Blogs - Admiral_Nemo

Wizards In Space - A Tale From Another Galaxy

Hyperventila: The Game by Admiral Nemo

It has been a while since I posted a blog on here. In case any of you long time followers have missed it, I'm making a game! It is called Hyperventila and it's about wizards in space.

I originally had the idea for Hyperventila as a spin-off for a fantasy universe known as Mikomwood. These were a bunch of fantasy shorts I wrote and narrated and then put up on YouTube (look them up at your own risk, they get quite cringy in places).

Mikomwood is this Discworld/Westeros/Middle Earth/Skyrim kind of world where the people living in this relatively small region are at the mercy of maniacal forces that control the fates of man at a whim... and they are very used to it. Mikomwood was well suited for short stories and role-play and I really wanted to make Hyperventila something similar but I always felt like it was a universe to be explored more dynamically, not through small stories but rather through an interactive medium; a game.

Inspired by games like Mass Effect and the Elder Scrolls series of RPGs, I wanted to make an open world game where exploration actually makes sense. Unlike these procedurally generated worlds in space exploration games like we've been seeing come out for the last few years, I wanted to make a universe worth exploring.

The rule is no randomly generated terrain, no horses with chicken legs, no names generated by the computer. Each world and ship should get enough attention to have its own unique feel.

My approach to development so far has been to make the core features of the "world engine", to create a solid foundation upon which to build this world. After a year I have now reached this point and can finally start working bringing this universe to life.

The largest challenge facing this project is one of finance. I've been managing to support myself for a year but this is a full-time job and the money will soon be running out. I've set up a Patreon to see if I can gain enough supporters that way to get me all the way through to release, and beyond. Developing Hyperventila is no small task and I'm planning to keep releasing content for the game even after release.

All of this will off course happen with or without financial support for the game. Financial support is needed to speed up the process and more importantly, to keep me developing the game full time, however since this is a project that comes with high personal motivation there is no deadline for me to stop.

My motivation comes from my passion for space, science fiction and fantasy. As any follower of me on ModDB will know, I'm really into building spaceships and with Hyperventila I am living the dream.

Early designs for the human ships in the game

Each ship has a carefully designed exterior and painstakingly detailed interior all built in the style of classic science fiction films back when models were still built by hand. That kit bashing look is hugely important for setting the feel and atmosphere of the game.

The main story will bridge the two universes, Mikomwood and Hyperventila. You, a somewhat unremarkable captain of a small cargo vessel will find in your care three accidental time travellers from the past. Their strange magical powers and very presence will cause a major stir in the galaxy transforming the timeline forever. You can choose to help these good-natured time travellers or trap them, force them to do your evil bidding.

The game will feature branching dialogue and therefore a branching story as well. To make this possible I even wrote a piece of software to aid me in writing.

The Hyper Dialogue Editor is an invaluable tool for this project and if anything just a massive time-saver.

I am very pleased to have reached this milestone and will be posting more updates here and on the rest of the social medias.

Naturally, it is important for me to get the word out there and make people aware of both the game and my Patreon so I humbly request of you to share these links wherever may be appropriate.
If the game sounds like something you're interested in, please, do follow the game on modDB and on Steam.

Thanks for reading and as always, have a nice day!

Admiral Nemo

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter - Review

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter by The Astronauts

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter can only be described as an interactive, narrative driven vision of beauty telling a horrific tale that will grip you until the very moment the story ends.
From the moment crime detective Paul Prospero comes into this world, the Vanishing of Ethan Carter will strike you with its visual beauty and eerie atmosphere. Be it a stain of blood on the ground or a distant sound on the wind, you'll never feel completely safe in Red Creek Valley.

The first thing that came to my mind when I jumped into The Vanishing of Ethan Carter was that it did not look like an Unreal Engine game, especially not Unreal Engine 3. This is a technical achievement all on its own by the developers. The draw distance alone as well as lush environments show that The Astronauts succeeded where many AAA developers failed miserably. Naturally there are no loading screens.
Granted, the game requires a pretty powerful PC to run which is where I think the game has its biggest flaw. The game is decently optimized and I personally was getting solid frame-rates in outdoor areas with most of the settings set to High.

