Yearly Archives: 2015

Selling A Tornado – Edinburgh University Project

A couple of years back whilst at Edinburgh University, I had the fortunate opportunity to take a course called Informatics Entrepreneurship and Digital Marketplace taught by Dr Adam J Bock. I enjoyed the course so much I thought I’d give one aspect of it a special mention, the group project.

As part of the course, groups of students we were required to analyze an opportunity. My group which was myself, Anton Caius Gurgu and Marat Subkhankulov, decided to base our opportunity on Anton’s coursework project, which was creating a programmable tornado.

We looked at whether Edinburgh nightclubs would be interested in buying/renting this product (opportunity description). The most memorable part of our assignment was producing a promotional video for this product.

As a team of solely Computer Science students we hadn’t had much practice in film making. We went about creating this video by brainstorming, planning, considering video elements and scenes, and writing up a script (details). The result was in my opinion a decent job. Here is the video in all its cheesy goofy goodness!

I think it turned out well.

A big thanks to Dr Bock for his course. It was one of my most memorable while at Edinburgh.

SASA Performance, Edinburgh 2012

A couple of years back I performed for Edinburgh Universities South Asian Student Association annual DiwaliEid with a couple of guys. I finally got round to digging up the SASA Performance videos from Facebook/Youtube. In the first I’m playing percussion. My favorites moments were round about 3:08 and 4:50.

In our second performance I sung backing vocals.

As well as this I had the pleasure of collaborating with a couple of my Uni colleagues on a poster for this very same event. All in all, It was a good night.

Overlord – Anime Watch

Visiting the world of Overlord we are introduced to Momonga, our skeletal protagonist, master of the empty halls of Nazarik within a game called Yggdrasil. The story begins on the day the Yggdrasil servers are to be shut down. Instead of being ejected back into the real world, our protagonist finds himself trapped, transported into a living game world with his domain and subjects.

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Continue reading Overlord – Anime Watch

The Force Awakens – Impressions

Star Wars The Force Awakens has been a long awaited installment in the series, and I certainly have looked forward to it. The day before its release I booked myself a ticket for a viewing at 12:00am on the 16th of December 2015, to be among the first to see it in Bahrain.

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Armed with popcorn, a ticket and a pack of Maltesers I made my way to the cinema hall.

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Continue reading The Force Awakens – Impressions

Cave Troll Painting Guide – Games Workshop, Lord of the Rings

Many years ago I used to play Games Workshops Lord of the Rings table top game. Naturally following this hobby I painted a number of models. One such model was the Cave Troll from Moria.

I spent awhile rummaging around the net for a good resource to remember how I painted the model and the best resource I found was from a Youtube channel which had a series of videos on how to paint a Cave Troll. I have written a summary to accompany the video series (paint name reference sheet).

Stage One: Assembly & Base Coat

To start first assemble your model, this involves:

  • Testing that joints fit together and filing them down if necessary (metal).
  • Making customization’s to your model and base as per your preference.
  • Gluing model parts together.
  • Attaching the assembled model to its base.
  • Applying a base coat of Chaos Black (can be done in White but I did it in Black).

Continue reading Cave Troll Painting Guide – Games Workshop, Lord of the Rings

FEAR’s NPC A.I.

FEAR has been cited as one of the most influential A.I. games. FEAR’s claim to fame was its implementation of NPC A.I. using a system called Goal Oriented Action Planning.

Since I have some experience with planning in games, I wanted to have a look at the techniques used. After some digging I thought I’d put together a brief summary of what I learnt.

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Continue reading FEAR’s NPC A.I.

Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy – An Overview

Recently Humble Bundle had on offer a Star Wars Bundle which included an awesome entry from the Star Wars’s Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy.

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I’d bought a physical copy of Jedi Academy years ago, and the memory of it was so endearing I thought I’d give it another play. This time with the difficulty set to max, and an eye open on elements of its design.

