The season finale of Game Shop is now upon us. This action packed episode is loaded up with Cyber Ninjas, Time Travel and lazer shootin' Digital Heads.

Looking forward to season 2.

The experience of playing Sword & Sworcery on my iPhone showed me how immersive games on my phone could be. I wasn't sure iPhone games could be more than the typical grind of a puzzle game or fruit ninja clone. As I played Sword and Sworcery for the first time it recommended I use stereo headphones and I was surprised at how fantastic the experience was. The game that unfolded was a visual and audio feast. I enjoyed the fresh take on how a video game provides you with an introduction and the music stood out front and center as incredible. I mentally noted to find out more about the music because as I played it really hooked me. Jim Guthrie's scores for Sword & Sworcery, Indie Game: The Movie and most recently a Sword & Sworcery remix album are some of his more recent awesome creations. I have wanted to talk to Jim for sometime and recently I sent him a note and he awesomely agreed to answer my questions.

Over the course of the Interview he let drop a few bits of fresh information. He is working with Sony to hopefully release the Corporeal score on iTunes and Bandcamp in the next few months. I asked him about his next project and he is currently working on a new solo album of material that will should be released by late spring or early summer!

jdodson: I was first exposed to your music playing Sword & Sworcery and that experience really stuck with me. I want to thank you for taking time to answer my questions.

jdodson: The track “Army of Assholes” from the Indie Game: The Movie score is interesting to me in that it seems thematically different. To me this track is a jab at simple ignorance and people that can be quite sublime in smugness. I just imagine an army of simple minded smiling folk as they walk down a long hallway. With all that, whatever all that was... I wonder how you approached creating this song and its inspiration?

Jim: There was really a master plan when scoring the film as I had very little time to do it (3-ish weeks I think?).   The music for Army Of Assholes was written for the section of film it shows up in and was fleshed-out and named after words.  I was trying to evoke a synthy / tech / electro circus vibe that also might shadow a "questionable sanity" of a developer at any given time during the creation of a game.  It wasn't until after I finished the song that it became clear to quote Phil Fish from the film when he uses the term to describe trolls on the web.

jdodson: What was it like working with Sony on Corporeal? Did Sony change much in the way of how you and the Superbrothers collaborate?

Jim: Sony wasn't really directly involved with what Craig and I did for our level in Sound Shapes.  It was a little bit more disjointed because Craig Adams (aka superbrothers) worked on the art assets with some guidance and direction from the guys at Queasy and I worked on my sounds separately with help from Shaw-han Liem at Queasy.  I got to see Craigs art at early stages and I did my best to try and create a pallet of sounds that worked but there was a lot of experimenting and hoping for the best as well.

jdodson: “The Red Bull” is a song from the Indie Game: The Movie score. The song has a primarily electronic drive and ends with an out of tune guitar strumming. I wonder what theme you were trying to hit here?

Jim: The songs sort of rises and distorts from the digital version over to a broken acoustic version of the song to try and expose the human element of game developing.  Simply speaking it's sort of a digital vs analog, mind vs body and the challenge to pull emotion / soul out of a few lines of code and some pixels or whatever.  It's one of my favourite songs on the album

jdodson: What are you working on right now?

Jim: I'm working on a solo album that's not related to video game stuff at all.  Before I did music for S&S I was more known for playing in bands and writing songs etc.  It's almost 10 years since I put out a "regular  album" and it should be out by late spring / early summer.

jdodson: Some of the music on Swords & Sworcery is so incredibly atmospheric. What came first? The art or the music? Were adjustments made on either side to fit the other?

Jim: Well the music came first I guess.  Craig heard some of my Playstation compositions years before the game was even conceived.  When Capy approached Craig to make a game we used a few of those tunes to get us started and then it was more 'back and forth' after that.  

jdodson: Any plans to release the Corporeal soundtrack?

Jim: Yes, I'm just trying to get all the paper work sorted out with Sony.  Hopefully there will be an ep of the music from the game for sale on Bandcamp and iTunes in the next few months.

jdodson: What are some of the things you have yet to accomplish as a musician and composer?

