My indie game is in the public beta-stage

Hey guys. I realize I haven't posted in quite some time, and I'm sorry about that. For the latter quarter of 2014 and the first of 2015, all my free-time was spent working on my final exam thesis. After handing it in I didn't exactly feel like writing anything for some time, not to mention the fact that I was then working hard to get caught up with the school-work I had missed out on doing because I was working on the thesis. Now however, I've finally got some free time. I got the results back and I'm happy to say the professor who graded my paper (shameless bragging coming up in 3...2...1...) was overly impressed, so much in fact I got the top grade. I'm extremely pleased by this (obviously) but what pleases me more is that he said the main attraction was the practical part of my thesis, I.E. the video game I've been working on for just over a year now. After I'd handed in my thesis I was no longer forced to do everything on my own. The project was all mine, and I brought in help from a good friend of mine who is quite good at programming. This really helped speed things up, and it brought my passion back for developing the game.

The public beta v.2 is currently available as free download for both Mac and Windows PC. In this version, stage 1-5 are perfectly playable, and I've gotten some great feedback from friends, family and random people at my school who got to try it out. Stage 6 is playable, but there is no way to finish that level in PB v.2. Public Beta v.3 is almost finished though. Stage 6 is playable there, and a few new features are being polished. Overall, I wan't to add a little bit more before uploading the update. Anyways, here are the links to download the game. It's safe and it's free, how could you complain?

Mac-version
https://mega.nz/#!zQIDyJCK!V7s12zfXAFn20r_OfgQQK9Mjbvwvgs7RwoRVIZW8eic

Windows-version:
https://mega.nz/#!6E4UjaCL!yfzmveTrgNknv14qv48l6BP68-lcm3XKRIsP5H9Xrcg


PS: If part of the main-menu buttons are off-screen, quit the game and choose a different aspect ratio on the settings-screen that is displayed when booting up the game. This is a problem I've been working to solve but it still might impact some screen sizes. I will post the links do download all future versions of my game right here on this blog. I hope to post some dev-posts here as well, so if you like the game, please keep checking back. That's it, and keep chasing the game.

Battlefield Hardline Beta Code

Hey guys / girls. I just thought I'd say thank you for supporting my blog by letting you know I have a spare Battlefield: Hardline PS4 beta code! It's up for grabs

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Hope whoever reads this first will enjoy the Beta as much as I am. Come find me, mr16thprestige, on PS4 and we will team up to win in a few games of Battlefield: Hardline

Battlefield Hardline beta - Review and my thoughts

E3 is upon us, (well, almost) and the preview shows have begun. In an upcoming article (probably posted tomorrow) I'll provide a quick run-down of my thoughts on all the biggest announcements, but right now I'm writing to you about one thing. My initial reactions on the Battlefield Hardline beta. Luckily I got instant access, and I've now been playing it for roughly 2 hours.

First of all let me clarify. As you all know, this is a early beta so yes, it does pack it's fair share of bugs. They are anything from minor spawn bugs (such as the gun spawning before the character model) all the way up to a still vehicle jumping several feet into the air, hitting you and giving you a "Killed In Action" screen as you where 10 feet away from depositing $500 000 into your teams base in the all new gamemode "Blood Money". At times (such as the time described above) I wanted to smash my PS4 into little pieces and burn them on a pile, but I didn't; for two reasons. #1: Because that would be insanely stupid of me, and #2: because that would mean I had to stop playing Battlefield Hardline. Although the Beat only features one map and two game modes, I got a general impression of the game and overall I have to say I absolutely love it. It truly does capture the classic Battlefield feel of gameplay, something I was worried a new developer wouldn't be able to do, whilst at the same time it's the most fast-paced, high-octane FPS experience I've ever had. 12 player Free-for-all Games on Nuketown in COD: Black Ops aren't as intense as BF:H, and that's truly saying something. Especially when it's taking place on a map with of the scale you've come to expect from Battlefield. The two new game modes has the same need for strategy, team-work and precision as any Battlefield game before it, yet at the same time it delivers gameplay that's more fast-paced and intense than any other shooter I've ever played.

