The old dcf Games Blog

Blog Migration: Important Announcement for RSS and Tumblr Followers

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 23:08:00 +0000

You may (or may not) have been wondering why there hasn’t been a post on here in a while. I’ve been building a new blog system which integrates with the rest of the site much better, and it’s almost ready to go live!

What does this mean for me?

The Facebook page will continue to publish updates as usual, but if you’re following the blog on Tumblr or subscribed to the RSS feed before November 2010, you won’t receive any new posts from the dcf Games Blog after next week. To continue getting updates, you’ll need to do one of the following:

The Facebook page and new RSS may go a bit screwy when the switch actually takes place (some old posts may come back up), but it should be fine after that. I’ll be migrating comments over in the following few days.

Why are you doing this?

A variety of reasons, really (Tumblr’s recent reliability issues, the lack of integration with the rest of dcf Games and the hassle of basically having to maintain two seperate sites being the main ones). Bringing the blog in-house and keeping everything together in one place just makes it easier to keep synchronised and provide new services in the future.

Sorry for the inconvenience this change might cause.

Global Game Jam 2011: Hour the 3rd

Fri, 28 Jan 2011 20:31:57 +0000

Global Game Jam, Newport on Ustream

The global game Jam has started in Newport! Follow our adventures through the next 43 hours on the live stream above (I’m probably on the far left, in the hat, almost certainly doing something stupid), and via my Twitter feed. You can send us messages through Twitter too! And we’ll read them!

If you’re working hard at another jam site, good luck and have fun!

Guest Lecture

Wed, 26 Jan 2011 20:28:56 +0000

I’m going to be giving a guest lecture at the University of Wales, Newport this Friday afternoon, just before the Global Game Jam! Topics to be covered will include the basics of PHP and MySQL, getting XNA to play nicely with a web server, and building a basic global high-score system, with practical work setting up your own high-score server in one afternoon. Why not incorporate global high-scores into your GGJ entry this year?

If you’re a Newport games student, come along and listen to my network-based ramblings! If you can’t come along and if there’s enough interest, I’ll also put up an abridged version as a tutorial on davecheesefish Games sometime in the next couple of weeks.

Indie Jam Triple Play: The Experimental Prototype Dare

Fri, 17 Dec 2010 10:03:00 +0000

This weekend, there are no less than THREE indie game jams going on simultaneously, and guess what? I’ll be doing my darndest to enter all three.

This week sees the Experimental Gameplay Project (1-31 Dec, theme: “Drawing”), Game Prototype Challenge (13-20 Dec, theme: “Immortality” and “Thin Ice”) and Ludum Dare 19 (18-20 Dec GMT, unknown theme) coinciding in the same 48-hour period. Making one game to fit all of them in two days can’t be that hard, can it?

Credit to Chris Kaitila (Breakdance McFunkyPants) for getting this idea into my head. If I die during this, it’s his fault!

Indie Kombat

Fri, 03 Dec 2010 02:18:22 +0000

For the last month, Alec Stamos of Ultimate-Nerds.com and I have been locked in an epic game-development battle for indie honour.

The contest ran from 5th-30th November.
Only 30 hours were allowed to be spent on anything going directly into the game.
Publicly licensed materials (graphics, sound, code libraries, etc.) were allowed, as long as they were declared in a readme file with the game.
No bleeding on the furniture.

The development stage is over, but now I need you! Voting has begun to find November’s winner!

How do I Get the Games and Vote?

Go to the game announcement posts on IndieKombat.com to download both games: About Turn (my game) and, if you must, Ninja Art Game (Alec’s game). If then you think my game’s the best, vote for me in the poll on the right-hand side of the page! If you like Alec’s game better, erm… there’s no need to vote. Your votes really do count - as I write this, there are only 2 votes between us! The winner will be announced at the end of December.

I’ll be continuing to work on my game, adding more levels and gameplay elements, and generally making it better. You can track the ongoing development now at Indie DB or Mod DB.

Vote now!