Jim: That's a tough question.  I've done music for many mediums (recorded and live) but at the same time I feel like I'm just getting started.  I just want to keep myself guessing and take on interesting and challenging projects.  It's hard to even know what that means but I've been lucky to work on the projects I have and I guess I just hope to keep getting more of the same work in the future.  

jdodson: The Sword & Sworcery score saw a limited Vinyl and Cassette release. My 90’s teen self is wondering if there are any plans for a Compact Disc release and my Dad is asking about 8-track? Seriously though, I still buy CD’s, rip them and put them on my shelf. Something about an actual album still seems totally awesome to me.

Jim: I probably should have made a CD version but it just felt right to keep it in these extreme ends of the format scale.  Digital download or extreme analog!  * - track would have been sort going overboard but its' tempting.  I still like CDs as well but cassette and vinyl is so much more nostalgic for me. 

jdodson: I love the Song “The Maelstrom.” It starts with what sounds like a looped guitar, drums and a piano. What did you do to the guitar to get that awesomely melodic grating sound?

Jim: I used a Boss looping station plugged into an amp and just experimented with different strumming patterns until I found something I liked.  I then added piano to break up the drone and give it structure.

jdodson: I know you have worked with the MTV Music Generator. Any thought to using Mario Paint in a future creation? The Cat and Dog sounds alone are worth the price of admission.

Jim: I never really got into Mario Paint but I love the limitations it imposes.  I feel I do my best work when confronted by a limited options.

jdodson: The primary medium that people use to consume music now is digital and allows totally awesome stuff in that I have access to all 44.3 days of my music at once. That said, one negative change is that I don’t listen to a single album as much as I now have so many. I wonder, as how people listen to music changes does that alter how one creates music?

Jim: Maybe.  I don't really think about how the whole album until I get all the individual songs done.  It isn't until then that I sit back figure out how to best sequence it in a way keeps people listening for the whole thing.  I can't expect to have people listen to the whole thing in one sitting because like you said there's just so much music out there and it's fun making your own playlists or putting it on shuffle.  In a way I almost like the idea of someone unexpectedly hearing a song of mine in shuffle mode more than anything else.  It definitely doesn't change the way I make music but it may change the way I sequence an album knowing people have shorter attentions spans.  There will always be musicians who care about the album as a whole and there will always be people care to listen to a whole album and the rest will just work itself out. 

jdodson: You release your music on Bandcamp with the pay as much as you like model. I wonder how well this is working for you and if you have any plans to modify how your music is released in the future?

Jim: It's tough to know how to price your own stuff and certain pricing models work better than others depending on the project and how it's marketed etc.   I don't really have any answers on how to best approach this kind of thing but it seems like the more you give away the better chance you have of people giving back.  The Humble Indie Bundle is a perfect example of this.  The trick is to have an audience to begin with.  If you have that luxury then you just have to experiment with how to price stuff and make people happy.

jdodson: I picked up The Scythian Steppes: Songs Localized for Japan and really enjoy the remixes of your music. 

Jim: I think this is the first time having people remix my stuff.  I let the people at 8-4 in Japan do their thing in rounding up remix artists and then pretty much let them do whatever they felt like.  

jdodson: Chiptunes and retro video game scores seem to have garnered more attention lately. Your style seems to borrow from these elements already but I am wondering if you have any thoughts to incorporating more elements from 8 and 16 bit music?

Jim: Well this is the thing.  I don't really consider myself a "chiptune musician".  The term gets thrown around a lot and what I do is a mish-mash of a bunch of sounds and technologies.  For example, I'll use a real acoustic guitar and strum it and then sample it and and mix other synth sounds in there and maybe even some 8-bit emulators but I'm never just using hardware from the 80s or even just emulators to create an entire piece of music.   I just call it "computer music".  

jdodson: Are there any video game scores that stand out to you above the rest?

Jim: Ah, jeez.  There are so many good ones that it's hard say.  I feel like if I name one then I fall down a rabbit hole of ramblings about video game soundtracks.

jdodson: Have you considered creating music with a 5.1 or 7.1 mix?

Jim: I haven't really considered it but I'd love to try and mix something in 5.1.  

jdodson: What games have you been playing lately?