Continue reading Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy – An Overview

Hungarfen, The Fungal Horror – League of Legends Champion Design

Role: Mage/Support

Hugarfen is a manaless champion from the Plague Jungles who uses its health as its casting resource. I’’ve written a short introduction that I highly recommend you read before moving on to the champion description.

Appearance

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This image is not owned by me and was sourced from here.

Lore

When writing Hungarfens lore I choose to be unconventional. My intention was to craft something with little less hand holding. I want to challenge the reader to make inferences while giving them the ingredients to do so. I want the reader to not just read, but think and discover. Hopefully I made that possible.

Lets get started, shall we!

Continue reading Hungarfen, The Fungal Horror – League of Legends Champion Design

Attack on Titan – Anime Watch

Attack on Titan is a series I’ve been watching a load of recently so I thought I’d summarize my impressions of it.

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  • Attack on Titan boasts an amazing sense of scale.
  • Top notch music, (for the sake of staying spoiler free) my personal favorite track being in an awesome scene of Captain Levi in the forest.
  • Great collection of characters.
  • Questions proposed by the story leaves you wondering.
  • Like the art style with its cannons and ‘Tudor-esque’ housing styles.

Attack on Titan is an anime well worth your time, so check out the anime’s first season. Season 2 is in the works, and rumor has it, has unfortunately been delayed to 2016. Meanwhile check out the live action movie instead! For additional information check out the wiki page, and its own wiki.

Game 2015 Dubai

Dubai’s is turning into a major hub for gaming in the Middle East, and this September there was an awesome game convention by the name of Games 15, which I was lucky enough to attend.

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At the convention were game exhibitors, distributors, artists, musicians, hardware and software vendors. Every major publisher was present namely Microsoft, Sony, Capcom, Konami, 2K and Ubisoft. A fine collection of folks.

Speaking of such Lara Croft was there. We didn’t hit it off…

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Since Lara was kind enough to spared my life. I had the chance to try lots of upcoming games including Battleborn, Assassins Creed Syndicate, Tom Clancy’s The Division, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege, Street Fighter V, as well as getting some goodies.

Aside from that there was loads to do. Busting out some moves at the Just Dance open stage, rocking out at the guitar hero stand, grooving to the DJ Academy tunez, immersing oneself in the variety of virtual reality technologies demos,  to trying out delectable game themed caramel sweets. I enjoyed myself thoroughly.

On top of all that I met Yoshinori Ono!

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Good times.

If I’m in the Middle East this time next year I’ll be back.

Hero of Allacrost

Reddit is where this story begins. Trawling around I joined the /r/gameDevClassifieds sub-reddit. A place of gathering for game developers advertising paid, and un-paid game project work.

By chance I came across a post asking for a game designer, to which I replied. Unfortunately the position had already been filled though fortunately additional help was happily welcomed.

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The project in question is Hero of Allacrost. Its an ‘open source single player 2D role-playing game inspired by classic console RPG’s, and I’m thoroughly impressed with the standard of this project. It’s use of BitBucket for source control, a Wiki containing lots of information/documentation, a forum, and welcoming project members! I’ve worked on this project for approximately a month, and my contributions to this project have been enhancements to the battle code.

Here’s the latest Hero of Allacrost gameplay footage.  Check it out!

Darwinia – An Overview

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I recently finished the single player mode of Darwinia, and here’s a brief impression of it.

Good

  • Interesting game design. In particular I enjoyed the design of the Dawinians and how their management was handled well through the user of officers units.
  • Smart choice of aesthetics. The chosen look is simple and suited to both the environment and story. If there was a lacking the artistic department in terms of time/money/ability their choice covered it all nicely.
  • Enjoyable game play. The overall goal, and game play matched up nicely as it felt that you were cleaning up Darwinia due to the self-replicating nature of the virus.
  • Good use of sound. Behaviors and actions are clearly accented such as the sound of fear/fleeing of Darwinas, and the satisfying explosions of rockets.
  • Impressive file size. Clocking at a fantastically low 30MB makes this game very download friendly. In countries with fast internet this is a non-issue but with my slow internet, it makes a great difference.

