I’m going to spend a week in Norway and then stop off in Iceland for 3 days. You’ve been warned.
Looking forward to hanging out with Al Lowe again. As is customary, I expect a Lucas/Sierra fist fight.
I also hope I get to meet John De Lancie. I really want to pick his brain about my Q Continuum theories. I’m sure he’ll be fascinated and provide much-needed insight.
It’s my Battle Royale game for introverts. Players parachute onto an island then scramble to find a nice quiet place to handout with a small group of close friends and chat.
I can’t help but wonder if how to keep indie dev from not working themselves to death has more to do with learning how to budget, scope and schedule.
Thimbleweed Park (a kickstarted project) was around 6 months late and no one crunched beyond a weekend here and there. How did we do that? We scoped, budgeted and scheduled.
We fucked up a lot of things, crunching was not one of them. It would be nice if the press talked about all the projects that are doing things right, rather than focus on… oh nevermind…. what am I thinking.
It’s a crime that so many Kickstarter projects are asking for far less money than they need to finish. It’s unlikely they did serious scheduling and budgeting. Or maybe they did and said, “fuck it”. That’s a problem.
I’ve talked to a few indie devs that didn’t ask for enough money to finish and they say “But we wouldn’t get to make the game otherwise.” Yeah, OK, fair, but then don’t complain when you kill yourself in the process.
It’s a big problem that indies can’t raise realistic amounts of money to build games. It’s a horrible cycle and I’ve stopped backing Kickstarters where they are not asking for a realistic amount.
Not a week goes by that I don’t run into an indie dev that is jumping headlong into a project and they haven’t done any serious budgeting and scheduling. The ugly truth is: if they did (and were honest) they would never start.
Maybe that’s not all bad.
Well… 14 years in a row, the Grumpy Gamer blog has been 100% April Fools’ day free.
Maybe it’s just me, but it feels like the stupidity of April Fools’ is waining a little. Maybe my life’s mission is finally coming to an end. It’s also possible that I’m really playing the long game and once you’re all 110% convinced I would never pull an April Fools’ Prank, that’s when I get you!
We got Pep from the local shelter three years ago in June, they estimated she was around 2-3 months old, so we put her Birthday on April 1, so happy Birthday Pep.
Thimbleweed Park’s one-year anniversary is this Friday, and to help commiserate (I mean celebrate) the game is going to be 50% off for one day on all platforms. If you’re thinking of picking it up, you might want to hold off a few days.
This will be the deepest discount we’ve offered, after that, it’s back to our normal price (but still less than the Guybrush approved price for a video game).
My new favorite YouTube Channel…
Does anyone out there have any good examples of top-down action/RPG games that have nice feeling combat? Preferably using pixel art and keyboard only. The combat in Nuclear Throne feels really nice, but like so many games out there, they use a combination of mouse and keyboard (keyboard to move, mouse to attack).
I’m trying to do the whole game with just keyboard (don’t ask, it’s just a requirement of mine).
Currently, I use WASD to move and SPACE/Enter to attack, but it just feels wrong and I can’t place why. Maybe it’s the best that it gets with keyboard only. Or maybe there is something little I’m doing wrong that actually matters a lot. It’s why I’d like to play some example of games that do it well.
Also, something that runs on the Mac.
And I want a pony.
UPDATE: Still no pony. But, for the commenters that are telling me I should use arrow keys instead of WASD… arrow keys work as well as the num pad. Originally, only the arrow keys worked, but then every single person I sat down to play started using WASD, so I finally implemented it.
I got some new D&D dice. Things are starting to heat up in my group and it’s time to stop screwing around.
In Star Trek, people eat food on the holodeck. Does the food disappear when they close their mouth? Why do they say it tastes good? Are they just roleplaying? Or does the holodeck special replicate the food like the replicators? If so, then why don’t the crew of Voyager just eat on the holodeck, avoiding the need for replicator rations? In the first episode of Voyager, they mention the replicators and the holodeck run off different energy signatures, this why there aren’t holodeck rations.
P.S. These are the kind of things I think about when procrastinating.