Jim: Well, I just got a Wii U so I've been playing a lot of Zombie U which I quite like and Nintendo Land.  Overall I like the Wii U but it's just such a mix of good and bad decisions on Nintendo's part that's it's hard to give a definitive answer about the console as a whole.  I'm looking forward to seeing what games come out for it because right now there isn't a ton of them to choose from.  Otherwise I play a lot of Chip Chain and Drop 7 on iOS.  I really like number puzzle games. 

jdodson: You have a wider audience because of your involvement in video games. Did you always want to approach scoring video games or was happenstance?

Jim: I never really considered it an option to be honest but I love video games and the potential they have to produce truly inspiring and engaging works of art.  It was just happenstance that Craig asked me to do the music for S&S and I'm forever thankful to him and everyone at Capy for having me along.  It's been an unbelievable couple of years.

jdodson: The score to Sword & Sworcery uses a wide array of musical instruments. The track “The Cloud” features woodwinds. How do you accomplish recording these different instruments and what different players do you collaborate with?

Jim: I come from a rich local music scene here in Toronto.  Most of the people I know and play with are amazing musicians so it's just a matter of trying to direct them while letting them contribute in ways I couldn't have on my own.  For The Cloud I didn't really have a song structure in mind.  I just had people come in a play very loosely in a certain key and then I edited all the rises and falls afterwards.  There was a lot of uncertainty and experimentation in that song and I'm happy with the results.

jdodson: Thanks for talking with me Jim, its been awesome!

Jim: Happy new year

http://www.jimguthrie.org/

Looks like we are getting a pretty interesting update to Diablo III early next year.

"First and foremost, if our original goal was to support dueling, then we're not achieving that goal very well if we don’t actually give players a way to duel in-game. You’ve been asking us for dueling for a while, so we're going to add it to the game soon. Dueling is currently scheduled to release with patch 1.0.7, which is set to hit sometime after the new year. (We'll be providing details about that feature very soon, so stay tuned.)"

Blizzard didn't ship PvP with Diablo III and instead opted to release it as an update after the launch of the game. It doesn't seem like progress on PvP is going well and they are going back to the drawing board with it:

"Certainly, we've gotten a lot of benefits from the development of Team Deathmatch, especially in the areas of controls and combat model tuning, but at this point we don't believe it's the experience we feel it needs to be in order to ship, so we will be shelving it for now and exploring other options."

This makes sense to me as when I envisioned PvP in Diablo III the idea of modes like Capture the Flag came to mind. Simply putting a bunch of people in a room and going at it does seem fun, but wouldn't hold my attention very long.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/8163085/Diablo_III_PvP_Update_-12_27_2012

After collecting all the community votes for game of the year the top 5 list is in.

*drumroll*

1. Borderlands 2


2. FTL: Faster Than Light


3. The Walking Dead


4. Diablo 3


5. Planetside 2

I am pretty happy with this list and want to thank everyone that voted! Feel free to submit your personal GoTY lists as well, I will collect mine and submit in the next few days!

I hit up Portland Retro Gaming Expo 2012 this year and am still surprised to see these video retrospectives come out so far afterward. That said, this is a good video overview of the event as it was back in the summer.

I am planning on hitting up the next PRGE and am working out a fun collab between Cheerful Ghost and Watch out for Fireballs. No promises, but if it works out, it could be fun.

I got this gift from some of my friends this Christmas. So awesome to have Spright as a little plushie toy!

http://play-dune.com/

Some consider Dune 2 to be one of the first, if not the first Real Time Strategy game. Some righteous soul has taken it on to see this classic playable in your browser.

To accomplish this awe-tastic goal they nabbed the source from the Open Dune project and used emscripten to convert the Open Dune C source to JavaScript to bring the browser love. Now if the same could be done for Warcraft: Orcs and Humans!

http://play-dune.com/
https://github.com/OpenDUNE/OpenDUNE
https://github.com/kripken/emscripten/

Fun video illustrating some highlights of this year in games. No Borderlands 2 or The Walking Dead jokes?

"MMEEEEEEEHHHHHH!"

