Right, sorry the video turned out a bit on the slow side, there hasn’t been a speed drop just Fraps being pants. Pantsfraps.

Anyway, a bit later than I’d wanted due to small child management, it’s a few tweaks to get Death Ray Manta to be Better Ray Manta and to prepare it for the Android release also. Which is stupid overdue but in my defence, I’ve only just got the exporters and I don’t have an Android device, which makes it all a bit awkward, yeah?

Like that’s going to stop me! Bwahaha etc…?

So what’s new here? Not a great deal on the surface, plenty o’tweaks under the hood.

New shinies. Improved the particle effects a bit. Could probably do better still but that’d mean rewriting chunks. I will do that, just not yet.
New audio bits because I love Berzerk
Faster transitions due to popular demand
Tidied up some graphics
Fixed the ending. Erm hahaha shush.
Performance tweaks
Readied the Android version for release, date soon.

Pc/Mac update next week. This one as soon as the overlords give the nod.

Found this down the back of the sofa from a very long time ago, figured fuck it, here’s some pictures of stuff I did many years ago using Neon.

Neon’s that thingy you probably know better as the burbly music thing on the 360. Once upon a time, Team Llamasoft were planning on pushing out a PC version complete with editor but for lots of reasons, that never came to pass. It’s a shame because it’s one of the most astounding tools I’ve ever had the privilege of going near and cements the insane majesty of Jeff’s genius even if that genius doesn’t quite extend to user friendly presentation.

So y’know, threw a few shots of the editor in as well but it’s really hard to convey just how many options you have to hand and how powerful a thing it is, there’s everything from mesh generation to all manner of blending modes, ways of controlling the feedback by linking it to music or to sticks or, well, there’s loads and it can all be tweaked and twiddled with sitting back with a 360 pad in hand. It’s a truly obscene and inspirational little thing.

It works roughly like this, you have a matrix of different effects to fill up, these are what will be watched or piloted just like the 360 lightsynth (what’s a lightsynth? Think the worlds most insane visualiser and you’re still not close but on the right track). You can flick between these using the dpad and they’re pilotable by up to 4 people at the same time (if you make it so). Each of these screenshots comes from effects that you can play and twiddle with as a pilot and all of them also react in some way to the music you punt through your machine. Most of them were also me finding my way round and seeing “what happens if I do that and then do that and OH MY PRETTY EYES”.

So how do you edit these things? Each of those effects is made up of what Jeff calls stacks. Stack are like the LEGO of Neon, you can have up to 8 stacks per pilotable effect.

Each stack has individual effects within it – maybe you want to generate a tunnel, maybe you want one that’s just about setting up feedback controls, maybe you want something to fuck around with the textures, maybe you want to take a previous stack and apply effects to that? You can do that too. Individual stacks can use other stacks as textures until it’s feedback all the way down if you’re so inclined.

Within those stacks you can also procedurally generate some meshes to play around with, there’s a variation on Psychedelia in there, there’s camera controls and I think the kitchen sink as well. Oh, and webcams. You could use these effects in conjunction with your webcam for some truly out there results. As I say, kitchen sink.

It’s quite the thing and it’s saddening that it never got to see the light of day and even more saddening that it wasn’t to become something that could net Jeff quite a few Earth quids.

Anyway! Jeff’s doing some Vita stuff now and some pay what you want thingies. You should support that rather than dwell upon what could have been. To the future! Oh, and here’s some Jeff did himself from around the same time that I’d forgotten about. Thanks for the reminder, Jeff.

“We can’t afford it”

I was a kid, I knew that. I knew we couldn’t afford it but still, I was a kid. You’ve got to ask, right? And I did. I stood there in Boots with a cassette in my hand, sometimes it was the same one, sometimes it was a different one, a different price and I’d ask. “Mum, can we buy this one?”

I knew we couldn’t afford it because I knew my dad was out of work. I knew my mum was out of work. It wasn’t long ago they were in work but then it sort of changed. I just knew that one day there was work, then there was none and then my parents stayed at home. I’d been brought up, in the main, by my nan and grandad whilst my mum and dad went off to work. Then I wasn’t.