Eurogamer Expo 2010

Thu, 07 Oct 2010 23:06:31 +0100

Last weekend saw Eurogamer Expo 2010 at Earl’s Court in London, part of the London Games Festival 2010. Despite being booked onto a non-existent bus, tube strikes, tube maintenance, roadworks and the bus company not stopping where they said they would, I actually managed to get there and back alive on the final day of the event, Sunday.

Overall I was impressed by the organisation and range of games on display but there was a sense that we were seeing the left-overs from the previous two days. Some of the booths in the careers fair were empty and there were very few staff from developers and publishers to be seen. I still had a good time but in future I’ll make sure not to go on the last day. The hot dogs sucked.

Those who know me will probably also know that I’m not easily impressed by games and my opinions are usually against what everyone else thinks. Plus I’m very good at changing my mind. With that said, here are my thoughts on some of the games I played at Eurogamer Expo 2010…

Games

Gran Turismo 5

After having played GT3 A-Spec and GT4 on the PS2, it’s an improvement. Not a big one, but an improvement nonetheless. The handling of the cars feels new and more realistic, doing what you’d actually expect them to instead of just sliding into the nearest tyre wall. Graphically, it looks amazing - the textures on the cars and circuits are much higher resolution and the models much more detailed than in previous installments, and the series is now heading firmly towards proper photo-realism.

The 3D - I’m not sure if it’s my brain or the game, but I couldn’t see much difference between the 3D and 2D versions of the game on show (except of course that if you didn’t wear the glasses, the 3D version was all fuzzy). You could tell that the HUD was supposedly in front of everything else, but the actual track and car still looked pretty flat to me which was somewhat disappointing for my first experience with a 3D TV.

If you’re a total racing fan, I’d say go for it. There’s a vastly improved line-up in the garage (a notable addition being Ferrari) now housing over 1000 cars, and over 70 tracks including the 13-mile Nürburgring Nordschleife, my personal favourite from GT4. It’s certainly not a bad game and if I already had a PS3 I’d probably buy GT5 without a though.

F1 2010

Definitely one for hardcore racing and F1 fans, not the occassional arcade boy-racer. The graphics are amazing, the gameplay is polished to a mirror shine and the tracks reproduced pretty much faultlessly. You can pick out every piece of gravel stuck in your tyres after your inevitable first-corner trip off-road. Barge someone out of the way deliberately and you’ll get a black flag penalty. Brake while going around a corner and you’ll just slide, as it should be (I’m looking at you, Gran Turismo 4).

Unfortunately, I’m not a devout F1 fan and I think that’s the one problem. Some people will be driving the lives of their favourite racing drivers in their favourite racing teams; I’m driving one of a handful of very similar cars on one of 19 similar tracks, which personally I can see getting repetitive rather quickly.

Mafia II

Rule number one for presenting your game at an expo intended to make people want to buy it: Make the demo fun.

Mafia II instead had me walking across town to my mum’s house, manually opening the front door, manually closing the front door, *cutscene*, opening another door, closing the other door, getting into bed, *cutscene*, waking up, going back through the door, talking to “mum” (in a *cutscene* on a console display stand with no speakers or subtitles), opening and closing the front door again, walking to a friend’s house several blocks away… several doors and numerous cutscenes later (no hurry, nobody was queuing to play it), I had finally been allowed to drive a car, albeit fairly slowly and with terrible handling, but had yet to be given anything else to do and finally gave up to find something less mind-numbingly tedious to waste my brain cells on.

The worst thing (if you hadn’t already noticed from the weird emphasis in the above paragraph)? Cutscenes! Too. Many. Cutscenes. Break. Flow. Like. Putting. Full. Stops. In. Between. Every. Word. In. A. Sentence. Except where I was wandering off the predetermined path looking for something to destroy in the name of anarchy, there was at least a cutscene every 20-30 seconds! If you’ve gone to the trouble of making an interactive game rather than a movie, stop taking control away whenever something interesting happens, leaving me simply walking as some kind of underpaid camera-courier in between.

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit

Criterion Games’ last release was Burnout Paradise back in 2008, and they haven’t deserted the crash-and-bash style racing in their new offering, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit.

