jdodson1

Joined 01/23/2012

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

2732 Posts

New Borderlands 2 trailer dropped this morning. This one features the villain Handsome Jack and showcases a little of the four playable classes.

Can't wait to head back to Pandora. Thinking of playing the Gunzerker or Assassin at launch. What class will you roll?


http://i.imgur.com/AxlFD.jpg
Decided to treat myself to playing more Skyrim this evening. As I was walking around I noticed a Dragon flying around and breathing fire on something so I decided to investigate. I snuck up on the Dragon and started attacking it and then I was dead. Apparently something one hit killed me and as my death animation was happening I noticed the club of a Giant. Apparently the Dragon was fighting a Giant. I had saved right before I came up on the Dragon so I held back and watched the fight. I snapped a few screen shots and the Dragon was easily bested by the Giant. Not wanting to waste the Dragon's death, I snuck up and nabbed the Dragon's scales, bones and then nabbed its soul. After that I ran like hell and the Giant didn't seem to aggro on me.

Today I completed the quest to become officially part of the Companions. Kind of cool to have a place I can hang my hat before I save enough gold to buy a house. Oh with that, can you stash your gear in your house? Its not apparent to me ifs that a benefit but I imagine it is.


http://i.imgur.com/SYctA.jpg
I know many players are looking to Blizzard to fix many of the problems Diablo 3 shipped with to make it a more fun experience. Today, Blizzard dropped some details on the upcoming 1.0.4 patch meant to address many of the issues plaguing players right now. I delved through the post and am bringing you the best bits from my perspective:


  • You will get your individual gold find and magic find in co-op games. They averaged the ability with your party which led to decreased drops when you played with friends compared to what you could get soloing.

  • They are lowering the health multiplier for monsters in co-op games. Hopefully this makes co-op games less brutal and more fun.

  • Closing the gap between normal monsters and elite and champion mobs by way of lowering champ/elite HP.

  • Buffing item drops. Check the post, its kind of complicated.

  • Increasing legendary item drops. This one is kind of a gripe of mine, legendary items, whereas fine are not that epic.

  • Classes. They are buffing underused skills, increasing the UI for the skill system, changing the cost of certain skills to increase use, etc.

  • Getting rid of the invenerable monster stat.

  • Much more to be discussed in a later post.



That's it in a nutshell from my perspective. Is this enough to get me to come back and play a ton? I've no idea, I have kind of moved on and found other awesome games that are fun. Diablo 3 was fun for a few weeks but I just kind of stopped playing and I don't miss it. Hopefully this patch makes it more fun and increases the games longevity.

-

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/6923456/


http://i.imgur.com/fsc7S.jpg
A popular video game site recently wrote an article about everything they knew about Borderlands 2. Its a really great high level primer on Salvador The Gunzerker, Maya The New Siren, Zero the Assassin and Axton the Soldier. It also goes into detail a bit about the arch villain Handsome Jack and the other enemies you will fight this time around on Pandora.

If you have read everything ive posted on Borderlands 2 so far, not much is new, but if you missed a few posts and want a good view of what the game will be, you should check it out.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2012/08/08/everything-about-borderlands-2.aspx


Just wanted to remind everyone that we will be on our Terraria game tonight(9/9) @ 7pm PST spawning and killing the Wall of Flesh. This will flip the world to hard mode.

terraria.cheerfulghost.com


http://i.imgur.com/3FMXV.jpg
Recently Blizzard updated Starcraft to version 1.5 and changed the UI and added several interesting features. Snipped from the article:

"Patch 1.5.0 Arcade has finally arrived, and it brings sweeping changes to the Battle.net experience. The new Arcade offers the StarCraft community an exciting new way to discover, rate, and play a wide array of community and Blizzard created games, as well as a plethora of options that will help you swiftly find the kinds of experiences you’re looking for. Meanwhile, the StarCraft menu has consolidated all the competitive and cooperative StarCraft II gameplay you’re familiar with into one easy to navigate place. With the new Battle.net UI, menus are now easier and faster to navigate, and a suite of new Editor tools provide game creators the power to bring their visions to life like never before."

After trying it out I have to say the new 1.5 UI is much, much better than the previous one. It seems less cluttered and makes more sense to my eye. Its also much easier to navigate through new and popular user created maps. Blizzard has a few maps in the mix as well such as Auir Chef, Starjeweled and Left 2 Die. Ive only played Starjeweled, which is a cross between Bejewled and ... DoTA. Sounds odd, but its quite a bit of fun. Wasn't great my first try and as such was verbally assaulted by my team members, that all said, it was quite a bit of fun :)

For more details head over to Battle.net:

http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/6823327


http://i.imgur.com/xfJmk.png
Blizzard dropped Diablo 3 profiles today. The profile for my most recent character, a Barb by the name of Discipline is shotted above.