Both game modes has one team playing as the cops, and one as the criminals. The Heist-mode has the criminals blowing up a armored car, stealing two bags of loot and delivering them too an escape location. The cops must stop them at all costs. The bags of loot do not re-spawn at the armored police truck after being dropped by a killed criminal carrying the loot, instead they stay right there and the cops can't pick them up. This may seem odd, but it creates for extremely diverse combat, with the center of the battle constantly being moved around.

The Blood Money-mode puts a big money pile in the center of the map, with a base for cops and one for criminals, each on their own side. The goal is to collect money from the pile and bring it back to your own base. The team with the most amount of $ in their base when the game ends, wins. This would make for a pretty cool game mode, but what puts an amazing edge to it is that you can actually go the enemies base and take cash from them. This gives you 3 locations to, two where you attack and one to defend, all of witch are always sprawling with players from both teams, as well as a highly trafficated and very dangerous path in between. Another great twist that ads to the excitement is that as you come to either the money pile or the enemies base, you hold down a button to collect cash. This takes a few moments; but if you're willing to take the risk you keep going and collect more. Each time the progress-indicator-circle thing goes around, you collect another $100 000 (max carrying amount is $500k). Keep going and risk loosing both valuable time as well as your life, or safe it, taking home only $100k each time. The choice is yours, and this makes for an extreme thrillride. The adrenalin rush of driving of at high speed with $500k strapped to the back of your motorbike, hoping you'll make it back without dying; hoping no-one from the enemy team is waiting at your base, ready to blow you away; is absolutely unmatched by anything I've played before.

Next up, I'd like to mention how there are a lot more vehicles to drive around in; and they're all for the better. They handle differently and provide different amounts of cover. The motorcycles are extremely agile and fast, but the trade-off is that you're very exposed. The armored trucks provide great cover, but in return they're fairly slow and getting around tight corners or navigating inside buildings can quite the challenge. The fact that the amount of vehicles pr game is so much higher also ads a great edge to each game you play. Everything is more fast-paced, yet it's all still battlefield.

A lot of COD players often rip on Battlefield for being slow. Well, not anymore they can't, because BF:H provides games with the intensity level of COD4's Shipment map, yet it does it on an epic scale with huge, destructable environments, gorgeous graphics and fun, new game modes we've never seen the likes of in either franchise. I myself have been with both franchises for years, and I have countless hours in both COD and BF. I'm not going to lie; I'm pretty dissappointed with what we've seen of COD: Advanced warfare so far, given the fact that it's so called COD game, featuring Jet-packs, lasers, giant Halo mechs and exo-suits. With Battlefield Hardline take a huge step forward for the franchise, without dropping what's made earlier Battlefield games so good, It's starting to be clear to me; you don't need to completely re-think everything about what your game is actually about; in order to create an entirely new, much improved and different experience. Thusly, it becomes more and more clear what FPS I'll be playing, come this fall and winter.

Indie Game in progress #1

First of all, (as tends to be the trend these times) let me apologize for not posting so frequently as i planned. I've got a lot going on in my life and unfortunately I haven't had the time to write for this blog. I took a very enjoyable trip to Dubai with my family, and a absolutely insane trip to New York City; where I among vacationing, also did some marketing for my blog by putting my business card on subways around the city. In general I had a blast (and maybe I also got kind of blasted, but tell no-one about that).  I'm hoping I can get my friend, currently heavily engaged in Watch Dogs, to give me a review I can publish here, seeing as I haven't been able to aquire the game yet.

That being said; here is the first update post on my Indie game project; for now named "Project: Arena". I explained in my last post how it is a major part of my final exam thesis; for more info on this, read the article previous to this one.

