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Super Karoshi

One of my favorite Flash (boo) games.

Meh, I don't have Flash installed. I tried some of their games and some work in HTML5 such as String Theory, String Heroes, and Tiny Tanks. So they'll just have to go through and convert more to HTML5 or they'll have to get Adobe to do a WebAssembly build of Flash player.

Meh, I don't have Flash installed. I tried some of their games and some work in HTML5 such as String Theory, String Heroes, and Tiny Tanks. So they'll just have to go through and convert more to HTML5 or they'll have to get Adobe to do a WebAssembly build of Flash player.

Meh, I don't have Flash installed. I tried some of their games and some work in HTML5 such as String Theory, String Heroes, and Tiny Tanks. So they'll just have to go through and convert more to HTML5 or they'll have to get Adobe to do a WebAssembly build of Flash player.

Well, I guess if it works in one context....

http://armorgames.com/play/289...

Although I enjoyed the game enough to waste 20 minutes on it, I am less than impressed with a "Pay to not watch the grass grow" model of business. So, while it may run blazingly fast, I'm not going to pay to see if that's the case.

As it is, it seems painfully slow, and more than a bit of a rip-off of games like these ones I can play for free in my browser with no speed issues.

I'm just not seeing the value.

There:

http://armorgames.com/play/12141/kingdom-rush

http://armorgames.com/play/15717/kingdom-rush-frontiers

There:

http://armorgames.com/play/12141/kingdom-rush

http://armorgames.com/play/15717/kingdom-rush-frontiers

The Internet is already ready: http://armorgames.com/play/924/balloon-invasion

Once I switched to a YouTube downloader for FF ( "Easy YouTube Video Downloader" https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/easy-youtube-video-downl-10137/ ) there is almost zero reason to even have flash installed anymore except for the odd Web Game. i.e. These 2 have excellent gameplay:

Gemcraft - Chapter 0
http://armorgames.com/play/3527/gemcraft-chapter-0

Desktop Tower Defense
http://www.kongregate.com/games/preecep/desktop-tower-defense-1-5

please don't try to compare Angry Birds' development efforts for some of the major-motion-picture efforts of your typical FPS.

I didn't and I wouldn't. Angry Birds is a 99c game. "major-motion-picture efforts of your typical FPS" cost anything up to $60.

I'm saying that, compared to other 99c app developers, who may be making little money, Rovio put in the work. They deserve their success.

Not because it was particularly a "good" game. And certainly not because of massive development efforts.

Here's the similar Flash game I mentioned. People spent weeks playing Angry Birds. I doubt many would spend more than minutes playing this.
http://armorgames.com/play/3614/crush-the-castle

Angry Birds may not be to your taste, But judged by the amount of time people spent on it, and how many sequels people bought, it is indeed an excellent game. And you don't create an excellent game without putting the work in.

P.S. Are you a games developer?

This is an actual game with programming in it - it even has recursion :)

  http://armorgames.com/play/13876/jahoomas-logicbox

It also kind of show how you can implement complex functions from a reduced instruction set - and somehow make it fun!

I've heard some very positive things about Dungeons of Dredmor:

http://www.gaslampgames.com/blog/

I picked it up in one of the previous Humble Bundles, but have yet to get around to playing it. It's only $5. There are certainly plenty of others that I could recommend, but it depends on what you're looking for. Spelunky is a fantastic side-scroller with roguelike trappings (permanent death, random level generation, many discoverables and tricks that you learn over time), you really need a control pad for that though. Pixelated retro graphics, but good ones - they're expressive. Monster's Den Chronicles is a reasonably solid turn-based dungeon crawl if you're looking for browser-based flash game:

http://armorgames.com/play/13132/monsters-den-chronicles

There's also an open source real-time graphical version of Angband, which would be quite similar to Diablo, but I forget what it's called and it's quite an old project by now (at least ten years old). I don't think it would match up to Diablo graphically. If you really want something that closely matches Diablo then, as an AC pointed out, the boxed version of Torchlight requires no activation. So when I said "unless they've changed things," as it turns out they have changed things.

I can also recommend Icewind Dale. It's also quite old by now (available on Good Old Games) so graphically it's not so hot any more, though I think it's at least as good as Diablo 1. It's not a roguelike, it's a D&D based RPG, but it is definitely a dungeon crawl - the focus is on delving into dungeons, loot gathering, monster slaying, not on involved plots or politicing.