Here is the profile for my account:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/jdodson-1332/

This is my highest level character, Snuggy Bunny a Witch Doctor:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/jdodson-1332/hero/3331502

Snipped from the D3 site:

"View your heroes’ gear, stats, and skills. How high have you raised your characters’ attributes? What are they wielding in each slot? What are their most prominent gear bonuses? What skills comprise their current build? Nuance awaits you in the Heroes tab.

Track your game progress. How many acts have you cleared? What bosses have you shredded in each difficulty? How far have you leveled up your hardcore and normal artisans? Find out in the Career tab. You can also check your play time (by class) throughout your entire Diablo III career, and learn how many monsters and elites you’ve slain.

Share with your friends. The Friends tab lets you check out your BattleTag friends’ characters, so that you can quickly compare notes on gear, skill & rune choices, and everything in between. You can also click on a BattleTag in the Diablo III forums to go directly to that player’s profile.
"

Share your Diablo 3 profiles in the comments!

Also heard about a Diablo 3 player that made over 10k in the Real Money & Gold Auction house. If this is real is and interesting development.

http://i.imgur.com/Zc4A6.png
http://i.imgur.com/fiWAa.png
http://i.imgur.com/tbeiV.png
http://i.imgur.com/YisJk.png


Finished John Carmack's yearly Quakecon keynote today. It comes in a little over 3 hours and is jam packed with information about all things gaming and tech related. The video is linked above and I took notes on the things I felt were interesting.


  • First part of the keynote he talks about Rage and apologizes for the PC launch.

  • He talked about Doom 3 BFG Edition and that it will run at 60FPS on consoles and higher on PC.

  • He wants to Open Source Doom 3 BFG Edition but its unclear if thats possible. Might be able to just release parts of it.

  • Talked about what part of the Doom 3 codebase has changed. Much is similar in Tech 5.

  • The rendering engine was improved over time.

  • Carmack wants to port Doom 3 to the Wii U, Vita and iPhone. Development and time constraints won’t allow it.

  • Doom 4 will be done when its done, no date to announce.

  • People felt Rage would be like Borderlands or Fallout 3 and that wasn’t what they were trying to do. People understand Doom, so Doom 4 will be an easier sell.

  • iD is closing down its mobile development.

  • Doom 3 BFG Edition is less of a survival horror game and now an action shooter with the recent changes:


    • They brightened things up.

    • The flashlight is attached to your gun now.

    • Less ammo stinginess, more liberal amount of ammo.

    • He thinks its more fun now and less masochistic as gamers are much less hardcore these day.

    • Recently he played Super Mario 3 and it was pretty hard, newer games are fun, but not really challenging.


  • iD games can’t take 6 years to create anymore. Hopefully Doom 4 won’t.

  • Feels like he has grown a lot in the last year as a software engineer.

  • NASA’s software engineering reports are not too useful to Carmack.

  • He is doign much more software engineering stuff like code reviews and helping the team learn best practices.

  • Carmack thinks Cloud Gaming is the unquestionable future of gaming. When he sees Gabe Newell he tells him this.

  • Its faster to send a packet over the web to Europe than it is from the back of your computer over a cable to your monitor. He thinks that is wrong and we shouldn’t put up with it.

  • Carmack is very interested in head mounted displays.

  • Doom 3 BFG Edition will work with head mounted displays and 3D tvs.

  • He doesn’t care about Windows 8. XP and 7 are just fine for him.



Here are the rest of the Quakecon panels featuring people from iD, Bethesda and Valve:

http://www.bethblog.com/2012/08/04/quakecon-2012-keynote-panels/


http://i.imgur.com/nhKrG.jpg
Mindwedge, an indie game company recently released its first game called Monster Minis Extreme Off-Road and I was able to virtually sit down with Dave and ask him a few questions about it all. You can easily snag the demo for Monster Mini's on the website and the full meal deal is available on Beamdog and Desura.

jdodson: What was the inspiration for Monster Mini's?

Dave: For inspiration I look to my creator first. It's my feeling that I can do no greater honor to him than to emulate him by being creative.

But on a more practical level, I think that there were a few influences in play. I really enjoyed off-road ATV as well as off-road truck racing games. One day I was toying with a very rudimentary game engine and was working with a futuristic style miniature vehicle I had modeled, and I stuck huge wheels on it just for fun. Then it struck me that I had hit on something I really liked. Not the car, but the huge wheels on it.

