Here’s a picture of him from his interview at Indiegames.com:

We’ll post a music preview for Project B “soon” In the meantime, please say hi to Mattias in the comments!

/jeb

The main reason for the move was that our previous host updated PHP to a version that broke our wiki, and they weren’t interested in doing a rollback just for us. We felt that it was time we took our destiny in our own hands, and lo and behold: the wiki is working again! (As an unfunny note, at our previous host we weren’t able to use the wiki, but spambots could still create spam accounts… Been cleaning that up now, though.)

/ jeb

(Picture source: http://www.basicallybenita.com/?m=200907)

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

I will post the DaisyMoon presentation as soon as I’ve had time to edit it.

Also check out our new widgets at the bottom of our blog! Thewreck spent an afternoon installing all of those, and hopefully it will make it easier to find old Oxeye articles

/jeb

Update: Re-uploaded the video clips with correct aspect ratio!

Long time no see! We actually have a lot of stuff to tell, such as we are now working with anosou for music in Project B and that there’s more info about the game online now, but these news will have to wait just a little bit longer

We just came back from No More Sweden 2010 in Skövde. We had a great time and met a lot of really cool indie developers. During the event we also created a 48-hour game called The Dubai Grand Prix Scandal.

It’s a game intended for two people using two game pads, but we’ve added keyboard support as well (using ESDF and IJKL for main controls, check the readme for the other keys).

Download Windows version here (and please read the readme file!)

This game has also been made in our DaisyMoon prototyping engine. Feel free to hack around in the Lua source code!

/jeb

It all started when they removed what is called “wireframe spellcasting”, the User Interface feature where you are allowed to target spells and skills by clicking the unit icons in the bottom bar. Now that it is removed, you must actively find your unit, and click on it on the map. They removed a feature I loved and used, which for me destroyed part of why I was starting to like the game. Instead of improving the interface like they have done for so many parts of the game, they are now hampering the interface to force some kind of ideal playing style on players…

The strange part is their stated reason for doing so: to increase the time spent away from the battle to increase the “feeling of actually managing their base”. They say this, while at the same time allowing casting spells and skills on the mini-map. Effectively, I can still be away from base and manage it, but way more cumbersome. This is not a game design philosophy I can agree with.

For some years, I have been somewhat following the Korean Starcraft scene. Then today, I learned that Blizzard had stopped negotiations with KeSPA, the Korean esports association, regarding broadcasting rights for starcraft 2. I don’t care about the legal situation, but it made me contemplate whom of them is in what position. Would I have been following the korean e-sports community if the RTS they played was not starcraft? Or is it in fact KeSPA and the pro gamers which is the reason I’m following Starcraft? I’m unsure, but Blizzard seems to be 100% sure its their game, this to me is incredibly arrogant towards the work and effort put down by the pro gamers and KeSPA. As I see it, Blizzard seems to think that Starcraft 2 is the only game that will be interesting to watch. I for one, would have no problem watching my favourite pro starcraft 1 gamers duke it out in some other rts.

Battle net has been getting increased value through rankings, achievements, friend systems and so on, to the paying, b-net connected customer. This is great, because it makes the paying version more attractive than a cracked one. However, as some of you may know, Starcraft 2 will not support LAN play. And the stated reason for this is, among other things, to: “safeguard against piracy”. As I’m confident hackers and crackers will manage to enable LAN play for themselves, I’m amazed that Blizzard can take this standpoint. To me, it feels like promoting piracy rather then safeguarding against it. Sure, its not that black and white, but why basically give the cracked version a bonus feature? To me, it makes no sense, and I hope they enable LAN play the second crackers manage to add it.

