"Space Giraffe" by Jeff Minter (Llamasoft)

SPACE GIRAFFE!

Joutuupa ehkä ostamaan 360:n tän pelin takia. Julkasupäivästä ei oo vielä varmaa infoa. Hintaa pelille tulee 400 MS pistettä, eli about 5 euroa. Ei voi mitään.









"Horse Smegma"

:excellent:

GR++:n ja muiden Yak klassikkojen tyylisesti, hyvien/huonojen suoritusten jälkeen ilmaantuvat motivaatiotermit on enemmän kuin hallussa , pick your choice:

char *phrases[]=
{
"OTTER SPUNK",
"BULL BUGGERER",
"PONY PERVERT",
"ANTELOPE ABUSER",
"RAM MASTURBATOR",
"FLUFF FUCKER",
"WILDEBEEST FIDDLER",
"DIRTY GIRAFFE TOUCHER",
"DONKEY MINGE",
"BULL POPULATION PASTE",
"GOAT SEX WEE",
"HORSE SMEGMA",
"MARE SLIME",
"COW LOVEJUICE",
"CUNT, CUNT, CUNT!",
"ALANC5'S KNOB",
"SNEEZE FETISHIST",
"OKAPI KNOB LICKER",
"PLUSHFUCKER",
"SMEGMA SANDWICH MAKER",
"STINKY HOOF SNIFFER",
"VICAR VIOLATOR",
"SWEATY BULL NUT LICKER",
"MARE MINGE MUNCHER",
"FUCKFACE",
"CUNTFACE",
"FILTHY KNOB JOCKEY",
"FUCKING FUCKER",
"PISSNOSE",
"FLAPSLICKER",
"VINDALOO ARSE",
"STINKY CAMEL VULVA",
"FUCK!",
"CUNT!",
"PISS!",
"GASH!",
"SMEG!",
"SHIT!",
"COCK!",
"SPUNK!",
"JIZZ!",
"WANK!",
"TOSS!",
"KNOB!",
"POLICEMAN'S HELMET!",
"BELL END!",
"PISS SLIT!",
"JAPSEYE!",
"COCKING WANK",
"FUCKING FUCKFACE",
"RANCID JIZZ",
"PISSFUCKER",
"FUCKBEANS",
"SHEEPS CUNTS",
"KNOBCHEESE",
"CAKE FARTER",
"GASH!",
"FUCKING GINGER MINGE",
"PISS FACE",
"TITNIPPLES",
"SWEATY NADGERS",
"BETTY SWOLLOCKS",
"SPUNKING COCK",
"GNU GROPER",
};

:king:

The thing is that elements of the game (including on some levels the "filling" of the surfaces) are all hooked up to lightsynth trigger events and so things are only truly "clear" when everything is moving. Motion and dynamics define the surface you see. Seeing it frozen in time gives an incomplete impression because the definition of the surface is smeared out over time, so to speak.

Of course there need to be enough hard reference points that one can see in order to see clearly how to play and where the threats are, and these also appear dynamically according to the situation (note the dots and lines delimiting the lane ends; these appear when there is something in that lane which needs dealing with). The thing is to balance basically out-and-out lightsynth effects with reliable, necessary cues to allow coherent gameplay. We want yummy visual overload *but* we still want to be able to play coherently throughout, and this is the major challenge in designing this game.

The result when it works well is that lovely "oh-my-GOD-the-Universe-is-exploding" feeling coupled with the feeling that one is in control and, indeed, kicking serious bad guy booty, whilst being suspended in a world of light. Which is a set of feelings I like .

Ja loppuun viel kuva äijän omalta kämpältä:



:cool:

http://www.llamasoft.co.uk/

Aaaand we're go, ekat kunnon klipit ilmoilla, alkutekijöissään vielä, mut ei voi mitään:

SOLD!

http://yorgle.cis.rit.edu/webmirror/yak/

Valitse jompi kumpi isoista fileistä, toisessa heikompi laatu, sisältö sama.

GONGRATURATIONS!

GIRAFFETASTIC!

