Hey anyone who's interested, I made a vector ass vector game in Unity over the course of 2 months for a project for school. An independent study specifically so I was given a lot of freedom over what specifically the project would be so I decided on Unity, since I had heard it was the Indie Engine of choice in a Quick Look, I decided on Vector Graphics to compensate for me having no modeling skills and I decided on a game where you, a robot, shoot at bad robots. Abominations the game calls them. I've had a basic idea of gunplay where you and most of your enemies could only shoot in compass directions for a while now. I've always liked the idea because in it lining up your shots and avoiding enemy fire are 2 sides of the same coin. I find it interesting. I also wrote a bunch of programming humor into screens between each of the 16 levels I made. I think they're funny. I have no idea if they're actually funny.

I call it MissionID 2700. Quick word of warning, might be a bit hard. Sorry about that.

Earlier today I 100%ed Katawa Shoujo, the first visual novel I've ever had a genuine interest in after seeing it on Day[9]'s Metadating show a week back. While it's a game with fantastic relatable characters, solid writing and a pretty great premise however truth be told these weren't the things that hooked me. The thing that hooked me was that Day[9] and crew actually had genuine interest in not only playing the game for the show but also playing more of it beyond the 2 hours of the show. That's what got me to download it (it's free), that's what got me in the door. That's what got me over the fact that up until now I would never have imagined myself ever playing a Visual Novel or even being interested in one. I hope what I say here might inspire others to do the same.

This "game" ended up hitting me harder than any book, game, film or show I've seen in the last year. And I played Walking Dead. And I read the Steve Jobs Biography. Nothing made me more emotionally invested and, ultimately, more introspective this year. I related to characters more reading/playing this than I have done anywhere else all year. Even real life. Especially real life. Parts of this game make me wonder if I'm doing everything wrong. It makes me think about death, the future, insecurities, communication, everything really. I don't know. That's the end of that thought. I just don't know.

Katawa Shoujo jumped into my heart over the course of this week and jumped up into my top 10 for this year at #3 right behind Fez and Sound Shapes. I'm really glad I watched that episode of Metadating and I'm really glad I gave it a chance. I think you should too.

My Game Of The Year is Fez. You can read why here. (Runners up: Sound Shapes, Borderlands 2, Diablo 3, Syndicate)

My Assorted Video Game Related Awards are here. I have 10 categories this year ranging from Best Humble Bundle (Botanicula Debut) to "Ability I'd most like to have in real life." (Blink after playing Dishonored)

My Film of the year is Looper. It was a really well crafted movie about Time Travel that touched me in all the right ways. I was very very impressed with it on many levels and it has the air of a film that a man spent a lot of time perfecting. It's fun in all the right places, intriguing in all the right ways, profound in a few very important spots, and it has a humdinger of an ending which worked perfectly for me and, in many ways, tied the whole movie together thematically and practically. I have to give it props. (Runners up: Avengers, Dark Knight Rises)

My Film I've Never Seen Before 2012 which came out before 2012 of 2012 is Porco Rosso. Porco Rosso is the fucking best you guys. Oh my god, it's a relatively subdued and grounded Miyazaki film which tells the story of a Airplane Bounty Hunter in the Adriatic between WWI and WWII. This bounty hunter happens to be a pig, which more relates to his world view and how he feels about the war than it does any fantastical nonsense. The way it's treated and the way he bears his curse is amazing and it really makes the movie shine. I would compare it to Brave only Brave's use of Bear was much more contrived and awkward where in Porco Rosso it feels perfectly natural in an amazing way. You seriously need to watch it if you haven't already. (Runners up: N/A)

My TV Show Of The Year is Breaking Bad. Obviously. (Runner up: Game of Thrones)

My Non Media Acquisition Of The Year Is my new Lenovo Yoga. It's just the best in so many ways and I absolutely love it. (Runners up: C5 Earbuds, eInk Kindle, Vibram Five Fingers)

My Book That I Read For The First Time This Year is Steve Jobs. That was a damn good biography. (Runners up: The Essential Difference: Male and Female Brains And The Truth About Autism, Halo: The Fall of Reach, Seductive Interaction Design, Killing is Harmless: A Critical Reading Of Spec Ops The Line*)

*Note: Haven't read this book yet as I intend to have played Spec Ops the Line before reading it but I want to include it as it's really interesting to see long form video game criticism & analysis pop up in book form. Doesn't feel right to sweep it under the rug because I haven't read it yet because I want to read it the right way.