Bad

  • UI was fiddly at times. I became frustrated with the gesture based interface, and fortunately a tab based interface was available as an alternative, but even there I faced some issues selecting what I wanted.

Conclusion

I enjoyed this game very much, it has great game play, and just enough story to go with it. Sad though that Multiwinia was just a ‘multiplayer’ expansion. I was hoping it would include another single player story that focused on Darwinian on Darwinian action with some additional complexity, as by far my favorite part of the game was the fighting between good and bad Darwinians on some of the final levels.

Overall an awesome little gem. Definitely worth checking out.

Supreme Commander 2 – An Overview

I recently completed the single player mode of Supreme Commander 2, and here are some brief notes on it.

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Good

  • Good in-game visuals. Top notch in-game animations in particular unit explosions.
  • Improved micro-management. Appreciated the removal of engineer and factory tiers from the first Supreme Commander, as well as being able to repeat build orders on factories allows one to focus on the fun part; commanding armies.
  • Game ran smoothly on my dated computer. I played the game on my fairly old laptop on the Medium graphics setting and it ran smoothly as well as looked good.

Bad

  • Pre-rendered cut scenes didn’t look good. To be fair though the game was released half a decade ago.
  • Single player mode was short. Supreme Commander one feature three seperate campaigns Supreme Commander 2 felt like it hacked together three half campaigns.
  • A weak story. The primary flaws with story are its underdeveloped characters, and a loosely strung together plot. It tries to have its ‘moments’ but unfortunately they fall flat given the lack of story depth.

Both

  • Smaller scale. Though the maps are smaller in scale, in some ways this is a benefit as you don’t have units travelling for ages to get to a battle, thus there is less time between ‘action’. Yet the point still stands that the overall scale of the battles have been shrunk, and with it the feeling of being the Supreme Commander.

Conclusion

Overall I enjoyed the experience. Supreme Commander 2 definitely has some improvements from the first game, though I get this feeling that the game is less that perhaps it intended to be. Perhaps due to time/budget constraints?

Nevertheless if  you enjoyed the first Supreme Commander the second is certainly worth checking out.

Get Games Middle East Launch

Get Games is part of Mastertronic a company that my company’s parent company Red Stallion Interactive is in negotiations to merge with. Red Stallions developers have since been tasked with an exciting project.

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Over the past few months I’ve been working on enhancements to their online platform, as well as duplicating a digital store for the Middle East.

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At present the project has involved re-hauling the language assets across the website, implementing right to left formatting, and performing general maintenance tasks such as updating the websites YouTube libraries. Going forward we have some exciting new features in the works including the integration of local Middle East payment methods such as OneCardCashU and CrediMax.

The localisation phase of the project was completed a short while ago, and Get Game ME was officially launched last weekend. The launch included dispatching a newsletter as well as well as promotions through Youtube, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Take a little time and check it out, you might find yourself a good deal!

Sacrifice on Steam – A suggested fix for Windows 8.1

Setup steps (ensure you have admin privileges):

  1. Download the game from your Steam library.
  2. Go to the location of Sacrifice.exe in your system, the path is something like – C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Sacrifice

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  1. Right click on Sacrifice.exe and go into Properties.

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  1. Choose the Compatibility tab from the Sacrifice.exe Properties menu that pops up, then press the Change settings for all users button.

sacrifice_compatability_tab Continue reading Sacrifice on Steam – A suggested fix for Windows 8.1

Shogun 2 Total War – A Recommendation

I remember nearly not buying the first Shogun Total War since it required four CD’s, which meant three other games I couldn’t have.

I remember sitting infront of my desktop impatiently. Expectantly flicking through the manual while the game installed, CD to CD.

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I remember a journey. Fighting alongside the Shimazu, rising from Kyushu, besting the great clans of Japan to ultimately ascend as Shogun.

I remember years of waiting for a worthy successor to one of my life’s best games.

In 2011. I found Shogun 2.

I’ve been looking at Shogun 2s Campaign Map UI. Check it out here!