My score on Multitask 2 disagrees with you. Practice also improves my play significantly. After not having played for months I only stayed alive for 85 seconds and I fell apart with 5 tasks. My record is 105 seconds with 6 things at once. After a while it's hard for me to gather enough visual information to play each game, and they all use keyboard input which overloads that part of my brain. Towards the end I can "think" what needs to be done, but not cause my fingers to do so quickly enough.

I usually multitask when playing the piano. I...
  * Get fingers positioned right (both hands of course)
  * Decide on little touches like dynamics, stoccato, pedaling, rubato, what emotional content I want to convey, if any; I often make these up anew each time
  * Decide on changes to the piece, like different rhythms, extra grace notes, changed chords, etc.
  * Evaluate my playing--"missed note", "incorrect dynamics", "this emotional arc sucks", "I really like that passage at that speed", etc.
  * Perhaps read music
  * Let my mind wander, thinking about the day or interactions I had with someone or sometimes a math problem (to calibrate difficulty, I was fiddling with pointwise approximations of complex measurable functions by polynomials almost everywhere a while ago, and the non-null-homotopicness of a particular curve yesterday)
  * Listen to people if they're talking around me or listen to TV if it's on; I can tune these out if I wish

Interestingly I can't respond verbally to someone while playing the piano. I can understand someone perfectly and think of a response (nodding if yes/no, for instance), but the verbal part of my brain seems to be engaged with the music. As a rule I can multitask somewhat on simple similar tasks and I can multitask to a large extent on unrelated tasks. Oh, I often juggle or otherwise occupy my hands while doing other things (eg. reading, thinking about math). I vary the patterns somewhat to keep that part of me from getting bored so it's not just tossing and catching in the same basic pattern forever.

If none of this is multitasking to you, you'll have to clarify your use of the term.

For the basic introduction (so he finds if he likes the idea of creating algorithms from simple instructions) maybe this game will be more enticing.

If he likes it, then you can introduce the more complex stuff relating it to the game.

"It's a pretty well made game."

Angry birds is a clone of flash games that had been around for ages, the thing that angry birds got right was just sheer aesthetics that launched it into the statosphere. It has nothing to do with 'well made game' has everything to do with the bird aesthetic.

Check out crush the castle (the games angry bird copied) below:

http://armorgames.com/play/3614/crush-the-castle

And what are those advantages, actually?

Check out http://www.armorgames.com/ to cure your cognitive dissonance.

Except, having read the article, it seems pretty clear this is a video-only solution. It's not going to deliver Flash games to the iOS audience.

And what are those advantages, actually?

Check out http://www.armorgames.com/ to cure your cognitive dissonance.

Why aren't they all like Achievement Unlocked or Upgrade Complete?

They generally have actual gameplay, some sort of challenge or some kind of story.

For sites like StackOverflow, yeah, the badges and such are a bit over done, but even then you have an actual community of people and the reason you're interested in earning them is because people can see you actually had to do something that other people found, if not useful in their paying job, at least informative.

If you're "gamifying" something that is completely pointless and insubstantial, it's bullshit. You can't start with bullshit, add some achievements and upgrades and get anything more than warmed over bullshit.

Why aren't they all like Achievement Unlocked or Upgrade Complete?

They generally have actual gameplay, some sort of challenge or some kind of story.

For sites like StackOverflow, yeah, the badges and such are a bit over done, but even then you have an actual community of people and the reason you're interested in earning them is because people can see you actually had to do something that other people found, if not useful in their paying job, at least informative.

If you're "gamifying" something that is completely pointless and insubstantial, it's bullshit. You can't start with bullshit, add some achievements and upgrades and get anything more than warmed over bullshit.

How many are filled with achievements for every damned little thing you do?

Achievement Unlocked

Always looking for things to motivate my young aspiring computer-game-designer offspring. When I was their age (8) I wasn't really exposed to computers all that much, but did already have exposure to Logo. Any good sites online that might provide some experience similar to that? The only one I know of is Lightbot.

The wife and kids are heavily into Minecraft at the moment, and I'm hoping to get them into building more redstone circuits. (unfortunately, minecrafwiki's realstone circuits seem to be down at the moment). I'm pretty tickled by the whole concept of constructing complex circuits the size of buildings out of basic NOT-gate building blocks, which has kinda been a running joke in IC logic design classes forever.

What are other good programming games / intros to expose them to?

