Kylegar’s Blog

So, We released Empires today.  All I can say is that it was as graceful as a ton of bricks falling through the sky.

There’s small things about the source engine that you just seem to miss.  Like, Theres over 500 files that you need to make sure exist.  When releasing a file bigger than 100mb, it’s generally a good idea to get as many mirrors as possible.  And, when you forget a file, don’t freak out like the world is ending (Read: Empires Community).

All went well though.  As the night wore on, and people mirrored the file, things got smoother.  I guess the initial fuckup with me missing the infantry.cfg wan’t that much of an issue, so, we managed to damage control it pretty easally.

So, some tips to make sure a release goes as smooth as possible:

1. Don’t forget files.  Thats bad!
2. Get atleast 4 mirrors for release day.  One is not enough
3. If something is forgotten, don’t say anything until a decision is made on how to proceed.
4. If it’s major, ignore rule 3.
5. Be nice to your server admins, they really control the game.

All in all, 2.2 is going well.  Of course there is bitching, and it always happens, but, keep pressing forward, and don’t stagnate.

~K

Kylegar Development, Empires, Games, Uncategorized Development, Empires, hl2

It’s true.  Sleeping in saves Money.
I sleep untill 11AM, and so I eat lunch, then go to classes, eat dinner, then hang out untill 1AM.  Thats saving about $30 a week from not eating breakfast, and I still eat after I wake up

Kylegar Life

An interesting article appeared in the BBC today.  Confirmed pictures of three “Exoplanets” or, Planets not within our solar system.

The article states that they are large gas giants, approximately 3 to 16 times the size of Saturn.  They don’t know if there are additional planets orbiting that star, but, they believe there are.

This is pretty interesting to see a picture of another solar system.  It’s stunning.

Kylegar Uncategorized

This post has been coming for a while.  A rant on DRM, but, I’m going to sweeten it a bit with a rant on DLC as well.

I’ll start off with a simple explanation what DRM is… It stands for Digital Rights Management, and it’s pretty much a little piece of code or a program that makes sure that You, the consumer, have purchased and are using Their product in the way that they see fit.  Most of the time, this comes in the form of putting in a CD key when you install a program or game, but, now it is turning into a whole bloated mess.  EA/Maxis’s Spore has a notorious “3 Install Limit”, meaning, you can only install Spore, Uninstalled or not, 3 times before you need to buy another copy.  Or, there is Farcry 2’s 5 Install limit, but wait, if you uninstall it, you get an install back!

Wait…What?

That’s right…the company you purchased this product from tells you how you can use it.  Now, I generally am not one for pirating, but, I downloaded the cracked RELOADED version of Spore, then went out and bought a copy from Fred Meyers.  I used the CD key in the actual purchased copy to install the cracked, DRM free version of Spore.  I wasn’t the only one to do that either.  In hindsight though, EA is getting slapped with some class action lawsuits over their DRM policies, so, I wouldn’t be surprised if we hear a bit more about DRM in the future.

Of course, with all this money grabbing in the Gaming Industry, Microsoft is trying to take a piece of the pie away from Steam in Digital Distribution.  Guess what part they are taking… Downloadable Content that you have to pay for. Yeppers, Buy a game, and pay for any additional content they decide to give you.  I’ll take Valve’s method of patching TF2 every 3-4 months with some new toys and achievements, or CCP’s Expansion Pack, for free, every 6 or so months.

Really though, I can understand why you want to charge people for DLC.  You spent time and effort creating that Content, and you want a return for it.  The problem is, In the case with Spore, who is going to pay $20 for extra creature parts? Who do you alienate if you, lets say, release a multipayer map that people have to pay for?  And, are you going to go so far as to Charge users to download other user’s custom content?  How far do you go to make money?

