Blogs - Templarfreak

To start things off, some fun things I was making for an OpenRA mod that I have put on hold for now. Firstly, a really fun micro technique:

Next, a nearly full realization of Starport mechanics from D2K:

Modifcations to ProductionAirdrop:

This, along with a lot of other things I've been working on in ORA to try and learn coding, are available on my fork of OpenRA.

The next thing on this list is, I took a crack at making a Five Nights at Freddy's engine in GameMaker. I got some pretty ok progress before I dropped it for now:

Finally, this one's a big section. I started working on another ORA mod that takes huge inspiration from Team Fortress 2's Mann vs Machine. It would be a co-op mod that pins players against a ravenous and very OP AI while the players perform various objectives like defending civilians, capturing control points, stopping the AI from delivering something from one end of the map to the other, or just plain old Destroy Everything.

The Defense Buster:


The Monsterous Mammoth Tank:

Fighting it:

The Nuke Truck:

And finally, something a little ridiculous:


These would all be units exclusive to the Robots, most of these being special units that would be announced when they are coming and you'd have time to prepare.

So, a little game on the SEGA Genesis / Mega Drive called Vectorman is one of my favorite games. And I'm actually on and off working on a fan game made in Game Maker for it. I was talking with a friend about level design ideas for it, and he wasn't so confident that he could really talk about level design for a game like this (even though he's way better at level design than me). So I think I'll share some of the videos I sent to him to help illistrate points about this game:

This is the ending section of "Day 9" titled Superstructure. This is one of my favorite points in the game. While I didn't really do this perfectly or too fast, this section is really satisfying. Mowing down all of those enemies one after the other. You have a lot of space to be able to take on the next challenge ahead, but it still feels fast paced. So you can combo the hell out of this, and then the end of the level is right there giving this big satisfying release. It's an extremely well-designed point of the game.

Arctic Ridge is overall the best level in the game. I didn't do this perfectly either, but the sheer amount of skillfull jumps and the sliding makes it really fun to master. I think this has a lot of the same characteristics as that last stretch in Superstructure, where it's not too crazily difficult and you can wing it, which is really fun, but that it also is constant action -- You are always killing or juking something and that feels really satisgying. To top that off, this one has some of the best visual directions in the game. With it snowing in some areas and having snowy waterfalls and the ice asethetic and the beams of light, and the very intro of the level clearly having a lot of thought put into it to be super cool with the intro of the music and the beam of light, the music timed perfectly with Vectorman landing.



Clockwork is an interesting boss. His head is not quite level with your jumps and they are quite persistent; if you don't hit him he comes rushing toward you. He can only take damage from the top of his head. This makes timing a very key element of this boss despite fighting it being so simple and shallow on the surface. if you can get the timing down right fighting this boss feels really satisfying and rewarding. Most of the bosses in this game aren't too interesting, but Clockwork was a much better effort to try and make a fun to fight boss (even if it's still not really great). The aesthetic is also pretty interesting. The sounds are distinct and memorable and the whole attitude Clockwork gives off is neat.

Hydroponic Lab is an interesting level. I wouldn't say it's one of the better levels in the game, but there are some very good Jaws jumps in here that feel really satisfying to pull off, if you can actually pull them off. I had to cheat at the end because I really wanted to pull off a trick against this boss and kept fucking it up. I think one thing this level does do that is quite interesting is each section is a repeat of the last with some slight variation, and while that may not sound interesting on paper it makes it feel like a very clear linear ramp up that, if you can do it good, maintains and increases your momentum which feels really good and also really different from a lot of other levels. Once again the visual direction here is also really cool, although doesn't quite look like you're indoors which is what it is suppose to be. It also reuses the track from Arctic Ridge, which isn't uncommon for this game (there's only like 7 unique tracks, almost every one is used twice). The visual direction is still neat, though. There are lights that actually change Vectorman's sprite, there's the big rolling things in the background, the big containers in the back are mysterious, and the pipe areas are strange (in a good way).

The first level, Terraport, is a nice warmup. There's a few neat tricks to do and all of the jumps (the fastest jumps) require some pretty decent timing and precision, but are still pretty forgiving. One of my favorite parts of the level is @ ~34 seconds. That's a pretty easy trick but it's a really fun trick. Terraport's visual design is probably the most consistent in the game and thematically also makes the most sense in the game. The fast-rolling sky in the background, the thin and very futuristic look, and the how you can never quite see the bottom makes you feel like you're really high up. "Port" is also one of the most iconic tracks in the game, second only to "Ocean" and "Arctic Ridge."

