tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-41693683947137377382024-03-13T08:09:39.440-07:00Keys AkimboA general blog for PC games, games culture and games design in general plus anything that catches the author's eyeAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.comBlogger86125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-28401413323151105732012-10-11T13:00:00.000-07:002012-10-11T13:00:07.512-07:00Varytale Tutorial: Statistics and Equippable Items
Well, it's been a while. It's always been a while between blog posts, mostly because I can usually fit what I want to say into a few tweets. I'm back and writing because I have a lot more than a few multiples of 140 characters.
I received an email today asking about the statistics and. inventory mechanics of Sixth Tower. It's been quite a while since I touched Varytale so have had to do a Lily Foxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10059330649575464110noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-8930840466294982942012-06-09T10:18:00.002-07:002012-06-09T10:18:46.790-07:00Writing, Writing and ReadingThis is what my life has become lately. Chris Evans of The Reticule saw fit to trust me with writing to his website so I have been doing that a bit, writing news and a couple of review pieces. E3 - the Electronic Entertainment Exposition in San Francisco - came and went with much news only a little of which was of interest to me. Maybe I'm just a young grouch or a rather specific Lily Foxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10059330649575464110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-30702660821906750282012-05-24T17:22:00.001-07:002012-05-24T17:22:26.562-07:00Varytale Reader In Open Beta, and StoryNexus Announced
For the past several months I have been lucky enough to be involved in the closed beta of Varytale, a web-based authoring and hosting system for interactive fiction. So far we testers have only had access to the writer's side of things, to experiment with the system and write our own IFs. Now, tentatively, the writers' side of VT is open to all for the first time.
Currently available to read -Lily Foxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10059330649575464110noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-4201648308776035952012-03-28T11:37:00.000-07:002012-03-28T11:38:32.786-07:00The Finite Forest: Tale of Tales Begs To Keep "Art" AliveThe self-described team of artists (rather than games developers or designers) Tale of Tales have long courted the periphery of PC games community. Their string of releases including most famously The Path have all been controversial for one reason or another; usually whether or not they are games at all, and thus deserving of some people's attention or money. (For the record: it doesn't matter Lily Foxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10059330649575464110noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-88735572798431736292012-03-15T16:24:00.001-07:002012-03-15T16:24:06.402-07:00Baldur's Gate: Reduxed?
I do love a good old fashioned map.
So, I imagine there's a lot of people disappointed with the Baldur's Gate announcement, or rather the lack of the announcement they were hoping for. Even though the BG:EE (for that is its name, so sayeth the prophet) website is no working, there are still few details at this time beyond a confirmation that it is the original game 're-forged' in an updated Lily Foxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10059330649575464110noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-79892641763242820462012-03-15T12:28:00.001-07:002012-03-15T15:49:45.839-07:00Remembering Forgotten Realms - Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition Announced
The end result of a Miniature Giant Space Hamster going for eyes.
It has been well ever thirteen years since the first instalment of the legendary Baldur's Gate series. BioWare's epic story of the child of a dead god set in the Forgotten Realms D&D world set the bar for character roleplaying adventure games. Over four years they released two games and two game-sized expansion Lily Foxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10059330649575464110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-30552186112222212542010-10-30T08:56:00.000-07:002010-10-30T08:56:00.737-07:00Games for All Hallow's EveWow I've been absent, haven't I? Again. Again, again, in fact. You know what I need? Someone with a hammer and chisel knocking on my door every 9pm and asking 'have you posted on your blog today, Christopher?' And if I say 'no'... well, I'll leave the rest to your imagination.
So, Frictional Games had a good old post about recommended plays/watches/reads for this, the darkest and most Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-40910459783999347562010-10-03T14:27:00.000-07:002010-10-03T14:27:09.686-07:00Eurogamer Expo: Gemini RueSo as you might have noticed I was at the Eurogamer Expo today. And only today, and not the whole three days that the event took place over because A) the weekend tickets were sold out before I realised it was happening and B) spending three days in London might just be enough to finally send me round the bend entirely. As it was five hours was more than enough in that place.
And more than Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-48189880292736300032010-09-27T03:21:00.000-07:002010-09-27T03:21:21.399-07:00Where Has He Gone Again?Yeah, so after the amazing success of my (shamelessly linked to everywhere) Amnesia review, I went suddenly silent. With no explanation. Again. Sorry about that.
This is/was not, however, another case of me abandoning Keys Akimbo, merely that I didn't have internet access for a while as I've returned to university and it took a while to get my internet sorted at my new place.
Rest assured thereAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-90051089896397574852010-09-09T12:13:00.000-07:002010-09-10T03:17:53.536-07:00Review: Amnesia - The Dark Descent
No no no no no, stay away, don't look! Light, light, I need light, where's the light? No, darkness! Hide! Oh god he's going to see me nooooooo... oh, thank god he's gone. Now, what's in this room?" *Sound of door creaking slowly open* Oh... oh god, no. *Sound of vomit splattering over stone*
So that's Amnesia: The Dark Descent in a nut shell. Frictional Games, whose previous game Penumbra you Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-88449735918439075602010-09-06T14:58:00.000-07:002010-09-06T14:58:26.571-07:00One to Watch: The WitnessThe pleasure of having a memory as full of holes as mine is you get to discover things over and over and over again. I rediscover things all the time: old songs, old movies, my sense of wonder at the world. Then I lose them again. But one thing I hope not to lose this time is the fact that Jonathan Blow, indie games darling and creator of Braid, is heading up a team working on a game called The Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-74616890189508675832010-09-03T16:09:00.000-07:002010-09-03T16:09:02.858-07:00Company Of Heroes On The Line OnlineWhich is my weird and obtuse way of saying that Relic Entertainment's new re-imagining of classic RTS Company of Heroes has entered open beta. Which as far as free-to-play micropayment-maintained projects means it has just been released.
Company of Heroes Online, as it has so originally been titled, is essentially the hit 2006 World War 2 strategy game sans the pile of expansion packs it has Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-56864438650350456562010-09-03T08:44:00.000-07:002010-09-03T08:45:00.668-07:00Try a Little Bit of Amnesia - Demo
Frictional Games have released a demo for their soon-to-be-scarring-us-witless Amnesia. In keeping with their ongoing development blog-thoughts, they have also blogged about the demo's design and theory.
The demo consists of two levels from different points in the game. The first is the opening level and starts in medias res, which is all kind of the point - of course somehow you got to where Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-7926007549615137602010-08-30T10:16:00.000-07:002012-12-06T04:07:52.657-08:00Project A Day 5 - Our Past Defines Our FutureWow, so now I'm up to 11,700+ words on the Falling Skies document. I dread to think how many words I've written talking about it on this blog. And today I'm going to add some more commentary, this time about the extensive history of the Raelian Plains (ie the region in which Falling Skies is set).
Timeline (well, part of it)
I may have mentioned I had already written a timeline for Rael, Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-28216291005459939432010-08-28T12:43:00.000-07:002010-08-28T13:19:37.547-07:00Project A Day 4 - No, Mr Bond, I Except You To RollMY PLAYERS: BEWARE OF SERIOUS SPOILERS BELOW! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
You'll notice it has been a few days since we've had a project update. It is not that I've not done any work on Falling Skies, it is that I have not had anything new worth writing about. I have already talked twice about designing locations and what would be the point in doing so again? I have written the Trade Quarter and Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-48433743109371222782010-08-27T17:10:00.000-07:002010-08-27T17:10:10.234-07:00Your New Dose of Amnesia Is ReadyThe new horror-puzzler, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, has gone gold as of yesterday (Friday) and has a confirmed release date of September 8th.
