Armchair Arcade

Two new articles: Discovering XFINITY TV for Xbox 360 and Using MLB.TV on Xbox 360

Bill Loguidice — Sat, 26 May 2012 15:47:56 +0000

Two new articles (of five total to date) have been released that add new companion information to our latest book, My Xbox: Xbox 360, Kinect, and Xbox LIVE. Check out: Discovering XFINITY TV for Xbox 360 and Using MLB.TV on Xbox 360. The former covers using your console to replace a cable box and how to easily control movies and TV shows with your controller or Kinect, while the latter covers the ins and outs of the MLB.TV app. A third new article (sixth total in the series), authored by Christina, will be released shortly. Given them a read, and, as always, let us know what you think!

Working on our newest book: My PlayStation Vita

Christina Loguidice — Fri, 25 May 2012 14:12:03 +0000

My PlayStation VitaBill and I are happy to announce that we're hard at work on our next book, My PlayStation Vita, which will follow a format similar to our previous book, My Xbox. My PlayStation Vita is due out in the latter part of 2012 and will cover usage of all the major features of Sony's powerful handheld. There are other exciting projects we'll be working on both individually and together in 2012 and beyond, including another videogame-related book and two special projects in the medical field. As always, we'll keep you informed of the latest happenings. For now, check out the marketing blurb for My PlayStation Vita, and thank you for the continued support:

Adventure Bundle in a Box

Matt Barton — Wed, 23 May 2012 14:36:16 +0000

Adventure Games BundleHead over right now to grab your Bundle in a Box! Pay what you want, no DRM, and support charity to boot. There's some great games in this package (see below). If you're a fan of old school adventures, it's worth getting for Gemini Rue alone. You also get codes for STEAM and something called Desaru (?). At any rate, at $5 this is a complete no-brainer, so go grab it now!

From our good friend Gnome of Gnome's Lair:

Nothing Adds Up & The Dice Are Loaded - part 1 of ?

Shawn Delahunty — Tue, 22 May 2012 22:38:46 +0000

Hello everyone. I'm back after another long hiatus, brought on by that pesky "Real Life" stuff. This time, I'm coming at you with another multi-part article. In it, I want to discuss two concepts which should be near and dear to any gamer's heart:

Zero-sum games, or zero-sum outcomes
The danger and difficulty of "Truly Random"

In the past several weeks I've become hopelessly obsessed with these two concepts. I've thought about them so much, and contemplated how they fit (and how they don't fit) into my concepts of "Good Game Design", that I'm practically humming with nerdly thought-energy. I'm also itching to get as much feedback and as many opinions on the issue as I can. So please chime in with your thoughts, your experiences, and any anecdotes and stories which you can muster.

Matt Chat 149: Diablo

Matt Barton — Mon, 21 May 2012 13:18:38 +0000

With all the attention of the CRPG community focused on Diablo III, I thought it only fitting to give a retrospective on the 1996 game that launched the franchise--the original Diablo! Reducing the complex CRPG gameplay mechanics to utter simplicity, Blizzard offered up a mesmerizing clickfest that's enjoyed by thousands today. It also introduced "Battle.net," a value-add that allowed groups of players to co-op or compete online--for free!

Download the mp4 here.

Some nifty history in The Best of Creative Computing: Volume 3 (1980), Kindle edition

Bill Loguidice — Wed, 16 May 2012 15:06:13 +0000

I sent the free sample of The Best of Creative Computing: Volume 3 (1980) to the Kindle app on my iPad 2, and I must say, speaking as both a historian and tech enthusiast, there are definitely some historical nuggets of genuine interest in there. The book was originally a 1980 release and collected more than 120 articles from the 1978 run of the legendary magazine. From the tone and content of the articles, you can definitely tell this was written for an unusually intelligent, sophisticated, and yes, geeky audience, which makes sense considering the type of individual who would be interested in computing in the late 1970s, and is a refreshing change from what tech magazines became from basically the late 1980s on as the potential readership expanded and the content had to be simplified accordingly.