Is The Vanishing of Ethan Carter a game? No. Just as with many other "games" in this not-so-well-defined genre (like Dear Esther for example) The Vanishing of Ethan Carter only comes close to being a game during the crime scene investigation... let's call them puzzles.
It is a narrative driven experience which focuses on the story and immersing you in the world. It does so very well because it doesn't have guns or well defined gameplay mechanics such as skill trees and weapon upgrades. It will tell you it won't hold your hand and this is quite true.
This approach means you will have to figure out the mechanics for yourself and you have to do so in order to advance the story.
The crime scene investigation mechanic works in such a way that you have to find and restore objects to their original location and then linking a chain of events together by playing them back in the right order. This is where your supernatural powers come into play. My first experience with the crime scene investigation mechanic was for the most part looking around and clicking on objects it will draw your attention to. The way it does that is by hovering texts above the object in question. When you click on said text it shows you a thought process that in turn gives you clues as to what you are looking for.
It is a way of informing you what to do while not ruining the immersion with a HUD notification or by pausing the experience.
If only more game developers would take that approach.

Story-wise the game will show you various events that you access through investigating crime scenes. While you can solve each of the mysteries in whichever order you please, the main story doesn't start coming together until you have solved at least half of them. Finding stories left by Ethan in the world will give you an idea of what is really going on and while there is a big twist, I think most people will have realized it long before it actually happens. If they payed enough attention to the stories, newspaper cut-outs and other minor clues that are left around in the world for you to find.
I would love to give more of an example but the story is hard to write about without giving away major (or minor) spoilers. I will say though that the writing is very good, I never had any problems with the dialogue although the voice-acting didn't always fit.

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is a great addition to my Steam library and while I got it on sale it is in my opinion worth the 19 Euros that it currently costs on Steam.
I want to see more games like this and I want to see what The Astronauts come up with next.

Thanks for reading and have a nice day!
Admiral Skeybar

DayZ SA

During the winter sale on Steam, a friend of mine bought me DayZ (quite a generous move considering it wasn't even on sale). My net-speed had been capped at the time but with the shift of the month and indeed the new year (happy new year by the way) I got a chance to download the new and improved DayZ experience.
I'll explain my thoughts and ideas about the current state of the game as well as my experience with the buddy who bought me the game.

DayZ has come a long way since I first launched the mod. I still remember my first experience in the game. It was probably better than most and I was very optimistic.
I had gotten some decent loot, plenty of food, an AK-47 with ammo and had managed to avoid all zombies thus far. Things changed when I ran into another player. He said he was friendly, he asked for directions and as I pointed North I turned my back on him. The last thing I remember hearing was a gun-shot like noise as his axe impacted with my back.

That is the harsh reality of DayZ. Bandits are common and you should trust no one. Play with friends if you want to trust someone.

The Stand-Alone release of DayZ. Let's start by saying that it's still and alpha. Many aspects will and should be changed. The current performance of the game is poor, acceptable if you have played the mod but poor by any other standard.
Gameplay is functional though feedback from how your character experiences and interacts with the world is still limited.

On my first run in the stand-alone I was all on my own and spawned in Novy Sobor. I headed towards the airfield and got some decent loot. I crammed by backpack full and set off to new adventures.
Unfortunately my character died of starvation before an hour had even passed. This was not the mod where you could carry as much loot as your backpack can carry and still run for kilometers without eating or resting.

My second run started pretty much exactly the same way. I once again spawned in Novy Sobor and headed up to the airfield. That's where things went differently though. At the airfield, many things had gone down since I had been there thirty minutes ago. I found a dead survivor, completely kitted out with guns and magazines. All his magazines were empty though and he had clearly been looted by whoever killed him.
I picked up most of his gear but was more selective this time about what I could carry. Luck had it though that the moment I went into the ATC, I found an entire box full of ammo, ammo compatible with my M4A1 and magazines. Upon loading the gun with ammo I set out feeling confident and quite lucky.