So recently I decided, for good measure, to make my next 5 (assuming I do that many, having done 2 so far though here's hoping) each using items of each album exclusively. That'll give me some good practice limiting my tool set and having to work with some objects I may just ignore otherwise. I've started (barely) building the first, the Hello, Robot song and have a pretty solid (I think) design laid out as well as come up with some ideas for the other 4. So what are they going to be? No one asked me, but I want to tell anyway! Hence blog. Here goes!

Hello, Robot's will be called Hello, Pantheon and will focus on nature and spirituality in a way. Plan there is to first show nature in sync with spirituality, but slowly changing such that nature becomes less and less welcome as the bowels of the pantheon are plumbed.

Corporeal doesn't have an idea I like yet. Get back to that later I think.

Beyonder's will be called Reach Beyond and may be shorter somewhat than the others. Idea here will be you start in sight of the finish however it's out of reach. The level will be more... atmospheric until you get a craft that can reach the finish. Then the rest of the level ramps up as you retrace your steps, using routes only accessible with the UFO, collecting notes which make things a little more upbeat.

D-Cade's will be something to do with Space Travel. I figure it'll start slowly, ramp up something fierce with a lot of just hopping from fast-invader to fast-invader, climbing very fast until things wind down and things are a little depressing. Ends probably with a little renewed vigor.

Got no ideas for Beck yet. Part of that is that the 3 songs and environs are pretty separate. I'm sure I'll think of something.

I'm not going to post this to forums, so no one will see it I expect unless I post a link to it when posting one of these levels (which I might do, I dunno) or they see it on the game page.

Edit: I started working on Corporeal, which I call "Confidentireal" or something to that effect. Idea is it'll be a super short level with a lot of hidden looking paths that ends abruptly but you can continue on from the ending screen by instead climbing into a vent and heading into the underbelly of the office. Issue is computers, can't really have giant computer piles, need to use other means to convey "bad business." Not sure how exactly.

On another note no one cares about my levels. Only 2 people played Hello Pantheon and it was posted on these boards. I was hoping for around the same numbers as before and a lot of the same names, the 2 people who did play it were new to me. Not Giant Bomb people I suspect. Perhaps I will finish Confidentireal regardless, but I'm not feeling like it. The only reason I would is because it seems like an awesome idea for a stage, and honestly I've abandoned so many awesome ideas in my life that's not enough of a reason to push to finish it.

I've been thinking about what the main issues of Mass Effect 3 are. Not just the ending, bu the greater mechanical and structural issues which keep ME3 from being anywhere as great as ME2. Besides nit picks about the roll mechanic, the lack of hubs other than the citadel and the pointlessly dull side quests I realized that a major issue with ME3 is that the Companions have no place in the story. Let me go back to ME2 to illustrate what I mean, ME2 is about Squad Members. Through the game you meet them, get to know them, fight with them, and eventually gain their loyalty in a mission where you see their inner demons and get to help them resolve their issues. ME3 lacks that entirely. Instead of loyalty missions and big personal issues which could jeopardize the mission you have petty interactions with each of your squad members that have no bearing on the end of the game. What's that EDI? You want to fuck Joker? Alright than. If you ask me the issue is that whether companions are loyal or not has nothing to do with the resolution of the story. They're not important. How would I address that you ask? I'd suggest forgoing the route of taking ME1's cast minus Wrex and instead make one rule: Everyone on your squad's loyalty effects the end game by way of them being Thought Leaders. 
 
What would the squad look like with that rule? Let me tell you. A note, I'm going to refrain from inventing characters here and will use existing characters from the game who could've easily become squad members. Ready? Here goes. 
 

