It’s been about 4 hours since the incident. I’ve made it to the train tracks and are now trying to get across Black Mesa to initiate a rocket launch. I forgot why, these scientists have a bad habit of explaining things in the middle of a gun fight. Talking about guns, I’ve found a pistol, a shotgun and a machine gun. Funny how they all seem to fit in the pockets of my hazard suit. Must be some magical pockets. The guards have been a great help, but somehow they always seems to get themselves killed. Ah well, at least they make the effort. If I ask them. They expect to be greeted. No greeting, no help. Same goes for the scientists. Would it hurt you to open a security door on your own initiative? Think with me people, don’t stand around waiting for me to ask for help. That said, everyone seems quite helpful, and willing to fight the aliens. What are they anyway, and how did they get here? The head-crabs especially, damn it, these buggers are fast, and in a pack they are pretty lethal. Luckily I’ve got my trusty crowbar to knock ‘em down. Continue reading
Madthijs.
Connected Games
Playing Half-Life… After 14 Years
In no way did I ever see myself as a ‘retro gamer’, or someone who likes to revisit older games. For the most part, that is still true. I love new games, new stories, new graphics to immerse myself in. You could even say I’m somewhat of a ‘graphics whore’. For years I would play games purely to see how graphics evolved, and how good games looked on the latest consoles. It will still be my number one reason to buy the next next generation consoles when they come out. However… Ever since I’ve been planning on becoming a game developer myself, and started studying various games, I found that what they say is actually true; Gameplay > Graphics. And what some great indie games lack in AAA-graphics, they more than make up gameplay-wise.
Yes, Halo: CE Anniversary Is Here!
10 years later and I still enjoy this game a lot. Remake is really well done, great graphics update, same tight gameplay and musical score. Good stuff! To me, there is no such thing as ‘too much Halo’. Even installed Halo 2 for PC on my laptop for some retro Halo on-the-go.
John Carmack on Parallel Implementation
Great blog post (as always) on #AltDevBlogADay by John Carmack on the subject of parallel implementation. Instead of trying to implement 2 different solutions into a single project Carmack advises to do the ‘bad thing’. Copy- ‘n-paste the project and create a separate implementation as to prevent them from interfering with each other.
What I try to do nowadays is to implement new ideas in parallel with the old ones, rather than mutating the existing code. This allows easy and honest comparison between them, and makes it trivial to go back to the old reliable path when the spiffy new one starts showing flaws. The difference between changing a console variable to get a different behavior versus running an old exe, let alone reverting code changes and rebuilding, is significant.
Source: #AltDevBlogADay
id Software Releases Doom 3 Source Code
id Software has released the full source code to Doom 3‘s id Tech 4 engine after resolving a tricky legal issue surrounding some of the included technology. id Tech 4′s release as open source follows a long tradition of the developer releasing past engines into the wild for the community to do with as they please.
This is very exciting news for aspiring game developers around the world. John Carmack believes in giving back to the community and play a key role in game development education. For me, the Doom 3 engine is a currently ‘out of my league’, however I will take time to study the Doom and Quake engines. Support id Software, and buy their games. Personally I’ve really enjoyed RAGE so far (10 hours in) and recommend it to everyone looking for a classic, hard hitting shooter with fun enemies set in some great looking environments.
Historically, Carmack has released the source code for id’s engines when the code base is five years old, with the Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake engines still proving highly popular with modders due to their customizability and relative ease of porting to other platforms.
Source: GamePro
GitHub: Download Doom 3 Source Code
On XNA and Why I Went With It
So here goes, developing games. Where to start? Some 2 years ago I bought a book on XNA development, just as the first version of the XNA Game Studio / SDK was released. I read it, was intrigued by it, but never got around to do any programming. But still, the promise of developing for an actual home console seemed cool as ice. I mean, seriously, your own game on an ACTUAL game console. But it gets better. XNA allows for simultaneous development on Xbox 360 and Windows PC, and now, since the 4.0 release, also Windows Phone 7. To be fair, WP7 hasn’t really caught on, but potentially this is another hungry userbase looking for a fun game.
Welcome to Madthijs
Welcome to Madthijs. I’ll be using this website to write about my game development efforts. For many years I’ve played video games, first on various classic Macintosh computers (Classic, IIci, Quadras, Performas and PowerMacs), later on the first Xbox I bought on the cheap. Ever since then I’ve played many games on many systems and I currently own a Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, DS Lite, PSP, iPad and kick-ass, custom-build, game PC.
In my day job as a webdeveloper I’m experienced in HTML, JavaScript, PHP, MySQL. Which has been exciting and fun during the last 5 years. However, as I’ve gotten more experienced, the challenges disappeared and the work itself became somewhat ‘dull’. I’ve been running on auto-pilot for too long, and decided it’s time for good old programming fun. Combined with my interest in playing video games, there is only one logical outcome: LET’S DEVELOP A VIDEO GAME!!!