The very next day I met up with Roaches in Gorka, the friend who bought me the game. This is our story. Me and my friend Roaches had been teaming up surviving for three days in a row now. We had been looting smaller villages and towns further in-land. After a successful run through Berezino (a town by the coast) we decided to keep heading south along the coastal line.
It was mainly an uneventful trip, Roaches and I were both decently kitted out. He had a good stockpile of food and a pistol. I had my previously mentioned M4A1 assault rifle.

We found a bleeding man along the way sitting in the middle of the road. Though I kept my weapon fixed on him all the time we decided to help him out and Roaches gave him some bandages.
The man did not pick it up and after a short while we decided to leave him to his fate.
We continued south, it was mid day and the sun was glaring in our eyes as we headed further up-hill.

When we arrived at the small village of Kamyshovo, we discovered a dead body lying in a house, stripped of all possessions. As I looked outside I only just observed another person disappearing among the houses. I pointed out to Roaches we had better be careful. We searched two houses at the edge of the village with me keeping a watchful eye towards the coast then decided to leave the rest of the town alone.

We proceeded further along the coast, towards the town nicknamed "Elektro". I expected there would be players there so we stayed away from the main road leading into the town. Instead we took another way, around the "Elektro-hill" and down past the fire-station.
Looking through all the houses we could find no sign of proper loot. It was clear we weren't going to find anything in the outskirts.
As we headed further into the town I heard some shots. Then we heard them again. I rounded a house cautiously and immediately saw the body of a dead player in the middle of the road. We went into an apartment building, both completely on edge, sharpening our nerves of steel.
Upon exiting the building we heard another couple of shots. In a move of foolishness or call it bravery, I set out towards the place where I thought I had heard the sound. Roaches followed behind me.
I could not quite pin-point where the shots where coming from but then I got a brief glimpse of the gunman. He had a white clown-mask on and an assault rifle. He had the high-ground but I had the drop on him. I instinctively raised my gun and fired a suppressive burst. He ran. I pointed Roaches in the direction of where he had been.
Instead of running after him, which meant going down the hill and losing the high-ground I had won by my initial burst, I decided the best move would be to flank around going further up and around the hill.

Roaches and I searched the hill but could not find him. Upon coming back though from the far end of the shrubbery I spotted the gunman atop the hill, ready to fire. I alerted Roaches to his presence as I fired another burst towards his chest. He opened fire as well and bullets were flying past my ears as I ducked left towards some bushes. In a desperate move I turned around and fired my gun at full auto, I could hear Roaches firing his pistol, the gunman fell.
Miraculously I had not been hit a single time and neither had Roaches.

This was the time to get some gear. I told Roaches to loot the body, to take all he could carry while we still could. I nervously danced around, looking right, looking left. Guarding the loot. Another survivor appeared, he had a red motorcycle helmet and appeared armed though had not readied his fire-arm. He was cautiously approaching us, I raised my weapon and took aim. I told him to back off. He said he would do so but sounded untrustworthy. As Roaches finished looting the corpse of the bandit we had shot earlier, I went back to take a look myself.

Roaches took watch. The bandit had a ton of ammunition, some food and plenty of other good loot. I took what I could. At that point Roaches pointed out the guy in the motorcycle helmet was back. He did the same thing I did, told him to back away. This time he didn't seem very convinced though and instead of backing away he slowly started moving towards us. Roaches told me to stop looting, worried the motor-cycle helmet man may attack. I concurred and suggested we hide the body and leave.

We went back up the hill, we had seen enough of Elektro. But on the road leading out of the town bullets started hitting the ground at our feet, we were once again under fire! Luckily this gunman was not very accurate either and we broke into a sprint along the road. Then I saw him running among the trees, the man with the motor-cycle helmet. Knowing it was him who had fired the shots I raised my gun and in a single burst shot him dead, he fell to the ground.