Anyway, below you'll find a few select screen captures from the free preview, with a bit of commentary. I'll definitely be making this a purchase, since it's only $9.99 for the Kindle edition, and the original paperback often sells for upwards of $100+! Enjoy (and get the ebook!):

Matt Chat 148: The Fat Man Answers Your Questions

Matt Barton — Mon, 14 May 2012 14:12:14 +0000

Here's the last installment of my interview with The Fat Man, aka George Sanger. In this section, Fat Man answers your questions concerning game audio, careers in the industry, and even a bit of philosophy. If you think I did a good job on this interview series, please send a few dollars my way!

Download the mp4 here.

Dev Diary 024: Two Player Dog Fight

Matt Barton — Wed, 09 May 2012 20:40:13 +0000

Two Player!This has been a rough day for me! I finally got my space duel game working with two players. That is, it worked fine in the EDITOR. However, when I made a build of it, the fire buttons wouldn't work! I spent hours looking into the input functions to no avail. Finally, I discovered the problem had something to do with the update speed of the editor vs. the build. I'm still not exactly sure what the problem was, but it had something to do with the way I instantiated and positioned the bullets. I figured I'd check to see which fire button was pressed, then check to see where the corresponding ship was located. The big complication here is that I need to impart an initial velocity (set by each player) to their bullets. But how to get the right variable to the bullet? I'll spare you the details, which I don't really understand, but the short of it I managed to kludge through it.

At any rate, I think there's enough here for you to finally see my vision for the gameplay. You've got a two-player dog fight, ships orbiting the planets. Each time you fire, there's a cooldown period before you can fire again. You have to hit the enemy ship head-on to blow it up, and, yes, you can blow yourself up if you're not careful.

The keys are below:

Matt Chat 147: The Fat Man Returns

Matt Barton — Wed, 09 May 2012 18:26:58 +0000

This week, I'm back with The Fat Man (George Sanger) to talk about some of his most famous game scores. Yes, that means Wing Commander, Ultima Underworld, and The 7th Guest. As always, Fat Man has great behind-the-scenes stories about all this stuff, so you go ahead and kickback with a fine cigar and a horn of Dragon's Milk. I also do a bit of clowning around at the end, giving you a glimpse of what it's really like making these Matt Chat episodes (hint: take after take after take...)

Download the mp4 here.

Matt's Podcast 13: Backwardness compatibility, Smelly Games, Why Stories and Graphics Suck, Matt's Turn to the Darkside

Matt Barton — Sat, 05 May 2012 01:50:34 +0000

Smell me!Hi, guys! I'm back with a little podcast here addressing some of the popular threads raised right here at Armchair Arcade. After a special announcement and some talk about my Unity game project, I talk about smelly game environments, three games that made me want to own a system, and backward compatibility. I even briefly kvetch about Tera! Thanks to Mark, Rob D., and Clok for those fun topics!

Download the podcast here.

Networking Your Xbox: Chapter article from the new book, My Xbox

Christina Loguidice — Fri, 04 May 2012 00:56:21 +0000

Que has released the second chapter from our latest book, My Xbox: Xbox 360, Kinect, and Xbox LIVE, as a feature article on their Website. You can go direct to the Que Website to read, Networking Your Xbox, right now. Let us know what you think and be sure to check out the book. As a side note, we've written three new original Xbox 360 articles for Que that should be released in the coming weeks, and are also well underway with our next Que book, details of which we hope to reveal soon. As always, we'll keep you posted.

Dev Diary 023: Procedurating Solar Systems

Matt Barton — Thu, 03 May 2012 20:12:58 +0000

Sparkles!The ol' dev diary has been quiet lately as I had some very tough times getting over the next hump of my gravity game. By the way, how does "Outlaws of Gravity" strike you as a title? Little play on "Law of Gravity." But, anyway, I've been busy trying to make a system for procedurally generating the solar system, giving you a random distribution of planets and moons. Of course, later on I'll add some different textures for the planets, so that they don't all look the same.

I had a really tough time with the moons. I don't want them to be smashing into planets or each other, so I had to keep spacing out the planet orbits more and more, until finally it just wasn't practical. I went down a dead end of just making them decorative. Didn't like that, so went back to the old way. Finally, decided I just had to limit the number of them. I originally wanted three as the max, but just wasn't feasible unless I really went big with the resolution. I'm still not really happy about the moons. I think they're cool, and make it more realistic, but they don't seem to serve much purpose. I guess one strategy could be trying to put your ship right next to one, so that hopefully it might catch a bullet. Other than that, I don't see a point, so I might end up taking them out. IIRC, they didn't have them in gravity wars anyway.