I'm not saying it's all bad, but, where is the drive to get someone young interested in computing? To them, using a computer is playing a game, or reading Facebook. Not writing a script for mIRC to scrape text for keywords and have your bot auto respond to people, because that's what used to be fun.. 10+ years ago..

We need something like a cross between Logo and the cool, but relatively simple Lightbot flash game to get kids when they're young. Teach them the basics while still being fun.

The iPad being replaced by a newer version is completely different from not being able to run an application on all current devices.

Not different at all when they are still selling them anyway so

Rovio

There are over 200,000 applications in the Android Marketplace. Of course, there will be some developers that will push the envelope and not be able to deliver a satisfactory experience on all devices. That is the exception as every single program I have installed on my G1 works on my Droid and my Xoom including some 3D games that require much more from my devices than Angry Birds which is a 2D sprite game consisting of shooting a projectile from one side of the screen to the other. Maybe Rovio is incompetent? They were practically bankrupt until they ripped these guys off so how much should I take from their example anyway?

He talks about how "innovation wasn't coming from large development firms like EA and Ubisoft, but from smaller, more nimble developers like his own.".... yet, angry birds is an obvious rip off of another game, Crush the Castle, which was developed by Armor Games quite some time before A.B.

Try it out for yourself...
http://armorgames.com/play/3614/crush-the-castle

Ya, I played "Castles" and various other games like it back on the Apple II. And then of course who can forget Scorched Earth, or in the later 90's the game Worms.

I would argue one point with him, though- EA and such companies HAVE made a lot of innovations lately... but all in the area of DRM, not gameplay.

He talks about how "innovation wasn't coming from large development firms like EA and Ubisoft, but from smaller, more nimble developers like his own.".... yet, angry birds is an obvious rip off of another game, Crush the Castle, which was developed by Armor Games quite some time before A.B. Try it out for yourself... http://armorgames.com/play/3614/crush-the-castle

> No TV? How do you do that? What do you stare at when you come home in the evenings after work?

Let me introduce to you a foreign concept --- gaming with friends. You know, before there were computers the activity used to be with board games and usually family members.

If I was evil I would tell you about L4D coop. Really evil, maybe World of Warcraft or Eve Online. And if i was a sick bastard, to get rid of any saving grace, I would send you to reddit.com. (Whoa Nelly! That dog-gone-it "intar-net" has tons of boobs on it!)

Instead I'll be nice, and send you to Gemcraft Chapter 0 :-)
http://armorgames.com/play/3527/gemcraft-chapter-0

They've even gone kind of meta with games like Acheivement Unlocked.

I don't know. There's at least one game I know of where achievements were used to good effect. The aptly named Achievements Unlocked: http://armorgames.com/play/2893/achievement-unlocked

Of course, it's 1) a parody of achievements systems and 2) a quick game that I can finish in under 5 minutes.

Achievement Unlocked

For more examples, see some of the better Flash games on ArmorGames.com or any of the other portal games sites. True, the games are short... but true, the games are mostly free to play. There are also some really quality games with a bit of story to them. (see the Sonny series: Sonny 1 and Sonny 2, with a 3rd one coming out, hopefully soon.) Any of these, with a slightly bigger budget, more time, etc, could be made into a retail type game. Effing Hail would be a fun Wii game with a few gameplay tweaks, additions, and/or enhancements (such as twisting the wii-mote to change the air-flow direction.)

For more examples, see some of the better Flash games on ArmorGames.com or any of the other portal games sites. True, the games are short... but true, the games are mostly free to play. There are also some really quality games with a bit of story to them. (see the Sonny series: Sonny 1 and Sonny 2, with a 3rd one coming out, hopefully soon.) Any of these, with a slightly bigger budget, more time, etc, could be made into a retail type game. Effing Hail would be a fun Wii game with a few gameplay tweaks, additions, and/or enhancements (such as twisting the wii-mote to change the air-flow direction.)

For more examples, see some of the better Flash games on ArmorGames.com or any of the other portal games sites. True, the games are short... but true, the games are mostly free to play. There are also some really quality games with a bit of story to them. (see the Sonny series: Sonny 1 and Sonny 2, with a 3rd one coming out, hopefully soon.) Any of these, with a slightly bigger budget, more time, etc, could be made into a retail type game. Effing Hail would be a fun Wii game with a few gameplay tweaks, additions, and/or enhancements (such as twisting the wii-mote to change the air-flow direction.)

