[I am taking part in a weekly writing task with some friends. The first seed for this assignment was the opening line from Dune by Frank Herbert: “A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct.”] The pump would need repaired. During the wet seasons the housings had…
Author: matt
Gamer. Writer. Dad. Serial Ex-husband. Creator of The 23rd Letter, SpaceNinjaCyberCrisis XDO, ZOMBI, Testament, Creed. Slightly megalomaniac
SyncNI: Exclusive on Galactic Racer by WeeMan Studios
NI-based game development studio, Wee Man Studios just gave SyncNI an exclusive on Galactic Racer! Click through the graphic for the exclusive. Due for release, later this quarter.
Once, Twice, Three Times a Detective
Dolgion Chuluunbaatar of Gamasutra writes about non-linear adventure games: As I was on vacation, I picked up my sister’s copy of Sherlock Holmes stories, and quickly I got caught up in the really really beautifully narrated and well thought-out plots. As I had my phase of obsessively playing the classic LucasArts adventure games, the very…
Current Inspirations
Portal – for the non-violent nature of it and the neat teleportation physics puzzles. And removing half of the stupid ways to die. And for this. Mirror’s Edge on iPad – for the simple swipe-based mechanics, showing us a new way to do a simple platformer. For showing us how to convert a FPS for…
Games in Education
I believe that my playing of games has contributed positively to my development as an individual. Traditionally advocacy for gaming has included the development of teamwork and leadership skills, understanding of competition, resource management and also a greater appreciation of geography, politics, religion and ‘alien’ cultures. Games, especially tabletop role-playing games, have been used in…
BLOC54 – GameStorming
Equally useful for the development of tabletop game ideas, this method was used tonight to brainstorm some ideas for videogames in our local game development cluster.
Yellowcon 2010 (Warhammer 40K Tournament)
Warhammer 40K Tournament (Yellowcon 2010) Sunday, August 29, 2010 from 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM (GMT) Stormont Hotel 587 Upper Newtownards Road BT4 3LP Belfast United Kingdom REGISTER HERE 1750 point tournament. Prizes for winner & runner-up. Access the rules pack which will be necessary for you to play in the tournament The first game…
The Fun Theory
When designing games I tend to think about what will make the game more ‘sticky’. At the start, I can usually enthuse someone about a game by talking to them about it. You’re the consummate salesperson for your game and design and in theory no-one can sell the concept like you can. To get people…
8 Bit Demakes
This article describes 8 bit de-makes – remaking some of todays popular games in 8 bit and 16 bit forms. Some of them still look amazing such as Little Big Planet and Mirrors Edge. All of them are great but these two – you can see why I like them – they’d work really well…
Runnin and Jumpin genre mash
Earlier this week, we had a meeting of local iOS developers and we segued into a conversation about the development of game ideas ahead of a ‘gamestorming’ event we have planned for next week. We talked about the development of game ideas and there was a look at the Mirror’s Edge game in the context…
I would not have played if…
From Wired: A federal judge is allowing a negligence lawsuit to proceed against the publisher of the online virtual-world game Lineage II, amid allegations that a Hawaii man became so addicted he is “unable to function independently in usual daily activities such as getting up, getting dressed, bathing or communicating with family and friends.” Smallwood…
Review of 20 non-video games at Gamasutra
Gamasutra has an interesting set of articles on real-world game design. [Game Design Essentials returns with an extensive review of some of the most interesting non-electronic games, from traditional cultural games like Chess and Go through pen-and-paper role playing titles like Call of Cthulhu, European games like The Settlers of Catan, and much more —…
Primer: One of the Best Sci-Fi Movies
Shane Carruth, writer and director of the lo-fi scifi flick Primer, has uploaded the entire film to Google Video so you can watch it for free. The plot is quite complex – so pay attention and lay off the mind-altering substances, you won’t need them. It’s about time-travel. And it’s tricky stuff.
Sunday afternoons are punctuated with the sounds of war.
Izaak had his Scout 3 training at Games Workshop yesterday and afterwards he decided that he was going to focus on building an army of Chaos Space Marines and that would be his tag in the future. This is not a worrying development at all.
Reunited
Today I moved about 150 kgs of my gaming collection to my house from my parents house. Keen-eyed geeks will be able to easily identify some of the game books here and some of you will even be upset at my organisation of the collection which, at the moment, is very coarse and will be…
Superheroes
In terms of special effects, I’d love to know how they do the superhero style special effects like in in Hancock and more recently, an EMINEM video (forward to about 3 minutes): and Push I’ve not been posting much because I’ve not been gaming much. I need to do something about that for the latter…
Bug Eyed Monsters
From Beyond the Beyond at Wired. See More.
The Aliens Are Coming
Stephen Hawking talks about how we should hide from aliens: I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach. … If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome…