ArGeeBee: ready to play

If you're keen for something different and rather experimental, I've just finished work on my Game.Dev Comp 24 entry, ArGeeBee. It's basically a mashup of platforming, top-down RPG and match-3 puzzle goodness. Or something like that. You basically need to get three very different little characters to work together to finish a variety of head-scratchy puzzles.

Control three separate avatars in a unicorn-puking array of colour contrasts!

Is it brilliant? I dunno. It was very difficult and maybe a bit awkward for me to develop, but it was stacks of fun too. Give it a shot if you have a few minutes to spare, and maybe (juuuuuust maaaaybe!) you'll have some fun while you're at it. You know, if you're a cool person and all.

In the meantime, I'll probably be returning to my other love in life:

Borderlands. Oh hell yeah. That creepy fat Christmas man has been very kind this year.

Foley for people who suck at sound

Oh look, a blog post! Gosh, it's been a while. Must have something to do with me changing this to an Official Dev Blog (TM) and then not doing any significant game creation for a good two months. Holy crap, I've been a naughty boy.

So anyway, I've been working on a little something called ArGeeBee for Game.Dev's comp 24. It's nothing much, but I'm quite proud of the ad-hoc sound effects that I've made for it. Why? Well, because I'm about as amateur as one gets when it comes to working with audio. I've taken a radio course and done my own fiddling about, sure, but aside from knowing how to hold a microphone and pressing the "record" button, I can't exactly say that I'm an experienced sound engineer.

Fortunately, one doesn't need to be a pro to make a delightful range of sound effects for videogames -- I do it all the time using a technique known as foley.

Foley is better known as the art of grabbing everyday objects and banging them near the microphone. It's used by professionals all over the world in a variety of fields, but few people realise that it's pretty easy to do at an amateur level too. Here's a few examples of how I made some pretty exotic sounds with some very rudimentary techniques and household objects. The results aren't studio quality, but they're a damn fine alternative to relying on your "1001 Free Sound Effects" CD.

Don't forget to grab my game if you wanna hear these noises in action. Because hearing them would be half the point, duh. Oh, and I edited most of my sounds using the basic options in Audacity. You should get it and learn to use it. You can still get quite far without knowing any funny sound jargon.

Now, on to some examples:

1) If you want to sound like something, grab that something

Enough ice to choke a polar bear.

One of the characters in my game has the ability to lay mines that can trap enemies in ice. I think the resulting sound is still my favourite effect in the project because, well, it was so damn simple. I needed a crackling-icy-freezy noise, so I looked inside my fridge, found a bag of ice and played about with it near the microphone. Afterwards, I cropped the recording to the bit that I wanted and with no further editing had a sound effect ready to inject into my game. Totally freaking awesome, right?

2) If you don't have something, grab something else

I don't own a Zippo, but I thought it would make for a sexy picture.

In situations where you need to use a jetpack, but don't happen to have one lying around (where do all those jetpacks go, anyway? They're like lost socks in the wash), there's still hope. Instead of going to the bother of borrowing a friend's jetpack for the weekend, I simply consider what else sounds like a small combustion chamber and throw that in instead. And that's how I turned to the jetpack's humble little brother: the humble lighter. A nice one, mind you -- mini-blowtorch style. In what's probably a very irresponsible move (kids, don't try this at home) I used one to light a coal by my (cheap) PC mic and got a pretty acceptable burst of "jet noise". After a bit of editing to make it sound sci-fi (just flanging the hell out of it, really), it was ready for game use.

Of course, I could also have simulated the noise using something else:

3) Blah blah blah ...

DISCLAIMER: Not my mouth.

Pretty much every other sound effect that you'll hear in ArGeeBee emerged as a product of Tongues 'n Teeth Incorporated: home-brewed and packed with lots of love, squirrels and other fluffy things. Those high-pitched voice clips are obvious enough (DISCLAIMER 2: Not my original voice), but everything else I got across just by making an approximation with my mouth and then fiddling with (literally) random filters until I got a sound I liked.

Given all of the above situations, I now ask myself three questions.

How was my expertise? Laughable.
How satisfactory were the results? Passable.
How fun was it making my own sounds compared to picking through a minefield of free sound libraries? Dear reader, it was enough fun to kill a whale.


On a final note: I'm not a professional foley artist. Heck, I'm not a professional when it comes to any form of audio. As a matter of fact, I probably even got the definition for foley wrong. But, you know, doing stuff this way is still pretty damn fun. If you're hopeless with sound like me, give this easier stuff a whirl to whet your appetite, even if you initially make someone's ears bleed.

Game update, travel update

Oh man, it's a busy Monday. I've just released a game patch for Onslaught of the Electric Zombies, have tried in vain to pay proper attention to various writing commitments, and am now preparing for an overnight bus trip to the noisy ol' province of Gauteng. While I'm no stranger to such journeys (heck, I got pretty deep about them once), I still can't say that I'm looking forward to it.

I obviously need to train up more and get a taste for travel again. Being lame and nest-ish in Grahamstown has its perks, but I'm steadily losing my vagabond mentality. A pity. Maybe hitting the rAge expo this weekend will do something for me.

Hawright!

