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I excelled at every video game I played at far above anyone else I've met. Every competition I've been in, I've done very well too. I ranked high in the Nintendo World Championships in what 89? I got #1 in ladder in Starcraft back in 99. I got first to 1500 wins in Warcraft3 and #1 in ladder in 1v1,2v2 and 3v3.

So my question is: Have you ever wanted to design an ultimate skill based game?

I'm also a programmer/designer. I got into game design in 87 when I played all the games that were out there and had ideas for my own. My main ideas as a kid was "Action/RPG", and MMORPGS. These were good ideas and as anyone can tell they're where we went as an industry. The problem is that MMORPGS have little reflex skill involved, and Action/RPG can be beat by just leveling your player up.

So lately I've been wondering in how to make a video game similar to those 80s games in terms of relying on reflexes, yet still be fun for the modern player who likes to bathe in powerups(levels, skill trees and equipment). Do you have an idea you might want to share? We could work together to see it through. I'm just finishing a video game that is like Zelda and is going on Kongregate.com hopefully in the next few weeks. If you want to play the engine the game was built on, just be sure to login to save your progress.

Speaking of Gauntlet, try out my tribute to Gauntlet Flash Game: Dungeon Run

I do this by not working at all.

People whine about this recent bad economy, but for some of us, we can't find a job after graduation since we graduated right after the dot com bust. Only thing I can do is continually try and start home businesses. Here is an example of a game I wrote. I think it showcases I have competency to code effectively. There are a great many people today who are talented, skilled and hard workers, but just due to the economy, there is no place for them to work.

As a solo developer, working 800 hours, I was able to write ~400,000 lines of debugged and play tested code. So 10 million lines doesn't sound like a lot at all to me. The only thing I experienced in writing so many lines of code is that I found a problem with the Eclipse editor. Once a single file starts going over 30k lines of code, there is type lag. The more code, the more type lag until you can no longer use Eclipse to edit that file, you gotta use Notepad.exe or Scite.exe.

Link here in case you want to play the game I wrote

Just out of idle curiosity: I wonder how many lines some of the bigger projects out there have. For example, how many lines of code do some of the Linux OS Kernels have? I'm curious because is 10 million lines actually a really large code base, because it doesn't sound it.

I graduated from Carnegie Mellon in 2002(end of dot com era). I guess I shouldn't have went to college and just got a job out of college since I was already coding MMORPG style code. But since I graduated after dot com bust, I couldn't get a job. My career never started. Guess it never will. I programmed this in AS3 with a startup

I knew C/C++ quite well and didn't want to learn a new language. But I learned Flash in under 1 week. Flash is actually easier than C/C++ for a lot of things, so you end up writing code faster. With a garbage collection tool, it is harder to get a memory leak. If you know C/C++, it is extremely worth it to buy Flash Builder 4.5

Here is a free to play game I wrote which took me 1 year in Flash. It will remind you of Gauntlet 2.

I can't help think that inept HR is one of the reasons I could never find a job in the past 9 years after graduating from Carnegie Mellon with a BS scientific computing and most of my free time is spent in coding since I was at a young age. I even tried coding a MMORPG knowing how successful they'd be before any MMORPGS were out. I gave up when Ultima Online was released because I am not skilled as an artist and could no longer compete.

Thankfully I found a team of Christian video game developers(tangerinepop.com) on Twitter who helped me learn Flash and we made a game on our own, without any funding. Play it for free here

I only show that I can make a game to show that indeed I am very competent. In the past 9 years, I sent out *thousands* of resumes, and I think I got a grand total of 3 interviews.
PS: If you don't know, AS3 is really similar to C++ with almost exactly the same syntax, but a lot easier. So if you were wondering to pick up Flash and you have a lot of C/C++ experience, pick it up!
Anyway, I'm still with Tangerine Pop for the next year as we make a Facebook presence. Hopefully we can make millions because that would almost make up for the fact I was getting about no income for the past 9 years.

I just recently got my video game I worked on all last year published this week Play it if you want

I put this post here because my link didn't work in my original post

Even games that have accurate summarizations of history in their story rarely use it to much good effect beyond a sort of flavorful seasoning. It's not really playable history that makes you think about it, in the way good historical fiction helps you understand and imagine aspects of history. If anything, the use of history in educational games like Oregon Trail is the closest to that, and even there it's a little superficial. (The article does correctly point out that alternate history has been dealt with pretty well in games... but oddly, real history, not so much.)

