Watch Q-Games’ Dylan Cuthbert share stories of coding Star Fox
Veteran game dev Dylan Cuthbert appeared today in the latest episode of Double Fine’s ongoing “Devs Play” series of design-focused Let’s Plays videos to share game dev trivia about the making of the 1993 Super Nintendo game Star Fox.
It’s worth watching because while Cuthbert is now well-known as the founder of Q-Games (The Tomorrow Children), in the ’90s he was working at Argonaut Software as one of the core programmers on Star Fox and its canned sequel.
This week Nintendo released its SNES Classic mini-console, which counts both Star Fox and the never-released (before now) Star Fox 2 among its library of 21 SNES games. To mark the occasion, Double Fine (in conjunction with 2 Player Productions) published the video of Cuthbert telling stories about his time working on Star Fox and Star Fox 2 as someone else played through the original game.
Devs who enjoy the video might want to check out its companion piece, another Devs Play video published today in which Cuthbert chats about working on the (Japan-only) 1992 Game Boy shooter game X, which is much akin to Star Fox. You can find both videos and many more like them over on the Double Fine YouTube channel.
If you’d like to hear more from Cuthbert about what it was like to work on a Star Fox sequel and see it mothballed until this week, check out our recent chat with him about Star Fox 2.
Speedrunners Love Splasher, Available Now on Xbox One
It all began at the Stunfest Festival, an arcade gaming event for which a lot of players, fighting game pros and speedrunners, save the date each year. It was not only the perfect place to organize a massive playtest session, but we also met the godfathers of the French speedrun scene: speedrunners Realmyop and Prospere. So we asked them to talk about their collaboration with the Splashteam for making Splasher a speedrun friendly title.
Realmyop: I met Romain during a French video game festival. We played the demo a lot, talked about Splasher and we agreed on the great opportunity provided by the game in terms of speedrunning.
Prospere: Splasher is made of the best 2D platformers, and for me it was very natural to work on integrating a whole speedrun system inside the game. It’s simple: today I can’t imagine a good arcade platformer coming up without any descent “competitive” features.
Realmyop, the “88 miles per hour” guy, has built a team with speedrun experts Prospere, Twyn and Kilaye. These dudes speedrun games for more than a decade, and incarnated the perfect crew to help us. Some of them even made a lot of speedrun on the last Rayman Origins and Legends platformers, games I’ve worked on too!
Realmyop: Our main goal was to make the game “Speedrun Friendly”, we were not there to tell how to build the levels, the gameplay mechanics, or the graphics and sounds. We wanted the speedrunners to feel at home but also welcome newcomers to the genre.
Prospere: Speedrunning games have always been a niche thing, with their own patterns, dedicated websites and unofficial leaderboards … it’s an underground community. But I think It’s about time that a wider audience get introduced to this very cool kind of eSport.
It’s not easy to achieve this goal, and there is a lot of parameters to work with. First because the speedrun is a way of playing that requires special tools. Realmyop and the runners shared a lot of precious advices during our collaboration.
Realmyop: In many games, there is no timer and most speedrunners are using external tools to time their runs. Even worse, sometimes the timer is buggy and can’t be used as what the speedrunners call the “in-game time.” So, our first work was to build an accurate stopwatch, useful for speedrunners which provides rigorous information at the right time. We took our inspiration for the stopwatch from metrics used by the speedrunning community such as “splits.”
Prospere: Splasher is our second speedrun design mission, right after last year’s indie hit Furi. It was a great experience to work with Romain, and seeing our features integrated in the game a couple of days right after our meetings. The cool thing is that we took time to iterate a lot, with a very reactive and passionate developer, and the results were there.
As long as we’re adding and tweaking these speedrun essentials into the game, we also started to design different modes, or let say different ways of speedrunning Splasher. We had to ask ourselves this question: What are speedrunners used to see?