I finally finished design on my intro/tutorial level where players learn how the game works. I've in the small sense started experimenting with astetichs, but for now I'm focusing on the core gameplay mechanics. It's almost there, but I'm still trying to solve a few problems with velocity, speed and gravity; although that all boils down to the hard part of the process...coding; witch is where my skills fall short. Luckily, Unity has a lot of great built-in features that helps ease the process and with the progress I've been making lately, this is what I plan to work on in the coming weeks, after ironing out a few other major papers for school. I'm now happy to report I've set up out the transition between levels, and as a result of nailing this, I just kept on doing what I like best about working on my game; designing levels and watching my friends and family getting annoyed for not completing them without several failures. I've completed the basic design for Level 1 (tutorial/intro) level 2 and level 3. I'm also happy to announce there is a nifty little easter egg in level 3. I just couldn't hold back when the idea struck me, and hitting two birds with one stone, with the easter egg I'm making a less than completely subtle reference to one of my all-time FAV games, Portal. The great thing about the easter egg, is that I don't feel it's been tacked on. It naturally sprung out of the original design idea I had for the level. I plan to upload a downloadable version of the game as soon as I get it to what I feel comfortable calling an alpha version (although, with other people playing it, technically it'd be a Beta but hey, you guys can be the exclusive test-players. The very first people outside of my inner circle who get to test out the game).

All in all, I'm very please with the progress so far, and I feel it's shaping up to be a much better project than I could've ever hoped for. I should post a youtube video soon enough, showing a walktrough of the first 3 stages, and maybe even some rageouts of my friends failing at the prototype level (currently not part of the game. Given it's difficulty level It won't be featured until much later in the game). That's all 

A final exam thesis on...video games?

I attend the closest norwegian equivelant of High School (our school system is somewhat different in terms of how it’s divided up in years, our “high school” is the optional year 11, 12 and 13) at a somewhat unique privat school. We actually don’t have any traditional final exams (or any exams at all for that matter). Although there are normal tests troughout our years at school, our final exam starts around February year 12, and ends aroung the same time in year 13. We get roughly 1 year to write a major thesis, about a freely chosen topic, and that serves as our final exam grade. Each student chose their own topic, and writes a thesis of 8 000 words or more + spends at least 100 hours making a practical work that can be presented at the end of the year (if they choose to focus on the practical. If they want a theoretically oriented thesis it’s a minimum of 12 000 words, and no limit on how long they have to spend working practically). Naturally, given my love for the cultural artform on witch this blog is based, I chose video games.

Over the course of the following year, I will write a major exam thesis about the history of video games; I will discuss and debate wether or not they are a cultural artform and how they can impact gamers and society. That’s all very interesting, but the main show is my practical project. I will (at least attempt to) make my own video game from scratch. So far, it goes by the name “Project: Arena”. It’s a 3D platformer, where you jump from platform to platform (yes, that’s actually what you do in this platformer), and try not to fall into the water below. I’m working with the free version of the Unity 3D game engine. Although it’s still fairly “barebones” I have a fully functional demo build, with 2 levels (and a third i originally built as a prototype, I will re-model it later to use in the “finished” game). Visually wise it’s nothing special as of yet, seeing as I have no finished textures, and I have yet to add any particular level of detail, and I’m still mainly working on tuning the gameplay “specs”. The height, speed and jump height of my character. Ones I get those “specs” closer to where I wanna be (I’m almost there) I’ll shift my focus to learning more about visual polish and start making new levels (as well as iron out some more than annoying problems with the pause menu).

As mentioned earlier, It’s a 3D platformer where you’r object is not to fall into the water below. The reason for the name, is that it all takes place within an Arena. I have several good ideas (at least i think they’re good) about what I can do to make the game interesting, including some features that I personally love, that faired over pretty well when i setup my prototype level at school, allowing my classmates to try the game out. They all got really, really frustrated because it was so hard, but few wanted to pass it on to the next guy in line, and I guess that’s a good sign (…or bad; R.I.P. flappy birds).I hope to share my progress on the project here; also, some of the stuff I’ll be writing in my thesis are highly relevant to this blog. Earlier, I shared a version of a chapter in my thesis on this blog, “are video games culture” and It’s one of my proudest articles. I hope to post more from the paper onto this blog, including my thoughts on how video games can impact society and gamers. I plan to release a reactions-video on youtube, where i filmed my some of the people at my school playing the prototype level for the first time(s. yes, they tried more than a few times). The reason for this is because many of them got delightfully frustrated and engaged. Of course I will post a link to the video onto this blog, so stay tuned. It’d definitely help you (and me, although I’m not a youtube partner) if you subsribed to my channel, “Thomas Tørrissen”, witch can also be found by searching for “Mr16thprestige”, although I have been thinking about making a new youtube user for the purposes of this project, although I don’t know if that’s so relevant, because I’m not sure how many videos I’ll have the time to record and edit, but we’ll see.

