Messages

76

DC Gamer Club / Re: Indie Royale - the Difficult 2ncd Bundle

« on: November 11, 2011, 06:58 AM »

I would highly recommend Ben There, Dan That and Time Gentlemen Please! to anyone who enjoys point and click adventures.

They are two of the funniest games I've ever played - even more so if you are British, and have played the classic adventures from LucasArts and Sierra.

They also feel fresh, something that most of the new crop of point and clicks fail to do!

--

So far I've only tried Night Sky - it is fun, with some challenge, though the puzzles seem very uneven in difficulty. The graphics are a little crude and for some reason they tear when there is very quick movement and I can't see an option to turn on V-sync / screen buffering.

77

DC Gamer Club / Indie Royale - the Difficult 2ncd Bundle

« on: November 10, 2011, 12:23 PM »

The 2nd Indie Royale bundle is live, and their servers are getting hammered!

The four (erm... actually 5) games on offer are:

NightSky by Nifflas (windows, desura, steam)
Fate of the World  (windows, mac, desura, steam)
Scoregasm (windows, mac, linux, desura, steam (windows only))
Ben There, Dan That! and Time Gentlemen, Please! by Size Five Games [formerly Zombie Cow Studios]

I bought the bundle despite already owning BTDT and TGP.

78

DC Gamer Club / Re: Humble Voxatron Debut

« on: November 10, 2011, 09:25 AM »

Worth noting that Gish on Steam is only at v1.52 where the zip download is v1.61

According to various forums the steam version is very unlikely to receive further updates.

79

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Problem - Conflicts with simple Excel VBA code for pasting object

« on: November 02, 2011, 11:08 AM »

For me it is FARR (with KlipKeeper) that freaks out Excel.

I frequently get "The Clipboard cannot be emptied. Another program might be using the Clipboard".

I hit OK and the copy paste (or drag and drop) usually seems to work anyway... but it is a frustration none the less!

80

DonationCoder.com Newsletters / Re: --> Newsletter for October 31, 2011 - "Frightening Feathers"

« on: November 02, 2011, 10:52 AM »

Yay! One of my posts got featured.

And as ever, some interesting things on DC that I'd over looked.

Thanks.

81

DC Gamer Club / Re: Humble Voxatron Debut

« on: October 31, 2011, 01:23 PM »

Aaaaarggggh!!!! Too many games!

Stop charging irresistible prices you ghastly game designers - don't you know I have no will power!

82

DC Gamer Club / Re: Indie Royale - Similar to Humble Indie Bundle

« on: October 31, 2011, 09:49 AM »

I bought it.

Have tried...

A.R.E.S - feels like a rather generic Turrican / Abuse clone. I felt the screen was a bit zoomed in meaning I couldn't see enough of the environment.

Nimbus - played the first dozen levels of this, and enjoying it greatly. At its heart it is a well crafted puzzle game, but the mechanics also require good reactions and quick thinking.

..but not looked at the other two yet.

83

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Captain Forever (+ Successor, Imposter and Jameson Alpha) for $9 !!

« on: October 25, 2011, 06:25 PM »

Really enjoying Captain Jameson...

My ship (on the left next to a space station) after an hours play...



Finally got my hands on some Beta level hardware (the yellow sniping lasers) plus a repair unit and chronos device (speeds up other modules).

84

Found Deals and Discounts / Captain Forever (+ Successor, Imposter and Jameson Alpha) for $9 !!

« on: October 25, 2011, 02:21 PM »

IndieGamer points out that Captain Forever is currently on sale...

For $9 you gain access to Captain Forever, the sequel Captain Successor, the quirky sister game Captain Imposter and the alpha version of the forthcoming Captain Jameson. You'll also receive all future updates and games in the series for free.



