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Metroid Prime 2: Echoes
Posted by Billy
Posted on 21 February, 2016 at 08:58AM ↑ 1 ↓ 0
Metroid Prime 2: Echoes

Last week I briefly discussed how I used to love to explore in Super Mario 64. Well, some games are built around this idea of exploration. This has become quite a ubiquitous thing in gaming these days, what with all the "open world sandbox" games that come out. However, in a much simpler (and more memory-limited) time, we had the so-called "Metroidvania" genre. My most recent trek in this genre came by way of Metroid Prime 2, which incidentally would be a terrible game to be introduced to the genre through. Not because it's a bad metroidvania game or anything but more on that later. I have played Metroid Prime, the first one, but since I played this one much more recently I feel it'd be a better review if I talk about the second game instead.

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Updates to RotW
Posted by Billy
Posted on 11 August, 2015 at 9:06PM ↑ 2 ↓ 0
Updates to RotW

Hello there! I have been working hard on the back-end of RotW. Part of this was updating the login system to be more secure. As a result, all previous passwords had to be dumped. If you are already registered, you should have recieved an e-mail containing a new (temporary) password. If you did not, feel free to e-mail me (address listed in my profile). If you haven't registered yet... then register damn it!

In addition, comments now support the following BBCode tags: [b], [u], [i], [s

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Wolfenstein: The New Order
Posted by Billy
Posted on 3 August, 2015 at 4:56PM ↑ 1 ↓ 0
Wolfenstein: The New Order

Everyone who knows me knows I like my first person shooters old-school. Newer shooters are fine and dandy, but they lack flair. Old-school shooters have interesting weapons that can shoot everything from bullets to lightning. There's interesting weapons to use, and usually interesting enemies to use those weapons on. Newer shooters have... assault rifles that you use to shoot brown people. Okay okay, that's a generalization. But that's certainly what it feels like, especially when you're used to a game like Quake, which features the aforementioned lightning gun, and has an enemy that shoots grenades and has a chainsaw. I must not be the only one who thinks so, since classic FPS style games have seen a resurgence lately, what with the reboots of Rise of the Triad and Shadow Warrior. However, classic FPS' didn't do everything right, certainly not, so perhaps a combination of new and old shooters would be a good idea. To that end, we have Wolfenstein: The New Order.

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A New F-Zero for Wii U Was Planned
Posted by GamersTavern
Posted on 23 June, 2015 at 10:29PM ↑ 2 ↓ 0
A New F-Zero for Wii U Was Planned

Apparently, Nintendo was seriously considering releasing a new F-Zero for the Wii U at some point. According to this, Nintendo asked the Burnout and Need for Speed developer, Criterion Games, to create a demo for a new possible F-Zero title for the Wii U. Former Criterion Games creative director, Alex War

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Newton's Laws in Video Games
Posted by Billy
Posted on 13 June, 2015 at 9:44PM ↑ 2 ↓ 0
Newton's Laws in Video Games

As computer hardware technology has gotten faster and more advanced, so too has the entertainment software running on it. I am speaking of course, of video games. Increasingly important in today’s video games is the use of physics. In order to become immersed in a video game, players often expect the game world to react in a realistic way, which means physics calculations. In real life, we explain how objects move and interact using Sir Isaac Newton’s three laws of motion. In video games, we also apply these same laws, but in a video game context. Indeed, the process of applying Newton’s laws in a video games is often called a “simulation”, often through the use of a special sub-system called a “physics engine”.

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Sonic R
Posted by Billy
Posted on 23 April, 2015 at 1:52PM ↑ 1 ↓ 0
Sonic R

Like a lot of people here in the US, I missed out on the Sega Saturn when it was still in production. As a kid, I always wondered what games I was missing out on, since we had a PlayStation. I was a huge fan of the Sonic the Hedgehog games on Sega Genesis, and seeing how the Saturn was also a Sega console, I thought I was missing out on some cool Sonic games. Turns out that, well, I really wasn't. The only game I really missed out for years was Sonic Jam, which was just a compilation of the original Genesis Sonic the Hedgehog titles, with a small 3D level to explore thrown in. (Interestingly, I've heard that this 3D level was the result of a game Sonic Team was working on, that eventually became Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast.) The only other two Sonic games for Saturn I played on PC; Sonic 3D Blast and, of course, Sonic R.

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Spyro the Dragon
Posted by Billy
Posted on 18 March, 2015 at 2:34PM ↑ 1 ↓ 0
Spyro the Dragon

I have interesting history with the Spyro series. My first exposure to it was the demo of the first game included with Crash Bandicoot: Warped, its inclusion owed to the fact that Naughty Dog and Insomniac had a working relationship. Years later I found myself in a video rental store picking out a game to rent. Spyro 2 caught my eye, and I rented it, played it, and really enjoyed it. Spyro 2 is definitely my favorite of the series, and the one I would recommend overall. However, recently I saw a 100% speed-run race of the original Spyro the Dragon, so I was reminded that I have never completed any of the Spyro games to 100% completion. Inspired, I chose to finish the original.

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Might be useful to someone: Line of sight testing in a 2D tile based game
Posted by Billy
Posted on 28 May, 2014 at 4:56PM ↑ 1 ↓ 0

The following C++ function does line-of-sight testing for a 2D game that uses tiles. The level map is a multidimensional array of integers (levelmap[LEVEL_HEIGHT][LEVEL_WIDTH]) that represent each tile; 0 signifies and empty tile, any number higher than that is solid. A vector2 is just a datatype that contains an object's x and y position.

// Check line of sight between two points (usually the camera/player)
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Wacky Wheels
Posted by Davrinsky sky
Posted on 20 May, 2014 at 9:08PM ↑ 0 ↓ 0
Wacky Wheels

Seeing the Mario cart posts recently made me want to share this. I think it's fair to say that this is the first cart racing game I have ever played. It's very similar to Mario cart for the SNES. looks similar in quality and game play for the most part. Whacky wheels is mostly the same setting as Mario cart, except all the characters you can play as are animals and the power ups or abilities you pick up are actually as you see them as you drive to pick them up. speaking of the abilities you p

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Doom 64
Posted by Billy
Posted on 3 May, 2014 at 3:30PM ↑ 1 ↓ 0
Doom 64

I absolutely love the Doom games, it's a close contender for my favorite game series. I love to get more Doom whenever I can, and thanks to all the mods and addons constantly being created that's never a problem. The guys at id Software felt the same way, they wanted more Doom even as they were making it. This is why they were very open to the modding community, and very open to licensing their engine to other companies. Midway handled the console ports of Doom to the Sony PlayStation and the Sega Saturn. However, when it came to the Nintendo 64 they decided to not just port the game and go with something more original. Originally titled Absolution, they went with the much less cool name of Doom 64.

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