Blog for Ian Omroth Hardingham at GarageGames.com

A call for help to Germany

Ian Omroth Hardingham — 2008-06-20T13:38:31+00:00

Hey guys.

Determinance has now been released at retail in Germany, and I would absolutely love to see a picture of it on sale somewhere. If any of the lovely Teutonic people who read GG happen to have a phone-camera on them and find themselves in a game store, a photo of Determinance on actual shelves would fill me with joy. I will give a free (downloadable) copy of the game to the first person kind enough to do so!

Ian

Divorcing from TGB in search of nicer TATs

Ian Omroth Hardingham — 2008-04-23T20:51:27+00:00

This is taken wholesale and lazilly from the Mode 7 blog but I thought it might interest a few people here. I should state that I was using TGB 1.1 (I don't believe in porting unneccesserily. Or spelling it) and that I'm currently very impressed with TSE 1.7

The original Frozen Synapse prototype was written on Torque Game Builder. After a lot of talking we've decided that we're going to make it more PC-centric than previously thought and to use the shaderific Torque Game Engine Advanced (previously TSE and the hilarious TAT) to do some interesting new stuff with dynamics-led art.

I was putting off the port for some more gameplay dev, but finally last week I found a crash in the TGB FS prototype. It was one of TGB's internal systems barfing at the unusual strain FS was putting on it. In other words, time to separate egg from incubator.

Luckily I had always wanted the core "simulation" aspect of FS to be separate from rendering of any kind (making it more portable), so this wasn't as hard as it could have been. However, writing my own 2D collision engine in three hours and porting FS to it still makes me quite happy. I also got it debug-rendering just using GL calls but consdering it's all rotated bitmaps that's not really the hardest thing in the world.

Frozen Synapse is now ready to move to TGEA. I'm very excited about the process of getting it to look good.

The best delivery I'll ever receive

Ian Omroth Hardingham — 2008-03-01T13:37:00+00:00

Hey guys.

Just wanted to let you know that Determinance is in a box:

It's an amazing feeling... thinking of the years I worked on it and could only dream this would ever happen. Guys, take this as encouragement - you CAN do it.

A huge thanks again to GG and the GG community - without you guys this would never have been possible. It's been a long time since I first found out some guys had started seling licenses to the Tribes 2 engines for a hundred bucks and my mind started working...

Ian

Call for help from Italy

Ian Omroth Hardingham — 2008-01-31T17:52:00+00:00

Hey guys.

Word has it from our publisher that Determinance will be available to buy in shops tomorrow in Italy. if anyone in in Italy happens to see it in a store and feels like sending me a phone-camera image I would be hugely greatful. The cover will probably look like this (but in italian)

www.omroth.com/dtInlay.pdf

My email is ian BAT mode7games BLOT com

Cheers,
ian

Determinance Cloth Pack

Ian Omroth Hardingham — 2007-02-23T18:02:36+00:00

Hey guys.

In case you missed it, Determinance has been released. We're having a fantastic reaction, and it really is very exciting.

A lot of people want to know whether we're going to make our cloth code publically available. My current plan is to release it in about 3 months as a Pack for $20. Releasing it for money allows me to put some work into making it extremely user friendly, with a gui for setting the cloth hit-elipses and so on.

I wanted to float that idea here, and see what everyone thinks about it. You can see exactly what you'll be getting in the Determinance demo. The cloth code is really very fast. We have two forms of cloth collision - "good", which is slower and we only generally put on "your" character (ie the one you see all the time), and "not especially good" which will quite often go through the legs, which is extremely fast.

So - do people think $20 is a fair price?

Ah yes, you can see the cloth code in full effect on this, er, rather strangely posed Determinance character. Marketing will be SO PLEASED that I've drawn more attention to this one.

Ian

--
Ian Hardingham
Mode 7 Games
www.mode7games.com

Determinance Released

Ian Omroth Hardingham — 2007-02-15T13:32:39+00:00

Yes, that's right. After three and a half years you can finally buy Determinance. We're getting a load of good feedback so download the demo, hit the servers, and tell us what you think.

Constantly updated news is available at our blog, and there should be a whole range of post mortems happening. Some emo, some not!

Ian

Determinance, live at Eugene this weekend

Ian Omroth Hardingham — 2006-10-04T15:02:44+00:00

Hey guys.