For those of you who aren't familiar with rAge: well, it's a bloody big game/tech expo -- at least by South African standards. Fancy overseas buggers may be taking a freaking slice out of the moon to hold their own showfloors, but I don't really care as long as I'm surrounded with bright lights, loud noises and lots of like-minded people. Which kinda describes the average student party except for the fact that people aren't, you know, fall-on-your-face drunk. It's quite novel in that respect.

I'll try write a bit more about rAge if I have the time: it's starting this Friday and lasts for three days, so I'm quite sure that something newsworthy can come out of it. At the very least, I'll have an opportunity to flog my- OH YES, GAME UPDATE BY THE WAY! ONSLAUGHT OF THE ELECTRIC ZOMBIES NOW HAS A GLOBAL LEADERBOARD! Check it out now and upload your scores: if you get to the top of the leaderboard, everybody will think you're totally awesome and stuff.

This guy is riding a freaking dragon, and even he isn't as awesome as you are.

Unfortunately, that's all I can afford to write for now: my remaining time in Grahamstown is ticking down, and I don't really think that I'll be able to get everything done in time if I spend too long on this blog post.

Cheers for now. And try my game if you haven't done so already.

Liberation!

See this? This is the INTERNET:

Sneaky advertising, free of charge.

The reason why I find this so special is because one of my regular Grahamstown haunts, Cow Moon Theory, has just gotten itself some sexy wireless access, meaning that I don't have to rely on my bloody unreliable cellphone to get basic chores done. Makes a nice change.

Sorry, Mr Cellphone.

No longer do I have to crumple my face when somebody sends me a paltry 5 megabyte file. No longer am I doomed to turning down Gtalk links just because they happen to be made of videofailure. No longer am I forced to wake up horrifically early (read: pre-noon) every single Tuesday just so that I can make sure a tiny article submission gets uploaded to my editors over at NAG Online without the file mysteriously breaking down and flipping me the bird halfway through.

Seriously, that damn process has taken HOURS sometimes.

Of course, there's a flipside: if I screw up from now on, I probably won't be allowed to blame my cellphone connection. A pity, but it's a sacrifice that I'm willing to make in interest of totally sweet Internetlands.

Kinda hoping that this new development sticks. It's pretty novel being allowed to enable browser pictures again ...

Onslaught of the Electric Zombies: RELEASED!

Hey, remember that post I made a few weeks ago before disappearing? It had something to do with zombies and videogames and crap, and I was muttering a bunch of excited things about finishing it off and updating my blog more often and stuff.

Well, hey, I wasn't lying:

My artist pushes this sort of thing pixel by pixel. He's clinically insane.

So yeah. The game's out of the door, and due to certain marketing obligations, I pretty much HAVE to update this blog regularly again. A good excuse to get into writing again: I've been in a bit of a work rut these past few weeks. Cool game project aside, of course.

For those of you not in the loop: Onslaught of the Electric Zombies is a bit of a cross between Roguelikes and Minesweeper. A typical game session consists of a randomly generated 'dungeon' (16 levels deep) which you have to navigate in the same way that one would typically solve a Minesweeper board. The difference here is that you actually have to fight monsters, manage health, pick up items and level up skills in good ol' RPG fashion.

It's really fun. You should try it.

Head on over to this page for the game download. I hope y'all find it fun: I also hope that you decide to go off and show it to all your friends (though not me, because I kinda already know about it and stuff).

Post some high scores if you want: I'm keen to hear what people think of this little bugger!

Also: this is my 100th blog post! This calls for a celebration.

TOGA PARTY!

I'm off to find a pizza and eat it. Laters, fellow people!

WIP: Onslaught of the Electric Zombies

Hey all, I'd like to introduce you to something I've been working on recently:

Hey thar!

So after a couple years of designing (hopefully) fun little games and occasionally embarking on more ambitious projects (Variance is still in a sort of long-term development thingie, for those who are wondering), I've decided to finally settle down and actually make something properly. Not something to just show my friends, not a proof of concept, not a 48-hour prototyping proggie: I mean a complete and marketable game from beginning to end, giving myself a dev time of roughly two months.

Meet Onslaught of the Electric Zombies, a work in progress.

Flashier than most of my projects, thanks to actually having an artist on board.

This game means a few things for me. First of all, it's going to serve as proof that I can make a complete and polished product to show to the masses. Goodness knows that I've heard derisive comments about gaming journalists before (usually from those who don't really understand what good journalism actually entails) so I'm kinda keen to show people that I'm more than happy to walk the walk.

Secondly, I've recently been snagged by the gnarly roots of the "serious" game development mindset. While it's certainly useful from a professional standpoint, I really don't want to lose touch with the simple hobbyist joy of creating something fun for people to play. It's for this reason that the project is small and will most likely be distributed as freeware.

Because, well, screw it -- I've never really wanted game development to be a job. I've always just wanted to make fun shit for people to play. And this shit is going to be fun. Or maybe just shitty. I don't know which one yet.

Of course, that's where you step in, oh Hero of the Internets. If you like the idea of combining Minesweeper with RPG dungeon-crawly elements and have decided to ignore the recently called-for moratorium on all zombie-themed games for the next two years (seriously, it's about as cliché as you can get), then do me a huge favour: download this itty-bitty bugger, give it some play time and leave me your comments. It's still a work in progress and rather malleable at this point, so feedback is going to be pretty damn useful and I may just reward you all with icecream.

Maybe.

