Perfect! Just in time for all of us to have a nice, comfy playthrough before Christmas, the 2008 Retro Remakes competition entries are now available to download! A big congratulatory slap on the back must go to everyone who got something together during the three months of coding time, and special thanks to the RR staff for braving the piles of paperwork and getting it all organised.

A quick note, though. Keep in mind that RR’s bandwidth is limited and goes through the roof at times like this, so try to avoid hitting refresh every couple of seconds if the page isn’t loading for you. Go have a nice cup of tea, perhaps with some digestive biscuits (or even ginger nuts if you’re so inclined), then try again

Over the next couple of weeks, I hope to make time to have a proper hands-on with a few of the entries. Blast Passage, Mini Saboteur, The Kiwi’s Tale and Revenge of the Punched Tape immediately catch my eye - Retroman and Cosmic Prison Commando might get a look too. Bonus points for the most bizarre combination of two 8-bit games has to go to Tetroid, however… it’s Metroid, with Tetris blocks in it! What on earth is going on there?!

On a closing note, this is the second time that (for various reasons) I didn’t have chance to put an entry in for the compo myself so I’m a little sad, but come hell or high water it will be third time lucky when - indeed, if - the competition rolls around again!

Until next time… let’s retro!

Those nice people at Bit Blot have updated Aquaria to version 1.1 including lots of added goodness! It now supports widescreen and has an improved world map and cooking interface, amongst other things. Best of all, if you didn’t buy it already, there’s a price reduction - get Aquaria for Windows now in exchange for just twenty of your United States dollars!

Check out the full information on the Bit Blot blog.

I would have posted a video to go with this post but, unfortunately, the movie is so amazingly incredible that this puny excuse of a webpage couldn’t handle it. Er… okay, what I really mean is that it’s too wide to fit Still, wander over to YouTube or Vimeo to feast your eyes on the Aquaria trailer featuring extra high-definition pixels.

Update: As of the 16th, Aquaria is now available through Steam! Better still it’s being sold for a measly $16 until the new year.

Even as I write this they’re fixing some initial opening hitches, but earlier yesterday, Sony officially announced that they’re opening the doors on their “social gaming community” named Home. Everyone on the planet should have access to it within the next 24 hours or thereabouts, so I guess it’s time to see if there’s anything of any actual use or if it’s just another entry into Sony’s catalogue of errors…

Keep track of the most recent developments as the beta opens up on the European community messageboard.

There aren’t very many games out there that can boast a twenty year history so I want to give a hearty clap on the back to Qwak by Jamie Woodhouse, a quintessentially retro platform game that has recently seen a long-awaited PC release. It’s so brilliant I really am going to give it a serious plug - please, visit the homepage and give this game a try! You won’t regret it, I promise

I’ve got some very fond memories of playing Qwak from a coverdisk on an Amiga magazine many moons ago, and this new version’s demo has gotten me addicted once more. In a similar spirit to Bubble Bobble, two players can team up - or maybe even compete - in collecting a whole spectrum of fruity goodies and bopping enemies on the noggin to progress through the levels.

The gameplay is still as fast, simple and horribly morish as ever. But keep in mind… bright green ducks are for life, not just for Christmas…

Attention mappers! For anyone interested in modding Mordor: The Depths of Dejenol dungeons, you might find this page helpful - it’s an in-depth description of the MDATA11.MDR file layout. It’s not otherwise very easy to find, so the more links that lead to it, the better! It was an invaluable resource when I was tinkering with MDATA11 editing some while ago, so I hope you find it helpful.

Here’s a quick scattering of images from the development process of Dalyn’s Quill. I’ve certainly not been working at full speed so far - this probably took me only a few hours of concentrated hacking…

The first is of jsp’s LogicGUI, a pretty nifty editor for MaxGUI (which is basically the GUI module of Blitz). BlitzMax lacks its own form editor, so without LogicGUI I wouldn’t even be near this stage yet. Thanks jsp!

Then there’s the proper editor window running by itself. I’ve simplifed the layout as much as I can think to and moved some stuff into the menus, such as the buttons for clearing a level and assigning all rock fields to area zero. You can see some of the gadgets for chute properties showing when they shouldn’t, but I’ve literally just finished the basic form design and there’s no code to deal with hiding things that shouldn’t appear yet.

Rounding the nostalgia trip off - and bringing some memories back - is a pic of the old monster that was the editor for Return to Dejenol. Oh, the hours I put into this, only to have it gathering dust in a forgotten folder Entirely my own fault, so I can’t complain, and a lot of the editing code will live on in Dalyn’s Quill so it isn’t all bad.

Right, enough blabbering, time to crack on!

Although the coding has been fun, it’s also been really nice not to have Millenipede-related problems or ideas nagging at the back of my mind for the past couple of weeks! There’s a never a “perfect” game and I can still think of other things to add, but I think it’s okay to call Millenipede done (barring future bugfixes, of course).

So now it’s time to think that dreaded question… what next?

I’ve pretty much already decided! The project I have in mind should be quite short but at the same time big enough to seem satisfying. Most of the important coding is already done; it just needs to be repackaged a little.

What I have in mind is Dalyn’s Quill, a re-release of the old map editor I’d originally created for Mordor: Return to Dejenol. It had the option of also working with dungeons of the original Depths of Dejenol, and was pretty intuitive to use. How much demand there will be for such a thing, I don’t know, but it’s a loose end that I’ve wanted to tie up for a while.

After that, well, who knows? I’m busy doing some writing for… well, I can’t really say just yet, but it’s retro and games related. And I’ve got a growing desire to make an 8-bit exploration platformer of some description, but that’s a deceptively difficult thing to do alone. For the time being I’m taking it one step at a time. Let’s see how the future flows!

This puts the last piece of the great Millenipede 1.2.0 puzzle into place! For everyone who is interested in it, you’re now able to get the source code along with the extra required BlitzMax modules from the Millenipede homepage. There isn’t a comprehensive guide to compiling the game yourself right now, but I will try to add one at some stage in the future.

Happy coding!

World of Warcraft’s second expansion - Wrath of the Lich King - is out!

The servers are trembling with fear as legions of Death Knights start tromping around the Eastern Plaguelands and boats from Stormwind and Menethil groan under the weight of thousands of adventurers heading out to the new continent, Northrend. The Horde’s zeppelins are loading up, too, though not quite so heavily here on Terenas-EU.

Yes, I’ll admit, I’m one of them…

Next stop - Northrend! Stormwind disappears into the distance as the Kraken leaves dock for the icy north

Good grief, it sure is chocka out there! There’s nothing quite like the first day of a major new MMO episode. The “buzz” is palpable - everyone’s excited about doing new stuff, finding new shiny loot and exploring cool new places. Literally. It gets cold in Northrend… damn cold

There are a few who are frustrated, or who just downright enjoy making trollish comments, but that’s to be expected. And truth be told the atmosphere just wouldn’t be the same without them. Getting to level 80 is going to be a fun ride, I think

Yes, I’ll admit that’s probably the worst post title yet to grace this blog.

In case there are any RSS subscribers out there, this post is to let you know that I’ve just added the Intel Mac download for Millenipede 1.2.0, so be sure to go and grab your copy now! Enjoy!

08/11/08 EDIT: Whoops! A repackaged Mac .dmg is now available which should fix a problem with the FMod dylib file and enable the game to run.