Cryptic Sea

A New Zero video update

2012-01-20T10:53:00.000-08:00

I added a simple AI to test out infantry combat. There's only two weapons so far, a submachine gun and an auto-cannon. At the end of the video you can see how to look around corners, you back up to a wall, hold down the right mouse button and then look right and down. I've seen a lot of games with cover systems, but they're almost always just pressing a button to cover. I think it's more interesting to actually control it yourself, it feels pretty natural once you get used to it. You can also see what happens when I decide to leave cover and charge in.

I will be doing an open beta with infantry soon, there's a lot of things to fix/add to do an open test though, last week I found a bug where it runs at 2 seconds per frame on some PCs here. I also need to optimize the net code, and improve the AI some. And no, the ballmen aren't final, but it will be some sort of abstraction of a human.

Recommended: Escape Goat

2012-01-19T10:25:00.000-08:00

Last week Ian from MagicalTimeBean came by to show his game Escape Goat, a really fun goat-based puzzle game. If you have an Xbox you can buy it from the Xbox Live Indie Games channel, I know Microsoft likes to bury that behind 10 different interfaces but I think you can also buy it here. It's only $3, or just 240 space bucks. If you don't have an Xbox there will be a PC version out soon, hopefully on Steam. I don't usually recommend games, but this is a really good one and I'd like to try and get the word out on it.

Hockey? Mac?

2012-01-04T18:44:00.000-08:00

Hockey? for the Mac is now available, and there's a new Windows build with improved stick handling.

Download:

Mac: hockey055.dmg

Windows: hockey055.zip

Also more fun with Google translations of Hockey? reviews:

Well, a very fun game from Cryptic Sea . Represents a such simulation hockey with a first-person.
Multiplayer - a generator of pain management for very peculiar. Play a lot of fun if you gather a small group in Skype - without communicating somehow not.

StopGame

Ludum Dare: Relativity

2011-12-19T18:41:00.000-08:00

I actually finished something for Ludum Dare, it's entered in the game jam section (72 hours instead of 48, and relaxed rules). It's a first-person puzzle game, you can slow down light to 2 m/s, the puzzles are very simple right now since I didn't have much time to work on them. The engine is a 4D raycaster, the world is stored in a 4 dimensional voxel grid, as the ray moves though the spatial grid it also moves backward in the time dimension. There's a lot of cool stuff that could be done with this with some more time.

Try it out here: relativity.zip

Ludum Dare video update

2011-12-18T00:09:00.000-08:00

Here's a quick video of my Ludum Dare game so far, you can see some of the effects of having a very slow speed of light, the ball appears to warp when it's moving towards the camera. I've been working on optimizing the raycasting, I changed the structure of the voxels to a nested grid, which at first seemed way slower but that was just a bug in calculating which part of spacetime to check. I'm done for tonight so tomorrow will be a mad dash to try and finish it.

Ludum Dare Halftime

2011-12-17T18:18:00.000-08:00

Ludum Dare is halfway through, I have the basic engine working, still need to figure out the gameplay. The concept of the game is that the speed of light is really slow, like 1 m/s or so. I'm going to try and figure out some puzzles based on that, I need to fix up the engine some more before I can though. The engine is a raycasting voxel engine but it casts rays through 4 dimensions instead of 3.

Ludum Daring

2011-12-16T22:28:00.001-08:00

I've decided to try a strange concept for this Ludum Dare, not sure if it will work or not, I'll try to do some posts tomorrow with progress(or lack of) updates.

A New Zero First Person Shooting

2011-12-16T17:46:00.000-08:00

Here's a quick video I made of the FPS in A New Zero while waiting for Ludum Dare to start. The movement is getting better, and the cool thing about having a physically modeled humanoid is the ragdolls are pretty much a freebie. Next I need to add different types of weapons, once I have the system in place it should be easy to try out a lot of variations. I'm thinking the weapons will be similar to X-COM, where a player could have a rocket launcher or auto-cannon but move slower and not have as much ammo as a player with a sub-machine gun.

SSAO Coding Battle!!!

2011-12-09T14:14:00.001-08:00

Yesterday I was talking with David from Wolfire about Screen Space Ambient Occlusion, a lighting technique that adds some depth to the scene. Since we had talked about it a few times before we decided stop talking about it and have a competition to see who could implement it in their game first. About a half-hour later, just after I had decided which album to play while I work on it David had it working in Overgrowth. Still I pressed on and eventually got it working in A New Zero.

I really hacked it in so there's a lot of artifacts, but what I ended up with was casting 16 spherical rays from each pixel, using the depth of the ray compared to the depth of the pixel it's at, and using a soft comparison to tell how much occlusion there is. It has a lot of inaccurate highlights around edges but I kind of like it, I'll probably keep messing around with it until I have a style that works. It's definitely a good technique for ANZ since it can be used in dynamic scenes and adds a lot of depth to the not very textured world of A New Zero.

Check out David's video at: http://blog.wolfire.com/2011/12/Overgrowth-a161-video-changelog

A New Zero update

2011-12-01T11:47:00.001-08:00

I've been working on the landscape generation, I've got some real mountains in now, I also have been working on rivers. For the rivers I'm trying to figure out how players will build bridges across them, obviously doing it brick by brick would take way too long. I have the engine working now where players can build structures anywhere on the landscape, which will probably be about 4km by 4km. I'll be switching it over to a voxel landscape instead of height mapped soon also, so the world can have cliffs or tunnels. I'm still working on the human movement, I'm going to have to fake parts of it, it's just a matter of how much, but I'm glad I didn't go with a generic floating turret. I'm not sure when the next version will be up, I was thinking of trying to get something done for the IGF but that's another lost cause I'm afraid. Once I have something fun to play, whether it's FPS combat, tanks or planes, I'll put up a new version.