We do, for whatever reason, have that more with current events to some extent. In the mid-1980s, Chris Crawford released the excellent Balance of Power, which attempted to use gameplay to interactively illustrate some aspects of the Cold War. More recently, there's been a flurry of interest in "newsgames" and "persuasive games", using games as a sort of editorial-cartoon-style take on smallish current issues, like tainted spinach outbreaks.

But where's playable history in any real fashion? It doesn't have to be pedantically boring, designed by Professors of Roman History to illustrate some sort of minutiae of interest to their field. Even semi-accurate, dramatized history of the History Channel variety would be interesting if it were playable in some significant sense, not just "you're playing an RTS that has Roman legions as units". Or something as good as the alternate-history games, but with actual history. Lack of interest? Too hard to figure out how to make it work? I mean this as a serious question, fwiw, not as berating game designers. It seems there's a lot of popular interest in at least some kinds of history, as evidenced by things like the History Channel, and yet in games we've gotten only really superficial elements. It may just be inherently impossible / really really hard, but somehow it seems to me that it ought to be doable.

I agree as far as the majority of games go, but there are some games that do try to use games as a medium for provoking thought and representing ideas, sometimes while still be interesting to play. Chris Crawford's Balance of Power (1985) is a pretty good example, I think, a game about Cold-War brinksmanship that wasn't just a wargame, but also aimed to illustrate some features of the Cold War and brinksmanship through its gameplay.

More recently, there's been a collection of much smaller games, usually Flash on the web, trying to say something about serious issues. They're mostly smaller because the current niche with the most legs seems to be games that respond in a timely fashion to current events. So, for example, in the wake of the 2006 E Coli spinach scare, an indie game studio came out with Bacteria Salad, a farm-simulation game that makes some points about the tradeoffs in small vs. large farms. And in the wake of the Kerry "don't tase me, bro" incident, another indie designer made a game about how people do, or could, respond to police brutality.

The book Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames (2007) has some decent coverage of the subject, about half an overview of games that already do include some actual expressive content, and half a manifesto of sorts that more games ought to, if the medium wants to have an impact in society besides entertainment.

You might be trying to make a larger point here, but I'll respond to your specifics:

-google earth in a browser.

Here's the Google Earth browser plugin.

-games are always a target for tech like this.

Shockwave can do 3D hardware-accelerated games.

There are games that plausibly serve some sort of editorializing function, and then there are games that just reference recent events, usually as a gimmick. Many of the recent Bush-shoe-throwing games are of the second sort---there is no real editorial commentary going on, it's just a generic arcade game that's been skinned with Bush and shoes. There were similarly content-free games that came out after 9/11, mostly based around revenge fantasies where you got to punch bin Laden or something.

There are some good examples of games that actually use the gameplay to make some sort of editorial point, though. From a right-wing perspective, in Al Quaidamon, you can treat a terrorist prisoner well or poorly, and a meter shows his current status. The political point is made in the balance: unless you coddle him continuously, you fall below the levels market as Geneva Convention standards (which are, incidentally, depicted as being above average U.S. living standards). From a more left-wing perspective, Airport Security satirizes the post-9/11 airport security measures through its gameplay, by depicting the changing standards of what's banned this week as absurd and impossible to follow.

(I got both of those examples from this list.)

AlienX

Some commenters have said they like modern high quality graphics. Others have said the old games were hard. We are all different in what we like but how about what we like to watch, and re-watch? Maybe we can be more objective with this kind of question.

In other words, are high quality graphics enough to enjoy watching someone else play? Not for me they aren't -- unless they make the game harder to play for the average player (e.g. R-Type or Raiden).

How about game difficulty -- is it more fun to watch someone ace a game that is very hard than one that is easy? You bet it is. Also, if the player playing is many times better than us (e.g. a great player on Gauntlet, or Mr. Do!, versus myself).

Modern games are like modern action flicks -- ok the first time, but not worth a re-watch. Old classic games like Defender/Stargate, Tetris, Missile Command, Centipede are interesting to watch when a master is at work -- including when you are the master. On one sales trip I drove "up country", passing through several towns along the way. On the way up I played one game of Arkanoid on a game I had not played before. Before playing I bought an ice cream cone and played one while I ate the other. An hour later the game was done and I left. On the way back down I got another cone and popped in another quarter. As I started to play I heard someone behind say "That's the guy!..."

Modern games reflect modern life, where the schools don't give out grades any more. At least not the ones our three go to -- they get slashes, hyphens and single letters not in the range from A to F. Just participate, doodle and consume -- growing up to become good consumers and good sheeple.

