Slashdot Mirror

The point of homebrew games is that you can't compete on production-values, so you'd better compete on gameplay. Although there are, of course, exceptions.

But graphics needn't be realistic to be good. Van Gogh's "Starry Night" or Paul Klee's "Dream City" aren't and weren't meant to be realistic. Does that mean they suck? I don't think so.

Maybe we're at a "Rembrandt" stage of videogame graphics - (most) people seem to want everything to look "real" (i.e. like in the movies). But that's hardly all there is to art. Maybe, once realism has worn itself out, we'll see the videogame art equivalents of Van Gogh, or Klee, or Gauguin, and, eventually, cubism and abstract art as designers grow tired of depicting physical objects at all.

(Not sure I'd welcome all of that, but I must admit I'm getting tired of realism. Realism doesn't guarantee interesting faces on characters or atmospheric scenery or an avatar you want to identify with. I'd rather have those but in a 320*200*32 2D game than perfect realism but nothing worth looking at. Not that you were advocating boring graphics. I guess this post is one big digression!)

I mean, we've had cave paintings (Pac-Man) and elaborate antique frescoes (Pac-Land) and the middle ages with their semi-3D (Pac-Mania)... so who's to say realism's the be-all, end-all? It certainly has its place, but so do other styles.

(My apologies to anyone with a less shaky grip on art history)

(Fortunately, for me, it wasn't; I do prefer computer graphics that look like computer graphics -- not jaggy and monochromatic, necessarily, I just don't need this total immersion into brutal, military-themed ugliness -- no more than I need the happy, shiny popsicle graphics of the "family-friendly" variety.)

I can see that it can be fun to be given a license to "go evil", and I won't even try to untangle the cause-and-effect mess here. It just doesn't turn me on much. There are other things I can't do (or shouldn't, or don't even want to do but still find interesting) that games could address.

But realistically depicted violence and macho guns really excite many gamers, it seems (even if the demographic here might be sort of self-selected rather than "all there is"). Wireframe models or bizarre pixel-clusters, on the other hand, won't impress them. And that turn-on, I presume, will be present in Target: Terror. Does Jarvis think the average gamer will care about the rationale for the violence, the weapons, and whatever "cool" equipment will be available?

Jarvis: You have all these fantasies about how people are going to play your game and all the depth you put in there and your great moral story and everything and it seems like actually what people really do is they just enjoy shooting guys in the nuts [laughs].

Exactly.

Not that I know what that game will be like. But try making a game that deals with the roots of terrorism, a game that isn't boring, and then I'll be impressed with your content. Whether this really is a topic for a game, any kind of game, is questionable, though.

We felt that it's just an insult to the players to have these polygon puppets that everybody knows are fake [laughs]. We wanted to do something that was more interesting and more real. I'm tired of -- and everybody is -- tired of these polygon rag-doll people that just don't seem to have any reality.

This endless quest for the "real" is so absurd, IMO. You've got a computer, an apparatus that hasn't got a clue about what's "real", and instead of using that to your advantage and producing something that does not resemble anything that already exists, all you do is mimick reality. Sure, one day that might give us the holodeck or something like it, but dammit, we've already got a real world which often sucks.

If we do have to copy it, why not deal with things that humans can't experience at all? (Flying, for example. Hm, is there a modern-day game that casts the player as a bird or bat?)

By the way here are very purty-looking remakes of Defender and Robotron (for Windows and Linux) -- beautiful, yet hardly "realistic".

Pom Pom's Mutant Storm is a greate Robotron remake. There's even a Linux version available. Be sure to give it a try -- incredibly addictive.

Lately I've pretty much felt the same way, but not just with games. Every year we've pretty much been seeing the same things coming out of both Hollywood, the music industry and the games industry.

I have a slightly older friend who has always gone to see the latest subtitled film, listened to Belgian house, and was into retro gaming before the concept had even been invented. I always used to take the P*** out of him!

The past year I've been buying a lot of oriental films in a big way, in particular I'm getting heavily into Korean cinema and when I haven't been trying to get Mame games working on a shuttle mini pc that's sat under my tv, I've been really into the indie games scene. Gametunnel and games from moonpod, pompom and sigma team have kept my gaming urges alive this year. They might not offer anything new, but at least they are games offering gameplay, rather than chasing the need of the masses to immerse themselves in a movie. I suppose once you've seen so much media of any time, you begine to crave somehting new.