The Expo setup consisted of eight Xbox 360 stations linked together for consecutive multiplayer races throughout the day. The controls will be familiar to veteran Burnout players - left trigger to brake, right trigger for throttle, A for boost - but this time you also have the D-pad with various articles of weaponry at your disposal, including spike traps, jammers and road blocks. Of course, you can always resort to ramming your opponents if all else fails! The particular game mode we were playing was a rolling start, with the cops several metres behind the “racers”. The player who finished the race in front won, meaning you weren’t just up against the other team but against your own kind as well, which seemed to negate the need for two different teams in the first place.

This time round there are real licensed cars in the game, a change from the made-up brands starring in previous Criterion games. Models mentioned on their website include the Koenigsegg CCX, McLaren MP4-12C and Pagani Zonda Cinque for the racers, and the Ford Shelby GT500, Bugatti Veyron 16.4 and Lamborghini Reventón for the officers among us.

There was a lot of fun to be had, and though I’ve had bad experiences with the Need for Speed series in the past (and a complete lack of any real updates for Burnout Paradise on the PC), this will be one game I know I’ll be buying some time soon.

Tech

PlayStation Move

I must admit, I was skeptical about the PS Move. Yes, it looks, feels and even smells like a blatant copy of the Wii with a glowing ball on the end. I didn’t really want to like it… but I do. It’s more responsive, more accurate, has much better graphics, and the rounded controller just feels better than the squared-off and chunky Wii one. They’ve done a better job of it, but they have taken nearly 4 extra years to do it.

The game I played was the table tennis from Sports Champions (not “Move Sports”?) and personally I couldn’t fault it*. There were complaints from other people that perhaps it was too accurate and lacked the forgiveness of the Wii, but I’m not entirely sure that’s the market they’re going for. Unlike the Wii and Kinect’s generally cute-and-cuddly and family-friendly graphic style we’ve seen so far, PS Move looks to have made no attempt to dilute (or dare I say it, “dumb down”?) what they’ve already got. Plus their advert (shown to the left) is slightly less nauseating than the Kinect one.

*Ok, one fault - the player on the left of the stand (using the pink controller) always seemed to win, though I’m not entirely sure if this was player error, game error or a specific controller failure.

Kinect for Xbox 360

On the flipside, actually owning an Xbox 360 myself, I was looking forward to finally getting to try Kinect out for myself before it hits the shelves in November.

There’s no one thing wrong with it, just a few little things that eat away at the experience. Expo-side I played a brief 2-player game of Kinect Joyride (and felt a bit of a prat in front of all the people watching, but considering the fact my living room doesn’t have a viewing gallery, I’ll overlook that for now).

The first of the niggles? The time delay. While not immediately obvious in Joy Ride (though it does account for how hard it is to stay in control), the stand next door was playing table tennis from Kinect Sports and there was an obvious half-second delay between the player’s movements and any action on-screen. Without playing it myself I can’t say whether it affected gameplay or not, but it looked awkward. Back to Joy Ride, the motion detection was also a bit shaky - not once did I nor my opponent manage to activate any power-ups we’d collected, no matter how much we attempted to punch the people to the left and right of us like it showed on the screen. Again, I’m not sure if it was the game’s fault, or the small crowd that had gathered behind us confusing the sensor.

On the stand to the left of us, they were playing the duck, dodge and jump-type minigame from Kinect Adventures, which actually looked quite challenging and possibly fun until one 7-year-old boy beat his big sister just by jumping up and down hyperactively all the way to the end of the track, bagging a massive time bonus and winning the game with no skill required other than a jumbo-size bag of blue Smarties and something fizzy.

All-in-all, Kinect seems to be confused easily and needs a lot of space but ultimately it will sell. Why? The kids were jumping around and having the time of their lives (and in some cases, so were the adults). It’s still an amazing bit of kit and provided Microsoft continue to update it once it’s released it has potential, but with the current delay, occassional glitches and sheer self-consciousness of waving around with nothing in your hands I’m not entirely sure it’s a Wii-killer in it’s current form.

End of the Day

I would’ve liked to have tried Medal of Honor, Rock Band 3 and Fable III at well but didn’t fancy each of their fairly sizable queues. Either way, the Medal of Honor beta is now free on Steam, so I’ll be playing that when I get a chance.