The day is here, eli Space Giraffe julkastaan huomenna keskiviikkona, full game = 400 points. Sick. Yks eniten odottamistani peleistä moniin vuosiin ja olematon hinta, Jeffille syvä kumarrus ja kiitos. Joutuu ilmeisesti hankkimaan 360:n etuajassa.

Täältä voi lukea uusimmat läpät (ja aivan varmasti tarpeeseen tulevat ohjeistukset ja strategiat):

http://llamasoft.co.uk/blog/

I mean, fuck me twice, it's good.

Really, really good.

I did enjoy the frolics with Gamecube VLM, but was always gagging for Jeff to take the environment and build a playable game around it.

And that's exactly what he's done. It's as mentalist-psychedelic and pyrotechnic as you'd expect, but also beautifully refined in terms of difficulty balance/risk & reward.

The visual and technical audacity is breathtaking. It just feels beamed in from another planet. I've absolutely no idea where to start having an idea about how it's done, but if it looks like magic and feels like magic...

It's like a bench-test workout for yer high-def telly. After all those nice, placid, colourful games displayed very calmly and correctly, Space Giraffe is like a big fat can of spinach to a Plasma's Popeye.

Think of Geometry Wars as a 9.99 Standard Family Box sensibly rationed in the back garden, with the Firework Code rigidly observed, watched through the windows just in case the kiddies get scared. Space Giraffe is like strapping on a jet-pack and soaring and swooping around the Sydney New Year display while ripped to the living tits on mescalin.

Knee-jerkers might twitch about it being `another Tempest'... And it sorta-kinda is. But more like Tempest 2000 Ultra-Deluxe with all the faintly annoying stuff taken out and some really, really ace progressive game mechanics weaved in.

Instead of just constantly trying to keep everything away from the edge of the web and always being rammed into a defensive, siege-mentality corner (my gripe with Tempest all along) you're now rewarded for playing in a much more free, open, strategic and (best) aggressive way - harvesting points, boosting a bonus multiplyer, always always pushing the line between pure survival instinct and score maximisation.

In short, my idea of gaming heaven - pretty on the outside, wild at heart.

All the usual obsessions are there - but in a funny, light, lovable way. The character of text announcements is cute enough ("Top hole!") but the sound design is laugh-out-loud astonishing: a spasming cacophony of bleats, yelps, barks, shrieks, Jarvis game steals, music and film samples...

And the pacing is perfect. Not just in terms of gameplay/difficulty curve; there's a constant slideshow of spooky, mind-warping background images and textures and zapping, synapse-like white flares. It's fucking cinematic - like a hallucinogenic, inner-space odyssey into the designers' minds and pop-culture cues.

But the really great thing about Space Giraffe is that it feels like Jeff loosening up and getting back to all the things that made us love his stuff in the first place - an unadulterated love of old-school arcadey gaming filtered through his unique, idiosyncratic goggles.

I give it six-and-three-quarter stars. Out of five.

Red, shiny ones, with a sort of fucked-up, glowing, pulsing, transcluscent, reptilian, mind-clearing quality about `em.

Pari muuta choice quotea SG:n tiimoilta:

I was going to wait until the game came out to post this review, but OXM's review has forced me to put this online now. The whole "don't talk about games that are on Partnernet" thing be damned.

First things first - OXM hasn't got a fucking clue what they're talking about. Seriously, a two out of ten? A bewildering Tempest clone? That's like saying The Shawshank Redemption is a confusing, too long Hogan's Heroes rip-off. Sigh. Games magazines. Ignore them and they'll go away.

Overall: Holy crap this is awesome hell yes / 10

Koko artikkeli: http://www.angry-gamer.net/ag/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=595&Itemid=29

Space Giraffe: Created by genre-defining game designer Jeff Minter, "Space Giraffe" is a psychedelic shooter that spans 100 levels, all set against vivid, pulsating backgrounds that synchronize with any custom music selection.

Space Giraffe is a no-brainer for shooter fans.

If the term "tunnel shooter" doesn't help you visualize Llamasoft's unhinged experiment in visual excess, picturing a Tempest of rainbows vomiting on your screen should get you halfway there. And that's not even considering the steady stream of mixed up gaming memes it spouts at you -- we just found out our giraffe is in another castle.

