Well, my posting on here has hit a bit of a lull. Overwork isn’t my excuse this time, since my last post things have been pretty crunch-free at my day job.

I think I’ve just chilled out a little more at home, not so much coding. Been actually playing games a lot more than usual; enjoying “Fallout: New Vegas” right now, and played a ton of “Dead Rising 2″ as well. To hark back to an old blog post I made here about Dead Rising; I can confidently say that Blue Castle Games did a great job on it, you guys do indeed rock!

Recently I did just move my blog to a new domain. I felt the old website name “Music To Make Games By…”, and it’s really long domain name wasn’t to my liking. The original aim for my blog was to talk a lot about the Guitar Hero games I’m working on. That sort of thing is pretty difficult to do though. For obvious reasons I can’t talk about games that aren’t announced yet. Also, to talk about anything with any sort of meaty ‘behind the scenes’ content I’d need to run it by Neversoft first. So yeah, all that fell by the wayside and I mainly ended up covering my foray into XNA and C#; with a few distractions on the way.

New Domain

So yeah, this site is sitting at ‘http://www.gavpugh.com/‘ now. Plan to continue it in the same vein, still plodding along the XNA-path when I code at home. Likewise I definitely intend to write some more articles about the more esoteric areas of C# and XNA, as I was doing previously.

Releasing the source code to “XNACPC” is still on my agenda too. A little after XNA 4.0 was officially released, I managed to get audio working in the emulator using the brilliant new DynamicSoundEffectInstance. Was really awesome to hear those old games chiming away their little 8-bit tunes. Even back when I worked on this emulator in plain C many years ago, I never got round to getting the audio working before.

So for this site, it’s pretty much business as usual then. Slightly new paintjob; shorter URL. The thing I’d really like to change next is my frequency of posts!

New Game

The last game I worked on: “Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock” was released a couple of months ago now. It did okay at retail, nothing spectacular. The sales are like night and day compared to around the time our studio started working on them. “Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock” sold numbers in a different league. Across all the SKUs it actually broke $1 billion in sales. Apparently it is the “first single game ever to surpass $1 billion in sales”, whether that is still true I’ve no idea. It has an advantage over most other titles though in that they very likely count the hardware bundles in these sales figures.

Anyway. Since that game is finished now, I’ve been working on something new.

Looking forward to Christmas, hopefully it’ll be a good time for game sales across the board. For all companies. “Black Ops”-aside it seems like we’re all hurting a bit right now.

New Book

I’ve been enjoying reading industry-related books as of late. Not technical books, but more stories from the trenches. I recently finished a very good one, it’s not specifically gaming-related though but it’s not too far off. “Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days” contains interviews with founder members of various notable startup companies. Actually there is one gaming-related reference in there; Steve Wozniak is interviewed and talks a little about his early work at Atari.

It’s very good. There’s a ridiculous span of different companies covered. From “Hot or Not” through to the guys who wrote “Visicalc” back in 1979, the very first spreadsheet app. A spreadsheet app from 1979, how is that interesting to read about? Yeah, I thought much the same. It was back to back with a chapter about “Lotus 1-2-3″ as well, I thought I was in for a bore-fest. However, it’s riveting stuff. Reading about the highs and lows of these companies as they developed through the years was surprisingly fun. What was also news to me was how incestuous the ‘regular’ tech company world is, almost to the same level as the games industry. So much cross-over where competing startup founders are ex-colleagues.

Definitely one worth picking up if you like inspiring stories. The vast majority of them are generally about coders being part of the initial startups. They detail the problems they faced in a decent bit of detail too. One common thread was scalability, that “Oh shit” moment where everything has gone a little too well and the servers aren’t coping with the demand. Usually some interesting stories on how they dealt with those periods.

There’s the odd one or two that read as “everyone else is doing the startup thing, so I thought I should to”. Which seems a pretty tenuous reason to go for it. But those from what I remember tended to be more the management-school grad types; family with connections and money. They almost read a little like it’s just a plaything, to give them something to do. If it works out that’d be cool, but they’ve got a nice parachute to escape. Been a while since I put the book down though, I think this was only isolated to just one or two stories max. Despite the glistening silver spoon, they did still have some interesting stuff in those too.

Me, a class warrior? Never.

Back when I last had a little spurt of writing in this blog, I really wanted to talk about ‘Pathologic’.

An awesome, unique PC game certainly unlike any other game I’ve played before. Its survival horror pushed to extremes. The development house is based in Russia; Ice Pick Lodge.

I’ve much respect for the game, I tip my hat to a fantastic achievement. My sole disappointment was just that only few people got to experience this gem. Maybe when I play through a second time as a different character: ‘Haruspicus’, I’ll get the gumption to write about it to convince the small readership of this blog to give it a try. Knowing that day will likely never come, please read this review:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/04/10/butchering-pathologic-part-1-the-body/

It’s what led me to give it a try in the first place. It’s an old game, so go easy on the graphical criticism… Speaking of which!

