| 25/1/07:
Icey Sacrificey Nicey 
"And the many children
of the King leapt and danced and sang praise in
His name, for great is His wisdom and His
benevolence."
- The Book
of the Bridge
First let me say
I didn't have a chance to get in the last minute
testing I wanted so you're getting this a wee bit
raw. Any bugs that show up will be fixed in later
releases. Also, don't play this unless you've
played through all the previous games, especially
Trilby's Notes, 'cos you won't have a hope of
getting what's going on.
Click here to go to the 6DAS page,
or click here to download 6 Days A
Sacrifice directly.
Help requests
and bug reports should be directed to the forum, there's a better chance
of me caring. As always, do get in touch if you want to provide a
mirror.
Everyone who was
trying to guess the game title from the blurry
screenshots, thanks for playing, most of you
suck.
Update: Oh
yeah, I almost forgot.
Since tongues
have been wagging about it hither and thither I
guess I should address this. Yes, there are some
people making a Half-Life 2 adaptation of 5 Days
A Stranger. Yes, I know about it and I'm closely
involved with it. I'm supervising the design,
okaying the changes and will probably be writing
much of the new dialogue and puzzles. The way I
see it, it's a chance to smooth out the creases
of the original and introduce it to a new
audience, like what George Lucas was doing but
less shittily.
I've also seen
the initial level design and a scripting demo and
I think the project has the mileage to see it
through. I've been asked not to reveal exactly
who is behind it but I will say that they're
looking for artists, modellers and coders to join
the team. The full pitch you can find here, give them a bell if you
can help out.
Since people are
getting the wrong end of the stick, let me assure
now that it's NOT GOING TO BE A FIRST-PERSON
SHOOTER. It's going to be an ADVENTURE GAME in
the FIRST PERSON. Like Normality, or Ultima
Underworld.
- Yahtzee
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Previously on Fully
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18/1/07:
The Final Countdown
Last one, I hope
you're keeping track.
"Today
the Mind of the Bridgekeeper shall meet with its
destiny, and I shall see the Bridge extend
between the Realms."
- The Book
of the Bridge
Click here to
download Countdown 3: The Mind (requires
Winfrotz)
- Yahtzee
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11/10/7:
Still Counting Down
"Tomorrow
I saw the Soul of the Bridgekeeper reduced to
ash, and I saw the Bridge created by
two-thirds."
- The Book
of the Bridge
Click here to
download Countdown 2: The Soul (requires
Winfrotz)
- Yahtzee
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4/1/07:
Counting Down
Okay, about the
new game.
It's pretty much
all done; I'm just waiting on music from Mods and
maybe a bit of testing after that. That may take
a few more weeks, which is why I've put something
together to tide us all over in the meantime.
I've been
getting into Inform 7 a bit lately. It's an
interesting experiment. They're trying to make a
programming language that reads like natural
text. You type in things like "the ball is
red and on the table", and the program takes
that and makes a text adventure out of it, like
having your very own secretary. In practise the
secretary comes off as severely retarded with a
bicycle pump sticking through her brain, but it's
certainly a lot more straightforward to use than
most other game makers.
So, I've used it
to create three very short text adventures that
foreshadow the plot of the next game. I'm going
to release one now, and one in a week, and the
third one in two weeks, and then three weeks from
now I release the actual game. This not only
provides a release date for the game but also
puts Mods under an appropriate pressure deadline,
the big fat slob.
The thing is,
though, the text adventure design community is
severely up its own arse and releasing text
adventures as executables is too base and common
for those hoity-toity literary snobs. You can
only make text adventures in .z5 format that
requires a special interpreter to run it. But
don't panic, because you can download said
interpreter for free from a whole bunch of
places. http://www.download.com/WinFrotz/3000-7504_4-10503213.html and http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/downloads/index.cfm?categoryID=1460&itemID=22456 might be a good place to
start, or you can just search for 'Winfrotz' on
Google and download from wherever you like.
So, without
further dalliance, the first episode of the
three-part text adventure countdown:
"Yesterday
I saw the Body of the Bridgekeeper engulfed in
flame, and I saw the Bridge created by
one-third."
- The Book
of the Bridge
Click here to
download Countdown 1: The Body (requires Winfrotz)
- Yahtzee
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27/12/06:
Merry Fucking Christmas
So Christmas has
come and gone and with it the usual bout of
holiday depression. I'll tell you this for nowt -
I don't regret emigrating, but being depressed in
Australia is a hell of a lot worse than being
depressed in England. The reason for this is that
England is, at heart, a very miserable country.