It's not old age, just boredom. Thankfully, I haven't felt the need to get into Belgian trance music yet...

PomPom have neato modernized clones/rehashes of Defender/Uridium and Robotron. Both are extremely pretty in that they don't fall into the now-standard be-as-naturalistic-as-possible trap ~ the graphics have an abstract and psychedelic feel to it that fit the simplistic arcade game concepts well.

"Egoboo is a 3d dungeon crawling adventure in the spirit of NetHack. It uses OpenGL and SDL. It should run on any Wintel, Unix, and MacOS X system." (I don't really see the Nethack semblance, but oh well. It's kinda wacky in a lovable sorta way.)

Starscape has some Asteroids-ish arcade sequences wrapped inside something more complex. Looks good.

Digital Eel's Strange Adventures In Infinite Space is a 2D Elite-esque space game (obviously) with, I thought, an emphasis on playability rather than complexity or sophisticated-ness. Link is to the screenshots page, they work as a description.

Spheres of Chaos might be a game but it looks quite like an early Amiga demoscene effort to me ~ psychedelic, chaotic, colourful and completely abstract. Something for the Jeff Minter fans maybe?

There's also pom-pom who have written two games (supports PC, Mac and Linux) with some of the best 3D graphics in the indie scene.

And of course, Ambrosia who have been in the Mac shareware business for ages, and have ported a few of their most successful titles to Windows already.

Give them some cash, as the binary versions are better than the source (they've got some propriatry stuff in there). Honestly, I paid a tiny sum about 6 months ago, and so far I've been able to play WCIII, Civ 3 and Counterstrike with no problems what-so-ever (then I've got Quake3 and Mutant Storm as native Linux binaries, but that's a different story).

Yes, official support would be nice, and it's a shame that only the likes of Carmack, UT developers and Bioware are willing to give us Linux gamers what we want, but the more noise we make, the more likely people like Blizzard are to take notice. They'd also start paying attention if TransGaming start posting profits of hundreds of thousands of dollars (so go pay them).

The first is a superb remake of Robotron, the second is exactly what Breakout would have been if the technology supported it.

I prefer original equipment like the Devastator II from Treyonics and good arcade remakes.

I prefer simpler, well done "retro" style games. Games don't have to be the biggest, most elaborate technical juggernaut to be good. Interesting gameplay, solid graphics, and polished sound has always been a sure thing. BTW, I love Frozen Bubble on Linux, and I'm considering Space Tripper. Can anyone suggest other great games for Linux ?

Sure, this is a fun game. Can't blame slashdotters for wondering if it works in theory as well as practice though.

If you are looking for more, try here.

Try http://www.pompom.org.uk/ instead. And yes, it does look really cool, and does run on Linux, MS-Windows and Mac OS X, and yes there is a free demo. (-:

Several... most recently, Mutant Storm. Some shareware is just that good and most won't work anyway after 30 days.

That's the problem with any script. It's easy to abuse. Hatch really should have checked his six before opening his mouth. It says a lot about the self-righteous mentality.

Mutant Storm by PomPom Games and Ricochet Xtreme by Reflexive Entertainment are my all-time favorite shareware titles and both could easily sell at twice there going rate ($20). While there's always going to be crap in the shareware world, there's also some gems. These two are definitely gems.

The best new shareware games I've played recently are Space Tripper and Mutant Storm from PomPom, a two-man UK company.

Alright, I admit it, I used to work with the guys who wrote them, but they're still the most awesome Defender / Robotron-style (respectively) updates I've ever played.

Oh... they have windows, mac and *linux* versions, so I guess the slashdot crowd should appreciate that.

The best new shareware games I've played recently are Space Tripper and Mutant Storm from PomPom, a two-man UK company.

Alright, I admit it, I used to work with the guys who wrote them, but they're still the most awesome Defender / Robotron-style (respectively) updates I've ever played.

Oh... they have windows, mac and *linux* versions, so I guess the slashdot crowd should appreciate that.

I saw their first title, Space Tripper, in an old /. article about Linux Games but, IMO, Mutant Storm is much more deserving of some publicity.