So what is Captain Forever? Well it is like Space Invaders meets Asteroids meets Elite all made out of Lego! You begin as a tiny vulnerable command module floating in space and must fight for your life, destroying the space pirates that are out to destroy you. If you manage to blow-up their command module the remaining parts of their ship can be harvested and snapped on to your own. Redesign your ship to be faster and stronger, then go out hunting for tougher foes with better kit to steal!

The game takes a fair bit of skill: you'll be using both hands (keyboard to pilot the ship, and mouse to grab components and attach them to your ship) and a good dose of strategy: knowing when to back off, setting two pirates fighting each other, shrinking down to a tiny ship to sneak inside the framework of a massive craft to take out its core.

While Captain Forever is free to play and is great fun for a couple of hours, but things really take off in the sequels...

Captain Successor adds a huge number of new components (sniper lazers, torpedos, homing missiles, sprint boosts, shields etc etc) which allow for many more ship designs.

Captain Imposter adds a whole new look and an interesting cloning mechanic, whereby you steal ship designs from your opponents.

Captain Jameson is building a whole universe with dockable space-stations, asteroid fields, more new ship components and breathable atmospheres!

NOTE: I have no affiliation with Farbs who writes the games, indeed I only discover the joys of the Captain series yesterday, but wanted to spread the word!

Enjoy

85

General Software Discussion / Re: The Glorious Return of Shell Extension City

« on: October 24, 2011, 07:46 AM »

Hooray! Been a regular visitor to SEC for many years. Will be adding the RSS feed again.

86

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR noshow when focused window is admin (UAC @ top level win7)

« on: September 12, 2011, 09:01 AM »

Confirmed... I have been running Xplorer2 in admin mode to reduce the number of annoying confirmations it asks for, but this disables launching of FARR (unless I first click on the desktop)

There are other implications of admin mode too... I discovered that drag and drop doesn't work into an admin mode application - eg WinRAR drag to admin Xplorer2 does nothing!

For now I've put Xplorer2 back to user level, but hope there is a more satisfying fix!

87

General Software Discussion / Re: software to write gamebooks ?

« on: September 06, 2011, 07:57 AM »

Another update: This one worthy of its own new post!

Edward Griffiths has written an extension for Inform 7 specifically designed for creating adventure game books!

88

General Software Discussion / Re: software to write gamebooks ?

« on: September 06, 2011, 07:40 AM »

As a teenager I was a huge fan of these types of book, and even went so far as to write my own.

It was not very long (perhaps 30 locations leading to 90 paragraphs of text) and to my adult eye the quality is pretty mediocre, but a great experience none the less.

I can't give you a suggestion of a definitive piece of software to use but here are a few thoughts...

You will need to design a map. I drew mine on paper in the manner that I used to map text adventures as I played through them. I know that there are various mapping tools for Dungeons and Dragons / Interactive Fiction that might help you here.

Tip: You will find that most of FF or LW adventure books are fairly linear and have discreet sections where the player is effectively trapped, unable to backtrack too far, nor proceed until they have solved a series of puzzles. This greatly reduces the permutations that the author has to deal with!

There is a lot of crossover between FF style adventure books and the text adventure games of yesteryear (now more usually called Interactive Fiction or IF). There are some fantastic IF tools - my favourite is Inform 7 - well worth a look! The Inform language is both very straight forward (it is almost natural English language) yet very powerful as it understands basic concepts such as location, objects, weight, light/dark etc.

You may also consider creating the book in the form of a Wiki which would allow you to write and build the adventure on the fly. Although the wiki would have no 'intelligence' (unlike Inform7) and thus could not enforce rules or handle inventory automatically, it still has some advantages: there is no scripting language to learn, yet it can highlight unwritten sections, handle simple text formatting etc. I like WikidPad but there are plenty of others you could try.

Good luck and keep us informed of your progress!

UPDATE: Couldn't resist a bit of searching myself and found this handy (and lengthy) guide to writing adventure books on the Fighting Fantasy website itself!