Recently I wrote about a classic game I love called Spaceward Ho! You can read my thoughts about the game here:

http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/853

For quite some time I have been wanting to do an interview with the developers responsible for such an amazing classic. As luck would have it, I was able to talk to Peter Commons the original developer of Spaceward Ho! I found it awesome to be able to bat around questions with Peter about a game so close to my gamer DNA. If you are not familiar with Spaceward Ho! it is available now on the iPad, iPhone and Mac.

jdodson: Thank you for taking time out of your schedule to answer my questions today. Spaceward Ho! is one of the coolest games I remember from my childhood. I played it for the first time at my friends house and being in awe at how cool it was as I tried to conquer the universe. Thank you for being part of such a classically awesome game!

You were the developer of Spaceward Ho! and as such I wonder if you could describe how you fit into the project and what your duties were?

Peter: I was the programmer for the first 5 versions of the game for the Mac. I of course contributed lots of ideas for the game as well and even am the source of a couple of the original sounds like "Let's get outta here!" Joe Williams was the primary designer. Howard Vives did the graphics. And Mark Madeley most of the sounds.

jdodson: Delta Tao Software were the publishers of Spaceward Ho! How did you first meet up with them and Joe Williams?

Peter: A friend of mine was interested in their first paint program, Color MacCheese, and brought me along to meet them as they lived in Sunnyvale, not far from where we lived.

jdodson: About how long did it take from you being introduced to the project to you guys shipping the final version?

Peter: About 6-9 months, if I recall. It was a long time ago - 1990, to be exact.

jdodson: After the game launched was there anything that your remember or were surprised with from peoples reactions to the game?

Peter: One of the most fun parts about "The Ho!" as we called it that I didn't expect was it's strong appeal as a multi-player game. Back then, multi-player was hard to set up. The original Ho! relied on a common AppleShare file server (it actually traded info by writing to different parts of a shared file - this was a much more guaranteed and easy-to-set up option than trying to get computers directly networked at the time). People would bring their Macs over and we'd set up a network of them at someone's house - I remember many "Ho! Downs" as we called them that had more than a dozen people (Ho! allowed up to 20 shared players in the original versions).

jdodson: Spaceward Ho! was released in 1990 and still lives on most recently being ported to the iPhone and iPad. I wonder how you look back at the game now having such a long lifespan?

Peter: It's pretty cool, to be honest. Joe used to always say that if it's a good game, it doesn't have to have the best graphics or anything else. Clearly Spaceward Ho! has passed the test of time to prove it's just fun to play.

jdodson: It's interesting that you say that because Spaceward Ho! has some of the most memorable graphics and sound from most games I played at the time. I really liked the way the ships change as you improvedthem and thought the planets always looked totally awesome. Playing it now on the iPhone with a Retina screen I see some artifacts but I still love the graphics. Its like coming back to a classic book, they still work very well.

Peter: Point taken - we tried to make the graphics and sounds cool, but we didn't have a studio creating them nor were they at the cutting edge in terms of use of the best rendering technologies (e.g. 3D) of the time. Just like the game, we tried to make it simple, yet elegant. Building on my previous comments, simple and elegant and functional and fun - just enough to make it good. (And yes, I love the graphics and the sounds, too to be clear).

jdodson: How involved are you with the more recent ports of Spaceward Ho?

Peter: I provided the source code, asked lots of clarifying quesitons ("what the heck does this line of code do?"), and helped beta test/suggest improvements.

jdodson: Another game that was around at the time of Spaceward Ho! was the old BBS Door game Tradewars. Was there anything that inspired Spaceward Ho! from the Tradewars itself? As a child they seemed like different takes on how to take over the universe yet I loved both. I guess I had an affinity for Galactic rule from a young age.

Peter: There were lots of similar games - Tradewars, Masters of Orion, and others. Other than setting it in space, which suggested certain commonalities with other space games, we didn't use any other game as a basis, no.

jdodson: One thing I love about Spaceward Ho! is its simplicity. The game allows you to dominate the entire universe and you accomplish that goal with very simple game mechanics. I wonder what you removed from early versions of the game to pair it down to what we have now?

Peter: From the very beginning, we had the mantra "sacrifice realism at every turn for a good game" - this meant that we didn't have a lot in there extra ever because we tried to keep it simple from day one. Money, for example, is the "renewable" resource and metal the "non-renewable" one. Unless something felt like it added new value (a different strategic dimension), we kept it out from the beginning.

