Sorry about the caps

The Consolevania team recently put together a 50-minute long documentary about the scottish games industry. It was shown at the Edinburgh Interactive Festival, and is available for torrent here and direct download from various locations found here.

Watch it, its funny and informative. You may see a certain Colin in it for about 5 seconds, actually.  It was rated 18 when shown at the festival, so expect the usual antics!

What a classic! Now free for download in celebration of its 12th anniversary.

I must announce that my game design hat is back upon my head. This is the reason we have no updates here, sorry!

There is currently a car design contest being run over at the Wheels of War website, give it a shot!

It’s great when you stumble on a bit of your own past, as I did here.

This was my first game project, a modification for Return to Castle Wolfenstein. I was Lead User Interface, as well as a level designer. It was great fun, and ended up being a nice total conversion, even if it didn’t last too long popularity wise. We got around 20,000 downloads within 48 hours of release, and (somebody correct me if they know better), we were the first game to feature wave-based parachute spawning! It is a great feeling to see how people had fun with your own creations - one of the reasons for my interest in the games industry.

We even got reviewed in PC Gamer and PC Format, scans following.

Unfortunately the site is not online any more. It is still up on archive.org at wolftactics.com, if anyone is bored.

I stumbled upon this about two years ago. Since then it has made steady progress, and it is quite fun - even if you don’t have a wheel and pedals. Mouse control can revolve around quadrants of the screen for acceleration, breaking and steering. It may sound dull/weird here but its a nice way of controlling the car.

There are hundreds of cars and many community developed tracks out there, ranging from in development cityscapes to a fully-fledged version of the Nürburgring.

Go download it. Now!

Today we witnessed the deadliest shooting at a US school. I am now going to be horribly blunt.

The first thing that sprung to my mind was “Bloody hell, Jack is going to have a field day with this”. I was not to be dissapointed! For those not familiar with Jack Thompson, he is a lawer in the US set against blaming computer games for anything and everything - regardless.

So, not surprisingly, we see him on Fox news pulling more media stunts to preach his thoughts. It sickens me people like this can be put in such a position of power within the media. Within a few hours after a major incident he can come on millions of TVs and claim anything; even before the shooters are identified.

P.S. Some may get a little peeved I am posting anything about him (the more attention he gets… etc etc), but some of the people I know read here may not have heard of the guy, hence the post.

UPDATE (2007-04-17):

A comment left by Robert included another article on a similar subject, you can find it here. Thanks for the link.

Seems like there is a thread on the Xbox 360 forums causing a stir. Those of you with GH2 may want to read it.

A select quote:

I, too, am a proud owner of a white brick that flashes red lights. Called up MS and have to pay for the repair. If the patch is the cause of the hardware failure, the I hope that Red Octane picks up the bill.

Recently I took a trip to the Virgin Megastore on Buchannan Street, Glasgow. As always, I went to have a look at the games floor.

As soon as you step off the escalator, you find the small Xbox360 stand. It was surrounded by say 5 or 6 teenagers, all playing this driving game. It looked fantastic. The attention to detail was evident: from the small view movement on turns and bumps to the camera flashes in the crowd. Unfortunately I didn’t stay long enough to catch the name of the game - the PS3 stand beckoned!

Whilst I may have been programming on the console for months now (and now have an extra shiny 22″ HD display on my desk for it), I have never once played a game on it. So, when I turned to see a huge PS3 stand, seats included, I went to see what the lone player was playing.

Sonic the frakking Hedgehog.

Not only that, but a really bad looking Sonic. Every time the player jumped, the screen stuttered down to some 10-12 fps. It may as well have been 2D for how I saw it. Certainly not a very good first impression!

Doesn’t seem true, does it?

In the UK, major retailers such as Game and Gamestation pull a huge amount of profit from pre-owned games. The publishers get no money from these sales. With the huge leap in direct-download and all the DRM involved in that (which makes it impossible to resell your game, hence increasing publisher profit) you would have thought Sony would want to get up close and cosy with the idea.

What I am trying to say is, if they are not going to do away with retail, then the content model is going to change. Think episodic content. Think paying for extra stuff. The game you buy in retail spaces is only the base; they will make the money in selling you the extra content which you used to get anyway when buying a game.

This doesnt include the huge wads of cash people now pay for subscriptions to games like WoW now, though!

Valve have stated that the ‘its-done-when-its-done’ Team Fortress 2 has cross platform play over the xbox 360 and the PC.

Why?

I sure hope that this did not add to development time. Quake 3 on the dreamcast anyone?

When will people learn…