Dwarf Fortress

A friend of mine recently introduced me to a game called Dwarf Fortress.  The pitch went something like this:

“Have you ever heard of Dungeon Keeper?”

“Have you ever heard of Fuck Yeah I’ve heard of Dungeon Keeper?”

“Well this is like Dungeon Keeper, except way more sophisticated and in three dimensions”.

At this point I started gibbering maniacally as I attempted to assimilate the awesomeness of the concept leveled at my encephalon.

“Well there’s just one thing, it’s a roguelike, all the graphics are in ASCII”.

What an emotional roller coaster.  I thought it was too good to be true.  If Dungeon Keeper 3 ever emerged from the ashes of a studio murdered by EA, I would be waiting in line outside Future Shop with tears of joy in my eyes.  The concept of hacking away at an ASCII game though did not really appeal to me.  Nevertheless, I gave it a try.

That was a week ago, and I haven’t eaten or slept since.  I sit here, moribund and wretched, hoping that this game will release me from its cruel, cruel embrace.  The developers who wrote this game are clearly doing it for their own amusement, and find the development of gameplay to be infinitely more interesting than making it pretty or intuitive.

Despite the face that the game uses only ASCII graphics, it requires a modern processor.  The reason for this is because all the cycles usually spent figuring out where polygons should go and how exactly to display them, in real-time, have been freed up to do insane gameplay things.  For example:

• The first time you play, you need to procedurally generate a world in which you will put your fortress.  This world will be big.  Fractal algorithms will be used to generate terrain.  Erosion will be applied.  Rock formations are geologically accurate, as is the hydrology.  An entire history will be generated for this world, for you to explore should you so desire to do so in Adventurer mode.
• Water behaves as water should, including transmitting pressure.  I have learned this the hard way after trying to dig reservoirs for myself and watching my fortress flood from below as the water rushes up.
• Dwarves have minds of their own.  On one occasion, one of my dwarves saw fit to kill another dwarf, drag his body into a workshop, tear his skull off, and make it into a totem.  He was laughing insanely the entire time.  I found this to be both highly amusing and somewhat disturbing (but mostly hilarious).
• Mechanical power exists, and you’ll have to build series of gears and axles if you want to harness it.  Due to what I assume is a bug in the game, it’s currently possible to make a waterwheel which powers a pump…which drives the waterwheel.  This setup will in fact also generate additional power that you can use to do useful work.  Apparently the developers don’t give a shit about the first and second laws of thermodynamics.
• Extremely sophisticated build pipelines exist, there seems to be 40-50 different types of work that dwarves can do, and it’s reasonably amusing to find a way to get that working properly.
• Losing is fun… and lose you will.  The learning curve of this game is like scaling a sheer cliff made of jagged glass - and your eyes only see the world in ASCII.  There’s something deeply amusing about piping a magma vent into the lair of some rowdy minotaurs who happened to be sharing the land with you, only to discover you’ve breached your fortress into theirs at a different level, and all your dwarves are dying in a firey blaze as well.

This is not a game for the meek, but if you can get over the initial struggle, you may also find yourself near death in front of your computer, contemplating how many times the sun has gone up and down since you last went outside.

New Force Unleashed Video

I’ve always wanted to choke a wookie.

Burn the Rope

If Portal was a Flash game, it would be You Have To Burn The Rope.

You should go play it right now. If you get stuck, here’s a walkthrough.

Get Over the Hardcore

Stardock has built themselves a tidy little market turning around profits that are orders of magnitude higher than their development costs (under a million!).  They’ve done this on the piracy haven that is the PC, and without using DRM.  In the dawning hours, as the industry is starting to realize the potential in casual gaming, I think we can predict a related move:  Getting away from the hardcore gamer.  Trends that begun with the first high resolution FPS in the nineties are beginning to reverse.  I predict in the next 5 years a major shift away from those large budget titles and into a field of much smaller, more innovative and original titles with smaller development budgets, delivered through digital distribution, and appeasing a much broader audience than the twitch crowds.

And I’m looking forward to it.  (On a related note, Dreamfall is getting released on Xbox Originals on Monday!)