Give it a shot and let me know what you think. I'm already trying to harvest some developer input from the NAG Online/Game.Dev forum and will probably be slapping this in a few other places afterwards. I just think that, being my personal blog, this would be a great place to put up a game that all of my buddies can have a gander at.

Peace out, and don't let the electric zombies eat your brains. Or batteries. What the hell does a creature like that usually go for anyway?

Blog reboot

Avid readers may have noticed my lack of activity recently. The reason for this is simple:

I've stopped travelling.

"No, Nandrew! What have you done?" cry the fans.

Yeah, I know. This trip was originally going to be a year long, but various circumstances have urged me to settle down, grow some moss and be more constructive in other avenues. In particular, I need to focus more on my career in journalism and game development (also known as "that crap I write" and "that random shit I code").

This new development DOESN'T mean two things:

(1) This doesn't mean that I want to stop travelling entirely. Oh ho, no. I may be settling in good ol', hippie-infested Grahamstown now, but I still have a trip or two planned this year. And I plan on making them interesting. Even if I have to take a picture of myself running naked through the highveld.

(2) This doesn't mean that the blog is going to die. It's just going to undergo a bit of a refocus, and I'll probably be talking about geeky things in as accessible and appealing a way as I can muster. This will be interspersed with my regular musings about nubile young Germans and the noble Giant Chicken.

So yeah. If you want to stick around, be my guest. In fact, I encourage you to, because most of you are my friends and stuff and I don't get to see you often enough. This blog is still going to be about my life. It's just that work is an important part of said life -- it's tied in with my hopes, dreams and aspirations, after all.

Hold on, maybe not.

I suggest you check on this blog over the next few weeks. I'm going to try get the ball rolling again and resume my noble quest of sending all of my little ramblings to you: the dearly beloved and delightfully insane audience.

Peace out, and let's see where this bugger goes.

Metallica!

So, my cellphone hates me.

Actual photo of my cellphone. With an angry face drawn on it.

I must admit that I've not been terribly vigilant with my Internet activity over the past week, but even when I have logged on (using the cell as a modem, of course), this device has been fighting me every step of the way. No identifiable reason, really: often, it just refuses to co-operate with my computer until I perform a reboot. Sometimes it freezes my system entirely. Invariably, it will try some sort of cleverdickery just to piss me off. And it will do so at a time when I have a gazillionty-one Firefox tabs open that need my attention. And at least three of those tabs will have nothing to do with that ever-present drain of time and productivity, TVTropes.

Its not been all bad, of course. For a start, I got myself Guitar Hero: Metallica.

Actual photo of me looking rather pleased with myself.

This game is, to say the least, pretty damn cool. Not only has it given me access to my ultra sing-song powers (with the help of an Xbox headset), but as far as Guitar Hero games go, this one is actually pretty gosh-darn good. The reviews have been pretty good and judging from the highly-polished gameplay (and my own inherent Metallica bias, of course), I say that this game gets a solid nine out of ten. Could have done with more TVTropes references.

Enhancing the game experience itself is a little something that I like to call the most badass setup ever. Of course, this is a horrific exaggeration, but after spending most of my game time on a standard-definition, CRT television, it's pretty cool to upgrade to HD and throw a hi-fi into the mix.

Actual photo of my current setup. With a smiley face drawn on it.

So basically, I've just spent my week playing hard, working (reasonably) hard and neglecting any duties which require me to show face on the Internet for more than, say, twenty minutes at a time, or however long it takes for my cellphone to realise that I'm being productive and cut my escapades short.

Damn annoying cellphone. I'll figure it out one day.

Still alive ... and hurrying out of Durban

Okay, so. I haven't blogged in absolutely aaaaaages. Obviously I need to rethink something here, or learn to procrastinate less. In fact, I'm going to blame my misery squarely on the fact that I have high-speed Internet once more.

In the previous episode of my strange and twisted adventures, I explained how my horrible procrastination was due to implode the universe. Said procrastination continued for a little bit after my birthday, at which point I decided to settle down and do some working and adventuring.

Then I got horribly sick.

And thus, I was bedridden for days, valiantly fighting my battle against death's dark embrace with all the willpower and teeth-grit determination that I could muster. The battle raged on and threatened to implode the universe, were it not for my heroic constitution kicking in at the last moment and pushing me along that final stretch that allowed me to recover from The Common Cold.

This is a picture of my cat!

Emerging from my sickness, I realised that work had thrown me one or two curveballs. Some events weren't too serious – an abrupt article deadline here and there, some once-off work opportunities emerging – others had me slightly peeved (oh, the life of a journalist!) and still others were fully enthusing, but a hazard on my time nonetheless.

The latter case was Dev.Mag – I wrote a feature article on indie marketing which caught on rather quickly throughout the greater Interwebs, meaning that we've been receiving quite a few extra page hits these past few days. Of course, that really just means two things: (1) we had to start churning out extra content at the last minute to keep our new readers hooked and (2) we suddenly started receiving review packages and offers from hopeful game studios interested in media exposure. Which is great, of course – I love helping indies get exposure, especially when I get free games out of it – but it didn't really settle down with my current procrastination-sickination-just-gave-yourself-more-work-to-do situation. So, for the first time in goodness knows how long, I actually set my Gtalk status to “busy” for a few days.

