H1DD3N.R350URC3 » Link

Good Old Games releases Realms of Arkania

sascha — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 04:03:09 +0000

After their last RPG masterpiece release, the Might & Magic 6-Pack, gog.com have now released Realms of Arkania 1+2 and 3. RoA is the English version of what I only knew as Das Schwarze Auge in German back in the 16-bit days of Amiga. If my memory serves me right only the first part of RoA made it to the Amiga while the two followers were only available for DOS.

Realms of Arkania is classic hardcore role-playing, flip3D style intermezzed with isometric combat screens and you can get this for a ridiculous cheap price now.

So far gog.com is only releasing DOS or Windows based games. For some games I wish they’d add Amiga games to their line-up simply because many Amiga games were better than their DOS conversions, just take a look at highly regarded Hired Guns. in case of Hired Guns you feel that the developers were a team of Amiga enthusiasts. The DOS version feels bland and rushed compared to the shiny and atmosphere-oozing Amiga version.

Either way, for DOS games Good Old Games are packing their releases up with a copy of DOSBox pre-configured and ready to install and run. For Amiga versions they would probably have to pack up a copy of WinUAE to assure a hassle-free experience. Not sure how that would work out.

10 Days …

sascha — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 04:40:53 +0000

… until the president election! Do the world a favor and vote for the right guys. And by that I mean not for THEM! People with at least a tad of intelligence now that Barack dances better anyway.

Aw Snap! This site is not meant for you!

sascha — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 05:22:12 +0000

Chrome, the new snazzy browser from Google is currently in everyone’s mouth and most people who had a look at it seem to be impressed so I decided to give it a go, after all it can’t be so bad, right?

Chrome installs right onto your system from the website and then takes over (or if you are cynical: steals) all the bookmarks, history, passwords etc. from Firefox (to make your life easier). It then opens with a slick and slender window that lacks all the tackiness of a plugin-convoluted Firefox. When opening a new tab it shows a neat history list with thumbnails of your most recent visited websites. Chrome starts up as fast as a finger snap! Maybe even faster! Can it get any better?

>> Continue reading "Aw Snap! This site is not meant for you!"

Font Creation with Flex

sascha — Sun, 18 May 2008 05:13:26 +0000

Fontstruct is an online font creator whose editor has been obviously developed with Flex. Users can register and design their own fonts which are made available for download. Looks slick!

A Love Letter to Flash

sascha — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 09:18:29 +0000

Not from myself but I’d like to second his words … A Love Letter to Flash

Planewalker Games “The Broken Hourglass” RPG Development Insights

sascha — Sat, 26 May 2007 06:57:51 +0000

A valuable resource for everyone who is thinking/planning to write a roleplaying game … Indie developer Planewalker Games who are currently making their debut RPG The Broken Hourglass are publishing precious bits of insider information about their game engine called WeiNGINE. The Broken Hourglass is a computer roleplaying game with a strong visual relation to late nineties RPG pearls like Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale or Planescape: Torment (who all were based on the Infinity Engine).
Some examples of their articles: Inside the Engine – Introduction to Items, Inside the Engine – Introduction to Sprites, Rules and Mechanics – Group Skills … and there’s a whole lot more when navigating through the links at the bottom of the pages. I kind of soak up such detailed information on game/RPG design as such things are sparsely seeded on the web (you will not see such information leaking from commercial developers!)

A MySpace for Gamers and Game Devs

sascha — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 05:09:03 +0000

Check out The Great Game Experiment, a community site especially for gamers and game developers. Members can introduce their favorite games, add new games, meet other gamers/developers etc. The site also focuses on Independent Game Developers, after all it was Jeff Tunnel of Garage Games who breathed life into it (The same Jeff Tunnel of Dynamix fame btw! Games like Project Firestart and Rise of the Dragon come to my mind).

Developers can introduce their creations and find other developers – both professional and hobbyist – to get working together on a project. Games made in Flash are welcome and there’s even a category for it.

Woahoazers!

sascha — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 03:45:47 +0000

Check out this 3D isometric game engine called renderhjs made in Flash! It took me three days to get my jaw back up from the floor!! (Ok, I’m lying there, I just found this link about ten minutes ago). Not only is it real-time calculated and fully textured 3D but it is written in ActionScript 2 for Flash Player 8 as a minimum. There are some glitches (watch the water basins in the toilet while rotating around) but still this is most impressive! In fact it looks even better than the graphics in Resident Evil. All I’m missing is a control to move the camera around freely but nevertheless it would be awesome to see a full game of this. (via UnitZeroOne).

