porn games were Custer's Revenge and X-Man on Atari 2600. Its Nintendo counterpart, NES, was more puritan in regards to what would appear on the platform, yet a few pixelated breasts made it into NES games as well. In general, even in the very early years of computer and console gaming there was quite a slew of erotic titles.

While this screenshot does not come from the game I have ever played,
it goes nicely with the previous one

I missed on almost all of these offerings: my first vaguely erotic game was Leisure Suit Larry 1, the very first version that I have played together with a cute redhead girl (and I was, what, thirteen then?). The second one was Knights of Xentar years later - it featured quite a few naked manga girls and a semi-decent story. Both titles actually had pretty enjoyable game component and a good dose of appropriately kinky humour. Ah, sorry, there were two more sexy games that I have just recalled: Interactive Girls: Vida and Interactive Girls: Teresa, both quite popular in my primary school computer lab (386SX with color monitor, yay). All of these titles were PC DOS games - in my Spectrum years I didn't feel the need to watch pixelated monochrome women.

EGA erotica at its best

Back on topic, though - the animation in question that started this topic is Truckers Delight by Jérémie Perin to the music by Lionel Flairs. The authors describe it as "Spielberg's Duel + Russ Meyer's Faster Pussycat Kill Kill! and Marc Dorcel's wildest fantasies. All warped into an 8-bit Sega era style graphic." and I am inclined to agree, especially on that Marc Dorcel part.

Hence, be warned that it is totally not safe for work (I repeat it here in case you missed huge NSFW in the title). The video contains very graphic depiction of 8bit porn, lots of nudity, multiple cunnilingus (at once!), scat, gigantic erection, ejaculation and a few other things that won't be listing here in fear of some unwanted visitors from Google that come searching for these very keywords. As it follows, the clip is not suitable for minors either. And with all the warnings out of the way, the video itself:

Ahem. Now I will share a little dirty secret with you: I actually find it enjoyable. At first, I was somewhat appalled by some of the very graphic depictions contained in the video, but excellent music and kinky sense of humour tipped the scales in favour of the clip, which I have already watched more than a couple of times. Also, there is moral stemming from this video: the persistent will get the girl. Eventually.

If you decide you like it as well, here is the official animation website containing higher resolution video and some merchandise (note to self: holy cow, one can buy official T-shirt and CD bundle!). If not, my apologies for wasting three minutes nineteen seconds of your life.

Some people juggle geese

I have found this little flash gem through RockPaperShotgun. The premise of Endless Migration is simple: you are a goose, the leader of the flock, whose job is to gather scattered geese and lead them for as long as you can, avoiding planes, helicopters zeppelins and UFOs. Add some simple graphics and couple of sounds and you get your average flash time-killer for a couple of minutes when you are tragically bored in the office.

Geese nightmare

But there's more to Endless Migration - add a little background story, achievements and upgrade system and suddenly what you get is your new flash addiction that will sap your time like a much bigger game would. The core gameplay gets much more appreciated when it's cleverly spiced up with smart achievements (Bourgeoisie and Consolation Prize cracked me up) and upgrades that influence the game style (some manipulation is necessary to be able to complete some more twisted goals, such as being a snob and having one's flock composed entirely of swans).

Overall, a barrel of fun, which I have explored down to the bottom and heartily recommend to anyone who is not overburdened with work at this very moment.

[ via RockPaperShotgun ]

Aural Planet - free album for download

Just a short information for all those who like free music: Lightflow, the first ambient album of a group called Aural Planet, can be downloaded for free and is totally worth it. The cover is shown below and the download link is available here.


I know it is not exactly news, but this is some really nice ambient music that for me places itself somewhere between early Jean Michel Jarre and soundtracks of sci-fi Silmarils games. Additionally, it is quite good as background music for coding, since it's non-invasive and gentle. Enjoy!

EDIT: As Alex rightly noted, I have forgotten to mention that the folks behind it are Polish and known both in the Amiga demoscene and in the gaming world as well. See, I have been listening to this album for so long, I assumed everyone knew it and it slipped my mind. Shame on me!

.kkrieger

Today I have decided to dig out a really old thing, namely .kkrieger (that's right, with a dot). If, by any chance, you have missed it and are blissfully unaware of what it is, then here's a quick wrap-up: 3D FPS game in under 100kb of code.

This image itself is one third of .kkrieger's size (~30kb).

The trick to it is that all game data is procedurally generated on the fly, hence a very small size of the game executable, yet long start time and large memory footprint - .kkrieger essentially creates its own assets (textures, music, level geometry) when fired up. Read more about it in this Wikipedia article.

.kkrieger is not that great as a game, yet very impressive as a technical feat. Download it, give it a try, shoot a few aliens, then delete it - but after that you will have a proof of what procedural generation can achieve game-wise. Now, if only more programmers would harness the power of Playstation 3 Cell processors...