I knew that whatever small amount of money they’d had, that was gone. It didn’t take long to work through and spend, not when you’ve got a kid. I knew that then, I was the kid. They told me. I knew the food changed. Sumptuous home cooked meals replaced with mince and something, chips and something, staples to get by. And the portions were smaller. I knew that. I knew it because I felt hungry.

But they did it all the same the Christmas before. They bought me that computer, they bought me some games. I didn’t even have to pull the homework stunt, “it’s for the future”. They knew.

I was a daydreamer. In many ways, I still am. I still drift off sometimes into my own little world. I watch my own kid running round the garden chasing imaginary Daleks with his lightsabre and I remember that. I remember what it’s like. I once dreamt that the shed was a portal to another dimension, an exciting dimension where things happened, where I could fight Daleks myself and win and I’d win because it was a better place where I could win.

When I was fighting Daleks I wouldn’t have to pretend I couldn’t hear my mum crying at night.

I’d come home from school, I’d do the things I had to do then I’d rush and play the computer. My parents never really complained too much about this, I couldn’t quite understand why. Everyone else, they got told off for spending too long on the computer but not me. From the time I’d finished doing the stuff I needed to do then had my tea, I could stay on the computer until bedtime. I didn’t always but I did a lot.

I remember walking to school talking to the headmaster. He had a Speccy too, just like me. “I’ll copy you some games if you give me money for the tapes”. No, I said. My dad can already get me games. Even if he couldn’t I’d have lied. I’d have lied because I knew my parents didn’t have the money for tapes really. “Don’t say we’ve got no money, please”. I respected that even if I didn’t understand why I couldn’t tell anyone.

But I was a kid. And yeah, I had lots of games copied. C90′s galore filled with videogames. I’d play so many, I’d discover so many. But I was a kid and a kid in Boots faced with a rack of videogames, videogames like everyone else could have in boxes, no fast forwarding required, I wanted that too.

“We can’t afford it”

I’d walk along the street on the way up to Boots, hanging off my mum’s arm and I’d try and think of ways I could get my mum or my dad to buy me a tape. I knew it wasn’t so simple, I knew there was no work and with no work came no money and with no money came no chance. I knew that. So how could I get a chance? How could I change that?

“Mum, can I write to the Prime Minister?”

“What do you want to do that for?”

I looked at my mum like she was stupid. Why wouldn’t I want to write to the Prime Minister? I’d got it sussed. If, when I got home, I could write a letter to the Prime Minister then I could let her know that my mum, my dad, they weren’t happy. That they had no job and no hope of finding any. That this town, this town had no work because places were closing down all the time. I knew they were closing down because my mum’s friends, they were out of work now too. My dad’s friends, they were out of work now too. I asked why. “Because the place they worked has closed”.

I was a kid. I thought the Prime Minister was supposed to care. I had a plan and it’d pan out like this.

I’d go home, I’d write to the Prime Minister. I’d say how bad things were here, how sad my parents were, how sad my parents friends were. How much they wanted to work and then I’d post it. It’d go off to 10 Downing Street and the butler would take it to the Prime Minister. She’d open it, she’d read my story and she’d wonder if it was true. So to find out, she’d come down, she’d visit the town and I’d show her the route we took to the town centre. Not over the bridge, under the bridge. If we went over the bridge she’d miss most of what I wanted her to see. I’d walk her past the flats and I’d say “don’t go in the flats, they’re not very nice and the people there are angry” and she’d understand. I couldn’t take her there, they smelt of wee but that’d be what I’d say.

I’d walk her that way because she could see the places that were closed. I’d tell her how the clouds smelt like trumps and the sky always seemed grey here. I’d point at the litter on the ground, the chip papers, the sweet wrappers and say how they never seemed to get cleared up round here, they just blew around for a while until they settled in a hedge and I’d show her the hedges filled with papers so she’d know I wasn’t lying. I’d walk her to Boots and I’d tell her that all I wanted, all I really wanted was for my mum to be happy enough, to have enough food so that she could buy me a computer game or two.

And she’d understand. She’d look at the town, she’d walked with me this far and she’d know what to do. She’d send some money to the council, that’s what she’d do. She’d send some money to the council and the town would sparkle again and when it sparkled, the shops would reopen, the factories would come back because who wouldn’t want to live in such a beautiful place? And she’d do this and then she’d get in her car and leave and I’d say “thank you”. That was it, that was the plan.

