Middle ages

I have already wrote a bit about the middle-ages of video games in my last blog but i'll write more i guess.

The middle ages of video games to me is after the industry got up off its feet (Spacewar through to pong) but before games started to rival the film and music industries wich is about like 5 years ago to now when the Playsation 2 and stuff came out.

After pong, pac man, defender and space invaders were released Atari raked in the cash and decided to develop the first ever home video console that uses plug in cartridges, there were a few home consoles before that had a few games built in but these were expensive and unsuccesfull. Originally they had trouble finding a fast and cheap CPU that could be used to render the current coin-op classics, but then this MOS techno 6502 thing was released wich allowed Atari to push forward the Atari 2600 and make even more money.
The 2600 started to decline and the whole E.T thing happened, atari were already trying to get into the 8-bit home computer thing but the commodore Apple 2 and amstrads controlled the userbase and Atari had to realise there were other company's that could make money off video games.
During this time the NES was released with Mario brothers and Nintendo were now big in the video games industry the NES became dominant in the north american market and were the front runners until Nintendo released the Super famicom in 1989 this console pushed atari out the door and the only real competitor it had was the genesis, wich held on but never was as popular as the nintendo. During this time Arcades started to decline as equal or better graphics could be achieved at home instead of arcades being superior in technology.
The PC engine also had a large enough userbase to survive in the games industry but they were used mostly as tools, the Amiga was still popular in its newer forms.
Hand held video games made there debut and became increasingly popular through the nineties with the Nintendo game boy in pole posistion.
In 1994 Sony released the Sony playstation wich impressed the world with its 3d graphics and quickly dominated the video game market the sega saturn flopped and atari fell apart after the jaguar failed.
After a good while nintendo released its new 64 bit console the N64 wich boasted better graphics and 4 player support although this was popular in japan and sold a lot it didnt beat sony with its playstation as it was expensive and still used cartdridges.
The dreamcast was also released in this time but i feel its more within the PS2/gamecube generation than the playstation/N64 one.

Pirate balloon

As you may of noticed most of the pictures arent working. I have been using an uploader owned by a freind who was nice enough to give me unlimited bandwidth and space however his host has died a bit and wont be fixed for a while.

there is a countdown on the site.

http://www.psychoholiday.com/uploader/

Space invader war tic tac tennis.

During the 1950's kids didn't get to shriek expletives through the internet while gripping their favourite sniper rifle, infact most kids didn't get to play video games at all, Video games seemed pretty exclusive to scientists and Ph.D holders tucked away with their mammoth computers.
The very first electronic game was called OXO wich was basically naughts and crosses made by A.S douglas in 1952 and was only really played within cambridge university.
In 1958 a game called Tennis for Two was made by a man called William Higinbotham, it wasn't really a video game as it was made of an Oscilloscope (one of those machines that monitors sound waves and stuff) To keep people from getting bored at a nuclear power plant.
The coolest computer game at the time was Spacewar made in 1962 by some blokes from MIT wich had two players fighting against one another with small spaceships i feel its one of the most important video games as it opened the doors for later game developers to create the first arcade cabinets and home computers.
I think Pong should be mentioned as it was the first home video console as well as one of the first arcade coin ops.
Space invaders was very important for the popularity of video games and convinced companies and shareholders that computer games could be a very profitable business, along with Asteroids, Pac Man and breakout it seemed computer and video games where here to stay.

And they did.

The first video games i ever played were on the Atari 2600 when i was about 3, the Atari was a little grey box that used small catridges that you seemed to put in backwards, i remember it as a gift for my older brother who was playing the atari version of pac man, i had a go and kept dying so i hated it and went to play with army tanks and eat chomp bars.

Later i attempted it again with another game but the atari had some problem with getting games to work and instead of the title screen you got loud beeps and whines eventually i got a game to play wich was called IKARU WARRIORS.. or something like that where you had crazy music playing and controlled a little army man that could drive tanks and blow up helicopters i thought it was great even though i was crap at it and died all the time. I still have the Atari with most of the old games, it still works and is quite fun to play some Boxing or crystal castles on again.

OH man i found a picture of the cart. Why cant game developers make their cases as exciting as they used to. A Japanese man blowing up American tanks and helicopters looks super awesome to a 4 year old.
The reality doesn't quite look as exciting as the cart promised but i loved this game.