And then proceeded to waste even more time reading weird Wikipedia stuff. The only place I know where you can move from “Bounty Hunter” to “Heat Death of the Universe” in under an hour.

So, summary of the whole thing: yeah, I've been inexcusably tardy. And my updates have been less than regular recently. And my life has been less than interesting (computer-bound, whooo!). I'm going to try make up for that by backpacking as of ... well, right now. So while you may not have found out much about Durban (summary: sharks, sand and the Burn nightclub) I hope to make up for that by giving you tales of my adventures along the Natal coastline and Transkei.

What I slept in. Aww yeah.

Here's one smidgeon of the family home: my bedroom. Or rather, my brother's bedroom, because he's not around and my own childhood living quarters have been swallowed by my mother's retail stock.

My brother's bed is freaking awesome. Which is in stark contrast to my own home bed, mind you: for a while now, it's been nothing more than a mattress on the floor, and I'm still not sure exactly when my brother decided to lay dibs on the Sleeping Place of Awesomeness, but I only now realise what I've been missing out on. Sure, I don't mind spartan sleeping spots, but this thing is absolutely glorious.

Anyway. 10/10. First stop isn't too far – Warner Beach, sayeth the breeze. Or something like that. Keen to get going again and get away from the damn computer screen a little.

Happy birthday to me, et cetera

Okay, so this one's going to be a quickie. Today (or yesterday, depending on which side of midnight this gets posted on) is my birthday, which means that I get cake, gifts and a pat on the back for surviving yet another rotation around the sun. Why nobody else views the celebration of this fact as holding an oddly cynical message is rather beyond me.

All I know is that when it's your birthday, you should never, ever be connected to the Internet. And having a Facebook account is WAY out.

Holy crap, it's a flood of cybernetic doom.

Fact: if you're online when your birthday strikes, you'll spend more time fending off well-wishers and concerted “fagstrikes” (don't ask) than actually celebrating said birthday. If you're the celebratory type, that is. And while it's no secret that I have remarkably little patience for ceremony, I will still latch onto any excuse to screw around. So that's what I've basically spent the past 24 hours doing.

Stop screwing around. You screw around too much.

Of course, my lack of blog updates recently is testament to the fact that I've probably been screwing around a lot more than that since I've been in Durban. I saw a friend playing something called Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space the other day and – long story short – I'm now playing it myself. A lot. Work, writing and personal hygiene have been pushed to the side. I can't remember when I last ate, either.

Aside from that ... well, birthday's mainly consisted of banking and admin rubbish. How terrifically inappropriate!

I'm probably going to try do something more exciting tomorrow, after I get together enough willpower to uninstall Weird Worlds. Because, like, seriously, that game. I dunno.

Ciao again, Pretoria

Between the Bat Cave and my family's hideout, I think that Pretoria has been my longest stay in one location this entire year. Although I tend to dwell in favourite spots for at least a week or two at a time (read: Cape Town and Grahamstown), it seems that I've inadvertently nearly clocked the full month of May in Gauteng. Blast it all!

The past two weeks have seen me entertained by several clutches of the greater Joubert clan: many thanks to the family, and it was good to see y'all again. I look back fondly on all the great memories I've formed with this particular visit.

Wimpy lunch with the cousins.

Mimmo's dinner – ahhh, the atmosphere!

Sunday lunch at my aunt's place.

I love food.

But now I'm just allowing my mind to wander too far into the realm of nostalgia and self-indulgence. Instead, here's a picture of my aunt's dog.

My aunt's dog hates me.

Hatred. Seriously.

I've not been this creeped out by an animal since seeing that super-creepy dog in Plet. Canine eyes have a way of burrowing into your soul, seriously. And when a dog has it in for you (not the world, not people in general, not even anybody else in the room. Just you), there's little you can do about it.

My aunt's dog hates me, won't go near me and won't let me touch it. It growls at me on a near-constant basis -- kinda like a revving Lancer. If that fateful Sunday gathering was in a movie, the audience would immediately be able to identify me as "the bad guy" cos the animals hate me. Gee whiz.

And, yeah, that's it for now. Just a quickie: I've been procrastinating a whole bunch this week and now need to get myself sorted for a Baz Bus shuttle tomorrow (didn't think I'd use these guys again, but go figure: turns out that they really are cheaper on multi-stops than a public bus would be, and they go door to door anyway).

Depending on how things turn out, I'll either be in the Drakensberg or Joburg tomorrow night. It's all very complicated and last-minute, so don't ask.

Catch y'all in 24 hours.


A LONG-WINDED POSTSCRIPT FOR BONUS READING:

This blog post was supposed to go up yesterday. I swear it. But then, halfway through my evening, my Internet died and refused to start up again. I thought that this was typical cellphone failure until I got an SMS five minutes afterwards that cheerfully told me I was screwed for net cap. But that's just the beginning of this grand tale of woe and deceit.

Let me give you a quick run-down of cellphone pre-paid Internet. When you get a non-contract phone with, say, Vodacom, you usually have the opportunity to use it as a make-do modem to access the Internet on your computer. The typical pre-paid tariff is about R2 a megabyte. This is effing steep, and is not to be used unless, say, there's a crazy guy with an axe behind you demanding that you log onto the Internet by any means necessary (in which case you open up your closest instant messenger app and give your online buddies a “help me please” code signal).