I wanted to make a racer though, not a stadium showpiece. I have always liked the monster truck shows ever since the early days of Bigfoot, but a 'proper' monster truck wasn't right for racing outside of an arena. By combining the ATV with a truck frame of sorts, I came up with a new hybrid - the Monster Mini.

As for making racing trucks as SUVs, I've owned a few and they seem to be very popular still. So I guess I have a special attachment to that. Though to be honest, our SUV right now is a Mini Cooper S hatchback, and I have a 4x4 pickup for bigger jobs and off-road excursions.

jdodson: What was the muse you followed to start Mindwedge and make video games?

Dave: That's kind of a different way to ask the first question perhaps, but If I had one thing to point to it would be RC truck racing. My first RC truck was a Tamiya Midnight Pumpkin. It wasn't a racer really, but the proportions of the monster Minis emulate the Midnight Pumpkin more than any other. Later I went on to race more capable RC trucks at indoor and outdoor tracks. RC trucks at the time were really just conversions of RC buggies. I still keep those race trucks on the hutch of my desk to this day.

I had also worked at a stretch limo manufacturer in the early '80s, and that is probably the inspiration for the limo style trucks we included later in the game.

Overall, it's about doing thigs you can't do in the real world. That's the great part about games - they don't have to follow reality.

jdodson: How long has Mindwedge been making games?

Dave: As I mentioned, I had been toying with a rudimentary game engine. That was in 2003. Then I ran into Chris Robertson who was at the time working beyond the norm with extending the abilities of that engine and I asked him to join me in making some Monster Minis. It turned out to be more of a toy than a full game really, but we had great fun with it. Then in 2004 we came across a more capable game engine and realized that we could make a really decent game with it. As we were getting up to speed on the new engine we ran across another engineer who was also working beyond the norm at the time - Ed Phillips, who was very interested in getting under the hood of some of Chris' work. I knew we needed to bring him in. The rest is history. We're still working as a team to this day.

Mind you, the early years were as much about learning how to make games as they were about producing a final product, and we did accomplish both. The learning part is never really over, and that's the great part. There's always a new challenge around every corner.

jdodson: Looking to the future, what do you see as a game genre youd like to do something in?

Dave: Well, my other favorite genre is the FPS. The first game I ever played on the PC was Wolfenstein 3D. That's when I was hooked on 3D games.

But I like that racing games are basically non-violent. I hear from parents all the time that say they need more non-violent games for their kids. We have several other racing game concepts we want to work on. We already have our game systems in place for racing and can continue to refine them as we go along. So as a practical matter, we'll be doing this for a few more years at least.

jdodson: What are you most proudest of in Monster Minis?

Dave: Through the thick and thin, I'm most proud of the quality of the people I get to work with. It's very rare to have team mates that stay with it for as many years as we have. I think that speaks to the basic values everyone on the team has. Along with that, I get to work with some of the most intelligent people I've ever known.

Going forward, I know it's going to be a challenge to find more team mates of this quality as our team grows. But we have a good foundation to build on now.

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http://www.mindwedge.com/
http://www.monsterminis.com/ (go here for the demo)
http://www.beamdog.com/products/monster-minis-extreme-off-road
http://www.desura.com/games/monster-minis-extreme-off-road


http://i.imgur.com/eoKfC.jpg
I have wanted more major players to port games to Linux for years. For along time iD was the only AAA developer that ported its games to Linux. Occasionally other companies would dabble in it but it was largely ignored.

As Windows 8 is nearing release some people are not happy with the direction Microsoft is headed. Gabe Newell recently called Windows 8 a catastrophe and make no secret that they were going to be porting Steam to Linux in response. Valve has stated the first game they are porting to Linux is Left for Dead 2 and have posted an update about it.

Snipped from the Valve blog post:

"After this work, Left 4 Dead 2 is running at 315 FPS on Linux. That the Linux version runs faster than the Windows version (270.6) seems a little counter-intuitive, given the greater amount of time we have spent on the Windows version. However, it does speak to the underlying efficiency of the kernel and OpenGL. Interestingly, in the process of working with hardware vendors we also sped up the OpenGL implementation on Windows. Left 4 Dead 2 is now running at 303.4 FPS with that configuration."

Really excited to see this happen. I hope more developers follow suit because it would be nice to not have to dual boot for to play games.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/07/26/windows-8-is-a-catastrophe-according-to-gabe-newell-valve-hedging-with-steam-on-linux/
http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/faster-zombies/