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How much you spend for gfx assets?

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It was fun reading some posts in indiegamer about “AAA art studios offering big discount for indies”. That thing didn’t sound right to me. Of course they couldn’t provide any price indication for it, not even a rough approximate for the example they posted.
They even seemed annoyed when me and other forum members pointed this out, like if they didn’t want to put a fixed price in public.
I don’t understand at all this attitude, since I’m not even bothering to ask them if they can’t post any info about it.
Also, when one replied with a figure, it said “in the thousands”. Too fun, in the thoussands what exactly mean? $3000 or $8000 ? I don’t know if they understand that even $1000 is a big figure for an indie devs. They think everyone is successful as Popcap, Funpause and so on. The truth is that for most indies even a “small figure” like $1000 for art is already the limit.

MMORPG and YOUR time

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I have been playing EQ2 a lot lately. It’s really an addictive game, even more than the 1st episode (if possible). I have a problem now (in general with all the MMORPG).
Those are kind of games that OWN you. You can’t press “pause” and go to bathroom. You play in real-time and are always on pressure.
That is bad because I don’t want to have long gaming session, but at the same time those kind of games makes you always want to play more.
It happens even with Civilization IV, but the difference there is that you CAN pause the game and have a break to do whatever you want.
Also is impressive how much hardware resource it needs. Bah I need to buy a new pc anyway to render my 3d Poser models faster… I think I’m going for a Pc with 2Gb of RAM!! 🙂

The superprogrammers and getting the job done

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Is really fun to discover, when talking privately to fellow programmers, that most of the successful indie developers are not what is commonly considered “a good programmer”.
For me,a good programmer is the one that gets the job done. In time, without (not many) bugs, etc. Language or ultra-knowledge of all latest tecniques does not matter.
Not the one who makes the best C++ ultra-polymorphic engine 😉 but often people are like that, and then they find out that they can’t port their code to other platform like Mac Os X because they used a particular class/structure/library etc.
I won’t make the names because I want to respect their privacy. But is not a secret to anyone that Platypus was made with Blitzbasic and was in the top 10 of the best casual games portal around… so you really don’t have to be an expert programmer to be successful in this industry.

why PES5 sucks

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Yes I am disappointed. After the initial enthusiasm, I can say that PES5 is not so good.
Why? easy, computer cheats.
At every level (even if I played only from 3 stars and up) the computer cheats in every manner. Some quick example:
– you shoot 10 times but their goalie makes impossible saves or you simply hit posts or miss the target. They shot 1 time and always make goal.
– they can do any kind of foul but the referee rarely whistle, while as soon as you touch them they fall on the ground.
and so on. It’s really a general sensation that the Computer Opponent has “something more” than you. Every time you play you can feel it.
Now I wonder: why do that?? they can say otherwise Computer AI is too easy. Ok well with the insane amount of money that you earn every year (PES is a top-selling serie of soccer games) INVEST in AI research instead of simply adding cheating!!! 🙁

Bah, going back to play Everquest 2, at leat is a game more “fair”.

First Magic Stones expansion released!

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Today I uploaded the first expansion for my game Magic Stones, “The Bonelord”.
Is still BETA version even if I think there shouldn’t be any serious bugs 🙂

If you want to try, check those links:
http://www.winterwolves.net/games/MagicStonesTrial.zip (mac)
http://www.winterwolves.net/games/MagicStonesTrial.exe (win)

you’re welcome to report any bugs or give feedback!