Fortunately, one has the opportunity to purchase Internet data bundles, and the more data you purchase at once, the cheaper it is per megabyte. I typically pay about 30c per meg, which still isn't great compared to a regular land line, but suits me well enough as long as I exercise some restraint. When you run out of data on your bundle, you go back to R2 per meg and that eats into your regular cellphone airtime.

Right, so, with that explanation down: I top up my cellphone airtime using Internet banking. I top up my Internet bundles using spare airtime. This is a very elegant solution which can sometimes go horribly, horribly wrong. When I'm surfing the net with my cellphone, SMS messages often don't come through until I log off. This is dangerous when, say, your “low bandwidth” warnings for Internet data bundles are sent – lo and behold – via SMS. When my Internet cut out at about 11pm last night, I immediately received four SMS messages from Vodacom.

The first one registered as being sent at about 7pm, warning me that I had less than 4 megabytes left on my bundle. The second one was sent half an hour later, telling me that my data bundle had been exhausted, and that I WAS NOW BEING CHARGED R2 PER MEGABYTE. The third was sent later, warning me that I was using up all of my cellphone's airtime on the Internet. The fourth and final message: “YOU F**KING IDIOT! YOUR MONEY IS ALL GONE!” Not in those words exactly, but that's kinda how I felt at the time.

So in summary, I simultaneously lost all Internet and cellphone access at a really inconvenient time last night because the only system of warning that I could receive was, ironically enough, disabled by the very use of the device which warranted the warning in the first place. To top it off, I recharged my cell's airtime with about R70 yesterday afternoon, and it all got chowed by the Internet in one evening. Suffice it to say, Vodacom and I are no longer on speaking terms.

End rant.

Variance prototype is out!

Right, so: long story short, I don't write about enough geeky stuff on this blog. So it's time to jack that up a little and post some regular updates on my game development efforts.

As I mentioned earlier, a recent mini-death in my blog updates was attributed to two weeks of caffeine and heavy game development. That game is currently called Variance. And it currently has a prototype version available for download.

Bright colours. Very bright colours.

Variance is a puzzle-platformer ... WITH A TWIST (a tip for marketers out there: never ever ever use the phrase “with a twist” when promoting your stuff. Clichés are a pet hate of mine). If you've ever played the likes of Shift and Sokoban, then you can imagine what it would be like if they ever got together and had horrible mutant offspring. Localised gravity fields have your avatar moving up, down, left, right and wonkways in an effort to navigate obstacles, solve grid-based puzzles, dodge enemies and get to each level's exit for glory and presumably some sort of reward.

Huuurgh, more colour. And puzzles.

As mentioned already, the game is in the prototype phase. What I'd like to call the “last” prototype, yes, but still a proto. This means two things: firstly, I've been focusing on getting gameplay down to pat, but acknowledge the need for better graphics. They're like doggy doo, I know – get over it. Secondly: there currently exists a bigger, better game behind closed doors in a whole different engine and stuff (I'll be keeping my lips sealed on the details, at least for now), and this particular bugger is just a version that I hacked out for public consumption to get important stuff from people ... like FEEDBACK.

That means that I'd like everyone to pick up a copy, dust it off, play a little and give me some useful advice about making it better. There's some handy feedback guidelines over here if you choose to accept this quest, o reader.

But yeah. Have fun. More blog updates soon, I've got a bunch of photos in my camera which need to hit this page before they explode.

Lurking at Luma

Dear reader, lo and behold! I have once again surfaced from my never-ending pile of work to present you with another instalment of what some call the Chronicles, others the Rodblog and the remainder A Bloody Waste Of Time If You Ask Me (or at least, that would be the case if I hadn't already shot them all).

I'm still adventuring in a very geek-heavy environment and loving it to bits, despite the fact that I'm regularly settling for about four hours of sleep a night and fuelling my days with enough Mountain Dew to drown a fish (and you know that's intense because it's a fish). It's a labour of love, though: through a mixture of writing and game development, I'm simultaneously honouring both of my major career choices in one fell swoop of work and sleep-deprivation. I'm also going on some rather interesting field trips as a result.

Last Friday, I paid a visit to Luma, a design company in Johannesburg which just happens to make games as well. Their game development studio – known as Luma Arcade – has already been making waves in the local dev community with a few nice racing titles and mobile games. Now, however, they're kicking it up a notch and starting on development for the iPhone. Unfortunately, there's not terribly much that I can say about it because they're locked up in a non-disclosure agreement thing (they call it an NDA in fancy-speak) and they'll cut off my sensitive bits if I violate that, but it should suffice to say: “Yay!”

Fortunately, the Big Boy burger kid wasn't part of the NDA. So here he is. Yay!

Without divulging too much, I'm really excited about what Luma's getting up to now. Their first few games were okay: they covered new ground and paved the way well for the South African dev community, but they weren't breaking any barriers with regards to game creation as a whole. Now that I'm seeing some awesome concepts and a real one-up on their previous projects, I'm kinda keen to pump images, interviews and reviews of these guys into every possible media outlet at my disposal. Because I'm a Level 90 Journalist, at least on the odd occasions when I somehow manage to do things right.

The head honcho at Luma decided to make his face a part of the NDA at the last minute. He said it was because he looked silly. Tsk tsk.

