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.

2757 Posts

Happy Holidays with Minecraft!
Like many of you, when my Holiday time off comes around I plan on playing some games. Minecraft will no doubt be played and it seems that Mojang will be updating it so you can ring in the New Year Minecraft Style.... Minecraft Style.... OP, OP, OP!

From the Mojangs mouth:

"What’s this? This doesn’t sound like a redstone update at all!”, you say. “Indeed,” we say. Thing is, we* suddenly decided we wanted to make sure that you have fireworks for New Year’s Eve, so we’re working in several parallel branches of the code now. One is for the 1.5 “Redstone Update,” and one is now for a 1.4.6 patch update. This update will be out before Christmas, and 1.5 will wait until January (or possibly February)."

Ill be checking the Wiki after the patch drop for the recipe.

http://www.mojang.com/2012/12/minecraft-snapshot-12w49a/

Mew-Genics Title Music
Just adding another post to the continuing trail of cat parts littering the road to the launch of Mew-Genics.

"So we really splurged with the soundtrack for Mew-genics, the game will feature a full album of over 20 studio recorded songs, with more than half of them with lyrics! we really wanted to make the games music feature extended themes of the game or small stories within each song, kind of how Katamari did it in a way, except all our songs are about cats!"

I really dig the title track and am really looking forward for this release.

http://supermeatboy.com/129/Mew_Genics_Teaser_week_7/#b

Dat Firehose: Elder Scrolls Online & Portal on TI
Bethesda's Elder Scrolls Online Team recently released a story from the ESO Universe. This one focuses on Jorunn the Skald-King:

http://elderscrollsonline.com/en/misc/leader-profile/ebonheart

Some awesome people released Portal for the TI Calculator. Video linked above. Nab the code for your TI:

http://www.omnimaga.org/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=841

THQ stock jumped 40% after its latest Humble Bundle went live:

http://m.pcgamer.com/2012/12/03/thqs-stock-rises-nearly-40-thanks-to-humble-bundle

Some have noted the Wii U is better for Indie Games. Great even:

http://games.slashdot.org/story/12/12/03/1549213/cheap-indie-games-make-wii-u-a-better-value

Crysis 3 specs were recently released. Its as if millions of PC's cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced:

http://www.crysis.com/us/crysis-3/buy

Game Stop: Episode 7
In this action packed episode with those wacky kids at The Game Shop, the Game Shop loses power! I am pretty impressed with how much they are able to do with just a Game Shop and a few characters.

Quake II Turns 15 Today!
http://i.imgur.com/w10te.jpg
This just in from the "I am getting old Department" it seems Quake II marks its 15th birthday today! Bethesda and iD Software rang in the occasion with some interesting tidbits from iD's Tim Willits.


  • Only three artists made all the 2D and 3D art for the entire game.

  • One of the original suggested names for QUAKE II was WOR, but the game’s fast-paced, tactile feel felt closer to a QUAKE game than a new franchise.

  • ‘The Edge’ (Tim’s favorite deathmatch level in QUAKE II or any other game), has over 50 trick jumps possible in the map. Tim only designed two of them, and the rest were discovered by the QUAKE II community.



http://www.bethblog.com/2012/12/06/happy-15th-quake-ii/

Isaac Rebirth News & Mewgenics Update
http://i.imgur.com/qaEH2.jpg
Edmund McMillen of the Super Meat Boy & Binding of Isaac fame dropped some news on The Binding of Isaac Rebirth. Recently he had a Formsping Q&A on his blog and you needed to be made aware of the details. Your welcome in advance.

"-Rebirth is a totally remade game based on the flash version of the binding of isaac + wrath of the lamb.

-The game is being produced and developed by Nicalis, the guys who did all the cave story remakes and the VVVVVV port.

-Nicalis is working on the port for Ps3/Vita and PC (steam) and is also currently talking to MS and Nintendo about releasing on their platforms. we are also looking into an iOS version if its not garbage.

-The remake will feature all the content featured in BOI+Wrath but will also feature another Wrath sized expansion over the top that will feature a new final chapter, ending, 2 new playable characters and tons more items, rooms, enemies, bosses and the like. the goal will be to make replaying the whole game not only worth it but also make i so it feels very fresh and new.

-The remake will feature content that was removed from the flash version of the game due to limitations (secret stuff!)

-The remake will feature LOCAL 2 player co-op… no online play because that will just extend the release by another forever.

-I will be lead designer on the project, making sure things are as perfect as we can make them and as true to the original as possible, i will also be designing all the new content and features.

-The game will be getting a full 16bit make over, im doing this because i think the art is tired and im sick of looking at it. i think a fresh coat of paint is needed and i think its kinda appropriate/funny to do a damake for the remake.

-We will try to do a loyalty pre-order discount to anyone who owns the game on pc."