Realmyop: We worked on what speedrunners call “categories.” For example: most games can be played in two main categories, “Any%” and “100%”. There is way more categories, every game can be different and the categories are made by the speedrun community. In Splasher, we tried to anticipate the categories that could be played, and we implemented 3 of them directly in the game.
Prospere: As our knowledge of the game was increasing with time, we were able to tell “this path is slightly better than this one”, “here you can optimize by doing this or that” etc. We were the high end playtesters, haha.
What speedrunners are used to see, and comfortable with, was not our only concern because attracting neophytes was part of the plan too.
Realmyop: All racing games are using Time Attack to record best times and some are even using medals as a reward to get the players to play again and again the same track to improve their time. Using this mechanic, we pioneered a full run of the game, and coupled it with the more typical achievements.
And building a community around the game was also something we were willing to do.
Realmyop: One important thing is the community, you need to follow it, to listen to it and stimulate it. We’re still following the runners and their progression, we’re always surprised by the performances and seeing gamers being so dedicated.
Not a great deal has been said about Tower of Babel; the game seems to have found its way onto the Switch’s eShop without anyone noticing where it came from. There isn’t even the slightest mention of the game on the official website or Twitter feed of its publisher, EnjoyUp Games, which is very odd indeed. EnjoyUp published multiple games across the Wii U and 3DS platforms (which, for the most part, happened to be rather average affairs), so it is strange that they wouldn’t be kicking up a fuss about their first Switch release.
Tower of Babel is an auto-runner that sees the protagonist (a knight in shining armour) tasked with collecting gems that can return light to the top of various towers, effectively saving the world. The plot isn’t important here, though; it is all about the gameplay itself. To collect these gems, you will have to survive dangerous trips to the top of spiral towers – by pulling or pushing the control stick you are able to speed up or slow down, and you also have the ability to jump or crouch with ‘A’ and ‘B’ respectively. These are used to dodge various obstacles that stand in your way, as well as jump over any perilous gaps between platforms.
Your first goal is to reach the top of a tower, collecting the required amount of gems, and surviving its traps. Once you get there, though, you then have to run back down the tower to escape as it crumbles to the ground. This effectively means that each tower actually contains two levels – one concerned with grabbing a set amount of collectables, and the other focusing on pure speed. For each duo you can view an online leaderboard of the fastest times achieved so your speed is important on both sections. Later on in the game you will face levels that provide you with a jet-pack and, thanks to this item’s double-jump ability, the speed-running aspect of the game intensifies slightly as you attempt to completely hurdle platforms rather than slowly jumping across each one.
Overall there are five sets of three towers (depending on the skill of the player, you’ll likely find yourself completing the main game in a couple of hours, give-or-take). Each of these five sets is made up of its own theme meaning that your surroundings and obstacles change to match the environment. These new obstacles are introduced at a pleasing rate and many behave in different ways to the ones you are used to from previous stages. The game’s most interesting feature comes from the layout of the three towers in each set – the first tower has just a single lane for you to run in, the second has two, and the third has three. Each tower becomes slightly more complex as a result of this, resulting in a rather satisfying growth in difficulty as you progress.
You’re probably thinking that everything is sounding pretty positive, right? Well you’d be correct, which is why it is so frustrating the game lets itself down with some unforgivable problems. The worst of these problems is an issue with the frame rate; at times it can drop so drastically that any kind of auto-running precision is impossible. As well as this, every now and then we would notice our character narrowly miss the edge of a platform, only to find that pressing the jump button allowed us to carry on as if we had made it. Another time, we paused the game and were presented with a different screen to the usual pause menu which showed a different button layout for the “quit” and “resume” options. We pressed the new button for “resume”, which used to be for “quit”, and were thrown out of the game, losing our progress on that level. Great!
The overall presentation of the game is quite weak too, and has some odd design decisions. The art style has a quirky quality to it that could have been successful but eventually starts to feel bland and, unfortunately, there are times when it just looks plain ugly. The soundtrack is made up entirely of electronic dance tracks which could have been fine – in fact, some of the songs that crop up are great – but when you’re playing as a knight, running up and down medieval towers with a sword in hand, futuristic beeps and chirps aren’t exactly the kind of sounds that come to mind. The music is good; it just feels so entirely out of place.
