http://www.mygamefast.com/volume2/

Cheers all!,
Gary

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http://www.mygamefast.com

I think FPS is probably what drives most aspiring game developers these days. However, I voted platformer as I've always had a soft spot for them. Flashback anyone?

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10 PRINT "Bad Monkey ";
20 GOTO 10

Yeah, I was initially drawn to platformer too. Then I remembered this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pit-Fighter

...and can't help wondering what a modern version would be like. Drop in some great physics on crates, tables, chairs etc... could be fun. :-)

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http://www.mygamefast.com

Yes please, I'll take one.

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What most people don't understand about "enlightenment" is that it is not an end-goal; but where you find yourself just before taking a new "first step."

I remember playing a cover disc demo of Pit Fighter on the Amiga. It was a bit pants IIRC, very limited moves (Kick, Punch, Jump), I suppose that was down to the limitiations of capturing and storing the photos of the actors instead of (smaller) traditonal hand drawn stuff.

Are you going to pose for the fighter images yourself Gary?

I wonder if beat 'em ups will be with us for much longer. They don't seem to be that popular with modern gamers. I loved the DoA series, but I've tried some of the current-gen fighters and they don't grab me at all. There seems to be a huge gap between the novice (bash all the buttons or spam one attack and hope for the best) player and the expert (there are 5 invincibility frames in this attack and I can go into a juggle combo for 76.218% of your health) players.

There's no doubt that they look much prettier thesedays, and that was always a big selling point in the past (Rise of the Robots, Killer Instinct, Rumble Roses ) but that doesn't seem to be enough today.

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10 PRINT "Bad Monkey ";
20 GOTO 10

Pit Fighter was crap. I'd much like a fighter/platformer hybrid (like "JUMP Super Stars" or "JUMP Ultimate Stars", or maybe "Super Smash Brothers"). There's also potential in a Power Stone 2D, methinks.

Lots of classic arcade action, rather than long combos of precisely timed button mashes is more appealing, IMO. I say forget the juggling and Hadoken stuff -- give me power-ups, platforms, and stuff to chuck at people, and I'm good.

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What most people don't understand about "enlightenment" is that it is not an end-goal; but where you find yourself just before taking a new "first step."

I agree, modern fighting games are crap. An XBox controller has enough buttons that I shouldn't have to learn a bunch of combo move inputs in Street Fighter. Some of the characters take like 8 inputs to do an ultra. Eight!!! To play any one character competently takes several days practice. They totally limit fighting games to people who have really quick fingers and time to memorize a bunch of stupid combos, just to play the game as intended, not even to do any really advanced stuff. Not to mention Street Fighter is almost unplayable without the arcade stick. (D-pad sucks on the Xbox and the analog input is awful and completely unforgiving for doing any combos)

It is the worst example of the "hardcore" fan-base completely ruining an entire genre. It would be possible to do every move in Street Fighter with a direction and at most 2 buttons in succession, but they needlessly make it take 8 inputs for some things. I can't think of a reason for this other than their stupid fan-base thinks muscle memory is impressive, or that a game with bad controls takes "skill". The only fighting game I have played recently that didn't suffer from this is Smash Brothers but they pretty much ruined that series with Brawl (for completely different reasons).

I think the only reason they are still around is that they can be churned out so cheaply (can you think of easier games to create?). Otherwise their fan-base would not be large enough to support them.

I'm waiting for a good fighting game that uses Kinect.

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Bored? Head on over to my blog and see what I'm up to.

Microsoft XNA MVP

There is a fighty Kinect game isn't there? (Or is it complete toilet and I missed the gag?)

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10 PRINT "Bad Monkey ";
20 GOTO 10

The results so far seem to be agreeing that a beat em up is out. I know pit fighter was a bit rubbish but, well, I have fond memories of playing it multi-player on the megadrive (genesis). There's no way I'd pose code head - I'm trying to increase the number of readers, not scare them all away.

Another nostalgic one in my mind was Monkey Island. That adventure genre (specifically the point and click style) seems to have all but died. Again, maybe I'm just being nostalgic and the genre died off for good reason.

Cheers,
Gary

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http://www.mygamefast.com

I really enjoyed playing through The Secret of Monkey Island™ again on the XBox, I was constantly switching between the screen modes. I couldn't choose between nostalgia and the updated artwork.

Point and click adventures were huge for a while, the SCUMM engine certainly got some mileage. The format would probably do well on portables (Prof Layton seems to be doing OK), but the availablity of SCUMM VM and its back catalogue are a bit of an obstacle.

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10 PRINT "Bad Monkey ";
20 GOTO 10

And maybe with the newer touch-screen devices, there is a resurgence in such games waiting to happen.

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What most people don't understand about "enlightenment" is that it is not an end-goal; but where you find yourself just before taking a new "first step."

Forgot to mention (somehow) that a friend got a gift for me: A DVD documentary entitled, "GET LAMP: A Documentary About Adventures in Text." Going to watch it tonight; should be an awesome bit of entertainment. Hmm... maybe even inspiring?

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What most people don't understand about "enlightenment" is that it is not an end-goal; but where you find yourself just before taking a new "first step."

GO NORTH
>> YOU ARE AT BLOCKBUSTER
GET DVD
>> YOU NOW HAVE A DVD, TISSUE, DOLLAR
GO SOUTH
>> YOU ARE AT GPWIKI
GO WEST
>> YOU ARE HOME
LOOK AT DVD PLAYER
>> IT'S NOT PLUGGED IN
PLUGIN DVD PLAYER
>> A LIGHT COMES ON
USE DVD
>> WHAT WITH?
USE DVD WITH PLAYER
>> I DO NOT UNDERSTAND
PLAY DVD
>> I CANNOT 'PLAY'
PUT DVD IN PLAYER
>> THE PLAYER CANNOT BE PUT
LOOK JUST PLAY THE FILM
>> YOU CANNOT SEE A FILM
F**K IT
>> THERE'S NO NEED TO SWEAR

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http://www.mygamefast.com

The downfall of any text adventure game. That moment when your idea of the logical command and the developer's part ways and you eat your keyboard in frustration.
It only gets worse as you look at MUDs, its all real-time and typos kill...

Yeah, I made a text adventure game back in the early 2000s (2001 IIRC) that was like that. "Doing this makes sense... Oh noes, it killed meh!"

It also made fun of you when you didn't input commands correctly or did something "dumb". There was one room with a torch. If you examined it, you'd find a dried-up wad of chewing gum. Once you took the gum, if you typed "eat gum" or "chew gum", the game would come back at you and say, "But you don't know where it's been!"

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What most people don't understand about "enlightenment" is that it is not an end-goal; but where you find yourself just before taking a new "first step."

Dig here on GPWiki found something that *looks* cool...

http://inform7.com/

... but I can't figure it out. You'd think a programming language that looks mostly like "plain english" would be pretty easy to set up for something simple. But it's not quite that straightforward -- the documentation is utterly horrible. There is no rhyme nor reason to the organization of the docs. Good luck finding anything using the docs as a reference.

Took me five hours to figure out how to make two locations. Sigh.

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What most people don't understand about "enlightenment" is that it is not an end-goal; but where you find yourself just before taking a new "first step."

Ugh....

http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc12.html

...yeah, see, the problem is - writing code in English does not feel natural. lol

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http://www.mygamefast.com