If you were at Eurogamer Expo 2010 or have played any of these games anywhere else, what did you think of them? Please leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Graduation and IAP Award

Tue, 14 Sep 2010 21:47:06 +0100

Last week was a big one on the scale of my life so far! I officially graduated from the University of Wales, Newport with a 2:1 in BSc(Hons) Games Development & Artificial Intelligence last week at a ceremony on the university’s Caerleon Campus.

That afternoon I also attended the Newport Business School PrizeGiving Ceremony, where there was an ample supply of very nice tea and cakes (mother was particularly impressed by the strawberry shortcake). As an additional bonus, I was also awarded the University’s IAP Prize for the Best Game Development Project of the acedemic year, consisting of £100 and a framed sealed certificate from the IAP (Institution of Analysts and Programmers)! I’ve probably already said this far too much, but I’d like to say thank you again to Newport Business School, University of Wales, Newport and the IAP for their support.

Here’s to the future!

Ludum Dare 18: PIXELSPACE Now Available

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 21:48:00 +0100

PIXELSPACE is finished and can be downloaded now for free at dcfgames.com/games/pixelspace!

You play as a white pixel defending yourself against incoming infected green pixels. You do this by shooting them down or by guiding them to crash into each other (the latter having the chance of an ammo drop, hence “enemies as weapons”). Coming into contact with enemies will cause damage, but you have the ability to regenerate health at a rate determined by your accuracy with your weapons.

For all my updates from throughout Ludum Dare 18, see my Twitter feed (#ld48 tag), the Ludum Dare entry page and the dcf Games blog LD18 tag. To see all the games from the event, click here.

A few screenshots of the finished game before I head off to bed!

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 03:53:22 +0100

A few screenshots of the finished game before I head off to bed!

The first screenshot of my Ludum Dare 18 entry. The player...

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 15:21:00 +0100

The first screenshot of my Ludum Dare 18 entry. The player plays as the white pixel firing on the incoming infected green pixels. Ammo is limited, so the player must use the homing tendencies of the green pixels to cause them to crash into each other, producing an ammo crate containing 100 bullets and killing both involved.

Ludum Dare 18: The Story So Far

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 10:42:00 +0100

If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you’ll already know I’m taking part in the Ludum Dare 48-hour game development competition this weekend.

My game idea is a basic top-down shooter, with different enemies having different effects on the enviroment when they are shot. The player has a very limited ammo supply, so use of these effects is vital to survive. The player can also lure enemies into colliding with one another to kill them.

It’s the start of sunny day 2 with 16 hours to go, so here’s a sitrep…

Particle system is up and running
Player movement working
Enemy spawning working

Now I just need to add the ability to shoot, collision detection for the enemies and the various environmental hazards… I’d better get to work!

More news to come throughout the day.

Meet Sushi - mascot and part-inspiration for davecheesefish...

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 20:19:49 +0100

Meet Sushi - mascot and part-inspiration for davecheesefish Games!

What’s wrong with a cheesy Wotsits-coloured goldfish with Ronnie Barker’s glasses and a miniature bobble hat from a smoothie bottle to keep warm? I AM NOT INSANE

dcf Games Joins Indie DB!

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 23:10:00 +0100

Game-modding community site Mod DB has just launched its new indie game site Indie DB! From today I’ll be uploading selected games, screenshots and tutorials to both dcf Games and Indie DB at my account, davecheesefish. If you have an Indie DB or Mod DB account, you can “watch” me via the eye button on the right-hand side of my profile page. You’ll also be able to track the development progress of individual new games by going to their respective pages and “tracking” them too!

2009 Global Game Jam game Lag is now available via Indie DB and (less than 48 hours after uploading it there), has reached rank 18 out of 1782 games on the site overall!

I look forward to participating in the lively community, and hope to see you there soon!

X48 Birmingham 2010: All Wrapped Up

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 18:38:00 +0000

Meet the team! Left to right: Mat Simmons, Jason Thomas, David Prior (me!) and Martyn Poole. Photo by Pixel-Lab.

