Spewer

Okay, so I got to the level Recap, and found I didn’t like this at all. My issues:
-To get killed, your center must cross the boundary of the left grinder, while only your bounds must cross the right one. That part of the level is symmetrical, so an unassisted jump on that side should be just as easy. The death point on the left one isn’t totally consistent either.
-Failing jumps, as frequently do (they require particularly expert timing, and I don’t excel at platformers), is a major time-waster. Is it better to go down and eat some puke, or just restart the level? Why should that question even be relevant?
-Prior to this, I got stuck on the level pictured here on TIGSource. I’m not often stumped by games, yet it really didn’t occur to me until after my first play that you can swim upwards through puke.

Not a bad game and I certainly wasted an afternoon playing it.

A few minor ires:

– The white spew is really annoying, as it really lacks precision in both making it and swimming in it. Levels where making a correct amount of white spew are quite annoying.
– The slowdowns. Even when I set down the quality, it can get really slow.
– The level “Pascal’s law” is really dickish, as the liquid physics are very iffy. That’s as far as I got and being a bonus chapter

What I did like:
– spewing and flooding everything.
– some of the puzzles.
Рthe story. Here I thought was another clich̩ story of evil scientists but I was pleasantly disappointed in the end.
–

You say not to be a dick.. but then you say “remember what I look like in person!”

Well, you look like a dick, with that beard and your stupid gape-mouth smile.

And we shouldn’t treat you like a dick? You’re talking in circles now.

[being a jerk:] ^^^

Since my other comment got censored out, even though it basically said the same thing like a couple of other comments in here already, I’ll just rephrase it again and since most of my points have already been made by others, I’ll provide new content too. Woohoo.
This time with a candy coating so no ones feelings might get hurt by the big bad keen words, uhhh. Well scratch that, if you feel hurt by these words, instead of throwing a Tantrum, think about why they hurt you. Or: If you think my words apply to you, congratulations, they do. If not, that’s cool, they weren’t meant for you anyways.

There’s an increasing trend in Indiegaming, one quite reminiscent of the same movement in Indiemusic. And that’s a certain “holier than thou” attitude. Or perhaps the words “acting like a Rockstar” can more thoroughly describe it.
Constant celebration and patting each other on the backs, as well as sugar coated opinions have led to a big overinflation of egos. These overinflated egos have tremendous trouble accepting that someone might in fact not like their game.

I’m sure their skin is tough enough, the issue is that they’ve lost contact with the ground. They’ve been celebrated for a too long time.

Every couple of weeks we get to read reports about how totally “awesome” this or that person acted, often making a one-man or one-woman show out of themselves.
So here’s the question, when did Indiegaming and thus, Tigsource (as some kind of mirror) change from “making interesting games for gamers” into “being a celebrity”? When did the person and their feelings become more important than their creations? Indiegaming is on the road to falling into the pit, sharing antics with Derek Smart while being brandished with the reputation of a John Romero.

If you guys want that, totally awesome. Go for it. Enjoy your own Downfall while it still glitters glory.

haha titties

Yea apparently the comment function filtered out my “insert name here”s.

I still fail to see how not liking a game has anything to do with person who made said game.

(Sorry for triple post.)

Anyway, I finally got to sit down and play the game (the computers at work were too slow) and it’s pretty good.

Nothing special or anything, but it’s a pretty nice little flash platform game. I can see how it feels like an “extended tutorial” but then again a lot of games are like that (i.e. Portal), so that didn’t really bother me.

I still stand by the fact that the reactions to the comments were a bit disproportional and overblown though.

Have the editors thought about turning comments off?

At least it could make more people to sign up at the forums.

@judgespear:

Comments were related to overall negativity on TIGS, not just spewer comments.

I really enjoyed the game, *love* the artwork. (but I love all physics sims, hell, used industry-level fluid solvers, finite element analysis tools as pastime.) But fluid as an important aspect in gameplay still gets me (as in bloody zombies).
However I thought that there was going to be an underlying story (i.e. saw just the tentacle like hairs in first levels, then the professor, the experimental setup etc.), got very excited, but although I’m in mid-chapter 3, the lack of story so far was disappointing, although I suspect the story will become apparent towards the end.
I think the game can be a little less tedious and more fun by changing the game mechanics somehow, spew runs out pretty fast without you being able to enjoy it, then you have to eat it again, and mostly make accurate jumps etc, becomes just your basic platformer which runs too slow.
Edmund, you probably know, and probably used it, but if not, clavet et al., “Particle-based Viscoelastic Fluid Simulation” is relatively very fast for fluid sims (my prehistoric laptop can run 1500-1800 particles with my implementation of pvfs). THAT slow gameplay with just 20-100 particles means either the algorithm you are using is very slow, or that flash was a bad choice for this game. just trying to help, the game really has potential.

If it’s not, and if you’re being serious. How is that worse? You can’t accept the fact that there might be some people don’t like or really care for your game?

It’s pretty much a basic fact of life. With anything in the world, there is always bound to be people who like something and those that don’t.