A Week in Cuba

As previously mentioned, I went on vacation last week, and apparently the world does not stop while I’m laying on the beach.

Big news of the last week.  Apparently it was GDC or something.  I wasn’t there, so if you want juicy GDC goodness, you’ll have to look elsewhere.

Microsoft

• Microsoft, in a new initiative called Dreamspark is making much of its developer software free to students.  This software includes Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server, XNA Game Studio, XNA Creator’s Club Subscription, and Expression Studio.  That should be plenty of tools for would be game developers to muck about in.  Details are here.
• Microsoft is dropping support for HD-DVD with the discontinuation of the add-on for the Xbox 360.  All remaining units are being cleared at firesale for $50.  I would not be surprised if there was a Blu-ray add-on in the future.
• Microsoft announced during the GDC 2008 Keynote a new service, the so-called Xbox Live Community Games.  Under this service, users can build a game using XNA Game Studio, and then upload it directly to a community portal where the game is democratically reviewed.  The reviewing process is intended to look for infringing or objectionable material.  The best of these games get automatically uploaded to Xbox Live for the masses to enjoy.  No specifics on pricing, or if the developer is getting kickbacks (as one would assume they would if Microsoft is collecting on their work).

Sony
On the Sony side of things, Phil Harrison, one of the founding members of Sony Computer Entertainment, and the president of SCE Worldwide Studios, has submitted his resignation.  Changes in leadership often come with widespread changes across the board, but it depends on the size and momentum of the company in question, and Sony is rather largeish, so I would not anticipate a massive change in the direction of their games.

Australia

Australia is talking about finally getting a new rating that will allow more mature titles to be sold there.  Unfortunately, I doubt this will alleviate the massive delays they usually incur before North American/Japanese release, and release to the land down under.

Electronic Arts

EA is offering to buy Take Two!  I would suggest in reaction to the recent Activision/Vivendi merger, EA is looking to add some more meat to its already colossal frame.  EA’s new CEO John Riccitiello has mentioned that he’s extremely unhappy with the scores EA’s games have been getting of late, so there might be some incentive to own some games that are critically acclaimed (which might have fueled the recent acquisition of Bioware as well).  Take Two is brimming with talent, including the developers of the Grand Theft Auto series (Rockstar), Bioshock (2K Games), and Civilization (Firaxis).  While EA’s initial bid is a bit lower than Take Two is looking for, most analysts are expecting this deal to go through eventually at some price point.

On a side note, Take Two is the current owner of one of my favorite IPs of all time, the Tex Murphy series.  This series was created by Access Software (later renamed to Indie Built) in the 90s.  Microsoft acquired them for the Links Golf series, and then sold the company to Take-Two who then shut it down.  While a revival is not likely at EA, it’s marginally more likely than at the parent who shut them down in the first place.

EA has a habit of killing great teams by using simple business math.  If you have everyone using the same tools and processes, costs are lower.  Unfortunately, this slows down and breaks the dynamic that produced the great team in the first place.  This is something you can do with teams that are having trouble realizing their full potential, perhaps due to infrastructural problems, but when you acquire a really solid team, it’s important that you just leave them alone to do their thing.  Riccitiello seems to be aware of this, so perhaps Take Two’s properties are not going to join the legacies of Westwood, Bullfrog, and Origin.

Havok

Havok is free, to which I say, OMGWTFBBQ.  Well, okay, it’s only free on the PC, but as of May 2008, you at home will be able to download your very own copy of Havok Complete (which includes the Physics and Animation packages).  This is a non-commercial license, but it allows hobbyists to get their hands dirty with the most widely used physics engine in the PC gaming space, which is good for companies looking to hire people who know Havok already.  This theoretically lays some groundwork for Havok’s more specialized products for behavioral animation, deformable solids, and cloth rendering.

And that’s all that happened this week, I’ll be posting on a more semi-regular basis now.

Spore Release Date Announced

September 7, 2008.  Mark your calendars.

