Nick.

Heidi finally got a new laptop (Compaq CQ60 118TX) on Friday, so I went about repurposing her old computer (Asus S1300A; Pentium3 1GHz, 128Mb RAM) for use by her niece and nephew.

Given that she’s had the same install of Windows XP on it for… ever (2002), it’s been running insanely slowly. However, we figured it would be fine with a lightweight version of Linux. After all, the kids only really need a web-browser so that they can play flash games right?

Anyhow, the tail-end of the story is that the machine is now running a clean recovery version of Windows XP (and currently downloading SP3). I tried a bunch of Linux distributions and they were either too memory or processor intensive (most commonly) or just too esoteric to hand over to someone else. Maybe I should have tried older versions of Linux…

Here’s the list of Linux distributions I tried:

• Ubuntu 8.10: required Alternative install CD; memory requirements were too high
• Xubuntu 8.10: required Alternative install CD; processor too slow
• Debian 5.0 + LXDE: processor stepped to 600MHz by default; Browser (Ice Weasel) performance too slow; too esoteric
• gOS 3.1 Gadgets: CD wouldn’t boot (uses ISOLinux); could use a boot floppy, but the laptop doesn’t have a floppy drive

At that point time was running out and I used the recovery CDs that came with the laptop to return to Windows XP. Performance is much better under Windows XP for this particular hardware, although I’ve ordered an additional 256Mb of RAM which should help a lot for Linux.

I’m considering trying to install Ubuntu 7.10 and then installing the gOS packages, but it’s going to be tough justifying putting more time into this if Windows XP SP3 works fine.

Update: I should mention that I used the awesome Super Grub Disk to fix the MBR (to boot into Windows) after using the recovery disks. It was a great tool for MBR repair.

Update: Installing Puppy Linux as per Rich’s suggestion. The Live CD was crazy fast, wifi worked without hassle, and the browser (Sea Monkey) comes with a flash player! 🙂

Just caught up with Simon for lunch and a bit of follow-up on our previous plans for a collaborative art exhibition. Since my trip to Japan, I’ve been pretty keen to have a small exhibition as a sort of concentrated and directed alternative to the traditional having-people-over-and-boring-them-with-holiday-photos.

We’ve laid out a basic timeline and are planning on 4-5 pieces each (some composed of multiple works). It was great discussing concepts and planning how they could be represented. We’re going for a sort of high-art/low-art approach contrasting relatively traditional concept realisation with more… progressive approaches.

I won’t say too much more because I don’t want to pollute the experience with pre-conceptions. Hopefully we’ll pull things together by the end of next month, and be ready to exhibit in early May. Yay!

I thought that I would use the same title as Joseph’s goodbye post to let people know that I’ve formally resigned from my position as a VP at Interzone Entertainment.

As announced on the corporate website and as evident by the Australian Interzone Futebol website, the team is currently preparing for an Australian Closed Beta (the first English-language Closed Beta for the game).

If you are a PC-gamer or soccer fan in Australia (especially if you are in Perth) you should really check it out. I can’t reveal any game details here, but I will say that it is a fantastic game built by some amazing people!

I’m immensely proud to have led the development team in getting the game to this point, and I have every confidence in those that will be taking it to a commercial launch and beyond.

I’m going to live the quiet and relaxed life for a while; with marriage in a couple of months and a lot of blogging in my near future. Take care Interzone. 🙂

Continue reading “Goodbye Interzone”

I apologise profusely for neglecting audio skills in the skillset portion of the perth games industry survey. This will be rectified in the next version of the survey (probably in 3 months).

If you are an audio or music person, please leave a comment at the end of the survey or in response to this post!

I don’t really want anything else out of a phone other than good battery life and the ability to make and recieve phone calls and send and recieve sms messages. I also don’t really listen to music “on the go”; I much prefer just listening to the sounds of the environment I’m moving through.

However, I may eventually get an iPhone or iPod Touch. Why? The games. I tend to buy hardware for a game platform when there are enough games (released or imminent) to justify the purchase. This happened pretty quickly for the Wii and DS, but took a lot longer for the PS3, PSP, and finally the Xbox360.