That’s it for now, and thank you guys for reading my blog. I notcied particular interest for my thoughs on the “how I met your mother” ending, and my alternate ending, and I thank you for that. I’ll write you in my next post, hopefully soon.

how i met your mother - my thoughts & alternate ending

(spoiler-free section)

So….the series finale to the long-running (9 seasons; damn) sitcom “how i met your mother” (HIMYM) recently aired, and shocked millions of fans worldwide with a very unexpected and controversial ending. Now, after 9 seasons of building up to one major reveal, and a ending that has so many loose ends to tie up, it’s literally going to be impossible to sattisfy everyone. I myself has bench-watched the show like a maniac, and I’m a huge fan, so naturally, when i viewed the final episode, I was on the edge of my seat just itching for the final reveal, whilst simultaneously I was a bit sad, because within half an hour, the series would be done; over; finito. I can honestly say it’s been an amazing ride, and HIMYM is probably tied, if not maybe the teeniest, tiniest behind the Big Bang Theory, for the title of my all time favorite TV sitcom. After watching the final ending, I was shocked, but not appaled. Was it bad? No, not really. After thinking about it, it made sense. But just because it made sense, that doesn’t mean it was nearly as good as it could’ve been. Now follows a quick run down of the actual ending, why I didn’t like it all that much, and how I think the show should’ve ended, with an angle that I feel actually would’ve sattisfied the majority of fans. 

(Spoiler alert (duh), so If you haven’t seen the final episode and don’t want it spoiled, don’t keep reading untill you have watched it. )

THE ACTUAL ENDING

Season 9 was spent building up to Barney and Robins long awaited wedding. Each episode started a few hours closer to the wedding, and they all featured a combination of stories to bridge the gap between season 8 and 9, the events leading up the the wedding, and present-time events going down at the “Farhampton Inn” (the wedding locale) in the last few days before the wedding. In the final episodes we see Ted letting Barney give the “something old” locket Ted searched far and wide for, to Robin, so that she’d have it as a sign that Barney was truly commited, however Robin suspected that it was actually Ted who’d tracked it down, and she tricked the truth out of him. At that point she was shown having second thoughts about marrying Barney, and she wondered wether it was actually Ted she should be marrying. Both Ted and Barney convinced her to go thru with the wedding and she was happy. The “mother”, revealed to be named Tracy, was the bass player in the wedding band, and Barney suggested they played a game of “have you med Ted”, but ted refused, and left to the train station so he could get back to NY in order to pack before he moved to Chicago the next morning. However the train was very late, so late that Tracy (“the mother”) showed up at the train station after the wedding gig, and another old lady sitting next to Ted on the bench convinced him to go over there and talk to her. After that, he stayed in NY. The show fast forward thru several years. Many events in thoose years such as proposal and Ted & Tracy having children have already been shown as flash-forwards in the last few episodes of season 9. After many years we see the gang back together. Marshall and Lilly did move to Italy for a year, and after they’ve come back Marshall did get his dream job as a judge. We also see that after 3 years of marriage Barney and Robin couldn’t keep going, much because Robin was traveling A LOT, now having become a very famous on-air reporter for World Wide News. They stayed friends, even after their divorce. When we finally cut to the ending of Ted telling his 9 seasons long story to his kids, we learn that he’s actually been telling it to them 6 years after Tracy (“the mother”) died of a disease unknown. They say what he’s been telling wasn’t the story of how he met their mother, but rather the story of how he’s still in love with Robin, and they tell him to go get her. The show ends with him standing outside Robins window holding the blue french horn, Robing smiling and we can assume they end up together.

