Archive for April 30, 2009

Uncanny Likeness

digitalgibs | April 30, 2009 | One comment

http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/action/zombieapocalypse/index.html

Hmm, you know I can’t put my finger on it but I know I’ve seen this before.  I just don’t know where they possibly could have gotten the idea for a top-down 3D arena based shooter where you dispense waves of fast-moving zombies with modernized weapons like machineguns, shotguns, and grenades.  Oh I guess the name Zombpocalypse was taken by someone so they just went with the ol’ Zombie Apocalypse; I see what you did there…  I tell ya, if I was half as big as Konami I’d have half a mind to see if there is grounds to suit here :) but I’m a bigger sport than that.  Besides, it’s not like I’d have a snowball chance in hell to win that one; corprate lawyers are like some kind of hypnotoad in the courtroom.

At least my game is free so they can’t buy me out like Bill Gates did to Homer Simpson. (Sorry I tried to find a YouTube video to explain the reference but failed.  So you get the joke or you don’t.)

Category: zombpocalypse

Step Inside My Mind

digitalgibs | April 26, 2009 | No comments

The uncut ramblings that rattle my head.

Working solo is hard and, dare I say, a little depressing.  I have wasted hours on some days just staring at a blank page and waiting for inspiration to greet me.  He never does.  Instead, he waits for me on the other side where all I need is a vehicle of some kind; a transport to guide me just slightly in a direction that would give me the confidence to continue.  I think I understand now a little about the anguish of solitude confinement.  It’s hard when you have a thought that teases to come out.  It’s enough to drive a person insane every time it burrows back in.  My thoughts would gladly show it’s face if greeted with another thought of similar kind, but it’s hard to do when you are surrounded by unlike minds.  I suppose I’ll continue to live in the prison I’ve built until I find a better answer.

I think my thoughts are sometimes the reason for my anxiety since I am most at piece when I am thinking of nothing at all; a rare treat.  When you’ve trained yourself over countless years to think critically, logically, and work on unthinkable solutions for nearly unsolvable problems, it’s not exactly something you can just turn off.  It does not help that I am trying find a logical path to an unreasonably high objective in life.  Some people may say that life usually ends relative to where you start.  I’ve made it a life pursuit to disprove that.  I recently reached a milestone in my life.  I have everything that I have ever dreamed out of life and then some, yet I still can’t stop from feeling that something is missing.  Is that ambition or illness?

okay, time to clear the mind with some mindless zombie stomping.  mmm zombies…

Category: general

Smarter than your Average Zombie

digitalgibs | April 12, 2009 | 2 comments

It’s kind of crazy how many zombie-related games have creeped up in the last year or so.  It’s especially odd that it came at a time when zombie movies have actually been on the low end.  The last real zombie movie I can recall is the remake of Dawn of the Dead or maybe Resident Evil came out after that (if you can call that a zombie movie).  When I started working on Zombpocalypse, the zombie scene was pretty dim.  Left for Dead was just a screenshot and the most zombie games up to that point had stuck with the old rigid zombies.  I thought it would be cool to make them fast and fierce, but I had no idea of the kind of technical issues it would bring.
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Category: zombpocalypse

Am I Getting Old, or Do Games Suck?

digitalgibs | April 6, 2009 | No comments

Am I getting  old, or does the industry seem to be standing still?  For the thousands of development studios and the hundreds of thousands of employees working at these studios, you would imagine the game industry in a very different place than today.  I know I would.  I’m not pointing fingers or looking to rant about how much the industry sucks; this is not my goal.  The truth is that I don’t have a goal, but I do often wonder why I find myself playing less games each year.  There was a time when I played maybe 10+ games a year; most of them borrowed or rented with a small handful of purchases.  Later in life, my gaming was reduced to maybe 3 games a year plus a good jRPG to fill in the gaps.  Now, I find myself playing maybe 2 games a year, total.  I started to question why this was happening and came up with the following list of excuses or reasons, whatever you’d like to call them.

Category: games