The first X48 GameCamp of 2010 was last weekend at Birmingham City University, and Mat Simmons, Jason Thomas, Martyn Poole and I were there competing against 15 other teams from around the UK to produce a game in just 27 hours!

Our Friday started off with a 4-hour journey to get to the venue itself. Once we’d finally ventured over the English-Welsh border and up to wild and wintery Birmingham, it was simply a matter of finding the right campus of the university (no small feat as every second building we’d passed on our way in seemed to have the university logo on the side). After a little confusion, we were informed by a friendly lady behind an information desk that actually the science museum/IMAX cinema we were in was indeed the right place (why don’t we have one of those?).

This year’s theme for Birmingham was “Discovery”, quite an open-ended theme leaving plenty of opportunities for some interesting game concepts. We started off with a 1-hour session coming up with any game idea we could get our hands on, no matter how stupid or difficult-to-build they sounded. From previous experience, the best ideas normally come from something completely ridiculous and immensely over-ambitious, scaled down accordingly.

Working through the night (only broken by the now-familiar experience of 2 hours sleep on industrial computer-lab carpet), we came to day two when everyone decided it would probably be a good idea to let those of us not doing anything at a particular time to get some more rest before the final push (that and the fact that our bus home wasn’t due to leave Birmingham until 8pm, still a full 12 hours away).

At the end of the day we didn’t win any prizes, but it was still a thoroughly enjoyable two days and I know I’ll certainly be back next year to try again! You can download and play our entry for free from dcfgames.co.uk/games/drainbamage. As for the future, the team is going forward to compete in the Imagine Cup and we’re looking into entering Dream-Build-Play and Dare to be Digital 2010 so watch this space for further updates!

One Down, One to Go!

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 01:10:00 +0000

The Global Game Jam has passed into the realms of history, and the crash from the 48-hour caffeine buzz has just about worn off. It was a brilliant weekend, even better than 2009 if I may say so!

This year I teamed up with Matthew Simmons, Chris O’Donovan and Martyn Poole in Team FAIL HARDER (Team FAIL from last year, plus two) to produce the Global Game Jam Game Jam Boat Game. I spent my weekend up to my eyeballs in PHP, C# and pizza and made it through training alive.

Training for what, you say?

The X48 Microsoft XNA GameCamp will be at Birmingham City University next Friday-Saturday (19th-20th Feb) and Matthew Simmons, Martyn Poole, Jason Thomas and I will be there!

Over the weekend, we will have roughly 24 hours to produce a game using Microsoft’s XNA Framework, so it’s all the work in about half the time! Last year in Derby, my team produced Bellis Perennis which made 3rd place, so we have something to live up to this time!

Some interesting stats from last year’s X48 event - in 48 hours, we went through:

264 chocolate bars,
90 pints of milk,
80 Freddo bars,
100 assorted pizzas, and
315 assorted cans of energy drink

(More stats available at daytum.com/x48)

I’ll be tweeting from the event (as usual) via my Twitter page, and if you’re going I’ll see you there! The Inside Xbox video from last year’s event can be found below if you’re still wondering what it’s all about (look out for me at the back of my team at 1:35):

Weekend Developer: Top Tips to Survive a Game Dev Event

Sat, 23 Jan 2010 23:30:47 +0000

Image source: The Pizza Review

Developing a game in less than 48 hours is hard. It’s hard to stop your brain from melting, and hard to produce anything near useable code when you’re blood is 98% supermarket own-brand carbonated caffiene drink substitute at 4 in the morning. With less than a week to go until Global Game Jam 2010, I thought I’d share my top tips for surviving a quick-fire game development event…

1. Don’t limit your ideas

Given such a short time, you may be panicking about just what is possible in the time. Don’t. At least, don’t in the ideas stage. Take 15 minutes at the start for everyone in your team to come up with ideas, no matter how ambitious or stupid-sounding. Discuss them together - someone’s failed idea could spark the next big thing from someone else’s brain!

2. Don’t try to be a robot

You’ll perform much better if you take time out to sleep. Ok, you’ll lose a few hours of development time, but the vastly increased productivity of a fresh team will more than make up for it. Don’t rely on energy drinks to get you through.