Tower of Babel could have been a great little game; there are moments of brilliance in its auto-running, especially in its later levels where you’ll find yourself whizzing from lane to lane, avoiding obstacles at almost blinding speed. There are just too many issues plaguing the game, though – leaving us in a position where we simply cannot justify a full recommendation. If a particularly nasty stutter in the frame rate happens just as you are about to land on a tiny platform you will inevitably fall to your death and, if we’re being brutally honest, that is unforgivable.
Conclusion
At its best, Tower of Babel has some great auto-running action that will have you flying around the screen at breakneck pace, firing yourself to the top of the speed-running leaderboards. Unfortunately, though, the whole thing is let down by some game-breaking issues and a rather lacklustre aesthetic that maybe answers the question of why there has been so little mention of the game prior to release. A frustrating case of a game that could have been excellent but shoots itself in the foot with its many problems, Tower of Babel is best left for another day.
Random: Move Over N64 Kid, We’ve Got Nintendo Switch Kid Now
The legendary video of Brandon Kuzma tearing open his N64 on Christmas Day 1998 has gone down as one of the most famous Nintendo-related YouTube videos of all time, to the point where Brandon himself – now all grown up and less excitable around wrapped items – continues to milk it. And why not?
However, time waits for no man and it would seem that Brandon and his beloved N64 have some serious competition in the form of Erick Garcia’s 7-year-old son.
The youngster was surprised (via Skynet forerunner Google Home – you can tell this is 2017 and not 1998) by the arrival of a Nintendo Switch on his birthday, at which point he falls over and actually rotates on the ground due to sheer, pent-up excitement. What’s interesting is that in both of these cases, siblings are close by to share the joy.
Cuphead is a classic run and gun action game heavily focused on boss battles. Inspired by cartoons of the 1930s, the visuals and audio are painstakingly created with the same techniques of the era, i.e. traditional hand drawn cel animation, watercolor backgrounds, and original jazz recordings.
Experience the thrill of motorsport at the limit. Enjoy graphics at 60fps and native 4K resolution in HDR. Collect and race more than 700 cars, including the largest collection of Ferraris, Porsches, and Lamborghinis ever. Challenge yourself across 30 famous destinations and 200 ribbons, where race conditions change every time you return to the track. [Microsoft]
The Better Together Update has been released! This update brings a new cross-platform version of Minecraft to Xbox, Windows 10, Mobile and VR — and soon, Nintendo Switch too! This is a major update and introduces many new features, including cross-platform play, the Minecraft marketplace, in-game servers and much more.
A huge bounty of Marketplace content arrived with the Better Together Update: 5 new worlds (Abstraction: Solar by Jigarbov, Halfling Burrows by Razzleberries, Sunset Coast by Blockworks, Sunnyside Academy by Imagiverse and Dinosaur Survival Map by Pixelheads), 17 new skin packs and a new texture pack, check them out here.
Story Mode Season 2 Episode 3 is out now, along with the retail (disc) version of Season 2 becoming available in North America — learn more about that here.
The Better Together update brings with it Realms invite links; allow friends to join your Minecraft Realm with just the click of a link.
The Minecraft Forum has been restructured this week to reflect the changes in the versions of Minecraft, which includes a new Minecraft category for discussion of the new Minecraft game (also known as the Better Together update). You can read about those changes here in this forum announcement.
We are hiring! Take a look at the information below if you’re interested in joining the team behind this website, and many more of gaming’s best websites.
The Minecraft Forum is run by Curse, and we’re looking for new people to join our team. Curse has several open positions for talented, passionate gamers. Employees receive catered lunches, an annual gaming budget, a generous vacation policy, and awesome healthcare. Our current open positions include:
Front End Developer – In this role, you will be flexing your CSS and JavaScript skills to build beautiful user experiences that will be used by millions of users.