•  Anderson. I know he wanted to be on Earth, but I don't care. Dude is the most sensible human squad mate. He was once on track to become a Spectre, he's a leader of his people, and he's not some random soldier that becomes a squad mate because of coincidences. Only issues would be why he'd take a secondary role aboard the Normandy and what possible loyalty mission could encourage more humans to fight the Reapers.
• Primarch Victus. He's a capable and clever soldier with new ideas in a role he never imaged he would have to fill. Simple story, would be a good set up for a squad mate. Loyalty mission would be the one where you go down and find his son, would be more personal than existing mission. More about him than the son, and him dealing with accusations that he's no good for commanding roles, which he takes hard considering he's in a role he doesn't think he's suitable for.
• Wrex. Simple, obvious, Wrex is the leader of the Krogans. He's a natural fit for a companion since he was already one.
• Legion. Again, obvious.
• Zaal'Koris vas Quib Quib. This one is a bit of a stretch, Tali might be equally suitable for the role of Quarian Admiral Companion (since she's now a companion) but she appears to hold no sway so I'd say Koris would be a better choice as the most credible dissenter to the war. What of Tali then? I'd say let her get injured in the war for the homeworld, have her dying of illness. We haven't seen any Quarians die of illness and Tali is the one we care most about!
• Ka'hairal Balak the Batarian Terrorist from that Citadel Side Mission. The end of that mission was really neat and I feel it would've been really neat if he had been an optional Squad Mate similar to Legion or Grunt. It could give you options to "Turn him into the Citadel", "Just kill him" or "Convince him to serve on the Normandy." I think that his perspective and what he'd have to say about terrorism, the hegemony, and whatever else would be really interesting. Plus you could have a loyalty mission where someone he was once close to defects since he's cooperating with Shepard and you'd have to go sort it out.

 This blog refers to other blogs I've written, here's part 1 and part 2. If you're just joining us it would be a decent idea to read one of them. However since this won't be posted to forums that shouldn't be too much of an issue. 
 
So today the guy behind Hoodoo randomly followed me on Twitter, so I naturally followed him back and showed him my previous blog. See, recently I've gotten back into TF2, and as a result, I've gotten serious about the map I've had in the tubes for a full year now again. Now, what I expected was simple given all the nice things folks have said so far, however what I got was far more useful than comments I've gotten before. He said " @TheMasterDS It's an interesting concep. I think your red/blu caps are too close to their spawns and either no team will get past mid.." and " @TheMasterDS or one team will reach the other side and just sit spawncamping the other team making it miserable for them." 
 
At first I frowned, as I was quite optimistic, perhaps overly so. However after an initial defensiveness passed, I realized something quite simple. He was right, and it was criticism like that that will allow me to improve on my designs, and in fact criticisms like that were what I was looking for when I initially posted the designs onto the internet months before. Really, going into that version I knew I had not cracked the code, and that there were issues that I was worried about, such as the size of the base and the position of the spawns. Really, all he told me is that I was right to be worried, and I should still be looking for the perfect layout for this map.  
 
With that in mind, I'm going to begin taking another shot at redesigning the base for the 4th or 5th time since designing the map, this time looking to make the base longer and adding more combat spaces and a more natural place for a spawn to be. For inspiration I should look at CTF maps, which tend to have the intel farther back from the spawns in a similar fashion. The timing of this couldn't be better, considering most of the base hasn't really been constructed yet (The hallway has to a certain extent, but that can be changed I'm sure if need be.) 
 
Feeling good about the future, and with a little more thought, I'm confident that I'll be able to figure out a better layout for the bases. 
 