3. K.I.S.S.

Keep It Simple (and) Stupid. If there’s an easy way of doing something, do it! You don’t have time to reinvent the wheel. Just be wary of any copyright or rules restrictions on the competition you’re in.

4. A good mix

There’s no point in having a team of 8 people, entirely made up of programmers who’ve only ever made one game in their life between them. Get a mixture of game artists and programmers and don’t make the team too large - Otherwise it’ll be a nightmare at the end when you’ve got to tie everyone’s stuff together and find half of it doesn’t work. In my experience, 2 artists and 2 programmers are plenty without going over-the-top.

5. Play to your strengths

Don’t make your amazing 2D artist struggle around with 3D modelling software; likewise don’t throw a Source engine specialist in at the deep end with the Unreal Development Kit. It’ll end up like porridge in a blender - a big sticky mess spread all over the kitchen.

6. An army marches on it’s stomach

Gummy bears and an IV drip of cheap syrup-y supermarket own-brand caffeine drinks should be supplied and refilled as required.

7. Don’t get tied to the computer

If you get bored, do something else for a while. Play a game, take a walk, talk to fellow developers, eat, sleep, do a handstand, learn to drive… oops, too far. Just do something away from the computer for a while to recharge.

8. Watch this video!

Last year’s Global Game Jam keynote video should be your first port of call… well, after this blog entry now I suppose… Anyway, it provides 8 tips for making the actual game itself, rather than simply staying alive through the event!

(Kyle Gabler’s tips section starts at 1:36 if you want to skip ahead)

9. Don’t be afraid for it to blow up in your face

Yes this is just a repeat of Mr Gabler’s last tip, but it bears repeating. The less you care about your game, the less it’ll suck. You’ll be more open to input from other people and be in less of a frantic rush to fix every little thing right at the end.

So have fun, and try not to pass out from exhaustion. If you’re doing the Global Game Jam next week, keep an eye on the webcams and I shall see you then!

Pinballz

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 18:08:52 +0000

I’ve seen my fair share of game studio recruitment sites, but most have yet to realise that the only real way to really speak to me is through the medium of catchy song lyrics.

Even play, even play, even play, even play, even play, even play, even play, even play, even play with our pinballlllllllllllllllllllz…

Imagine Cup 2010, IGF 2010 and Dream-(on...)-Build-Play

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 15:43:30 +0100

Photo from the 2009 Imagine Cup final

This summer’s calendar is certainly looking busy…

The 2009 Imagine Cup has just finished, but already the Poland 2010 event is starting! I’ve signed up for the Imagine Cup 2010 and ideas are already forming… The round 1 deadline is 1st April 2010, so who knows what might happen before then?

I’ll be posting progress updates on the blog as I go along, but nothing too detailed until after the round 1 deadline - we wouldn’t want cheating, would we?

Also on the cards for the near future is the Independent Games Festival Student Showcase 2010. Not sure about whether I’ll get time to do it, but I’ll certainly have a go!

Unfortunately, Dream-Build-Play is looking like a non-starter for me, due to this year’s event being an Xbox-only competition. Not having an Xbox myself, developing for one is going to be just a tiny bit difficult… Maybe next year.

Microsoft Research Student Celebration Day Videos

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 15:37:35 +0100

Video from Ed Dunhill of Microsoft

Various videos from the Microsoft Student Celebration Day held at Microsoft Research, Cambridge, which I was fortunate enough to have attended back in April, are now available for all to view. Of particular interest to me was the talk on fast route finding by Simon Peyton Jones (shown in the video above). If you want a clearer look at the slides from that presentation, they’re available in all their crystal-clear glory here.

More videos from the event are available from Ed Dunhill’s blog, with accompanying slides here.

Kodu

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:17:05 +0100

Video from IGN

Kodu Game Lab from Microsoft looks like an interesting tool for co-op game creation on the Xbox 360. While I don’t foresee “the next big thing” in gaming being created with it, it certainly seems like its simple interface and ease of use could just have the potential to kick-start some new programming and design talent into considering the games industry as a viable career choice, which can only be good in the long-run.