Warcraft 1

I just stubled upon a treat - a three part story about the development of the Warcraft 1 game. I recommend you go to the source and read parts one, two, and three. This story was written by Patrick Wyatt. He is the original developer on the project. Back then the company was called Silicon & Synapse. Later Davison and Associates acquired the company, and it was renamed Blizzard.

The game work started with just one develper in September 1993. Gameplay was inspired by Dune 2, a real time strategy game which pitted you against the computer. The goal was to produce a multiplayer game. The developer banged out a rough single player version in a few weeks.

Warcraft 1 was a DOS protected mode game. It was developed in DOS real mode. Initially they tried using EMS paged memory. Later they adofpted Watcom's DOS memory extender. Here is a funny bit of trivia. The company did not have a LAN intially, even though they were targeting a network game.

In 1994, they put together some of the first design docs. The goal was to release the game by Christmas 1994. The company only had 20 people total. Many eventually worked on this game. The game was unusual in that it had a bright color palette. The graphics were 320x200 resolution.

The company was self funded. They got an infusion of cash when they were acquired. Their AI program did some cheating. The game properties behaved different for the computer than for other players. The computer also had views that were obscured for players.

When the network code came around, they implemented passing of player commands to all computers in the network. They each computer could implement the commands for all players involved. Initially there were a lot of sync bugs in the code. These got fixed. And the rest is history.

Machinarium

I just checked out an ad for the latest Humble Bundle. It was targeted to Android users. Most of the games seemed like nothing special. However there was one games whose graphics seemed unusual. This game was Machinarium. You had to pay at least $5.95 for the whole bundle of games to qualify for the Machinarium bonus game.

Machinarium was released back in 2009. I looked it up. The thing costs $10 if you want the game as released on multiple platforms. If you just need the iPad version (which requires the iPad 2), it costs $4.99 in the app store. Note that this game also runs on the Playstation 3. Apparently they initially wanted to release it on the XBox360. But Microsoft halted that effort.

This game was made using Adobe Flash. The credits only list one or two developers for the whole game. Guess that is all you need when there are 30 screens total of puzzles. However there were a whopping 16 testers listed in the credits. This game was produced by Amanita design. They have a few other games out there including Samorost and Botanicula.

Macinarium has a free demo for Windows that I played. The intro shows a bunch of trash being dumped. The main character is apparently one that appeared previously in games such as Super Meat Boy. While playing, I was a robot with just a head. I retrieved my body, but had to trade another animal a mouse so it would retrieve my legs. Then I got stuck.

I could not get off the first screen. There is allegedly a built in hint system. The thing that struck me about this game was the weird but beautiful graphics. It was strange also that there was little to no text on the screen. This is a graphic adventure that reminds me of Myst. I might just have to buy this darn thing (and use the hints to get by). I wish this would work on new iPhone 5.

Make Games With Us

Just heard about this company "Make Games With Us". They provide tutorials for you to code iPhone apps. They also hook you up with artists so you can concentrate on the your coding. When you are done, they want to publish your game for. They take a 30% cut of profits in return. This rate applies during their Beta phase.

Makes Game With Us is a two many startup. Recently they got accepted into Y-Combinator. So they got some cash from Paul Graham, and have access to the Y-Compbinator community at large. Their claim to fame is that they made a video using their accents to get into Y-Combinator. Check out their video here.

GitHub Game Challenge

GitHub has announced a game challenge. You have a month to develop a game. What kind of game? Well a game that deals with things you do in GitHub. You know. Make a game about forking, cloning, pulls, and pushes. Top prizes include nicely equipped iPads.

How do you submit your entries? You use GitHub of course. Heheh. I don't even have a GitHub account. I think you can get a small one for free. But what are the chances that I can bang out a top rated game by the end of the year? Well I have done 7DRL entries for the past few years.

One good incentive is that the judges are from game companies themselves. If you can put a game that really rocks, you might just make a connection that could land you a job. Go GitHub.

KIXEYE Recuitment Video

I just watched a video from KIXEYE where they try to recruit developers to work there. To say that the video was hilarious would be an understatement. They parody other games companies such as Zynga, EA, and Kabam. Priceless. Then KIXEYE CEO Will Harbin comes on and give a speech of why you need to join the company now.

KIXEYE was found as Casual Collective back in 2007 by two Flash ddevelopers. They are located in San Francisco. Last year they rebranded their company as KIXEYE, focusing on hard core gaming. They have a couple hundred employees. Apparently they are adding up to 30 employees a month. I saw over a hundred job openings posted recently.

KIXEYE has been in the news when a contractor blogged about the racist environment at KIXEYE. CO Will Harbin said he personally conducted an investigation that resulted in the firing of four employees. KIXEYE is looking at around $100M in revenue this year. They have around 5M users, and make money by selling speed ups in their games. They are unique in that they generte a lot more profit per user than other FaceBook developers.

KIXEYE offers an "unlimited" amount of vacation to employees. They also offer free food. Their FaceBook games focus on real time strategy. It looks like their games are still being developed using Adobe Flash.