Although i had an atari and was quite contempt with it i didn't realize there where much newer consoles apart from arcade cabinets which i used to enjoy. The next console i had was a Sega Megadrive one christmas wich was to be shared between me and my brother. The first game i played on it was Streets of Rage and it was the best thing ever. I also loved sonic the hedgehog and ended up with all the sequels. i was quite sad when the megadrive died out and these rubbish looking 3d games started taking over, i kept my megadrive until we got our first PC.
We didnt get many ground breaking games on the PC but i still had some pretty cool ones, the one that influenced me the most was Half life and the mods that kept being produced (i also had a dreamcast and a gamecube within this time which i thought where fantastic).
In recent history i haven't bought many games. My PC is quite rubbish and needs a replacement video card although its quite new. Half life 2 and its mods remain a firm favourite of the time, i also enjoy tactical shooters (usually mods for HL2 or BF2) and mapping for source.
I have kept playing computer games all this time as its really been a big part of our lives as much as movies and music as entertainment mediums, although for me i never really watched movies and video games kinda took their place. Plus fragging the kid with the sniper rifle is always fun.

Zombies!

Went home this weekend and bought back my old sega megadrive to play in our kitchen. i didn't bring many games with me but i hope to pick some up for dirt cheap at this store some kid mentioned. I also need a second controller as i lost my other one.

I have another map i decided to post, this is kinda near completion i just need to make the steps to the house better and add a roof to the house. It's for a mod called Zombie panic source. I need to add the zombie panic entities and guns after they release the game, but the base map can be done in HL2 deathmatch.

Its a fun mod and already has a release for HL1 i used to play it quite a lot and after i heard they where making a source conversion i had to make something for it.

heres a general descrition taken from the site.

"The basic idea of the mod is straight out of many different horror films: Zombies are coming for the last remaining humans, and the humans must fight them off as best they can. The way it works is this:

Everyone joins a server, say 10 people. All of the players but one join the Survivors team, which is the humans. The remaining player joins the Zombie team. His goal is to kill all of the humans. The humans' goal, of course, is to stay alive as long as possible. The catch is that everytime a zombie is killed, he simply respawns and continues to play. If a human is killed, he respawns as a Zombie on the Zombie team. Soon, more and more humans have joined the ranks of the zombies, until there is only one human left, facing all of the zombies alone. When the last human dies, the round is over.
That is the gameplay in a nutshell. Of course, there is a little more to it than that.."

My map called zp_surrounded places the humans inside an old wooden house and the zombies attack from the outside. The difference from any other map being the house is fully breakable and zombies soon start pouring in from all over the place, i thought this would make a great map idea. The humans could attempt to barricade the house (support for this is supposed to be in the mod) or do a runner upstairs and hide in the rooms. (breaking the staircase is always a good idea). I had a few problems with the lighting as breakable props act wierd and you can sometimes see the outline of the interior shape.

First map i actually finished.

This map was only finished as i only spent about 5 days working on it. It really does need some errors sorted out like the SDK bug that makes objects fall through displacments, It's a fun little map designed for garry's mod wich lets you build things with the source engine. This map was aimed at building boats and fighting them, i also added bits of wood and other stuff you could use to make your boats better.
Its basically a giant water brush with two parrelel islands and one near the middle. I'm happy to say that it doesn't lag even on low end systems considering the amount of water there is.
It was my first go at a 3d skybox wich is more water added stretching of into the distance, the texture is a little different but i think i'd be able to fix it if i could start steam on this internet and open it.

This is one of the islands. I tried to give the map a sunny feel by making the light brighten the water at a distance.
I also added cool little bunker things you can attack boats from.
Its a pretty basic map but i think it works well and is fun to play.

Stuff

I have like zero 3d max experience but i did a lot of mapping for various source mods.

I dont have a scanner to show you most of the real work for this but i have endless sketches somewhere with details of how i want everything to be. including erm "contingency plans" where like if something ended up out of place or took to much resources to run i could cut a section off and still make it playable. At the moment it looks like a few blocky buildings with textures slapped on but its the most "planned" map i have ever built.
I made a few textures of signposts and things and imported them. Somebody else made the nice normal/specular tile texture for me, although i did provide the reference.
The image quality is a bit rubbish as i just kept saving them all as default Jpegs to save time.










The Cinema is probably the only part of the map that was made after a reference photo that i took myself. It's of a derilict cinema in my town that my dad closed down becasue it had really dodgy electrics. If i find the photo i'll post it up.

Hallo

Testing my new blog where i post stuff about game art and other projects that i will never finish