Developers Frictional Games have already delivered dread and darkness with their previous games which formed the Penumbra series. Amnesia goes further from the preconceptions of a first person adventure game and makes the player completely Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-4885843146044187942010-08-25T18:54:00.000-07:002010-08-25T18:54:24.103-07:00Project A Day 3 - Variety, Spice and StereotypesToday's progress was filling in and completing the Transient Quarter of the City of Phire. Like I described in the previous blog post, this involves an overview, the people, the places and story hooks (in that order). Today I will go into some detail about the thought processes behind the location's design and look at creating a location from the bottom up (starting with its mechanical purpose, Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-65281620849670561192010-08-24T17:38:00.000-07:002010-08-24T17:38:23.000-07:00Project A Day 2 - Residents of the Wasteland
Locations - Overview
Today was devoted largely to expanding the Falling Skies campaign setting notes. I expected to have a chance to expand the setting through play but tonight's regular gathering didn't work out that way. Man, I love that I can add stuff like this to my CV or portfolio - it's essentially games design when you get right down to it, like writing a level design document. Exactly Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-798022325621694072010-08-24T06:49:00.000-07:002010-08-24T06:49:11.711-07:00Going Underground: Take a Trip on the Metro
More than five months after its release, Metro 2033 has got itself a demo. It seems to be funded/sponsored by hardware manufacturer MSI but no-one's interested in The Money, right?
Metro 2033, as you might remember, is a Russian-made FPS based upon Dmitry Glukhovsky's novel of existential horror in post-apocalyptic Moscow underground. To save the remnants of humanity from mutant Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-72195569906543532872010-08-23T15:52:00.000-07:002010-08-23T15:55:10.788-07:00Project A Day 1 - A New Fallout FantasyAnd now for something a little different.
Since last time I have done some work on Khalith's Cell Level 2, cluttering and lighting the reception room, hospital hall and surgery room. Damn they're complicated, and I don't know if I'm making them any better than the early work on Level 1 but they certainly feel more complicated at this point. Is that a good sign? All I know for certain is that I Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-49789001870480322422010-08-20T10:31:00.000-07:002010-08-20T10:31:20.837-07:00Project 1 Day 6 - Number Crunching
Rooms and portals w/o statics
Short post today, I feel. Largely because I haven't done so much work today, and none yesterday, but also feeling rather unnecessarily wrecked and spending more time on other projects right this minute.
Anyway, what I have done is optimised Level 1 as best I can. This involves applying room makers to each room and corridor and connecting these blue cubes withAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-10247724247279575522010-08-18T13:48:00.000-07:002010-08-18T13:48:42.135-07:00Project 1 Day 5 - Give My Creation Life!No blog post yesterday? No, but I do need to take some manner of break sometime. Still, I managed to get started on one of today's tasks: developing the NavMesh for Level 1. Actually everything I've done lately is for Level 1 alone - I wanted to get something fully playable quick. Plus learning the full level development process on a limited area means building levels 2 and 3 will be so much Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-27030568654628664522010-08-16T13:41:00.000-07:002010-08-16T13:41:36.771-07:00Project 1 Day 4 - Clutterizer 2000So much for a day of rest, though today was a few hours shorter - 3 till 9pm, not 1 till 9 (ridiculously long blog posts not included). Today's time was mostly devoted to completing Level 1's clutter pass. I started with a list of the rooms, listed by letters which reference their matching rooms in the original map layout, and each had a brief description with maybe a note of particular Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-47720668945401183022010-08-15T14:47:00.000-07:002010-08-15T14:47:08.932-07:00Project 1 Day 3 - Scattering the ClutterWhat a way to spend a Sunday, hey? Stuck behind a laptop, surrounded by a nest of pillows and bean bags with House Series 5 boxset on the TV. And up to my elbows in thick, detritus-filled GECK.
Level 1
First off was fixing a couple of errors noted in yesterday's blog: sorting out overly straight paths, empty boring halls, missing rooms and various other minor errors/omissions I later Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-88832000902117722582010-08-14T14:27:00.000-07:002010-08-14T14:27:18.915-07:00Project 1 Day 2 - Laying Out The LevelDay number two! We're on a roll!
Level 1
Today's work began with a realisation that the existing work was going to be unsuitably large as a single cell (which has the problems of long loading times and sluggish performance). And in order to make it work as two cells I had to first teach myself how to connect one cell to another.
It turns out the process is marvellously easy. All Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0