Latest Comments
A3P
By Venn, 19 June 2011 at 5:58 pm UTC
By Venn, 19 June 2011 at 5:58 pm UTC
A bit of native play http://linuxgamecast.com/2011/06/l-g-c-b-reel-%E2%80%94-a3p-acquire-attack-asplode-pwn/
Helena the Third - Now on kickstarter!
By Rustybolts, 17 June 2011 at 5:08 pm UTC
By Rustybolts, 17 June 2011 at 5:08 pm UTC
Cheers for the article! I have included the video which is on our Kickstarter page.
Irukandji On Ubuntu Software Centre
By Liam Dawe, 11 June 2011 at 5:52 pm UTC
By Liam Dawe, 11 June 2011 at 5:52 pm UTC
Thanks mystery guest for the info :)
Irukandji On Ubuntu Software Centre
By , 11 June 2011 at 2:30 pm UTC
By , 11 June 2011 at 2:30 pm UTC
Bullet Candy Perfect on the Ubuntu Software Centre:
http://www.charliesgames.com/wordpress/?page_id=283
Frozenbyte:
"We'll make Trine available on the Ubuntu Software Center shortly, there's just so many things going on at the moment that it's been progressing a bit slow (on our end). SG games will come after that as well."
http://frozenbyte.com/board/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3599
http://www.charliesgames.com/wordpress/?page_id=283
Frozenbyte:
"We'll make Trine available on the Ubuntu Software Center shortly, there's just so many things going on at the moment that it's been progressing a bit slow (on our end). SG games will come after that as well."
http://frozenbyte.com/board/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3599
Interview with Troy of MyGameCompany, part 2 in the replies
By MyGameCompany, 10 June 2011 at 7:43 pm UTC
By MyGameCompany, 10 June 2011 at 7:43 pm UTC
Thanks, Brandon. When I get to the point where I'm ready to delve into 3D, I'll check it out! Good luck with your game - it looks like a lot of fun!
Interview with Troy of MyGameCompany, part 2 in the replies
By Brandon Smith, 10 June 2011 at 6:27 pm UTC
By Brandon Smith, 10 June 2011 at 6:27 pm UTC
Cool! I'll need to check that out. Btw, in case you were interested, Helena will have a kickstarter page where I'll be giving out the source code to the engine for a nominal pledge amount. Could be used to make a kids 3D platformer, and comes with a level editor!
Interview with Troy of MyGameCompany, part 2 in the replies
By MyGameCompany, 10 June 2011 at 6:08 pm UTC
By MyGameCompany, 10 June 2011 at 6:08 pm UTC
Ok, I've reposted all of the articles I've written on my web site. So you can find article #4 in the series here, as well as a Post Mortem I wrote for the first Dirk Dashing game. Enjoy!
http://www.mygamecompany.com/articles/index.htm
http://www.mygamecompany.com/articles/index.htm
Interview with Troy of MyGameCompany, part 2 in the replies
By MyGameCompany, 10 June 2011 at 4:49 pm UTC
By MyGameCompany, 10 June 2011 at 4:49 pm UTC
Thanks for the link. I'm not quite ready to venture into 3D yet - my 2D platformers are more than enough work for me! Though I have been starting to dabble in 3D, with the lighting and 3D planets in the background on The Adventures of Rick Rocket, and the new lighting and shadows in Dirk 2.
Interview with Troy of MyGameCompany, part 2 in the replies
By Brandon Smith, 10 June 2011 at 3:31 pm UTC
By Brandon Smith, 10 June 2011 at 3:31 pm UTC
You know Troy, there was [URL='http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1777096']this thread[/URL] on ubuntuforums.org. Someone was asking for a 3D platformer for kids. It got me thinking, if you could make something in the vein of mario 64 or such than ran on Linux, I bet a lot of people would appreciate it!
Interview with Troy of MyGameCompany, part 2 in the replies
By Brandon Smith, 10 June 2011 at 2:46 pm UTC
By Brandon Smith, 10 June 2011 at 2:46 pm UTC
Thanks dude. It seems like some of the terminal commands got messed up in the new formatting, but the information is good. I really appreciate it!
Interview with Troy of MyGameCompany, part 2 in the replies
By MyGameCompany, 10 June 2011 at 2:43 pm UTC
By MyGameCompany, 10 June 2011 at 2:43 pm UTC
Here you go! Though I notice they've lost the link for the 4th article since they switched to their new repository format, and the links at the bottom of each page that point to the next article in the series don't work. Maybe I'll have to repost these on my own web site. Article 4 contained tips for testing on various distributions, and how to deal with things like SELinux, hardware accelerated drivers for various cards, 32-bit vs 64-bit, etc.