Deadly Premonition – A ‘B Game’, as in ‘B Movie’?

Aye, not the prettiest game on the eyes given we’re talking an Xbox 360 game. But really, it’s another time to ignore that. How I link this to Pathologic isn’t too direct, the games share some similar elements in how they expand the survival aspect of gameplay. They’re both very unique games, very different to the usual AAA fare.

The fuss over its review scores is what led to me noticing the game. I suspect all the furor over it has led to it getting nice sales. Oh, by the way; did I mention that Deadly Premonition is a new release and priced at only $20? Unfortunately European guys, it’s not released out there yet and the US version is apparently region-locked. It’s quite a shame.

What I’m about to write about is free of spoilers. With a game like this I really wanted to avoid reading too far down into reviews. I’ll respect anyone reading this by attempting to just lure you into buying it and not ruin any of the nice surprises in the game. I haven’t got too far into the game, I’m only a little after the investigation of the crime scene. Probably only three to four hours in.

First Impressions

When I first fired up the game it was what I was expecting. Nice initial cutscene to set the mood. The devs have their names flash up during the opening sequence too, kind of like COD4 in a way. I was a little surprised to see that the devs are all Japanese; I didn’t remember reading that in the reviews that I skimmed. Things fall into place now; I can’t see a Western dev attempting a game like this. It’s ‘M-rated’ too. If this were a big budget game I’m sure the publishers would have them water it down to a ‘T-teen’ rating, and market it as a CSI-style game. Thank god that didn’t happen! I’m real curious as to how long the game was in development, does anyone know?

My first warning when picking up the game is that you will be a little frustrated with how gameplay starts out. It’s not long before you’re dealing with combat. Yes, there is combat in this game but it doesn’t seem to be the main focus of the title at all. If you get the game and give up whilst you’re in that first part of combat; you’ll be missing out for sure. Persevere.

Also, one big tip I can give which didn’t seem to be mentioned in the manual, nor on-screen is that holding ‘B’ and another face button together will speed up the text scrolling. You can also press start to skip any scrolling text. The game has a number of rough edges which frustrate me as a coder. The sort of things that if I were set loose on the code for a week, I’d have fixed immediately. Here’s a few that come to mind:

Minor annoyances:

• Animations such as opening doors begin to feel too long, and are unskippable.
• Cutscenes can’t be paused, or at least I haven’t found a way how. The guide button doesn’t pause them unfortunately.
• The pause menu is a little clunky and slow
• The world map doesn’t zoom out far enough. It also doesn’t appear on the HUD during combat at all, which is frustrating.
• Saving is a little arduous. If autosave is enabled, when I use a telephone to save the game, I shouldn’t get a bunch of confirmation UI screens.
• Collision. A couple of times I’ve got caught on a ninety degree concave edge of a room. The player control should be a little more forgiving and push you around if you’re close to the edge.
• They spell ‘Turkey Sandwich’ as ‘Turky Sandwich’[sic] at one point in the game! Unforgivable!

Wow! I’m doing the game lots of favours here eh? Who’d want to play this mess? Well, the game is a breath of fresh air in 360-land. It’s awesomeness I simply do not have the superlatives for. Here are some things I think rock about this game:

Premonition of greatness:

• Voiceovers. These really shine. Compared to say the Bethesda games: Fallout 3 and Oblivion… There’s so much charm to it, and it really highlights how soulless the VO on those games sound sometimes (they’re great games of course, just one criticism I have of them). The game treads a fine line between comedy and horror, and the style fits it extremely well.
• The music. It’s fantastic! It’s simple stuff and I haven’t heard many different tunes but the cues alongside the cutscenes, and the way it sometimes drowns out the dialog… It just feels right. The main protagonist is a little ‘special’, so I see it as him drifting off into la-la land when it happens.
• The story. It’s a pretty gripping one. Despite the bat-shit insaneness where the game steps into comedy, the storyline is always intriguing. You actually care about what happens, and moreso you’re wanting to see what the slightly insane twists on what’s coming next could be.
• Survival elements. I like that you need to make sure that your car has topped up petrol. I like that you need to sleep and stave off your hunger. Apparently too you have to change clothing as the days progress otherwise people start to think you smell. I liked the similar mechanics in Pathologic too. Where on something like GTA: San Andreas they can become annoying; here these mechanics suit a survival horror game perfectly.
• Open-world gameplay. Near the beginning of the game you’ll meet up with some locals who want you to drive them somewhere. You can leave them at any time, and when you meet up with them again later they’ll be pissed at you for leaving them waiting. The cutscene transitions during open-world gameplay are pretty cool too, big thumbs up.
• It’s GTA meets Resident Evil, meets Maniac Mansion, meets CSI, meets Criminal Minds (unsub!), meets Spaced, meets Twin Peaks. What’s not to love about that?
• Laughter, fun, entertainment. It’s easy to forget sometimes that games can be fun! Take some serious gruff-voiced guy, who’s built like a brick-outhouse. Navigate him through a repetitive dull environment; it’s what the kids seem to like now. The vibe of this game is different, wholly unique; it’s something I’d recommend to anyone who thinks that games are an artform.