The Verdict 2.0 / 10

+ Unlike anything you've ever seen (except Tempest).

- Too visually noisy to figure out what going on.

- Actually made us angry when we played it.

? Is this a failed game or a failed art experiment?

;)

Vaikka meininki onkin perin sekavaa, mikä on aina boonusta, niin pelinähän tää on tosiaankin vissiin 1:1 Tempest. Itse en ole koskaan Tempestistä tykännyt. Yhtään :(

Ei oo 1:1 Tempestin kanssa, mikä kyl tulee enemmän kuin selväks, jos on seurannut homman kehittymistä tai lukenut vaikka noita äskenkin linkkaamiani juttuja. Jeff on saanu ite korjata porukoiden ennakkoluuloja kyllästymiseen asti. Mut parhaitenhan sen tietty huomaa, kun lataa Demon huomenna, ottaa tutorialin vakavasti, ja antaa pelille edes mahdollisuuden olla oma itsensä, sillä sitä se kaikesta päätellen on, diggaa tai ei.

And that's true; SG won't be for everyone, that's for sure. Some people simply don't like trippy abstract visuals, and that's fair enough. I'm sure I'll see plenty of cheap shots taken at it along the lines of "OMFG it's Tempest but I can't see and I'm having a SEIZURE!!1!!" - well, fair enough, that's what demo downloads are for, to allow people to make an informed decision about what they like and don't like; and in attempting to explore new areas one is always going to step outside of some peoples' comfort zones and perhaps make of oneself an easy target for some.

However there are many people who do enjoy exactly this kind of abstract, zoner game - look at how well T2K did on the Atari Jaguar - and it's those people that we've made SG for. And if you've never played that kind of game before, hey, have a go, maybe you'll like it, it's only 400 points after all. And when it all clicks and you find yourself in the Zone while the Universe is exploding around you and you're dancing in the light, grinning like a loon - then you'll understand }:-).

+

SPOnG: For those who are looking at the screenshots, bemused in wonderment, what exactly is the premise of Space Giraffe? It's an arcade shooter with a twist, no doubt.

Jeff Minter: It's an abstract shooter with a surprising amount of depth and subtlety to the actual gameplay. If you're seriously playing the game to get a decent score then shooting is really just a secondary thing, a way of setting up the play environment to allow you to feed off the best point scoring opportunities. You can see this in the leaderboards in alpha test - I can see naive players coming in and playing it just "Tempest style", just shooting everything, and although they can get to level 40 odd, I can have bigger scores than them by the time I get to level 17.

...

If you play it just as a Tempest game you'll end up on the wrong side of the score dichotomy I just mentioned. All the major techniques that you use to score would either be suicide in Tempest or simply don't exist. In a way SG is the "anti-Tempest" when played properly. In Tempest stuff getting up to the rim of the web is very bad news indeed, whereas in SG you want that to happen; you want to gather as much stuff as you can up there for the "bulling attack" that is unique to SG and the only way of raising your bonus multiplier.

Tempest is more about pure survival, whereas SG is more about risk/reward and really encouraging bold, aggressive yet strategic play. You can throttle back to a pure survival style of play when you need to, but it's not as satisfying as really kicking into an excellent scoring run.

http://spong.com/feature/10109562?cb=225

Btw. ihan mielenkiinnosta, mitä Tempestejä oot pelannut, nehän on käytännössä täysin eri tapauksia (eri tekijät) riippuen versiosta ja alustasta?

Tuo kommenttini perustuu hyvän ystäväni, ja pitkäaikaisen peliharrastajan/-ammattilaisen kommenttiin, tämän testattua sitä demoversiota debuggikoneella tässä jokin aika sitten. Itse en ole peliä vielä päässyt testaamaan. Kyseinen kaveri on kyllä pelannut todennäköisesti ~kaikkia maailman Tempestejä.

Itse olen pelannut sitä ainakin Jaguarilla. Muitakin versioita olen kyllä joskus testannut, mutta en kyllä tähän hätään muista sen tarkemmin. Pohjimmiltaan niiden SE idea on kuitenkin ollut suhteellisen sama, vaikka jotain omiakin ideoita toki eri versioiden välillä onkin. Eli eivät ne nyt TÄYSIN eri tapauksia tosiaankaan ole.