So you want to be an Indie Developer?

sascha — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 07:13:48 +0000

Some links to nine articles about the topic on ‘becoming an Independent Game Developer‘, found via Digg. Some more interesting, some less, the last one from a Mac perspective. There seems to be a lot of discussion about if it turns out to be paying off or not etc., in short, things that don’t interest me that much, I’m just creating games because I have fun doing it and I like the practical side, I’m more of a hobbyist! Either way, here are the links …

Introversion
Cliffski’s Mumblings
GameProducer.net
Lemmy and Binky
Reality Fakers
Zoombapup
BoneBroke
They Came from Hollywood
gusmueller

Flash your own Converse Sneaker together

sascha — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 04:34:39 +0000

Just found this yesterday via Adobe Consulting Blog … Converse – Chuck Taylor, Jack Purcell, Basketball Shoes, Design Your Own Converse Shoes. Click on the first shoe under Collection. You can design your own sneaker with your own style of color combination and even add a personalized text at the side or back. I first thought its a nice gimmick for playing but in fact you can order your designed shoe in your preferred size! I’m a big fan of classic sneakers but I have rather large feet and finding large sneakers in Japan is more than just a challenge so I thought I’d make my own couple of neatly colored Cons and order them … until I saw the Shipping in U.S. only sign! Damn! Well at least I could print my design out. Here’s my low top suede model ‘Venice Nights’ …

This shoe designer is a nice example that shows that Flash really needs to support 3D! Imagine you could freely rotate and texture the shoe model! Wouldn’t that be cool?!

Fotologue – The Japanese answer to Flickr

sascha — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 05:33:50 +0000

Fotologue which was Japanese only for a while has been translated into English and opened up it’s gates for anyone else around the globe! Not only does it look much more stylish than Flickr or any other photo sharing site, it’s also completely done in Flash! Check out my gallery for a quick preview of how the user galleries look.
via If Then Else

Which Open Source License is good for you?

sascha — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 10:26:56 +0000

I was trying out Google’s own code repository Google Code today, finally delving into some SVN knowledge with Subclipse and was starting to wonder if there is actually an explaination about all those Open Source Licenses which is understandable for non-lawyers. A quick googling gave me this useful ZDNet link … HOWTO: Pick an open source license where the editor describes some of the most common licenses like GPL, MIT, BSD, Apache etc. in a more concise and clear way. It makes it much easier than digging through all those license text at opensource.org.

More Coding Fonts

sascha — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 05:45:57 +0000

Found these today on my daily dose of Stumble Upon random links … Proggy Programming Fonts! Still coding with Courier? Maybe it’s time for a change?!

How to survive IT meetings

sascha — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 16:54:17 +0000

A Developer’s Guide to Surviving Meetings … an invaluable guide for those long and boring meetings! Be sure to also read the comments as there are some nice tips as well!

Oldschool Gaming Goodness in Flash

sascha — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 02:58:32 +0000

Thy Dungeonman 3: Behold Thy Graphics, a text/graphics adventure from Homestarrunner in the style of the very early days of computing. Complete with fake floppy load delay and amber screen display! You find yourself in a dungeon cell with doom lurking all around you. The texts are intentionally exaggerated old ‘english’ and once you got out of the first area you’ll notice that this game plays quite smooth. It’s a short but funny and while you’re there, you find several other oldschool imitations on Homestarrunner and videlectrix.com.

Star Wars Wiki

sascha — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 20:09:58 +0000

Wookiepedia, a Wiki solely dedicated to the Star Wars universe! How nice to see that some people have already been very busy filling the database with tons and tons of background info on Star Wars related things. Ever wanted to know how Bossk’s ship looks, why Yuuzahn Vong are such a fearsome species or what the name of the asteroid is where Luke and Leia were born? It’s all in there! They even have listed many of the source books of the Star Wars D6 and D20 Pen & Paper Roleplaying games. With all those loads of information it becomes clear that the movies are only a small fragment of what makes the Star Wars Universe so intricate and vast!

Flash Racer Blog

sascha — Tue, 23 Aug 2005 13:35:23 +0000

A development blog about a racing game done in Flash! Some interesting posts there, one about AI for computer controlled racing cars. It seems they will update their blog as development progresses so I will put it on my watch list. I still keep the idea in the back of my mind about writing a ‘view from above’ racing game like Super Cars or Micro Machines.

Game Music Oracle

drcolossus — Fri, 05 Dec 2003 03:11:00 +0000

finally found an excellent sorted database site about all sorts of game music! on www.mirsoft.info is a well worked out database containing info on all kinds of video games and formats! even found some info about the fighting force 1 soundtrack, which became one of my favorite by the time…. despite others gave it a medium rating, i’d say it is well made! they cover alot of formats from digital audio to Turbo Grafx-16 HES music but there is no original music downloadable, except for several MIDI files and alot of links to other sites.