Australia on the other hand is full of sunshine
and happy smiles which just make you want to
punch things until their teeth or nearest
equivalent fall out. Seriously, right after
Christmas there were children playing with their
new toys in the street outside my house. Surely
that never happens outside of films starring Dick
Van Dyke. All I could do was skulk in my house
like the child catcher, shaking my fist in
impotent rage.
It's true:
England is a naturally morose country, and
Australia is naturally happy. This becomes even
clearer when you look at both country's
children's television output. This is a theory
I've come up with.
In Australia,
most of the TV for very young children is hosted
by human beings, as in the Wiggles and a thousand
Wiggles knock-offs, because what with Australia
being so bright and cheerful it's not considered
odd that grown men and women should wear brightly
coloured jumpers and dance around like retards
with costumed creatures and animal puppets. In
fact, walk through the Brisbane Queen Street Mall
on a Saturday afternoon and you'll probably see
something along those lines.
Whereas in
England most of the really young kids' TV is
hosted by groups of demented malformed freaks. No
human or even Earthly animal went into the
character design of the Teletubbies, or the
Tweenies, or the Boohbahs (dear god what the FUCK
are those things, seriously). And the reason for
this is that England is so universally miserable
that it's unconsciously felt that excessive
cheerfulness in humans is so implausible that the
only entities that can credibly exhibit it are
weirdos from space. The creatures never venture
from the small enclosed sets where they live and
never, ever, interact with normal human beings,
because not only are they physically repulsive
but their happiness is deviant and must be
ghettoized.
This theory,
that you can judge the general mood of a populace
by what they expose their toddlers to, applies to
other countries, too. America is divided between
liberals and conservatives - between smiling
flower children and scowling ogres in grey suits
- and so their children's television is
intermediate, sitting on the borderline between
English dehumanisation of happiness and
Australian relentless cheer. They have shows like
Barney the Dinosaur and Sesame Street where
actual human children hang around monsters who
teach them the joys of childhood. Note that the
monsters are typically in the central or
authoritarian role. An Australian equivalent
would have the humans in charge and the monsters
as sidekicks, because there's no shame in
Australian humans being filled with glee, while a
British equivalent would quietly evacuate the
children and have the monsters taken down by
snipers.
Compare your
local kid's TV programming with the overall mood
of your nation. I think you'll find my theory is
very sound.
Now, let's
celebrate Christmas with a quick game of Make
Up Facts That Sound Like They Might Be True But
Which You Pulled Out Of Your Arse.
The
tradition of eating turkey at Christmas began in
11th century England when the king decreed that
poultry could not be eaten on religious holidays.
The turkey was at the time believed to be a kind
of rodent and was not included in the ban.
When the
three layers of a trifle are mixed together, the
result is chemically identical to crude oil.
"Jesus
Christ" is not the name of an individual but
rather an ancient Aramaic term for a ruler or
religious leader. The person contemporarily known
as "Jesus Christ" is agreed by most
historians to have actually been named
"Blaze Dynamite".
- Yahtzee
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Previously on Fully
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15/12/06:
Aspirin: The Game
Painkiller is a
first person game for PC and Xbox by developers
Dreamcatcher and People Can Fly. Inexplicably
named after a kind of medicine, the game is about
the requisite burly hero fighting through an army
of demonic creatures on his way through Purgatory
and Hell in his quest to win redemption and gain
access to Heaven. In terms of gameplay it's an
entirely traditional "just you against the
horde" shooter in the vein of Serious Sam or
the original Dooms - in fact, since Doom 3 went
all System Shock 2 on us some people consider
Painkiller the 'unofficial Doom 3'.
Painkiller is an
awesome fun game. I wouldn't have played it
through umpteen times on all difficulty settings
to unlock all the extras and the bonus ending if
I didn't think it was awesome fun. But it is
severely marred by one thing - it thinks it has a
story.
I'm a huge
advocate of story in video games. I consider
Silent Hill 2 my favourite game. But I recognise
that story is not always an inherently good
thing. It's like chocolate sauce. Chocolate
sauce, ice cream and KFC popcorn chicken are all,
individually, good things. Chocolate sauce and
ice cream is a good thing. Chocolate sauce and
popcorn chicken is not a good thing.
