1 Reality From The Sidelines

8

Apr

Reality Fakers’ Spring Clean!

Posted by sharpfish  Published in Reality Fakers

Well, I finally managed to banish the dreary grey backdrops and the jumble of ads and games from Reality Fakers, and make something clearer and more fun looking. More importantly I can now fit more game links onto the index page, and it’s a fairly flexible layout that leaves room for future features (such as ‘real’ indie game scene features, possibly banner ads for Atomic Pond and other’s games etc).

Reality Fakers - Computer Games and Free Downloads

Now my focus switches back to the main site ‘Atomic Pond’ which has been somewhat neglected while there is nothing to show on there. The game is still coming along well, but as always there is still so much to do, however I am looking forward to posting new shots and preview videos on the site soon.

By the way, if any indie game news site admins are reading this and you are looking for content and would like to help me out and give the game a preview when it’s closer to release then please get in touch! email address is at the foot of the Atomic Pond home page.

So, that’s enough affilliate game pushing for a while, I need all my energy to finish my own game now! :)

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6

Apr

RF Indie Game Review [ Peggle Deluxe ]

Posted by sharpfish  Published in Independent Game Reviews

What we have here is quite possibly one of the most fun casual arcade games that has ever been made! It’s certainly getting a lot of people talking about, and more importantly playing, it. Yes it’s Peggle Deluxe from the masters of casual: Pop Cap Games.

Peggle Deluxe Download

To really enjoy it, you have to appreciate the lack of control and limited interaction. This is a game that is part chance, part physics and part planning. The point of the game is to clear all the orange pegs or blocks from the varied level layouts. To do this you point and shoot a ball from the top of the screen, this is then controlled by the laws of physics (or something akin to it) until it falls off the bottom of the screen, if you are lucky or planned your shot right, it will fall into the ‘cup’ that moves from side to side along the bottom. If it does fall into this then you get a ‘free ball’ condition. Because this is somewhat random but can be partialy judged as you get more experience with the game, there is a real feeling of achievement and reward when it does fall into the cup.

So that’s the mechanics, sounds pretty simple but it plays like a dream. It’s such a fun feeling actually watching the ball(s) bounce around taking out more and more pegs, all the time the chance of an extra ball is building as your score rises. Most challenges are easy early on but the difficulty ramps up the further you play and will take some careful thinking to complete.

One especially cool feature is that each character that you unlock has their own set of themed levels and in turn their own special “bonus power” that is called into action by hitting any of the spartan green pegs. As you play, these special abilities get more inventive and more powerful and it keeps the game feeling fresh.

There is a lot to do in Peggle, you can go through adventure mode, then onto fun level challenges and even a 2 player (against a human or the computer) mode where the winner is the one who scores the most points on the shared level.

Although some players may not fully appreciate the waiting or seemingly random factor, those that persist with playing the game will understand it’s nuances and the fact that strategy can be used to good effect. The really great part is that for the majority of the time you don’t have to be a physics genius to still have fun. You can play it as a totally random point and pray game and the sharp sound effects, incentives and sometimes suprising positive action of the ball will keep you hooked.

Downsides are negligable and more down to taste, some may find the characters slightly generic and ‘too cutesy’ but it doesn’t bother me personally, and they are up to Pop Cap’s usual high standard. The gameplay is where this game excells (which is handy). One of the best casual puzzle action games in a long time and certainly one of my favourites.

Download the free version now and experience the totally addictive gameplay for yourself!

Peggle Free Download

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30

Mar

New Developments Soon!

Posted by sharpfish  Published in Game Development, Reality Fakers

Ok it’s been very quiet around here for a few weeks (again) but things are always going on behind the scenes. I’ve been burning the midnight oil working on the upcomming game which is so close to preview status you could almost bet your house on it (but please don’t).

Then in the hours when I’m not sleeping or working on the game, I am re-designing RealityFakers.com, AtomicPond.com and even my music website PaulTimson.com… First of the sites to reach “final” status (which means that for the first time in years I will actually be happy with them functionally and graphically) will be Reality Fakers which should be up by the end of next week.

Thanks for reading.

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1

Mar

Atomic Pond: Full Steam Ahead!

