Intensive Gaming Diary

Blog about different aspects of retro and new video games.

Tag: role

Still Waiting for Diablo IV

Posted on by Viljami

I am eager to get my hands on the newest game in Diablo series. I got information on Friday that the game shop has delivered the package and it’s on the way. I know that some people have already got to play this game. I am jealous. As I am still waiting it might be a good time to go through what my relationship with Diablo series currently is.

I wasn’t a big fan of the first game of this action role playing game series. It was the second game, Diablo 2, that got me excited. I also played Diablo 1 with my PlayStation back in the late 90s. Diablo 2 I played with a PC. I think it wasn’t even released to other platforms. And of course there is this one game that I like also. It is, of course, Diablo 3. I enjoyed it also very much.

A friend of mine sold me these Diablo 2 PC big boxes. There is the original Diablo 2 and there is also the expansion, Lord of The Destruction. I am very lucky to have this items. I think they are valuable also when it comes to money. I am not going to sell them. Not any day soon, after all. As you might have figured I have lots of love for PC big box games. I have currently 16 boxes in my collection. I just love the way they look on the self. It makes me feel like a real gaming professional.

I also have played Diablo 1. I have completed it several times. There is this thing that makes Diablo games re-playable. This is the way that you can choose your character class and have a different experience and play the game through with a different character.

What makes Diablo games so spectacular? I think it is the way it combines action, strategy and role playing elements. I have read that Diablo was very much influenced by a Sega Mega Drive hockey game (would you believe it). This game was NHL 94. The first Diablo was released in 1996. The company that first released it was Blizzard. You might find a book called “Stay Awhile and Listen” interesting. It tells you the story of how Diablo came to be. It is written by David L. Craddock.

Diablo has always offered its players a great overall gaming experience. For me it has also brought me a step closer to role playing. While Diablo has many roguelike elements, it isn’t fully a roguelike game. In 100 percentage roguelike, or the oringinal game, Rogue, there are some features that aren’t as rough for the player.  One difference is that when you die you don’t have to restart the whole game with a completely new character. Instead you leave a body to the spot where you died and when re-spawning you have to collect the body to keep all your gear and potions and so on.

I like this series of games very much. I hope to see one great game. I might write another blog post about the game. By the way – I finished Forza Horizon 5 after playing it for almost 20 hours. There could be some other achievements to unlock but I am not that interested in continuing to play that game anymore. After all, the latest and maybe the greatest Diablo game is just around the corner.

Impact of Final Fantasy VII

Posted on by Viljami

There has been many Final Fantasy VII remakes, be it HD or some other, but the fact remains and that is that it was first released in 1997 for the first Sony PlayStation. My experiences with these types of games begun when it was the end of the 90s and I picked up this role-playing-game. Graphics were fascinating. There was also a lot to play. The game came packaged in three CDs.

It also took some time to complete this game. I remember playing it for well over a hundred hours. There was lots of discussion and dialogue in this game. In remember reading carefully every conversation and still failing to deeply understand the plot in overall. I am not going to go throught the plot som deeply here.

Characters of this game are very relatable. You can name the character as you want butI found it funnier to keep their names as they were. You have, of course, Cloud, that is the main character. There is also a romance between two of the characters. Sephiroth is the main bad guy in this game. Also, chocobos are introduced.

The gameplay works in a kind of a turn-based way. Combat works this way. You have to keep close eye to your health points of all your characters. For me it worked well to have a sort of a healer in the group and also one or two characters that could cast some effective spells that you could attack against your enemies. I found it effective to keep Cloud fighting with his sword and maybe learn a spell or two.

If you haven’t ever played Final Fantasy I have to tell you how it basically works. You get to towns and cities from a world map. When moving you are getting randomly into a fighting scene. You have to defeat your enemies that are also randomly selected. You get experience points that give you more health and mana and so on. This is very different than the way that action RPGs like Diablo function.

For many consumers in Europe this game was the introduction to games like Final Fantasy. The first Final Fantasy game was released for NES. Then there were several released games for SNES. But actually FF VII was the game that made a real break through in Europe. So, FF VI got also released for PS1. I wrote about FF VI a while ago. Its graphics don’t actually differ much from what is seen on SNES.

PS1 was the gaming console that made PS1 even more popular and also acceptable for adults also to play video games. As CD-ROM was beginning to be used there was a powerful way to represent longer and better looking games that appealed to older people. Video games weren’t kids stuff anymore. There were many other games also that made this break through possible. I am talking about games like Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid and Gran Turismo and maybe also Colin McRae Rally. These games will remain in my memory bank for the rest of my life. And its cool that I can get to play them anytime I want.