Anyway, that's all I'm going to say. Mostly going to save the juicy details for people who will, you know, actually pay me to scribble them out. And I'm waiting on permission for some things anyway. In the meantime, I'll leave you with a little something I whipped up this morning. I call it Icebix:

Oh no, he's not ...

Oh he just DID!

The surprising conclusion: Weetbix in icecream tastes DELICIOUS! Patent pending.

Food woes and cool news

This blog post is about food. In all ways. Food is pretty awesome. Not only does its consumption allow human beings to continue surviving, but it also has the occasional decency to taste good while it's doing the job.

Of course, instead of taking the time and effort to eat properly, I usually just drown my pangs in a mixture of caffeine, carbohydrates and MSG. Occasionally, I'm bold enough to try something different – like cooking and stuff – but this is a purely artificial resolve that I try to conjure up because my doctors keep saying stuff like how I should be clinically dead right now.

For one, I'm sure that I've by now overdosed on caffeine at least six times.

Two litre Mountain Dew bottles have become the bane of my existence.

Not too many people are aware of this, but I have a thing for Mountain Dew that's basically borderline worship. I mean, the stuff is great and all, but it's still quite rare in most of the shops that I go to and even then it tends to be in cans (which aren't even nearly worth the money compared to the price of bottles).

When I arrived in Pretoria and learned that one of the gentlemen I was staying with regularly supped on the well-caffeinated fruits of BOTTLED Mountain Dew, it was basically over for me. I purchased a few gallons for myself, squirrelled them away in the fridge and began drinking. About five days later, I realised that I'd stopped sleeping. Or, at least, I was no longer prone to the bouts of narcolepsy that I've been oh-so-unfairly labelled by my friends as being subject to.

That, and peanuts.

This is a kilogram of peanuts. Also known as my survival rations.

Of course, that's not all I've been eating. Just last night, we decided to make a pasta dish. Today, I made the mistake of eating the leftovers.

Be warned, dear reader. Never finish leftovers in the Bat Cave. You'll be fined, guilt-tripped and cast into hell. Moreover, offering your comrades a kilogram of peanuts as compensation will not work. They'll simply pass commentary on how they have no food to eat that night, raising concerns in your tormented mind of waking up the next morning to the sight of a pair of emaciated corpses (still posed in front of their computers of course). And then, five minutes later, they'll douse the unnecessary fires of guilt by whipping up a fish and chip dinner for themselves. Asses.

This seafood is made of pure failessence.

Unfortunately, I'll have to leave my blog post at that, as I've surely just placed myself in great peril. My current companions both keep tabs on my writing, and one of them is a freaking ninja.

...

Oh, and before I forget: I got an article featured on Gamasutra, the face of the world's largest game development journalism conglomerate thing. I've apparently earned the label of “Expert”. The professional in me is unmoved. The aspiring juvenile in me is busy going “EEEEEEEeeeeeeeeee!”

Discussing the Gamasutra exposure with Dev.Mag's editor. Professional composure in action.

Totally sweet. But seriously? It's not just a personal pride thing: I'm actually genuinely stoked that Dev.Mag (the SA publication that I'm writing most of my game development stuff for) is making moves to establish a global audience, and I shall continue to update on Gamasutra with Dev.Mag reprints that I feel are pertinent. Hopefully this effort will serve as encouraging news for disillusioned SA devs and get them out of their shells a bit more.

Game geekery with Dev.Mag

Okay, okay, I know: my blogging rate has rather unambiguously been suffering as of late. I can predict three reasons for this. Logical assessment of situation number one: anticipated decay and loss of steam. This is the result of a scientific formula that dictates how, if you're not paid to do a given task, you tend to do it a little less often as time passes by. Mainly because you can't be arsed to put in the same effort. I kinda accepted this eventuality when I started out.

Logical assessment of situation number two: hanging about in places like Grahamstown and Pretoria have the unfortunate side effect of causing me to slack off and not do much blogworthy stuff. Sitting in a comfort zone is a far cry from, say, doing newsworthy stuff like throwing myself off bridges.

Logical assessment of situation number three: perhaps most importantly, I've been devoting one helluva lot of time over these past few weeks to Dev.Mag, an online e-zine that's all about cool stuff like game development and ... well, just game development. But that's more than cool enough on its own.

It's also very, very orange. And has lots of gears. And a giant robot.

I've been with Dev.Mag since its inception three years ago, assuming various roles within its grand superstructure of awesomeness that included a fairly lengthy stint as editor and grand high poobah. For most of its existence, the mag has been a humble monthly PDF with a reasonably small circulation, but a few weeks ago it was jacked up to become a full-blown dev Website with daily news updates and free icecream.

Right now, we're doing our damndest to punt ourselves to the international community. I won't bore you with the marketing spiel, goals and rationale – suffice it to say, I'm writing a lot of stuff for them right now, so whenever I have spare time to sit down and scribble out a few words, I'm unfortunately forced to choose the mag over my blog. So really, I'm still updating the Internet with Nandrew-ish goodness: it's just that I'm mostly doing it elsewhere. With a different pic of myself.

What a devilishly handsome bugger!

If you're interested in game development (or even if you aren't), stop on by at http://www.devmag.org.za/ and have a look-see at all the cool stuff. If you have any friends interested in game development, swing them the link. If you have any friends with loads of money who are sitting around wondering, “Where can I squander my vast wealth now?” ... well, point them in our direction too. We may be able to help them with that problem too.