“I don’t think she reads kid’s letters”, my mum said.

I came home from school the next day and my mum told me we were going out. There was a new store up town and we had to go and visit it. Off we set, my mum, my grandad and me. It was a long walk, we walked up under the bridge, across the smaller railway bridge, up the road I’d planned on showing the Prime Minister. We kept walking, we walked past the town centre, this was further than I’d ever been. My eyes lit up when we finally got there, a shop that sold nothing but computer games. Incredible.

“Mum, can I have this?”, I held up a copy of Psytron. I’d be lying if I told you now I hadn’t chosen it because it came in the biggest of all the boxes.

My mum took it from my hands and went to the counter, Psytron bought and bagged. My grandad smiled at her and off we went back home.

“Say thank you to your grandad too”

I didn’t know why but I thanked him anyway. Then we went home and played computer games.

My kid plays Minecraft. All his clique at school play Minecraft.

They just rarely play it as a videogame.

Sure, if you listened to their chatter, the gabble of children all trying to say “yeah, I do that LOADS”, you’d probably assume that all they ever do is play Minecraft as videogame but we parents, we know that’s not really the case but ssssh, don’t let on. Don’t be that person.

No, instead they play Minecraft as game.

It’s your turn to be the creeper. SSSS. You can’t go over there, SPIDERS. This twig is my pick, I’m mining for gems.

Let’s play Minecraft Tick, whoever has the torch can’t be tagged.

Videogames become games and Minecraft becomes games, it’s a thing.

Yup, I’m still smiling too. Everything seems about right.

(with apologies to Mike who, as we all know, made Thomas a wonderful thing but I can’t resist a cheap shot in retaliation to other cheap shots)

–CONTAINS SPOILERS–

About 4 hours into the game, I put these words down on a forum…

—

Anyway, 4 hours in to Infinite Tea and it’s an incredibly silly thing that’s absolutely stunning in so many ways. It’s spectacular to look at – I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything look so magical in a game, each of the areas of Columbia, from the streets to the skylines are stunning and for the most part leagues ahead of anything I’ve seen in a game. It’s full of little neat touches and it feels very much like a passion project in building this place. No spoilers but the beach sequence is just wondrous.

However the facade is one that slips easily. From the opening sequences which have both a real wow factor (something that the game never really let’s up with to be fair to it) and Columbia feeling like having stepped into a crazy unreal but real feeling place, it quickly falls into videogame maps and videogame spaces in a videogame world and believing in Columbia as a fictional place crumbles to make way for believing in Columbia as a series of challenges to overcome.

And then it jumps back and you’re back in a tangible place again. And then it jumps back and you’re in a videogame. And then it jumps back and so on. It’s a conflicted thing where the two parts of Infinite Tea dilute each other but fight to be the best bit of it. Both are so good but the videogame is a good videogame and the story pieces are good story pieces but the leaps between the two are stark, it’s a big box game with the heart of a fantastical story book. And that’s weird.

Like I’ve just finished a sequence that’s pure Double Fine after riding through an arcade game after walking through a serious faced I HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY bit. It’s all very much “make your mind up”.

I guess it’s made more strange by the game being very definitely Bioshock so you have a comfort blanket of the familiar punctuating the unfamiliar. I’m not sure yet if this is really smart or not. Maybe.

And in judging it by what it isn’t corner, it’s not a tight, compact tale like Dishonored or Bulletstorm so it has coherence problems due to big box game with a big box playing time. I don’t know if I’d want Infinite Tea to be this thing but I’d like to see what Levine could do without reaching for the many hours o clock game time. I suspect there’d be a truly amazing videogame waiting there but who knows?

—

I’ve finished the game now.

Tonight, this piece passed me on the way through the Twittersphere: Why is Bioshock Infinite a first person shooter?, a piece that smartly concludes that it’s a first person shooter because they’re the dominant genre so duh. OBV. I mean, what else would it be?

