Game Design, Programming and running a one-man games business…

Category: Uncategorized

Totally FREE game for the first twenty readers…

No.. not kudos 2 (you can BUY IT HERE though :D), but a game called DETERMINANCE.

Us indie game developers are friendly people. We occasionally meet up to eat pizza and grumble about big games companies, publishers and the fact that we can only afford to eat pizza. And in-between all that we occasionally get chatting about each others games…

Have you ever wondered how cool it would be if there was a game where you could do sword fighting by moving the mouse around rather than clicking the ‘sword fight’ button? So have I……..So let me ask you this… Have you ever tried this game:

Its called ‘Determinance’ and it’s made by fellow UK indies ‘Mode7 Games’. here is the website where you can download the demo:

http://www.mode7games.com/

And if you try the demo and want a completely FREE copy. Just email me at cliff@positech.co.uk and ask for a code that will unlock it. I have twenty to give away. Will they go in five minutes or five days? YOU DECIDE!

Kudos 2 On Sale NOW!

At last, it’s all done and dusted and the game is ON SALE! This is the first game I’ve released since doing the whole ‘talking to pirates‘ thing. It’s also the best game I’ve ever made, and the one that’s taken the longest, cost the most and involved the most effort to get it the way I want. I’m really extremely proud of the way it has turned out.

All I need now is for people to like it, and buy it, so I can pay the bills! There is (of course) a free demo if you aren’t sure if it’s your kind of game. here is the demo link:

http://www.positech.co.uk/kudos2/demo.html

Here is the website with screenshots etc:

http://www.positech.co.uk/kudos2

The game is set at $19.95 which is a price that’s just low enough that it makes me panicky and Fidgety. I’m hoping that all the feedback I got about the price of games actually makes sense and that more people buy a $19.95 game than would buy a $29.99 one. (and a big enough difference as to end up making more overall). If not, I’m kind of screwed :D I also made the demo more than twice the length of the original games demo, because that was another, possibly fair criticism aimed at modern games.

Obviously there is no DRM on the game, you just download it, install it, run it and have fun. Any feedback on the games purchase process is much needed, as are any bug report because this is day one, and let’s be honest, there is bound to be something that I’ve forgotten due to extreme tiredness, stress and tunnel vision.

Now go try the demo!

Edit: If you could digg this (http://digg.com/pc_games/Kudos_2_On_Sale_NOW) It would really help get the word out, as I’m just an invisible indie game developer unless people get to hear about it. Much appreciated.

Making Vista Stable and FAST

If you run Vista home premium and have never taken the time to strip it down to its basics, or done any un-installing of the crap that some PC makers pre-install, you *might* be having stability or performance issues. Vista is NOT a horribly slow and bloated O/S, or at least not as bad as people claim, but it can easily get cluttered. If you run task manager (right click the bar at the bottom of the screen and select it) you should see something like this:

If your list of running processes is bigger than that, you are running stuff you do not need. You might run it anyway (I run msn and the sidebar normally) but most people have junk running that achieves nothing but instability. I don’t like itunes thinking it deserves a permenant position in my memory, same with quicktime, the BBC iPlayer etc.

I thought this might be helpful for people looking at a list of 34 processes, and thinking “These must be essential”. They aren’t :D

Guardian Newspaper + Dublin radio?

I am on the front page of the IT-section in today’s guardian newspaper here in the UK. It’s an article about games piracy and the various responses to it. I should also hopefully be interviewed live *eek* on the radio in Ireland tomorrow, around 10amish hopefully.

here’s the online version:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/sep/11/games.piracy

Still working away on Kudos 2, doing play balancing and so on. Gradually getting there…

costumers?

why is it so many people type ‘costumers’ instead of ‘customers’? is it a typo? or people who are confused? or is it some hilarious new internet meme I am not aware of?

Answers on a postcard.