Modern PC Game Recommendations

When one first upgrades their computer, the perspective is one of, “I wonder if this game I had trouble with before plays better now.”  After the new computer buzz wears off a bit, one begins to realize that all their games play the same, just without lag.  (With the exception of games which were so [...]

The Death Strangulation Migration of PC gaming

Death?
Now that I have a PC fast enough to run modern games, a startling thing that I noticed is just how few of them there are.  I have not bought that many games over the past few years – I was busy with school.   Even so, I somehow owned over half of the (worthwhile) games [...]

Geek Ascension: Upgrade Time!

Today, I’m digitally staving off boredom the old fashioned way: With a hefty computer upgrade.  Yep, it’s finally time to upgrade from my AGP to a PCI-E system for me.  I’m only about 3 years late on that, but now it’s affordable enough for me to do.
My poor ATI X1600XT just isn’t hacking it anymore. [...]

Game Brains: Your Artificially Intelligent Opponent

As I take my BYOND project’s AI back to the drawing board for the 3rd or 4th time, I realize I’ve collected a bit of insight as to what goes into a game’s artificial intelligence that negated my earlier impressions.
In my initial impression, the main thing that worried me was creating a competent AI. [...]

Reinventing the compelling MMORPG economy

Perhaps if you’re a hardcore invested economist you think differently, but capitalism is a simple game of incentive for personal gain at its core. Don’t have money? Can’t live above welfare level. Want money? Work for it. Can’t or won’t work and still want money? Commit crimes. Committing [...]

Crunch Time: The end of the Learning BYOND series

So ends my ‘Learning BYOND” series (though I’ll probably go back and edit those entries – for brevity, if nothing else). Ten days of “Learning BYOND” is probably enough to say that I’m past learning it, and am now simply using it.
What does use of BYOND produce? If the title [...]

Learning BYOND, Day 10: Early Contentment

Progress has been good lately. Although I doubt I’ll have a well-polished and ready game by the time school rolls around, 6 days from now, it seems I’ve at least completed some vital foundation framework. It’s reached the point where neither the Game Designer hat nor the Coder hat need to be worn [...]

Learning BYOND, Day 9: Purposeful Toil

With the focus placed on my Graphical User Interface from Day 8, I’ve pretty much created the game. The GUI is the game, after all. At least that’s what I quoted yesterday… but, I have to concur from personal experience that once you’ve got the basics of the GUI ironed out, the game [...]

Learning BYOND, Day 8: Is The Game

It’s hot and it’s a Saturday, but I don’t care. I’ve only got another 9 days until the school semester starts. Plus, I’ve developed a relatively good design in my head, now it’s time to see it through. Back to work, slacker.
Today, the Graphical User Interface was on the agenda. A [...]

Intermission (cont’d): Prolonged Incubation

As my graph from yesterday might suggest, I’ve been rambling on too much lately. This is problematic not only for the reader but for me: it can take me a quarter to a half of a waking day to write and proof-read those entries to a satisfactory shine. That’s a real bite out [...]