Posted by sharpfish  Published in Game Development

From the Atomic Pond blog:

So… to some it may have seemed as if the lack of updates concerning the debut Atomic Pond game meant I had gone the way of hundreds of other indie developers and given up…

Not at all. I have been busy with other (non games related) stuff for a while and my time is now free to concentrate solely on game #1, it’s in the final 20% of development now for sure. There have been some late changes, rethinking and all sorts of stuff that shouldn’t have happened this late in a project but as it is my first game for many years (since 1993 to be exact) I suppose it’s to be expected.

The next week or two is taken up with the remaining gameplay interaction/logic and in game graphics. After that the rest of the front end and audio will be done. And around that time I will also be updating the Atomic Pond website with a slightly new look, better navigation and some proper content (including a full game preview).

I’m still not setting firm dates as they only serve as negative points when they come and go, i’m learning to not be as optomistic about development time but will be putting many hundreds of hours into the game over the next month so it shouldn’t slip too much. I will also start sharing more info and screenshots towards the middle of march onwards.

Thanks for reading. :)

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14

Feb

Under the banner of “music”

Posted by sharpfish  Published in Misc

Recently been taking a mini-break from game dev (back on it today) to do some music related stuff. Made some banners for my own music (on myspace) and Paul Draper (the ex-lead singer from Mansun who I’m always going on about because he’s currently launching a solo career).

After months of resisting ‘myspace’ (cos it’s “for newbs init”, or so they say) I realised that if you are not on it somewhere you may as well not be on the net… or something.

If you are interested in then please check out Paul Draper:

Paul Draper

And Spacehotel:

Spacehotel

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11

Jan

Samsung YP-Z5 MP3 Player - ooh shiny!

Posted by sharpfish  Published in Technology

I got this as a gift for Christmas, I am a fan of devices that do what they are meant to do well rather than all in one gizmos (maybe the new ‘iPhone’ can tempt me in the future) so this fits the bill as a personal music player perfectly. Not many bells and whistles but it has great sound, brilliant interface and a large, bright colour screen.

Samsung YP-Z5

Of course I want to fill up the built in 4gb (flash) ASAP anyway as it will be benificial to my other activities (namely, programming and graphics production for my indie ‘vapourware’). So in a way it’s essential to the future of Atomic Pond that I mess about for the next week uploading my CD collection and album art. I normally listen from CDs or Mp3s from the computer but it’s good to have it portable to take anywhere (in case I go out of the house this year, who knows?).

The device has a brushed alluminium case, a 1.8″ tft colour screen, dedicated controls for music control (something my partner’s mini i-pod doesn’t have much to the annoyance of… mainly me more than her I admit) and the ability to have wallpapers and album art showing when browsing/playing music. This latter feature is most welcome by me as I always feel mp3s remove most of the material qualities of “owning music”. With the mini album cover pictures to accompany the tracks I can feel at one with the music, or something.

The player is loud, and the supplied headphones are good (compared to most factory supplied ones) though a new set of better aftermarket ones are probably on the horizon.

The battery life is quite good, continuous play can reach over 40 hours on one charge (that is if you leave it playing without making the backlight come on or playing around with the features). In normal use (backlight on and off, button presses, adjustments) you could expect around 10-20 hours depending on settings. The screen brightness can be turned down (it’s very bright anyway) too, I have it set on the lowest but one setting and it’s still very bright!

The picture below (taken from the internet) shows the black version with album art displaying while the album is playing. Smaller versions of this are also shown when browsing through lists so you can see at a glance which album you are selecting. Note: chunky black wire plugged in the top is not the standard one (mine was provided with normal white earphones akin to iPod ones, much smaller wire/plug)

Samsung YP-Z5 (black)

If you get one of these be sure to check the firmware version. Mine came with v2.40 which is decent but the latest one 2.45 adds gapless playback (so crossfaded albums like Mansun’s Attack of The Grey Lantern) play back almost as intended. This is a good feature not seen on a lot of players in this price range. Also note additions of custom EQ settings (2.43) and USB mass storage device were added (2.40).

The best thing about this player was that it was a total suprise, I didn’t write a letter to Santa demanding one so it was all the nicer to receive it from my fiancee’.

Today I will be putting the ‘A’s on which means off the top of my Head:

Air - Moon Safari
Arcadia - So Red The Rose

and…. gotta go check my CD collection see you later!

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3

Jan

Me, Me, Me, Me, ME?

