No Uudders isn’t dead; it’s merely in a state of torpor. The head chefs (Logan and myself) are going through a busy RL patch at present; with Loge’s currently in the death-rattle stages of pre-release beta for a Dreamworks title, and myself currently readjusting lifestyle to the strange new customs of a foreign land (even though New Zealand is about as foreign to Australia as Canada is to the States).

We hope that you will remain patient with us over the next month or two as we attempt to gradually build it back up to a steady hum once again, and know that our separation doesn’t in any way spell the end times for armature nerd on nerd action, I myself plan to start posting regularly again and once I’ve got my workstation back online I also hope to be remotely adding to our video features.

So stay tuned, come make some spam posts on our website if you like, tell us how gay we are and let us know you’re still out there lurking. In the mean time though, on behalf of Uudders -salute!.

~R

Lookit, we came through!

We really DID finish Resi 5, and recorded most of it, and heres the PROOF!

Part three of our Beginners Guide to Resident Evil #5 series of videos; essentially we endeavored to experience and critique the game live at a frontier review capacity; these videos are the result.

Enjoy the antics & poor footage quality of this newest installment, which consists mainly of the two of us shouting at each other and shrieking wildly as we fumble our way through Mission #3 on Veteran difficulty, much the same way a questionably experienced young lad would fumble his way through bra clasps and condom wrappers during those early life encounters of intimacy.

Parts 4 & 5 are also complete and will appear on this site very shortly. Over the course of the play-through we recorded across two separate digital televisions, with different cameras & capture techniques, taking this into consideration I can assure you that the video footage quality will improve beyond this installment, and perhaps it might also get worse in some areas also.

Not an oldskool uudder? Perhaps you might like to watch the earlier parts in the series first:

Episode #1

Episode #2

As I mentioned in a previous update, the original combat implementation was ground into a fine, code-tasting dust and packed away, replaced by an infinitely deeper (and juicier) solution that uses firing arcs.

Entering into combat hasn’t changed – you still click on the event in the event window – and the representation of the room is similar too. The difference is that zombies are no longer shown as one large group, they’re now broken up into individual flesh-eating nasties. Weapons have also evolved, the far/close/melee profiles exchanged for variable firing arcs and shot modes. For example, the shotgun has a wide firing arc and shoots pellets in a spread, but it can only fire once per turn and has a short range. A submachine gun on the other hand has a medium firing arc and range, but you can shoot up to six bullets at one or multiple targets. Keep in mind that each bullet fired in the same turn reduces the accuracy of the shot that follows it.

Hit the jump for an additional screenshot which show projectiles in flight. Yes, I said projectiles.

As promised some time back, we will be kicking off the new year firstly with an Indianna Pones extravaganza; presenting our exclusive three part documentary focus on the releases of Blendo Games, including a blow-by-blow interview with Blendo’s founding playa Brendon Chung.

For any of you out there who’re unhealthily obsessed with Mr. Chung, we’ve included the interview transcript for your reading pleasure (below).

In addition to this Blendo games expose, we’ve got even more recently relevant news that’s so hot out of the oven you’ll blister your tongue trying to digest it, ruining the rest of your day and any other consequent meals you might attempt to enjoy… material or er metaphysical… what was I getting at again?

…Oh right, Flotilla (review pending).

Flotilla is the newest of the new from the mind of Brendon Chung, soon to be released through Impulse, GamersGate, XBLA and also direct from Blendo Games. We’ve got our copy of the game, where’s yours?

We’ve also recently been writing lots of promise-checks by way of our stunted efforts to play through the entirety of Resident Evil 5; all three of our die hard Beginners-Guide fans will be happy to know that recently Loge’s and myself finally witnessed the conclusion to Resi 5 in all of its jaundice tinged glory! So now all that’s left for us to do (aside from the mammoth video editing line I’ve got to wade through) is make more promises about soon to be finished and updated entries into our Beginners Guide to Resident Evil #5 series; parts three & four should be up in the next couple of weeks so ya’ll do come back now!

