Miscellaneous Links

I've been collecting links for a while now, and they're piling up.  I'm going to run through a few of them, so that you, dear reader, may benefit from the delights they contain.

Featured Game: Jumpman

http://runhello.com/
This is a site of a creative fellow with lots of projects.  The most immediately interesting being jumpman (a free game for download, see the video above).  It is my intention to go back and check out his other projects.  

Game-creator resources:
http://www.pixelprospector.com/the-big-list-of-game-making-tools/
The big list of game making tools.  self explanatory.  One of the best things this page has is links to examples of games made with each featured game making tool.  Some I've played or heard of before, and others look cool.


http://youcanmakevideogames.com/
Another self-explanatory link along the same theme.


http://www.diygamer.com/
DIY gamer.  Great website, I may have linked to it before, but it bears repeating.  This stuff is truly DIY, from stuff that you or I could put out, to other things that take serious work and talent.  I guess I'm mostly trying to convince myself to hunker down and make a game.  I guess.  

Free Flash Games:
http://www.lorenbednar.com/Excitement/
Excitement.  Neat Atari arcade style game.  very simple, nice graphics.  The controls are pretty loose.  With some tightening, this could be a really addictive game.  plays in-browser.

http://var.i.brainworth.net/main.html?level=introduction_to_actions_moveforward
Var and the Vikings. A game where the whole purpose is to program character AI.  Start with teaching them to move forward.  Then to jump, then to do both.  If this sounds interesting, give the demo a look.  Plays like a puzzle game.  plays in-browser.

http://thotep-7dfps.s3.amazonaws.com/index.htm
Modern shooter.  A wild west shooting game that has entirely keyboard inputs.  This game is a rush-job, but it is worth a taste.  Plays in-browser.

Gaming Editorials:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130063/game_design_essentials_20_.php?page=1
Article listing the top 20 hard video games.  Lots of old games here, you might see some favorites.  The purpose of the article is to examine game design choices through the difficulty of these games.  


http://www.brainygamer.com/the_brainy_gamer/2012/09/index.html
The brainy gamer is my new favorite video game journalist.  Here he uses a bread metaphor to talk about the idea of the 'mother dough' as applied for video games.  Example:  Donkey Kong laid the groundwork for basically the whole platforming genre.  Wolfenstein 3d - the FPS.  But what did these games take from even earlier games? 


http://indiegames.com/2012/12/top_10_indie_games_of_2012_2.html
Indie games weblog does top 10 indie games of 2012.  A bunch of them are paid games, but I should take a look at the free ones.

http://zeboyd.com/2013/01/31/a-better-classification-system-for-rpgs/
Guys at zeboyd games discuss genre classification for RPGs.  I like this subject.  Some of the comments are good too.

http://www.indiegamemag.com
Indie Games Magazine.  This is a nice little site.  I actually discovered it when I was searching through the Google Play Store on my phone, looking for indie game information.  This is the only publication that came up.  So, while there is a website, I primarily browse Indie Games Magazine on my phone.  I enjoy being able to disappear into the world of game journalism while away from home.  Which reminds me...

Rambling, why doesn't this guy shut up?
Surely by now, you've heard that Valve is releasing a home console called the Piston, or Steam Box.  Which is all fine and dandy, even downright neat.  I encourage others to get into the console world, shake up those console wars a bit.  Ouya is another neat new console-thing that is happening. (both are designed as tiny cubes- huh.    Anyhow, I realized the other day that what I really want is to be able to play my steam games while on the go.  Away from my home PC.  

I don't even own a TV, so console systems all come with the price of a TV attached to them.  I may get one some time, but for the time being, my PC serves as my all-in-one machine.  Except when I'm on the go.  Then my crappy Android phone or my outdated Nintendo DS have to suffice.  I would like a powerful portable gaming PC.  Is this possible?  No, I don't want a laptop, I want something to compete against the 3DS and PSP.   Hell, I would buy one of those systems if you told me I could access my steam library on it.  I've heard nothing to this effect, but then again, I am generally out of touch.  Moving on. 

Oh, wait, I'm done?  Yep, all done.  Enjoy the links :)

-D

Bridging the Gaming Continent: Risktego

Since Dr. Potts and I started this blog, I liked the idea that when we talked about being gamers, that that would also include other areas of gaming besides video games.  Like Penny-Arcade's Omegathon at PAX, I like the idea of branching out into other areas of gaming, but still maintaining our main focus on video games.

So I was talking to Conklederp yesterday about the boardgame Stratego and explaining the rules the the easiest way possible, mainly because I didn't have any visual aids and verbally explaining the rules of a game you've never heard/seen could be confusing.  So I'm talking about the different pieces and ranks and how they're used in battle.  Then my mind goes to the other war based game that I know and have played very little of, being RISK.  I played Castle RISK a bit when I was younger and last year I played one of many RISK variants called Risk Godstorm.  Anyway, the point being that I have a lot more experience with Stratego than I do with RISK, so any hardcore RISK gamers might be upset/irritated/annoyed with my lack of proper RISK terminology/knowledge.  (And just to note, the word "risk" is starting to look like it's not a real word anymore).

My idea for Risktego is a pretty simple one.  You would play RISK normally with almost no alterations to the rules.  The only difference is in how the battles are conducted.  Instead of rolling dice to determine the outcome of the battle, you would then move into a separate game albeit modified version of Stratego.  Right now, one can see a potential difficulty with the RISK battles being run in the Stratego game.  In RISK, as far as I know, there's no limit to the number of armies attacking any given area, whereas in Stratego, you're limited to a maximum of 40 units, including bombs and the flag.  The following rules set for Risktego, will probably annoy any RISK purists, but they'll just have to deal with it.