Postmodern Warfare

2011-11-16T23:08:00.001-08:00

I've been watching a lot of videos of Battlefield/Modern Warfare 3 and one thing that disappoints me is the movement and shooting are still basically Quake 1 with a few adjustments for "realism". For A New Zero I've been working on physically modelling a humanoid body, which is harder than it sounds and it sounds hard. I've been getting close to a point where I can use it in game, today I finally hacked it in and I'm surprised how much better it feels already. The subtle movement of the head makes it feel like you're an actual person instead of a gun that moves. When the gun fires it applies a force to the right hand, which causes your whole body to shake a bit. Right now the body is a bit too floppy, but that shouldn't be too hard to fix. I'm aiming for having a new test with the first-person combat finished by the end of this week.

The Precipice

2011-11-08T21:34:00.000-08:00

Since finishing the underwhelming armor test I've been working on getting the rest of the game back in/added. In the video you can see an attack plane, currently armed with a 75mm tank cannon that stalls the plane if you fire more than 3 or 4 rounds. I'll be changing it to a more reasonable sized gun and add a bomb for dive bombing. Next is a voxel landscape engine that I will try and get in soon, I'm not really satisfied with the height-mapped landscape in right now, I also want the terrain to modifiable so you can dig trenches. Finally there's the building system I'm working on, right now it's very Minecraftian but I think eventually it will be done with bigger chunks instead of a block at a time so you can build bridges or bunkers faster.

Next test version is scheduled for Friday.

A New Zero 0.80

2011-11-02T00:55:00.000-07:00

Download: anewzero080.zip

Keys:

WASD: movement

Q: Open/close hatch (can't fire or turn turret with hatch open)

Delete: Hold to eject

F5: Reset game

This only has one level with some basic tank combat and bases to destroy, there will be a lot more added soon. Net code is not optimized yet so probably won't work with very many people on a server yet.

Video of Tanks

2011-10-31T22:04:00.000-07:00

Here's a quick video of the ANZ tank combat demo, it will be released when @crypticsea has 1,000,000 twitter followers, or Wednesday, whichever comes first.

-Alex

And all that you do

2011-10-11T21:06:00.000-07:00

I just realized I haven't posted an update for a couple months, so here's some video of the stuff I've been working on. There will be a new version of A New Zero soon, probably just a small test of tank combat or air combat without the strategic parts yet.

At the end of the video you can see the touring cars game, the gameplay is close and we might have a beta demo of that soon also.

And all you create, and all you destroy

2011-07-25T19:39:00.000-07:00

I've been working on the voxel engine for A New Zero, one of the additions is multiple voxel areas which I can place over the landscape for cities or bridges. The other is structural physics for the buildings, so they now collapse when you destroy the supports. At the end of the video you can see how this works, when an area is destroyed a physical model is created and a simulation similar to Pontifex's is run to see what should fall. I will be adding a humanoid mode soon, so you will be able to walk inside the buildings. Until they get blowed up.

In other news, here's some quotes about Hockey? from around the web:

"Oh by the way, is developed by the same human little people signed the now legendary 'Golf?'." - Google translation of gamesajare.com

"You will learn. You’ll suffer first. But you will learn." - rockpapershotgun.com

"I'm ...very, very hard." - indiegames.com

"why is ign showing us this?" - deltrae3 on youtube.com

"very enjoying this game" - bloodynooob on youtube.com

Hockey?

2011-06-28T06:46:00.000-07:00

We made a first-person hockey game in a week.

UPDATE! UPDATE! UPDATE!

hockey054.zip

Use WASD and the mouse

left mouse button looks at puck

right mouse button for mouse look also lean for checking

space bar to jump

mouse wheel to tilt stick

enter to chat

Shift F5 to restart game

Version 0.54

-added switch teams (press 0) during warmup or intermission

-added kick player

-added direct ip

-fixed disappearing puck bug

-fixed overtime ending bug

-fixed jumping exploit

Version 0.53

-fixed net code more

Version 0.52

-net code improved

-autorestart

Version 0.51

-fixed chat bug

-fixed player in wrong body bug

-fixed invisible ice bug?

-fixed game over on client

-fixed assist

-client controls a little better

With their tanks and their cars, and their cars and their tanks

2011-06-03T16:49:00.000-07:00

Here's a couple videos showing the latest developments in the tanks physics for A New Zero and the multiplayer racing game based on 70s touring cars. We've played a few multiplayer rounds of racing here and it's getting pretty fun, the next step is to add height changes to the race track. The tanks are getting close to being playable, I'll probably do an open beta of just tank combat once it's ready.

-Alex

Tanks

2011-05-14T22:52:00.000-07:00

Here's a video of some tank physics I've been working on, I'm considering doing tanks like this for the next version of A New Zero. I'm still in the design phase right now so I'm not sure how landscapes will fit into the game, but the islands will at least be a lot bigger.

I've also made some progress on the top-down racing game, we'll probably do some tests of it here next week.