Now; does this ending make sense…yes, it does. Is it the best it could’ve been? No, I don’t think so. I wouldn’t go as far as to say I feel betrayed, but there is an alternate ending I think provides much better closure, and here it is:

MY ALTERNATE ENDING

In one of the last episodes of season 9 Robin and Ted are talking on the beach. We see a flash-back to Ted’s childhood, when his best friend was a balloon, witch he lost so it flew away. We then see a scene where he does the same with Robin. He says he has to let her go, and she flies away just like the balloon did. This I feel makes very little sense, seeing as they end up together after all, but that’s not the point here. The point is, they should’ve skipped that scene, because of a reason I will explain later on. I feel that Ted should’ve met the mother of his children the way it’s shown in the show, and we should’ve gotten to see their first dinner date. They should’ve skimmed thru it, showing the “mother” telling Ted all about herself, and we would’ve got to see her saying she is all the things Ted want’s in a girl. She plays bass, she likes historical landmarks, she uses driving gloves, she loves this, she likes that etc… Ted would be silent, but smiling more and more. At the end of the date, she does what we all know is one of the things Ted values most in a relationship; she reaches for the check. At that point, Ted sees Robin standing next to the table, holding his hand, and he let’s go voluntarily, the way he in the actual ending did much earlier, and she flies away. This would show us once and for all that he had met “the one”, and he could finally get over Robin completely. He finally had closure with her.

I think this ending works better because that’s really what the show has been about all along. Ted meeting the one. The one who would finally give him closure, and let him get over Robin once and for all. A stale ending with him just meeting “the mother” wouldn’t have worked. It would’ve been a huge anticlimax, after such a long, suspensefueled ride; and that’s why I think they wen’t with the shock ending they did. However I feel it just doesn’t “work” if you catch my drift. I don’t feel neither I nor Ted get the closure I want, and I’m left with a somewhat empty feeling.

So there you have it. My thoughts on the actual ending to HIMYM, and my alternate ending. I’m happy to respond to any comments you have on the ending, or my alternative one. Thanks for reading. Chase Game out.

The Online Gamer

First of all, let me say I'm sorry my Bioshock Infinite review is taking so long, It's a big game with lots of content; now:

"Watt-up noobs? stop being a bunch of team killing p#ssies and back this project now"...is what I'd say if I was Aaron, the lead character in this amazing and hilarious webseries. I've been laughing my a$$ off watching this series since it first started out, and now, more than 80 episodes later I can tell you it's been one hell of a ride. I'm pretty skint right now, but i dug up what I could to back this project and help them reach their funding goal on Kickstarter. Upon reaching their goal, witch I sincerely hope and believe they will, the Reckless Tortuga team will begin production on a new season of Online Gamer. They promise it'll be bigger, longer and better, and given how amazing their last 80 episodes was, (excluding of course their one, tiny little unfortunate event, yes I'm looking at you "online gamer: zombies") I truly believe them. I so far have a little over 1100 klicks on my blog, and if all of you guys gave just 1.45$ they'll have reached they're 25.000$ goal. Now other people keep pouring in the cash theese guys so badly need to make another season of my favorite webseries, and the cash they truly deserves for their amazing work so far, but the more the merrier. Or, in this case, the more people who give, the more, longer and better episodes we'll see of Online Gamer. Now if you haven't seen the show yet, I highly reccomend you stop what you're doing right now, that's right, I'm actually telling you to take a break from reading my blog, and hit up the links below to check out the first, original episode.

Once you've done that, please help out the amazing Reckless Tortuga team, and make this new season happen by backing them on kickstarter.
http://kck.st/1hXVWfn


The first Online Gamer episode.
http://www.recklesstortuga.com/episodes/the-online-gamer-game-night-2/

All the episodes can be watched either on Youtube, or their website.
I'm not in any way endorsed by or affiliated with Reckless Tortuga, Kickstarter or any other external parties. I'm doing this to show my appreciation for a webseries I've loved for years