jdodson1

Joined 01/23/2012
  Admin

I'm an Engineer and built the video game community Cheerful Ghost and text based mini-MMO Tale of the White Wyvern.

2755 Posts

Does Twilight Princess Running on the NVidia Shield Showcase What's To Come On The Switch?
If you didn't know, Nintendo is licensing some Wii games for release in China by Nvidia on it's Nvidia Shield system. Essentially these are emulation/rebuilds of the games running on modern hardware you can download to play on the Shield in China only. DigitalFoundry has been downloading these games and running them through the paces and it seems like Twilight Princess is a bit more than just a Wii port. It does show that these games run incredibly well on the Shield paving the way for a possible re-release on the Switch as both systems share very similar hardware.

I'd love to see a bunch of Wii games get ported to the Switch, what about you?

Where Have All The Demos Gone?
Game demos used to be a staple of gaming but in recent years are few and far between. Some live on mostly as console downloads and seem to have nearly evaporated on PC. Ben Paddon of PortsCenter takes a look at why and it seems to be because game demos ... don't really sell games. Still it's fun to look back at what game demos were and some good examples of modern titles that did well with releasing a demo.

It Is Finished - My Candy Box Review!
jdodson gives this a solid "Rad" on the Ghost Scale
This is fun, with very few issues, and is well worth your time.
jdodson gives this a "Rad" on the Ghost Scale
This is fun, with very few issues, and is well worth your time.
I always get a sense of satisfaction when I beat a game for the first time and today was such a day in that I finished Candy Box. If you didn't know, we launched a Games BBS on Cheerful Ghost and Candy Box was one of the first wave of games to launch on it. It was one of the original games in the web clicker genre and it proved that you can do really creatively simple things in JavaScript. If you haven't played Candy Box I recommend trying it out, it really is just a couple clicks away => "Games / Candy Box."

That said, you start the game by collecting candy one piece at a time. The only controls you start with are the ability to eat the candy or throw it. If you amass enough candy other things happen and those things make the game something special. My on critique of Candy Box is that the ending isn't as good as the first half. It's such a well paced game in the early parts but to the end it's quite grindy and not as much fun. I sort of put in the time over a series of weeks to complete it because I really wanted to, not because it was a lot of fun.

I'm really happy the developer of Candy Box aniwey decided to release the game as Open Source. That makes it possible to include it to run on Cheerful Ghost and allows anyone the ability to read the code, learn from it and make a game just like it.

If you haven't tried it I seriously recommend it and Travis tells me that Candy Box 2 is WAY better and I can't wait to dig in and eat more candy.

Shovel Knight Showdown Coming Soon To Treasure Trove!
Shovel Knight had a very successful Kickstarter and because of that keeps getting a bunch of new incredible updates to the base game. That said, we're nearing the end of the Shovel Knight feature train and the last few stops seem to be some of the most compelling! Announced today, Shovel Knight Showdown looks to create a brawler style local multiplayer game featuring Shovel Knight and a ton of other boss characters. IGN got a 10 minute gameplay trailer linked above and from that it looks like a fun brawler that looks right at home on the PS4, Switch and XBox One!

"Duel with up to 4 players and scramble after gems as your favorite heroic or villainous knight in Shovel Knight Showdown. All the classic Shovel Knight characters you know and love are playable, many for the first time ever! Gather your pals for endless multiplayer clashes, or take control of your favorite character and dig into Story Mode. Familiar controls, items, and mechanics return, making this a platform fighting game that anyone can jump into and try.

Shovel Knight Showdown features local only multiplayer, and arrives as a free update to all existing versions of Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove on consoles and PC. It will not be available on portable platforms (3DS and Vita). It will also be made available as a standalone game!"

http://yachtclubgames.com/2018/08/shovel-knight-showdown/

Play Crescent Loom On Cheerful Ghost Games BBS Today!
When we originally launched the Cheerful Ghost Games BBS we let you know that more games would be coming that you could play. Today is a good day because we’re launching the ability for everyone to play Crescent Loom right here on Cheerful Ghost in your browser. Crescent Loom is a game created by Wick, the developer of Starship Rubicon (a game Cheerful Ghost published) and according to Wick Crescent Loom is a game about creating life. Knit bones, stitch muscles, and weave neurons into a biologically-realistic simple creature.

You can find Crescent Loom by clicking the Games link about and selecting it or hitting the link below. I encourage everyone to give Crescent Loom a shot as it’s a very unique game that isn’t like much out there. To help celebrate the launch of Crescent Loom on our BBS I reached out to Wick to talk about the game and how development has been going.

https://cheerfulghost.com/games

jdodson: The last time we interviewed you was October of last year. We were about to head over to our booth at Portland Retro Game Expo and we ran an interview in celebration of all that. What have you been up to since then?

