Category: Uncategorized

I’m just not sure…

The majority of tower defence games (and on this issue, GTB can be considered one, even if it’s vastly different to it in many other ways). Take a very simple approach to showing you the health of enemy units. A simple green/red bar over the top of the unit is displayed all the time, simple as that. I have always found that to be horrendously ugly and clunky, and was very very pleased with the solution I had in GTB, which was chunked-circles of health/shields/armor that gave you much more information in a much nicer way (if you ask me :D).

However… deciding HOW to display health is only half the issue, the other half is of course, whose health to display.

The first beta release of gratuitous tank battles only showed health circles for your units, and only when a unit was selected. they defaulted to all off, but you could (temporarily) toggle them all on with a fairly hidden shortcut key.

Due to public demand, I’ve improved that so there  is a button for health circles, they default to ‘on’ and they will stay on all the time if you prefer. There is no way to see the health circles for enemies.

My reasoning is thus. You get an extra bit of unknown-information tension in the game when the exact health of an enemy unit is unknown. As a potential game-winning enemy unit trundles towards the exit square, you have to bite your nails and hope those gatling guns you have trained on it are going to finish him off before he gets off the screen. It’s tense, it’s worrying, it’s exciting, and it builds suspense.

This is my view, but I know some people are shocked to find that the approaching enemies do not have health bars. I guess the tradition with tower defense is to show them but I’m pretty certain there is no set rule for an RTS game, and certainly none in an FPS game. Why the convention for TD games? Does it make the game too easy, too predictable, too much a simple matter of number crunching?

I’m willing to be argued round, but I’d rather balance GTB to be one way or the other, than take the easy route and just give the player the option. What do you think? health bars on or health bars off?

This morning, when I woke up I checked my email at a desk in the Southwest UK. The internet routers somewhere in London spoke to my positech server in Dallas, and sent me messages from all across the planet. One of them was from a flash developer I have never met, whose game I am sponsoring. I have no idea which country he lives in. Another was from a business partner in Boston, (as I recall), about a port of my game. While I read these, I also checked share prices of companies around the UK whose shares I buy and sell as a hobby.

If I chose to check, I’m sure there would be people from every continent currently browsing the dallas-hosted server of my UK owned company.

I’ll probably chat to some other indie developers today on forums hosted god-knows-where and who live all over the world. Most of the people I talk to on a daily basis are more than a thousand miles from my home.

My parents were born and worked all their lives in one city. My grandparents were born, worked and died 80+ years later in the same city. My grandfather left the UK only once, as a soldier during the war. My mother remembers before TV, before plastic, before indoor plumbing…

And online, we think people are old now if they remember alta vista, or windows 95.

When the world is so amazingly fast moving, it’s easy to forget to stop and reflect on what an amazing time this is to be alive. Life has never changed with such an incredible pace.

I am prone to ranting at people in their twenties, or younger about how they need to panic big time about job prospects. As I have a nice job, that pays ok, and I love, people never take me seriously. Here is why you should:

1) I’m naturally a workaholic, and highly motivated. I already have that as an advantage, and it’s a big one. If you can’t make yourself leap out of bed at 8AM on a Sunday to go do some work, you are at a disadvantage. I just got lucky here.

2) I’m just over 40, meaning I was 11-12ish when the first home computers hit the UK. As a result, I am a first generation programming geek. A few years older, and I’d be old enough to not have found them cool, a few years younger, and I’d have missed it. The ZX81 and its ilk forced me to learn programming from the ground up, with no help. This is another advantage.

3) I started an online business before steam, stardock, gamersgate etc. As a result, I sold direct because I didn’t have any other option. Thus I now have a very long-established site, business contacts, history, experience of selling online. If I’d started a few years later, I would have been tempted to just rely on portals, and I’d not be truly independent.

4) I got a free university education. Sorry to the kids now who are paying for theirs, I can’t help being the right age. Exactly the right age. A bit older, and there wouldn’t have been the push to go to uni, later and I may have skipped it due to cost. This is not going to change, except for the worse.

5) I started my business before china and india really went bananas with economic growth. I never had to worry about someone from china or india taking my job. Right now, I’d be VERY worried about that. Unlike people in the rich west, Indian and Chinese kids have parents who were in real poverty, and grandparents in extreme poverty. You bet your ass they will get pestered to get better grades than you.

6) I started work before robots got good. Robots now are very good. There is going to be NO work in warehouses or doing assembly line stuff soon. All those factory workers will HAVE to reskill to do something, and that may include doing what you do. I’ve got lucky yet again! I’m the right age for robots to help me in retirement, but not young enough that they take my job. Unless your job is creative, or involves direct people skills, are you really sure it will exist when you retire. If you are 20 now, will your job exist in 2061? because don’t pretend you can retire at 65 if you are 20 now. Don’t forget to factor in all those ex-warehouse guys working as robot technicians to make them even better each year… Say goodbye to warehouse, security patrol  domestic and many military jobs.

7) Complexity. Things were simpler for my working life. I commanded serious money because I had an MCSE qualification as a network / IT engineer. That isn’t so rare now, and the tech is more complex. You need to know more stuff now, much much more.

8) The interweb. People everywhere on the planet can take your job now. Telepresecence, video conferencing, skype etc… I employ people all over the world. You don’t compete with other locals, but 7 billion people.

9) Property boom. I thought UK house prices were insane when we bought, but that was 10 years ago, and they have tripled since then. How young people can afford a house now is beyond me.

TL,DR: Study hard, and work your ass off. You need to. More than I needed to. Sorry!

I haven’t blogged for a week because I’ve been away. Unlike many geeks, when I go away I *REALLY* go away. I take a phone, for emergencies, but it has no email access. No computer, no tech. Just a digital camera. Here was one nights accomodation (a mongolian yurt in the alps) and a panoramic picture of the surrounding area..

Back in civilisation now, with much to do, and much to arrange. Plus, battlefield 3 to try…

I’m on holiday for a week. Don’t bother trying to burgle my house, it’s protected by an ex-commando, and my two cats.

SEE YOU SOON