One of my most memorable moments was getting a serious score on ST:TNG pin -- 10Billion+. No sooner did I finish the game but the techie came along, turned it off and started to clean it, as clean pins are tougher pins. The ST:TNG pin was so tough, yet so cool, that I surfed the 'net in 1994 to learn more about it (and ended up contributing to the FAQ I found). Today we might look for cheats, or cracks, but just end up like cheaters or crackers when we use them. At that time is was a true mission (to stop the owner from taking this, my very own, quarter until I have played for an hour or two) and success was shared.

Classic arcade games are meant to be tough coin-suckers. Anyone able to conquer one of them is a hero. Heck, I've even gave one guy a quarter just to see him play a game again after watching him get 9xx,xxx on Centipede.

Today, thanks to MAME I can watch great replays without leaving the house. And I prefer that to playing any modern console/commercial games. They are not my style and don't interest me. I'd rather throw a football. I should say that some flash games carry on the tradition -- Super Collapse comes to mind.

Classic games were more physical and that was good. They were tougher and that was good also. They weren't all flash and no substance like modern games. They were truly tough nuts to crack and anyone that did was cool. They made us want to improve ourselves. Modern games are addictive, but not in the way that programming is addictive -- more in the way that TV is, putting us into that coma-like state for hours at a time.

Entry level users need a lot of hand-holding at learning their new computer. Their learning will not consist of back-end computer administration; but, instead, it will be how to use their new word processor (OpenOffice.org), their web browser (Firefox, Opera, whatever), whatever antivirus product might be out there for Linux (careful, if Dell does start selling Linux to the common user, Linux will gain market share and the eyes of the cracker crowd), and how to install games and other apps through some sort of GUI package manager (such as Synaptic Package Manager in Ubuntu).

Hopefully, Dell will remember to install Shockwave Flash and Java. Like it or not, the common user will need this when visiting sites like http://www.shockwave.com/ or http://games.yahoo.com/ to play their favorite games. And as I recently learned, installing Java on Linux is not the easiest thing to do. The user is not going to want to type wget http://java.sun.com/; apt-get install java java-doc ...; and watch the scary text fly by and maybe understand what they see to comprehend any errors that come up.

To get a little off topic, but avoid posting in two different areas: one thing Dell can do is use all Intel parts. The fully integrated Intel motherboards (audio/video/LAN onboard) would be a good thing to use. As I understand it, Intel is writing a lot of drivers for the Linux community.

Yes, I said it: "Flash websites" aren't websites.

Flash is basically either used as an application, or an animation format.

If I put up an application as an .EXE (or whatever Linux/Mac/etc use) or a Java applet, or if I put up an animation MPG/AVI/whatever, is this a website? No. It's just an application/animation which happens to be delivered over HTTP. Sure, hopefully it plays with a plugin in the browser, rather than needing to be saved to disk and run with a separate mouse-click / key-press, but that doesn't fundamentally change the facts.

Same with Flash. Just an application/animation which happens to be delivered over HTTP.

There's nothing inherently wrong with this. Sometimes little applications (like this) or animations (like this) are absolutely great, flash is a great technology to build/deliver them in, and the web is a great way to distribute that flash. I have no problem with that.

Doesn't make it a website though. A website (IMHO) is 'onion skinned', I can take the basic text and parse it how I want. There's no assumption it gets rendered in a browser as opposed to downloaded, parsed, searched, transformed, translated. I can take the content but ignore the styles. I can take the text but ignore the images. I can open a page in the current window, in a new window, in a new tab, save it to disk, pipe it to a script. Flash does none of that. So to me, I honestly see "flash website" as essentially a contradiction in terms.

Internet killed the video star

I thought the software title Defender was already taken.

Internet killed the videostar. Old, but somehow fitting...

The Jump Start series. Sam's Club has a 6CD pak I think for $60. Animals, numbers, etc.

And here is Snail Mail http://www.shockwave.com/sw/content/snailmail

For a second, I thought my favorite game was getting a new character. SEE PHARM-BOT GO MAD AFTER TAKING SUPER VITAMINS!!

"Oooh, whydya slice off my hayynnd?"

Jedi training film here.

Does somebody remember the old Sev Wars parodie of Episode I?

It is also damn funny:

http://atomfilms.shockwave.com/af/content/atom_126 2

Luke: What is it?

Kenobi: It was your father's lightsaber. He wanted you to have it when you were- No wait!

(Luke fires up the lightsaber while looking into it.)

Kenobi: Crap. I knew I should have shown him the lightsaber saftey video. So ... how have you droids been?