1 - Introduction
http://www.gamedev.net/page/reference/index.html/_/reference/programming/platform-specific/linux/linux-game-development-part-1-r2372
2 - Building a "universal" binary for Linux
http://www.gamedev.net/page/reference/index.html/_/reference/programming/platform-specific/linux/linux-game-development-part-2-r2377
3 - Installers on Linux
http://www.gamedev.net/page/reference/index.html/_/reference/programming/platform-specific/linux/linux-game-development-part-3-r2389
5 - Marketing on Linux
http://www.gamedev.net/page/reference/index.html/_/reference/programming/platform-specific/linux/linux-game-development-part-5-r2421
1 - Introduction
http://www.gamedev.net/page/reference/index.html/_/reference/programming/platform-specific/linux/linux-game-development-part-1-r2372
2 - Building a "universal" binary for Linux
http://www.gamedev.net/page/reference/index.html/_/reference/programming/platform-specific/linux/linux-game-development-part-2-r2377
3 - Installers on Linux
http://www.gamedev.net/page/reference/index.html/_/reference/programming/platform-specific/linux/linux-game-development-part-3-r2389
5 - Marketing on Linux
http://www.gamedev.net/page/reference/index.html/_/reference/programming/platform-specific/linux/linux-game-development-part-5-r2421
Interview with Troy of MyGameCompany, part 2 in the replies
By Brandon Smith, 10 June 2011 at 2:22 pm UTC
By Brandon Smith, 10 June 2011 at 2:22 pm UTC
OOOh cool article. Could we get a link to those gamedev articles Troy? That information could really help me out.
Interview with Troy of MyGameCompany, part 2 in the replies
By Liam Dawe, 10 June 2011 at 11:30 am UTC
By Liam Dawe, 10 June 2011 at 11:30 am UTC
Rustybolts also had a few questions to ask
Rusty: Hi Troy!
I was wondering if you are a games player at all yourself? If so which genre of game floats your boat and from what period you got into playing games e.g the 8bit, 16bit era? Also what are your standout moments in games history in your time as a games player?
MGC: Oh, yeah - I love games! I've been playing computer games since the earliest years. My dad bought me an Atari 2600 back in 1980, and we played Pong, PacMan, Asteroids, and lots of other great games. I also had a friend with an old 8-bit Commodore 64 back in 1982 that we used to play games on. In 1985, our family bought a PC Jr, and one of my first games was Sierra's King's Quest, which I absolutely loved. He also bought a cartridge with the BASIC programming language on it, and I started dabbling in writing my own games.
I enjoy a pretty wide variety of games. Through the years, some of my absolute favorites included the Commander Keen games (particularly episodes 4-6), Wacky Wheels, Interplay's Lord of the Rings and Star Trek: 25th Anniversary, Sierra's King's Quest and Space Quest series of adventure games, LucasArt's X-Wing and Tie Fighter games, some first person shooters like Quake II and Dark Forces, Disney's Jungle Pinball, Re-volt, and more.
My current favorites include a number of indie games, particularly Eschalon 1 & 2 by Basilisk Games, Fairway Solitaire by Grey Alien Games, Titan Attacks by Puppy Games, and Ancient Empires Lux by Sillysoft.
I still play a lot of the older games via DOSBox. There's something about the purity of the gameplay and the stories that is almost timeless. The older games focused a lot more on story and character development, and they had an undeniable fun factor while you played them. It seems like most newer games focus almost exclusively on combat, realism (in both gameplay and graphics), and darker settings (military missions, horror settings, or weird supernatural themes). That doesn't appeal to me at all.
That's probably the biggest driving factor behind the design of my own games. I'm trying to recapture some of the fun of those earlier games, because nobody makes games like that anymore. That's why my Rick Rocket game borrows a lot of elements from Dan Dare, Buck Rogers, and Flash Gordon, in terms of both story and art. That's why my Dirk Dashing platformers use the same slanted 2.5D look of Commander Keen, with traditional spy music, a cool cartoon spy that is not a bungling idiot or a dark, hyper-realistic CIA type, and a lot of fun gadgets, weapons, and moves. These are the kind of games I enjoy!
Rusty: Yeah really enjoyed the Eschalon series myself, looking forward to the third installment. Can you tell me a little bit on how you produce the artwork for Dirk, as some of that background art is gorgeous. Also I read in one of your monthly newsletters about a problem you had creating the secuirity cameras for Dirk, can you tell us a bit about this problem or any other problem like this and how you solved them.
MGC: Oh, thank you! I'm glad you like it! Hopefully that's an indicator that I'm on the right track with the improved graphics...
