Castlevania Composer: Michiru Yamane
I came across a neat interview over on Gamasutra (which is a reprint from the October 2006 issue of Game Developer magazine). For those of you who haven’t played any of the Castlevania games, you’re defintely missing out. It’s one of my favourite series, not just because of the great game design and awesome artwork, but because it has some of the best music out there.
Gaming Deals
I’m sure some of you have already caught that the latest Steam Sale is happening. I picked up some copies of Monaco for Matt and myself on the first day of the sale when it was 80% off, and since it was a four pack it didn’t take much effort to find two more people to give copies away to.
This YouTube Debacle is Bananas
If you’ve been up on your tech news this past week, you may be familiar already with the sudden wave of copyright flagging that has been happening with the new and “improved” content ID matching system on YouTube. If not, here’s a pretty good summary of what’s happening.
Designing Mandatory Co-Op Play in Left 4 Dead
There’s a great video from GDC 2009 that has found its way over to Gamasutra today about the game design choices that were made when developing Left 4 Dead. L4D is a game that I played quite a bit of back in 2009 and is really what got me back into PC gaming.
Making A Game Is Really Really Hard
Something just felt right when we started working together on our own game. The idea of forging ahead and creating something new was kind of magical. The wheels were always spinning, and there was a lot of talk about “wouldn’t this be cool”, and “we should totally do that“. Bit by bit, we have been working to make things happen: making snippets of code to allow the display of sprites, creating characters to go on those sprites, and making those characters capable of fighting against each other.
Mohrbacher: The Gathering
While living in San Francisco, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Peter Mohrbacher: an amazingly hard working illustrator who has some beautiful images in his portfolio. If you’ve played Magic: The Gathering in recent years, or if you’re a fan of the Spectrum books, you may be familiar with some of the work he’s done. If not, you should definitely become familiar with his work.
Nice Home Gaming Set-Up
I’m personally kind of excited for the world of VR. I remember trying out a hang glider simulator back around 1995 at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum, and thought it was pretty cool at the time. And of course, growing up watching Star Trek, the holodeck seems pretty amazing.
Just In Case You Were Planning On Upgrading
The next wave of consoles is out. The PS4 came out a couple weeks ago, and now this past Friday we see the release of the next big thing… the XBone. I’m tellin’ ya now folks… don’t let these slick corporate types fool you. Each generation since the Nintendo Entertainment System has just been one giant ploy to make you pay for things that you don’t need. People market things to make you spend more money.
Pushing the Limits Using Constraints
Dan Behrens aka Danimal Cannon is a musician that I’ve been familiar with for a rather long time due to his frequent participation in the Dwelling of Duel contests (something I never worked up the courage to participate in myself). I was catching up on recent gaming news today, and came across a recent talk that he did for for TedX where he discusses the benefits that working with new and limited tools has had on his development as an artist.