You mean like this?

http://atomfilms.shockwave.com/af/content/regurge0 1

No, that was before Apple got ahold of it and improved the UI. You can see light saber version ten (LS X) in action in Pink Five Strikes Back.
[Pink saber resistant boots sold separately.]

If we are going to discuss lightsabers... one must point out the film Your Lightsaber and You over on Atom Films. To quote it's blurb: There's more to being a Jedi than mind tricks and meditation. You also have to know the proper method of handling your light saber safely! Tune into this informative industrial film on the finer points of opening up a proverbial can of whup-ass with your light saber.

The Light Saber Safety Video can be found right here

Vader: "What is thy bidding, my master?"
Emperor: "It's a disater. Skywalker we're after."
Vader: "What if he can be turned to the Dark side?"
Emperor: "Yes. He'd be a powerful ally -- another Dark Jedi."
Vader: "He will join us or die. We got Death Star!"
Emperor: "Death Star!"
Vader: "We got Death Star!"
Emperor: "Death Star!"
Vader: "We got Death Star!"
Emperor: "Death Star!"
Vader: "We got Death Star!"
Emperor: "Death Star!"
Vader: "We got Death Star!"
Emperor: "Death Star!"
Vader: "We got Death Star!"
Emperor: "Death Star!"
Vader: "We got Death Star!"
Emperor: "Death Star!"
Vader: "We got Death Star!"
Emperor: "Death Star!"
Vader: "And you know that we got it."
Emperor: "Death Star!"
Vader: "And you know that we got it."
Emperor: "Death Star!"
Vader: "And you know that we got it."
Emperor: "Death Star!"
Star Wars Gangsta Rap Special Edition

Also, George Lucas pushed on technologies (THX, DLP, ILM, etc.). Also, he lets fans make their own movies (not for profit obviously; he even watches them to pick the best ones), stories, etc. for contests.

When I started the article, I was kind of hoping it would be based off this spoof. Ewoks are still funny.

The best fan film I've ever seen was one of the winners of that program of them Kevin Smith hosted a hojillion years ago; Christmas Tauntauns. http://atomfilms.shockwave.com/af/content/tauntaun s

I remember emailing the creator of Pink 5 a year ago (two?) asking for a high-quality direct download and he told me that Lucas's rules prohibit anyone from distributing their own work for a year or so. He thought it was due to Lucasfilm producing a DVD of the fan films, but I dont think that has ever happened.*

*cavaet: this is all from memory and second hand information

Seriously, and the little stick figure aliens look like Devil Doll.

Nintendo lists Meteos as next month for the US.

I remember when this first came out. Histerical.

http://atomfilms.shockwave.com/af/content/hardware _wars

May the Farce be with You...

I am sorry for having spread this addictive agent to you if you haven't been previously exposed.....

Blaming Shockwave would be blaming the wrong people, you want to blame Macromedia instead.

!#%$#$*& That URL on my first reply attempt didnt work right (sorry mods .. *hangs head in shame* I will use Preview next time)... Anyhoo, again, Maybe this game was inspired by this? "SW Project": http://atomfilms.shockwave.com/af/content/sw_proje ct Yes SOMEONE already DID try making a Star Wars "Fan Film" MOVIE out of using Lego products ... it failed miserably as you will no doubt have an endless laugh at the poor guy who attempted it, by watching that above video lollllll but man i was the Lego master when I was a kid .... I always combined all the sets I had and I made huge sea/space-freighters and guns and "computers" and stuff outta em ... I never could get any of them to work tho ... lol Much less able to blow up a planet ... lol Somehow I suspect that Weird Al must have a part in this ... LOL

Pretty slow right now (or maybe it's just my network), but you can see what this is from here (click on 'watch film'). One of the funniest things I've seen in a long time.

Gotta love parodies...

I'm trying to find a site to play the game today online. It seems like it would be a simple game to recreate in a multiplayer form online. If I can play Joust online with shockwave, why not Maze War?

The best I could find was this Palm Pilot version available for download. Good, but not multiplayer like I want. Also, as I have a pocket pc it's not much use for me.

Or maybe I'm not as familiar with Australian fauna as I thought I was....

You bet you ain't... ;)

Exhibit A

np: AFX - Remix By AFX (26 Mixes For Cash (Disc 2))

Direct Link

http://images2.shockwave.com/afassets/flash/goodto beindc.swf

The link works, but Slashcode added an extra space in the text. That's supposed to read "goodtobeindc" not "goodto beindc."

Yes. [3.89MB]

At least until they change it...

-Adam

It has already been made: at atomfilms.

See here