Software Development Manager – Curse is seeking an experienced Development Team Manager to lead and grow our Engineering team. You’ll be responsible for supporting business growth, user engagement, and security through effective development team management and engineering practices.
Marketing Director – Curse is seeking an experienced Development Team Manager to lead and grow our Engineering team. You’ll be responsible for supporting business growth, user engagement, and security through effective development team management and engineering practices.
Sales Director, East Coast – Curse seeks an East Coast Sales Director to drive territory revenue in the non-endemic games marketplace. The Sales Director will have ownership of the East Coast sales territory and will be entirely dedicated to driving long term success.
Battle Chasers: Nightwar is an RPG inspired by the classic console greats, featuring deep dungeon diving, turn-based combat presented in a classic JRPG format, and a story driven by exploration of the world.
Let’s talk some truth: Making games is hard. It’s a collision of art and technology that’s about as predictable as a tornado. There’s no secret formula, no foolproof blueprint—but it certainly helps to have a reason for making games in the first place. “Every Player’s Story is Unique.” At Hangar 13, that’s why we make games. We’re currently creating an intense action game set in an immersive world and with a strong narrative, but player agency is at the heart of everything we do. We want to give players the freedom to choose how to overcome challenges and make meaningful decisions that shape the world and characters around them.
Hangar 13 is the newest 2K development studio. We’re focused on creating AAA games for console and PC. The studio is comprised of industry veterans drawn from a diverse range of studios, who have collectively shipped hundreds of titles across a wide variety of genres. We are located just thirty minutes north of San Francisco, and we recently released our first title, Mafia III. We’re currently building our own proprietary engine and tools in service of our next AAA title, still unannounced.
What We Need:
Hangar 13 is seeking a Senior Animator for our upcoming project teams. You will work closely with the animation lead and the lead game designer to create visually compelling narrative animation within our game. We expect you to have a passion for games as well as demonstrate a clear knowledge of the principles of animation in your work. As an animator with Hanger 13, you would be responsible for animating characters using a combination of keyframes and motion capture. You will work with our Lead Animator to figure out how best tell the story of our characters and our world both in and out of gameplay.
Job Responsibilities Will Include:
Create high-quality scripted animation that matches the visual style of the game
Mentor other animators contributing to narrative animation
Set a high bar for the animation team for quality and pace
Implement animation in game in our proprietary animation system and scripts
Plan, animate, and implement in-game story moments and scenes
Organize complicated sets of animation data
Direct motion-capture sessions
Manage animation outsourcing
Who We Think Will Be A Great Fit:
Minimum Requirements:
Experienced character animator
3+ years game experience in animation using Motionbuilder and / or Maya
Strong communication skills and a positive attitude
The ability to problem-solve and prioritize issues
Ability to collaborate with peer-level Game Designers
Ability to collaborate with team in another country
Experience with motion-captured animation data
Ability to take direction well
Able to respond elegantly to difficult creative changes, often late in the process
Whether you’re just starting out, looking for something new, or just seeing what’s out there, the Gamasutra Job Board is the place where game developers move ahead in their careers.
Gamasutra’s Job Board is the most diverse, most active, and most established board of its kind in the video game industry, serving companies of all sizes, from indie to triple-A.
Niko Partners’ Zeng Xiaofeng’s tips for publishing in China
Despite the importance of the Chinese market is to the global games infrastructure, and how many publishers are trying to buy into the region before it’s too late, China itself still seems a little bit unknowable.
Western developers have long been localizing for the Japanese market, and the ground zero of the eSports revolution is fixed squarely on Seoul. But a mixture of censorship, restrictive government policy, and genuine differences in taste has kept the China’s games culture remote.
