A Game Ripe…

Sony has recently piqued my curiosity recently as they are slowly re-releasing quality games from their PS2 catalogue and giving them a nice HD lick of paint. This I am all for, the games of the past made for today, there just seems to be so many MORE games from then that I enjoy. I have been itching for a Final Fantasy VII release on the PS3 and I still hold out hope with the recent releases of God of War and Sly Cooper to name but two, and recently rumours of Team Ico re-releasing Ico and Shadow of the Colossus.

But through my searches on the internet lead me to look up Day of the Tentacle. Possibly one of the finest adventure games I had the pleasure of playing. I caught a glimpse of this image.

And it made me think, this game NEEDS to be remade and the sequel that the ending seemed to hint at with the Tentacle Flag being raised up J hope you have fond memories of this game as I do.

flOW

A game I’ve always loved the simplicity and beauty of is flOW, by Jenova Chen

FlOw is a game about piloting an aquatic organism through a surreal biosphere where players consume other organisms, evolve, and advance their organisms to the abyss.

You are an organism floating in fluid.  You use your mouse to direct the organism.  Holding left click increases your speed.

The objective of the game is to consume organisms to grow and change.  You move deeper by consuming the red dot organisms.  You move shallower by consuming the blue dot organisms.  You can defeat other organisms by consuming their nutrients, and you upgrade your own organism when you consume the leftover segments of your defeated enemies.

I love the soundtrack of this game, which is simply an underwater organic drone.  It really gives the game it’s feel.

I like the way levels are stacked on each other, so when you are in one level, you can see a blurred version of the level below.  It adds a simple depth to the game that adds to the ambient feel.

You can play flOw here

Where could I take this game?  You could possibly turn this into a Massive Multiplayer game, where players join, and are spawned in a pool with other players with the only objective being consume or die.  As you consume organisms, you evolve into more interesting creatures, so the player wanting to see a new creature and then become that creature would be another reason for playing.  I don’t think keeping score is something that would be all that useful, since you can play the game for a really long time.  If you quit the game, the organisms that make up your creature could become food for other players.

Phippsie’s First Project: Paradroid

I’ve finally decided to take the time to write a journal entry.  Because I’m a linux native, I run my XNA development environment in a Virtual Machine that runs Windows XP.  It took a little bit to make work, with lots of help from Mr Rogers, but now it runs a treat.

So, what is Paradroid?  It’s an old C64 game by Andrew Baybrook.  I have very fond memories of this game from my my childhood, so figured it would be fun to bring to life.  For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about here it is:

Thankfully, I’ve got a lot of raw material to work from, thanks to a project called Freedroid that brought this classic game to linux.  Unfortunately, a company in the UK called Jester owns the rights to Paradroid, so without making considerable changes to the look and feel of the game, I most likely won’t be able to release the finished product.

Ultimately, my goal is to beef up the original top down view and give it a bit more of a 3D feel using the Sunburn Framework for XNA (here’s an example of what I mean).  But I’ve got a LONG way to go before I can get there.

Currently, I’ve worked out how to place an animated sprite on the screen, and found a tile engine as a basis to draw the ship.  I learn by copying other code, modifying it so it works my way.  Doing this, I become familiar with the flow of the code, and the functions being used.  Then I can start applying that knowledge to writing my own code.

I’m currently looking into something the original code refers to as “friction with air” which gives the influence machine (the white droid in the video) a deceleration when you stop moving in the direction.  This gives the controls a soft floaty feel making the game feel less mechanical and more fluid.

I’ll post how I handle this deceleration once I’ve worked it out.