When playing the
actual levels of Painkiller, all is well. The
monsters are enormously varied, imaginative, and
very loosely attached to their limbs. The weapons
are original and fun to use. The main character
is as he should be, an absurdly muscled big cock
action entity with an arsenal strapped to his
back, bunny-hopping stupidly around the level
chucking rockets at oncoming hordes of screaming
baddies. When you're making a traditional
shooter, having such a figure in the main role is
absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. We all like
to turn our brains off once in a while and slip
into the role of some ridiculous destructive
fuckwit like Duke Nukem or Serious Sam or, in
this case, Daniel Garner. We don't want whiny
cunts like James Sunderland when we're fighting
off ten million skeleton warriors at once. Don't
be ashamed of Daniel Garner, Dreamcatcher. Let
him be himself. Let us get into him.
But we can't get
into him, because every few missions we have to
be subjected to a ridiculous pre-rendered
cutscene in which retarded-looking models of
Daniel and some other characters we don't care
about bring further credence to the Uncanny
Valley theory. And because these cutscenes are
the only opportunity the developers have to
recount this plot they're obviously so pleased
with, they drag on for hellish eons as garbage
trucks full of shitty exposition pull up to our
faces and empty their loads right into our
screaming mouths, nostrils and eye sockets.
This is our
lesson for the day, children. Don't lose sight of
what you are. Painkiller is a fun little shooter
where you can blow off some steam nailing enemies
to walls with stakes and shaking down their
corpses until they drop shiny trinkets. It is not
a vehicle for your lead designer's screenwriting
ambitions.
To prevent this
sort of thing happening again, here's a quick
guide for determining whether or not a game you
are developing needs a plot.
Q. Does
the player possess the ability to make an enemy's
limbs all simultaneously fly off in showers of
sticky crimson?
If no ->
come up with a plot
If yes -> fuck that shit
- Yahtzee
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Previously on Fully
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6/12/06:
Mistletoe And Whine
I know I don't
usually let on when I'm in the process of
developing an adventure game, but since it seems
everyone and their Wikipedia already know there's
a fourth Days instalment in the pipeline then
denying it would just be futile. With that in
mind, check out this background I made for it.
Dag, yo, I was
pretty pleased with myself when that was done.
That's just MS Painted with the line tool, the
fill tool and about seven different pulsating
flesh tones. And the prequisite Photoshop
lighting effect, but that was the very least of
it.
Anyway.
Hyper readers -
I have a regular slot on the letters page now for
my Unappreciated Computer Game Characters series,
so be sure to check it out every issue if you
want to see, you know, writing, the thing that
doesn't get posted on this website anymore. Also
I'm led to understand I have a feature article in
next month's edition.
Anyway.
I was roaming
Brisbane's Myer Centre in the Queen Street Mall
this morning when I caught a glimpse of a curious
sight. Four prime examples of early teenage
paedobait in festive and revealing red attire
roaming the escalators singing Christmas carols.
Personally I've never known what you're supposed
to do when people sing at you in this fashion.
Every possibility that flashes through my mind -
throw money at their feet, join in, tell them to
shut the fuck up - just seems needlessly rude.
You know me, I'm
a mealy-mouthed old cynic in the body of a lithe,
handsome young bastard, and I have absolutely no
tolerance for the saccharine, but I have to say I
felt a surge of emotion. Not by the music, God
no, they were firing random bursts of throat
noise in the hope of hitting a note by law of
average, and you could hardly hear their reedy
little wails over the background din anyway. I
just felt sorry for them.
I find it hard
to believe those girls came up with the idea
themselves to wander a busy shopping precinct all
day trying to compete with the PA system; this
has 'pig-ignorant corporate idea' written all
over it. If it was a man who organised them, he
is the creepiest man in the world, like a fat guy
in glasses with greasy long hair who breathes so
loudly you can hear gobbets of thick saliva
rattling around the back of his throat. If it was
a woman, it was a dangerously oblivious woman who
never misses Desperate Housewives and genuinely
owns a feather duster. Either way, it just
seems... wrong.
Maybe I
shouldn't judge shit like this. When I was a kid,
my brother and I - by means still unclear to me -
were roped into dressing up as fucking dalmations
and standing on a parade float arbitrarily
chucking out handfuls of sweeties at the
creatures lining the streets during some
piss-pointless celebration at my home town. At
the time it gave me a surge of rockstar power but
in retrospect I probably should have felt like a
total dick. If we didn't have photographic
documentation of the event I'd probably have
blocked that particular memory out by now.