Wick: Finished up & delivered on the Kickstarter, i.e. I got the basic mechanics for the engine down and put it out as a sandbox. I also was accepted to (and just returned from!) the indie game accelerator Stugan (http://www.stugan.com/), where I spent two months in the Swedish woods working on a tutorial / introduction to the game.

jdodson: At what point will you consider Crescent Loom released?

Wick: I think going Early Access on Steam is the right path for Crescent Loom, but at minimum I need to polish the heck out of the introduction, implement the open-ended challenge modes, and work with an artist to really bring the game to life visually.

Personally, I have a goal to exit early access and "finish" the game in three years (by the end of 2021). There are other projects I have in the pipeline that I'm excited to get to.

jdodson: Wow! Three years is an awesome amount of time to get the game right, what do you plan on adding in that time?

Wick: The stuff I mentioned above for early access, then a structured series of challenges to rebuild the planet's ecosystem & encourage players to explore the nuances of the building mechanics.

jdodson: This question is maybe just for me but have you considered Starship Rubicon 2? If so what would it be? I was thinking you could continue the Starship Rubicon story-verse thing and have it be a series of flight simulations with different students on new earth learning how to be pilots. Pilot from the first game is the leader of the flight academy. Your final test as a student is a recreation of the original game with a slightly different take based on it being a simulation. I have obviously more ideas but I guess none of that is really the question except STARSHIP RUBICON 2 HOW HYPE WOULD THAT BE?

Wick: Haha, I consider Crescent Loom to actually be a low-key sequel to Starship Rubicon, with a not-that-different setup from what you just described. I want to move away from the whole blowing-stuff-up game genre, so my current idea is that the characters are now working with the aliens from SR to restore their destroyed planets with bioengineering.

jdodson: If you could get everyone on the planet to do one thing for 2 minutes on the same day together what would it be?

Wick: Meditation. It'd be nice just to get myself to do it for two minutes a day...

jdodson: What’s the best movie you’ve seen this year?

Wick: I re-watched Secret of Kells. Still one of my absolute favorites.

jdodson: Starship Rubicon is the first new indie game to launch on the Cheerful Ghost Games BBS. You’re sharing space with games about candy and old DOS based BBS games about fishing. Why did you agree to be part of this crazy experiment?

Wick: 'cause you're cool and I like you and I wanna see where it goes.

jdodson: Right now, what’s the hardest part of game development?

Wick: Being solo, I think. I can manage alone, but I keep running into situation where having somebody as deep in the weeds as me to collaborate with would add so much to the game.

jdodson: You recently got back from spending some time at Stugan, which is a game development summer camp in Sweden! Did you collaborate with other developers on Crescent Loom while you were there?

Wick: Friendship is the real treasure! I wrote up a big ol blog post here about all the different ways I got help from my peers there.

jdodson: After we talked last year you said that due to your disappointment with Rogue One you weren’t excited for Episode VIII The Last Jedi. The Last Jedi is out now and it’s on Netflix, did you see it and what did you think?

Wick: Couldn't suspend my disbelief. Why didn't they do that hyperspace-explody thing as plan A, instead of waiting until all their escape pods had been exploded? Why is everybody so obsessed with going out in a blaze of glory? They love having these moments of artificial drama and then saving the day with a last-minute "clever" deus-ex-machinas.

jdodson: My thinking is because they were on the ship already and couldn't ram it into Snokes ship or they'd die on it. Then after they got everyone off, Lura Dern sort of was improvising?

Wick: Again, though, why was that improvising and not plan A?

jdodson: Thanks for doing this interview and double thanks for letting us put Crescent Loom up on our games BBS. Anything you want to leave us with before we part ways?

Wick: It was a pleasure! Remember to stay in school & brush your teeth.

You can play Crescent Loom below and if you want to follow Wick you can sign up for his newsletter at the tinyletter URL below.

https://cheerfulghost.com/games/crescentloom

https://tinyletter.com/wick

Want To Know More About The History of The BBS and Cheerful Ghost Games?
Game Dev's Quest is a cool local Oregon Podcast about game development and I was part of their most recent show. In this episode I talked about my history of BBS's and the launch of our new games BBS. If you wanted a deep dive of the games we launched and my absolute love for the retro days of BBS past this is a must listen! I've embedded the audio podcast above but I recommend heading over to Airpodcast to listen below or, even better, subscribing to Game Dev's Quest on the Podcast client of your choice.

"Jon Dodson is back to talk about launching the Cheerful Ghost BBS! We discuss what a Bulletin Board System is, its history, and why we are still interested in them today. We also talk about the history of games and technology and its preservation. Then we finish with a goals check-in."

http://airpodcast.com/game-devs-quest-e75-cheerful-ghost-bbs/

If you didn't know, you can checkout our games BBS by clicking the "games" link above!