Once again the looting game began. As Roaches sat exposed looting the corpse I nervously kept watch. I did not bother looting this person myself and Roaches and I moved off. Elektro was not a hospitable place.
Unfortunately at this point our luck ran out. Another bandit was hiding in the bushes and shot my friend right in the gut at point blank range. Roaches bravely fought him off and killed him where he was lying on the ground. Then Roaches fell. I was not sure if he was alive or dead. Was he breathing? He was unconscious. I bandaged his wounds knowing it would be practically impossible for him to recover from his wounds. As he collapsed before me, I ran off, scouting the area for more bandits, this was not a great place to be incapacitated in, on the Elektro hill by the side of the road. Then he spoke to me.
He had suffered great a loss of blood and his vision was blurred. I headed back but heard gunshots. My friend not being in a state to realize what had happened, had been gunned down by two ruthless bandits. As I approached my friends corpse, I saw one of the bandits running away among the trees.

What would I do now? I had lost my friend, my companion. The two bandits who killed him were still around, I could go after them. But I decided against it, revenge would have to wait. There is only so much one man can do so I turned around and ran, I ran as fast as I could away from Elektro and the Elektro hill. I ran away from the bandits, the loot and away from Roaches' dead body.

That is how the DayZ standalone is. Currently it is a mess of banditry, beginners and lag.

Would I recommend you buy the game? Not as such no, though if you're a long-time DayZ player you may enjoy the simplicity of the current state of the game. It goes back to the early days of the mod and maybe it will make you feel somewhat nostalgic.

That's it for this blog. I may post some more DayZ stories at another time. Have a nice day!

Admiral Skeybar

Listen to this while reading, hopefully some of you will get the reference:

Pictures And Models

What have I been up to these past few months? Well not much to be honest. Not on here anyway.
ModDB is a lovely community that pretty much runs itself and I have had very little time to contribute lately.
I had another game production going. Something not as ambitious and with a small team. Just me and one other in fact. Together we had managed to make a decent start. It would have been a game where you explored the world we would have mapped out, no story as such and nothing other than large-scale asset creation that would have truly been a challenge.
Unfortunately this didn't really work out. My partner mysteriously disappeared without a trace about two months ago. At the time we had been working on the game for about three to four months.
Later I found out he had other projects he had promised to work on. Perhaps things got to much for him. Who knows. I do not blame him, I simply see it as a mystery.
With him gone and nobody to take his place there was little I could do. Keeping up the entire production of a game all on my own was something I could not do...

...but what have I done since? I made some models, which can be found in my gallery by the way.
Here are some examples:

In other news ArmA III was released last month. I'm quite impressed with what they have managed to accomplish with that game. A huge performance increase with better graphics, better controls, improved animations and another set of huge maps that stay true to the ArmA franchise.
Mod support has always been a key feature in the ArmA games and ArmA III already has a whole bunch of them. Most were already started when the game was still in alpha.

I have been playing around with ArmA III since the alpha when I did a (sort of) review of the game. After the launch last month I have been playing around with some of the new features in the game. These new features include UAVs, more weapons and the huge 270 square kilometer Altis map.
Another neat little feature is the camera function. I've been taking some shots while in the editor:

Other than having played some ArmA III, my games-to-play list is still annoyingly long and has games like Alan Wake, ArmA Tactics, Guns of Icarus Online, The Showdown Effect, Red Orchestra 2, Sleeping Dogs, War of the Roses and the whole X-game trilogy, among many others on it.
Yet I still find myself more drawn to taking pictures in ArmA III than actually picking up one of the titles above and playing it.

I will try to post blogs more often but this is it for this blog. Have a nice day!
Admiral Skeybar

PS check out the Admiral Plays: Sir, You Are Being Hunted:

Faster Than Mods

So it happens that a game I own on Steam called Faster Than Light has mod support. Naturally, any game that has spaceships and easy mod tools is just begging for me to mod it.

So why not start with some ships I've already made:

Naturally I started with the Athena. The Athena battle refit is a perfect fit for this game being both heavily armed and yet small enough to fit the screen of the game.

At this point I should probably explain a little what the game is about. It is a space exploration game where the point of the game is to outrun the rebel fleet with their invasion plans (sounds familiar?). You, as part of the federation however also have the obligation to cause as much havoc around in the universe as you possibly can as well as interfere with daily life wherever you can, yes, this game is a lot like Star Trek.

