Satan Sam.co.uk

http://bossbaddie.co.uk

We’re quite mega into the future at Boss Baddie, and there is no more evidence of this fact than the following;

This is the homepage of the site. Literally everything that happens to do with the company is fed through here. We also have a new image section brought to you by Flickr. Where we also have an account.

YouTube is the name of a fascinating site where people can upload videos. It has been going for a few years but it’s well worth checking out if you’ve never visited.

Twitter is the most new site here, or “social site”. It’s a place where people can engage with each other over topics they like, or become united against things they don’t like. It’s not dissimilar to “txt messaging” on mobile phones, but much more public.

Facebook is similar to Twitter but more private. A lot of people like the strength of privacy on this site so choose to use it over Twitter or YouTube. We like this one because data seems more permanent. We can link to things and people can easily see that data in a nice looking typeface.

By all means follow and like and subscribe to us using those above methods. It’s a good way to keep informed of things we release to the public, and not private conversations, negotiations, plans or anything like that.

One thing that bugs me about high content games is how that content is presented to the player. Especially when it’s unloaded all at once.

The best example of this problem is a newcomer to a fighting game. Last summer I picked up Super Street Fighter 4 AE for PC, and in that time I’ve played with 6 out of the ~40 character roster.

The problem isn’t that there are so many characters, but that there isn’t a system in the interface to quickly play through those. The only way to do it is to log out of a training game. So it loads up the character selection screen, then reloads the game. This process takes much longer than it needs to.

So what would I have done to “fix” this “problem” in SSF4? On the training menu include an option to quickly switch out to another fighter, have a brief pause, and back into the game.

I also picked up Street Fighter X Tekken and Ultimate Marvel v Capcom 3, but again there’s no quick way of playing through and finding out the different fight styles and nuances each fighter possesses.

This problem isn’t just limited to fighting games either. I’ve had the same feeling with Gran Turismo 5, and until the Vita version, Little Big Planet. Any game with numerous modes or characters. Beginning Torchlight 2 I was presented with a selection of fighters that I’ve never heard of before and my only introduction was a short video. Fans of the series will know what does what, as will fans of Street Fighter (which I am – been playing since the vanilla SF2), but these things should be as explanatory to newcomers as possible.

It all boils down to the lack of quick experimentation. Something a lot of games do right – something I feel Nintendo and Valve get totally right. In Mario and Zelda, you’ll be presented with new content and puzzles all the time and you’re free to mess around with them, quickly shifting tactics and items to conquer and master whatever new thing just turned up. In Left 4 Dead or Team Fortress 2 you’re never penalised for taking the wrong weapon, and if it is wrong you can just pick it up again.

I feel as more and more games get full with lovely content, more options are needed to quickly breeze through, to find our feet and get settled in.

So it was around a month ago that E3 happened. I finished going through all my photos (approximately ~3,000,000ish, give or take) and here are some of them. Do you need descriptions and stories? I’m almost positive I should keep quiet on those, so I will.

But it really was the best week ever, all thanks to the awesome people at http://ripstone.com/ for dragging us out there

So yeah.

Back in August last year I started chatting to some people who became Ripstone, a publishing outfit ran by two ex-Sony veterans (now 3 ex-Sony veterans). Now we’re making (with VooFoo Studios) a sequel to Really Big Sky for home consoles- Big Sky Infinity!

FOR THE PLAYSTATION 3 AND VITA.

That’s all you’re getting.

Ta ra!

I never get rid of my old pics. Here’s the oldest one in my pictures library-

Made in Photoshop in 1998/1999 or so (the first couple of years at secondary school). So there you have it. Proof!

SO HERE WE GO. Be prepared for sneak peaks at things that never made it into the final game, early concepts and unrefined silliness from the Really Big Sky and Big Sky libraries!

Also one random commenter who correctly points out the ONE picture in this post that doesn’t have a link to a larger version will get a Steam code for Really Big Sky!

Ends this Friday

The ship is born!

Whilst perusing my hard drive during a rainy Bank Holiday I found an old folder full of games I once loved enough to backup for eternity on a RAID backup.

Alex Adventure.

http://tomvert.free.fr/

Without dissecting it too much I want to just switch off a bit. Ok?

I love this game!

It’s fun.

It’s wacky.

It’s outrageous!

I fell in love with the total throwback charm. Unlike modern day retro-styled big hitters (such as VVVVV (not sure if that’s enough V’s)), it focuses on something that other games don’t. Growing up on the Amiga and Spectrum I found most games to have a total lack of direction. Games like Popeye and Ghostbusters on the Spectrum were a hammer to my little 6 year old brain.

Alex Adventure transposes that feeling to adults. It’s something that commercial games don’t do. It’s risky and out there. Something I think I subconsciously tried with Lunnye Devitsy. The “levels” are labyrinthine with enemies that have strange movements.

However it was composed I found myself going back until completion.

You know it’s 11pm and I’m going in too deep here. It’s just a fun game yeah. If you played lots of real, old games then you might like this. Or you might not.

Just a quick pointer outer that the Indiegala IV is currently out and contains Lunnye, Wake and Really Big Sky!

www.indiegala.com

Caroline, the other half of Boss Baddie and my life, and I are heading out to E3 in June. It’s a long long flight from the north of England involving 2 stopovers on the way back, but it’ll be worth it.

It’s really quite mad. This time last year I was trying to get a job as a freakin TESTER!

In other news I’m now a lecturer on a game art+design course. Crazy times.

Stick is DONE! It’s rather spiffy in real life, away from cameras. Had I taken a bit longer to plan it I would have done something much more different. The UK market for fight stick parts is pretty poor, we have www.gremlinsolutions.co.uk and an eBay seller, but they only stock the most common components. But I guess that makes my British-modded Chinese-manufactured with Japanese-parts controller that little bit more awesome.

The new blue ball top and shaft. This thing catches light so well.

Steep angle shot of the buttons. The blue ones are by far the best. I’d love to make a black+blue stick at some point.

Better shot of the front. Can I stress again how lovely those blue buttons are? I can? Good.

Infront of my 27” iMac (to give a sense of the size of the stick). Pinball buttons for all to see.

The pinball buttons were the hardest part of all this.

An electric drill was used to make several pilot holes that would eventually be cut through, making a rather ugly looking hole. Then, and this is quite silly I think, a soldering gun was used to melt through and create the shape. This left loads of residue which, and sillier still, was removed with a Dremmel recently discovered in a cupboard!

Another hard part was cutting out the artwork.

It wasn’t technically difficult, it just took a while. Used a guillotine whenever I could and a scalpel for the rest. It does work too. The button lips cover up any flaws from the cutting process.

And because I like you so much you can also see my new carpet.

And speaking of awesome things being made, MrPineapple’s supercool sister is crocheting some characters ‘o mine. I’ll post my own photos when I get them!