I have been playing Centipede (info, screenshots) on my Atari 2600 for the first time today. It is amazing how well it stands up in gameplay to modern games (I guess there is no reason why it shouldn’t really, but it is still suprising). What caught my attention most with the game is the clever gameplay mechanic it uses. Every element of the game puts the player in the position where they have to balance risk against reward.

Do you want 900pts for shooting a spider? Better shoot the spider point blank. Don’t like the risk of a point blank shot? Shoot from a distance for 300pts.

Want to slow down the centipede? Then shoot the mushrooms in its path - but get less bonus points when you lose a life. Want more bonus points? Then leave the mushrooms on screen and handle the centipede’s rapid descent.

When you die you usually feel that is is your fault. You were too greedy and took one risk too many. Note that this feeling plays alongside the more typical feeling of either the game being too hard or that you are not good enough to beat it, but it has a very different effect on the player. Almost always it gives players the “just-one-more-go” syndrome. Not many games manage to get this across well and it is nice to see such a perfect example that was originally released way back in 1982! (I was just one year old then!).

While many modern developers talk of the risk-reward balance, very few games made lately seem to show a good approach to working with the risk-reward balance in-game. Many games present players with a choice of performing an action with a fixed risk-reward balance: Should I go down the pit with the spiders to get the gold or not? What is great about Centipede is that it takes this binary descision and makes it analogue: (In the case of the earlier example) How many spiders can I take on in a pit, given that I’ll fine 1 gold coin for each spider. This acts to involve the player more in the game as the player himself (or herself) becomes the one defining the difficulty landscape of the game.

I really enjoy playing games based around a core mechanic, and Centipede is one of the best examples of this I have seen in a while (even though it is 22 years old!).

Right, back to work!

I haven’t really paid as much attention to nVidia & Epic’s Make Something Unreal contest as I should have, but at the moment I’m checking out a few of the entries. I’m not really into online games at the moment so delights such as Red Orchestra will have to wait until I have the time (and motivation) but I am trying to check out the singleplayer entries. They are all very impressive but I was drawn to play Damnation first.

Damnation is a first and third-person action game (with platform elements) running on UT2004. Graphically it is initially very impressive with a good “steampunk” style to it and some nicely modelled characters. Animation is also good but with a few glitches especially with things like one of the player characters coats passing through his legs etc… I was expecting straight forward FPS style action from the gameplay but it is more like a mix between Prince of Persia: Sands of Time and a console FPS of some kind. While playing Damnation is an enjoyable experience the clash between it’s first and third person modes is a cause of many annoying problems. Third person view is used for moving about, negotiation some of the more platform style areas and interacting with things like ladders and switches. Combat is entirely reserved for the first person view, which makes sense as the weapons are all projectile, but for an unknown reason you cannot climb ladders or throw switches while in first-person view (unless I missed something obvious).

The platform elements are the moments that will make most people sit up and realise Damnation is something different. Players can hang from ledges, climb ropes and ladders, jump across large gaps in a very “Tomb Raider” manner and initially you feel a little “led by the hand” but nothing seems to bad. After playing for a bit longer you find the platforming elements just break the flow of the game too much. Fixed cameras implemented in some places when in third-person view cause the usual problems with buttons suddenly taking you in the opposite direction when the fixed camera cuts it. Also the jumping seemed to me to be a bit hit or miss with the camera placement of the fixed cameras or the third-person view never allowing you to judge distance quite accurately enough for my liking. That’s quite alot of negativity! Yet I still enjoyed playing it so if you have 15 or so minutes to spare give it a go!

I’ve been having a couple of days away from my major project (SmallWorld) lately and that has proved been both good and bad. I used the time to get all this mad web stuff up and running and did loads of other things that I had been putting off (like updating the MyLuminaries.com code, booking one-on-one Swedish lessons etc…) which is all good. But on the bad side I feel like I should be working. And that makes me feel anxious. Which makes it hard to get back to doing serious work, because you worry about everything. Still once you realise this is going on things get easier, but still, it is not pleasent.

I also have a few things lined up over the weekend and first half of the week that are all good but I am beginning to feel “time cluttered”. And as anyone who knows me knows this isn’t a good state for me to be in! I just need to chill for a bit I think.

Still, Karin has booked a flight over to England in the beginning of March so I am looking forward to that, so much!

