Digital Amusement Game Development
  
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I'm exceptionally proud to say that ut4_temple2 will go into alpha stage, server playable, right quick soon as I have FINALLY gotten the map to -VIS. This has been an effort of stupid proportions. What this means is that FPS will significantly increase because the whole map isn't being drawn. My water looks GREAT. The standing water at least, I'm not happy with the waterfalls but they do fine as they are. Seriously, best looking mucky water in UrT. Behaves correctly up close, at a distance, bright and dark light, under and over. Spawns are fixed but not optimized. Numerous other tweaks. In current gaming, Portal 2 rocks the house. Without spoiling, the second iteration of the game continues to raise the bar. Haven't finished it yet, but wow, I will say the story is as fantastic as the gameplay, becoming more intense every level. Seeing the demo for Battlefield 3, and now some footage of Brink, tells me that we have now accomplished "realism" in gaming. I want to see full open world realism where I can craft my environment. Point-click blam - hovering car. World around reacts to it. Laser weapons on said car - blam! World reacts. Giant monster! Blam! Hmm this scenario seems like a sim game. Well that's the direction... now I'm thinking... a SIM FPS game? Suppose America's Army sort of takes that approach. The point is in a gamescape where realism is abound, game uniqueness will muddy quickly. It's fortunate we're amidst a retro revolution with handheld gaming. One word has it 2012 will be the next time we'll see a new console, specifically from Nintendo. They're lacking in the graphics department, so to modernize their hardware would certainly help. I can't say I play my Wii anymore, except maybe SMB Galaxy 2 once in a while, mostly out of boredom. Also sounds like Metroid is officially botched, as Samus reportedly now talks and turns into a whiny little girl. Not the image I imagined. Urban Terror has a nice new movie showing how they're attempting to modernize. But, under the shiny new stuff, is it just more of the same?
What's up with supersoldier? Little progress over the summer. The team waits for further instruction. I can't fully commit to the project right now due to r/l. I'm sure that's well understood, considering the significant effort put towards the map throughout all of 2009. I did whip up a new map concept, a map extension, detailed on the FSK405 and URT forums. I plan on taking this concept to the next step.  Several people continually drop hints on wanting updates of previous maps. I'm torn on this. Updating a previous map takes so much less time and effort, but if I have that time then why aren't I spending it on developing supersoldier? Moral dillema. So for now I just drop in the server and play. Can't get rusty on one's own map! :D Without going into detail, I talked to twentyseven about some future aspects of UrT. There is one very interesting feature, that is not in any urt version atm, that has me quite excited about the potential future of the game. If said mystery feature were to be implemented, this could become one of the greatest game mods ever (it isn't already? to a degree but it is sorely lacking certain feature sets). imo. Oh! Let's talk iphone gaming a minute. Get this game: Super Mega Worm. Mission, wipe out the humans for polluting the earth. You are a giant worm (think dune sand worm). You eat, you grow. Humans are suprised and scared. They retaliate, slowly, as they realize the magnitude of the problem. You are that problem. And what fun it is to be that problem. :D Played a little Mega Man 10. Where is my freakin Mega Buster and slide?? WTF Capcom??!! Bring back Rush Jet-pack while you're at it!! Ok so the game is equally as good as MM9, and still holding a solid position as a legitimate 8-bit MM platformer action game. This one seems slightly harder that the previous. Fortunately they're liberal about using the store to buy items. Wouldn't have survived without dumping big bux into cheatz0r items like half-damage and a few energy tanks. I suck at this game! Hang tight everyone. I'm working on a new digitalamusement.com server. It's also been a very slow process but necessary if the site is to remain functioning. If the site goes away for a bit, well, gonna hafta roto-rooter the bitbucket, or something like that. Also as soon as things get smoother on my side (r/l situations), I'll be able to update the site more frequently. Looking towards a pond site facelift too.
God of War 3: I played the first 2 of these up and through, so the series is quite familiar. The first fight sequence in 3 is jaw dropping. One of the reasons I wanted to play this right away is because I wanted to see what kind of game could be produced when one of the largest companies in the world gives a gaming studio a blank check to cover development costs. There were a couple surprising results. Bump mapping and specular retained the Doom3 plastic look in numerous areas. Gameplay was great, although weighed more into puzzling this time around...definitely felt more mainstream. Then 2/3 of the way through, the story fell apart when someone thought adding love and humility would be the right thing to do, overcoming the brutal nature of Kratos. I'm torn on this one. There's a legitimate storyline, but the implementation was weak. So much so, I doubt I'll play this game again. Yes, played the second time through. No, the interest is gone. I should note that the sequence near the end of the game involving running seemingly forever through death was artistically incredible. It was refreshing to see mainstream design thrown out the window for a moment. Next, Burnout Paradise. Wow, this was an engaging game. There's a number of technological feats here. Certainly number 1 - no loading. Once you're in the game you stay in. Drive, I mean race as if your life depended on it, 3 literal minutes from one side of the world to the other, or poke around and get there about 10-15 minutes. For a wide-open city/countryside environment, you get more than you had bargained for. The visuals represent a great deal of hard work by smart programmers and designers. Reflections are real-time, which I counted SIX rotating signs on the surface of my curvy car, standing under said sign. Detail abound. Intense gameplay, many clever uses of the map. AI was great as well. This is the game you want to whip out at a party on a big HD screen with a rocking sound system. Third. Mercenaries 2. Let's start with the original commercial that you HAVE TO SEE if you had not already. Once you watch that, enjoy this one-of-a-kind absolutely awesome behind the scenes movie of the making of that commercial. Once you have accomplished these two things, please meet me in the next paragraph. LMAO wow ok the main charater Mattias Nielson is one of my favorite characters of all time. He's a laid back viking who thrills in chaos. Yes. This guys' quips and quotes and demeanor throughout the game cracks me up. Truly he makes the game. The game? Ah yes. An open, sprawling world, full of lush jungle and urban terrains. You can do pretty much anything to anything and blow up just about everything. Really good explosions. One example, you can get a fuel-air RPG. Imagine a rocket impacting and a 100 foot radius of vapor appears. Then ignites. Another, buildings get demolished in satisfying ways. So many things to explode! Fuel tanks, ordinance you could keep, vehicles, crashing helicopters, entire oil rigs, suspension bridges.... it all can be wiped out. Physics are fun! The story is interesting, while only somewhat linear. You have an Ultimate Goal, but so many ways to get there! Another important note. This game did bump mapping and specular RIGHT. Surfaces appear natural. The artists on this game were really really good. I took many notes playing through it... The initial learning curve of the game is a little steep, due to the sudden immersion of being able to do just about anything, but your second main character, Fiona, is your operator and eye-in-the-sky helping keep you in the right direction. Works out great. The only significant complaint I have is the repetition of character dialog, both NPC and random character bantor. For all the work put into the game, they could have put a lot more focus on random dialog. Not to say the game is short on it. Perhaps they botched timing, like instead of every 15 seconds someone is complaining about the heat or being shot at, maybe once every 3 minutes. It's annoying for a little while then it becomes a whatever. Nothing to report on the supersoldier front right now. Looking to get dev started back up. Lots to do there!!! The team had a good solid run for about 2 months. Had to take a break. Not going to spoil too many details yet! :)
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