-Alex

Ludum Dare Game Jam

2011-04-30T14:39:00.000-07:00

We're doing a game jam here at IGN for Ludum Dare 20, the team is Justin, Colin, Evan and Chris from Interabang, Kent from Ethereal, and me from here. The theme is "It's Dangerous to go Alone! Take This!". We went through a few ideas, right now we've narrowed it down to three:

Nuclear Hand Grenade

Acid Rain Umbrella

Zero-Gravity Space

We're going to make prototypes for each one in the next few hours and see which one ends up fun. I'll be updating the blog every few hours with our progress.

-Alex

Wir fahren fahren fahren auf der Autobahn

2011-04-26T22:42:00.000-07:00

Here's a quick video of another prototype I'm working on, it's a top-down multiplayer racing game based on some British Touring Car footage I saw on Top Gear. I'm going to try and do at least one blog post per week so stay tuned, keep on tweeting, or doing whatever the kids do these days.

-Alex

A New Zero: Blowing stuff up is fun

2011-04-12T15:33:00.000-07:00

I was messing around with the attack plane in A New Zero, making the cannon explode on impact as suggested by JohnG, obviously it's way overpowered right now but fun to mess around with. Stay tuned for more updates!

Late Shift

2011-04-06T23:07:00.000-07:00

It's after 11pm here at the IGN offices, there's me and some Interabang guys still working, I thought I'd take a break from programming and make a video of some prototypes I'm working on this week. The first part is just some A New Zero video, trying to make the attack plane actually useful, there's other stuff I'm working on but not really anything I can show yet. The second part is an FPS idea I'm working on, attempting to make something new in the FPS genre instead of another cylinder with a gun turret. Third part is the sequel to the prequel that is A New Zero. Finally there's the latest in walking dude technology.

-Alex

Met The Press

2011-03-28T13:10:00.000-07:00

I did a podcast for Bitmob with Rich from Runt, we talked about indie stuff and ranted about how the game industry sucks. Check it out here.

DIYgamer has some previews of our games and an interview about the Indie Open House that we're in.

Also Aimee will be in a podcast soon with someone who was in The Office.

Cryptic Sea at GDC!

2011-02-25T15:37:00.000-08:00

We're gonna be at GDC! We'll be hanging out at the GameSpy booth and showing our game there at some point. So come visit us and try the newest and unreleased build of our game!

There will be 4 player action on each computer and you can take home your very own plushie evil doom ball if you impress us with your gaming skills!

A New Zero videos, also ATI sucks

2011-02-22T20:27:00.000-08:00

Here's a couple videos some guy sent me of a bunch of people playing A New Zero, they have a dedicated server up so if you've been wanting to play an obtuse vehicle combat simulation with a broken economy now's your chance!

Also ATI sucks. Their latest drivers created more OpenGL bugs, look at these two screen shots, one is what it should look like and the other is caused by an ATI bug.

If you guessed the bottom one is the ATI bug you win! What caused this you may ask? It's this line of code:

glEnable(GL_LINE_SMOOTH);

That smooths the lines for the objects. When I released the latest ANZ version about a year ago it worked fine on my ATI card. Since then the latest ATI drivers somehow managed to make it so when line smoothing is enabled it fucks up GLSL shaders, even though line smoothing is immediately disabled after rendering the lines. Why does this happen you may ask? I have no clue.

This is just another in a long line of ATI's OpenGL driver bugs. That's why if someone is buying a video card and want to play indie games I recommend buying an NVidia card, the only reason I have an ATI card is to hopefully find these bugs before I release games, but this time ATI managed to outwit (or I guess the opposite of outwit) me. At least ATI is better than built-in Intel GPUs, but so is a 3dfx Voodoo 1.

EOR

Alex

Triaxia?

2011-02-09T16:56:00.000-08:00

Feature game from our upcoming album!

Most everything is figured out, we're getting damn close!
Here's some gameplay for you

IGN indie open house

2011-01-28T16:35:00.000-08:00

By the way, I think we forgot to mention

We're working in San Francisco now at the IGN building!!!

http://games.ign.com/articles/114/1144454p1.html

we won a spot in the IGN indie gaming open house! So now we get to work with other awesome teams and enjoy the wonderful goodness IGN has to offer

~Aimee

P.S. do a google image search for "ign" and be amused and/or insulted by the content (hint, there weren't many actual logos popping up...)

Quixotic

2011-01-25T15:50:00.001-08:00

Visuals so far for our soon to be released set of games. Action puzzle gaming goodness!

Hext Concepts

2011-01-25T15:34:00.001-08:00

Two visual concepts for word puzzle game Hext, part of our next game set

Moto Concepts

2011-01-25T13:38:00.000-08:00

Newest visual concepts for our motocross demo

Will be part of our next game released, stay tuned for more awesomeness

~Aimee

Ballz Night Tuesday!

2011-01-24T14:57:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow January 25th, Tuesday, 5pm Pacific time!

Be there for another glorious invasion!

in case you don't have the awesomeness yet

http://crypticsea.com/theballs/Download.html

~Aimee

Ballz Night Tuesday

2011-01-13T17:32:00.000-08:00

Tuesday the 18th at 5pm California time we shall commence another ballz night!

They're invading our office.... and take no prisoners

Balls Night Tuesday at 5 PST

2011-01-10T14:33:00.000-08:00

Join us tomorrow (Tuesday Jan 10) at 5 PST for Balls Night, insert funny or clever comment here.

Ballz Tonight!!!

2010-12-21T16:39:00.001-08:00

7pm tonight!

the ballz invade again, join us!

http://crypticsea.com/theballs/Download.html

First documentation of the invasion!

