Alrighty, I finally submitted all my info to Intel for the Threaded Game Demo Contest and as it turns out they give a weekly prize up until final judging for the game with the most votes. So, please go vote for Goo!. Make me happy...make me feel...Love....again.
PUSH THE THUMBS UP BUTTON ON THIS PAGE K THX BYE PLS!
In other news, I've started on a new game. More to come later!
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Sorry for the lack of updates. Life has been...well...busy is kind of an understatement...uber-busy..maybe? Or perhaps Busy Extreme Beach Volleyball? Either way, I thought it would die down a bit after GDC...boy was I wrong...and I'm glad it hasn't. Big, huge giant beyond my wildest dreams things are taking place and as soon as I can say what these things are I will but now you just have to trust me when I say "things are happening". What I can tell you is this....I'm working on a new engine. Now, those of you that know me may say "Why aren't you doing the game?" To which I say "things are happening". Now this may seem cryptic to you, and, you are correct it is. I can say this: The reason I'm doing a new engine is two fold. Reason 1: The old engine was married to DirectX basically Reason 2: I like speed. When I came back from GDC I rewrote the threading model for Goo! in anticipation of the Intel Threaded Game Contest and got a huge framerate increase. This version has not been released yet because I'm taking it to the next level. That next level, is the new engine. I've been hitting it pretty hard for the last couple of weeks and have a new, much faster, OpenGL and DirectX, multi-platform compatible engine up and running. I'm still in the process of porting Goo! over to it, but the results are going to be great. NOW, you may be asking yourself...why OpenGL. Well sir, to that I say "things are happening". Now, that being said "Things" sometimes fall apart...so here's hoping that "things" actually FUCKING WORK OUT THIS TIME *glares towards the West Coast*.
There have been a few write ups and interviews about Goo! since my last post, here are the links:
Grrlgamer writeup on the best of the IGF at GDC (I wooed them with my dashing good looks and the ability to not run away cowering when girls talk to me)
GameTap Interview (I called out Scarlett Johansson in this interview as well)
IndieGames Blog interview with Tim (I did call out Scarlett, but it didn't make it into this interview)
Stay tuned...things are happening.
Wuddup bitches,
Goo! v1.5.HolidaeInnnnnnnn is now up on the Goo! website. It is named v1.5.HolidaeInnnnnnnn because the majority of changes were done in the Holiday Inn the few days before the IGF Pavilion opened. This was the version demoed at GDC for those of you who weren't able to sell your child in time to purchase a ticket. Below is a screenshot...you'll notice it looks a bit different.
This version should fix "hear music but only see black" problems on 32bit Vista. I just purchased a quad core machine with Vista Ultimate for the Intel 2008 Gaming Contest. After not getting Technical Excellence *grumble* Some dudes from Intel came up to the Goo! booth at GDC and said "We have this threaded game contest, you should enter Goo!, it will win". I had heard about the 2007 contest at the beginning of 2008 and said to myself "Shit, Goo! totally would have won at least SOMETHING here". I was pissed that I didn't know about it, BUT NOW I DO! Anyway, this contest basically checks how Goo scales from single core to multi-core systems...which means I'll have to scale it to single core. I haven't done this yet because I didn't want to take the extra time for something that was never going to come out on the PC...but since this contest came up...I'll be doing a single core version. For all you hyperthreaders out there, you won't get anywhere near the same amount of detail as the dual and quad core people (<3 you guys) but you'll have something that is playable. This should be out in the next month or so and I'll update then.
The post below is a really short version of what happened at GDC. Some really cool stuff is happening with Goo! and hopefully I'll be able to post more about that in the very near future. Until then, check out the demo and paypal $5.00 to tommunism@hotmail.com THANKS!
People enjoy the game. They genuinely have fun when playing it.
4 Player Versus Mode is like smash brothers on crack dipped in barbeque sause.
A Senior Game Designer at Nintendo, Jenova Chen, Jon Mak, and some people from Sony said my game was cool.
I didn't win, but I think people seeing the build for the first time realize that this game is special and that it was probably overlooked for Technical Excellence due to the high system requirements and / or some judges looking at technical excellence from a "how polished is this game" stance instead of a "how technically complex is this game" stance.
Intel came to my booth and told me to enter their Threaded Game contest. They basically told me I would win. Several several people were really impressed with the tech.
Some bitch came up and said something along the lines of "a company called MetaTools made a game exactly like this called Goo about 10 years ago, you had better watch it I'm sure they hold a patient and will come after you" I laughed and said "Let them try, I wrote this myself".
Several big publishers are interested including some major first party console people. The game is looking like it'll be out on a major console by the end of the year.
I am in Wired, I'll be on a TV show on Starz, and a few other magazines and podcasts.
Everyone at the IGF is friendly as all hell. I had lunch with the World of Goo guys. I met Cactus and just about everyone from TigSource. Most awesome people ever.
I'll update the build on the server later this week. Just requires any sort of webcam and it'll work in the Gish and Mercury Skins.
Ok, so, the post below says there is a public demo available, this was made for the IGF Audience Award. If you like the game, or just like me, or just hate everyone but me, or just hate me less than everyone else, or if you just hate the establishment or your parents and want to lash out....vote for Goo! here:
http://www.igf.com/audience.php VOTE FOR GOO!
The version that is up there is one version older than the one that is at http://goo.pillowfortgames.com the newer version has better sounds. Enjoy and vote for me PLEASE!
I've redesigned it, optimized it, thrown crud on it, wiped the crud off and slathered on some fun and here it is: http://goo.pillowfortgames.com
Enjoy, if you have the system requirements.