89

Mouser's Zone / Re: Im going to be mostly away from the internet this week (Aug 29 - Sep 2, 2011)

« on: August 31, 2011, 06:44 AM »

Gorgeous sunset - looks like you're having fun

90

Living Room / Re: Flash TD Game of the Month: Kingdom Rush

« on: August 30, 2011, 06:23 AM »

Finally back home and rediscovered Kingdom Rush in my browser window.

Finished the game on Normal difficulty - yay! hooray!

A very polished game which could easily have been a retail product.

91

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: The Humble Indie Bundle #3

« on: August 03, 2011, 06:05 PM »

Wow! I already own quite a few of the games, but now that Humble Indie Bundle 2 is included too, I just can't resist!

And besides I am doing good things for charity

92

Living Room / Re: Flash TD Game of the Month: Kingdom Rush

« on: August 03, 2011, 05:44 PM »

Damn you Mouser! This game has now eaten too many hours of my life.

Playing on Normal difficulty and have met J.T. - tried to beat the level 3 times so far and failed, despite having 3 gold stars on every level to date.

Grrrr... Away from home now and didn't take my cookie with me, so shan't be able to continue until next week.

93

DonationCoder.com Newsletters / Re: --> Newsletter for July 18th, 2011 - "DonationCoder Plus"

« on: July 29, 2011, 07:28 PM »

Great newsletter - how do I always manage to miss a few great posts when I idle on the forum all the damned time!

@cthorpe: any news of those tempting ExpanDrive giveaways... it is nearly the end of the month and I'd love to be in the running

Thanks.

94

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: xplorer² 2.0: First beta versions around - Here comes the news.

« on: July 28, 2011, 02:00 PM »

Version 2.0 final has now been released.

I was a little disappointed that I didn't qualify for an upgrade price discount (as I bought xplorer2 over 2 years ago), but was pleasantly suprised to see that you can get the Pro version for free using the TrialPay system.

I browsed the TrialPay offers and was able to find one that was entirely free (just required me to sign up for a product trial, which I then declined to take up).

I've received my license key, and so far have not been inundated with spam - so all in all I think I got a good deal!

95

General Software Discussion / Re: What special character do you use to have a file sorted at the top?

« on: July 28, 2011, 12:19 PM »

OMG!!

I use -= Folder =- too! (But with the spaces)

I've no idea when I started doing this (probably around the time WinXP came out and long filenames came in) but I find it makes my most important folders stand out and look jolly official!

96

Developer's Corner / Re: md5 / sha1 hashes What's the point?

« on: July 20, 2011, 07:50 AM »

I use MD5 hashes to quickly run suspicious files through the VirusTotal system... it allows you to see results from their database for a specific file that has been tested in the past, without having to upload the file yourself.

97

General Software Discussion / Re: Why crack offered for freeware and tiny app uploaded on Megaupload ?

« on: July 19, 2011, 07:01 AM »

I suspect that the alleged 'crack' may contain a nasty payload destined for the unsuspecting, unscrupulous down-loader!

Many crack sites will simply serve you a virus / trojan / rootkit wrapped in an exe / zip file which is given the same name as your original search term.

98

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: FARR Plugin: FProcs - v1.01.01 - June 11, 2011

« on: June 16, 2011, 06:22 AM »

If I use fprocs to kill a process it still remains in the list.

This is perhaps by design since it would allow for easy relaunch of the application (say after a crash) but also seems a little odd (the process is still listed despite being terminated)

Thoughts?

99

DonationCoder.com Newsletters / Re: --> Newsletter for June 12th, 2011 - "Summer Server"

« on: June 16, 2011, 06:10 AM »

Only one reply to this month's newsletter - Yikes!

Thanks for the interesting synopsis: discovered a couple of posts that I'd missed and revisited a few others to catch up on the latest musings from fellow DCers.

100

Developer's Corner / Re: [CSS] Problem with div height

« on: June 15, 2011, 07:24 AM »

Do you have a live version of the page uploaded somewhere?

It will be easier to experiment and see the structure of the page from a real example rather than a static image.