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Darth Vader's Bathroom
Things are pretty exciting right now. We’re preparing for Beta and that means getting a load of new servers set up and ready for testing. Why is this so exciting? Well, it’s a case of Darth Vader’s Bathroom.
I first heard the term a couple of years ago whilst attending a conference. Intrigued, I asked what it was. It was a term used to describe the set up of the servers within a Data Centre – all dark, sleek and with little flashing lights on them.
They are arranged, with complete precision, in racks with all of the cabling carefully tidied away.
The Beautiful Game
Watching Romania versus France, one of the commentators made a fantastic remark. After one of the severely scarce chances he commented, “This could turn into a decent game if they’re not careful!”
I’ve watched every minute of Euro 2008 and so far I’ve been underwhelmed by the majority of them. This got me thinking; what are these games lacking? What could turn this dross into the beautiful game?
The involvement of your club:
This is obviously the first thing that comes to mind as an Englishman watching Euro 2008.
Chasing The Elusive Bug...
This isn’t the name of a Hollywood film or a popular Best Seller. This is what happens at least once if not several times in any project. You know the deal, everything looks fine and dandy and things are going well – almost too well – and then bang! It crashes.
Ah, no matter, all of that ultra-useful crash diagnosis we have built in will help us determine and fix the problem. Usually, 99 times out of 100 the error is easily spotted and the fix is trivial.
This is what happens on a good day.
ISE ISE Baby...
Ten years ago, back in secondary school, the deputy head often led assemblies. As I’m sure you’ll remember from your own experiences, these school assemblies usually consisted of getting shouted at for the behaviour of a few lads in 11C who you’d never met, followed by some sort of moral or ethical lecture. Without fail the deputy’s message would be about the importance of community, a word which he’d always accompany by dovetailing his fingers together like a self-satisfied Bond villain after aiming a laser at 007’s nether regions.
I remember when all this was just fields...
It’s a cliched saying, I know, but it certainly rings true when I think back to the origins of this game, or at least the first time I actually installed the client on my machine.
It was a few days after I’d first started working here that I’d got my first view of the lifestyle engine.
It was just a field. A huge field. A never-ending field. With trees in it. And grass. Lots and lots of grass…
The atmosphere was generally dark and oppressive, clouds hanging in grey clusters in the sky, threatening to unleash a torrent of rain from their bursting innards.
Feature Complete? Part 2
Football Superstars just reached “Feature Complete” which means that we now have a team of external testers working on the game full time.
Feature Complete is an exciting and extremely important period of the game development process where we continually test and fix the game getting it ready to open Football Superstars up for the first time to real players during our Beta testing phase. Beta testing will be starting over the next few months, so be sure to keep a look out for future information in our regular newsletter, website articles and blog postings.
That's not a bug, it's a feature!
Bugs, bugs, bugs. What is a bug? Yes, there’s the creepy-crawly variety but there’s not much we can do about those!
As far as Computer Games (and Software in general) are concerned, a bug is simply a defect or glitch in how the program that is supposed to work. Bugs exist in many different forms – some are simple and easy to spot. Others are not so simple, so where does the name come from?
Way, way back in the very early days of computing, computers used to be made from mechanical contacts (switches) that opened and closed as they did their job.
Under the influence
Any game designer should be influenced by absolutely everything and anything. It’s as simple as that. Films, books, television, plays, even other games, you name it, there’s something that can inspire you in almost anything.
So here, for a bit of fun, is a list of some of my influences and how they relate to Football Superstars.
Games:
Like most people, I can’t escape the fact that I’m getting older (except for my cousin Jimmy, who gets younger every year. I’m sure there’s a horribly disfigured painting of him in an attic somewhere that needs stabbing).
Is anyone else feeling the pain as much as Southampton fans?
Sunday April 13th 2003:
Southampton win FA Cup semi-final against Watford
Saturday 17th May 2003:
FA Cup final appearance against Arsenal
Sunday 21st December 2003
Southampton 3 Portsmouth 0 (leaving Southampton in 4th place in the Premiership for Christmas; Portsmouth, the bottom 3)
Sunday 23rd April 2005
Portsmouth 4 Southampton 1 (first time since 1960 that Portsmouth ensure they finish higher than Southampton in league standings)
Sunday 15th May 2005
Southampton 1 Manchester United 2 (Southampton relegated from the top flight for the first time in 28 years)
West Brom 2 Portsmouth 0
Monday 31st March 2008
Portsmouth-FA Cup semi-finalists and 6th in The Premiership.
Feature Complete? Part 1
Football Superstars has just reached a major point in the development process. This “milestone” is what game developers call “Feature Complete”. Feature Complete is the period of a video game project where the features that will make it into the final build of the game have been finalised and agreed upon.
The development team at Monumental have been working on Football Superstars at the Nottingham, UK office since September 2005. The team of designers, programmers, artists, service and administrative personal have generated a huge amount of great ideas on how to make Football Superstars the most innovative, exciting and entertaining Massively Multi-player Online Football game possible.
'You do what? Write computer games?'
Yes, it’s true. I, and others like me, write computer games – but what does this actually mean?
Contrary to what my brother thinks, it’s not being paid to sit in an office all day long and play Pac Man. Alas, that bit is just not true. Writing or developing computer games just has to be one of the most challenging, stressful but also rewarding areas of Software Development there is. Yes, it involves working on stuff that’s cool. Sure, it also sometimes involves playing other games to see what makes them tick.
'It's a football MMO.'
These four words, uttered by my interviewer, and future boss Luke Smith, made my eyes widen.
I’d taken the train up from London to Nottingham for a job interview at Monumental Games. The company was looking for a designer on a new MMO under development.
I was nervous, obviously, and worried that I’d be working on yet another wannabe World of Warcraft clone that was more than likely doomed to failure.
Let’s get something straight here. I love MMOs. I’ve spent countless hours playing them, with Ultima Online offering me a first taste of this huge genre and Pirates of the Burning Sea being the most recent played.
'It's 2012, do you know where your national team is?'
Certainly not at the London Olympics as FIFA supremo Sepp Blatter has decreed that there isn’t going to be a Great Britain national team. The four home nations, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland hold special status within FIFA, voting their own VP for example and over the years there have been various rumblings that the home nations should be treated as one rather than the current set up.
England and Northern Ireland were willing to create a Great Britain team but Scotland and Wales have resisted.
What are emotes?
/welcome
Emotes are a standard feature in most MMOs these days yet they serve no real ‘game’ purpose. They have no real ‘function’ and are an entirely social feature of massively multiplayer games.
Essentially, emotes are used as a communication tool, a shortcut if you will. They can be used to portray a feeling, or emotion, or mood, or as a response to something someone has said or done. Rather than type ‘Don’t do that, it’s silly’, for example, users can type /silly into the chat window and an automated response appears to people around the user, or to whoever the user has targeted, sometimes with an associated animation attached to the emote.