Many of the graphics are hand-drawn and hand-painted. For the background elements, I use a combination of acrylic paints, colored pencils, and colored markers. I draw and paint each individual background element by itself - this includes repeatable walls of bricks/stones, floor surfaces, trees, furniture pieces, etc. Then I scan them in, trim them, and scale them using GIMP. For the animated characters, all of the frames are hand-drawn, just like they are in a traditional cartoon. Then I scan them in, clean up the edges, and paint them in the computer.
I've had a few art pieces that posed challenges for me. The security camera you mentioned was one. I was having difficulty with the hand-drawn animation - the camera movement just wasn't coming out the way I wanted. So I built a paper mock-up, photographed each frame in the position I wanted, and then converted each photo into black and white line art and painted them. A fellow indie called me the "MacGuyver of video game production"!
Another art piece that challenged me were some background hills I needed. I couldn't get the paintings to come out the way I wanted. But I found an article on the Internet about how to convert a photograph into a watercolor painting using GIMP, and after some experimentation, I came up with the perfect background piece that I think complements the rest of the art in that scene.
Liam: Have there been any problems in porting/coding your games to the different platforms?
MGC: Not really. Most of my games use the same core game engine, which is built with cross-platform technologies. The initial port for the first game that used this engine took some work, but once that was done, it became trivial to do a build for any of my games on any of the 3 platforms.
Linux was probably the most difficult platform for the initial port. Even though I had developed the game on Linux, it wasn't easy to create a binary that would run on almost any distribution. There was almost no useful documentation available for doing this. Fortunately, Erik Hermansen at Caravel Games put me in touch with Gerry Jo Jellestad, who has done a lot of Linux game development and had experience with building distribution-independent binaries. Gerry was very helpful, and very patient as I bombarded him with e-mails over several months, asking questions and getting help for technical issues that I was running into. By the time I was done, I had two notebooks full of great information that wasn't documented anywhere else. So with Gerry's permission, I wrote a series of articles that captured what I had learned, and I published them on gamedev.net a few years ago.
Actually I've been thinking about turning those articles into an e-book. There's a lot more I've learned since I wrote them, like how to handle PulseAudio (which seems to be the norm on most common distributions nowadays) and how to build a binary against older versions of glibc so your game will run on older distributions. I've also talked with some other indie developers who would like me to write an article or tutorial about how to get started with basic development tasks, like compiling, linking, and debugging on Linux. When Dirk 2 is done, I might put that book together and sell it from my web site.
Rusty: Ok to keep the spy theme going ill end this interview with spy themed question.
Whats your most loved bond film and who is your favorite bad guy from the bond films (Odd job is my fave although I do have a soft spot for Jaws). Also if you wish you can end with anything else you wish to say to our readers.
MGC: That's a tough one! I enjoyed all of the Bond films, to one degree or another. I don't think I could pick just one, but my favorite movies would be Goldfinger, The Spy Who Loved Me, For Your Eyes Only, The Living Daylights, and Tomorrow Never Dies. And Odd Job would definitely be my favorite bad guy too!
Thanks, guys, for the great interview, and thanks to all of you for reading this and supporting me and my games! I really appreciate my Linux customers, and I'll definitely keep bringing you new games in the future!
Some cool pictures to end it with!
[ATTACH]166[/ATTACH][ATTACH]167[/ATTACH]
Rusty: Hi Troy!
I was wondering if you are a games player at all yourself? If so which genre of game floats your boat and from what period you got into playing games e.g the 8bit, 16bit era? Also what are your standout moments in games history in your time as a games player?
MGC: Oh, yeah - I love games! I've been playing computer games since the earliest years. My dad bought me an Atari 2600 back in 1980, and we played Pong, PacMan, Asteroids, and lots of other great games. I also had a friend with an old 8-bit Commodore 64 back in 1982 that we used to play games on. In 1985, our family bought a PC Jr, and one of my first games was Sierra's King's Quest, which I absolutely loved. He also bought a cartridge with the BASIC programming language on it, and I started dabbling in writing my own games.
I enjoy a pretty wide variety of games. Through the years, some of my absolute favorites included the Commander Keen games (particularly episodes 4-6), Wacky Wheels, Interplay's Lord of the Rings and Star Trek: 25th Anniversary, Sierra's King's Quest and Space Quest series of adventure games, LucasArt's X-Wing and Tie Fighter games, some first person shooters like Quake II and Dark Forces, Disney's Jungle Pinball, Re-volt, and more.
