Journey of Bokou!

Borderlands 2 Trailer

Bokou — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 16:30:53 +0000

Release date according to the video should be September 18 for the US and September 21st internationally. Sweet!

Starbound

Bokou — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 16:09:56 +0000

Since many of Terraria’s fanbase is sad about it’s discontinued updates with the team moving on to bigger and better things, I thought I’d share another game called Starbound that many of them will no doubt be interested in.

Finn Brice, the lead sprite artist for Terraria, has announced a new indie project called Starbound. The game is a 2D “sandbox RPG” with almost all the content being entirely randomized and procedurally generated.

According to their website:

“Planets in Starbound are entirely procedurally generated and filled to the brim with unique content. We went into the planet generation with one simple goal: no two planets should be the same. By procedurally generating even the smallest details, we’re doing just that. Not only is the terrain of the planet procedurally generated, but the weather, the gravity, the difficulty level, the plant life, the behaviour and appearance of alien creatures, and much more all contain random or procedurally generated elements.”

“We have a procedural item system that produces items on the fly… There are MILLIONS of combinations of rocket launcher. The game even procedurally generates the graphic used for the guns, right now there are 21,000 different visual styles for rocket launcher. Then each of those styles can be coloured individually. By release time, there will be many, many more, and that’s just for rocket launcher.”

Sounds awesome, right? Yeah I know.. it is. Especially considering the quality of pixel art we got with Terraria – we can expect it to have the same if not better (from experience with a major release hit like Terraria was) artwork. Check out the game’s official website and check out some of the awesome artwork from the game.

Terraria’s Lead Developer Leaves

Bokou — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 15:38:05 +0000

Yesterday, Redigit dropped a bomb on the Reddit community. He and the rest of the Terraria team have decided to move on. The funny thing is that games like Terraria and Minecraft have changed how we view and consume games. They’re always being updated and worked on with bug fixes and new features. Just a few years ago you’d buy a game and that was that… you get what you paid for. Now there’s a team that monitors what classes in multiplayer games are overpowered, what exploits need patching, introducing new maps and expansions.

With the team’s leaving you can see the utter sense of entitlement from the community. They signed on to develop and bring you a game with a few fun updates – not a lifelong investment of new content and expansions for it.

Such a feeling of entitlement… I’ve already got around 100 hours in the game and it’s been well worth the $4.99 I paid for it. The one complaint I see the most is that there’s no modding API to speak of officially, but I don’t think that’s going to keep people from enjoying the game in the future.

We’re still going to run a Terraria server here on JOB until there’s been a few months where we haven’t seen anyone log on at which point we’ll decide if it’s something we want to continue to host. So long, Redigit and thanks for the amazing game and post-release content!

The future of Terraria has been highly debated as of late, not just with the community, but for us as well. The last year has been a crazy ride! When I started on this game, I just had a few ideas of what I thought would make a fun game. I had no idea that it would receive so much attention. I want to thank all of you for supporting us and making this game’s success possible.

After a lot of internal debate, we have decided that it is time to move on. My wife and I are due to have another boy soon, and I want to spend some time getting to know him. I also want to spend the time recharging and bettering myself as both a programmer and game designer. I have learned a lot from working on Terraria and plan on using what I’ve learned, building upon it, and moving forward with another, even better project. However, we are still planning at least one more bug fix for Terraria.

For those that haven’t already heard, Finn “Tiy” Brice has moved on to form Chucklefish and is heavily at work on an exciting new game called “Starbound”. It’s looking to be a lot of fun, so make sure to check it out if you haven’t already!

Thanks again for all your support, and I am very much looking forward to providing you with something much better than Terraria in the future! – Redigit

Diablo III Not Coming This Quarter

Bokou — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 20:35:04 +0000

In a statement issued by Blizzard, Diablo III will not be released this quarter but will likely be the second or third quarter. “The company’s first quarter 2012 outlook does not incorporate a new release from Blizzard Entertainment, but its calendar year 2012 outlook anticipates two releases from Blizzard Entertainment”. Source

New Minecraft Map Format

Bokou — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 23:55:55 +0000

Jens has hinted at a project over at Mojang calling it “Anvil” and it’s a new format for minecraft maps.

