Monthly Archives: February 2008

Gilbert interview

By Rubes | Published: February 27, 2008

Just wanted to point out a new interview posted over at Eurogamer with Ron Gilbert, he of Monkey Island fame. Gilbert was recently hired as creative director at Hothead Games to assist with their upcoming games, “Penny Arcade Adventures: On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness” and “Deathspank”. I’m not a Penny Arcade fan, so the former doesn’t really appeal to me very much — particularly the way Gilbert describes it:

“It’s kind of a light adventure game; there aren’t going to be these really intricate, mind-boggling puzzles you would find in Monkey Island.”

The latter, however, sounds a bit more intriguing, although not much has been revealed about it except that it will be released episodically — which apparently is the hip new thing these [More...] Read the rest

Posted in adventure games, interactive fiction | Leave a comment

IF Beginners Comp

By Rubes | Published: February 26, 2008

I would be remiss if I did not mention the new IFBeginnersComp, organized by David Fisher and inspired by (and running parallel with) the Interactive Short Fiction Competition. The comp consists of games that are suitable for beginners to IF, which I think is a great idea for getting more people interested in IF.

There are five entries in the comp:

– Connect, by James Hudson
– Germania, by Vicente Munoz
– Limelight, by Justin Lowmaster
– Mrs. Pepper’s Nasty Secret, by Jim Aikin and Eric Eve
– The Sleeping Princess, by Molly, Alex, and Mark Engelberg

All were written in either TADS3 or Z-code, so they should run on most interpreters. I recommend Spatterlight for Mac users and Gargoyle for Windows/Linux users.

The [More...] Read the rest

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The Sentimental Sound of Spinning

By Rubes | Published: February 20, 2008

Like many nerds, I get nostalgic when I think back to my childhood in the mid-late 70s and 80s and the computer games that I played during those years. Best I can remember, it started with the original Colossal Cave adventure on my dad’s enormous NorthStar Horizon computer, with its wooden case and dual 5.25″ floppy disk drives. Later, it was some of Scott Adams’s great text adventures like Adventureland and Pirate Adventure, and a host of other text-based games like the old Star Trek grid game and even an old game about the Battle of Midway very similar to this one. Not to mention a whole mess of games that I typed in by hand from David Ahl’s incredibly awesome book from 1978 [More...] Read the rest

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Response

Vespers Update 2/18

By Rubes | Published: February 18, 2008

Time for another update, the first since starting this blog. There has been some progress in a few areas, although perhaps not enough to warrant one of my more extensive blogs like on GarageGames.

Characters and Animation

Happily, we’ve finally replaced our previous animator, who left us for more prosperous opportunities. In his place we now have two individuals helping with the character animations, James and Matt, which I hardly have to say is a real gift. Progress on the new characters has been slow so far as we get those two up to speed and comfortable with the art flow. We’ve also made a few adjustments to what we were doing previously; in addition to entirely new character rigs, we’ve also been experimenting with [More...] Read the rest

Posted in 3D/if, Vespers | 4 Responses

IGF Ramblings and XYZZY Awards

By Rubes | Published: February 16, 2008

Just a couple of thoughts as I daydream about what it would be like to have a game nominated as a finalist for IGF…

I really wanted to try to go to GDC this year, finally, to get a glimpse of what it’s like. Alas, it was not to be. Another work trip this week made it too complicated to try and do both, especially with a busy week ahead of me and the in-laws coming for a visit this next weekend. Ah well. Next year, I think.

Speaking of which, thanks to TRC and Scorpia for posting and linking to the finalists for this year’s IGF. I’m a little disappointed that we don’t have any real adventure games in the list this year — [More...] Read the rest

Posted in indie games, interactive fiction | Leave a comment