Night of the Living Balls Part VIII

2010-12-12T17:42:00.000-08:00

Join us on Tuesday December 14 at 7 PST for Part VIII of Night of the Living Balls!

Joins or no Jack for you!

Night of the Living Balls Part VII

2010-12-04T18:58:00.000-08:00

Join us on Tuesday December 7 at 7 PST for Night of the Living Balls Part VII

Download The Balls here:
http://crypticsea.com/theballs/

Night of the Living Balls Part VI

2010-12-02T14:53:00.000-08:00

Join us on Friday December 3 at 6 PST for Night of the Living Balls Part VI

Giant Balls!

2010-11-23T20:34:00.001-08:00

Wanted to share a screenshot of the awesomeness that happened tonight! I'm the teal one on the left =D

Return of the Mac version

2010-11-23T15:16:00.000-08:00

The Mac version of The Balls 0.65 is up, download it here: theballs065mac.zip

Then join us at 5pm tonight for Night of the Living Balls Part V

The Balls 0.65

2010-11-23T00:55:00.000-08:00

Download it: theballs065.zip

Join us tonight (Tuesday) night at 5pm PST for Night of the Living Balls Part V, Part IV was awesomely chaotic so don't miss out.

Balls Night video

2010-11-19T21:02:00.000-08:00

Here's some of the action from last Tuesday's Night of the Living Balls IV, join us next Tuesday, Nov 23, starting at 5 PST and be part of something magical.

Can you identify this flying object?

-Alex

New Videos New Webpage

2010-11-16T17:23:00.000-08:00

New Site just for balls

New Videos for training you little spawnlings!

The Balls 0.64

2010-11-15T22:56:00.000-08:00

Download: theballs064.zip

Join us tomorrow (Tuesday Nov 16) at 7pm PST for Night of the Living Balls IV.

Night of the living ballz III

2010-11-09T16:26:00.001-08:00

It's night of the living ballz III tonight!

7:30 - 9pm PST

Download newest version here

Join us!!!

~Aimee.

New Beta!!!

2010-11-04T19:01:00.000-07:00

New and Awesome Beta!

Download Now

Many, many improvements!!
New Levels
New Abilities
Refined gameplay
Money added
New objectives
Awesome new sounds!
Pretty much everything is just way awesomer and you have to play to see it!

We now have a money system where you collect and earn money each level to use in buying abilities and upgrades for those abilities. Also each level has a more clearly defined objective, advancing to the end, killing your enemies, collecting food, rescuing allies, etc. We'll soon be adding two new abilities as well that are a mystery for now.

Enjoy!

Death to humans

2010-10-01T16:34:00.001-07:00

Hey there humanses, we'll have new demo up in a few weeks, so stays tuned you hairless apes

-The Ballz

Deck The Balls

2010-09-18T15:24:00.000-07:00

with normal maps! We've been working on a new lighting system for The Balls, and it's starting to look pretty good. We start with Aimee baking in normal maps, which looks like this:

The color is the normal of the pixel encoded, red is X, green is Y and blue is Z. We load that texture in and use a shader that takes that encoded normal and calculates the light using the dot product of the normal and the light direction. We're also using a "toon" style shader, meaning the amount of light is rounded to certain values. We then combine that with the color texture of the object to get the final output color. We also have a fur shader for the balls, you can see how it looks so far in the video.

We're also working on a bunch of new stuff for gameplay that we want to get in for a demo sometime next month.

-Alex

Balls are coming

2010-09-03T18:33:00.000-07:00

Study your enemy, the Balls ARE coming!

Night of the Living Balls Part 2

2010-08-30T23:50:00.000-07:00

Join us for the sequel to Night of the Living Balls tonight (August 31) at 7pm PST. Mac and Linux versions now available!

Get the newest version here:

www.crypticsea.com/theballs/

Added chat, press T to chat.

Balls N' Orbs

2010-08-27T16:22:00.000-07:00

The Balls 0.60, now with Orb Capturing! Also we will be doing Night of the Living Balls Part 2, Tuesday August 31 at 7 pm PST.

.....punch and pie

Night of the Living Balls

2010-08-24T15:04:00.000-07:00

Join us tonight (August 24th) at 7 pm PST for a test of The Balls, we're trying to get as many people on one server as we can.

How to join:

Download the latest version here: www.crypticsea.com/theballs

Choose the server Night of the Living Balls

Here's our symbols so you know which balls we are:

The Balls!

2010-08-17T00:29:00.000-07:00

Download and info:

www.crypticsea.com/theballs/

Gish Open Source

2010-05-29T21:49:00.000-07:00

Download

License:
GPL

About:

Most of this code was hacked in in the last 3 or 4 months of development, so it's not very clean.

Support:

Post on the forum

http://www.crypticsea.com/forum/

Programmer wanted

2010-05-28T14:51:00.000-07:00

We're looking for a programmer to help finish some of the 5 or 6 projects we're working on. If you live near Santa Cruz and are interested contact us

Humble Indie Bundle

2010-05-05T17:35:00.001-07:00

If you haven't already heard about it, there's a five game bundle of indie goodness (including Gish) available here: Humble Indie Bundle

You can pay whatever you want, some of it goes to charity, some of it goes toward my Ferrari.