Really, what I think is most interesting to note is how defensive we get when told we are not perfect. At some level, we know it to be true, but on another level we fight it. Really, thinking about it, we really have to fight that impulse to keep it from creeping into our work. It's like Yahtzee once said "The cruelest thing you can say to an artist is tell them their work is perfect when it isn't" as then they become convinced that they're perfect, and refuse to believe any criticisms or improve their art in the slightest. 
 
edit: New layout. Warning, it's really big. Numbers correspond to heights.  (Later Edit) Also the area to the lower left is a pulled out region that exists under the map and connects the 3 arrows that go out into space. 

 edit: New new layout. Small change with the hallway that goes below most of the map - it's been made to lead back to the spawn, and there's some highground for folk coming from the spawn. Additionally a path too the right hallway's been removed, making the lower hallway the quickest way to the right hallway if I'm not mistaken. 
 
Also I should note I went in a different direction than I first thought. Initially the thought process was the spawns should be forward of the point so that you always have the situation, while holding the opposite team's final point, they'd be able to come in on all directions. However, after thinking about it, it because clear that that would allow them to cut off reinforcements and split defenders and reinforcements up without some teleporters. Really, CTF maps have spawns forward of the objective because the process of being enemy lines should be a quick one, and optimally you are in and out before too many dudes respawn to cut you or reinforcements off. Capturing a CP is a longer process, and as such, I feel like the conventional wisdom is probably right when it comes to positioning the spawns. 
 
 Instead now I've looked at creating a valley of sorts between the point and the spawns through which the local team can pass through to get the point as directly as possible, however there are also side routes now that allow them to get to the side hallway or the bottom of the stairs from the spawn point, which I think should prove really useful in providing the local team with means to retake the base and the different ways of handling the attack I want. 
 
The only thing I'm worried about is whether that little base room I've added should be open to the enemy team. Currently, the thought is that it should be, however I do worry about the possibility of spawn camping if the exits are that close together.  Maybe it should simply be a matter of having windows to check if there are campers and placing the supply cabinet close enough to the door where killing campers is simple enough and fighting there becomes something that no one wants to do because of the advantages the local team has there anyway.  
 
Edit: Small detail that just changed, there's an opening that allows people coming through the crack in the wall to shoot or drop into the right hallway, I removed it to make sure the lower route is the fastest way to that hallway. 
 
Edit: Sketched it out on a grid to help simplify the geometry to make it easier to build. I think I did a good job. Also added a bunch of colors to clarify bits here and there.

So six months ago I posted about a map I was working on called Thunderclash. This map was of a mode of my own creation called Timeline (Well, it was called Advantage originally, but Timeline is better) which sought to solve problems I saw in KOTH and 5 Point Control Point maps like Granary, Well, or Blackmesa. Designed specifically with the mode in mind, it was an elaborate proof of concept. However, as the semester started up I found myself with less free time, and what free time I had ended up being spent watching Whiskey Media content or playing a variety of video games, plus purchasing Starcraft II right after returning from a vacation didn't help the map get made either. That said, while I am one who has abandoned many many great ideas in the past due to lack of time or more likely another new idea, I can't help but regret abandoning Thunderclash because whenever I looked at the layout, I remembered how brilliant it really was. 
 
So the other day, as the holidays are closing up and I finish up the 5 or so games I decided to play through over the break (Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, Darksiders and  Alan Wake namely)  I got the urge to step back and give it another shot.
 
So then, the map and the mode. I'll start with the mode. Way I saw it, KOTH has a simple problem, and that it's very static. There's never any place in KOTH where there is a dramatic shift in the action, no place where you say "Alright, I've captured X, now I need to push forward more before they are ready for us" because once you've done X in KOTH you're done, and all that's left is to see how long you can sit. Meanwhile, in 5 point CP maps a lot of games would end up being big long stalemates where two teams would exchange the central 3 points for a half hour until one, by some miracle, managed to push all the way. Way I saw it, most of the conflict was over the middle 3 points, yet it doesn't really contribute to the result of the game in the  grand scheme of things. 
 