My current favorites include a number of indie games, particularly Eschalon 1 & 2 by Basilisk Games, Fairway Solitaire by Grey Alien Games, Titan Attacks by Puppy Games, and Ancient Empires Lux by Sillysoft.
I still play a lot of the older games via DOSBox. There's something about the purity of the gameplay and the stories that is almost timeless. The older games focused a lot more on story and character development, and they had an undeniable fun factor while you played them. It seems like most newer games focus almost exclusively on combat, realism (in both gameplay and graphics), and darker settings (military missions, horror settings, or weird supernatural themes). That doesn't appeal to me at all.
That's probably the biggest driving factor behind the design of my own games. I'm trying to recapture some of the fun of those earlier games, because nobody makes games like that anymore. That's why my Rick Rocket game borrows a lot of elements from Dan Dare, Buck Rogers, and Flash Gordon, in terms of both story and art. That's why my Dirk Dashing platformers use the same slanted 2.5D look of Commander Keen, with traditional spy music, a cool cartoon spy that is not a bungling idiot or a dark, hyper-realistic CIA type, and a lot of fun gadgets, weapons, and moves. These are the kind of games I enjoy!
Rusty: Yeah really enjoyed the Eschalon series myself, looking forward to the third installment. Can you tell me a little bit on how you produce the artwork for Dirk, as some of that background art is gorgeous. Also I read in one of your monthly newsletters about a problem you had creating the secuirity cameras for Dirk, can you tell us a bit about this problem or any other problem like this and how you solved them.
MGC: Oh, thank you! I'm glad you like it! Hopefully that's an indicator that I'm on the right track with the improved graphics...
Many of the graphics are hand-drawn and hand-painted. For the background elements, I use a combination of acrylic paints, colored pencils, and colored markers. I draw and paint each individual background element by itself - this includes repeatable walls of bricks/stones, floor surfaces, trees, furniture pieces, etc. Then I scan them in, trim them, and scale them using GIMP. For the animated characters, all of the frames are hand-drawn, just like they are in a traditional cartoon. Then I scan them in, clean up the edges, and paint them in the computer.
I've had a few art pieces that posed challenges for me. The security camera you mentioned was one. I was having difficulty with the hand-drawn animation - the camera movement just wasn't coming out the way I wanted. So I built a paper mock-up, photographed each frame in the position I wanted, and then converted each photo into black and white line art and painted them. A fellow indie called me the "MacGuyver of video game production"!
Another art piece that challenged me were some background hills I needed. I couldn't get the paintings to come out the way I wanted. But I found an article on the Internet about how to convert a photograph into a watercolor painting using GIMP, and after some experimentation, I came up with the perfect background piece that I think complements the rest of the art in that scene.
Liam: Have there been any problems in porting/coding your games to the different platforms?
MGC: Not really. Most of my games use the same core game engine, which is built with cross-platform technologies. The initial port for the first game that used this engine took some work, but once that was done, it became trivial to do a build for any of my games on any of the 3 platforms.
Linux was probably the most difficult platform for the initial port. Even though I had developed the game on Linux, it wasn't easy to create a binary that would run on almost any distribution. There was almost no useful documentation available for doing this. Fortunately, Erik Hermansen at Caravel Games put me in touch with Gerry Jo Jellestad, who has done a lot of Linux game development and had experience with building distribution-independent binaries. Gerry was very helpful, and very patient as I bombarded him with e-mails over several months, asking questions and getting help for technical issues that I was running into. By the time I was done, I had two notebooks full of great information that wasn't documented anywhere else. So with Gerry's permission, I wrote a series of articles that captured what I had learned, and I published them on gamedev.net a few years ago.
Actually I've been thinking about turning those articles into an e-book. There's a lot more I've learned since I wrote them, like how to handle PulseAudio (which seems to be the norm on most common distributions nowadays) and how to build a binary against older versions of glibc so your game will run on older distributions. I've also talked with some other indie developers who would like me to write an article or tutorial about how to get started with basic development tasks, like compiling, linking, and debugging on Linux. When Dirk 2 is done, I might put that book together and sell it from my web site.
Rusty: Ok to keep the spy theme going ill end this interview with spy themed question.
Whats your most loved bond film and who is your favorite bad guy from the bond films (Odd job is my fave although I do have a soft spot for Jaws). Also if you wish you can end with anything else you wish to say to our readers.
MGC: That's a tough one! I enjoyed all of the Bond films, to one degree or another. I don't think I could pick just one, but my favorite movies would be Goldfinger, The Spy Who Loved Me, For Your Eyes Only, The Living Daylights, and Tomorrow Never Dies. And Odd Job would definitely be my favorite bad guy too!