Both Mutant Storm and Space Tripper by PomPom are great games with top-notch graphics. And both are available for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. I don't need anything else.

Incredibly addictive stuff. I've been playing it for a year now and only just beat it on the hardest level. You won't regret checking out the demo at pompom.org.uk (you will, actually, if you value your time).

Gameplay is pure arcade goodness, with 3D graphics to match.

They've also recently released a robotron clone, Mutant Storm.

Incredibly addictive stuff. I've been playing it for a year now and only just beat it on the hardest level. You won't regret checking out the demo at pompom.org.uk (you will, actually, if you value your time).

Gameplay is pure arcade goodness, with 3D graphics to match.

They've also recently released a robotron clone, Mutant Storm.

Try Space Tripper and Mutant Storm from Pompom. Those guys know how to make FUN games.

I probably never would have tried them, had I not been a Linux gamer. They have Windows and Mac versions too.

The fact that they have released a second game lets me hope they're not doing too badly...

The fact that they have released a second game lets me hope they're not doing too badly...

The fact that they have released a second game lets me hope they're not doing too badly...

I agree... And even then, it is still rediculous that they can't package the game with a fully-functional install script. It takes 15 minutes to write one. It is crazy to require an installation of WINE (or better yet, Windows) to install a game. Scratch that- It is downright idiotic.

They think that they are doing us some favor by releasing this game. I know that someone is going to say "Well, they don't owe you Linux users anything!"... Maybe so... But the least that these guys could do is not mislead people into buying their stuff. I might sound angry about this whole thing. I am angry, because I am sick of excuses.

So, Epic. I appreciate the fact that you are claiming that you will release these binaries. Maybe all of those posts on happypenguin about disgruntled gamers claiming that they wouldn't run your servers if you didn't release a client program made some sense. But don't try to get us to buy the game and then turn around and release it 6 months later (Ahem... BioWare, no excuses can make your customers any happier about it).

Perhaps if developers would start *designing multiplatform games from the ground up* then they could increase profits and help make alternative OS's (e.g. non-Windows) viable platforms for gaming.

"It's really easy to support all 3 OSes if you start from the beginning with that in mind." -Raybondo of Guild Software.

Check out screenshot of their *multi-platform* demo for a space MMORPG called "Vendetta" at Guild Software's Vendetta Page.

Another great game that is available on all three platforms is Space Tripper. Developers; Take a note from this 2 man development team on how to make *excellent* multi-platform OpenGL games. I played the demo, and within 10 minutes I was ordering the full version from them.

About the closest the community is going to receive perhaps is a game released for the consoles and then ported to Linux and not Windows.

Or perhaps a two man operation producing something like Space Tripper, of quality rather than the, in my opinion, low quality Tux Racer.

The audience is too small for a commercial game, and I don't believe an open source project is a good model for a game, since playability is not a tangible goal to aim for.

Spacetripper is more like Defender than R-Type, but a beautiful game regardless. There's even a Linux version available. Perfect combination of gameplay and graphics, IMO.

Well, I guess the game I'm most into right now is "Space Tripper". It's released on Linux, Mac and Windows. Check out the demo if you're looking for an old fashioned style shooter.

Oh yeah, some rave reviews here , here and here

Brant

Perhaps it's about time shareware games gets a come-back. They're very rare these days, but are far easier to distribute, which makes it cheaper in the end. Maybe it's just me, but most of those expensive high quality games aren't that fun to play at all...

Take a look at SpaceTripper, for instance. Made by two British guys, nice graphics, simple gameplay = cool game! The full 11 MB version only costs 12$ to download, and they have an linux version in the works. Another such example is Wetrix, and I've stumbled over a few other such small, fun 'n cheap games during the last 3 years.

I think it would be easier for small companies to create games if they tried the old shareware method. I don't believe games that are expensive to develop are the only ones people today would like to play, it's just that mostly they don't have a choice.

Quit whining - garage games are alive and well, it's not even hard to find them. Check out this or this for great examples of PC garage development

There are also a lot of low-production-value, simple, fun games for consoles - not done by two guys in their garage, but with a definite substance-over-style design ethic. Try Bangaioh on the DC or Kuru Kuru Kururin on the GBA to see what I mean.