 The mode was designed to fix that. Instead of 5 points, it had 3, and instead of saying that once all 3 are captured one team wins, instead there are 2 timers, and when one team has all 3 points, only their timer counts down. Otherwise both timers count down. This way, the games would become more about gaining an advantage over the other team and forcing the disadvantaged team to be on the offensive, because it not merely a matter of "We have to stop them from taking our point or we'll lose instead of stalemate" it's "We have to push forward, or we'll lose." Additionally when you capped the center 30 seconds would be added to your opponents timer, meaning that a true advantage would be over 30 seconds, i.e. you could lose the center and still win if they didn't get any farther.  
 
The map was designed to be a proof of concept of this mode, focusing on giving attackers of any point a variety of attack routes, whether they were in their own base or their enemies. For its center point, I looked at Black Mesa's Center point and took elements from there, while still building a more open point with a variety of good flanking routes. For the base, I went through several iterations as I struggled to find a design that was both simple, and offered a good variety of routes such that the point would be hard to hold, but not impossible to take. After giving it one last redesign, I think I've got it down though. The map is called Thunderclash, and uses stuff from the Swamp pack, idea being it'd be set in either a disused laboratory or a decrepit mansion, which I'd think would make sense for a bog. 
 
Here's the most recent and hopefully final layout. For previous ones you can look in the previous blog. Darker regions indicate higher areas, the water is shallow apart from a single area where you can swim into a building, and there are some ramps that are expressed as a rectangle of the high color outlined with the low color, but it's not consistent as I only started doing that today. Also the map is mirrored. 
 
That's about it, just have to build it now. By it I mean the base since the center point is (and was at the time I bought Starcraft II) just about completed. Only issue now is my laptop seems to have trouble compiling it since it isn't great, and it's not rendering the water properly for some reason. At this point I'm hoping the design is strong enough that someone would be compelled to help me build it and make it pretty at some point, but in the meanwhile I'm trying to stay optimistic and just build it so I can see if it works as a map soon.

I've been thinking a little about the sequel to DKC Returns (which I hope is named Forever, its sequel being called DKC and Robin naturally) and I'd like to put down a quick list of the ten things I hope to see in it come November 2012 or whenever it comes out. 
  
10. Make an option to turn off the Super Guide. Seeing Checkpoink show up whenever I died 8 times really made me hate him by the end of the game. That's a terrible thing to do to a character.
9. Make the Time Trial mode restart faster. No point in restarting if the timer isn't reset. Look at Super Meat Boy for an example of how fast a platformer should restart you.
8. Make the map less Mariolike. No red and blue squares! Flags at the levels if you want to get fancy, faces if you want to be traditional. Kongs walking around would also be nice.
7. Make Kong Letters give lives instead of access to hidden levels, add DK coins, Kremcoins for the lost world purposes, though they can keep Puzzle Pieces.
6. Fix the roll. You should be able to roll through dudes without worrying about hitting the 3rd dude even when you don't have Diddy. That's how it was in the original games, and it made the roll an effective attack for any situation. (You could keep rolling so long as you were hitting dudes was the rule.)
5. Snow. Really speaks for itself.
4. Use only DKC2 music for remixing. It was a real misstep I think not using any of it here, especially considering the inclusion of Volcano stages, which really could've used some Hot Head Bop.
3.  A Super Meat Boy styled dark world version of every stage after you get a Gold Metal on a level or get all the Kong letters or something.
2.  Squitter, Rattly, (playable) Squawks and transforming into an animal buddy. Squitter could make platforms beneath him as he walks or jumps if it has to be fast, and Rattly would be a perfect fit since this game already stresses jumping over rolling, which is basically what Rattly sections did. Squawks could work too because there's already flying, it just has less controls than Squawks did.
1. Have Donkey Kong kidnapped and make Diddy and Dixie the playable characters. This one is a little less likely, and I think a lot of people will think I'm crazy for saying this (if they didn't play DKC2 that is), but the removal of DK was one of the best and ballsiest decisions they made in the development of DKC2, and I think it would really help the franchise going forward if they were to do it again.
 
Overall I'd say that DKCR was very much a sequel to DKC in the same way that DKL was, expanding on the elements from it as if later games didn't exist, only problem being that DKC2 was the pinnacle of the series, and ignoring the progress made there was kinda dumb. Therefore, I feel while simply removing the flaws from DKCR would be a perfectly fine way to make a sequel, I feel they should definitely make an effort to draw a lot more from DKC2 than they did in this first go. 
 