In general, I haven’t been very impressed with iPhone games. However, it looks like there are a few worthwhile games amongst the plethora of ports, crappy games, and titles that I’m just not interested in. Maybe when I find four games that I really like, I’ll jump into a purchase.

Cam showed me Zen Bound the other day and it looks awesome.

I’m also interested in Eliss, which is highly recommended over at OddWorld.

Finally, I’m keen to check out RjDj (not a game) and Chris’s GhostWave.

Anyone have any iPhone or iPod Touch game recommendations?

I’ve put a Perth games industry survey up at:

• http://survey.letsmakegames.org

I announced the survey on the IGDA Perth and PIGMI mailing lists around 15 minutes ago and there have already been over 20 responses!

Here’s a blurb from the survey introduction:

The information gathered by this survey will be used to produce a Perth games industry profile document, which will summarise general characteristics and capabilities of the local industry. We want to facilitate organic and sustainable growth to help ensure a long-term future for game developers in Perth, and a clear objective assessment of the local industry is an important part of making this happen.

We want to hear from you if: you are in the industry, want to get into the industry, or even if you have left the industry. We will greatly appreciate if you could take the time to complete this survey.”

If you are part of the Perth games development community, please take a few minutes to complete the survey. I’ll present initial results at the IGDA Perth meeting tomorrow and put a more detailed report online in a few weeks.

Update: Almost 50 responses so far! Thanks to everyone who participated. Please tell your friends!

This post is just a quick recap of the last few days (I don’t really have time for a full blog post for each thing that happened).

Here we go:

• I made my first (basic) flash game using Haxe and FlashDevelop (which is a really nice IDE)… then ran into a bug when adding more features.
• I bought a HD (1080p@30fps) digital video camera for only AU$299 (that’s less then US$200). It’s much better than I expected, I’ll post more on it later.
• I setup LimeSurvey (at an as-yet-unannounced location) and I’m preparing a Perth games industry survey. Thanks to Will for mentioning LimeSurvey on a PIGMI mailing list discussion; It looks good so far.
• I saw the Watchmen movie. Without spoiling it, I’ll say that it was enjoyable. I think it’s a good sign when you only realise that a movie was really long after you’ve seen it. 🙂

I’ll try to get more fleshed out posts for the above notes.

Is there anything in particular people want to hear more about? 😉

Charming short film:

via VideoSift.

My sister was married on Saturday, so I now have my first official brother-in-law! The weather was perfect, the venue was excellent, and everyone had a great time.

I won’t say much more here since I’m not sure how private she wants to keep things. She’s the first of my siblings to be get married (although not the first to get engaged :P) and they seem so incredibly happy together.

It seems like heaps of games feature some sort of “rewind feature” these days. From the never-really-made-it-big Blinx, to the let’s-keep-making-sequels Prince of Persia series, to the art-house title Braid… everyone is doing it. And why not? It feels like part of the logical progression from creating machines that eat coins to a more conceptual view of “gaming”.

I need to segway a little bit here and explain my view of the timeline of major game innovations (aka. realising when stuff doesn’t matter):

1. In early games you have a certain number of credits (or lives) and play for a high score. This is so that arcade machines make money by appealing to our competitive nature.
2. We’ve been moving away from the concepts of lives and scores for quite a while. Home users have already bought the console, so you don’t need to continually slog them for coins. Moreover scores are meaningless in many games.
3. (Some) companies realise that it’s stupid to punish the player when their character “dies”. It’s incredibly rare that you have to start the entire game again because you are out of lives, but you are generally still set back in some way.

The minimal punishment you can inflict on a player when their character dies (or when they hit point in the game where they can’t progress due to something they messed up) is to return them to just before that happened. An excellent way to put them in control of the situation is to let them rewind the game whenever they want.

Rewind and fast-forward are used in a some of classic console emulators (eg. NesDS) in order to make the games of yester-year more palatable to today’s gamers. Why not make it a standard feature in future game consoles? Throw in other standard controls like pause and fast-forward. There’s already more feature integration at the console operating system level (networking, billing, save game management, quitting, achievements/trophies).

It might sound weird now, but it could be part of making games more mainstream. People are used to rewind, fast-forward, chapter selection, etc. in other media. Why not in games?

Bottom line: I’d play more platformers if I could rewind, and I’d definately play more Japanese RPGs if I could fast-forward.