Fantastic to get a preview like this from GameTunnel the day I leave for GG's community weekend. Determinance's first release candidate will be fully playable on the floor, and I very much look forward to showing it to everyone.

Anyone who's interested in keeping up to date with Determinance's progress can subscribe to our blog here.

See you in Eugene.

Ian
Mode 7 Games

Good casual games

Ian Omroth Hardingham — 2006-09-08T14:45:44+00:00

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This is an exact copy of a post on the Mode 7 Blog, but I thought it would make interesting reading here. By the way, Determinance is in final testing and is pretty much finished WOO. If you're looking for more info follow the blog, mail me, or drop into #determinance on the GG irc server.

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I'm going to answer a question Edge magazine posed to someone this month:

Edge: What do you see next-gen technology being used for in the coming years? Remarkable visuals are already being explored, so where do you see the power going next?

Ian Hardingham: Into making my life easier. More power means I can code faster because I have to worry about cpu-limits less.

You want a revolution in gaming? The biggest revolution there is will be the process of making games easier to create. Hundreds of developers, multi-year development cycles? Yeah, that's a great way of making an artist's idea into a product. Why are we stuck with boring sequels? Because it takes so much time and money to make a game that publishers go with the high-percentage shots. You the savvy reader know all that - you've heard it all before.

Really? Doesn't sound to me like you, or anyone else, is actually listening to that piece of information. If the problem with the industry is that games cost too much to make, then the solution must be:

1. Hate EA. That'll work.

2. "Embargo" boring sequels. Yes, because you have so much market influence.

3. Make a gaming system with a unique controller to force people to make innovative games. Hah! I'd like to see you make a third person action game with that now EA. Yeah!

4. Talk about how great gaming was in the 80's. You know, back when small development teams could make a game in six months. OH WAIT.

Have I got my point accross yet? These are the solutions people who want interesting games turn to. And don't get me wrong with number 3: I love the DS and the Wii more than I love the CFL. But it seems kind of strange that the best solution to boring games we've come up with so far is to literally force developers to innovate by taking away all their usual toys.

The solution is very simple: make games easier to make. Sounds hard? No. Just invest in stuff like dynamically created content and useful middleware.

"Casual" games were boring for two years. Then it became a multi-million dollar industry and teams are making interesting games. Why?

The term "casual" gives them permission (because developers are stupid and they need permission) to make a small game quickly with a few people.

There's now money in casual games.

Competition means they need to stand out, and they've found that the best way to do that (well, the best way to do that other than putting Da Vinci in their game's title) is to make proper games, but on a small scale.

Market forces combining to make the market better? Lenin would not be happy.
I'm telling you that the first golden age of indie games is only a few months away. But please, as more and more people start making small and interesting games, follow these simple rules:

1. If you're innovating, make your tutorial a massive priority.

2. Cut back on the amount of content, not the quality. That sounds really content-less so here's an example: one polished level is better than ten levels by Derek Smart.

3. Just so we're clear, I know you didn't listen to point 2. I know, it sounded boring and obvious. But you will make this mistake. No really. You will make this mistake.

4. Have a nice menu screen.

Good tutorial, one level, nice menu screen. Maybe I should rename this post to that.

Determinance Screenshots Up

Ian Omroth Hardingham — 2006-05-09T18:21:47+00:00

Hey guys.

Determinance!

Determinance!

We've finally found time from finishing off the ever exuberant Determinance and writing our blog to get some new screenshots up. Go take a look here.

More , including a full video, coming soon.

Ian

Determinance blog live

Ian Omroth Hardingham — 2006-04-25T12:40:03+00:00

Determinance work has finally become a boulder crashing down a hill, inevitably aiming for a summer release. Unfortunately, like a boulder crashing down a hill, my attention is not easily focussed on making new screenshots, so don't look at the screenshots on our site because they are old.

However, someone has very rudely released an underground video taken at a recent Determinance lan party on the new Determinance Blog. If you want to know what it's like finishing off a flying, freeform swordfighting game you won't find a better RSS feed to subscribe to. The blog is being designed by someone at the moment, but the content is there.

Mode 7 now has a full time marketing manager in Paul Taylor, which brings us up to two full time employees. Paul seems more interested in talking about animals than Determinance, as usual, but he's cheap so it's fine.

Ian