And now our interview with Brendon Chung of Blendo Games…

UUDD: Can you tell us about your history & experience with Videogames; Your gamer roots, the titles that you’ve drawn the most inspiration from, your love of the artistic medium that is ‘Games’, how long you’ve been developing your own games.

BC: I grew up with the old 16-color Sierra and LucasArts adventure games. I think the first game I made was a text adventure game in QBasic – just getting a little text prompt that recognized player input was incredibly exciting (for me, at least!). There’s been a lot of films, books, and games that have had an impact on me. Regarding games, notable ones for me are Thief, X-COM, and Another World. It’s great when a game creates a world that just compels you to discover more and more about it.

UUDD: How many games have you developed that have never seen the light of day & of which is there one or two in particular that you regret having never been able to release?

BC: There’s a pile of game prototypes hanging out in my hard drive. It usually takes several iterations to finally get something on the right track. What’s nice is that when things finally do start shaping up, there’s a nice grab-bag of prototype code, assets, levels, and sounds to pick and choose from!  There’s definitely a few prototypes I’d like to clean up and flesh out some more.

UUDD: The original Barista game (apart from having Coffee drink health power-ups) has no direct indication as to the significance of its title; additionally it has spawned three apparent sequels if going by the name alone. Can you divulge to us the enigma of the Barista series concerning the title ‘Barista’? Or is it a carefully guarded secret? And were they actually intended to follow on from one another?

BC: The back story for the original Barista was “something catastrophic happens in the Mars station where everyone awake disappears.”  The gag was, the player character never drinks coffee.  So, you sleep like a baby and survive the ordeal.  This gag is somewhat referenced by the other Barista games, in that you always begin the game waking up from slumber. Once the project was done, the coffee back-story felt a bit too ridiculous, so I removed most references to it.

UUDD: (In the Case of Barista #1) DooM modding back in the day was arguably the original game customization craze that birthed FPS modding as we know it today, responsible for such success stories as Couterstrike & Team Fortress. Were you a DooM modder back in the day? Why chose DooM source to make an indie game? Was your plan for the originating Barista always to make it so brief or had you initially planned more levels / episodes?

BC: I made a lot of Doom maps back in the day. None were released – I didn’t have an Internet connection at the time!

Barista 1 was made primarily to learn how to use the ZDoom engine port and learn its scripting language.  Whenever I learn how to use a game engine, I like to expand my test maps into a small, focused project, such as Barista 1.  Afterward, once I’m more comfortable with the game engine and know its strengths and weaknesses, I’m in a better position to make a bigger, full-fledged production.

UUDD: (In the Case of Barista #2) players were exposed to intricate abstractions akin to what they would later experience in a consolidated format within Gravity Bone. What was the deal with Barista #2? Who was the girl? What was the equation?

How did you come up with the fantastically non-diegettic concept of forcing the player out of their FPS comfort zone & into a more text-adventure sensitive format with the introduction of the talking skull?

BC: The gag of the story is that the player is always trailing one step behind an expedition team. The player discovers the expedition team slowly unraveling, starting with distrust, to jealousy, and eventually culminating in murder. The player has his own back story, but I’ll leave that part open to interpretation for now!

I can’t claim credit for the idea of the talking skull. The idea was borrowed from Bungie’s great “Pathways into Darkness”, where the player could talk to dead nazi soldiers to learn more about the story and characters.

UUDD: The following Barista installments came in the form of Doom3 & Halflife mods, in addition to this you also have a number of other Blendo-branded mods such as Bugstompers, the Puppy Years & Bootleg Squadrog; while these are slightly less accessible for all casual gamers (needing the original game in order to run) they seem to have been quite popular in the modding community. Can you tell us a little more about them, particularly for the benefit of those interested in your stand-alone indie releases who might not have played the mods.