Your ~~tax~~ normal dollars at work:

If you're wondering why you should support things like this, here's an example: After constant harassing from John at Wolfire, I was able to get them Mac and Linux builds of Gish. Unfortunately we weren't able to test them too much (keep in mind we don't have huge QA teams, we just have to try and find a Mac or Linux user to try it out), so we've had some technical issues. Luckily most people have been cool about it, and most have been fixed, but I needed a new Mac to make an Intel version. Since the bundle is doing well I felt justified to finally get the new Mac you can see here:

So once the 2.3 freakin gigabyte Xcode is downloaded I can fix the rest of the Mac issues. Also we'll be able to do Mac and Linux versions of Pontifex III, A New Zero and whatever other secret projects we're doing fairly easily.

Plus there's the charity thing :-)

-Alex

Cars... and SCII Beta?

2010-04-20T14:59:00.001-07:00

So here's a rough preview of most of the cars. Not all are quite finished, but it's fun to see 'em all together.

And on a different gamer side note, anyone want to play some SCII Beta?

Add me, Sekhmet.Acinonyx =D

Cars and things

2010-03-30T14:00:00.000-07:00

Here's a preview of two vehicles I've been working on for the game.

Yes, they will be drivable! And each vehicle will drive differently, because of course a crazy off road Truggy is going to handle differently than a sleek sexy sports car.

As for the sea stuff, you'll find out what it's for when you play the game. ^.~

~Aimee

Pontifex III update

2010-03-29T17:44:00.001-07:00

Sometimes I get overwhelmed with all the work still left to do on Pontifex III, then I build a bridge like this one and it all seems worth it. I think that's one of the coolest things about the new version, you can make some really epic bridges.

We are making good progress, we've been doing some local testing to try and fix up some of the confusing parts of the editing. The online beta is still a week or two away I think, it will take a while to make the rendering work well on different video cards and all that fun stuff.

We will also be starting pre-orders soon, and anyone who pre-orders will be able to join in the beta.

-Alex

Pontifex III video

2010-03-20T16:51:00.000-07:00

Here's some video from the Pontifex III beta that we're working on, we should have it ready for testing by next week.

Lots O' Rain

2010-03-03T22:30:00.000-08:00

In the wonderful tradition of Deity of Hostility comes Lots O' Rain, another text-based super-masterpiece.

Pontifex III screens

2010-02-26T18:43:00.001-08:00

C:Medieval Development Video

2010-02-11T20:39:00.000-08:00

Here's a development video of C:Medieval, you can see the progress from a bunch of circles to a bunch of spheroids. One of the main things I worked on early was getting the gameplay right, I figured if that sucked there's no point in making the game theoretically support 100 players. You can see in the video I started off with only being able to attack in 4 directions, just like Zelda on the NES. I soon realized that this doesn't work very well with circular collisions, the reason it works in Zelda is actually pretty interesting, you can check out this link that Raigan of Metanet sent me to see why. Once I had the 8 direction attacking in I just had to balance a few things, originally players could turn around instantly but that was annoying so I made it so it takes time to rotate.

Once the gameplay was working I moved on to the networking, one of the main challenges for that was bandwidth. Since there's 100 objects moving around with 99 clients, it was clear that I couldn't use a standard server/client setup. Even if each object's position could be compress to one byte that's still 100 bytes times 99 clients times 30 frames per second = 297K per second, which most DSL or cable lines don't support for upload (most can easily download that much). So what I decided to go with is 10 direct connections to the server, after that clients connect to one of the direct clients, which become client/servers, or clervers. This way the server can run on a connection with 50-60K per second and still support 100 players (I think).

-Alex

C:Medieval

2010-01-29T03:19:00.000-08:00

Here's a game I made for this month's Experimental Gameplay Project, the theme is 100 things so I made a 100 player arcade game. I'm not sure if it works yet, I don't have 99 friends.

Update: Version 0.52 should fix the multiplayer connecting bugs.

Download: C Version 0.52

Instructions: C Webpage

A New Zero 0.78

2010-01-18T21:14:00.001-08:00

Download: A New Zero 0.78

Version 0.78

Additions:

Random forests

OpenGL 1.1 compatible

Changes:

Increased cargo boat capacity to 10

Changed rearming

Fixes:

Fixed player ready bug

Fixed game restart bug

Fixed lag issues

Fixed research bug?

Fixed bloom rendered underwater

Fixed profiteer bug

Version 0.77

Additions:

Added Attack Plane

Added Missile Ship

Added flags to show island's team

Shows research points in research menu

Added player ready to restart game

Added starting cash option

Changes:

Increase island income for 2 island game

Increased Air-to-surface missile thrust

Lowered wing strength

Lowered bandwidth for missiles and bombs

Fixes:

Fixed bug with research and restarting

Fixed Esc sending chat message

Fixed fullscreen tab bug

A New Zero 0.77 Beta

2010-01-15T23:21:00.000-08:00

Download: A New Zero 0.77 Beta

I'll try and post more info and get a full setup this weekend. In the meantime play it and check out the Wiki.

A New Zero 0.76

2010-01-03T22:37:00.000-08:00

Download: A New Zero 0.76

Thanks for all the feedback, I've fixed a few things, added a few things. More info soon.

-Alex

A New Zero 0.75

2009-12-12T19:33:00.001-08:00

Download: A New Zero 0.75

I'll try and post more information soon, I pretty much rewrote the whole game the last couple months so I can't really think too much right now. Let me know what you think, it's definitely going to need some balancing.

-Alex

Bomber Madness, Pontifex III, and fan art

2009-10-21T14:19:00.000-07:00

What happens when you combine a bomber with unlimited ammo, bad AI, and Lorenzo Lamas? I don't know! But here's what happens with the first two things. I've also been messing around with a ground attack plane, which you can see at the end of the video.