Thing is, I’m a massive advocate for “more to life than manshoot 7″, I understand and felt the incongruities of the two parts of Bioshock Infinite and how story and shooting were often at odds with each other, I’ve played the game, I totally get that feeling that something maybe is a little bit odd here because for a good few hours I really felt that. Towards the end I was feeling big box game length fatigue something rotten, I’d stopped enjoying the combat as the game fell into traditional videogame things, do 3 things, fight a boss, fight the boss again over here, defend the arbitrarily decided item or you will explode and oh, look – it’s a videogame – it was dragging and I wanted it all over, it felt like the game was writing big but thinking small on so many levels because christ, this is Bioshock again isn’t it?

I realised that most of what sat uneasy with it is that I’d played Bioshock before, I’ve played this Bioshock before.

Sure, I haven’t played Bioshock in Columbia before. Last time I played Bioshock, we were under the deep waters learning about how not to play golf and people asking me very, very nicely about stuff. But still, I’ve played Bioshock and this is Bioshock and Bioshock is an FPS.

Bioshock Infinite isn’t an FPS because they’re the dominant genre. Bioshock Infinite is an FPS because that’s what it wants to be, that’s what it is. It’s an FPS because it’s Bioshock and Bioshock is an FPS. It is not in the wrong genre, it is absolutely in the right genre.

Which sounds stupidly fucking circular, right? You could justify anything with that sort of argument, right? Except AND HUGE FUCK OFF SPOILERS FOLLOW, Bioshock Infinite is a game about being Bioshock as much as it’s a game about wibbly wobbly oh fuck off Steven timey wimey. It makes no bones about being Bioshock. Being Bioshock is very much part of the story of Bioshock Infinite, what it means to be Bioshock is part of the story of Bioshock Infinite. Like when learning how not to play golf in Bioshock wasn’t just about a plot beat but a commentary on player agency, Bioshock Infinite shines the mirror on big box games, being a big box game and what that means for Bioshock.

It tells this story as well as telling a story about a girl, a city in the sky and some tears in the fabric of reality, as well as being a tragedy in videogame form.

If you strip out the FPS from Bioshock Infinite, if you strip out the Bioshock from Bioshock Infinite then a whole substantial part of what Bioshock Infinite is is lost. If you strip that out, then we’re saying that FPS games can’t make commentary on games, players, the industry in big box form on their own terms, they just have to be fucking popcorn entertainment. It’s OK for Little Inferno to pass comment on our freemium world, our pastimes and more because that’s indie, right? Those rebels! But AAA? Stick to the fucking story, you lot. We don’t need your videogame about videogames in our videogames, we just want the popcorn, we want the flowchart plot, we’ll come out and say “the best bits of this game were the bits with no game, next time, take the game out” and we’ll do it with sincerity because hey, it’s an FPS and fuck those manshoot guys. Fuck them all.

No. Fuck you. We can be better than this. Bioshock Infinite is an FPS. Bioshock Infinite wouldn’t work as an RPG, a sneak-em-up, a Dear Esther tour of Columbia. Because then it wouldn’t be Bioshock Infinite, flaws and all. Fuck your no thinking allowed in manshoots, fuck it all.

We can make a point about something other than the human condition and what it means to kill or whatever else predictable “but what if we could talk to the monsters?” sad piano music tears of a man crying real tears nonsense you might rustle up to scream BUT WE MEAN IT, MAN into the void that whilst finally elevating our videogames to the higher echelons of art because we questioned shooting the mens or cried a little bit.

Bioshock Infinite has many faults, being an FPS isn’t one, it’s a great FPS, but I guess it says a lot when our first response to game and story being ill at ease is to want to remove the game, right?

Today I made a squid with laser beams and flew off on it into the sky.

Before that, I engineered a fight between a giant dinosaur, the tenth Doctor, Finn, Jake and God. The Tenth Doctor killed the giant dinosaur who left a giant piece of meat which we then proceeded to stick in the oven and cook whilst the Doctor flew off on a jetpac after The Ice King who seemed to be engaged in a fight with Iron Man over who could keep the staff of cats. Then I brought out the imitation horse and we had to turn the game off because nobody could stop laughing long enough to type anything.

Essentially, if you don’t like Scribblenauts you should probably just not ever talk to me again because I’m likely going to hate you.