Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

One Nice Retro Rally Game

Posted on by Viljami

Yesterday, after a typical working day, I found myself playing, again, this classic rally game. The game is titled Rally Trophy. It was released in 2001 only for Microsoft Windows . So, this means it can be played with a PC that has Windows. I did buy this game back in the day. I don’t think it’s available anymore. And I don’t know if it’s really necessary to buy it. I of course have it in my PC game collection and I even have it as an actual physical game disc.

This game was brought to us, gamer persons, by a Finnish game company named Bugbear. I remember when I get to realize back in the day that this game was actually developed in my home country. I made a search through internet and found the e-mail address of the company. I was excited but I don’t remember did I actually send them any e-mail message or not. There were some game companies here in Finland and I felt this need to be a game designer even back when I was only a teenager going to high school. So, I don’t remember if I did or did not send them my resume when I was looking for a job later in my life. I did send an application to Remedy and that I can remember clearly.

Not so many people have the actual skill to work as a game developer. Be it a programmer or a 3D modeler or maybe even a software tester. You have to have some experience under your belt and some projects that you can show your skills with. Today there are lots of people that have just been graduated and cannot find a job anywhere. They will end up to getting any job that they can get. And that’s the way it goes. But not back in 2001 when some very skillful game programmers could show their level of skill. I think many people got their skills back in the 80s and with a Commodore 64. It was a way to get to know the hardware and also the software.

Rally Trophy is a nice driving game. It isn’t actually an arcade type of a game. Although the driving technique isn’t hard to learn it is a bit different if you compare it to some other driving game of this particular era. There are some vehicles for you to choose from. I took a Ford mainly because it was the most powerful one. It has a horse power of 140. The driving means in this game very much trying to keep your speed above 100 km per hour all the time. There’s not a lot room for braking or accelerating. Somehow I still find this driving style satisfying. It brings a unique feel to this game.

I played this game with a Windows 10 PC and with my Xbox One Elite controller. I had to run some patches and also a fix to get this game to work. I was actually able to configure my game pad after all. The game has a maximum resolution of 1920×1080. I think that graphics of this game still look very nice. A bit retro styled but nice. It was at first hard to try to play the game. I banged my head with these first four stages of the first rally for maybe two hours. That was yesterday. Today I started playing again. I played for some time and I managed to finish every rally in the top six and the season ended and I placed third in the season.

There are some cars to unlock but I didn’t care to figure out further how to do this. I think this was it for me for this game. If you wish to play this classic there is some information available if you do a search on your favorite search engine. I also advice to go to a website named My Abandonware where you can find lots of games including the one I was just writing to you about.

Are You Ready?

Posted on by Viljami

Xbox Series X was released November 10th 2020. It has been about two and a half of year. It has been a successful and popular gaming device. PlayStation 5 was released at almost same time. Nintendos latest gaming console was Switch and it was released in 2017.

Are you actually ready to buy another console? There have already been some information leaked about the new and upcoming Xbox console. It has been six years since Switch was released. It would make sense that Nintendo would release the next new console in this new console generation.

I think Xbox Series X has still a lot to give. I think also that it will sell even more when it becomes available more openly aand freely. There have been some difficulties in delivering consoles to consumers to buy them since this gaming systems release. I am still kind of waiting for some great game titles for this console.

Technology companies keep pushing new hardware in the direction of consumers. This isn’t a new fact. You can see this clearly. Just take a look at smart phone manufacturers. This matter is present also in personal computers. Even some software companies are pushing people to update to their operating system that actually runs on a computer that has to be powerful.

The question seems to be – where are these new and amazing games for Xbox Series X? We haven’t seen many game titles released recently. We have seen games like Hogwarts Legacy and Elden Ring. But I still think that there is a need for some attracting new games for todays newest game console.

What about our screens? Would you update your gaming television also if there would be a new game console released tomorrow? Would you have to make that update? Would you like to make that update? And finally what would it cost? Would we be gaming with screens that are even sharper than 4K? There are so many questions.

I was actually thinking about this when I handled my Nintendo Switch the other day. How does a game consoles price take a form? You can get the newest Nintendo console for about 300 euros. But, yes there is a but, you don’t get a decent gaming controller with the system. You have to buy a new controller also. I had to pay 70 euros for a good controller also. Xbox Series X had a controller invcluded with the system. But, yes there is a but also here, I had to buy a cable for the controller. Eventually I bought a battery and a charger also. They were cheap after all.

So, there’s a price that you pay for the gaming system. There are also other matters that might make the price even higher. And of course you have to buy a game or two if you want to enjoy your new gaming console. I am not so excited about these new and upcoming gaming consoles. I am hoping that there will still be some nice gaming titles to be avaialble for Xbox Series X and PS5 and also Nintendo Switch…and why not even for PC.

What It Takes to Create Own Video Game?

Posted on by Viljami

What it actually takes to create your own video game? Does it take hard work or maybe talent? Well, that depends also on how high you set yor goal. It isn’t so hard to create a text adventure game. For me, the hardest parts are concerning programming and graphics. I have created some minor prototypes and an actual working text-based adventure game.

How did I make my game? I programmed it with Java. If you program some other type of game, like a simple platformer with some basic graphics, you are basically creating a never ending while-loop, inside your code, that will refresh the screen like maybe sixty times in a second. The code updates the screen all the time. It also records every rerlevant key presses and updates the objects that seem for the player to be moving on the actual screen.

This is the basis of a simple game. You can also create event or command based games. This is what I did with my small text adventure game. The game reads your command, like “look around”, and then gives you some new output in a form of text. And the whole text adventure game happens on a command prompt inside your own program or game or what ever you are running your code with.

So, what do you need to do when you actually create a new game. There’s lots of things to work on. You need a simple plot and some kind of a scenery. You need to know how the player of your game can interact with the software, or computer, when the player plays the game.

There are also more areas of knowledge that are needed. You have to come up with whole world of music and sound, graphics, controls and storyline. Making your own game is technically demanding. You have to know your computer and how it works. You know, a good painter doesn’t necessarily know how to make good-looking video game graphics. You might need a voice actor or maybe even three or four of them.

Making a video game is demanding. But it is very rewarding if you can actually make a game that people like to play. Some people might be more interested in finding out how did you come up with your game. That can concern programming, creating the music, writing the plot or dialogue of the game or some other area.

If you still want to make a game on your own, remember to not to set the aim too high. And this is propably a good advice especially when you are just starting out. Remember to try to collaborate with other people that have some of these skills I have mentioned in this blog post. If you feel like it, you can share your source code with other developers. There are also lots of information available online. There are materials and tips for you to use before you try to make everything by yourself.

There’s a saying in Finnish that goes “kukaan ei ole seppä syntyessään”. I am not going to try to translate that. But this means that you have to take your time to learn the craft. I hope you got some new ideas from this blog post. We were moving on some game desing principles here in this blog post. Maybe I will write something about actually playing some video games the next time. We will see that.