Video Games

Mac version coming out later, oh the irony.

Myst was the first "grown up" games I have played, abet blindly not knowing what the characters are saying and that damn musical puzzle.

Caved and bought Mankind Divided. No principles, me.

Looking forward to the review!

Also, getting very tempted by the latest Hitman game. Any of you folks have any experience of it?

talking purely about the gameplay itself, I'm just not finding it at all enjoyable. despite all the ways the game gives you to go about your task, once you choose a method it feels very linear. also you can't go ham with the shooting if you feel like it as the mechanic is terrible.

....and then talking about the episodic release business - very dead.

also, by the accents people have, one would think the whole world was inhabited solely by americans. this kills the atmosphere completely

Not sure if this has already been mentioned but Ubisoft are giving away games (1 per month) because the company is 30 years old.

Currently Rayman Origins.

When I was at school I remember getting a sheet of paper in a geography class with theoretical island drawn out on it and various resources marked - waterfalls/forests for timber/flat fields for farming etc. We were told to mark down what we would have where (where to put a dock for trade, where to build a town etc).

What games for Windows, Mac or iOS exist on a similar line?

Not looking for combat necessarily, just a functioning society ideally in a pre-industrial world.

AOE is too basic, Banished is too 'sim'. Something in the middle?

Was gonna joke DayZ, but you're one of them already.
Was gonna say Banished, but then you said no.

Gnomoria?
From Dust?
The Settlers: Rise of an Empire?
Towns?

The Crew is now free on Ubisoft

https://club.ubisoft.com/en-US/ubi30

Grabbed the Super Luigi U DLC yesterday, it is FANTASTIC!?!?! Why did I wait so long?!?

Not sure if any of you folks have any interest in development, but there's an amazing HumbleBundle offer on at the moment for the pro version of GameMaker (which aside from some additional export options is basically the same as the free version). But the awesome addition is the source code for a bunch of games made using it. Definitely recommend picking it up.

They had a similar deal a while back for a bunch of other games built with GameMaker and their source code. Really interesting to pick them apart and see how different devs approach their projects.

If only they'd do the same for an engine like Unreal or Unity that uses a proper damn language...

Anyway, link here: https://www.humblebundle.com/gamemaker-bundle

Very is the answer. So, am I write in thinking that GameMaker is basically some kind of tool allowing you to code and export a simple game (like Premiere is for video)?
What language does it use? I've been faffing around with Swift recently having no other experience of coding beyond a bit of web faffery (bootstrap/html) but would love to do more if only for a bit of fun.

re. the HumbleBundle - with the source code of the other games I could tinker with and adapt something for practice?

Cheers for the heads up. Seen people using it and it looks like a decent programme. Will have to wait until I get Windows on the Mac to use it though..

Been learning unity over the summer and have been having a lot of fun. Currently making a 3D puzzle game with a friend which is slowly coming together.

No experience with Premiere but it offers both a drag & drop interface (I've not used it so can't comment on its capability, but it compiles to code all the same) and a scripting function. The language used is called GML (simply GameMaker Language) and is not to dissimilar to Javascript/Python/Ruby.

You can indeed tinker with the source code of the other games but if you're not used to GML it'll be a complete spaghetti mess.

If you do start using GameMaker I can't recommend enough Tom Francis's tutorials (he made a game called Gunpoint in GameMaker, also recommend checking that out. Link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DN6dZWXUEzA

He's not a "great" programmer (and admits to that himself), but it makes it even more accessible to get something put together quickly. It was what first got me into development and was hugely helpful.

Worth picking it up now so you've got the pro licence that allows exporting to other platforms.

I've been using Unity since about April or so and am only now starting to make original content as opposed to making clones. Hope it's coming on well!

Yep already purchased :-)

I was surprised at how easy it was to pick up. Theres still a lot of things I don't know but the documentation online is excellent as well as the unity forums where pretty much any problems you have have already been asked. My A-level physics has actually come in handy

Yeah the documentation is very thorough and it's unlikely that you've got a problem that no one else has had (and solved) before.

If only they used video game development problems as examples when teaching math & physics at school, I'm sure much more people would be attentive in class!

Awesome, ordered. Thanks.

I applied for the first video game/interactive media course at Brunel back in the 90s, I was totally let down by my lack of maths... I even did a C+(+?) course as prep, all since forgotten...

I can definitely see it becoming a great way to teach kids math. Want to learn kinematics? Here, go make an Angry Birds clone etc.

My 15 year old nephew, who's very green, super spoilt and generally clueless about the real world is the kid in that ^ meme... Seems to think he'll walk into a videogame job because he plays them all the time... Little twat...

Give him a reality check by getting him to spend an hour or so making pong: https://noobtuts.com/unity/2d-pong-game

Might give him a bit of perspective on what's required!

I'll leave that to his doting mother... 🤣