I usually try to avoid posting more than once per day, but I nearly forgot which date it was today… it’s the 5h of March! That means we have two birthdays to celebrate!

First up is Pontus Hammarberg, our own very cuddlesome artist who is trying to save mankind, one life at a time He has turned 26 today. Give him a cheer! (And in case you were wondering, Pontus goes by the internet alias “Kinten”, you may have seen him around.)

Second up is Harvest: Massive Encounter that is 2 years old today! It’s crazy how long time that has passed since its release, and how different things are now compared to back then.

To celebrate this we are going to give you a present! We are going to send out postcards (real, physical postcards) to anybody who wants one. All you need to do is to give us your home address (we’ll not use it for anything else, don’t worry), and maybe suggest a name for Project B! Anything goes, but obviously we prefer actual usable game names over “Cheesemaster of Death 2000″ The best name will receive an extra present… I think.

In any case, suggesting a name is optional, so to receive a postcard all you have to do is to go here:

–> http://www.oxeyegames.com/addresses/ <–

We’ll gather addresses for about 2 weeks. I’ll post again later. (We may not send a postcard to everybody in case this becomes unexpectedly popular, since I have to write all of these by hand… so if that happens it will be first come first served.)

/jeb

UPDATE: Remember to write your NAME with the address! Our divine senses can only stretch so far…

When we had our Harvest holiday sales on Steam we were contacted by the nice guys over at Immortal Machines (a part of the Colony of Gamers network). They wanted to know if we would be interested in participating in one of their nice podcasts, but because of time zones (and lack of confidence in speaking English live) we settled for a text-based interview instead.

The interview is mainly about Harvest, but we also talk a little about games that we like, and the future. You find the interview here:

http://www.colonyofgamers.com/cogforums/showthread.php?s=dc6fdb0bab7d47261bcec7f1270ad96c&t=15834

/jeb

Two weeks ago a box full of stuff dropped into our mailbox at the office. (I don’t go to the office very often these days, so that’s why I’m not posting about it until now.) The package was from Daniel Wolf, who wanted to pay for a bet that he lost over two years ago. To thank him for his effort, I decided to record this clip:

/jeb

Almost three years have passed since I made the first Harvest prototype. I recall it was a wednesday and I had “this idea I just needed to try,” and never got out of my bathrobe that day. The idea was based on the concept that I wanted to make a mining game where the challenge would be to get power from the plant to the harvesters. The aliens (originally green goblin heads) and defense towers were quickly added afterwards, creating the basis of what would become Harvest: Massive Encounter.

This concept has in turn inspired other game developers to make their own implementations. The first time I heard of one of these “clones” I was really shocked. It was the same kind of feeling as when we discovered that Harvest torrents were available on the same day as we released the game. It wasn’t a good feeling, but now when I look back at it I see how irrational and childish that feeling was. We should be proud that the game was worth being inspired by!

In addition, the game was The Space Game by The Causal Collective, and David Scott & Paul Preece were super cool about it and even added us to the game’s credits. Since then three more clones have appeared, and in truth I think some of these are more inspired by The Space Game than by Harvest… In any case I thought it would be fun to write a small blog post about them. (They are listed in the order that I heard about them.)

The Space Game - The Causal Collective – Game Link

This is the most famous of the “harvest games.” It’s even more famous than Harvest itself, so sometimes I read in comments and forums messages like “oh, this looks like a browser game I played somewhere…” The Space Game expands on the idea with missions and more options, while simplifying a few things to make it runnable as a browser game. Pretty neat!

Creeper World – Knuckle Cracker – Website Link

Creeper World is quite different from Harvest and has received a lot of positive feedback. It’s made by Knuckle Cracker and was brought to my attention by somebody under the alias “Zulgaines.”

Caleum Defense – anpd – Link

I’m not actually sure who has done this game. It was posted to the TIGSource forums by the mysterious user “anpd,” and s/he didn’t give any website or other personal information. The game itself doesn’t contain any readme either, so I’m lost there. In any case, what I’ve seen is an early 3d prototype which allows you to place laser defenses and energy links.