Steamworks

Valve has announced a new design platform for PC game design called Steamworks, available free of charge. The suite of tools seems to focus on easing some production-level issues rather than design issues. This includes smoothing delivery of the game through Steam’s retail channel, as well as providing certain frameworks to improve a game so delivered, notably in the multi-player arena.

Most notably in my opinion is the inclusion of hooks for getting play data back from the users once they’ve been launched.  This type of data gathering immensely helps developers get information about how the players are playing their game, and thus to take this data back and use it to improve designs for future titles.

All of this of course depends on the utilization of Steam as the delivery channel, something very few large studios would want to commit exclusively to.  I’ve asked Jason Holtman how well Steamworks would interface with XNA, as these two technologies seem to me to be functionally, if not technically, complementary.  If I hear back from him, I’ll update this page.

The Force Unleashed

Summer 2008. Want.

If LucasArts is telling me that this is what a talented team can create when several highly specialized engines are integrated, then I will tell you that you’re looking at the future of development. Despite my earlier criticism of Assassin’s Creed, they had a similar philosophy in that the gameplay should be inherently fun. Assassin’s Creed did that in spades, the problem was that they beat the same mechanics until they lay raw and bloodied on the floor, and I lost interest in doing the same tasks over and over again. Hopefully The Force Unleashed will do a better job of wrapping more into the game than throwing people around like dolls. If they do, this game will set a new bar for action developers.

A natural consequence of this is that engine developers will begin to create standard interfaces to which they will conform. This will enhance the interoperability of these engines, and make it far less expensive and difficult to get the effects you’re seeing in the video below.

The Thoughts of Rambling Morons on Mass Effect

I’m sure most of you have heard of the debacle with the news network that time and time again has me wondering what kind of people actually believe the things it tells them, Fox News. I could spell out a lovely rant about why this insipid media station pushes nothing but beligerent nonsense that rarely has a single fact straight, but I think X-Play’s Adam Sessler can do it for me. Enjoy.

Duke Nukem Forever

Lewis Black has this good sketch about how the punchline to any joke can be “Michael Jackson”, but really, that’s all you need to say. Duke Nukem Forever is the Michael Jackson of the video game industry. What I don’t understand is how you can not make money for that long and still stay in business. It’s now over 10 years since the announcement, and most people have simply put it aside and waited for 3D Realms to eventually announce that they’re canceling it. Today’s teaser trailer brings it back into the spotlight again, but seems to be more of a desperate plea, saying “Hey guys, we still exist”, rather than a true indication that the game is on track for release.  Especially since said teaser trailer looks more like a step up from Normality rather than a state of the art FPS.  Which, I mean, I’m fine with that.  Far be it for me to encourage a further development in the arms race that is video game graphics, but if that’s what you have to say for yourself after going dark for 6 years or so.  Just, wow.

Eli Hodapp has an eye opening list of things that have occurred since Duke Nukem Forever was announced. I highly encourage you to read it, as it’s hilarious. Some Highlights:

• Google and eBay have come into existence
• Every single major Peer-to-Peer file sharing application, including Napster have been developed
• Blizzard releases Diablo 2, Starcraft, Warcraft 3, and World of Warcraft, and expansions for all of these
• Every movie, animation, and video game from The Matrix series
• The entire Grand Theft Auto, Halo, Metal Gear Solid, and Thief series’ have been made
• Steve Jobs rejoins Apple Computer and releases the iPod
• Every Massively Multiplayer Online Game other than Meridian 59
• The entire South Park Series
• Every Pokemon game outside of Japan
• Valve releases the best game ever made, twice (Half-Life, and Half-Life 2), as well as Team Fortress 2, Steam, and every Counter-Strike game
• Black Isle Studios is formed, creates over 7 of the best RPGs ever including Fall-out, Fall-out 2, the Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale series’, and is disbanded
• The Euro is created
• All three Star Wars prequels and all three Lord of the Rings movies are made
• The entire Harry Potter series of novels

World War 2, and the entire Manhattan Project, culminating in the invention of Nuclear technology happened in less time than the development of DNF. The entire moon-landing, from Kennedy’s challenge to the touch-down on the moon, occurred in less time than DNF has been in production, so far.

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