So perhaps it
was the feeling of 'there but for the absence of
God go I' that tugged my heartstrings as I winced
in time with their barely audible mouthing of
Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer. Perhaps it was
the sense of regressive cameraderie that had me
quickly scan the nearby crowd for greasy
middle-aged men with their hands in their
pockets. Perhaps it was a flash of embarrassing
childhood memory that had me then quicken my pace
until the choir had disappeared from both visual
and auditory range.
Happy Christmas.
- Yahtzee
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Previously on Fully
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27/11/06:
Bits And Pieces
It's late
November in Australia, and the heat hits you like
a neutron bomb in the face the moment you step
outside. It's hot. Hot.
The independent
game company I work with, Gridwerx, has produced
some demos of our current little projects,
available to download on the website. Check them out, do.
There's an adventure game demo by me and a puzzle
game demo by my real world mate Scott. Help us
out, 'cos we'd kind of like to become a
professional company that actually makes money at
some point.
I really don't
have anything else to say, so here's a gorgeous
piece of Trilby fanart from the artist who owns this website here.
- Yahtzee
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Previously on Fully
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14/11/06:
You Ess Ay
Don't look now,
readers, but I believe I have discovered further
conclusive evidence for Britain being superior to
America. I know, I know, at this point that's
like finding conclusive evidence for the
existence of life on earth, but I feel a little
more strengthening of the position can't hurt.
The evidence in
question I discovered by reading the Wikipedia
article for tragically entertaining
improvise-o-thon Whose Line Is It Anyway, in
which I found two screengrabs comparing the
original marvellous tea and crumpets up
Buckingham Palace British version with the
godless roadsign-shooting deep fried pig raping
American import.
Let's start with
the British.
1. Presenter
Clive Anderson is seated with a proud and noble
posture, his hands gathered on the desk in front
of him as a demonstration of trustworthiness. His
perplexingly perfectly round head has a
classically handsome look with a somewhat
blustering, self-effacing expression, part of his
innate British loveableness. Also, his tie seems
to be somewhat tribal in design, indicating a
courageous warrior's soul.
2. The desktop
is a muted shade of red, probably deliberately
blood red in tribute to the world's war veterans.
3. Audience
member A (far left) is a respectable businessman,
viewing proceedings with an amused stiff upper
lip as he reflects how much his orphan friends
will enjoy the hospital he is opening first thing
tomorrow morning. He also turns into Superman
whenever evil is afoot.
4. Audience
member B (second from left) is a flower of
English girlhood, innocent and childlike and yet
also possessing of a fiercely incisive
intelligence when required. She smiles at the
thought of the royalty cheque she received that
morning for her thought-provoking romance novel
set against the background of the Napoleonic
wars.
5. Audience
member C (third from left) gazes contemplatively
upwards, quite lost in philosophical musing on
the nature of studio ceilings, and how mankind is
forever reaching for the stars.
6. Audience
member D (far right) grimaces as audience member
E consumes the back of his head, but is far too
heroic and manly to be bothered by such
inconsequential agonies.
Now let's
examine the same scene in the American version of
the show.
1. Presenter
Drew Carey is a fat, arrogant buffoon. He squats
in his seat in the manner of a warty toad in a
pond, a stupid grin plastering his idiotic greasy
face as if someone has just held up a shiny coin
for him to gaze at in slack wonder. His hands are
balled up in fists in front of him, preparing to
lash out with characteristic American violence at
the first person to look at him funny. His tie is
just fucking ridiculous.
2. The desktop
is carved decadently from pure gold at an expense
that could very easily have fed many starving
families.
3. Audience
member A (bottom left) is an imbecilic manchild,
mindlessly sucking on his lower lip for
nourishment. His tiny retard brain is incapable
of grasping the events taking place before him,
so he gains his amusement from watching the flab
rolls on the back of Drew Carey's head vibrate.
4. Audience
member B (back row, second from left) is a
demented serial killer wanted in several states,
his most recent victim the gender ambiguous
creature sitting on his right, which he gutted
and stuffed before arriving. His hateful look of
self-satisfaction stems from his intention to go
out prowling once the show is over and murder a
disabled person.
5. Audience
member C (back row, third from left) giggles
vacuously, exposing the buck teeth and easygoing
stupidity of the monstrously inbred. There is a
slight tint of sinister hunger to her expression,
because she has designs on the dead possum that
another audience member across the room brought
in for reasons known only to his empty little
redneck mind.