Peter: As far as changes from v1, there were some additions over time where we saw a need for something extra:
- armageddon and biologicals to help eliminate stalemates later in games when everyone is out of metal but not dead
- tankers to save stranded ships without requiring you to send a whole colony ship there
- satellites IIRC weren't in v1 (or maybe just early beta versions - can't remember)
- radical tech as a whole came later
- so did the idea of savings
- and the various levels of starting planet (outpost - abundant)

jdodson: The game I remember always had Satellites but I wasn't sure what that version I first played was. Good thing they were present too, I find them integral to a good strategy. Its interesting because I notice the new types of ships added in the iPhone version with Dreadnauts & Tankers. It's interesting because I see why they were added but so far have stuck to the Fighters, Colony Ships, Scouts & Satellites. I am looking forward to trying out the new ships in some future games but I have been making smaller galaxies and "trying" to win in 20 minutes or less. Keeping to a simple formula helps :D I think my best time at this point is 45 minutes as I still like to take my time :D

Peter: A ship parked around a planet is a satellite; it just costs more :-)
There were no new items added to the iPhone version - everything (including dreadnaughts and tankers) started in a previous version. DNs are fun but dangerous to use - great until you see one wiped out and all the metal gone in one fell swoop!

Peter:The other thing we did was to simplify the money mechanics. For example, in early versions, the sliders for the planets had a bar which was the "minimum spend" required to keep the planet afloat. When you dragged the sliders for each planet, you had to make sure the bars stayed above the lines - leaving it below the line was the way to abandon the planet. But it was a pain to keep all those bars to the right when you were in fast expansion mode. So we changed it later such that the "min spend" was at the left edge (0) and you had the "abandon planet" option in a menu.

jdodson: What was the most challenging part about working on Spaceward Ho?

Peter: Most definitely the AI. I spend probably half my time creating the AI across multiple versions.

jdodson: Spaceward Ho! was one of the first games I remember having awesome sound effects for a computer game beyond the garbled beeping of a PC speaker. Hearing that "YAAAH" sound effect as you direct your ship blew me away! I wonder what feature you are particularly proud of that comes to mind?

Peter: The sounds were great - I was in a singing group in college @ Stanford called "Mixed Company" and one of the guys in the group named Mark Madeley was awesome at sound effects (and from Texas) so he was the obvious choice to ask to do most of the sounds.

Peter: I also loved the planet themes and the graphics and their style (done by Howard Vives).

jdodson: The planet art is fantastic. I really tried hard to terraform my planets part in to see how beautiful they could all look and get a "sea of blue planets". Its a form of incentive to the player to provide awesome art for the highest form of terraformed planet. Plus seeing the holiday themed planet hats is always awesome :D

Peter: :-) We loved doing easter eggs. Have you ever played on any birthdays?

Peter: Personally, I was proud of:

- the dragging of ship paths - always felt really clean and fun
- the AI, as noted above. Not sure if you know this, but Spaceward Ho! doesn't ever cheat - many games make themselves "hard" by giving the computer faster production/cheaper ships, etc. This is not true. The best computers may start out with the best options (e.g. abundant planets), but they never get anything you as a player can't also have.

jdodson:I think this made Spaceward Ho! challenging but never impossible. At a young age if I sort of applied myself, I could often win. Choking out a player or starving them of metal was a viable strategy and it makes sense why because if the computer cheated that wouldn't be possible.

jdodson:Thank you for making the AI not cheat, it wasn't popular to do that at the time and just now companies like Blizzard are doing it in games like Starcraft 2. Its odd as its a pretty big feature they tout that Ho! had back in 90!

Peter: :-)

jdodson: I was always curious how the undefended Planet mechanic worked. How does the attack and defense of the Planet scale VS an attacking force?

Peter: They get one shock per 50,000 inhabitants at your current weapon tech level, IIRC.

jdodson: So if you attacked a planet with 500,000 inhabitants with one fighter the planet would "shoot first" with 10 shots? Sorry, I am slow and must work this out with words until I understand it. :D

Peter: Yeah

jdodson: I was wondering though why the choice was made to not be able to terraform the "rock" planets even if it took forever? I remember as a kid trying to do this and kept sinking money into it like I could do it even if the game said it wasn't possible :D

Peter: This is still one of those either/or things to make strategic interest. You are aware that each race has a different opinion of what perfect gravity and temperature are?

jdodson: I was not aware of that.