The History of Bethesda Game Studios
Noclip is a YouTube channel that focused on crowdfunded video game documentaries and they did an excellent video on Bethesda Games Studios that you need to watch. It covers the history of the studio from the first Elder Scrolls game all the way through Fallout 4 and then teases the upcoming doc on Fallout 76.
Buckle up for an hour and a half of Bethesda documentary goodness that includes a discussion with the writer of the now infamous Skyrim "arrow to the knee" meme.

"Embark on a quest through the history of The Elder Scrolls and Fallout. With insight into the development of everything from Arena to Fallout 4, Noclip takes you on a journey through the creative process of one of the most prolific RPG designers in gaming history."

Jeff Vogel - Failing To Fail
A friend shared a recent talk Jeff Vogel of Spiderweb Software gave recently at this years GDC and i've been keeping it around for the right time to write about it. It's only available at the GDC Vault and not a YouTube video I can embed above, so sorry about that. Anyways, I recommend you check it out at the link below because not only is Jeff someone I admire but it's a really great talk about how not to fail in the games industry. Jeff admits that the kinds of games Spiderweb makes are not hits and that he makes just enough to have a good middle class life serving his niche audience. Usually the only stories people focus on in gaming are the rags to riches stories and Jeff's is something a bit more inspiring to me.

If you're interested in fun talks about people doing cool stuff in gaming, watch this video. If you have no idea who Jeff Vogel and Spideweb software is then watch this video. So yeah, just watch the video and when you do let me know what you think.

https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1024944/Failing-to-Fail-The-Spiderweb

Quakecon 2018 Keynote featuring Quake Champions, Rage 2, Doom Eternal & More
The Quakecon 2018 keynote streamed earlier today and Bethesda and iD had some really interesting stuff to reveal. Firstly Bethesda bought out Escalation Studios that have worked with them on Skyrim VR, Fallout VR and Skyrim Switch. Escalation is currently working on Elder Scrolls Blades and Fallout 76 and will be renamed Bethesda Texas. This is a pretty cool development as Elder Scroll Blades is a game I'm really interested in playing and more Bethesda stuff is always a fun prospect.

Quake Champions

The other big news out of Quakecon is that Quake Champions is now entirely free to play forever. They also dropped all new bot AI and a new class making the game seem like it's hit a proper release. Since it's free to play and an online only game it's hard to say it's hit 1.0 but now that it's free to play forever and such it feels like it's "officially launched." If you login to Quake Champions during Quakecon right now you will get a special Quakecon 2018 machine gun.

Rage 2

The gameplay and game shown at Quakecon of Rage 2 has bumped it up to an instabuy when it launches next year, which is a pretty rare thing for me. I'm going to figure out which pre-order I should get and then jump in. I like owning a physical copy and I prefer PC so I'll most likely pre-order it from a store I can pick it up on launch day. I know i'll just be buying a case and a Steam code but I like having that kind of thing even if it just lives on my shelf.

The new driving and gameplay footage of Rage 2 makes it look like Mad Max Fury Road meets the best parts of Doom and the original Rage but the stages seem a bit more open than the original linear corridor missions of Rage. I'm sure there will be some kind of DLC for it later and a season pass but so far nothing has been discussed about it.

Doom Eternal

When I originally saw the new Doom Eternal reveal I only watched half of it. Needless to say I wasn't too impressed, it really didn't look like a big upgrade from Doom 2016. After coming back and watching the whole reveal i'm not sure i'm too much further from my original thought but the game looks a bit better than I thought at first. If you loved Doom 2016 this looks like doubling down on all that but somehow Doom 2016 didn't hook me. Might have had something to do with my son being born around that time, or maybe I'm just a very old man that is getting tired of ripping and tearing.

Something Is Happening With Diablo III This Year
According to this recent Diablo III video "The forges here at Blizzard are burning hot and we have multiple Diablo projects in the works. Some of them may take longer than others but we might have some things to show you later this year." Usually this kind of news is pretty cool to hear but with the ups and downs of Diablo III and it not getting a follow up after Reaper of Souls i'm not sure what to make of it. Blizzard has hinted at a Diablo III Switch version and I well imagine that's gonna do well and it will be a great game to play on the Switch, it's just... at this point I think it's better if Blizzard just doesn't hint anything and drops whatever news when it's time. For instance, if a new Diablo game is coming just announce it later.

I suppose i've been a bit disappointed with Diablo III after Reaper of Souls as I expected them to wrap up the Leia storyline with some kind of third Diablo expansion. StarCraft II got three games and it felt like Diablo III should have got one more too finish it off. Might just be me though, what do you think? If the forges are burning hot at Blizzard what do you think is coming?