Destiny of Jonathan: Maze of Salala

Posted on by Viljami

I have been thinking and also waiting to write about this game that has been under development now for several years. I have been involved in the development process with my good friend Antti Pulkkinen. I started working in this project back in 2014. Antti asked me to join and help him to get this game designed. He has had this idea of a role-playing 3D game. After some talk about the game we started to figure out what kinds of weapons and armor there would appear and how the story would be structured.

Back in 2014 I hadn’t even yet graduated and my studies as a software engineer were not finished. I saw these opportunities and they made me want to work in this project even more. From the first lines we discussed it was also clear that I would be also responsible for the music in this game. I also had the opportunity to develop the website. That’s basically my role in the designing of the game.

The game is released for PCs that have a Linux operating system. It costs 15 euros. If you want to buy the game you can register and then pay and download the game. I think this game gives something especially if you are into role-playing and adventure games and also if you are deeply into game design and programming. Antti has worked hard as he programmed this game. If you have any questions about the development process or anything related to programming you can find his email from our website: https://www.onegamecompany.fi

The game reflects our passion to how adventure and role-playing games were in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. We had also some skillful 3D modelers and graphic designers involved. There have been ideas for sequel or a series of sequels. I have been also busy with composing the music for these games. For music production I currently use FL Studio, a 32 key MIDI keyboard and a large library of different synthetic instruments and also samples. We looked for sound effects also from different websites and communities.

Diablo and Dungeon Siege series’s games were a big inspiration for us. We worked hard designing different kinds of features, mazes, puzzles, levels, discussions, characters and everything else we wanted to include in the game. We wanted it to have a clear and interesting plot and to give the main character some personality. From the beginning it was supposed to be a game that had some action involved in it. There are also many ways to develop the main character as the player progresses throughout the game. So it is an action RPG that has some characteristics of adventure games. Destiny of Jonathan was developed by our company One game company. This is our first serious game.

Waiting for Diablo II Resurrected

Posted on by Viljami

In the middle of all retro games I have had a chance to play I have also been waiting eagerly for the next purchase I have planned for my shiny and new Xbox Series S. And it is going to be after all Diablo II – Resurrected. How have I prepared for what there is to come? Of course I got my copy of Diablo III and installed it again to my newest personal computer. It’s been a while since I played this one the last time. It was actually released back in 2012.

Do you remember Diablo III? This game got the whole internet stuck world wide. It is required as you install the game for you to connect to the server for a moment. This is actually true. I am not telling lies here. There were actually so much weight on the whole internet that it made it a bit slow for us for a moment. Although after a while things were normal again. This happened at the moment when game was released and this didn’t repeat.

After I installed the game I noticed that I would also need to login to my Battle.net account. It still held my hero that I had previously played as. I am aware that it is a bit different to play this game with a controller but not so much different after all. I decided to start a new game and this time I chose to be a Wizard.

I played for some hours and got my player to level up to all most to level 20. After that I increased the difficulty level up from normal to first hard and then to expert. I found out that I am not so good at playing this game as I could be. I do enjoy casting different spells and trying to kill as many monsters as I can to gain more experience points. This game is still lots of fun. I have also bought the t-shirt when it still was available from one Finnish webshop. And I remember travelling to another city to get it. That was probably back in 2013 or so.

Why not introduce the game a bit for those of you that haven’t heard or played it? Diablo III is probably where you want to start if you want to get into some playing modern Diablo games. I don’t exactly know how Diablo II Resurrected will be. I haven’t yet played it. But here we will start from the third game of this series. So Diablo is an action role playing game. There is lots of things going on. The main activity is to kill monsters. Your health goes down when monsters hit you. Sometimes they hit you with some magic. There is different kinds of magic spells that you can use and also that your enemies in this fictive world can use. In earlier Diablo games you had quite strictly mana that you could use for your spells. This is a bit comlplivated in the third game. But you can for now think this power to be almost like mana. So you spend it on spells and it keeps coming back when time progresses (or you have to drink a mana potion or something like that).

There are different kinds of weapons and armor that keep your character to not to take so much damage. Better weapons give you better damage against monsters and other enemies. You can use a teleport to get back to the village. There you can heal yourself to your current maximum health and repair your weapons and armor. A big part of this game is searching through different maps and doing some kinds of tasks. There is a plot but it isn’t the main reason for someone to play this game a lot. There is a lot of fantasy involved. This is a role playing game after all. It takes it’s roots and it is considered to be (or so I heard a speaker at one years “Games Now!” lectures to say) three out of five (3/5) of a “roguelike”. Roguelike is just a term that is used of a game that reminds of an ancient role playing game that was actually named “Rogue”. Maybe that’s enough about these Games Now lectures and it might be a story for another post, maybe, some day.