The last point is about the actual game. For some time, after losing or winning a game in Starcraft 2, I have felt a sort of apathy, a sort of indifference. Up until yesterday I could not identify why this was. I then found this article which basically explains the concept of the “moving shot”: In Starcraft 1, some units, most notably air units could attack and retreat without having to stop in-between. This might sound trivial, but as the article explains, it has some rather grand consequences for the dynamic of a match. If you don’t feel like you want to read it all, basically, it made it possible for a smaller force to get off pot shots on a larger force occupied with something else without risking getting hit itself. This has huge implications and is one of the biggest reasons why pro gamers could get so good in starcraft 1. It made it possible to bridge gaps in unfavourable rock-scissor-paper situations, do comebacks from failed tactics and execute otherwise seen as impossible strategies. In Starcraft 2 I have yet to experience something like the mentioned scenarios happening. It makes me wonder.

Before all this, I was confident I would come to like Starcraft 2 and that it would be a great game. Now I’m not so sure any more. I even had thoughts of boycott going through my head, but I finally decided that writing about it was much more constructive. Thank you for reading!

/thewreck

And oh… Haowan is Alex May, maker of stuff like Cottage of DOOM and IGF-nominated Eufloria/Dyson! (It’s not he who is singing, though.)

/ jeb

http://www.oxeyegames.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&p=3674

Some highlights:

• 17 different towers
• Upgrade menu (with custom-built buttons)
• Nice use of the rush and threat level GUI items
• Some clever particle effects (I first thought it was custom graphics)
• Clean and pretty Lua script, you should definitely take a look

The mod suffers from a crash bug, unfortunately. It occurs sometimes when you upgrade towers, and is likely one of the bugs I’ve fixed for the long lost 1.17 patch… and I still don’t know when we’ll be able to release it…

/ jeb

It would be fun to know when/if you get your card. Just leave a message as a comment to this post, or in our forums.

Cheers!

/ jeb

You sign up at this page: http://www.oxeyegames.com/addresses/

Please remember to write your name with the address! If you forget to write your name, I’ll send a postcard anyway, but I’m not sure how good the post office is at locating you. Guess it depends on if you are living in your own house or not Also, you don’t need to write anything in the name suggestions / comments box if you don’t want to. In that case simply leave it blank.

/ jeb

One of the biggest indie events every year is the Independent Games Festival at the game developer conference in San Francisco. It’s a competition that awards cash prizes to a number of outstanding indie games. Many of these games are still work in progress, hoping to gain some attention and maybe distribution deals. Monaco by Pocketwatch Games is one of these games, and it happened to grab both the awards for best game design and the Seumas Grand Prize.

Monaco is a 4-player cooperative stealth game taking place in… uuh… Monaco. You choose one of four characters (eight characters are planned), each with its own special abilities and skills and attempt to steal money and other stuff from various locations. These locations (banks, casinos, yachts, etc) are protected by alarms and armed guards, which makes things a bit tricky. This is Monaco’s IGF trailer:

Now, as I’ve written earlier, I was one of the judges who were evaluating the games for the awards. I was very pleased to see that Monaco won, since I had voted for it in the final round. There are two reasons for this,

First, Monaco feels like what indie is all about, at least for me. It’s the kind of game that can’t be produced with multi-million dollars. It’s too risky. Weirder games, such as Scribblenauts, seem to be exclusive to portable devices and usually don’t have multiplayer. Also big budget games need big budget content, and I can’t imagine what Monaco would play like if it was, for example, in 3D.

Secondly, Monaco is a really fun game, at least when you play it with a friend or two (as it was intended). The cooperative element works very well. Shutting down an alarm or opening a door will help everybody, and players are able to revive those that have fallen. It’s especially exciting when only one player is left alive, trying to dodge guards and revive the others. I like this sense of giving everybody in the team the chance to be a hero. And even if you should fail you get a sense of progress because the map will remain revealed when you start over. It’s like, “alright that didn’t go so well, but now I know how we should do it!”

These things put together: originality, good design, and pure entertainment, made it easy for me to pick Monaco for the IGF grand prize. Of course, there were like 160 judges voting, so I’m not alone.

/jeb