¡¡¡¡Awesome Logo Splicing Action!!!!

Rules for Risktego

You will need:

• 1 RISK boardgame
• 1 Stratego boardgame

RISK is the primary game being played and only moves to Stratego during skirmishes/battles.  During skirmishes/battles, the following rules apply:

• Each side pre-selects the Flag Tile in Stratego.
• For every single infantry unit in RISK, randomly select 3 tiles from Stratego.
• In RISK, if you are attacking or defending with 13 or more infantry units, you play with all of your Stratego pieces.
• When two pieces of the same rank meet in Stratego, the attacking piece wins.

So those're basically the rules, have fun as you will.

Side Note:  After completing this article, I looked up "risktego" on google just because I was curious.  As it turns out, there's quite a bit about combining both RISK and Stratego together to make one massive game.  Rules from a couple of the pages I looked at vary, but some seem to be built around the "rule" that with any battle, you play a full 40 vs 40 game of Stratego.  Which, for me, then feels like it takes away any strategy in army building.  However, that could be said as well for the rules that I've put up here.  

Whatever, it was an idea I had, free of outside influences that just happens to have been not an uncommon idea.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Disclaimer:  Games Will Last 3 Hours to Never Being Finished.

So, what have I been up to lately?

Hi there everyone.  I haven't posted as regularly as I'd like, I've been busy and stuff.  Right now I'm just playing Metroid I, which is a huge pain in the ass and I might give up.  I've got high jump, screw attack and the ice beam, but I just get lost too damned much.  And I always think to play the game after I've turned my computer off, and I don't want to boot it up just to get a map.  That game is just too hard.  (I've discovered the italics button- watch out!)

But on another note, I've been doing some basic research on games and gaming.  Mostly Indie Gaming.  After Jack's post about Shadowgate, and his challenge to the indie gaming world, I decided to take a look to see if there were any shadow-gate style indie games.  I remembered the Crimson Room, and the rest of the series:  The Viridian Room and blue room and white room, etc.  But, as I was researching information on these games, I got to thinking about the history of indie games... and then I fell down a rabbit hole.

It turns out there is way more going on in indie gaming than I realized.  There are hundreds of creators out there, just itching to make games.  I can barely even find the time and initiative to talk about making games, but over here, I found a damned list that you can post to and someone might make your game idea!!  Egad! Okay, okay, breathe, breathe.  I'm going to try to post a little map of the rabbit hole so far.  It goes like this:

Google search.  "Hello, what is this?"  DIY gamer dot com?  That sounds awesome.  What am I looking at? Wait a second.  So, what you're telling me is that you had a contest for people to create First Person Shooter games, start to finish, in seven days?  Really?  And they did?  People can just do that?  Okay, I'll play one: First Person Tutor.  Haha, this game is funny.  Kinda fun.  Neato.  There are several other games on this page that look interesting, and you can play them in-browser.  I just got in this damned rabbit hole, and I have at least two hours of exploring to do on this one page.  But I don't feel like stopping just yet, so I keep going.

Oh, here's an interesting new(to me) website called Glorious Train Wrecks.  Isn't that a great title?  It turns out they have a game making contest too.  They just finished up their fifth one.  They also have a list of development tools and hundreds of games submitted to them.  Jeepers H Crackers, what am I supposed to do with all of this?  Can someone please pay me to write about the indie game scene so I can pan for gold in all of these (probably) shitty games?  I would very much like to do that.  But I have no attention span, so off I go!

Oh look, DIYgamer.com has an article about Indie Games and they mention Crowd Funding.  You know, Kickstarter.  And, apparently a new one aimed specifically at games.  Card games or video games, it doesn't matter.  Here we go, 8-Bit Funding!  Okay, so now there's a place to ask for money to develop your games?  And there are a bunch of projects already on it.  048tyhdfs;ovndzkjs.  Too many choices, too many possibilities!  At this point I'm just closing my browser tabs.  I've got more than ten open on this last chain, and it's time for me to focus a little more.  Let's copy down these addresses into a text file and move on.

Oh, hey look, an adorable Mario Spin Off game that "compresses" all the levels into one screen a piece.  Super Mario Summary doesn't truly compress the levels, but it does make one-screen levels inspired by the original Mario.  Not a bad little puzzler.  Kinda tough, best played with JoyToKey.  Oh, wait a sec.  This game was made as part of Another Damned Contest?!  Wow, indie games are seriously thriving.  This contest is like the twenty fourth this site has had.  I had no idea it was so open ended.  My head is popping.  But in a good way, I think.  I certainly know that if I come into a huge cash of free time, I know how I'm spending it!

Okay, so, I think it's time to get the hell out of this Rabbit hole.  Oh, one quick stop by another article on DIYgamer.  They're referencing a 'rouge-like spaceship simulator?'  What is rouge-like?  Oh, I see.  Random dungeon generation, RPG elements.  I've played games like these.  I guess Diablo is like the most advanced/successful rouge-like.  I see, the genre is based on a 1980 game called Rogue. So the popular name for the genre became "Rogue-like."  Right on.

Okay, okay.  I'm getting out of the rabbit hole now.  I hope you've enjoyed your time, sorry if the arrangement of links is little chaotic.  I guess I didn't so much make a map as scribble on some paper by torchlight.  Still, there's a great big marker at DIYgamer.com they are organized and oh so full of new info for the interested.    And then there are at least three links here to game creating contests, which I find very interesting.

So, I guess I'll leave you with a link to a game creator from Cameroon, Africa.  I think the graphical style is great, the music is awesome, the controls not so hot, and the level design can really use some work (I can't beat the first level).  

So, without further ado:  PHL's Air Flying Game.