Here's a couple early Pontifex III screenshots:

There's still quite a few things we're still adding/fixing up, but it's starting to come together. The main new gameplay feature is the concrete material, so you can build your own anchors.

Also this guy made some Hitlers Must Die! fan art and won't stop bugging me about it, so here it is:

Finally if you're wondering/didn't know how to play the one Hitlers Must Die! level in No Quarter: V-Sides you have to enter the Konami Code with a gamepad while Cryptic Sea fades in and out at the beginning. The actual No Quarter beta won't start until next month, I think.

Cool fan-made HMD video

2009-09-23T16:07:00.000-07:00

V-Sides Development Video

2009-09-02T21:20:00.000-07:00

This video shows the prototypes of the V-Sides at about an hour increments, as you can see in the video Rescue Helicopter was actually harder than it is now. Most of the time was spent trying to get to the tasty gameplay center, even though the graphics look like they must've taken months they actually did not.

By the way if you're doubting that Rescue Helicopter is possible to beat, here's a screenshot proving you wrong:

If you didn't doubt that it was possible then you win a prize.

-Alex

No Quarter V-Sides

2009-08-31T23:33:00.000-07:00

I've made a couple games for the Experimental Gameplay Project this month, the theme was Bare Minimum, and despite that I barely finished on time. Actually I spent about a day each on the games, which can be downloaded here: V-Sides Download

Update!

I realized I forgot to explain the controls, they are:

Rescue Helicopter:

Up/Down: Increase/decrease throttle

Left/Right: Rotate left/right

Button A(Space bar): Lower basket

Button B(S key): Raise basket

If the throttle is about 3/4 then you will hover, gentle taps of left and right are necessary to keep you balanced. Only one person can fit in the basket at a time.

Return to Skateboard Mountain:

Down: Duck

Left/Right: Lean left/right

Button A(Space bar): Jump (only if you're already ducking)

You can jump and flip if you lean and duck and then jump.

Using a gamepad is highly recommended.

The games are:

Rescue Helicopter, a helicopter sim inspired by Choplifter, where you try to rescue people with your helicopter. This game is HARD!

Return to Skateboard Mountain, inspired by Ski Stunt Simulator, skate down Skateboard Mountain doing radical jumps!

Both games use the No Quarter framework, which allowed me to prototype them very quickly. They feature old-school vector-based graphics, for all you old-school vector-based graphics fans. I have some videos that I'll try to throw together in the next couple days that show the progress of the prototypes. It won't be as cool as Petri's video for last months EGP but oh well.

Also thanks to all the people up in Toronto for showing me an awesome time, by some beer at The Beer Store for me, eh?

-Alex

Mission: Canada

2009-08-25T21:45:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow I will be heading to Toronto to hang out with Raigan Burns and Mare Sheppard, the Brad and Angelina of indie games, and Jon Mak, the George Clooney of indie games, as well as some other people that I'm sure are the somethings of something. While there I will be attending a prestigious event presented by the Hand Eye Society, where I will be presenting some of Cryptic Sea's prestigious projects. If you're in the area feel free to stop by, just be sure to wear a tuxedo, or clothes.

No Quarter Beta Update:

We received a great response from the call for beta testers, next week we'll go through the emails and hopefully have a version to send out by the end of the week.

-Alex

More to come

2009-08-16T23:02:00.000-07:00

Some video of part of one test level of Hitlers Must Die! from No Quarter. I'll be doing some videos of the other games from No Quarter soon. If you're interested in beta testing contact us.

Gish 2 won't be out until next year, deal with it.

Indie Super Sale!

2009-08-08T00:04:00.000-07:00

Buy Gish and get 9 other indie games for free! Only $30!

On Steam!

No Quarter Test Day 2009!

2009-07-27T21:28:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we had some of the superstars of indie games come by our office for some testing of No Quarter. By merely offering free pizza and soda we were able to attract the likes of Jonathan Blow, Kyle Gabler, Alex Neuse, Chris Osborn, Mike Treanor and Derek Yu. The testing went really well, we got some good suggestions, learned how people react to the games, and along the way learned a lot about ourselves. Although no cameras were allowed out of concerns for celebrity privacy, there is this artist's depiction of the event:

I've also made a video of Odyssey as seen above, some of the superstar testers were able to land on the moon, but no one was able to successfully rendevous with the CSM. Sadly there are quite a few dead astronauts still orbiting a virtual moon. Also Derek made a "tree" in Seedling:

Clearly an argument against intelligent design.

Somnia Trailer

2009-06-18T19:19:00.000-07:00

We also did an update that adds invert mouse Y-axis for you backwards people. You can get it here: Demo 0.71

Somnia - Play it!

2009-06-12T19:03:00.001-07:00

So here's that weird unknown game you saw in the not E3 trailer!

Somnia! -the demo-

I hope you can figure it out, if not, there will be much sadness... and me laughing at you secretly.

I'm awfully pleased with how it's turned out, then again since this is the first game I've worked on I don't have much of a frame of reference.

So, thoughts for the final game?

~Aimee (Yes, I'm really a girl)

Cryptic Sea: Didn't go to E3 trailer

2009-06-05T15:52:00.000-07:00

We didn't go to E3 this year, so we missed out on sneak peeks of Call of Duty 6, God of War 3, Assassin's Creed 2, Left "number 4" Dead Too, Halo 3: Orbital Drop Shock Trooper, Alliance of Valiant Arms, Uno, Order of War, Battle of War, War of War, Duty of War, Gumption of Battle, Combat of War, Honor of Duty, Lords of Shadow and Heavy Rain. I personally wanted to see just how heavy rain can get.