Posted by sharpfish  Published in Misc, Ramblings

You may have seen it sweeping through blog land like a spiralling wind through England’s great Capital city; this is the “5 things not many people know about me” blog ‘meme’. I would probably change the title to “5 things not many people know or CARE to know about me” but nonetheless, you gotta keep up with the kids and their crazes or you look ’so last year’ so here goes:

1. When I was 6 I received a massive blow to the forehead from a giant bamboo cane while playing “Star Wars Light Sabres” with an older friend in his garden. The trail of blood I left down the street as I ran for my own house screaming, in hindsight, would have made a wonderful path slide as the gradient was quite perfect for it. No permanent damage done (as far as I know) but boy did it hurt! I’ve had an irrational fear of Bamboo, Gardens and Friends ever since!

2. I once had to explain to Damon Albarn (of Blur and Gorrillaz) who Justine Frischmann (His then girlfriend) was. I saw Blur at a gig in Sheffield in 1995, we luckily got into the after show party at the Leadmill and I managed to talk to Damon, Graham and Alex (Dave had gone off somewhere). I talked to Damon mostly (about 30 minutes on and off during the evening). At one point I asked “When is Justine back?” (Knowing that she was in the US on the lollapollozathingymajig tour. I said it a couple of times and Damon just didn’t seem to grasp who “Justine” was. I ended up saying (with a hint or humorous irony), “You know, Justine from Elastica?” He laughed and said she was due back that week (spooky). Eventually she dumped him and went back to Bret from suede (momentarily) causing the whole self healing song writing phase witnessed on the Blur album “13″. If only I could have warned him at the time that his band was going to suffer for love (or lack of it) I would have.

3. I once refused to shake Michael Heseltine’s hand. He was doing a PR tour of my town back in the early 90’s as a general election was due (as far as I remember). An older work colleague of mine and I went out to see what the fuss was about, the colleague being a staunch left winger (Heseltine at the time was high up in the Conservative party who were in power then, and almost became the leader a short while ago; so could have ended up as the Prime Minister), actually started to lecture Heseltine about some political issue to which Heseltine seemed to ignore and turned to me instead and said “May I shake your hand young man?“, my chance to really strike a blow for the working classes was presented before me, a thousand possible clever politically fuelled retorts could have been used by other more politically inclined people, Maybe I could use this chance to point out how his party had sucked the “little guy’s” life away in taxes, laws, and ignorance. Instead I simply said “no thanks, I’d rather not!“, and he just looked a little dismayed and turned to the next person. With an estimated wealth of £240m I’m sure he doesn’t dwell on the incident.

4. I once had to explain to David Darling (’Codemasters’ founder, past winner of the UK Entrepreneur of the Year and frequent occupier of the Sunday Times Rich List) how to view an mpeg file on a CD-Rom. David isn’t stupid by any means (he’s the business side of Codies and obviously knows his stuff). While working at Codemasters, Dropping off a presentation disc for a then upcoming game, I was surprised to find I had to talk David through the process of viewing the file on his laptop, I assumed it a simple operation for most people. In his defence he probably is less technically oriented than his brother Richard (the creative side) and I myself didn’t exactly explain things that clearly (adding to the confusion no doubt). However it was a definite “weird moment” for me to be in that position, we finally managed to view the video and changes were ordered by David to which I scurried away and complied with. A very non-eventful eventful event in anyone’s book!

5. When I was young (probably around 6 again) my grandad cut my finger off! Accidentally of course, he was cutting the hedge in his garden, and I was being helpful by getting in his way. I noticed a piece of the hedge standing out where he had “missed it”, I pointed to it to let him know he hadn’t done the job to my exacting standards but unluckily for me he had already seen it and was moving those razor sharp garden shears towards it at the same time. I don’t want to get too graphic but basically he did manage to cut that last bit, along with my right index finger. It wasn’t fully cut off (thankfully) but was swinging around a bit; the bone was still in-tact. I remember having bandages around it for weeks that made it look like I had just one finger from a giant comedy hand attached. Again, no long term damage but I have had an irrational fear of Shears, Hedges and Grandads ever since.

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2

Jan

2007 Awaits!

Posted by sharpfish  Published in Misc, Ramblings

Here I am not more than 2 days into a brand new year and I’m full of it. ‘It’ being drive, ambition, determination (is that the same as drive?), passion (not ‘that’ kind of passion; I always have ‘that’ kind at the ready!), and loads of other words that sound really great in January but haunt your mind come October. (Usually).