Some of the major changes are:

Maximum build height has been increased to 256 (was 128)
Empty sections of the world are not loaded into memory
Block ids have been increased to 4096 (was 256) by adding a 4 bit data layer (similar to how meta data is stored)
Block ordering have been changed from x/z/y to y/z/x in order to improve compression
Packets for sending chunks have been updated (a full 128-high chunk is smaller than the old format, and a chunk with lots of empty space is much smaller)
Biomes are saved per x/z column, which means they can be altered by tools

The next snapshot, and Minecraft 1.2, will automatically convert worlds to the new format. The files of the current format (“McRegion”) will remain in your save folder, if you need to restore them for some reason. Check out the full Mojang blog post here.

Telltale Games on iPad

Bokou — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 02:45:47 +0000

A while back we posted about Telltale games being loaned a Jeep that was decked out to look like the Jurassic Park jeeps and when the lender got it back, it was “damaged”. Turns out there’s always two sides to the story and people who were quick to grab their torches and pitchfork ended up with their foot in their mouth.

I’ve grown to love just about any game they put out recently (I’m looking at you, Puzzle Agent series!) and have most of them on Steam. While browsing the top free iPad apps a little earlier on the sofa I saw their Back to the Future Episode 1 app for free. Naturally I snatched it up as fast as my fingers could type my password and have only put it down long enough to write this article. I already own the game on Steam and while it makes a great game for the PC, Telltale’s casual episodic type games that really tie in with the movies and with the story work perfectly for the iPad. So much in fact that CEO Dan Connors says that the iPad is their fastest growing game segment. I’d believe it with the number of games they’ve put out for Apple’s tablet recently. They have everything from the Jurassic Park series out on the iPad to the Back to the Future to Sam and Max to Law and Order. After a $10 million revenue in 2010, I for one hope that means more and more content from them, be it on the PC, PS3, Xbox, Wii, or iPad. If you’re looking for a story driven casual game, be sure to check them out on any of those platforms!

Cube World

Bokou — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 17:09:02 +0000

Cube World is a pretty sweet looking voxel-based exploration RPG currently in development by a guy named Wollay. If you have been following Notch news, you’ll recognize the name as the guy Mojang tried to hire to get some of his ideas and pick his brain to add yet another stellar programmer and artist to their arsenal. Wollay decided against joining Mojang and cited his independence as his reasons. Understandable.

The game has been coming along nicely, in addition to some features found in Minecraft like villages, a day and night cycle, rivers, waterfalls, trees, there are loads of very uniqueenemies and quests to go on.

If you like Minecraft or if you like Terraria and the style of gameplay a sandbox can lead to, be sure to check out the video below. For more information on the game, check Wollay’s blog for updates, info on the release date, and more.

Another Day Another Lawsuit

Bokou — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:14:05 +0000

Spry Fox, maker of popular Facebook game (and now iOS and Android app) Triple Town has filed lawsuit against 6Waves LOLAPPS for copyright infringement with their iOS game Yeti Town. That phrase “copyright infringement” is thrown around all too often today, but in the case of Spry Fox it was definitely necessary and an obvious abuse of trust.

6waves was in confidential (under NDA) negotiations with Spry Fox to publish Triple Town for iOS at the exact same time that they were actively copying the game. They gave 6waves private access to Triple Town when it was still in closed beta, months before the public was exposed to the game. Spry Fox believed those negotiations were ongoing, and continued to give private information to 6waves, until 6waves’ Executive Director of Business Development sent them a message via Facebook on the day Yeti Town was published in which he suddenly broke off negotiations and apologized for the nasty situation.

It’s not huge news, but it could be a deciding factor and case used for future lawsuits with the hundreds of companies copying and profiting from other people’s games such as Minecraft, Tiny Wings, and loads of others by companies like Zynga.

Patch 4.3.2 Goes Live

Bokou — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:03:15 +0000

WoW has launched 4.3.2 on all the live servers this week. There’s a list of changes over on Blizzard’s Blog, but probably one of the most anticipated features is same-faction raids with Real ID friends. In addition to being able to group with Real ID friends cross-realm, you can now queue up for regular or heroic raids and dungeons and even battlegrounds! Check out more info on the Cross-Realm Raids and the 4.3.2 Patch!

Donkey Kong Country

Bokou — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:49:55 +0000

Was cleaning out a bunch of old stuff and found a VHS tape that was sent to me by Nintendo Power magazine in the 90′s. I remember watching it over and over before the game came out getting completely hyped about it. Now I can look back all nostalgia-like and laugh at the hair and clothes of the 90′s. It seems like every gaming system was always trying to out-extreme each other back then. I guess it’s not too much different today, but the video is still entertaining to watch nonetheless.

Part one:

Part two: