All posts by Andrew Armstrong

Fun, Videogames

Technology and Videogame Podcasts/shows

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I’m half interested in promoting that I listen to these, and also half wondering what other ones I’m missing out on – but I’ve been listening to weekly podcasts for a while now and having some more for when I travel and so forth would be awesome. List any you think are good in the comments please 😀

I personally listen to, in no particular order (and with RSS and usually iTunes links on each page):

  • One Life Left – which has irrelevant humour, some surprisingly good discussion randomly, and mostly some great features and the odd bit of music. Is also an hour long, which is nice.
  • Tech Weekly by the Guardian’s team. Yes, I still dislike the the “Videogames shoved into technology section” part, but I’d likely listen to it anyway (in addition to a videogame one. You listening Guardian?), since it has a good mix of technology news and discussion, and with some good comments about what is in each episode I have missed the ones I don’t want to bother with.
  • Idle Thumbs now has 2 podcasts – a UK and USA one. I’m going to listen to the UK one this week, and the USA one is good – rather random discussions, and also a big bonus in the form of funny songs 🙂 There’s some good writers and people who do the shows, despite the very American “Well, you know” thrown around a lot. Worth a listen!
  • The Rock, Paper, Shotgun Wireless Show is a nice if a little hard to hear one, randomly produced whenever the RPS guys get together. I’m a PC gamer so it’s all good for me.

I’m also going to see what the Mega64 podcast is like, although I’m looking for more to listen to. I’m willing to expand my horizons, simply because there’s barely a few hours of regular content in the ones I currently listen to since some are so happenstance (with One Life Left and Tech Weekly being the most regular).

Filming, Videogame Events, Videogame Music, Videogames

the doyouinverts

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doyouinverts lyrics! woo!

the doyouinverts are a great comedy videogame-related band, they have some songs up (so I should have linked to them before!) and awesomely played at GameCity, where I captured their awesomeness in sadly, rather poor quality (below). I’ll have to catch them if they tour nearby or do another One Life Left appearance! If you have a chance, download some of their other tracks if you like their sound, I recommend Random Encounter, and although it’s not available to download (yet!) 7/10. Both work really well 🙂 well, more so I got all the references in them I think, some of their others can be called rather obscure without reading the text accompanying the download.

Edit: 7/10 is also up! Yeah! Give that a shot if you have time 🙂

Continue reading the doyouinverts →

AI, Videogame AI, Videogame Events

AI and Non-Player Character Workshop Report

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Robin showing off DEFCON Bot AI

I am terrible at keeping my site updated, damn (I’ll post more often I hope!). Anyway, I went last Friday to the AI and Non-Player Character Workshop at the University of Essex, which was a pretty good day – I wrote up my notes as a report for AI Game Dev, and the pictures I took are available in my gallery if you want a super huge picture of Richard Bartle, or maybe Robin Baumgarten 😉

PC Videogames, Videogames

Halloween Team Fortress 2 Medic Costume

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My complete costume, although I should have tidied myself up a bit before the picture

I forgot to post up how I did my rather quick and dirty Team Fortress 2 Medic costume for Halloween. It required the use of sewing, which I got help with from my mum (luckily for me, since it required a sewing machine). I also had some relevant bits already lucky.

So, a quick run through, what I aimed for was to get just the costume part done for a Team Fortress 2 Medic – not really any props (such as the bonesaw, backpack or medigun). To get a half decent setup I’d therefore need:

  • Thick rimmed glasses
  • Lab coat, appropriately changed (patch, buttons, etc)
  • Gloves of appropriate colour
  • Trousers of appropriate colour
  • Boots
  • Belt and some attachments
  • Shirt and tie of appropriate colour

Read on for how I did each part… Continue reading Halloween Team Fortress 2 Medic Costume →

Travel, Videogame History

National Videogame Archive Visit

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A Pile O’ Stuff to sort

Today I visited the National Videogame Archive, or the beginnings of it at least! I met with Tom Woolley, who is the Curator of New Media – the National Media Museum where this is going to be hosted is branching out into videogames after it’s name change – previously it focused on TV, radio, photography and film.

The archive in it’s initial state was pretty cool to get some pictures of, and the start of it considering it’s only been publicised this month, is a damn good one. Tom detailed every way the archive stuff at the museum was setup and his plans to put on hopefully a permanent exhibition (maybe with interactive elements and some games to play), or at least a temporary exhibition of videogames once the museum has enough material – perhaps in a few years. These are quite lofty aims, and hopefully the collection will rapidly grow to fill the need. When putting on an exhibition Tom will be able to get more material specifically for that exhibit too – hopefully adding interviews, oral histories, and so on and so forth to the collection.

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The original Sony Eyetoy Prototype!

There’s a great deal of work to do – luckily, it is run through the museum rather then it’s own endeavour so he has a lot of help (although, it comes with a cost of justifying all his decisions due to their somewhat limited space and money 🙂 ). He is requesting any material that might be worth via. the donations policy. Since they haven’t got a complete console collection yet, and not an abundance of games, now might be a good opportunity to help!

Since this is the only videogame archive in the UK now, since Swindon’s efforts are currently closed down for now, it is a worthwhile think donating and helping the project if you can. There are more general computer museums for mainframes and non-videogame computers of course, but this specifically will also archive all kinds of culturally worthy material for videogames too – including relevant magazine collections, digital material, and a lot of things developers might have 🙂

Videogame Events

GameCity 2008: Saturday

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The “canvas” of Lego stuff

TT Games own Jonathan Smith presented how the Lego platformer series of games they’ve made came about. He explained about appealing to people who don’t like Star Wars for instance, and gave some detail on how the games were developed.

Sadly, the session “I was there…. DMA” was cancelled (due to the presenter Brian breaking his nose). This along with the other two “From the Desk Of” sessions sadly 🙁

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This is how Media Molecule rolls…everyone gets a say!

Media Molecule did the “GameCity Vision Statement supported by BAFTA”, and provided information on how the game was made, who made it, the changes during the game development – I also got the presenter Alex Evans to initial my Sackboy, and autograph my book. I do want to play the game, it would be real great to try it sometime despite my lack of proficiency with platformers.

I also got Alex the presenter to autograph my Sackboy model, and he also showed off four interesting videos I got a chance to record some of, the first being prototype footage of “brainfluff”, ie; Little Big Planet and what they showed Phil Harrison to get Sony on board. The second shows their prototyping method to get the team working together – showing the way 2d and 3d can be combined. The third and fourth interesting ones showed the “focus” of the game (made up to keep the team on track on what they were doing), and the last video was what they’ll show at their Christmas party, a short run of clips from their development. Really cool stuff 😀 I should have asked if I could have got any of them for the Internet Archive…damn.

I visited Indiecade through gaps in the day, and got a talk through of Where Is My Heart which looks like the finished game could be a nifty platformer. I played through . I saw levelHead – the physical blocks with a camera, it’s an interesting use of a camera. Democracy 2 was taking me ages to start, but I get it’s simulation aspect, and looks pretty in depth. I played through Ruckblende (Flashback), which aesthetically was amazing, being a paper-built world to do the point and click adventure, and hand drawn animations to portray moving things. I also saw Machinarium being shown off again 🙂

I also recorded one of the more interesting games, Dark Room Sex Game. I’ll let you view the video, since it’s quite hard to describe. Additional info though; yes, you can be male on male, or female on female. It is hard (I didn’t try it myself however) and obviously, the noise your controller makes is the other person’s response 😉

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I hate American politics. Our’s wasn’t the only “Joe” reference either

Lastly was the Guardian GamesBlog Quiz, and the closing party. We didn’t win the quiz (tough competition I’ll say!) but the last round we did the most spectacular entry out of the lot. The party was okay, if a little empty – some free drinks (which lasted me the night), and a great “30 player game on a projector” setup was crazy. The first band, PowerPlay, were loud. Very loud. They also did a lot of Megaman, sadly (since I find the games’ themes all a bit repetitive). Press Play On Tape were more varied, and had some great songs during the night, but also were a bit loud (although more quiet then the others).

Some more pictures are available in my gallery too. My autograph book got a few more signatures, although I missed the bands’ – but all in all a fun day.

Videogame Events

GameCity 2008: Friday

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Goldeneye, really good commentary

I got up rather late after the previous evening, and with the buses being rubbish my journey took twice as long as it should have. Therefore, I missed the start of the “Goldeneye : The Director’s Commentary” history session – but still got the vast majority of it. It was great to see the details behind the game which was stuck on a 12MB console, and managed to get 4 player multiplayer, more advanced AI then most shooters and a great amount of maps and huge expansive level vistas. David Doak and Martin Hollis were very talkative and took some good questions all while playing the game.

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Harmonix’s history – a very strange advert

“Harmonix : Ten Loud Years” after lunch was an interview with two of the developers about Harmonix’s history and present – from the older games they’ve made, FreQuency and Amplitude, as well as prototypes and some unfinished or unreleased games. They also had Dr. James Newman come on about the National Videogame Archive, and explain what Harmonix was contributing – one of the Rock Band drum set prototypes, handed over to Tom Wooley, curator of the relevant part of the National Media Museum.

Geometry Wars was the last session – they had a runthrough of all the Geometry Wars games, the design – audio, coding, iterations, and so forth.

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Ross et al. as Splicers – not counted as zombies either

Then came the Market Square Zombie attempt, dancing to Thriller and Ghostbusters…and some other third, rubbish tune. I didn’t participate, I wanted to keep the facepaint off so I could use my own costume later easier.

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Not a bad attempt for a Halloween costume 🙂

I popped back home to get my Medic costume, and went to the party (got there around 30 minutes late, damn Pizza Hut service was atrocious). It was quite good – Jonathan Coulton (despite missing Code Monkey I was told, damn), and Rock Band was available (with the two Harmonix members trying with their interviewer, who failed the first time and then got a guitarist to do it properly 🙂 ). I saw some other great costumes, which was cool too. There was also lots of Resident Evil stuff – a successful 2:00:40 speedrun of Resident Evil 4, and then Resident Evil 5 was on show (on one Xbox only sadly). Lastly there was Resident Evil Live – a corridor of zombies you had to fight past. I was a bit drunk when I did it and laughed at some bits, so got killed, oh well 🙂

Again, I got some videos from this day – but only two, a brief bit of Jonathan Coulton and the Zombie Dance Record. There are also pictures in my gallery.

Videogame Events

GameCity 2008: Thursday

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Macharium Concept for the hero robot

I got to Gamecity a tad late, so missed the Eyetoy stuff in the morning, which I didn’t mind missing much – since I don’t have a PS3 🙂 I visited Indiecade for a bit before meeting Alice – who I met at GDC and another IGDA scholarship winner – and moving to Gatecrasher for some talks.

Firstly was the session “Amanita Design : Inside Macharium EXCLUSIVE” – the designer (I presume Jakub Dvorsky despite him not being named anywhere in the programme as presenting it) walked us through most of Machinarium, then went into the team and how levels and the games are designed – very interesting, especially since they solely use flash. Machinarium should be out next May or so I think he said, which is ace, despite me being poor at the puzzles in the game (feedback is a problem).

At the same time it was on, I missed David Braben talking about Lost Winds – he did, I was told after it, a similar talk to what he said in Brighton at the Develop conference, including his part about used games.

Next I saw the end of Tom Kim’s talk about how games helped him through illness (a brain tumour), which was very interesting. He explained his difficulty with playing games that kill people too.

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Geeky David Jaffe

Sadly, the Splash Damage guys doing “Splash Damage : From Frags to Riches” were late, and clashed with From the “From the Desk of David Jaffe” talk – and of course no one mentioned it either. Oh well, I missed them 🙁 but I got to ask David Jaffe some questions about some topics 😀 (like leaving Sony for instance).

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Absolutely fucking awesome!

After this was DS Night for an hour and a bit, where we got some good 8 player Mario Kart going – then onto One Life Left’s curry evening show. The show was great, with live 2 live doyouinverts songs (with part of the band, since the others were on tour) being “7 out of 10” and “Random Encounter”, and Craig “The Rage” McClellan doing some of his older poems live! At the end I also got an amazing thing to remember the night – the doyouinverts band member gave me his lyrics (attached authentically to a menu) and Craig gave me his poem copies – noting there were more then he read out, so he had to choose. Awesome 😀

I did get videos of the doyouinverts and Craig performing and 2 of the OLL record breaking stunts, they’re on my youtube channel I’m trying out, and in a playlist too. There’s a lot more pictures too in my gallery.

Throughout the day, I got autographs – since the Gamecity “Programme” was a brief thing which looks like a Passport. At the end of the day, I got the Gamecity organisers, all the One Life Left crew, Amanita Design and Tom Kim sign it – David Jaffe would have been tough to get, being on videocast though 🙂 Great way to remember the things going on though, I’ll get more today (Friday) I’m sure.

Videogame Events

Eurogamer Expo Day #2

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Multiwinia allows manual control of defensive turrets, neat!

Day 2 was much like Day 1, so I won’t detail every game again 😉 but I got some more pictures!

I did get to play Mirrors Edge, which does play well once you’ve got a grasp of the controls. Enjoyable, but I’m still dubious about the PC release – DRM (it’s from EA), possible control issues, and certainly the game might be a tad short since they seem to press the Time Trial mode and speedrunning aspects more then the length of the game, which is a real shame. It looks really good though (which really helps the gameplay), although the version at the expo was really graphically aliased.

I also tried a bit of Left 4 Dead – it does play okay, as co-op things go. No particular difficulties, the rush of zombies is a bit odd since they don’t damage you much but is fun enough. I’m not sure about it at the full-game price, and will have to try the demo first (I also played it on the Xbox 360, which doesn’t help) – it really needs some good friends to play with, so I’m not sure I’ll get it unless I can convince a few others to get it as well.

All in all fun stuff, especially playing some more Plain Sight and War Twat. 😀