If you like Blizzards games such as Warcraft and Starcraft which are real time strategy games you will definitely like Diablo games also. They rely a bit more on the combination of fantasy and action mixed with these role playing features. And when I am mentioning Blizzard I have to mention World of Warcraft. It is actually very dependent on online players as it is an online game. I am not after all such an expert nor have I even played it.

Anyways, let’s hope this new Diablo game would be a good one. It will be released next week. The actual release date is 23rd September. So I will get my hands on it the next Thursday. The graphics must be something to see. We are still waiting, of course, also for Diablo 4. And please don’t mind me posting this screenshot. It isn’t the sharpest of all the Diablo screenshots possible but it is a good one from a game nine years old.

Some changes we have seen – Gaming from 1984 to 2021

Posted on by Viljami

I am going to go through the most important changes that have happened inside gaming from my birthday to this day. Back in 1984 we had already NES in some gamer’s living rooms. This wasn’t the first gaming device that I ever played. That place was conquered by PC. Computer games in the 80s might have had black and white or eight color graphics. Some games might have had 16 colors from which the graphics would be presented. The resolution was much lower than what we are used to today.

For games’ sounds there was only this horrible noise that was produced by the computers own speaker. In the 90s it was possible to buy a sound card for your PC and some gaming consoles, like Mega Drive, offered a better quality of sound. We were still far from a CD quality of sound effects and background and theme music. The quality of sound progressed as more and more and better consoles became available and as the technology advanced.

Getting the input from player has progressed. From keyboards, joysticks and simple controllers to game pads like Dual Sense and Xbox Elite. We have seen the beginning of real virtual experience. If you compare the controller that is seen in the related picture to the latest Dual Shock you really can see the difference. When the NES controller has only axis buttons and four other buttons my Dual Shock 4 has way more buttons. You really cannot compare these two in the means of human engineering.

What else has progressed? Designing games has taken major steps forward. Consider for example how much games like Doom and Diablo have influenced almost all types of video games. Besides bringing more technical advancements these games brought us some improvements in pure game design. Many games today have taken influences from role playing games. These features include developing and choosing a role or abilities to develop inside the game. You can gather experience and rare items that are able to be gathered by the player.

We have also seen how social media and internet have both made an impact. Did you at some time go to LAN parties? Well, I did. Haven’t been in those kinds of happenings in a while and this is also the trend as connectivity has increased so that you can get online almost everywhere in the world. Also the size of computers, mobile phones and consoles has been getting smaller all the time.

So if you would travel back to 80s you would see a different world. I think today we are dealing with lots of devices and activities that require more and more these skills that can probably be called something like “digital skills”. These skills include using social media and even marketing and using your visibility in your own advance and in collaboration with your friends and people also that you work with. We are all connected together and there is huge amount of data moving in these networks all the time. As some of us have combined sport activities to the new digital world I think that the amount spent exercising has decreased in overall.

Time will show in what direction we are moving. It has become clear that skills with internet, mobile devices, laptop and desktop computers and different kinds of networks are required. And so are also skills in teaching and providing a decent support for the final users of this technology. Big data has already made it’s impact on games that are actually gathering all kinds of data from within the game as the player makes its moves and progresses in the game.

Stay Awhile and Listen – The Book About Blizzard Entertainment

Posted on by Viljami

I was searching for something new and fresh to read. I don’t remember exactly on what website was it that I found a book about Blizzard Entertainment that was recommended as a good read for a gaming fan. The words I used for this search might have been something like “good gaming books to read”. I used this phrase and made a search through Google and I immediately found a website that recommended about five books. Some of these were already familiar for me and some of them I had already read. But a book about Blizzard? That sure sounded interesting to me.

As I started to read this book, it was titled “Stay Awhile and Listen”, I first noticed that text was written with a large and somewhat loose font. I didn’t let it bother me and kept reading. This book managed to capture my attention very efficiently. It introduces the people that were actually behind games like WarCraft and Diablo. It describes how they got inspiration from games like Dune II and UFO – Enemy Unknown and from earlier role-playing-games, not so graphical rogue-likes, and also from Dungeons and Dragons.

Diablo was very different than those other role-playing-games that were released on PC in the 90s. It defined a whole new genre of games combining action and traditional role-playing elements. It focused also in gathering different kinds of items that could be weapons, armor, rings or amulets that had special attributes. There could be, for example, an axe that gave, once equipped, more strength and maybe more resistance to enemies spells to its user. At first Diablo was designed to be turn-based but eventually it was made to be real-time. It featured an ability to play with multiple players through internet. Back in 1996 that was something revolutionary.