Mutta täytyy tätä Minterin näkemystä kuitenkin kokeilla. Sen verran hapokasta visuaalia ainakin on tiedossa :) Sinänsä on hassua, että Minterin täytyy selitellä pelaajille pelinsä olevan jotain muuta, kuin mitä siitä tulee ensimmäisenä pelaajille mieleen sitä pelatessa.

Ne eri versioiden erot ei siis ole Tempestien perusideassa tai muodossa, vaan pelattavuudessa, sanomattakin on selvää, että tämmöisissä "zone"-peleissä koko pelikokemus muuttuu täysin jos balanssi ei ole kohdallaan. Asian voi todeta helposti vaikka pelaamaalla GW2:sta hiirellä gamepadin sijaan, tai Zookeeperiä PC:llä ja DS:llä. Näennäisen pieni muutos, mutta aivan mieletön ero. Tempestien erot on näitä perustavampia ja itse koodissa. Mut jos T2K Jaguarilla ei toiminut, niin sit ei voi todellakaan mitään, peli / genre ei vaan oo sulle, tähän törmää väkisinkin, kun mennään pintaa syvemmälle, asia mikä asia.

Jeff Minter wrote only the Atari Jaguar version of the game; other, later versions were ported by other developers and are generally considered to lack the fine gameplay tuning present in the Jaguar version.

Se, että Jeffin täytyy selitellä SG:n luonnetta on must luonnollista, vaikkakin harmittavaa. Peliteollisuus ja -journalismi on aivan käsittämättömän surkeassa jamassa suhteessa alan massiiviseen vaikutuspiiriin. Järkyttävän suuri osa porukasta ei vaan yksinkertaisesti ymmärrä high score pelien päälle, eihän niissä ole edes juonta O_o tai nehän on vaan mini-pelejä =:o Tottakai SG:stä tulee visuaalien ja muodon ansiosta ensin mieleen Tempest, mutta jos nyt panostaa vaikka parin ekan levelin ymmärtämiseen (kuten blogin ohjeistuksessa kerrotaan), niin pitäis jo huomata perustava ero, tai sit ei vaan tajua mistä hommas on kyse.

Hemmetin hyvää menoa kautta linjan, toistaseks takana about 6 tuntia tehokasta peliaikaa ja pisteitä abt 60m. Enemmänki vois olla kevyesti, mut testailin ja jumittelin muutamaa leveliä ihan tahallaan ymmärtääkseni paremmin (vaihtelevalla menestyksellä ;P). Tyyli (visuaalit, äänet ja fiilis) toimii täysillä ja trance-henkiset musiikit sopii mainiosti meininkiin.

Edelleen suurin osa omista kuolemista johtuu siitä, etten ole kaiken visuaaliryöpytyksen keskeltä nähnyt tuhon aiheuttajaa. Mitä enemmän oon pelannu sitä enemmän elintärkeät sound-cuet ja tarkkaavainen ja ennakoiva pelisilmä säästää henkiä. Pari kertaa oon päässy jo hyvään zoneen, which is nice!

Tutoriaaliin kannattaa muuten perehtyä ihan kunnolla, luulisin että achievementin verran (10 m) pitää olla plakkarissa ennen kuin saa alkupäänkään kenttiin luottavaisen fiiliksen tai jonkun muun kuin 'meh' tai 'you are not brilliant' -tyylisiä kommentteja levelien päätteeks. Ite oon nykyään abt 11-13m putkessa, eikä silti oo viel ideat hallussa. Pelkästään ekan 10 levelin hiominenkin on erittäin palkitsevaa puuhaa, monissa kentissä on aiva oma luonteensa, ja pelin uusi continue-systeemi tukee hyvin level kerrallaan opettelua ilman mitään erillistä practise-moodia. Kaiken kaikkiaan, mahtava kokemus ja peli-iloa ja kehittymisen varaa pitkäks aikaa, leaderboardit haltuun!

YakYak:ssa porukalla aika kovia scoreja Tutorialissa:



Edit: Tutorialin tueksi: http://www.yakyak.org/viewtopic.php?t=66963