Texas Game Testers Blog

BUBBLE BOBBLE NEO: NOT WORTH 800 POINTS

I’ll try to keep this short and sweet. I have been looking forward to playing Bubble Bobble on my Xbox 360 for a while now. Bubble Bobble NEO, a version I have not played yet, finally came out last week. It wasn’t the original version I played on Nintendo, but who cares? It’s still Bubble Bobble, and if you have read my posts in the past, I felt this was one of the few titles that was a must for

Nintendo Wii: Sega Think They’ve Got The Number One Game This Christmas

Sega firmly believe that Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games is going to be ruling the top spot in the UK gaming charts this Christmas.
“There are three games that can be Christmas number one: Call of Duty, FIFA or Mario & Sonic. It’s as simple as that.”

“The price …

Open source 3D RPG updates

There has been some activity in the most prominent free (as in freedom) software 3D role-playing games DungeonHack, jClassicRPG and Radakan.

DungeonHack

Green, water and village in DungeonHack [more]

DungeonHack (DH) 0.10 has been released in form of win&lin 32bit biaries and a few commits later I was able to compile the game on my 64bit Arch Linux machine. It is the first release of DH that does not rely on non-free libraries.

I played the game for the first time and I was positively surprised. Not only can I move around in the nice-looking (endless) landscape but also fight, cast magic, pick up items, enter houses and dungeons as well as talk to npcs. Physics also work (see barrels video below). On the downside: the current code is crash-happy and there is little content: In toto three houses, two dungeons, two enemy types, two items, one non-player character, one spell).

Zombie roasting á la DH

The next DH aim is to create a typical RPG village, add some inventory and status GUI and to write a dialog system (the current one runs on boxes). Maybe you feel like giving them a programmer’s or artist’s hand at achieving one of these or other goals? Then enter the DH chatroom and/or forum (which I find one of the most entertaining floss game forums to read).

When test-playing DH, it appears weird to me that enemies’ bodies disappear when eliminated and wish they would drop and also drop loot, which I could then collect into the (also not yet accessible) inventory. When playing the latest release or watching the videos, is there something you feel is missing?

jClassicRPG

Shrine and road in jClassicRPG

There has been much activity lately in jClassicRPG’s Subversion repository. There are texture-roads now, the map not only shows terrain type any more but also infrastructure (roads and settlements). Shrines and Igloo buildings appear in the game world and a yeti creature has been added to the game’s repertoire.

Usability has increased a lot through mouse menu integration and addition of buttons for map, character status etc. Though the drop-down menus don’t act as the ones most of us are probably used to, the GUI-usage learning curve has dropped a lot. I especially like the tool-tip system, which shows usage instructions for the different controls or details about fields in the map. If only the font was better readable…

If you would like to help jClassicRPG grow, I can think of at least one Blender-modelling task: give attack animations to this gorilla. Apart from that you can find ways to help on this page and in this thread. And if you’re hardcore, also read the TODO! (Search for “[ ]“)

What I would like to see in jClassicRPG are cloth/armor items and a menu for equipping my party members with them. Also the shiny flowers scream to me “pick me” and I hope that will be a gameplay option some day. Can you think of content or features that would enrich the game?

Radakan

Panda3D integration in Radakan

Radakan’s developer announced a while ago, that the 3D view of the game will be postponed and a text/GUI interface would be developed first. Now Panda3D, a fun, BSD-licensed, python-powered game engine is being integrated.

What Radakan’s developers could use help with now is exporting their already available media [.7z archive] and some media from OpenGameArt to the Panda3d .egg format. Instructions here (press “next” multiple times to see instructions for various 3D applications).

Radakan’s ‘behavior’ editor

I do not care too much for the 3D part of the game (at least not yet). I would prefer the engine to be more stable, so I could try out the quest and add some detail to it using the behavior editor. What do you think? Is implementing 3D worth the time or would you rather prefer the gui/text-based framework to get developed further?

Off-topic

A little hint if you ever feel like making a gameplay video yourself: I prepared the videos for this post (and other posts) using glc to record and mencoder to encode. Sometimes (for non-OpenGL games) I use recordmydesktop to record. Feel free to ask in the comments or forum if I can help you with making videos.

Another little hint: If you are unable to use YouTube but curious about the videos and can play back mp4 files (vlc and mplayer can handle them), use youtube-dl to download videos for off-line playback.

Nintendo Wii: No Resident Evil 5 For Nintendo Wii Says Capcom

Whilst many gamers are clamouring to play the latest instalment of the Resident Evil franchise on Wii, Capcom say that isn’t to be.
“I think, while Resident Evil 4 is a great game, its appeal was limited somewhat to maniac players,”

“With RE5, I wanted to bring the series to a larger …

BRUTAL LEGEND: DEMO IMPRESSIONS

Activision dropping Double Fine Production’s ‘Brutal Legend’ was probably a bad idea. Win for EA, definite loss for Activision. I think I finally understand why they tried to block Brutal Legend from being released. Activision realized they made a pretty big mistake in letting this one go. Maybe a couple. One mistake was underestimating the talent and overall creative ability of Double Fine

CLAPTRAP: THE STAR OF ‘BORDERLANDS’

I am having mixed emotions right now. The ‘Claptrap’ series of documentaries developed by GearBox Software is quite honestly, one of the most humorous game marketing campaigns I have ever seen. But it’s starting to bother me. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy this kind of marketing and I encourage all developers to do something ‘out of the box’ like this, but I find it troubling that they are relying

CRACKDOWN 2 MULTIPLAYER GAMEPLAY VIDEO

Whoa! I’m surprisingly not impressed with what I am seeing of Crackdown 2. Maybe I haven’t seen enough of what Ruffian Games is trying to do here, but I’m not seeing anything special. What I am seeing is Crackdown 1.5, with a lot more blood. Big deal! Seriously, it almost looks exactly the same. And although I really enjoyed the first Crackdown, I was hoping to see a different take on the

THE WITCHER 2: MOST REALISTIC ENVIRONMENTS IN HISTORY OF RPG’S?

Do you know much about The Witcher? I sure don’t. But the statement about the most realistic environments in history has got my attention. I mean, we should take that with a grain of salt right? Every new game that comes out is usually better and badder than the next it seems. But it’s sort of like every new blockbuster movie that comes out each week. For that one week, they get to run new

Nintendo Wii: Wii Classic Controller Pro Heading Stateside?

According to online gaming publication, Siliconera, the Wii Classic Controller Pro could be heading to America.

Koei, the developers behind Samurai Warriors 3, have mentioned the Classic Controller Pro twice in their recently published fact sheet. Looks as though the developer wishes to bundle it with Samurai Warriors 3 when it …

Nintendo Wii: Wii Price Cut Not Influenced By PS3 or Xbox 360

Denise Kaigler, Nintendo of America vice president of corporate affairs, has stated that the recently announced Wii price cuts weren’t influenced by similar moves by its competitors.
“We were not driven by any other factors but our own business decision to do this. As I mentioned, this was timed to take …