There have been two sequels made for Diablo and there was a whole genre of these new kinds of role-playing-games that many of us gamers have had the joy to play. I wasn’t so excited about traditional role playing or Dungeons and Dragons. To me Diablo was about the first RPG that I played, ever. I remember it being released for PC and PlayStation. The game that brought me closer to enjoying RPGs was definitely Diablo II. I liked Diablo 3 also very much. WarCraft then made something out of the genre that was initiated by Dune II. This genre was called real-time-strategy. WarCraft made some improvements to Dune II.

Before releasing these legendary games the guys of Blizzard were involved in computer technology as programmers and visual artists. They were working in this field already. They had some other interests also. It is told in this book that they really much enjoyed playing games like Sega Mega Drives NHL 94. Back in the 90s they were very young and very talented. So the book describes also their other activities and tells something about how this team worked and who was responsible for visual look, animation and programming. This was an effort of the whole team so you couldn’t tell so much about which member was actually responsible of the whole game. It was more like about they working as a team and every ones effort was needed.

I can recommend this book for any fan of 90s video games and especially for a fan of WarCraft, Diablo or them both. It was actually for me a fast read and I read it in about two weeks. At least that’s a fast read for me. It wasn’t a pricey book. It cost me about 20 euros and I bought it from a Finnish web store. So you should definitely read this book.

Tools for Building Your Game

Posted on by Viljami

Do you want to know how to actually make a game? Do you have an idea? Let me tell you what it is about and what skills you must learn. You might already have a friend or two that are talented in for example doing graphics or making music with personal computer. Why wouldn’t you get to understand how to make your game? And wouldn’t it be fun even if you wouldn’t actually end up releasing a game?

We will start with 3D modeling. There is this method to make a 3D featured game. You will have to make all the objects that the player encounters and also all surroundings and so on. If you want to make a game that has only 2D graphics that’s ok. But in this blog post we are dealing with 3D environment. So for making animations and 3D models you have to learn to use Blender. Or one of your friends has to. You probably need also skills in programming OpenGL which is based on C++. SO you need to know programming also to “make things click”. you have to have a way for the player to interact. So you need input from player. This is also made possible through an interface that has to be programmed. Making a game isn’t actually all programming but it isn’t all creative thinking also.

You don’t have to make your game with C++. You have a wide variety of different programming languages to choose from. You can make games with Java. I have been fiddling around with SWING. It is quite easy to make a game with a GUI but no graphics. You can make for example a role playing game with a deep plot. There are also some game engines for you to choose from (in Java). Some of them are engines like LITIENGINE and LWJGL – Lightweight Java Game Library. You can find more information about them … again … from your favorite search engine. (Or I might write about them some day). Android is also build with Java. So you need to learn Java if you wish to make a game for a mobile device that runs Java.

What about Python? You might have learned basics of programming from some course for example with it. Python is very good for many purposes. You can make games with Python. Then you would maybe want to learn about Pygame. There is also a funny library for Python for making games that have ASCII graphics (and only ASCII graphics).

You can choose C and C++ and then you are again going to the direction of using OpenGL for so many things. Have you ever made websites? Then you must be familiar with things like HTML, CSS and JavaScript. This is one way for you to make a game also. You can even use a library like Phaser that is based on JavaScript. You can also make your game with C#. You can also make something out of SQL or databases.

There are also some other ways to make a game that I haven’t yet mentioned here. There is basically tools that are built for making games. So they act like software that you can code and design your game with. Some of these tools are Game Maker Studio, Stencyl and Unity.

We have dealt with programming and 3D modeling. But you need also something else. You need graphics or to say it more precisely you need textures. Textures form the surface to your 3D models so they will look like they were actual objects in actual real world. Or that is their goal since a clever player always recognizes that he or she is playing a game and it’s never a real life situation. But, you need textures, right? Your tools for accomplishing this are free tools like GIMP and/or Paint.net and actual paid software application Photoshop. These tools are powerful and you have to learn to use them if you wish to make a game.

Some graphics can be made from sprites. So animation needs many still pictures that finally form the desired animation. But let’s think that we are building a game with 3D environment so we will stick to using Blender for the purpose.

Okay. What about music? What about sound effects? A good game has a dedicated soundtrack, right? You can make your own music or you can try to contact some independent artists. You can find these artists from SoundCloud or if you can speak in Finnish or at least in English you can try to talk to some artists in Mikseri which is a Finnish platform for releasing songs as mp3s on internet. But those are your options, basically. And music you can also find from YouTube. Try asking from some artist you dig.