Well, that's about everything I wanted to talk about!

The dream came motherfucking true fuckboys. The motherfucking dream motherfucking came true. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

(Some people are actually trying to make this a real game, as well as other people making other little Grand Dad fangames)

Stuff about 4D things. Pretty crazy.

Matt Parker's lecture about it at The Royal Institute -

4D Rubik's Cube mentioned in the video - Superliminal.com

I have created some videos showing off Brood War mechanics and briefly describing them.

In this video, I demonstrate how Brood War keeps units formations consistent and clean. Brood War kept it's formations very consistent by offsetting the unit's target order point by the distance they are from the center of the group they are in when being ordered. The group is determined by what the current selection is upon issuing an order.

This is my recreation of Brood War's formation mechanics. The code can be easily translated to almost any other engine and language. The biggest thing you'll have to do is slightly rework how you get the order points of each individual unit because they use WarCraft III's built in polar coordinate point system.



Ignore what I actually say in this video, most of it is wrong. Units do not wait the period before firing, they wait the Damage Point before firing then wait the Period again before waiting the Damage Point again to fire again. Everything else is just kind of rambling without much of a point.

This is a follow up to the previous video, showing how my modifications to SC2's system, SC2's base system, and Brood War's systems all compare in terms of micro and efficiency.

That's about it!

He makes some very good points here.

There is a REAL demand for Classic, Vanilla WoW servers to play the old versions of the game that people will have a funner time playing.

I don't even play WoW. I never liked WoW. But this is a pretty universal idea, here. Blizzard is a titan of a company. They have more money coming out of their money-stained anuses then they know what to do with. They can put up some Classic/Vanilla WoW servers, or hell let the people from Nostalrius set up and run the servers for them without even paying them and charge the people who play on it subscription fees! Why deny people something they want, something they know they want, something that 850,000 people were totally okay with and played on a regular daily basis. Why do this? It's stupid, if you ask me.

Okay, so, I've been considering making a game for a few months now. I've looked through lots of things, and have determine the bulk of my knowledge in games is under these 4 categories.

Strawpoll.me

(TBoI = The Binding of Isaac)

Over the past 5 or so years, these are the types of games I've been playing. Me being hyper-critical and looking into details, I've been able to come across a lot of knowledge for these. So I'm curious, out of these which do you all think I could do the best?

As a bonus, here is a teaser of some of my knowledge explaining why I don't think Larva Inject in StarCraft II is a good mechanic.

Okay, so please keep in mind these are my opinions. Blizzard has no intention of messing with Macro Mechanics again, this much is obvious, but i never really got to say my opinion on the subject. So let's just keep this to fun and games.

I'm posting this here because hopefully this is a lot less bias than traditional General Chat (God I hope so anyway). This is copy/pasted from another thread though.

So, let's take the time to explain why Larva Inject is a bad mechanic the way it stands (The idea itself can work and StarBow is proof of this). It's a bit of an in-depth reason and it takes more than just saying "because it's useless clicks" but that is a glaring issue. The biggest issue, however, is fundamentally it does not fit Zerg's identity. The main problems as to why Larva Inject is the way it is seem purely due to a lack of understanding of the source material.

When we look at a lot of mechanics in BW, we see a lot of them have an underlining theme. They don't just require player input to work effectively. They take decision making. Simply pressing buttons that you have to press did not do everything for you like Larva Inject or MULEs do, you had to know what you were doing.

That is, the things that weren't purely technical limitations of the game such as selecting 12 units or 1 building at a time or the very small amount of the map shown on the screen at one time which were there not as a design choice, or at least not purely as a design choice, but because it was left-over code from WC2 that they did not have the time or interest to change.

What are examples of this claim? Let's look at how Zerg is different from BW to SC2 in terms of macro. Hatcheries were slowly added on over the course of a game, usually maxing out at 6 to 8. But there is a choice in this, the choice to either tech or throw down another Hatchery. It wasn't uncommon for a Zerg to skip an expansion or macro hatch and instead go purely for quick tech in hopes of tech-smashing the opponent (A tactic very common in the C&C series, as well). This element can be reflected into both Terran and Protoss, though it wasn't as viable.