Mark plays... Robotron 2084 on C64 (dual joystick mode)

Mark Vergeer — Thu, 03 May 2012 13:45:34 +0000

The C64 port of the game shown here running on a PAL C64G (the German Aldi version with the C128 CPU) playing with two Suzo Arcade Sticks in port 1&2.
I run the program on the 1541UltimateII, the first version is trained and halfway the video I realize that and load up the cartridge version that is unmodified.

Mark plays... Robotron 2084 on Original Xbox (Xbox Live)

Mark Vergeer — Thu, 03 May 2012 13:43:29 +0000

Playing a hidden gem on the original Xbox 'Robotron 2084' a port of the original arcade game on microsoft's first venture onto the online gaming market on the original Xbox.

The game has an 'enhanced' background but for the most part remains pretty true to the arcade original. It is controlled by both analog sticks on the xbox controller and the gameplay is fluid and very nice.

The game is very tough though as only 8 way shooting is possible allowing for 45 degree angles of vulnerability and lots of small objects being hurled your way. Loosing a life is easy!

Some more information is found below...

Mark plays.... Krakout (C64)

Mark Vergeer — Thu, 03 May 2012 13:41:07 +0000

The nice Arkanoid/Breakout clone on the C64 called Krakout. Great gameplay, great music. Mind you on the C64 and TV screen the gameplay is really fluid my grabby thingie really mocks up the smoothness of it all so it doesn't do it justice completely.

Some more information below...

Thumbing through it: Retrogamer Issue 1 Reprint

Mark Vergeer — Thu, 03 May 2012 13:38:53 +0000

This time I take a look at the special reprint Issue 1 that came with the 100th edition of the great gaming mag 'Retrogamer'

The website
http://www.retrogamer.net

The place to subscribe to the mag
http://www.imaginesubs.co.uk/subscribe-to-retro-gamer
or shoot a mail to
retrogamer@servicehelpline.co.uk

Role of Smell and Taste in Games

Matt Barton — Wed, 02 May 2012 15:25:45 +0000

I was just thinking that gaming is the most sensual of all forms of all creative expressions save tribal dancing. It incorporates sight, sound, and touch. Tribal dancing and mystical ceremonies, of course, incorporates smell (burning torches, incense, etc.) and possibly taste (alcohol, herbs, feasts, delicacies, etc.) It seems to me that some interesting game ideas open up if you allow for taste and smell. How could game designers make games that utilized smell and taste?

Smell seems to be right around the corner. Consider The Scentscape. Imagine crawling through a dungeon and smelling the reassuring aroma of your burning torch. Imagine really being able to smell that famous "napalm in the morning," or the exotic flowers and plants in games like Riven. I don't imagine many people would want to smell rotting corpses, but I suppose that could be done, too, just to add to the horror. This could, of course, become part of the gameplay in adventures and such--an "aroma puzzle." Or it could heighten the feeling of immersion if you could smell a creature before you could see or hear it!

Matt Chat 146: Matt Reviews Legend of Grimrock

Matt Barton — Tue, 01 May 2012 19:35:18 +0000

I'm back this week with a review of my pick for "Game of the Year," Legend of Grimrock! An awesome game for so many reasons, Grimrock has the added advantage of being independently produced and available for only $15! Get it direct from the developer and you'll still get a Steam key for sharing achievements.

*Warning.* My video contains a few minor spoilers. Nothing that should ruin your fun, but if you're worried about it, just listen to the audio or watch it after you've completed the game.

Grab the mp4 here!

My favorite Storage Media - what are yours?

Mark Vergeer — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 13:00:00 +0000

I ramble on about my favorite Storage Media a topic first initiated by one mr SteveBenway and this is an actual response to his video found here:
http://youtu.be/mvCEyAiJw5w

A special day for RetrogamerVX - birthday wishes for a good friend!

Mark Vergeer — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 12:00:00 +0000

Happy birthday!

Disclaimer:
Some images from the RetrogamerVX website and YouTube channel were used in the creation of this clip.
All sound comes from a standard iMovie theme/media base intended for publication online by the user.