Well this year there will be no haunting in October (Halloween being the exception), as my only new year resolution this year is “stop banging on about it and get it done”.

So what is “it” that needs doing? Oh just a few items:

  • Atomic Pond’s Debut game to be released ASAP even if it means leaving stuff out and culling other stuff!
  • at least 3 other “work in progress games” to be brought to reality (released), which should be do-able as a lot of 2006 was spent working on design for ALL of the games and on some technology building which is now behind me!
  • Record/mix/master/release the first Spacehotel album, the last “album” I managed to finish was sometime in the 90’s but I’m feeling confident that this time I can nail it! ;)
  • Redesign/tweak all of my websites.. sounds simple when you say it like that!
  • Get my MK1 MR2 Supercharger back on the road (in the summer), currently a mitsubishi FTO is keeping me/us from walking everywhere so it’s not essential but it’s my little project rocket so it needs sorting!
  • Build a new “main” PC: This means Core2Duo (e6600 probably overclocked), DX10 GPU etc. This will be usefull for many of the other things I need to do so I can easily justify it… *ahem*.
  • “Finish” Viva Pinata (is this possible?; Well get all species, varieties and what have you… this game is easy to loose 5 hours at a time on so not good for getting the other things on this list done!).
  • Landscape/revolutionise my Mothers garden (she’s been waiting for 2 years for me to get to the stage of making my initial building site efforts look more pleasing so 2007 is moment of truth time!)
  • And I really need to POST LESS on forums, stay away from the internet a bit more and generally do the kinds of things I used to do before my life got sucked into my broadband connection!

    • Of course I also have plenty of non task related stuff to do (Like get out and about more; living in a dark room for 90% of the year, coding and working does not make for a healthy mind - ask my dream Diary*), couple of vacations this year, day trips, general “bump and go” style driving excursions.

    It will be interesting to see this post again next year and see what I managed to cross off (hopefully all of it) and by publishing my boring list of chores on the internet it may just spur me on to do something about them so I never need air my procrastination laundry in public again!

    Happy 2007 and STAY BUSY!

    *I don’t actually have a dream diary but if I did it would be full of scary shit!

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    28

    Nov

    RF Indie Game Review [ Fizzball ]

    Posted by sharpfish  Published in Independent Game Reviews

    Well, old Professor Fizzwizzle is becoming a regular site around these parts and while he keeps appearing in great independent games then why not?

    Fizzball!

    Yes this is Grubby Games second game featuring the crazy Professor and his gadgets but rather than just being a strict sequel (maybe that’s still coming?) this title is a whole new ball game (pun intended). Fizzball is in fact one of the best breakout style games I’ve played (Along with BreakQuest). What the developer has done here is throw the old rules away and introduce some new elements wrapped in a solid and fun theme with interesting and colourful graphics.

    The game is based around collecting animals (always a winner for the younger crowd) with your “ball”. The ball in this case is a collecting device that expands everytime it captures an animal small enough to fit inside it, thus opening up the possibility of capturing larger animals as you progress. There is also an animal sanctuary, kids mode and all sorts of extras to fiddle with!

    Overall one of the most innovative and unusual breakout style games, in fact it’s almost an insult to pigeon hole it in that category… it’s just a very good game in it’s own right, and you should download and play it today!

    FizzBall Free Download

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    22

    Nov

    Atomic Pond Dev Update: A small teaser screenie!

    Posted by sharpfish  Published in Game Development

    While still not ready for proper previewing, I had this screen shot kicking around from some weeks ago showing progress on a certain aspect of the “mystery game#1″. It’s a rendered backdrop (as the game uses them) which now has overlaid 3D elements (read: The kind of 3D yo mamma warned you about.. ie not pre-rendered).

    ???

    And i’m well aware you are probably scratching your heads thinking “what does that tell me?”, or maybe you are busy looking at the textureless, barren backdrop and wondering wtf it all means and how it could constitute a game. As I said, it’s a shot from a while back and things have progressed since then (by quite a way). It does give another hint at the style of the game even if you know nothing more about the game than it being a “casual” one with a “matching” mechanic driving the play forward. What I can state is that it is NOT a 3D racing game regardless of what the above shot of my lovingly crafted retro race car may insinuate. ;P

    I look forward to posting more teasers as soon as I find ‘em, and eventually a proper preview (YAY!).

    Check out the actual Atomic Pond Blog for older details of the game.

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