Escape from Death Mountain and Biggles on Mars

I think anyone who had nerdy parents when they were little, or perhaps some OTHER reason an early start on PC gaming probably played one of the many point-and-click adventures that were available at the time. By this I refer to games such as The Broken Sword and Myst, though more specifically – games such as Monkey Island which are games made under the Lucas-Arts point-and-click platform.

Given the popularity of these games there is now a way to make your own using a tool called Adventure Game Studio. A member of a community I attend called thecatamites has in the past 6 months created 2 short games following the formula but with a twist – the world and scenery are made from cardboard and lego and the dialogue is even more creatively wacky.

thecatamites new creation features giant bone-crushing robots driven by insane tapdancing enemies!

The simplicity of the concept produces some excellent atmosphere – visuals that could not be achieved simply by drawing them on a computer. These games are essentially hand made.

I am posting them here because I really enjoyed both of them and would like to preserve them in a post here. I’m not going to rate them or anything as I lack the methodical approach they have on game review sites but I will say that they were both highly enjoyable and you can find links to their download pages at the bottom of this post.

Album Progress and a Demo Song

This semester (This year since January) my musical direction has taken a turn in the respect that it is no longer completely synthesised and sequenced. I have finally started recording vocals and with more recent tracks I have used a new MIDI controller for drum sequencing. As 2009 as moved onwards I have got a little bit better at production each week and hopefully I will have something released around about mid-June (so Download Festival time-ish).

I have ordered some lightscribe discs so the materialistic people amongst you will be able to order at CD with printed artwork for the price of the disk and postage (can’t be more than £2-3 i guess). Or if you are nice to me I will give you one for free. Perhaps… Bwa ha ha.

I will also be uploading the entire album to MySpace on the day of its release as they have enabled up to 10 tracks per artist now (Thanks Tom!).

I can also reveal the tracklisting will be as follows:
.
Heart
Enter Apocalypse (Pinball Witch)
Pap

I.
Engine One Has Failed
Black Box Recorder
Waste Land (Instrumental)

II.
Followed
Desolate

III.
A Dream for the Blind (A Path Defined)

I have also attached a rough demo of a song called Pap which is off the album. Enjoy.

Listen now! (3:37min / 5MB)

Mind Erased v0.9

This is a track I made this month which follows a general concept of having your memory cleansed/erased.

I’ve had a few comments and crits about people saying “oh you broke my crap speakers” or “make it longer” so I will look into those over the holiday season.

I am making a short 3D arcade game for a competition so that may or may not be posted here in the immediate future. Oh, and Merry Christmas.

Listen now! (3:19min / 5MB)

Lite-C Tutorials on Gaming World

As one of my activities I write tutorials on how to make 3D games in Lite-C. There are currently 4 available and you can visit them on

3d Map Editor Progress

I’ve been working on an RPG engine for Lite-C and the part I am attempting to tackle first is the level editor. The above video demonstrates the current abilities of the editor where you can load models in the game directory and place them. If you press P whilst the editor is activated it saves the current level file with new objects in place.

Level loading and saving is pretty much finished. Now I need to concentrate on user interface objects and contextual menus, for example there would be a checkbox as to whether or not the map has a water table. A value of sunlight and ambient light for the level model (So there can be dark levels also).

In the bigger picture I have got a cutscene sequencer planned too. The general concept of this is that it remembers what animations the models are playing and what positions they are at during “keyframes”. It then calculates the middle values and interpolates between frames allowing for characters to move from place to place.

This concept could also have an incorporated particle system generator (think explosions, spells, rain, smokestacks).

I have about a hundred ideas on my notedpad that I would like to implement and I’m ticking them off one at a time.

Stay tuned for more developments.

-Ed