Some really interesting bits here:


  • Co-op. Whoa! If you can harm the other then that might make it harder.

  • I wonder what stuff didnt make it into the main game they wanted to include? I guess more on those bits will surface later.

  • Dropping the price for current owners is a good idea but I would have picked it up either way

  • If an iOS version played well I might play more of that than on the PC



The full post where he drops the details:
http://edmundm.com/post/36798306331/binding-of-isaac-console-remake-details

Edmund also ran a poll about the remake:
http://edmundm.com/post/37223982057/binding-of-isaac-retro-remake-the-results-are-in

Team Meat is working on a new game called Mew-Genics and dropped a bit of information on how diverse the in game cats are:

"So yeah, Mew-Genics will feature over 12,207,031,250,000,000,000,000 cats. its easy to assume you and your friends wont ever have the same cat. technically that number only applies to how the cat looks, if you include its personality variables that number multiplies by A LOT.. not to mention the ability variables, personal stats and a ton more secret stuff we will talk about later on."

http://supermeatboy.com/128/Mew_Genics_teaser_week_6/#b

This is in the running for my most anticipated new games besides Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm.

A Few Stracraft Bit-lets: New Starcrafts & Dev Q&A
New Starcrafts cartoon short released, linked above. So many times I was foiled by that lone air unit when the brunt of my army had no anti-air. This is why I am not a pro Starcraft player. Fun game though.

Continuing with the Starcraft 2 dev Q&A Blizzard recently posted Part 7:
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/7994699

I thought this question and answer were particularly interesting(yeah, I sort of follow the Starcraft lore and all that):

"Question: Are Tassadar and the Overmind one now?"

"Answer: Not now, no. But something like the Overmind does not die instantly. Some synapses may fire for a time as it fades away. And at the moment of impact for both of these organisms, they were one, for a brief instant. Their bodies certainly collided, but their higher-level functions, on a psionic scale, also merged. There is precedent for this: recall that Zeratul's mind touched the Overmind briefly when he killed Zasz."

So basically in Starcraft 2 the Zerg high person(trying not to spoil it) was undone. I am not sure what Zerg thing took over, but the devs are talking about the Overmind now being in charge. The end of Starcraft 2's campaign isn't terribly forthcoming but I did feel it closed up the story it created fairly well.

Dat Firehose: Baldur's Gate, Big Picture & More
Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition was recently released by Beamdog exclusive to the Beamdog game platform.

http://www.baldursgate.com/news_2012nov28.en.html

Steam has officially released Big Picture Mode. Having a sale on Big Picture Mode friendly titles to celebrate.

http://store.steampowered.com/news/9495/
http://store.steampowered.com/sale/big_picture_release

Skyrim's Dragonborn DLC is dropping on XBox 360 tomorrow. No word on if any Skyrim DLC is coming to PS3.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRmdXDH9b1s

Congratulations to Mojang as Minecraft has sold 8 million copies. Someone also made a Minecraft Dishonored mod.

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/11/12/minecraft-pc-sales-up-to-8-million/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=sepXAPLOTn0

A image has been passed around showcasing some awesome free games created by the folks at /v/. I still need to play Dwarf Fortress.

http://imgur.com/0hxve

THQ Bundle just hit a record 660,000 bundles sold totalling 3,395,015 at the moment of this writing.

http://www.humblebundle.com/

A Bit of Awesomery! Welcome Internet.
A few days ago @panickedthumb posted an Interview he gave with Ryan Gordon of the amazing Linux game porting fame. Recently the interview has been picked up all over the web and as such we are getting a lot of new visitors.

If you are wondering what Cheerful Ghost is, take a peek here:
http://cheerfulghost.com/about

I am going to collect all the places on the web the Interview is being picked up in this post, if you see it somewhere let me know:

http://games.slashdot.org/story/12/12/02/1749251/interview-with-icculus-on-gnulinux-gaming
https://twitter.com/search?q=cheerfulghost&src=typd
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTI0MDI
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com//2012/12/02/the-sunday-papers-245/
http://linuxgamenews.com/post/36901542979/interview-with-ryan-c-gordon-about-linux-gaming#.ULwVCEJ1Rmd
http://www.linuxgames.com/archives/18497
http://www.tuxmachines.org/node/59058
http://www.ubuntuvibes.com/2012/11/ryan-c-gordon-2013-will-be-awesome-for.html
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/ryan-gordon-is-no-longer-one-of-us-4175439703/
http://steamforlinux.com/?q=en/node/135

Oh and it was translated to Spanish:

http://libuntu.wordpress.com/2012/12/01/conoce-los-detalles-de-la-entrevista-realizada-a-ryan-c-gordon-de-valve/

If you see the interview pop up anywhere else online, let me know and ill add it to this post.