BC: Bootleg Squadrog was an experiment to see how would it feel to play the role of a squad member, not a squad leader. That is, your AI squad leader gives your team orders, and you and your squad mates carry out these orders. It was challenging to make your squad buddies move in a tight pack and do basic bounding overwatch maneuvers, but it turned out pretty well.

In Bugstompers you play a space-marine on a mission to retrieve a MacGuffin suitcase from an abandoned office complex. It builds off of Bootleg Squadrog in that you have an AI squad mate who gives you covering fire and cooperates with you in solving some puzzles.  Something Bugstompers plays with is the player weapon. I was taking a photography class at the time, and thought it would be fun to model a rifle after the basic camera principles of f-stops and shutter speed.  The final result was a simplified system where the player was able to modify two-weapon parameters on the fly, letting the player “make” any weapon he needed.

The Puppy Years was made mainly because I think the premise of a super-powered infant is hilarious. You climb up sheer walls, hack security keypads with your tiny baby-hands, and eat cookies and milk.  This was a bit more ridiculous than my previous projects, so it was a nice change of pace.

UUDD: Most recently released in your Mod specific repertoire is the Doom3 based title Pathways Redux; intended to be your love letter to the original Apple FPS title Pathways by Bungie. Can you elaborate on your feelings toward the original, how you came to revisit this somewhat obscure nugget of retro gaming & what you were aiming for in your Pathways Redux remake?

BC: After Barista 3, I was interested in following it up with a more elaborate project. Barista 3 played with the Doom 3 GUI system and had a fairly large story component, so I wanted to do something that further explored those aspects. Pathways fit the bill quite well – it had a great story to tell, and there was a lot of room for experimenting with light adventure game mechanics such as inventory items and conversation trees.

It’s always fun to see in what directions a genre can be pushed and prodded. There’s something thrilling to see games like Ultima Underworld of Pathways into Darkness blurring the lines between game genres.

UUDD: In your entire listed catalogue, the point & click adventure Pilot Light is easily the odd one out. This sample sized homage to the LucasArts era of RPG gaming is branded as being the ‘first episode’. Can you talk a bit about this particular project and the likelihood of Pilot Light Episode #2.

BC: I grew up on the old Sierra and LucasArts adventure games. I heard about this free game engine called Adventure Game Studio and saw a nice opportunity to make homage to the point’n'click genre, and give myself a primer on the AGS engine at the same time.  Pilot Light was very refreshing to make – compared to previous projects, it was a nice change of pace to have the game not focus on shooting everything that moves!

There is a half-complete Pilot Light 2 sitting somewhere in my computer. It’s a light RPG where the player can visit planets and take on odd jobs. The scope of the project got a bit out of control, so I stopped working on it.  I’d certainly like to revisit it someday.

UUDD: Your game ‘Grotto King’ seems to be a strange halfway point between some of the more recognized releases (Gravity Bone / Barista) can you tell us a little about the development of this project & your thoughts regarding GK in general.

BC: At the time, I was having the game equivalent to writer’s block on Gravity Bone. I decided to take a break and make a small FPS game to get things moving again – this ended up being Grotto King.

A problem I was having with Gravity Bone was developing its art. Its art then was more realistic-looking, and it took a large amount of time to make a single asset. I happened to borrow Zelda Wind Waker over a weekend and loved its art style – so I used Grotto King as a test bed for trying out a cartoon look.  It turned out better than expected, and as a bonus it was now significantly easier to generate art assets.

One of my goals was to make an FPS game for people who have never played an FPS game. There’s a fair amount of coordination required to move with the keyboard, look with the mouse, and shoot at the same time. So I thought it would be fun for Grotto King to be a “My First FPS” for new gamers.  Testing it on non-gamers was great, if a little soul-crushing – watching someone fall into the same lava pit for the 20th time in a row is an amazing wake-up call that something needs to be adjusted.

