Aborakon & Richard Garriott

Richard Garriott, also known as Lord British, is most famous for his computer role playing series Ultima (besides travelling in space). Beginning with Akalabeth in 1980 and reaching its peak in 1997 with Ultima Online, the Ultima series influenced the RPG genre for decades.

When playing Aborakon: Fragment Green, it's obvious that the Ultima series was an example for parts of the gameplay, especially the controls and the interaction with items. In particular Ultima VII: The Black Gate was the biggest inspiration for Aborakon. By the way, this Ultima part was the first computer game I ever played (1992) and it had an enormous impact on me for sure.

Unsurprising it was a real pleasure for me to meet Richard Garriott in person the other day. I had the chance to talk with him more than an hour about his past, his current projects and about Aborakon. I showed him the game, he said that he likes the item interaction, so that you can move single wood logs below the oven ;-)

Spriting for Game Jam 2011

Some weeks ago I joined a 24h Game Jam in Munich. The subject was "MMO" (Massively Mulitplayer Online Game) and "Lemmings". So we had to combine these two topics into one game and finish it in 24 hours, including graphics and coding. It turned out to be a desaster, but a fun one.

So all in all we were 13 people (plus a girlfriend of someone watching us for 24 hours): 8 coders, 2 game designers, 2 graphic artists and 1 concept artist. The coders were split up in two groups. One group worked out the client code and the other one the server for the MMO.

Due to the complex backend architecture of a MMO we had to cut down the gameplay mechanics to the easiest level. We decided to make an action oriented MMO where dozens of players could enter a 2D map (see screenshots below) and held off Lemmings to reach their goal. With solid firepower of course. We called it "Muglings". For each frag you gain experience points which automatically upgrade your little space ship in 9 levels - from a small drone to a massive battleship. Ehm and the story was that the Lemmings world was invaded by an alien space force who sit in tiny little ships and ensure to make them a hard day.

My job was to make the sprites for the ships and some Lemmings. So I cranked out all the sprites for the 9 ships in some hours. Additionally with some animations for the weapons and engines. Moreover I made three visual damage levels to the ships' hull for easier identifying the healthpoints of an enemy.

That's a mockup screen after the ships' and the Lemmings' graphics were done.

These are my little ships I made in four or five hours. For viewing the animations, just click on the screenshot.

Here you can see the three damage levels.

And that's a title screen I made for the game.

One of our coders commenting his notebook's operating system failing. After 17 hours of work, 5am in the morning.

So we couldn't finish the game on a good playable level because there were some problems with the Unity3D engine we used. And problems like the crashing operating systems mentioned above didn't help either. Nevertheless it was a really fun event and despite of the technical problems we had a great time. Looking forward to upcoming Game Jams!

Last week some coders managed to re-implement the game in the Love2D engine. It actually works now, you can play simultaneously with other players now. For download link and more pictures check out the Facebook page: _CLICK_.
Furthermore here is the general website of the Munich Game Jam: _CLICK_

"The others decide if you're a writer or not."

I just read an interview with Michel Houellebecq (The Elementary Particles, in German Elementarteilchen). He said it's always the others who decide if you're a writer or not. And so he's aked if you can't be also a writer without any success on market. He strongly negates and puts it like there has to be people who say "That's good, what you're doing. Keep it up!"

Disregarding the fact that financial success is always a type of more or less indirect endorsement or demand for continuing the work. I think it's pretty the same with independent game developers. Without financial success only the most iron developers would continue making their games, if there's additionally no support from at least a small fan group. Things are getting interesting if on the one side an indie has financial success, but on the other side he's faced with (idealistic?) criticism by some who don't like the games or the way the payment works and try to deprive her or him from being an indie.

So in my opinion Houellebecq's view is more or less also true for indepdent developers. It's always the others who decide if you're an indie game developer or not. So I don't think there are developers who really ONLY make games for themselves, without considering an audience, at least at some points. Well, it's a bit tautological: If these guys really do exist, we wouldn't notice them because they wouldn't release anything on the internet or anyhwere else. That would lead to another idea of when making games only for you, setting rules for yourself, why not just play the game inside your head? But that's another story...

Another memorable thing about Houellebecq, asked about his writing rhythm: He said that he gets up at 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning and then writes for four or five hours. Afterwards he gets drunk.

Welcome in English

Don't be surprised - due to my recent trip to California I decided to start writing in English here. So interested friends in Berkeley, Culver City, Oakland, Palo Alto, Santa Cruz and San Francisco can catch up with my latest steps in game development. I hope German readers won't mind and are still interested in my thoughts and of course news about Aborakon. I'll translate the rest of the page gradually.

Besides keeping the page in English, I thought about developing upcoming Aborakon fragments also in English. Perhaps there'll be a German version, too. We'll see.

Megaman erledigt Jewel Quest in Tetris

Andrew Morrish hat ein feines Spiel kreiert, das mich schon einige Stunden gekostet hat!

In "Super Puzzle Platformer" hüpft ein schießender 8bit-Zwerg durch einen Tetris-Level. Herabfallende Steine werden nicht bewegt, sondern geschickt zerschossen. Die Waffe lässt sich stufenweise upgraden. Besonders toll ist die gelungene Steuerung sowie das Balancing.

Kostenlos direkt im Browser spielen:
http://andrewmorrish.net/?p=254

Anna-Lassid auf der E3 2011

Schöne Grüße aus Los Angeles! Anna-Lassid und ich waren auf der diesjährigen E3 2011 und haben uns die neuesten Spiele einmal ganz genau angeschaut. Besonders spannend: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim sowie Battlefield 3 und Assassin's Creed: Revelations.

Neue Grafiken

Es geht weiter! Hier sind zwei Screenshots von neuen Gebieten für Fragment Schwarz zu sehen.

Der erste Screenshot zeigt einen Ausschnitt aus einem Bergwerk. Zu sehen sind ein Bau- bzw. Schürfgerüst aus Holz.

Auf dem zweiten Screenshot ist ein weiterer Dungeon-Abschnitt zu sehen, eine Schmiede.