One third and final list now. From what I remember of when I skimmed reviews, there were a number of things that were mentioned as negatives that I really think are no big deal at all. Granted I’m only a small portion through the game, but I have encountered and seen pretty much all the things that have been complained about. Whether the charm lasts is another matter, but I feel like I’ll get my money’s worth out of this game for sure.

Don’t you love journos?:

• The graphics. C’mon, this is a budget title. The characters in my opinion are above the quality of most PS2 games. The outside environments probably on par with early PS2-era games, the interiors look much better. Go have a wank over the latest Final Fantasy if pretty scenery is what does it for you.
• The combat, the camera, the controls. They take a little getting used to; by the second section of combat I was a dab hand with the FBI issue shooter. The complaints here are probably because the controls don’t match the ‘generic third-person game’ controls. Whatever; it’s not hard to get to grips with them.
• The sparse environment. There are actually a lot of residents in Greenvale. The story though is of a town which had a boom a few decades back due to a buoyant lumber trade. The town now is relatively empty since those days. The hospital is too big for what the town needs; the hotel is almost empty. Sounds perfect for survival horror?
• Terrible writing, terrible story, terrible voiceovers. You must have really missed the point.

So there, go play it. It’s only $20!  If you don’t like it, go trade it for a grey and brown shooter; there’s plenty sitting in Gamestop.

Recently there has been news of that great game ‘Dead Rising’ getting a sequel. It was a big success for Capcom, and I guess came as no surprise that it was coming.

However, the big thing that has generated a talking point is that it’s going to be done by a Western developer. Now, as I work for one of those myself; I shouldn’t be slinging mud. But I’m really a bit concerned that this game can go down some bad avenues.

Here’s what I fear:

• Game starts development. Team are giddy, they come up with some great ideas. This is good, very good.
• A lot of stuff sounds great, code are on the new mechanics, and the concept art is looking superb.
• Player in the game, zombies in the game. Game chugs a bit, but that’s okay as we’re just starting out.
• Milestone one, a first playable of sorts approaches, all hands on deck!
• Game gets a bit of polish, environments look nicer, characters look great.
• It’s dropping frames though, lets only have a dozen zombies spawned at once. Just for the milestone.(TM)
• Man, those zombies look good. Engine coders and artists given lots of praise. Milestone passes fine.
• Design folk are a bit bewildered, and finding it difficult to put in new mechanics with the sparse zombie layout.
• Art plays with fancy new HDR rendering and of course, bloom. It looks great on the HDTV in the conference room!
• People high up decide that as it’s an Xbox game, so it’s for hardcore gamers only. None of this primary colours shit, we want it gritty! Game becomes grey and brownfest.
• Design are still wondering why there’s only eight zombies shown at a time.
• Ship date is a few months away. Design accept that we’re not going to have as many zombies as the first one. No aggressive LODding either like the first one, the pop-in when you walked into shops was awful! We can use the memory we save on the zombie instances and textures on the environment!
• Screenshots are released, and gameplay video. Youngsters on the internet love how great it looks.
• Everything continues along same vein.
• Game ships. Gavin buys the game and is disappointed that yet again tech wins out over gameplay.

Now, this isn’t actually how it’s gone on any game I’ve worked on, despite the ranty sound of it! There’s always been strong people around to reign in this sort of thing to a sensible level. There’s no reason that the new developer may go down the route I detailed, it’s just that I think it’s real easy to lose sight of what Dead Rising was all about:

Lots and lots of zombies.

If you take that away, you’ve got a shell of a game. The tech of the game has to revolve around aggressive LOD-ing, that’s the focus. I just hope your code team consists of some seasoned PS1/2 era guys, and certainly not more than one or two fresh from University. Put the ShaderX7 book down, and back away slowly.

It’s okay that the zombie in the distance, twenty pixels tall, looks shit. It’s okay that the contents of any stores or buildings pop in a bit if you’re running fast. You don’t need to fix these things. What isn’t okay is dropping the sense of humour; and please for the love of God, don’t make it gangsta!

Guys… Make the game fun, that’s all. Just make it fun, and I’ll love you for it; and everyone will think that you rock.