You can find lots of sound effects online. You can try Freesound.org for example. Sound effects might be hard to make. It helps if you have a good quality condenser mick. These come nowadays with USB connection and they cost about from forty euros to several thousands. I would myself prefer a good and cheap mic for testing to record something. You can get creative with this. Slice an orange maybe and record that sound. You need to handle the audio clip. So you need skills in using an audio editor like Audacity or any other audio editor.

If you really want to make your own music to be played on the background you need to master some DAW. There are free DAWs, like LMMs, and ones you have to pay to use, like FL Studio or Renoise. There might be free to use demo versions that have some limitations. Some free DAWs I actually haven’t tried to this day are Pro Tools First, Ohm Studio, Cubase LE and Ableton Live Lite. I make my music with FL Studio.

You probably need some instruments. And I mean “virtual instruments”. There are lots of free VST instruments and effects. Some tools come with VST plugins and you can also buy them if you really need. A MIDI keyboard is a good thing to have. So you can make all the melodies with your virtual instruments. It doesn’t hurt if you have samples or if you have a friend that can play some guitar so you have all the diversity that is needed.

You will also need some gear. If you want to record vocals while you are listening to your instrumental at the same time you need headphones. Want to know why? Your voice starts to circulate if you don’t use head phones and you basically don’t want that to happen. You might also want to use monitor speakers. I have spent under 1000 euros for my studio, well if you leave the computer out…But you don’t actually need a super fast computer for making music. You can use your parents desktop really well. Just something that runs your audio software and has some space for your music. And you can buy for example a licence for OneDrive pretty cheaply so you would have 1 terabytes of space.

The last thing, I promise this is last in this long long blog post is about big data. What the f has big data to do with gaming, you might ask. It has every effing to do with today’s gaming. You ever think about how much data is moving in mobile activity all the time. There is also data to move in games. This can be something about how you make your choices in the game or what kind of weather happens to be or what time of the day it is. All this makes games very realsitic. But you know what? It makes them more boring. This is purely my opinion. But keep in your mind that there is a lot going on inside the game when you play it.

 

Final Fantasy VII Remake – A small preview

Posted on by Viljami

I played Final Fantasy VII way back when I still had my PS1 gaming console. I played it through and I remember it really took some time to complete it. Graphics were bad if compared to games released today. It had box with four CDs. Remember? PS1 didn’t have a hard drive. Hard drive was first introduced when original Xbox got released.

So for lots of us this new remake brings up so many good memories. The nostalgia is strong. It is a real joy to understand that they haven’t forgotten us older gamers that think FFVII was one of the best in this whole FF series, if not the best of them all.

Free demo of the game was released on PS Store. Demo took over 9 GB of space so it was a small introduction to this game. I played the demo and I think it’s a good response for nowadays gamers demands. Graphics and controls are great. You can choose to play with classic turn-based mode or with modern mode which reminds a lot about Final Fantasy XV.

All in all this is going to be one heck of a game. I would buy it. The release day here where I live is 10.4.2020. I’m waiting for this game. Hope to get to playing it soon!

Diablo series – Are you already waiting for Diablo 4?

Posted on by Viljami

I first got in to Diablo as my brother bought it for PS1. My mom destroyed the game, but that’s another story…I played this, but got really deep in Diablo 2 couple years later. I played it on my PC. I don’t think it was released on any other system back in the day.

Fast development of my role character and action in this game soon got me addicted. One Saturday I played Diablo 2 for six straight hours and that was kind of an record for me as a young teenager. I finally got through the whole game. It took many years for me to return to this series of games.

I had heard rumours of Diablo 3 being in development. Had read an preview article about this game. Hype was very strong. I finally saw Diablo 3 on my friends apartments floor. I was surprised that it was already and finally released. I was so hyped that I almost instantly bought a copy. I had to update my PCs GPU but it only cost me some 50 €. I liked Diablo I 3 also.

I ended buying a t-shirt and a poster. I still have them. And I remember how much traffic was generated back then as the game needed internet connection to register the player and to get to playing the game. It was very popular game. Had me playing Diablo 1 and 2 again a couple of timesboth.

So I thought Diablo 3 was OK as a game. I am waiting for another Diablo now and it is number four this time. While there hasn’t been any information about release date we are currently waiting for the game to be published on PS4 and PC or at least these are the systems I am waiting it to be released for. It is somewhat uncertain and time will tell if it will be out on PS5 also.

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