(Enough self indulgent crap! Listen to Puffy AmiYumi and I promise something will go into the gamedev category soon…)

It’s 9:20am or thereabouts and I still haven’t slept. Oh well. In a fit of tired restlessness I have just integrated my new Flickr account with the site (a few mods had to be made and it is still not 100% how I want it but…) which is nice. Eventually I will use flickr to store the latest screen shots from my work (when my confidence can take it!). Until then enjoy my random test pictures of Sweden & people I know.

Today: Try and put a pre-order in for Desolation Jones someplace before I forget totally.

I will get onto the gamedev topic eventually, honest!

After discovering the joys of del.icio.us recently I wanted to put a selection of my del.icio.us links onto this site. Various plugins exist to do this for WordPress but none would randomly select a few links to display. So 5 minutes later I have “del.icio.us cached MW Edition” - a WordPress plugin based on Alexander Malov’s “del.icio.us cached” plugin but modified to select a few random links to display.

Usage is simple: just use the command “deliciousMike($randCount, $count);” in your WordPress template where $randCount is the number of random links to display and $count is the number of links from the top of your del.icio.us list to choose from. Currently the $randCount random links will change every 5 minutes on your site, but the $count links from del.icio.us will only be updated every hour. (This can be changed easily in the script).

Get the plugin here (as a .txt file - rename .php for use).

Karin (my g/f) and I often exchange interesting /weird / funny links online throughout the days when we are not together so I’ll be posting some of the best ones every now and again culled from our MSN chat logs…

Bill Gates as a teen idol?

My baby’s bigger than yours…(text in Swedish, picture universally understood!)

Matrix Ping Pong (very cool! - found at: http://www.ntv.co.jp/channel/kasoh/ - in Japanese)

J-Pop Billboard

So, my friend Dan and I are sitting in a pub the other night and a slightly disheveled guy who neither of us know walks up to our table and asks if he can sit down. Like the polite, laid-back people we are we say sure. After a brief introduction the guy gets around to his obvious agenda:

Him: “So, do you guys like poetry and prose?”
Us: “Er…Sure….within reason…”
Him: “Good….do you guys like Harry Potter?”
Us: “well…kind of…seen a few films…”
Him: “Do you know Hagrid?”
Us: “yes…” (Starting to wonder where this is going now…)
Him: “Well, I’ve written a poem about Hagrid if you want to hear it?”
Us: (Fatally) …sure…

What followed was about 7 minutes of poetry, all about Hagrid. Actually, not just about Hagrid, but about his soul more specifically.
Then:

Him: “So what did you think?”
Us: “Well…it’s very good…”
Him: “Oh, I’m glad you liked it. I’ve got another one here…”

Another 10 minutes of Hagrid inspired poetry followed. All read from a small, pink, glittery notebook. By the end I was feeling well peaky from drinking on an empty stomach and we made our excuses and left. Possibly one of the strangest experiences I’ve had in a pub. The poetry itself was actually not that bad, a bit hard to follow given the slightly abstract subject matter, but….random.

Dan followed this up last night by spending two hours (!) in our regular (The Coopers) waiting for me to turn up with a 67 year old (or there abouts) man who was, quite basically, a fruitcake (a nice, harmless fruitcake though). He had no credit to call me and let me know he would be someplace else so he spent 2 hours with the guy. Even bought him a drink. Ho ho ho. When I turned up the guy gave me a map of Reading….fair enough. Then spat on his jacket sleeve. Then said something I didn’t understand. Then we left. The barmaid (who knows us) found it all very funny.

Takes all sorts I guess…

OK, so I’ve finally got around to getting WordPress installed. It took less than 5 minutes so I don’t know why I was putting it off!

The idea of this blog is to complement my slightly more static site at www.mikesspace.net with more regular updates etc…

What you’ll find here will (I guess) simply be a more raw un-edited form of what you will find at the main site and I make no guarantee of how interesting you’ll find this! Topics will generally include:

• Games & Games Development
• My SmallWorld Project
• Karin, Moving to Sweden and Sweden

as well as anything else that takes my fancy.

NOTE: It will take a few days for the mikesspace.net domain to be re-targeted at the new site location, until then mikesspace.picohosting.co.uk and mikesspace.picohosting.co.uk/blog are the ones to use.

Mike.