UUDD: In your earliest listed works we can find mention of your Citizen Abel character in the form of a collection of what looks like mod maps for HalfLife, can you explain to UUDD & its audience if this is a significant character of your creation or just a simple film geek play-on-words, and if the former then who-exactly IS the illusive ‘Citizen Abel’ and how significant is he/she to your work.

BC: Citizen Abel is the name of a series of Quake 2 mods I made several years ago. The player assumed the role of Citizen Abel, a gun for hire.

Abel is what made me take a deeper interest in game development. After releasing the first Abel and getting some good feedback, I became interested in game development – what makes a game good, what are the nuts & bolts to achieving those things?  I experimented with various ideas in the sequels, some things successfully working and some things failing horribly.  My latest project “Gravity Bone” is the fifth Citizen Abel episode.

UUDD: Which brings us to Gravity Bone; this is a difficult game to discuss as aside from its rampant peculiarity the most noticeable dilemma for Journalists writing about this game seems to be the dichotomy faced trying to explain its content with desired zeal, while ambivalently trying to keep their review free of spoilers. From the perspective of the gamer, Citizen Abel is a secret agent arriving at some sort of plush mountain lodge where an international super villain (or sexual deviant) convention is apparently taking place. From here the player engages in about 30 mins worth of lateral thinking in order to navigate to the game’s conclusion. Please tell us a bit about how the game came about.

BC: Gravity Bone is a sequel to a series of mods made a while ago named Citizen Abel.  The first couple iterations of Gravity Bone were very gun-heavy.  Lots of bullets, lots of explosions.  I wanted to add something to break up the shooting sequences, so I experimented with a few things like grappling hooks and computer consoles.

With each passing iteration, the new “toys” and story bits became more interesting, but the gun shooting started feeling almost unnecessary.  I had always wanted to try to make a FPS game that didn’t have any shooting, so I decided to take the plunge and remove guns from Gravity Bone. It was a fun thing to try, and I’m still pretty surprised that people are responding to the final results.

UUDD: Tell the truth, did you make up most of Gravity Bone as you went or was it meticulously planned out?

BC: Yeah, the project was planned out. But, as often happens, every level went through a lot of iteration and changes. I’ve found that the best ideas are almost always sparked once you see the initial pass of your ideas implemented in the engine.

UUDD: One of the most memorable aspects of Gravity Bone is its unique artistic aesthetic, stylistically half 70’s retro-kitsch and half 80’s Super Deformed Anime. Tell us about the creative inspiration behind this.

BC: I didn’t really have any sort of epiphany about it; the style was borne out of technical constraints – the technical constraint namely being myself.

My 3D modelling skills are fairly basic. People are difficult to make, but I’m fairly capable of making mechanical-looking objects. After failing to make a good-looking person for the nth time, I decided on a whim to make a character with an oversized square head. It instantly clicked – on the design side, it had a great light-hearted look, and on the production side it was dead simple and quick to make new characters and textures.

UUDD: How long was its development from start to finish? Was it a long-term project considering your original Citizen Able relevant work, involving dressed up content that you created back then? Or 100% fresh material?

BC: I’d estimate Gravity Bone took about a year from start to finish.  The game itself is short – most of the development time was spent iterating on various versions and polishing up the final project.

UUDD: What have been some of the more memorable responses and/or feedback to Gravity Bone (friends/family & complete strangers) that you’ve had?

BC: Someone had an interesting comment on the characters.  He felt that very little was expected of the characters – they’re big square people, their animation is limited to a few frames, and you don’t really interact with them in any meaningful way.  But by the time the finale is reached, the characters surprise you a bit and give the impression of having back story, personality.  I didn’t quite intend to pull a switcheroo like that, but I thought it was a very interesting view.

UUDD: Do you think we might see more of Citizen Abel in the future?

BC: I’d certainly like to see more!

UUDD: Finally we arrive at your latest work-in-progress Atom Zombie Smasher, being developed with the open source 360 community XNA utility, you’ve described AZS as a top down strategy game.