Left 4 Dead parody

I planned a whole post on Left 4 Dead, but I haven't gotten to writing it in early 2009 and some time later I considered that all that there was to write on the subject had already been written. This may or may not be true, I recently had a relapse of Left 4 Dead (two weeks spent playing) and I think that for me it is the best game of 2008, hence I might get to post a word or two on it here. What I planned to add to the post, however, was this:

The reason I have decided to publish the above animation right now and without the aforementioned note is trivial - the sequel to the movie appeared in the wake of the game sequel. Oddly enough, while Left 4 Dead 2 seems to have improved on its predecessor in many ways, according to quasi-unanimous voice of game reviewers, the second animation is definitely less funny, which is the reason why I only link to it, instead of embedding.

As for Left 4 Dead 2 itself, I will wait for it to go down with its price a bit - 50EUR ( about 70USD) is a bit too expensive for a game in my book.

Polish Cyberpunk

Not sure if I have ever mentioned it on it on this blog (quick googling shows that indeed I had), but Robert Adler is among my two favourite Polish comic artists, the other one being Michał Śledziński aka MrHerring. Together with Tobiasz Piątkowski, Adler was co-author and artist behind two extremely funny and witty - not to mention well drawn - cyberpunk graphic novels, Breakoff and Overload (in the links you have sample pages, should you be curious how it looks inside):


These two graphic novels were supposed to be a beginning of a series called Status7, unfortunately there were only two of them published and the series got cancelled. As MrHerring will explain to you, should you ask him, the life of a comics creator in Poland is not a piece of cake and the market is difficult to make living of. Hence, Adler moved to work for some marketing agency as a storyboard maker (as far as I know), something that most comic authors in Poland do at some point - which usually comes when they are hungry and need to pay rent for last three months.

The only comic-related activity that Adler would dabble in was occasional images on his blog and a number short strips on Boli Blog - be warned though, it is not safe for work, as the author likes to draw naked ladies and sexual intercourses a lot, not that I complain, mind you. While most comics are in Polish, there are some that don't require any reading skills because there is no text at all in them, some that are easy to understand without explicit Polish knowledge just by a little deduction (the strip with airport guards holding someone at gunpoint and shouting into their walkie-talkie "f**k, do repeat, 'cause you're breakin' up: tourists or terrorists?") and as for some, well, I guess you will have to live without knowing why they are funny.

The good news that I have learnt just today is that Robert Adler will come back with nothing less than a comic book to be published in United States! What's more, this is going to be a cyberpunk science-fiction story taking place in Blade Runner universe. Supposedly, this started when Bryce Carlson of Boom Studios noticed Adler's work on his blog. According to this webpage, the comic in question will be titled "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep: Dust to Dust" and Robert Adler is credited as the artist.


What can I say, this is truly great news! I always hoped that the duo (Adler and Piątkowski) would be noticed by the international comic world, be it in France or United States market, because they deserved it. So far Adler got scooped, hopefully others will follow. My sincere congratulations, Robert!

Battlefield Heroes stories, continued

Just recently I wrote an angry rant on Battlefield Heroes, which I am fully aware ended on a note stating that I won't be writing about it again, but I think what I have for you today is interesting enough to justify breaking my promise.

Firstly, as a bonus to the previous post, there are three small things on the subject for your amusement:

• after reading the sentence about player avatars "who look like a hybrid between Arkham Asylum patients and more extreme Gay Pride Parade participants", one of my buddies, RusH, pointed me out to his post on Battlefield Heroes where he described it as "playing with toy brass soldiers, except they are straight from gay wet dream about Village People". Great minds think alike, I guess, and it goes to show that some other people also dislike this trend of creating weird-looking soldiers. As the forum where RusH's post can be found requires registration, here is a screenshot of his mini-review:

• secondly, it seems that I was not the only one unhappy about recent game imbalance and VP/BF changes. Judging by the looks of players reactions in official forum threads such as this one, the rage is rather widespread.

• thirdly, any internet rage eruption would not be complete without obligatory Hitler movie - this one is not that funny, yet seems strangely in place, what with Nationals reminding Nazis somewhat...

Right, but the above points are but an appetizer, a hors d'oeuvre, if you will, to tease your gaming tastebuds.

The real juicy bit is the developer response to the aforementioned note, namely from HelloAndy (I tried to find his profile or an interview somewhere, but my Google-Fu has failed me). Since many folks that visit Barts News don't actually check comments, I am reposting our little dialogue from below the previous note for everyone to have a look at. I think it is very interesting to see what developers have to say about the recent changes and other issues. So here goes the first comment:

Thanks for your blog post and comments. Player input are always welcome! I can't reply to everything, but we are working with Even Balance (Punkbuster creators) to prevent cheating. It's not easy -- you'll see most games like Heroes have equally or usually worse problems. An soon coming change will hopefully let PB be more aggressive.
Python is one of many techniques we use, where C is what the game itself is written in.
VP prices are definitely not set in stone, and there are some areas we're looking into right now.
(Oh, and commandos seems to get an interesting change in one of their abilities soon that is gonna be a very cool little buff to the gameplay.)