Luggage woes, adamantium claws and a return to the Bat Cave

I bet that most of us have had fun and games with public transport in the past. I'm not sure how things are for international readers, but the services in South Africa are a far cry from the if-it's-five-seconds-late-it's-unforgivable mentality of the Japanese subway system. I've heard quite a few horror stories from friends who have been horrendously delayed, robbed of their luggage or even hijacked by laser-wielding dinosaurs who want to catch the next bus ride to the lost city of Atlantis.

Personally, I've not suffered too heavily in this regard (except when it comes to the dinosaurs. Stupid bloody dinosaurs), but that changed a couple of days ago when I hitched a quick ride from Grahamstown to Pretoria via our delightful domestic bus system. A quick overview of what happened: both my luggage and I hopped onto a bus in Grahamstown. But while I was safely deposited in Pretoria about fourteen hours later, my luggage was whisked away by an extremely localised space-time rip that tore it out of the nice and safe underbelly of my transport and deposited it somewhere in Midrand. And although everybody seemed to know that it was in Midrand (and, indeed, could confirm its presence with one of a multitude of buses that hopped between Midrand and Pretoria every day), nobody seemed able to retrieve the luggage and put it into my grubby little paws until a good 24 hours later, following several broken promises from the transport crew and a few chewed-off ears at 6:30am.

A picture of my missing ba- OH WAIT, I LEFT MY CAMERA IN MY LUGGAGE.

Fortunately, my renewed presence at the Bat Cave has more than compensated for this momentary setback. The Bat Cave, as you may recall, is something of a gaming Valhalla – a gathering spot for geeks to achieve something of a critical mass and explode in a shower of awesomeness.

Plastic controllers and bright colours = instant rock band success.

There were three reasons that I arrived on this particular: one, it was a long weekend. This begs people of my ilk to get together for major videogaming sessions (which, ironically, never seemed to consist of the stuff I actually wanted to play. Screw you guys, I'd do anything to play Lode Runner on the Xbox).

The second reason was the cinema debut of X-men Origins: Wolverine. This needs little explanation: the guy is a freakin' cultural icon.

A freakin' cultural icon.

Lastly, I had a score to settle with the local division of Yanky's – more specifically, I needed to finally confront one of their Monster Burgers for myself. My encounter was framed by a challenge that I levelled at a fellow geek: we had to race to see who could eat a whole burger first. Preferably without dying from gastrointestinal complications in the process.

It's bigger than my laptop. Oh dear.

I lost. Horribly. And now I have a bit of a tummyache. I'm still trying to figure out how that much physical burger can fit into such a scrawny frame as my opponent's, but admittedly the overpowering sensation of mass indigestion is blurring my cognitive processes for the time being.

This blog post is dedicated to Simon “you-never-mention-me-in-your-blogs” Croudace.

Azi owes me fifteen bucks. Also: Coke Zero Fest.

So. Today, I finally had a chance to pick up my digital pen and scribble up a fresh new report of my adventures. And boy, do I have stuff to write about! I've been hyping up Coke Zero Fest on this blog for more than a month (and planning my attendance since the beginning of this year), and on Monday, 13 April I finally had the chance to attend it.

I'll start off by saying this: no matter what else I blabber on about, it's of utmost importance for everybody to remember that a certain friend of mine owes me R15. I bought her a beer at Coke Zero Fest and she never paid me back for it.

13/04/2009. Never forget.

Now, on to the rest of the stuff. Overall, Coke Zero Fest was absolutely freakin' awesome. I enjoyed the bands, I got to hang out with a nice range of friends and I walked away from the experience with about a gajillion free T-shirts earned from playing in a Guitar Hero competition.

Snow Patrol got a bigger crowd, but I bet they can't 5-star Sweet Home Alabama on Expert.

The bands were awesome. Zebra and Giraffe were the highlight of the locals with an absolutely stunning performance, and the other South African acts weren't far behind. Panic! at the Disco was fun, and Snow Patrol really gave it their all. Even Oasis managed to give an acceptable performance, suggesting that they probably took a hint from their Joburg reception.

There were also attractive women in Coke outfits handing out free drinks, pins, bangles and other assorted paraphernalia. This was a big plus.

Unfortunately, I felt that the organisation was a teensy bit on the “Extremely Crap” side of the crappiness scale:

(1) Two international bands pulled out. Probably nothing that the festival organisers could have done, and I wasn't actually interested in them anyway (who the hell is Red Jumpsuit Apparatus?), but it's the principle of the matter.

(2) No passouts were allowed. At first I thought this was just a warning to not drink too much alcohol. Oh-ho no! As soon as I entered the festival grounds, security tore up my ticket and ushered me further in, with no hint of giving me something as simple as a wristband to keep track of my entry. This meant that I had to stay inside the festival grounds or lose my place in the concert of a lifetime. And I NEEDED to go out. I ended up having to call a connection on the inside to get this crap sorted out. Thank goodness for networking.

(3) They have something against cameras. Recorders I can understand. Videocams I can totally see as not being cool. But picture snappers? The last time I checked, most musicians didn't have to worry about the rampant piracy of photographs Unless I'm totally missing out on something.