While we're already wildly off-topic and straying into the realms of dangerous levels of procrastination...

This is the most addictive tower defence game that I've played. The documentation is a bit sparse on the characteristics of the mega towers (hint: they depend on the characteristics of the towers that you make them from), but apart from that it's a lot of fun, and gives a lot more variety than DTD.

http://tremulous.net/files/

Tremulous is a very unique FPS. Two sides: Humans and wall-climbing aliens. Check it out.

http://www.wesnoth.org/

Wesnoth is a hexagonal turn-based-strategy. I find it quite fun, though at times the random number generator can be annoying. (Don't ask...)

http://www.playonlinux.com/en/

If you've got any relatively new Windows games, check out PlayOnLinux. It manages multiple versions of Wine, and the installation of games. I've got it on an Ubuntu box, and it works great for stuff like Diablo II - old classics. ;) Apparently it also works quite well for a bunch of newer games - the list of supported ones is about 200 long.

And if you're looking for flash based games, there's two sites that are absolutely the best:
http://www.miniclip.com/
http://www.armorgames.com/

Honourable mention - Penumbra. (The survival horror series, with native linux versions. Around $10 each, but right now they seem to be bundling all three.)

some flash games are quite decent, like gemcraft http://armorgames.com/play/3527/gemcraft-chapter-0

The industry is barely a decade old and according to this guy there are paradigms that have been established that hold forever.

There are certainly some well-established paradigms, though I don't believe they'll hold forever.

Think back to Everquest and Ultima Online -- both great games for their time, but there's not much interest anymore besides nostalgia. This is because the industry matured and realized that people didn't want to spend hours and hours beating on a practice dummy or struggling to solo rats five levels below them. With modern games, developers are expected to give enough quest-related content for players to reach the level cap by themselves without that level of monotony.

And really, it's fine to break that rule if you offer compelling enough gameplay that people don't care. (See This Is The Only Level.) You just need to have more of something than the early games had if you want a successful game.

"Apparently, this guy has not heard of creativity and innovation."

Quite the opposite -- I'd say those are two of the "expected" quantities in a new MMO. :)

You can track their progress by checking out their Orbital Launch Simulator.

So I guess you don't want to know about the second episode, do you?

Getting a rocket to orbit or manned flight takes a few more resources than maxxing out your credit card to buy an Altair or even an Apple II.

No it doesn't

How is this different from "unlocking" parts of a game after achieving certain achievements?

"you dies 10 times by falling - you now have access to level x"

On another note: http://armorgames.com/play/2893/achievement-unlocked/

I dunno about armadillos, but hedgehogs can.

Pretty funny games BTW, just finished the 2nd one late last night:
Karoshi
Super Karoshi

Pretty funny games BTW, just finished the 2nd one late last night:
Karoshi
Super Karoshi

Karoshi is fun!
http://armorgames.com/play/2407/karoshi-suicide-salaryman

You're making the false assertion here that this is between Flash and Silverlight. Playing videos and drawing vector graphics are things that should be done in the browser and which have technologies on the way that will allow just that, so that one company no longer has absolute control over who can do those things. By apologizing for Adobe and their ineptitude in making Flash a true cross-platform technology you harm that effort.

Look, I'd like to see an OSS alternative to Flash, but I just don't think HTML5 and AJAX is it. There are things Flash/Silverlight can do that AJAX either can't or would be crap at doing, and you're in cloud-cuckoo land if you think anything else. See, Flash (and obviously Silverlight) were designed from scratch for vector graphics animations, interaction with the mouse, etc. and for those graphics to look good and not flicker or stuff. AJAX wasn't, really. Could you create hedgehog launch with AJAX and HTML5? Possibly a crappier, flickery, nasty version of it, but it just wouldn't be the same.

Yeah, I know it's a tacky little game, but this is Flash's bread and butter. It does this stuff really well. AJAX won't, and IMHO, never will. Give it up.

This game seems to be entirely relevant. Especially since posting this unlocks the "April Foll" achievement. :P

http://armorgames.com/play/2893/achievement-unlocked

As in, this MMO'd...

np: Fennesz - Glide (Black Sea)

I don't suppose you're familiar with the game, then?

http://armorgames.com/play/2893/achievement-unlocked

If the achievements thing will actually stick around. While funny, it really is kind of interesting, in a sick, metagaming way. Sort of like Achievement Unlocked.