Peter: Yeah - absolute ranges for planets go from .5 to 4.0 but "perfect gravity" for each race is between 1.0 and 2.0 - thus all players will have an equal (based on luck at least) percentage of planets in the good (.5 of perfect to 2.0 of perfect) range.

jdodson: I recently played a Spaceward Ho! game a few days ago where my starting planet was called Hobbiton. Over the years I have seen Yavin and other names I recognize from geekdom. Since I am a programmer BUT can't troll the game source I was wondering if the game picks planet names from a static list only or is it from a part static and procedurally generated list?

Peter: It's a static list that we populated with every name we could think of, from every star name to geekdom references - as long as it was not too long. The old Mac versions also let you name a planet if you won, which it would then throw into the list to pick randomly from going forward.

jdodson: What strategy do you use to conquer the universe on the highest difficulty? I am curious because find the game quite challening and havent been able to crack it playing at the highest IQ setting yet.

Peter: The hardest computers attack hard and fast and as noted above start with the maximum planetary benefits. They're also very good at leveraging all the info they have (legally acquired) of your tech levels and ship locations. Until you get far ahead in tech and/or metal/ships, you need to keep the computer guessing about what you have and where you have it. Never let the computer have an easy win where the computer gets lots of metal. And, FYI, Joe's better than I am. I've never been able to defeat multiple of the smartest computer players (although I can pretty easily 1:1).

jdodson: That makes sense, thanks for the tip. I will try to integrate that with my current strategy which is quick expand out and try to not accumulate too many planets that will never be terraformed or if I do, mine them as quick as I can. I have been realizing if I get out to too many unsustainable planets too quickly the metal yield is good but the constant cash drain is not sustainable.

Peter: Yes, it's as much a game of economy as it is ship power.

jdodson: Has there been any talk or movement on Spaceward Ho! 2?

Peter: Well the last Mac version (launched around 2000) was v5. As for the iOS versions, I know Ariton is looking at newer graphics, multiplayer, and other options, which I guess could be considered 2.0. Although note, even from v1-v5, we never really changed the game - we added things that made it easier to do what people already were doing (e.g. tanker to refuel an attack fleet vs. using a colony ship but abandoning each colony as you went) and we did plenty of things to make it look nicer (e.g. rotating planets in v3 or net server in v5), but rarely added much to change the core game play.

I marked this post with spoilers because I want to talk a bit about the plot. For yall that have played before, chime in with if the game was different for you in some way.

I am continuing my current game as an Elf Mage.

After the Mage Origin story I was tossed into the King's warcamp as they were assembling against the Blight. Basically some people in my world were corrupted somehow and became "The Blight". The good guys have to rise up every so often and beat back The Blight and now seems to be the time yet again. The Blight minions kind of look like Orcs from Lord of the Rings so nothing really scary or new in the way of the game antagonists.

One thing I have noticed about DAO is that they seem to be kill off characters quickly. Already I have met a few interesting characters and the murdered them before my eyes. After a huge battle where the King and his Army were double crossed all that was left in my party was myself and a Grey Warden fighter. I blacked out after the battle and awoke in an old Witches house I had met earlier in the game.

I kind of liked that they sort of "reset the game" at the Witches house because it stripped the game away of an uninteresting King and the notion of fighting for some kind of country I had no association with. I also like that the odds are stacked entirely against us. Right now I am a rather low level Mage in a world crawling with a ton of Blight minions. So it was a good way to sort of clear away the cruft that RPG games seem to accumulate in terms of really generic and uninteresting plots. Clear it away in that now all those uninteresting characters and tropes are now dead. Fun.

I really like the in game dialog. At first I was annoyted because the game the seemed so chatty. Annoyed until I sort of broke through to an understanding about it. I can shape my characters relationship with others through my choices. At least it seems like I can. If I am pity, the other characters react to that. If I am too nice sometimes they question that. If I am a jerk they call me out on that. Its interesting to play a game where those kinds of things actually matter.