Blogs - AaIsoaho

Alright, I've had a little to nothing time to work on my game project. I've succeeded in finishing the game engine and I have a friend of mine to work on the models. Now I'm working with levels and of course, storywriting.
What's sad though, my time is very limited with developing, as I have a school to finish. At the moment most of my time goes studying for matriculation examination. After studies, I can start working with this project and publish it on Desura.
I released an early-alpha stage version of this project to Game Maker Suomi for their competition. Keep thumbs up for it, aye?

Here's pics of the early alpha-version. Levels in alpha version are meant for testing and of course, I've dipped a little difficultness in it, so the gamers will have fun while beating the levels.

Here we go again!

I've spent great time with my friends, my new girlfriend, my partners and with my newest project. I'll introduce that project to you. Anyone reading, please post your opinions ASAP.

I'm thinking of naming my project New Atropos. Little backstory about the game;
Moirai Techs is a big company developing weaponry and machinery to be used by military. They are testing their newest patent, "New Atropos" -named android. Android is advanced in every way.

So basically; You are that android in a testing facility, you jump through the levels and try to survive. To give you more fun with this, the difficulty has made so high that even a developer (me) is having hard time not to rip his pants off. Oh and whats more, there is a timer and android doesn't have any weaponry or form of attack on early stages.

What I have made so far and what is on to-do list?
-Engine is complete, 3D platform engine with turrets, elevators and buttons
-I have a lot of textures and models ready (well, I have one guy creating the models for me)
-Level design is on a good way, already 10 levels waiting for their final judgement

To-do:
-Moar levels, I'll have total of 25 levels
-Sounds, I haven't found any slave willing to make music and soundeffects for me. :c
-Animations
-Moar content; textures and models!!

Oh, and I haven't decided; should I publish this as a freeware or should I sell this with cost of 3$ (or something like that)

Yeah, I'll do double-blog posting today. The earlier post was about the case of 9-year-old pirategirl. This is about how I'm doing.
Lately all I have done in school is exams. Exams whole week. Yum yum. Today was English exam. Yesterday was some Swedish. Tomorrow will be Physics. I'm in senior highschool/sixth form in 2nd grade. I I start my 'matriculation examinations' at next spring with some French. Studying hard yeah. Or not.
I've had time to play and test some videogames. Lately I've been playing only Dwarfs?! on Steam. It's pretty addictive. Dwarves running on my screen mining their way towards doom of their civilization. Great graphics, happy music and great idea has caught me in to playing it all day long.
Yeah and this Desura, compared to Steam, is in my opinion a bit better service. Why's so you may ask. Because, Steam takes a huge amount of performance from my computer, it lacks when we talk about freeware. Oh and Desura is a bit more simple than Steam. Too bad I'm not able to put my moneys into Desura to buy some games from here. There's so much things/games I want to buy.

Do you know any company who first sets a lure and when a 9-year-old girl takes it they come with police to girl's doors and takes her computer? Yeah, that's Finland's shiniest pearl called 'Tekijänoikeuden tiedotus- ja valvontakeskus' (TTVK).
Oh, that wasn't the whole story. The story, which media has told, goes like this:
1. 9-year-old girl doesn't have enough money for Chisu's album.
2. That girl decides to check the internet. She finds some torrent containing that album.
3. Files were corrupted and TTVK tracked every downloader/seeder and sent them 600€ claim and if the person agreed to pay this price they also made that person an agreement of professional secrecy.
4. The little girl and his father DID NOT AGREE to TTVK
5. Father and girl went to store to buy the legal version of the album.
6. Day after the events came finnish police behind the door and they seized girl's Winnie-the-Pooh laptop. They said to the father "if you only paid the claim any of this wouldn't happen"

Yeah. Talking about mafia-ish actions? TTVK, our "legally working" mafia. I hope this case spreads worldwide and our little friend called Internet would do a raid to TTVK. This is just wrong!

Yesterday I noticed EA gives Battlefield 1942 for free. Yay? Well, after a half of hour I finally got that game. Things I had to do: create an account to EA, create an account to Origin, activate them trough e-mail and download Origin. After that I finally began to download Battlefield.
Battlefield, meh, I think it is overrated. It's kind of boring first person shooter. I rather play Halo: Combat Evolved than that. Well, but it was free so why not? :D
After the "paper wars" about battlefield I got myself into another difficulty. I noticed Origin has an ability to get yourself a virtual copy of your game with your serial code. I quickly searched my boxes in my room to find out my Spore's serial. This didn't go as planned.
First I had to search from EA help for why Origin doesn't download Spore even if I inserted my Serial Code. Then I found out I have to connect to EA helpdesk via e-mail or via phonecall or via live chat. I decided to send an email. I got reply. Yay. It said "I have searched the code provided by you and found that it is linked to some other account. Please let me clarify that we can only provide the digital download of the game on the account to which the code is linked. Hence please provide the account email to which the code is linked so that we can further process your request.". GRAAAAHHH! I remember my bro activated some account with my spore, because back then I had a computer which had performances level of a vacuum cleaner. Well, why doesn't that e-mail say "DONOTREPLY" or something like that? I just found out it has an auto-answer so my messages didn't go trough. And I can't open that f-king case in EA's website.