Instead we've been working on games. Games of war. Games of other stuff. I've made a quick video of some of the stuff we've been working on. You will watch it.

The games in the video are: No Quarter: Hitler's Must Die!, A New Zero and Somnia. The HMD video shows off the newest addition, the rocket launcher. The ANZ video is of the most requested feature, guns on the planes, which will make it into the next version. The last is a preview of Somnia, a game I've been working on with our new artist Aimee, who got the job despite ruthlessly beating Edmund and I 2 versus 1 in Starcraft.

HMD!- Beta gameplay vid

2009-05-18T17:09:00.000-07:00

A little video from the Beta version of Hitlers Must Die!, track 1 of 6 off No Quarter, featuring the music of Danny B.

Enjoy!

Hitlers Must die

2009-05-06T18:07:00.000-07:00

Alex and i are currently crunching for Pax10 and indiecade, that means getting a playable version of No Quarter finished by sat. Not much has been said about No Quarter, or the games first track "Hitlers Must Die!".

We just finished the intro for it today.. i just couldnt hold back from posting this.

Enjoy!

-Eddy

No Quarter update

2009-03-13T17:57:00.000-07:00

Here's a video of some of the things we're working on for No Quarter. The first part is a test I've been doing for walking/running on moving platforms. As you can see in the video, by running left it pushes the platform in the opposite direction, causing the wheel to rotate. This sounds simple, but actually takes quite a bit of balancing to get the right movement while still being physically simulated. Mare and Raigan from Metanet describe the process better in this post. The cool thing about having this working is we can have moving platforms that the player interacts with the same as the static level, similar to what we had in Gish. The second part of the video is what I do when I get tired of running in a wheel: kill Hitler clones.

The third part is some early video of the tree game we're working on, it's taken a while to get the prototype going but it's starting to feel like something now.

Edmund made a wallpaper of some of the characters that may or may not appear in Red Alpha, you can check it out here:

Ignore this

2009-02-01T18:50:00.000-08:00

A New Zero 0.74

2009-01-31T15:21:00.000-08:00

Download:
Windows Demo 0.74
Changes:
Added option for no team damage of buildings
Added penalty for team killing
Added player control of towers
Added defecting to another team
Added options for keyboard, mouse and joystick controls (press F2 in-game for options)
Added scoreboard for battle mode (hold Tab to view)
Added max players option
Fixed missile sounds and exhaust for client
Fixed gladiator mode points for client
Improved interface
Subtracted city for now

Thanks to everyone for playing and sending comments, the next version will probably take a while, I'm planning on adding quite a few things.

Calling all beta testers!

2009-01-28T15:04:00.000-08:00

We are currently looking for a few testers to try out one of the games in No Quarter. Basically all we ask is you play the game and fill out a basic form so we can get feedback.

e-mail me at Edmund@crypticsea.com to apply.

-Edmund

A New Zero on Rock, Paper, Shotgun

2009-01-15T13:24:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Rock, Paper AND Shotgun for the mention. Good to see they're posting real news instead of interviews with losers like that Edmund McMillen guy.

In other news, No Quarter is coming along really well, we're aiming for a March release. Hopefully March 2009. I should a new version of A New Zero ready soon, there's a few minor issues that should be fixed as well as some new stuff added. Also look for a HUGE announcement about Gish 2 soon.

New Game!

2009-01-07T16:38:00.000-08:00

In honor of not making the IGF finals I've made a new game, it's called "You don't have to burn the rope"
Download it now!

A New Zero trailer

2008-12-23T02:52:00.000-08:00

A New Zero 0.71

2008-12-22T02:03:00.000-08:00

Download: Windows Demo 0.71
Now I go to sleep.

A New Zero update

2008-12-13T16:31:00.000-08:00

I will hopefully have a new version up in the next couple days, some of the things I'm working on are:
- fixed multiplayer choppiness
- dedicated server
- new scoring system
- new interface
- client sound fixes
- new vehicles
- more options (no turrets, level size, respawn delay)
- chunks (see video)

No Quarter

2008-12-04T16:52:00.000-08:00

Its official.

In early 09 Cryptic Sea (that's us) is releasing an "album" of retro inspired games that will play kind of like tracks on a cd, the project is called No Quarter.

The current track listing so far is: (Note that track titles are not final)

1."gun" (Mario + N + Wolfenstein)
2.Trivium (Tetris + Physics)
3."epic flail" (Missile Command + Rampage)
4.Hext (Scrabble + Hex board)
5."tree" (Art game + Sim)
6.Odyssey ( Lunar Lander + Awesome )

The project is still very early in development, so more tracks might pop up as time passes.

I put together a video showing the basics of what we have so far, this video represents the first few months of development and what we submitted to the IGF this year.

Enjoy.

A New Zero

2008-11-24T19:56:00.000-08:00

Download: Windows Demo 0.7
Information: Webpage

My CD is out!

2008-11-06T13:33:00.003-08:00

My lifes work is being sold on a single CD for only 10 bucks!!!!

Watch the trailer.

why arnt you buying it yet?

http://edmundm.com/

"I've spent the past 10 years of my life trying my best to stay independent and work on personal projects I felt had meaning to me and what I was trying to express as an artist. All my work has a personal cathartic theme. I don't censor my ideas even if they contradict my personal views and I think that's something very important when it comes to making art. Thanks for buying the CD, I hope you enjoy my work.'