I guess what I’m getting at is, It should be fun to make games for other people to play, but, the big industry is trying to lap up as much money as they can.  It makes me sad to see something so great be swallowed up by money grabbers.  I mean, Come on…there is going to be a 50 Cent game.  He isn’t even a good rapper…

Also, played Fallout 3 and loved it.  The Liberty bot at the end screaming democracy catch-phrases was a great touch.  I loved hearing “DEMOCRACY IS NON NEGOTIABLE” and “COMMUNISM IS A LIE” from a 75 foot tall walking, laser firing robot that looked like it came out of a 1950’s comic book.  Made my day.

Kylegar Development, Games, Life

Well, after a very frustrated post yesterday, I have made some progress on rebuilding my Desktop from erasing everything.

I’m really suprised on how many tools I use…from winrar to Visual Studio, theres so many little things I use every day that I had to reinstall.

Thank god for Steam though.  While I lost my game files, I still have HL2 and its friends (TF2, Portal, etc) tied to my account, and I can just download an play.  I lost Warcraft3 though, but, I’ll head home and pick up the CDs

I lost all of my music though, all 75gb of it…  That stung.  Oh well, I can probably get it back pretty easy.

Kylegar Life

Executable Injecting Viruses are no fun.

3 Live boot disks, 2 frustrated nights, I’m now running a fresh install of windows XP, and lost all of my music.

Good Game.  Really.

Kylegar Uncategorized

So, I got the last of the crap for my dorm today.  Got some lamps, and some bins and some other crap.

Oh, and Silly String.  Yea…thats gonna be fun.

Kylegar Life Life

Did a few tweaks with the blog.

If you have a comment approved, then you may post any comment without having to get approved.  I’m hoping to curb down on spam, so, if you use one username/e-mail combo, use it again so you don’t get moderated.

Also, I changed my username from admin to Kylegar.  yay.

Kylegar Blog Blog

Smashball playtest yesterday.  It’s a great game, with Spider-man like swinging and trying to score.   Theres quite a few bugs, and its still in alpha, but its hella fun.  l’avair sucks, but thats because hes a scoring machine, but I shut him down.

Also, went to OSU and got my books yesterday.   I got 2 out of four, since one of them wasn’t in yet, and I’m still waitlisted for the second.  The book for Computer Science sucks.  It’s a how to write Python book, and, well Python sucks.  It’s slow, it has no power (unless you give it power), and the Garbage Collector sucks.   And, it’s section on C was horribly wrong.  Oh Well

I’m going shopping again today to pick up the rest of the little things I need for school.

4 days left.

EDIT: I have officially named the engine I’m working on.  It is the Kloptrop Engine.  Wewt.

admin Development, Engine, Kloptrop, Life, Smashball Gaming, Kloptrop, Life

Well, haven’t done much since I reinstalled wordpress on mah website.  Meh, not much happened.

But thats all about to change!

6 Days from now I’m gonna move into my dorm at OSU (Go Beavs!).  Thats gonna be fun.

Also, I have started working on a Game Engine…Right now, the memory management part is done, and I’m going to start building the kernal with some task managing and profiling.  Thats gonna be fun.  I haven’t decided weather or not to do a 3D or a 2D engine.  Right now, I can go either way, and I think I’m gonna leave it like that.  Perhaps set up a 2D scenegraph component, and then a 3D world component.  If you want to make a 2D game, then just load the 2D portion.  If you want to make a 3D game, load the 3D part and use the 2D part for the GUI. If I do 3D though, I’m going to go with DirectX, mostly because OpenGL makes me mad, because they didn’t do what the promised.

Also, Empires is chugging along.  I also was invited to the Alpha test of Smashball.  Thats alot of fun.  Basicly, the goal is to grab the ball, and score it in the other team’s goal.  Of course, players are much much faster than normal, and can grapplehook and swing around.  Its pretty fast paced, and alot of fun. Much Thanks to Krenzo (Whom I love and care deeply for ) for inviting me.

Oh, and I’m thinking about using Kordo as my nickname in some games/wobsites.  Cause the name Kordo is cool.

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