Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Quebec Video Game Industry Sixth Largest In The World

Well, it seems that I'm living at the right place after all!

From Gamasutra: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=21157

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Saturday, November 22, 2008

Less than 5 seconds to compile Golemizer!

I don't know how I've been able to live without that much speed (yeah, I finally received my new machine). It was taking a good 5 minutes to compile and another 5 minutes to start the server on my machine. Now imagine this while trying to debug... fix, compile, start, check, doh!, fix, compile again, start again, doh again! ...

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Friday, November 14, 2008

That's when you ask why?

And the answer is obviously just "Because it can be done"...

World of Warcraft first level 80

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A new era! My new computer finally ordered!

I'm finally getting rid of my old junk! It was quite painful to watch everything being so slow and freezing on every occasion. A simple code rebuild was taking about 10 minutes which was making debugging hell on earth...

So here's my new tool/toy:

- Intel Code 2 Quad Proc Q9400 (2.66GHz, 6M, L2Cache, 1333FSB)
- 4GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM
- 320GB Serial ATA Hard Drive
- 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT
- Running on Windows XP SP3. Took the downgrade with Windows Vista Business as I have no time to waste getting used with a new OS. Doing fine with XP so if it's not broken don't fix it...

Not top of the line but more than enough for my needs. I decided to go with a decent video card too just in case, you know, I could manage to find some time to play a game or two in the following months (or at least try some of the many free trials which is more likely).

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Sunday, November 9, 2008

I hate these exclusive distribution rights

Sunday night, tired a bit, want to relax. I just figured out that Star Wars: Clone Wars was finally running. Guess I must have been living in a cave for the past weeks.

The show runs on CTV in Canada but I missed the first 6 episodes. No problem! Opens iTunes, find Clone Wars, Add to cart, login... "Your account can only buy from the canadian store"... Ok, get into canadian store, no Clone Wars available...

Get on CTV.ca website, only the last 2 episodes are available...

What???? I want to spend money on it and they won't take it. Money I shouldn't be spending to watch that show but hey! I'm tired and want to spend $2!!!!!!

This is a bit surreal. On one side there's a major black "free" market (torrent and friends) of downloadable movies, music and such and on the other side they don't want to take my money when I want to purchase it. Something's just plain silly in all this. So I guess the answer for me is to wait, buy the DVD on Amazon US website (because the same DVD in the Canadian store can be twice the price, and that even when the canadian dollar was worth the same as an US dollar... and the joke is that when I buy from Amazon US, the item is actually shipped from Toronto when available there...) or maybe just forget about it. After all, they don't want my money...

Never thought it would be so hard to spend some money on a sunday night...

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Finally, the mail system has been added

I just pushed update #10 that includes the mail system. Most games have this kind of system and it should help a lot communication and guild management.

Now that the system is added, it will link others like player merchants, guild application and /report command later. It opens a lot of possibilities.

Should have been there from the start, yes... Like probably a lot of stuff. But hey! It's there now ;-) Enjoy!

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Saturday, November 8, 2008

Want a MMORPG on your website? Here it is!

I am now providing code and buttons to allow anyone to put Golemizer on their gaming portal, blogs or any other websites.

The key here is to spread the word about Golemizer without caring about money at this point (I'm referring about the ads on the front page of the website). Advertisement costing quite a lot and not always efficient (and prohibited anyway since I have ads on the website), this is for now the best option available to me until THE possible major review/interview that might help to push this project higher.

Golemizer being an AJAX game requiring quite some space in the browser, it's quite hard to be accepted by gaming portals (that are mostly looking for Flash games anyway, Runescape being a recent exception I've seen on Kongregate and other portals).

So you can learn about it here: http://www.golemizer.com/linking.aspx

So, what do you think? Good move, bad move? Any other suggestions to approach gaming portals?

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Monday, November 3, 2008

Golemizer video

Thanks to gdmacd for this video!

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Press Release - Quests created by players in free web MMORPG Golemizer

Blainville, Canada - November 3, 2008 -- Dave Toulouse, an independent game developer, announced quests created by players in the free web MMORPG Golemizer (http://www.golemizer.com). A free 2D steampunk MMORPG, Golemizer requires no download or plug-in to play and features a rich sandbox environment.

Providing more creative opportunities to players, the latest update of Golemizer introduced quests created by players. By getting their hands on the new quest NPC available to everyone, players are now able to build their own immersive content. With four types of quests available (talk, give item, defeat opponent, answering a question) and more to come, this new addition grants everyone the power to actively participate in the evolution of the game.

Once a quest is approved by an administrator, it is available to every other players to enjoy and becomes permanently a part of Golemizer. Rich storylines can be achieved as Golemizer also allows all players to create their own dungeons, monsters, houses and cities.

With more than 7000 free accounts created since its release in September, Golemizer is rapidly growing and offers a home for players looking for a more involving experience. Entirely free and browser-based, Golemizer is available at http://www.golemizer.com.

About Dave Toulouse

Dave Toulouse is an independent game developer with eight years of professional web development experience working to provide rich multiplayer experience on the web. Progress of current and future projects can be followed at http://www.over00.com.

Contact:
Dave Toulouse
over00@golemizer.com

Media kit:
http://www.golemizer.com/media_kit.zip

Screenshots of content created by players:
http://www.golemizer.com/screenshots/screenshot1.png
http://www.golemizer.com/screenshots/screenshot2.png
http://www.golemizer.com/screenshots/screenshot3.png
http://www.golemizer.com/screenshots/screenshot4.png

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