Thanks, guys, for the great interview, and thanks to all of you for reading this and supporting me and my games! I really appreciate my Linux customers, and I'll definitely keep bringing you new games in the future!
Some cool pictures to end it with!
[ATTACH]166[/ATTACH][ATTACH]167[/ATTACH]
Fowl Space Pre-order
By Hamish, 4 June 2011 at 8:02 am UTC
By Hamish, 4 June 2011 at 8:02 am UTC
I think the only three words are appropriate here: What The @#$% :P
Oilrush 0.64 update
By Rustybolts, 4 June 2011 at 7:40 pm UTC
By Rustybolts, 4 June 2011 at 7:40 pm UTC
Hmm this video can be set to run at 720p, for me thats a pretty good resolution to view a video.
Oilrush 0.64 update
By Brandon Smith, 4 June 2011 at 6:51 pm UTC
By Brandon Smith, 4 June 2011 at 6:51 pm UTC
If you're streaming or recording a game, it's much harder to run it with all settings maxed
Oilrush 0.64 update
By Liam Dawe, 4 June 2011 at 5:38 pm UTC
By Liam Dawe, 4 June 2011 at 5:38 pm UTC
Well if you in any way feel you can do some videos why not join us ;)
Oilrush 0.64 update
By , 4 June 2011 at 3:47 pm UTC
By , 4 June 2011 at 3:47 pm UTC
that dude did more damage in "review" than good.
I agree not all can have powerful machines.
Yet, game looks SO MUCH better on my pc. Youtube's low resolution is not helping either.
Heh, may be I should make some video myself...
I agree not all can have powerful machines.
Yet, game looks SO MUCH better on my pc. Youtube's low resolution is not helping either.
Heh, may be I should make some video myself...
Clockwork Man on USC
By MyGameCompany, 4 June 2011 at 1:09 am UTC
By MyGameCompany, 4 June 2011 at 1:09 am UTC
Nice to see more casual games on Linux. Hope it pays off for them!
New opensource linux space sim
By Brandon Smith, 30 May 2011 at 5:24 pm UTC
By Brandon Smith, 30 May 2011 at 5:24 pm UTC
Eek, need some stars there! The planet parts look amazing though.
Hex-a-Hop...heard of it?
By tweakedenigma, 28 May 2011 at 9:32 pm UTC
By tweakedenigma, 28 May 2011 at 9:32 pm UTC
Not really my style of game, but I think the GF might like this one.
Oilrush updated to 0.63 and 0.631
By Brandon Smith, 26 May 2011 at 10:22 pm UTC
By Brandon Smith, 26 May 2011 at 10:22 pm UTC
If it runs on PS3 I might be interested.
Mobile site is up!
By Hamish, 26 May 2011 at 5:21 am UTC
By Hamish, 26 May 2011 at 5:21 am UTC
Well, saying something looks better or works better are subjective Liam. I personally prefer interfaces with less bling, which is why I generally avoid compositing window managers and desktop effects, and the new website does have more bling than the old. I do agree that the theme for the old one was rather ugly though, and the fact that it did not fit with the forums was a sizeable aesthetic drawback. But I heartily respect the effort you put into the mobile website, and I may vary well use it when I am stuck on the modem as I am now. Still, considering I barely go to the main webpage and mostly just prowl around the forums looking for unsuspecting victims to assault with my devastatingly witty comments :p, it does not change much since this understandably can not change the forums. But the effort is appreciated. ;)
Hacker Evolution Duality
By Liam Dawe, 24 May 2011 at 10:40 am UTC
By Liam Dawe, 24 May 2011 at 10:40 am UTC
No worries cleared it up.
You're right though it does seem rather pricey for such a simple game.
You're right though it does seem rather pricey for such a simple game.
Hacker Evolution Duality
By Hamish, 24 May 2011 at 5:09 am UTC
By Hamish, 24 May 2011 at 5:09 am UTC
Sorry for the double post, I think me and my modem need a little hammer time... :mad:
Hacker Evolution Duality
By Hamish, 24 May 2011 at 5:00 am UTC
By Hamish, 24 May 2011 at 5:00 am UTC
I think they are setting their price a bit high if they want to compete with some of the other indies. I do think that some of them do undercharge sometimes, but having the full price at thirty bucks?
Invasion of the Blobs
By Hamish, 22 May 2011 at 8:26 pm UTC
By Hamish, 22 May 2011 at 8:26 pm UTC
How about a game called Invasion of the *Binary* Blobs? :p
Minecraft 1.6 Next Week!
By , 22 May 2011 at 2:46 pm UTC
By , 22 May 2011 at 2:46 pm UTC
Please do! it is a great add on making MC even more fun.
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