Blogs - fragfest2012

Hello to anyone who reads this.

I am making progress both on Wake Up Call and on my little Spaceship Commander game. It is now Spring Break for the next week, so I have a ton of time and will be doing a lot. Recently, I cleaned up the spaceship game and made it work again, and am now working on adding a few new features. I still don't think I am going to have much graphics for it, but am looking into sound. Now, the code is much more efficient and there is more on the parts rather than it all being in one place (the ship) which makes it more flexible. In addition, I cleaned out old systems that I had used for doing stuff and have now rewritten a lot of the code.

Now, for Wake Up Call. For those of you who don't know or haven't seen the game lately (Indiedb.com), we are going into silent mode and will be making a lot of progress in concept art and documentation in the next few weeks-months. After we get to the point where we are going to come back, we will post a huge update and something really cool (don't want to spoil it). Anyways, I have been working on the storyline and other writing stuff for the game, and our new composer has been making some cool stuff.

Thanks for reading!
Millan Singh aka fragfest2012, Project Lead of Leatharian Studios

Hey people who actually read this blog, since my last blog update four days ago, I did some more work on my little spaceship game, and now the first little stage is finished. As of now, the super essential systems are all online and working, of course this doesn't mean they won't deserve polish down the road. Right now, you can pick a number of guns to fire and shoot at an enemy ship (currently another player atm, will be AI later) and damage their armor (ship health) as well as damage and possibly destroy their guns and/or their power plant, which makes the power for the ship's guns to use (and more things when I add them). So, this is very disorganized, and filled with parenthetical statements, but whatever, it doesn't really matter. All I want to know is if you guys would like screenshots, and please comment, it feels weird writing when no one comments...

Anyways, hopefully next time I can bring a new feature or two to the blog table.

Hey guys, and anyone who reads this. You may know me as the Team Leader for Leatharian Studios on Project Wake Up Call, but I am also a closet hobby programmer. So, after being inspired by the recent Star Trek movie, I decided to make a space ship game, called, for now, Spaceship Commander. The game is simple, and has no real graphics, just buttons at the moment, but I may want to add graphics down the road. To describe the game, I will just say this: you control a spaceship and manage how you distribute your crew and power while battling an opponent. Currently there is no AI, just two human players, and the game still has bugs, and only a small fraction of the features in the final version. If anyone is interested in knowing more, please comment below asking me to post more information when I can, or pm me, if you really want.

Hey guys, recently I actually started playing Starcraft 2 again after a few months of inactivity, and I am loving it. It's almost as if I rediscovered the game. The first time back, placed in the silver league and quickly rose to number 7 in my division. I love the game, and I never really liked it this much since I bought it, and the reason is fairly simple. I learned how I play.

I am not good in the late game, which means I have to win fast. Now, I usually play as Terran, sometimes going as Zerg (trying to learn a good strategy for them) which means I usually do a modified 4-rax rush. Now, if I don't win within the first 10-15 min, I will pretty much assuredly lose. As zerg, I am playing around with the classic six-pool rush and trying to get a good version of it that I like.

Now I know this was short and that I said 'now' too many times, but I was a bit bored and just wanted to share some gamer-related news with my crowd (which is small). I would appreciate any comments that you give me just telling me to blog more often, and, if you guys out there do post some comments, I will be sure to blog more often.

Peace, and thanks for reading this small ramble.
--Millan aka fragfest2012

Ok, I am writing my first ever rant! Yay! Some of you may know me as the CEO of Leatharian Studios from here: Indiedb.com. Well today, you will know me simply as Millan, that guy who wrote about what the Battlefield 3 Beta is all about. So onto the main course: Battlefield 3.

Before I really get into this, I would like to point out just a few things: one, the Beta is an incomplete version of the game, two, Battlefield 3 is an amazing game, and three, my findings are based purely on the beta and as such are not based on all the game modes and maps. Now, the beta, to start off, even though it is unfinished, is a lot of fun and this is only on one map with one game mode, I haven't even touched Caspian Border or 64 player madness. Even though DICE chose not to publicly test Caspian Border or their trademarked massive warfare, they do seem to have some reason for doing so. For instance, it has long been known that the Battlefield series has been plagued by its infantry combat, so, logically, as a game dev myself, I can see why DICE wanted to focus the Beta on their infantry combat, which Operation Metro addresses perfectly. Also, Operation Metro gave DICE a way to show off all the capabilities of their Frostbite tech, because it afforded a first base that is very foliage heavy and showcased rendering as well as scale, a second base that was underground and really showed of the dynamic lighting and also showcased some instances of destruction, a third base that showed off all the micro destruction and really close up combat, and finally a fourth base that showed off the massive destruction trademarked in the bad company games and also showed off the great looking new particle effects and lighting. Another thing is that I am sure that DICE was more wanting to test Battlelog than the actual game, because it did ship with more than its fair share of bugs and glitches.

Although there were many great things about the beta, there were some flaws as well. The big one being the lack of Caspian Border to play on, but there were other problems that plagued the PC beta. The first big problem other than the lack of Caspian Border was connection problems which have been largely fixed due to Battlelog updates. Another big bug early on was people getting under the terrain in the first part of the map, but DICE also addressed this problem, quoted here from a news update on Battlelog: "Terrain destruction disabled, because it causes problems with people crawling around under the map. We have a proper fix for this in the retail game, but chose to simply disable it for the OB." Although it may sound lazy on DICE's part, it is actually a good call, because doing a patch would be hard for many players I'm sure and because terrain deformation is a minor point in the long run, and it will still be in the retail version. There were other more minor bugs, but those kinds were expected to be happening in a beta. The only troubling thing was the number of bugs so close to full release, but I am sure DICE has fixed many of them and the engine is probably designed to fix bugs quicker.

Overall, the beta was a success and many people, me included, played and enjoyed it.