(4) They have something against devil sticks. Apparently, they're potentially as dangerous as most firearms. I tried to explain to security that I'm not a complete moron, but it didn't seem to work. Eventually sorted this out with a little help from an insider again.

Despite these setbacks, the venue was definitely prime rib:

(Insert cheesy nature comment here)

I spent time in a glorious place, got to hang out with my dear brother at a rock concert (Hi wittle brudda!) and sang along to “Champagne Supernova” within a crowd of drunk people. It doesn't get much better than this.

My culinary wizardry

I don't cook. It's just not something that I've ever really been into. I can make myself a toasted sandwich, a heat-up microwave meal or a boiled egg, but that's just about the extent of it.

Recently, I have become exposed to the art of making Real Food™, an endeavour which I was first introduced to when I sort-of-successfully helped some buddies make a killer lasagne. This trend continued while I was in Cape Town – I stayed with a couple of student friends who unbelievably managed to cook meals for themselves every single night. I've encountered some crazy things over the course of my blogging career, but this little factoid has probably astounded me the most.

Since arriving in Grahamstown, I've felt inspired to try this “cooking” thing for myself. The results have been ugly, but edible.

My first dish.

I've benefitted greatly from being able to use the fully-equipped kitchen at Cow Moon Theory to craft my crimes against nature. It wasn't too difficult to get permission to use it outside business hours – offering to cook food for people kinda falls into the same category as famous commentary like “Hey, can you look after my Xbox for a few days?” and “My wallet is way too heavy, would you like some of this money?”

In general, I'm striving to tear apart the good name that pasta meals have acquired over the ages – after all, they're cheap and easy to make. I do intend to diversify, however, and have already attempted bolder ventures such as chicken a la king.

The meal ended up turning into its less glorious cousin: chicken, rice and glop. Half eaten, of course.

What I've found is that cooking isn't as hard as the Internet makes it out to be. Seriously, shame on you Internet. You provide me with a lasagne recipe with about five billion ingredients when all it really takes is a wad of mince, a wad of pasta sheets and a packet of just-add-some-damn-water cheese sauce. I added a can of tomato onion mix and that was JUST BECAUSE I WANTED TO BE FANCY.

My tuna macaroni dish. Ingredient count: 4. Splurt of tomato sauce was number 4.

Cooking an adequate meal is surprisingly easy, even if the results aren't exactly pretty, and I think that simpler recipes need to be more broadly advertised so that neophytes like me can see that making food isn't so hard. Yes, my lasagne isn't nearly as good as the stuff that top chefs make, but it's a springboard into the Real Food™ world and hey, it's still pretty edible.

It's great to know that I can start with a bare bones pasta dish like this, for example, and then elaborate in the future with more interesting stuff like garlic, chicken livers and crystal meth. If only more Doritos-eating basement dwellers like me realised that this truly was the case.

LAN in the Town of Cape

With all this recent going-outery and suntannery, a part of me has missed my beloved Xbox sessions and multiplayer mayhem. Fortunately, yesterday provided me with an opportunity to relive my gaming glory for at least an afternoon. With Gears of War 2 , no less.

Unfortunately, there was one hitch in my plan. My friends had locked me in their house.

Me Gnarl. Me HUNGRY!

You see, for the poor, poor students of UCT (my friends being among their number), it was back to the grindstone as a fresh new year of varsity began on Monday. That meant that every morning, I'd wake up and stagger to my feet (wearing nothing but my underwear, of course), scratch my beer-belly and belch a lazy goodbye to my hardworking associates before passing out again. Because that's how I roll.

This time, however, things were slightly different. I warned my buddies that I needed to go out that afternoon, so they were to leave the front door unlocked so that I could escape while they were out. The whole idea was that I would then close (and therefore lock) the door once safely outside the building. What happened instead was this:

ME (at about 9 AM): Don't forget to leave the door open for me.

MY FRIEND: Okie dokies, I'll keep it unlocked then.

(Friend instantly forgets promise and locks the door)

ME: Mmm, this peanut butter sandwich has completely diverted my attention. It is delicious!

(half an hour passes)

ME: OH CRAP.

I was stuck in the house until about 1pm, after which I was mercifully released and allowed to proceed to my LAN destination. It was a humble setup – only 3 Xboxes (Xboxes? Xboxen? Xbeese? I can never figure out which) and 5 players, newbies amongst their number - but Gears of War 2 is something of a trump card for awesomeness, so we proceeded rather merrily regardless.

The rig was great until we realised there was no space for the players.

During that particular afternoon, I went to what's probably the most awesome bakery in the existence of bread-like production. The Coimbra Bakery in Claremont has some of the most lovingly-crafted delicacies that I've ever seen in a corner cafe, including a whole bunch of delectable confectionery that one would be hard-pressed to find on offer anywhere else.

I was almost loathe to leave without extensively sampling the wares, but the fact that I'd just eaten lunch (combined with the promise of a glorious lasagne meal that evening) forced me to settle with a packet of popcorn and one of their delightful Petit Fours.

So, a summary of the Gears LAN? Well, it went swimmingly, of course. And I was amazing. Practically awe-inspiring.

Badass.

It also made for a refreshing geeky change in light of all the other malarkey I'd been getting up to recently, and also provided me with a little peek at Xbox Live's version of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night . I'm craving now, dear reader. Craving so badly.