So yeah, that's my list. I could go into detail point by point, but it's 2 days after Christmas and I really don't feel like it.

So a while back I came up with an idea for a mode which combined the merits of CP and KotH maps and fixed a few of the problems I perceived with them. I sketched out several maps, and over Christmas I started building a map which would prove the mode in Hammer. It came together well across around two weeks in terms of structure and, to a certain degree, appearance. However, after Christmas my Harddrive failed and I lost all progress I had made on the map. I was playing less TF2 at that point and I really didn't feel like going in and starting over at that time. However, since getting back into TF2 for the Engineer Update, I've been thinking about the map and I've decided to give it another go.
 
So then, this mode was designed to resolve the problems with CP and KOTH that I perceived. In CP maps the problem is that too much of the time it devolved to a struggle over the middle 3 points where rarely will the attacking team manage to take the last point and win the game. Like in CP_BlackMesa, which I am quite fond of, the middle three points mearly change hands countless times across the course of 30 minutes. And while one team may be doing better, unless they manage to take that last point from the other they'll have nothing to prove it with. Meanwhile I think KoTH isn't dynamic enough. Basically, you're either trying to defend a single solitary spot or you're trying to take that single solitary spot and force them off it. There's a single set of entrances and exits and never an event where you say "I have to push forward now that I've done X." In KOTH, when you've done X, you've finished! Now all that's left is to sit down and see how long you can sit. 
 
Basically it works like this. Two countdowns are always counting down from say, 3 to 5 minutes. However, capture the middle point and you add 30 seconds to the other teams timer. Capture all 3 points, and only your timer ticks down. That's about it really. Simple, but I believe it rewards a team which manages to dominate their enemy consistently and encourages pushing for the team that's behind because if they do not push to the 3rd point they will lose.
 
I figure such a mode would have to have points which are easy enough to capture, but tricky to defend. That's the reasoning I have for the design of the central point I've done justice in Google Docs for this post. It's loosely based on the central point of CP_BlackMesa. The shade of the color indicates the height and the color sorta indicates material for some reason. Also, for what its worth, I'm currently going with a swamp motif for the map, with one side having a big laboratory and the other having the kind of wooden mansion you would expect to be haunted.
 

 I've just dropped 650 points of work into the Donkey Kong wiki article since it was pretty poor for one of the most frequent video game characters there is. I think my article goes into the characterization of Donkey Kong more than some people will expect, explaining his character flaws and how he differs in some of the more recent games, but I think it's pretty solid anyway.
 
Still a couple things to do I suppose. For instance, the original page was largely random trivia put into a few sentences posing as paragraphs, I simply deleted a lot of stuff. It'd be a good idea to drop in some needless trivia at the end concerning the character's creation, his resurgence, and any other random facts that you feel isn't relevant but you might as well mention.  
 
Also, I don't like the default picture as it characterizes him as a dimwitted grinning moron, while the DKC games all characterized that specific character as a laid back and likable. Since DKC is returning I think it makes sense to slot in the much better looking DK render from the Brawl site. I'd do it, but that's for folk with 5000 points. Finally if anyone wants to write a paragraph or two talking the character through the Donkey Kong franchise before DKC, go ahead and put it right after the overview and before DKC. I wrote a decent paragraph in the overview summarizing the early games, but that's not much really. 
   
Oh, and someone who can add aliases needs to add "DK" as an alias because he's called that half the time he's referred to.

I've been doing some work with pages relating from the Donkey Kong series, like the Extra Life Balloon page for instance, but there's just so much that needs to be done. Even the basics need a ton of work. Diddy's page is hardly a paragraph, Dixies is 4 of 5 pieces of trivia. Some pages, like Donkey Kong Island, are just completely blank. It's just terrible. I'm gonna try to do my part, but there's a lot of DKC related entries out there and I can't right 300 points for every one of them.