I hope you don't feel how I feel, have a sweetday, fudgetard. :3

PS. title of this blogpost is rough translation from finnish proverb 'paperisodan kynsissä', which refers to suffering from bureaucracy. (what a word-monster, comes from french word "bureau" I think? )

EDIT: Yeaaah... Thanks EA. -.- My Spore is still linked to brother's e-mail so no go for me. *getting frustrated*

Yay! Finally it's weekend. And for reward of my studying I'm gonna spend this well earned weekend for games. Sad I don't have any online-money so I can't buy Amnesia: Dark Descent from here, Desura. What makes it sad is the -75% discount. :(

Well, I have downloaded some freeware games, so I'll just try to beat them. :) Savage seems pretty cool. Have to say, one of the games which runs perfectly on my computer. I haven't tested some games yet, like Renegade X. I think it is not gonna run very smoothly.

Off the desura, if nothing else, I'll update my SCP: Containment Breach and try to play that without making my pants go brown. Nothing has ever scared me as much as that game. Random maps makes sure I can't know whats coming and about the idea of that doll-ish creature, that you can't look away from it, gives me chill.

Oh, and at last, I got little motivation/idea today on the way to the bus station. I thought about continuing my project. Sad that it's halloween now so I can't release any alpha on halloween. Fffuu.

Well, I scrambled trough my notes and I found my "what makes games scary" -page. I thought it was important thing to go trough in my mind. Here's some of my thoughts.
Music and sounds plays the main part of the mood. Thinking about some scary, like serial killer dressed as a clown chasing. If you put something like slow and mainly instrumental piano music in background, you get into a mood where you almost shit your pants. If you put some happy stuff into background you'll get hilarious gameplay. Music should be kinda creepy and/or wicked-insane kind of stuff. And it should vary. Some parts should be silent, like when before the chase in an intensive place. Then, suddenly clown in a bloodthirst comes from the shades with his blade and wicked smile.
Another important thing, is extraordinary. You are not comfort with what you're not knowing. If you put some creepy and shady stalker instead of some lame zombie, you get the "what is that?" feeling and you're not sure about what to think. I'd be scared if some shady character chases me instead of some lame zombie.
Oh and I'd use some fobias against the players. Fear of clowns and fear of insects/spiders are common things. So why not add some clown crawling like a spider with four limbs attached to the ceiling? Only little children fears some smelly and clumsy zombie. Teenagers have seen too much horror stuff to be scared of something else. And adults seems to fear stalkers and shady characters like peeping Toms.
Graphical outfit also gives great amount of chills if it is done correctly. If everything fits into some pattern, it is much more rational and scary than a mess. Black and white with some powerful color, like red, is a good pattern to fit into. I'd rather see shades of grey with some red blood scary than colorful and pink world. Of course you can tease player with pink world where everything goes horribly wrong. Just for the shock.
And screamos (you know, like scary maze game) can create some brown underwear but if you overuse them, player becomes immune to them. Some random moments where some lunatic runs fast towards you and disappears is enough. If some faces flashes everytime you open the door, you learn to not to be scared of faces flashing from opening the door.
Have I forgotten something important... Oh, now I remember, of course. Rather than creating inhumanly strong protagonist, let other beings be way too strong and let the protagonist be some weak and pathetic creature.
That's about it? Have some chills. :)

Ah,
I ended up here on Desura by accident. I tried to download and test a game called 'Erie'. I heard about erie through a friend of mine. He said the game was scary and I should test it. Oh well, my computer didn't run it lag-free so it was kinda unhappy gaming experience.
After that I went to 'Games' section of the Desura and I began to look some free games. At the moment my personal favourite is a game called Broken Dimensions. It has cool design and graphics fits in well. My HP Mini is at its limits when playing Broken Dimensions. I love the protagonist's outlook. Chicken-ish little boy with a ability to rotate his surroundings.
Okay, I'm not a person who stucks on a single game. I've enjoyed playing Blendimals too. Kinda cool game, even if it is a bit childish. Gotta try to remember not to put my pets into a blender. :D

Well, how was my weekend other than gaming? I was visiting my friend whole weekend and we did what we did. Played some skyrim, went to spent some pastime and I even had time to design a little more my tiny project called 'Bridge'. I'm a amateur programmer and Bridge is a project of mine. It is supposed to be a horror game with 3rd person view. But because my lack of motivation etc. I'm not gonna yell out "I'm gonna do this and that!!" so yeah. We'll see what happens to that project.

See ya later! :)