Entertainment

I recently a recorded a bunch of videos of the game Overcooked on Xbox One.

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Your goal is to assemble meals out of various ingredients, cook them, and serve them. Over time the meals get a bit more complicated and the levels get a lot more complicated. It is strongly designed to be played cooperatively with up to four people, and even supports two players on a single controller.

My only complaint would be the difficulty is based too much on complicated level design (and jumps up a bit too quickly). Some times the controls are not exactly tight and you can end up selecting the wrong thing - having levels with moving targets or slippery floors for instance just accentuates an otherwise minor problem. I would have preferred more meal variations (that are also more complicated) on simpler levels.

But despite all that it’s a fun party game that almost anyone can play. And of course it is made in Unity.

One final note. The first video in the playlist above was generated by Google Photos. It turned out well, except for its automatic cropping.

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Gravitas is rapidly approaching something playable, now that ships can be destroyed and new levels are generated.

“Something playable” is still quite far away from being an actual game. In terms of features required for even an alpha release, it still needs: scoring, match state, player lobby, AI, and better level generation.

Some other features I would rather have but aren’t strictly required include: special powers (especially warping, to get players out of impossible situations), better UI feedback for touch controls (which was not necessary for the original) and some match options.

But overall, progress is good.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPhbri7XIdo&w=640&h=360]

First, a video of the latest progress. Now includes aim lines.

Second, if you aren’t using Unity Cloud Build, you should be.

Over the past few years, the importance of automated builds in software development (and the wider concept of continuous integration) has grown in importance. In my day job, setting up automated builds is one of the first thing that happens on any project. The details tend to be different for different platforms and it generally requires a fair amount of maintenance. The good news is, Unity do most of the hard work for you, and across most of their platforms, and surprisingly, for free.

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In software development (and product development in general) is a concept called MVP or Minimal Viable Product. According to Wikipedia it is “a product with just enough features to gather validated learning about the product and its continued development”.

My plan was to develop a Gravitas MVP in Unity and release it as quickly as possible. After reading a bit about some of the cool things I can do with Unity quite easily that would have been hard before, I inevitably got distracted. But it’s okay, since technical spikes are also an accepted part of software development (again thanks to Wikipedia: “a product-testing method that is used to determine how much work will be required to solve or work around a software issue”).

Specifically, one of the things I wanted to do in Gravitas was add a real lighting model, probably using normal mapping on the sprites. I had read up how to do this in MonoGame, but decided to see how quickly I could do it in Unity. The answer was about 2 hours. That includes the time to create the normal map for the ship (and finding a tool to help do that).

The tool I used incidentally is Sprite Illuminator from a company called CodeAndWeb. If you plan to do any 2D games I suggest you check them out. Their tools all come with trials, and the only reason I haven’t bought it is yet, is I’m deciding which bundle to get (I’ve already used Sprite Illuminator and I’ll almost certainly use Texture Packer. Physics Editor is probably less useful to me, but is only £10 extra with the other two).

TLDR: Go to Kragenmoor to the Grandmsters Palace and find Grandmaster Omin Dres to begin the quest Aggressive Negotiations.

Elder Scrolls Online on consoles has an achievement/trophy called Hero of Ebonheart which requires you to complete all the in game achievements relating to the Ebonheart Pact.

As I was checking through the list of ones I completed, I noticed that for the achievement Hearts of Darkness, the middle step - Stop Tanval from unleashing the second Brother of Strife - was incomplete. When I checked the map there were no black markers normally indicative of an incomplete area, nor did I have any incomplete quests in Stonefalls.

It turns out there is short series of side quests that are easy to miss in the Kragenmoor area starting with Aggressive Negotiations. This eventually leads to To the Tormented Spire which adds the Tormented Spire as a location to your map. Complete this quest line completes the middle part of the Hearts of Darkness achievement.

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Remember to visit Gravitas on Google+.

It’s been a while since I reported that Gravitas was in final play testing. To be honest the process didn’t actually take that long, I just became busy in the meantime. But I have now finally submitted Gravitas for peer review and it’s currently marked as “60% complete”. Based on what I’ve seen of other games as a reviewer that means it should be a few days before it’s eligible for release.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been some work not related to the release. Firstly, the game now runs successfully on a Mac thanks to MonoGame which I hope will lead to a Mac App Store release. Secondly, I’ve been cleaning up the code (mainly separating out anything that isn’t Gravitas specific in preparation for beginning my second game, which for the moment I’m going to keep quite about.

To keep up to date on that and any other Gravitas news, visit Gravitas on Google+.

CCP have just announced DUST514 will be exclusive to the Playstation 3. Which is a shame (check out the EVE Online forums for some stronger opinions). Unfortunately it makes sense for a few reasons (well making it exclusive to one console makes sense - whether the 360 or the PS3 was the better choice is more debatable).

Developing for a single console is quicker and easier - especially important for a game that will probably have more updates than the average game.

There are suggestions that one or both of Sony and Microsoft aren’t happy about cross-platform multiplayer games.

Since the idea of the game (a console FPS interacting with a PC MMO) is quite revolutionary they could get a lot of support (both financially and in terms of marketing and other benefits) from the console manufacturer, but only if it’s exclusive.

That being said, it may not be the end for the Xbox 360 and DUST.  Sony have suffered recently and definitely have lower consumer confidence (will players have to give Sony any personal information to play DUST?) and this decision will have been made long before Sony’s hacking problems. If sales are lower than CCP hope they may rethink the plan. And remember, “exclusive” in the games industry can be a vague and rarely lasts for ever.

The game is scheduled for a Spring release so at least 360-only owners have a while to decided if they want to get a PS3 just for this game…

CCP recently announced that their long awaited “walking-in-stations” feature will now include an item store selling character customization options exclusively for real money (actually for Aurum another in game currency only available for real money).

Some people have lamented the idea of EVE finally entering this area and selling items for real money. After all today you can buy a monocle, tomorrow a ship. This is a slippery slope that will lead to death of EVE Online as we know it. Except, of course, it won’t. Since PLEXs were introduced anything in game has essentially been purchasable for real money. Take the price in ISK, devide that by approximately 350 million and multiply by half the price of a 60 day gamecard. These items are slightly different since they aren’t available in game without using real money at some point (but it is possible to trade them between players so you don’t personally have to spend real money).

One final note: the same customization opens are likely to be available to DUST 514 players once it’s released.

Yesterday EVE Online broke the peak concurrent user record again for an online game with 60,453 players online simultaneously.

Just for the record, the reason World of Warcraft doesn’t hold this record (despite having by far the most subscribers of any MMO) is because of it’s sharded nature. All sixty thousand EVE players were in the same game world.