Partially the appeal of the game is however micromanaging your ship. You have the ability to act as a sort of overlooking god (or HAL 9000 if you will) where you can send crewmen to their deaths while doing all you can to protect your ship.
An example of such a situation would be having a fire in the aft cargo bay, now you could just send a crewman over with a fire extinguisher but that means risking the lives of your precious crew. Usually the favorable action in such a situation would be to simply open the cargo bay air locks and let the vacuum of space deal with the fire.
Having this sort of classic sci-fi approach to space exploration is probably the best thing about the game. Going back to mods for a bit though.

Here is The Bronco, a fierce vessel with an impressive crew. This was proving to be the main challenge of modding the game. How do I make all these huge ships in FTL form without making them extremely overpowered in game terms?
Well, I suppose I kind of failed there. This ship in many ways is quite overpowered especially with upgrades.

Even so, I as the maker of the mod have no responsibility whatsoever to make these mods "fair" to the game... nope.... non at all...
Moving on to this last little ship:

If you're at all familiar with my spacecraft (which I do not expect you to be) then you will no doubt recognize this as an M-class Explorer. This is the M60 A.C.E turned into what I would say is the smallest possible ship in the game. Engines, Life support, Weapons, Shields and the pilot have all been shoved into their individual little square rooms. This ship with a standard crew of 2 is by far the most fun ship I've made so far. Sure it's a challenge but with an impressive arsenal this ship can hold its ground while dodging just about anything fired at it.

So what else is new? Not much really. The Steam summer sale robbed me of probably 60 or so gigabytes of space.
This does mean I got some great games though. This list includes Alan Wake, Hitman: Absolution, Primal Carnage, Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, Sleeping Dogs, Tomb Raider (2013), Max Payne 3 and more.

About Max Payne 3, the only game of those other than Primal Carnage (really fun) and FC3: Blood Dragon (overrated) that I have actually got installed and played. It is a fantastic game, showing that Rockstar studios all over the world can still produce that level of professional games where so many other major developers fail.
The writing, story and acting is all top notch. The gameplay is... well in comparison adequate but good nonetheless.
Is it a personal favorite of mine? Not really, however I admire the game for how well made it is and that's something I rarely say about a game.
On a sidenote, 30 gigabytes for 9 hours of gameplay? Couldn't you have scraped of maybe 1/3rd of that Rockstar so I could keep some of my SSD space?

Ok, so that's it for this blog. Have a nice day!
Admiral Skeybar

PlanetSide 2 Battle Rifles

I've been playing Planetside 2 for a while now and there were something I found the game lacked. One of those things was a proper battle rifle (or scout rifle as they're sometimes also known).

So, me being the creative pain in the ass that I am, thought I'd show those developers why they should put this into the game.

Here are my ideas:

New Conglomerate Battle Rifle

Vanu Sovereignty Battle Rifle

Terran Republic Battle Rifle

I've been working on these for the past couple of weeks but work limited my time so I mainly worked on them in the weekend.

Now, with this project finished, I'm free again to build other models. And by other models, I mean spaceships, loads of spaceships.

Have a nice day!
Admiral Skeybar

Stealth GLaDOS

Scrap any previous news of a computer upgrade. I decided to go ahead and build myself a whole new one. Since the motherboard and HDD of my old PC were both acting up, I figured it was time for a real upgrade.

My new computer has a 650w power supply unit from Corsair, powering a motherboard from Gigabyte and is packing an i7-3770K and an overclocked Gigabyte Geforce GTX 680 (also known as the Windforce Edition).
I call it: STEALTHGLADOS.

At first she did have something of an overheating problem, mainly due to the stock Intel heatsink and fan being of very poor quality. As a result I was forced to get a new CPU cooler. I went for the Corsair H70 Core Liquid CPU Cooler.

Full specs here:

Case: Coolermaster Centurion 5 II BLACK.

Storage: 2x 500 GB Samsung SSD

Now for some epic gaming and modeling.

Additionally, if you're a Rainbow Six fan like me. Check out this terrorist hunt video I did: RSV2 Oil Refinery

That's about it. Have a nice day!
Admiral Skeybar