PLEASE spread the word people! this is honestly everything ive done artistically for the past 10 years.. that's 1 buck a year! WHAT A DEAL!

Buy it!

-Edmund

i also made a secret uncensored trailer here :)

Meat Boy!

2008-10-06T16:30:00.000-07:00

Update: Tim From indie games blog is at it again, proving how much we all suck at meat boy and how awesome he is. Tn this video he beats all the hardest levels collecting all the band aids along the way...

Meat boy!

Jon McEntee (a new Designer on the flash scene) and i just finished up a new game!

Meet Meat Boy. He's the protagonist of his self-titled debut, irreverently named Meat Boy, a more traditional "hardcore" platformer in the same vein as Ghost and Goblins, Mega Man and N. You play as the unlikely hero in search of his kidnapped love interest. Cliché I know, but this princess is made of band-aids and she's been kidnapped by a fetus in a jar wearing a suit and a monocle. Oh, and you're also a skinless ball of juicy meat.

You can play the flash version online here:

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/463241

You can also download the stand alone version for both Mac and PC here:

http://www.newgrounds.com/downloads/flash/meatboy.zip

Meat Boy Features:

.56+ levels spanning 4 chapters

.A full featured, user friendly level editor

.4 unlockable playable characters

.10 unlockable bonus levels

.Fully animated ending and hidden epilogue!

All the controls and info are in the game.

The game was created by :
Jonathan Mcenee - Programming/Design
Edmund McMillen - Art/Design
Featuring music by Danny Baranowsky of dBsoundworks.com.

Oh heres a little vid of Tim from indiegames blog getting all the secret band aids and unlocking the final secret ending (its been edited not to spoil the fun for people going for 100% completion).

-Edmund

Aether

2008-09-03T14:18:00.000-07:00

Yay i made something!

Its called Aether and its a simple experimental "Art" game about childhood and escapism. Its a very honest and personal project i've been a little worried about making public because its exposes a lot of the fears i had when i was a child and puts me in a vulnerable places. But i feel like there are some out there that can appreciate something honest that has a lot of heart.

You can play the flash version online here:
http://armorgames.com/play/2153/aether

and can also download the stand alone version for both Mac and PC here (it runs better on slower pcs):
http://armorgames.com/misc/downloads/aether.zip

In the game you play as a boy who leaves the earth in search of life in outer space, someone he can relate to. in the process he discovers lost planets that need to be saved, solving puzzles on these planet bring life back to them and the galaxy expands.

Please feel free to try the game out yourself, the story is left open to interpretation and if your into exploration and problem solving then you just might really like it.

All the controls and info are in the game.

The Game was created by Myself and Tyler Glaiel of http://www.glaielgames.com/. We made it in 14 days.

I hope you enjoy our labor of love.
-Edmund

International Braid Day!

2008-08-06T15:19:00.000-07:00

Braid is out on Xbox Live, if you haven't played it yet, play it. Then buy it. Or buy it first, then play it. It's up to you. Here's part of the official description: "Perhaps you will find the Princess and rescue her. There are no refunds for this item." I'm not sure if they mean the game or the Princess. Anyway we highly recommend it.

In other news, Blast Miner is available in stores, namely Fry's. You can also buy it from Amazon here: http://www.amazon.com/Masque-Publishing-10320-Blast-Miner/dp/B0017XCE4Y/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=software&qid=1218061649&sr=8-1

We've been making good progress on all the games, I've been working on Gish 2, Ramjets and a new bridge building game. Ramjets is getting really close to a new version, also it will probably have a different name. Ramming and jets will still be included however. Edmund has been working on Gish 2 and drawing lady parts.

Teaser trailer

2008-07-01T14:30:00.000-07:00

So there is the little Gish 2 teaser/intro ive been working on this week. the youtube video is a little small, so if you have a hard time reading the subtitles check out the high rez flash version on Gish2.com.

This trailer only shows a small piece of one of the many layers of the story in Gish 2. more to come.

-Edmund

I am Salvation. I am Death.

2008-06-27T14:40:00.000-07:00

I added a new (flash) teaser page to the Gish2 webpage showing the 1st image of Quietus "god of the dead". We are currently working on outside lighting/day night cycles and should have something to show in the form on a new dev. documentation video in the coming weeks. im also working on a video teaser that should shed some light on one aspect of the Gish2 story.

Check out the trailer for Gish mobile its looking sweet.
http://www.erphenic.com/gish_mobile/

Also did an interview with Tim at the indie blog that could be interesting to someone
http://www.indiegames.com/blog/

-Edmund

Bob Loblaw Blob Blog

2008-04-17T15:33:00.000-07:00

Here's a video showing what I've been working on the last few months, as you can see Gish's physics have changed quite a bit. We started out with physics similar to Gish 1, but we were running into the same limitations we had with the old model, so we decided to start over. The new model is made up of 128 particles which move independently and have an attraction to each other. The trick has been wrangling the particles to move as one blob, it's getting closer but still needs some work to feel like the original Gish. The cool thing is we can use the particles instead of a hit points, so Gish gets damaged by losing particles. This is good news for anyone who dropped too far in Gish 1 without holding jump and died.

We've also been working on the graphics, there's not much to show of that right now but we should have something in the next month or so.

Ramjets fan(s?): I've added a lot of new features and should have a new version up in early May.

Blood Car! 2000! Deluxe!

2008-02-08T15:54:00.000-08:00

A great work of art or the greatest work of art? You decide. Download the executable here.