Space Station – Origin 8 – Website Link

I don’t know much about this game except that it’s available for iPhone from the AppStore. I would guess this game is more inspired by The Space Game than by Harvest, though. We had plans for making an iPhone version of Harvest, but those plans were stopped by lack of motivation (and funds, actually, because we couldn’t afford to keep on working like we did). I don’t think our version would bring the game to space, though…

So there you have it! I fully expect more games to come, please let me know if I’ve missed any.

/jeb

Happy new year everybody!

As you already know, Oxeye is run more or less like a hobby, so things get done in the order they are fun and we have energy and time to make them. That means we’ve accumulated a lot of unfinished projects (because finishing projects is not as fun as starting them), so I’ll begin this year with a small list of stuff that aren’t “done” yet, and what our “plans” for them are.

• The Harvest 1.17/1.18 Patch – I still intend to finish and release this patch, but unfortunately the Mac OS X version just keeps crashing on me. I’ve spent a whole weekend cursing at xcode to no avail, and I’m not looking forward to wasting another weekend on the same problem. You could say that I’m waiting for some kind of divine intervention, and who can tell when that is going to happen…
  Also, I want to add more features to this patch before I release it. I realized that it would probably be possible to allow mods for other game modes than creative, as long as I make sure that all “cheating” methods are disabled. That would be quite nice, since it would allow people to make user interface mods and so on.
• Harvest Lua Documentation – I started moving our forum documentation into our Oxeye wiki, but that quickly became really boring, so it’s also unfinished. I’m not really planning to finish it anytime soon, but I’ll make sure that whenever I change or add stuff to the mod system, the documentation on the wiki will be up to date.
• jeb <3 RTS – The RTS Design article series I did (over a year ago now) is also unfinished. I think the reason I stopped working on it was because I had already written my most important points, and the remaining articles were derailing a little too much. I also got some critisism that my articles were too Starcraft’y, so I need to take one step back and look at the subject in a more general way.
• thewreck’s Retrospective – I’m not the only one here who isn’t finishing projects Daniel Brynolf, who is better known as thewreck, has made a lot of small games in MMF over the years, and was writing an article series about them. The first article is here, http://www.oxeyegames.com/thewreck-in-retrospect-part-1/, but the second one is still a draft in our wordpress backend. Pontus (Kinten) even wagered 500 kr (roughly $60) that thewreck would never write the second article. He said, “the money is safe with me,” and so far it looks like he’s right.

So there it is. I’ll make a new year promise that during 2010, we’ll start more projects that we won’t finish!

/jeb

Harvest: Massive Encounter is currently 75% off on Steam!

Get it here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/15400/

/ jeb

UPDATE: We’ve matched our own service with the Steam discount, so you Mac users won’t feel left out! The 75% discount will be available until January 3rd. Look here:

http://www.oxeyegames.com/harvest/buy-now/

LavaSoft has created a site for selling their AdAware anti-virus/anti-spyware/anti-rootkit system bundled together with a bunch of different indie games, and Harvest: Massive Encounter is one of them!

So if you haven’t bought Harvest yet, and are thinking about getting some protection for your computer, this is your chance: http://www.shieldpowerup.com/games?id=5895

/jeb

As I wrote earlier I’ve been working on a new patch for Harvest, and now the Windows version is available from our forums. Please help me beta test it (just let me know if it crashes, mmkay?)! I will upload the Mac version as soon as I’ve got it running.

Check here: http://www.oxeyegames.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=490

/jeb

Hey

I’m currently working on a patch for Harvest. I’m updating this forum post with the patch progress, feel free to suggest other changes as well:

http://www.oxeyegames.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=490

Currently I’m having difficulties with the Mac version, but as soon as those are sorted out I will upload a beta version of the patch (version 1.17). The reason why the patch needs beta testing is that we’ve changed a lot of things in our engine since the last version (1.14, or 1.16 on Steam), and I’d like to sort out any problems that these changes may cause.

In other words… to be continued.

/jeb

Hey

I thought it might be a good time to repeat what the latest versions of Harvest are. Currently, the correct version is 1.14 or 1.16. The 1.16 version is only used on Steam, and fixes a couple of Steam-related issues. This version has the same features as the 1.14 version that everybody else is using. If you got the game from Reflexive, this version should already be 1.14, otherwise follow this link:

• Harvest 1.14

If you are a Steam user and want to migrate your non-Steam copy there, you can do so by activating the product on Steam with your Harvest license key. This option is only available if you bought the game here before March 2009.

/jeb