But why does Larva Inject provide no tactical or strategic importance like this and why is this more important than what Larva Inject does? Larva Inject boils down to being a limiting factor for Zerg. Unlike macro hatches, which were a heavy investment and could be chosen against, Queen Larva Inject has neither of these factors going for it. Instead, it is a requirement to effectively play the race as well as results in numerous units being rendered cost and/or supply inefficient, which is the exact opposite of what Zerg's original identity was. The majority of units were generally efficient in either cost or supply or both, but because they were so cheap, and stats being addressed accordingly to this cheapness, they were still dealt with even in huge numbers. Why is this important when we look at SC2, though? It's a different game, after all. The answer to that is simple. We cannot exceed the predecessor if we do not understand why the predecessor worked. When we can understand this, we can understand how to make a sequel that is different and make it work. This is something that Larva Inject completely fails on.

Larva Inject is a complete misunderstanding of what made Zerg work in the previous installment. Zerg did not work because they could produce tons of units really quickly. Zerg worked because they had highly cost-efficient units that could be produced kind of quickly. Larva Inject, contrarily in SC2, fails at this entirely by producing units too fast and making too many at one time. This resulting in units having to be toned down, which gives a wealth of other problems. Look at how StarBow's Larva Inject works. It is significantly better design wise because it slowly trickles in Larva. It has a bonus for having a lot less maintenance. As well, the Queen has an ability that increases the construction speed of buildings, breaking the second-biggest problem with macro hatches in SC2 - they take too long to build. So you could choose to go with Larva Injects, or make more Macro Hatches. (The other problem with Macro Hatches in SC2 is fixed as well but it's fixed by completely rebuilding the game from the ground-up, it cannot be bandaided easily though I won't say it's impossible.)

Larva Inject has no tactical or strategic purpose. It serves as a dump to raise the difficulty floor, which is something that should be as low as possible, and actually lowers the difficulty ceiling, something that should be as high as possible (Or at least with my understanding of an E-Sport which I will admit is lacking compared to actual game design). The complete removal of Larva Inject, as well as some buffs to Macro Hatches and rebalancing across the board for Zerg units (Totally not hard to do as long as you got the right picture in mind), would see Zerg being more Zergy and less death bally. There would be more time to focus on multiple points across the map as a Zerg.

So, the main points here:

1. Larva Inject is more of a hindrance than beneficial.
2. The way Larva Inject works is a clear misinterpretation of Zerg's identity. (There is absolutely NO reason to change their identity. You can change up all their mechanics all you want, hell you could even remove Larva and Zerg could still work, but changing their identity is something that should never be touched. You'd be better off making a new race.)
3. Larva Inject is pointless clicks, it makes a hard entry-point barrier but makes Zerg easier than BW once you get the hang of it, which is the exact-opposite of what Blizzard and the community as a whole wants.
4. Remove the Baneling, Widow Mine, and Disruptor.

Well, even though I tried as hard as possible to make it descriptive and objective, this is still rather weak and bias. But it should still at least get the point across. I have no hopes Blizzard will actually fix these issues that I see, but at least it is good knowledge to pass on for the future.

I'm gonna try and do ... Something here to help out. Spreading the word can really do that. This is a very, very important thing. I really can't explain it well, but this video does it EXTREMELY well.

*Drool* Good music *Drool*

Youtube.com
Youtube.com
Youtube.com

There's SO MUCH MORE, but these are my favorites.

Approaching Nirvana is a small 2-man group. I don't know a whole lot about them, as I have only recently started listening. Whenever I take the time to learn more, I might edit this blog with more info.

In the mean time, I'll talk about the music. It's great electro/dubstep, real electro/dubstep. This isn't the generic WUB shit, this is actually very complex music that you have to listen to multiple times to hear everything, to fully experience it, and to feel the emotions it's giving you.

I can't actually figure out how to input these "IFrame" videos, but oh my god...

This is absolutely amazing, and it's called yellowBird.

Yellowbirdsdonthavewingsbuttheyflytomakeyouexperiencea3dreality.com

I don't have anything else to say other than this is absolutely amazing...There's no way to describe it in any other way possible.