BC: Yes, Atom Zombie Smasher is a game I’m making using the XNA framework.  It’s potentially for release on XBLA, though its still in development.

(Uudders would like to personally thank Brendon for taking the time to speak to us about his work, we wish him all the best with Flotilla and Atom Zombie Smasher in 2010)

This is the first of three parts, an exclusive inside look at the fantastic indie releases of Blendo Games, and an interview with their creator Brendon Chung.

This first part looks at Blendo titles: Barista & Barista 2

If you enjoyed this, be sure to check out Part #2 and Part #3!

Based on the v1.82 source code released recently, Zafehouse Infection amps up a number of features of the game, while adding a few new things for you (and I suppose, the undead) to sink your teeth into.

Version 1.0 is already up and available for play, and includes the following changes:

- Infection is now contagious, but there is a small chance to heal it.

- Weapons can be loaded automatically, and when giving a range weapon to someone, is it automatically loaded with one box.

- Barricades higher than heavy block survivors movement

- It is possible to weaken barricades to recover some supplies

- Survivors fighting alongside family members [survivors with the same surname] get an attack and defense bonus

- A survivor can only be cured once per hour.

If you’d like to help flap out, or just give his version a whirl, head over to the progress log on the forums, or check out the list of planned changes and ideas.

Zafehouse Infection V1.00 – Fan edition – Progress Log [Zafehouse forums]

All the thumbnails can be clicked for larger versions, if squinting isn’t your thing, and I can assure you they want to be clicked. By you. Right now.

Zafehouse 2 – Media [Zafehouse]

Something Awful’s devout followers have mused on the prospect of a world where classic gaming concepts are awarded their own learning-orientated literature, and crafted a series of Photoshops to illustrate their findings. I found the Health Recovery one (shown here) to be among the best, though a few other gems await you in SA’s Comedy Goldmine.

Video Game High School [Something Awful]

I don’t have anything super huge to divulge this update, but I can say that, after many requests, I’ve added outside movement to Zafehouse 2. This means instead of taking a turn to move from one edge of the map to the other, it’s looking closer to five or six turns, as you dodge between buildings and the inevitable (and darn hungry) undead.

Currently, you can only move to entrances and zombie “hotspots”, as I didn’t really see the need to position survivors outside in the middle of nowhere. If someone can give me a really (really) good reason why it should be any different, I’ll think about it.

Implementing outside movement required me to confront my fear of A* pathfinding and, while it was a tortuous and many times frustrating endeavour, my work paid off.

I also took the opportunity to give the underlying graphics engine (which isn’t so much an engine as it is one of those tiny electric motors you get in a toy racecar) a boost. The game now supports double-buffering of the pixel kind, which has improved drawing performance by a metric arseload. Scrolling around the map is now smooth as buttery silk, even considering the sledgehammer-like approach I have to 2D visuals (read: amping the crud out of GDI+)

It’s time now in Zafehouse 2’s development for me to work on the meat and potatoes… or the “actual game” as it’s called in some parts. Which means details should get juicer, and the gameplay videos tastier as time goes on.

Again, thanks for bearing with me. There are moments when I wish I had whole days (weeks even) to commit to the title, instead of the couple of hours a night I have now. I’m not at the point yet where I’m willing to sacrifice my social life.

I’ve been working on a pet project, Zafehouse 2. It’s the sequel to Zafehouse, a free zombie survival simulator I coded in seven days during my stint at Kotaku AU. It was moderately successfully, and then indie games site Rock, Paper, Shotgun got a hold of it and an even larger audience got a taste of Zafehouse’s flavour of lo-fi, undead fun.

The popularity was great enough to prompt development of a sequel. After a false start, Zafehouse 2 became properly tangible, and even playable. There are screenshots, even, and like, news!

The goal this week is to post a video of combat on Playwrite, my other blog, and here. Hopefully I can introduce a couple new people to the awesomeness that is Zafehouse.