Since 2002, Niko Partners has studied and interpreted Chinese gaming trends, filling the gaps and answering the questions for anyone interested in bringing their product across the Pacific. I recently caught up with senior analyst and China director Zeng Xiaofeng, and asked him what he thought were some of the crucial things Western publishers need to understand when trying to break into the games market in China.
The first, and arguably the most imperative thing Xiaofeng detailed is the labyrinthine process of successfully (and legally) licensing a video game in China. Despite the country’s notable flirtations with the free market, all mobile games that enter the Chinese public forum must be pre-approved by the government, or more specifically, the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film, and Television.
Some of the restrictions are notably arcane. For instance, all the text in games released in China must be written entirely in Chinese. Also, in order for a company to receive their revenue, they need to secure a very specific license from the government. The only problem is that those licenses aren’t available to foreigners.
As of July 1st, the arduous process involves completing an application, sending it to provincial authorities for approval, who will then forward it along to the municipal office for another once-over, before being sent back down the chain for a final handover. “There is so much red tape that it filled a 100-page regulatory report we released,” says Xiaofeng.
Dungeon & Fighter is still popular in China a decade after its debut
In the West, we pretty much download our apps through either the App Store, or the Google Play Store. Those two platforms are built into our phones, and it seems extremely unnecessary to seek out an externalized merchant. But that’s not the case for Chinese Android phones. The country has a massive third-party app store industry, and it can be really difficult to get your head around.
The sector makes sense when you think about it. Google has been blocked in China since 2014, so naturally, other tech companies native to the region flocked in to fill the gap. Xiaofeng tells me that if you’re going to launch a successful Android game in China, you’ll need an intrinsic knowledge of the myriad consumer choices.
To give you some sense of the app store industry’s depth, here are some of the major players. Baidu, which shares a name and ownership with the China’s largest search engine. Tencent, the company that purchased Riot Games, runs the massive social networking site WeChat. Then there’s Wandoujia, a startup with over $120 million in VC funding.
Wandoujia CEO at recent keynote
We’ve heard horror stories about people who hole up in Internet cafes to play MMOs for days on end. But Xiaofeng says that many internet cafes in small or mid-sized Chinese cities serve utilitarian purposes – they are literally the only way some people can play games.
Xiaofeng believes that the setups at the more elaborate cafes in cosmopolitan areas of China are a window into future market opportunities in the West. There, cafes are outfitted with the horizontal, 5v5 set-up you might be familiar with from live eSports broadcasts. “They are great for eSports viewing and participation, and for coaching as well,” says Xiaofeng. “In the US, they hardly exist at this time, but I feel that more will be built with the high-end eSports focus in mind.”
Cross Fire is another title that’s been a consistent hit in China for over a decade
The Japanese and Western gaming markets are pretty diverse. You’ve got epic, fully immersive single-player adventures like Final Fantasy and Horizon: Zero Dawn, annualized sports franchises like Madden and FIFA, and casual multiplayer endeavors that run the gamut from Call of Duty to Gang Beasts. That’s not exactly the case in China.
Xiaofeng tells me that gamers in the People’s Republic prefer long, grind-y persistent experiences. “Chinese players love to level up and be competitive,” says Xiaofeng. “To the point that they would rather turn off the graphics if it helps speed up gameplay in order to level up faster.”
In 2015 TechInAsia reported that the most popular PC games in China were the free-to-play Korean first-person shooter Crossfire, the massively-multiplayer isometric beat ‘em up Dungeon & Fighter, and (of course,) League of Legends. There’s a real commitment to games. These are the exact same three games that were the most popular in China back in 2013. Dungeon & Fighter and Crossfire were released in 2005 and 2007 respectively, and League of Legends has been available in China for eight years.
Xiaofeng also notes that Chinese gamers are turned off by realistic imagery, and instead prefer their content to be drawn with “anime-style graphics and cartoon-style avatars.” But despite this general preference, and all of the cultural affinities Ziaofeng highlights, it’s telling that PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is currently one of the top-streamed games on the Chinese streaming site Douyo. Game fans in China are not immune to global trends.