HelloAndy, developer

To which I replied as follows:

Hi Andy,

Many thanks for dropping by and leaving your comment. I am actually quite surprised, because the tone of your response is much kinder than my angry rant above. I do appreciate that and it makes me feel somewhat guilty.

You see, the reason I got annoyed was that I had high expectations from the very first Battlefield Heroes trailer. You might also notice that in my first post on BFH I was actually really pleased with the game. It is the recent developments that have gotten on my nerves.

I am under the impression that the situation right now is not exactly the fault of developers, more marketing division (VP/BF balance, nasty commercials). Except perhaps the issue with cheaters.

The comment on the forum of one of hack creators was "as we know, PunkBuster is shit and won't be a problem". I do not know how to deal with dll injections, but in Enemy Territory (which was my previous addiction) I didn't see anywhere near the number of cheaters that Battlefield Heroes. Occasionally there would be one, but it was a rarity. In BFH, it is very common and it hurts gameplay a lot.

Comment about Python and C is interesting, my bad for not researching properly. The problem with game stuttering and typing is nevertheless an annoying one, too. That is another thing that has been mentioned in bug reports and on the forums and did not get fixed. This is also something for the devs to do, I reckon.

Once again, many thanks for taking a moment to drop by and answer some of the accusations. I'll try to return the favour by rephrasing some of the post above.

Best regards,

Barts
(as a matter of fact, also a developer)

I actually thought that this would be the end of our little conversation (as it was, for example, the case with Aviary's Avi Muchnick who did not bother to post anything more after his first comment), but was pleasantly surprised with another reply on the part of HelloAndy:

Hi again! I like angry ranting as long as it's constructive feedback, so all is well. It helps us to understand the players better too. :)

The VP/BF balance changes are a tough one. It wasn't working very well for the game before (basically unlimited access to band aids, clothes and so on) so we needed to change this. It's more balanced now, but instead of giving out way too many VP, we perhaps give out a bit too few now. If we can get it to a level where you have to make some tough choices with VP, and easily get rid of those with very few BF, then I think it would be good enough for everyone.

I don't have much experience with ET, but they use Punkbuster as well I believe? A guick google get me access to many different cheats. Would be interesting to know why there was (or you experienced) less cheating in ET. Fewer players? Vote-kicks?

Nvidia drivers of certain versions have been known to cause stuttering, see links from http://www.battlefieldheroes.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=79210&pid=796106#pid796106
Not sure if this is your case, I have yet not seen this problem with my own eyes, only read about it in bug forums.

Have a merry christmas, and I hope to see you around in another game (or if you decide to come back in Heroes later) in the future!

HelloAndy

And then my turn:

Welcome back, Andy!

Glad you spared a moment to reply. Much appreciated.

I understand that VP/BF balance is a tough cookie, because you would like to calibrate it in a way that will both make it feasible for occasional free players to get by and lure more regular ones into shelling a couple bucks for the gear, thus allowing you to actually make some reasonable money on it. This is fine and understandable.

The way it was executed, however, was clumsy to say the least. I admit that the initial VP/BF ratio was rather liberal from the point of view of free players, but with the recent changes you have put it upside down and went from "easy on the player" to "extremely strict with potential unfair advantage for paying players". VP prices have increased by a factor of seven - that's quite a radical move.

Also, the fact that paying player not only look better and have more useful gizmos, but get stronger weapons, including the new Super/Uber calibers (which, frankly, are needlessly overpowered and harm the gameplay balance), has not surprisingly caused an outrage, especially since it was promised in the beginning that real life money would not buy unfair advantage.

What I am trying to squeeze out here is that you really need to reconsider this and restore the balance to the Force.

As for ET, it has been significantly less than three million players in 2006 when I was playing it a lot, but still, the percentage of cheaters was definitely lower. Occasional cheating bastard versus swarms of them in BFH (recently got massacred by a clan of Gunners, all of them using cheats - quite discouraging, actually). And yes, kick voting mechanism was in place, it alleviated issue somewhat, too.

Concerning the stuttering, I might try to record it and post it, but after the Christmas break.

Thanks again for your replies, I am much obliged. Merry Christmas to you as well!

Barts

As much as it's just a bit of conversational ping-pong on the subject of Battlefield Heroes, it definitely makes me feel much better about the game. Consider my ego stroked or something, but kind and informational response from one of the developers is a sign of taking responsibility for their game and paying attention to the voice of gamers, even though this voice seems to be cussing a little. It shows that they care about the reception of their child and they stand for it. It gives me hope that maybe Battlefield Heroes will not be entirely ruined in 2010 and I might get back to playing it later this year.