So..Merry New Year and all that shit. Over my Christmas break I decided to take a breather from Goo and code something I've wanted to create for a very very long time. I've always had a love for Flash and will be doing a Flash game with a buddy of mine sometime this year...but I was worried about controls. It is a sort of fast paced game, and keyboard / mouse controls don't cut it. The first game I made that I publicly released was written in Flash 4 and since then I've always wanted to take an old keyboard and convert it into a joystick so I can play my favorite flash games without using the keyboard (I hate keyboard / mouse controlled games that AREN'T RTS games)..so instead of ripping apart a keyboard I did the next best thing.
http://flashjoystick.pillowfortgames.com/
This is a program that allows a developer to add rumble functionality to their Flash games as well as provide a mapping file with their game that will allow a user to use an Xbox 360 controller to play. It's just at version 1.1 so I'm sure there are some bugs, but I've done my best to work them out. Most of the bugs come in the bundled Flash CS3 component that allows you to send rumble commands to the joystick. They are mainly security problems, and they have been worked around, but I'm still testing it. If there is enough demand, I will make a version that supports generic, and PS3 joysticks. I figure that the 360 and PS3 joysticks will be the most widely available joysticks on the market thanks to the miracle of USB! Anyway, download it, give it a try. Any questions or anything just shoot me an email. I plan on releasing v2.0 with a revamped interface after all this GDC craziness dies down.
Now that Christmas is over, it's back to Goo! time for yet ANOTHER crunch to get the Audience Award build ready. Wish me luck..and if you don't...well you're a jerk anyway.
I decided to make this video after finding out that Goo! was nominated for Technical Excellence at the IGF 2008. I am so honored to be recognized along side World of Goo, Audiosurf, Axiom: Overdrive, and Gumboy Tournament. Not to mention every other game in the 5 other categories. It is truely an honor and I am really looking forward to meeting everyone at GDC. This video represents the first break I've had since August...now back to work.
Yes...1 week until the IGF finalists are announced and I anticipate not sleeping for said week. It's been tough the last two months waiting to hear if the game is good enough to be a finalist or not. I think it has an honest shot at Technical Excellence, but I'm not sure if the game will be played, reacted to as "This just isn't fun" then discarded like a dead hooker that I killed yesterday. It could be because I play the game every day and am bored of it, or it could be because it isn't actually that great. I'll know in a week. I don't sleep very well already, but now it's even worse. I go to bed every night literally saying "Technical Excellence...Technical Excellence". Luckily for me, my brain never gets tired so I've packed my week with tasks gameplay and redesign tasks for Goo!. I do think I'll be redoing the movement for Goo! to speed the gameplay up, but I'm not sure when it will be done. It'll all depend on the verdict on Dec. 3rd. If I'm a finalist in something, I'll work on aspects of the game that pertain to that category. If I'm not, then I'm going to focus back on movement and gameplay to make the game more fun, playable, and polished. There are already a bunch of changes to the core mechanics and everyone will see them in time when the demo is released. I'm still planning on the demo being ready in December, though I'm not sure WHEN in December. We'll just have to see. Wish Goo! luck at IGF and do me a favor and sabotage other people...even if they have nothing to do with IGF...I like the word sabotage and I like to know that people sabotage on my behalf. Thx Bye.
For a while now, I've wanted to redo the collision system for Goo. It's pretty top secret (movable interactive liquid doesn't come free) so I won't go into too many details on how it works other than to say it's multi-threaded up the butthole. Anyway, I've wanted to redo it for some time, and I felt it necessary to do so today. So, I sat down at about 11AM and just got finished with it, it's 3:34AM. I'm extremely happy with it, as it has allowed me to up the detail by a factor of 4 or 5...and still run well over 60FPS at 1920 x 1080. It may also allow me to release a demo that will not require a dual core machine to run which will make several people happy. Short update, I know, but stay tuned more cool stuff to come.
Orange Mapping has allowed me to do some pretty cool liquidy looking skins, and after talking with Edmund McMillen (creator of Gish and like 1300 other games) I thought it would be cool to do a Gish skin. With his blessing, behold, a Gish skin!
In this screenshot, Gish is fighting against The Hoff. This skin is avaliable in the latest IGF build, I think that's pretty technically awesome really...I mean...that's like 400 Hoffs on the screen! Anyone who has worked with me before knows I have an unhealthy obsession with putting disturbing pictures of The Hoff into all my tech demos. While at my last job, when converting the Unreal 2.X engine to the 360, the first graphics test was a really really really disturbing "Hoff cube" showing David Hasselhoff lying on the ground with only some pug puppies covering his manly parts. Yea...disturbing.
Anyway, back to work. Some early feedback of the game has indicated it needs more fun poured on it...and I agree. I'm redoing the Versus Mode right now, and adding in some AI so Versus Mode becomes a single and multiplayer mode. Also, I'm doing away with the current Survival Mode and replacing it with a more Street Fighter Alpha 3 Survival Mode (i.e. Fight lots of matches with different Goos, as you progress it'll be 2 on 1, 3 on 1, stuff like this). I probably won't throw out the current Survival Mode all together, but it is back burnered for singleplayer AI now. I'll post again when I have news on these changes. BYE!
Well...I'm pretty excited about this. Since the beginning of development, I've had trouble creating smooth normals and preventing the goos from capping out and looking like it plateaus. Well, I had a dream about a way to fix this, so the next day I got up and coded it out. The results are...well...take a look for yourself.
Before this technique, a mercury skin wasn't even possible. This has very very very little impact on rendering performance opposed to the old method of rendering. This is the first of many skins to come using this technique. Stay tuned!