6. Audience
member D (back row, far right) is Chuck. Chuck is
a dick.
- Yahtzee
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30/10/06:
Fuck Those Lions
UPDATE
11/2/06: The very first transaction from
my new store was an ash grey t-shirt sold on
October 31st to some guy in Surrey. Hi, mystery
consumer guy! You brightened up my evening!
Hey there.
Do you eat
lions?
Do you know
someone who eats lions?
Are you sick of
the stigma attached to eating lions? Of the
discrimination lion-eaters face in restaurants
and everyday life?
It's time to
come out of the closet and take a stand.
Introducing my
new range of I Eat Lions T-shirts, available in enough
sizes to please the smallest and the largest
varieties of jungle predator consumers! Now you
can tell the world that you eat lions at home, in
the office, or just out and about! Wander around
in an I Eat Lions shirt outside public eateries
and school canteens to passive-aggressively
demand that lion be introduced to the menu!
Also available:
the I Eat Lions barbecue
apron,
to wear while cooking lions!
Plus: the I Eat Lions mug, for drinking lions that
have been smashed into liquid form!
All major credit
cards and payment methods accepted. Let's not let
the lily-livered non-lion-eaters take the lions
right out of our mouths!
Not convinced?
Here are some interesting facts about eating
lions:
- Lions are
delicious and good for you
- People who
eat lions are considered brave and masculine
- Lions
offer very little to the worldwide economy
- Lions
aren't as endangered as other animals, like
pandas
- Not many
people eat lions, so it's still cool and
non-conformist
- A lion
would probably eat you given the chance
- Even if
you already eat lions you have to wear a shirt
that says you do or no-one will know
So come on,
gang! Put on a shirt and scoff some lions
today!
Mmmm. Lion!
- Yahtzee
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Previously on Fully
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16/10/06:
Leave Irwin
I haven't really
commented on the whole Steve Irwin thing. Since I
live in the country he arguably embodied this
seems like a tragic oversight. I mean, he was
Australian, I live in Australia, he wrestled
crocodiles, I pick my nose a lot, it was like
losing a little part of me or something. But when
that stingray broke his little heart and a nation
was united in grief - or at least a media was - I
kept conspicuously silent. I even had some
prepared witticisms I could have used, like
"I bet the crocodiles are pissed off that
they never got around to it first" or
"The guy who went for 'stingray' in the
'animal by which Steve Irwin will one day be
killed' betting pool is pretty fucking happy
right now".
I only bring up
the issue now because of the new adverts for
Australia Zoo I and my countrymen are being
subjected to. Now, until recently these adverts
were always personally presented by Irwin
himself, but lately this obviously couldn't be
possible without either advanced CG or a handy
necromancer so Irwin's young daughter has picked
up the slack.
"Come and
see me and all my friends," she sings
happily, her childlike face inflated into an
expression of chubby ecstasy as she hugs the leg
of an indifferent elephant. Her narration is
delivered with huge enthusiasm. One might almost
say... suspicious enthusiasm.
I put it on the
table now that her demeanour is not that of a
child whose beloved father is barely a month into
his prolonged dirt nap. Okay, I don't exactly
expect her to chirp out her sales pitch in
between mucus-laden sobs of undying grief, but
there's something about the way she hugs that
elephant that seems needlessly and
unrehearsedly... possessive. And I know from many
primary school nativity plays that kids her age
can't act - her blisteringly cheerfulness is the
genuine article. Her tone of voice has much of
the 'fulfillment of long-held wish' about it.
Now, don't
misunderstand me, I'm not saying there was
something suspicious about Irwin's death and that
his preschool-age daughter might have had some
Steerpike-esque role in the whole affair,
demonstrating one might call a prodigial grasp of
Machiavellian cunning. I'm certainly not
suggesting she has some kind of Aquaman-like
command over the animal kingdom. I do, however,
invite you to consider the scandal a few years
back that concerned Irwin, a baby and said baby's
vicinity to a crocodile's gnashing mouth and ask
yourself if you, as a child, would harbour a
grudge for that sort of thing.
Anyway.
By the grace of
David-kyo from the forum a new version of 5 Days
A Stranger is available on the 5 Days page that uses a special
font, and as such can be translated into other
languages that use all those quaint little
special characters like vowels with slanty things
and B's with little tails on that you foreigners
like so much. At present we only have a Hungarian
translation but if you speak English and some
other language and want to do a translation then
feel free to drop a line so we can sort something
out.
- Yahtzee
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