The mature thing would be to accept the fact that you can’t please everyone, not get worked up over something which you can’t really do anything about.

great game! but flash just scks as a game platform performance-wise

And to all the people hating on cactus or whoever: just make a better game, and you’ll be more famous. It’s really that simple, seriously!

The internet doesn’t discriminate. I guarantee that if someone dropped 20 amazing games (or even just decently interesting/weird games like ikiki’s) in derek’s lap, he would post about them.

Now, if there exists someone who has made several games which are just as distinct and interesting as cactus’, but for some reason is languishing in obscurity and is frustrated with not having their efforts recognized, I could sympathize with that.

But I doubt such a person exists. So it seems hard to justify the hate, which I guess is just a combination of jealousy and/or outrage at the patterns of behaviour in our society (wherein certain individuals tend to be lionized, perhaps beyond what is reasonable).

The latter is understandable, but misguided since it’s hardly the individual’s fault that media/etc have chosen to focus on them. Also it seems like it would be better to start with the _big_ offenders like Hollywood, before worrying about people who are essentially internet-famous among a small subculture.

Cactus is a bazillion times more worthy of attention than Cliffy B! If you need to rag on a celebrity game developer, why not talk shit on http://www.cliffyb.com/ ?

Let’s just try to talk about things in a general sense, especially considering that this post has nothing to do with Cactus or people being jealous of how popular he is.

I don’t know about you, but I judge games based on the games themselves and how they play. I don’t look at whoever makes the game and base my whole opinion on that. And neither did the first two comments on this page. They were just opinions on the game itself.

is hating on WASD with no option to reconfigure a valid complaint? Because seriously, fuck WASD. I don’t used WASD to navigate any of the menus in any of my other programs. It’s almost as unappealing as forcing me to use vi bindings.

Wow, this has got to be the most effective trolling I’ve ever done. Usually, TIGS comments start with “first lololol panda” or something so I figured I’d mix it up by posting something dismissive and goony, and boy did it work.

I guess I’m one ‘full’ troll. Not that I usually troll, but I thought maybe it was better than just another memey first post.

In-joke ire aside… this game wasn’t too terribly engaging. Flash is a really terrible way to make a game. Yes, I know, ad revenue is important, so let’s put all of our games in an environment that everyone can access, etc… but if 75% of people can’t run it properly, who cares if 95% of people can access it?

The graphics are nice and original, as usual for this guy. The sound is fine. The concept is unique in one way: you have to eat your energy back up in order to jump again. That’s roughly the opposite of fun. (See: Super Mario Sunshine)

And yeah, the celebrity attitude gets a little bit annoying, but it’s not really Edmund’s fault in this case. He’s not a douchenozzle like J.Blow in that way, I don’t think. It’s just the fanboyism of bloggers and some posters that gives people that impression. The only issue I take with him is his claims of altruism. You’re doing this because you’d rather not work, and it allows you to express yourself artistically, which is fun, and doesn’t really feel like work. You make some money, get some e-cred, etc. Don’t act like Mother Theresa here, really.

Cheers.

re johnny b goode – we are talking about the comments in general, not just the ones in this particular post or even this particular blog.

re “judgespear, please put a link to something you’ve made please.”

that was exactly what i wondered. it’s very easy to say that insults about things you’ve created don’t matter when you haven’t experienced it.

> that was exactly what i wondered. it’s very easy to say that insults about things you’ve created don’t matter when you haven’t experienced it.

And this is a fine example of the kind of attitude I’m talking about. There are two theories, which I call the big two.

* It’s art/protest; And as such you’re not allowed to have an opinion.
* Do something better; aka unless you’re one of the chosen ones or our fanbois, shut up.

Both arguments are about as silly as they can get. Those are “dead horse” arguments, all around 360° kill them all arguments. All one has to do is use one of the two to invalidate someone elses opinion.
That is if those two arguments weren’t so inherently silly and desperate to begin with.

Art isn’t above criticism. And Art must not function as a shield for mediocre works. Its the same really with war movies, by simply attaching the word “Anti War Movie” they turn from mindless gorefest into educational works. They’re still a mindless gorefest at heart though. Same goes for games classified as Art, they’re still a game at heart. And it’s that game element that is vulnerable, despite being labeled as Art.

And I’m willing to bet a months wage in saying that there is not a single person on earth that has not seen one of his/her creations being met with negative opinion. It’s a very natural process of growing up, and while I’m aware that one of the internets most famous insults is “grow up, kiddie”, I’m afraid I have to point out that this specific element of achieving maturity comes quite early in the human lifecycle. In fact, before humans even can read and write.

Please don’t start the whole ‘until you release a game you don’t have ground to criticize mine’ argument. Any gamer has the right to give his/her opinion about a game posted on a public forum. Whether you read it or accept it, is your choice.

Why is this about me all of a sudden? I haven’t insulted anyone. You’re trying to pull an “ad hominem” argument on me. For what?

I said that I enjoyed your game.

However, I don’t like the fact that people are getting all up in arms over two or so comments, which people are putting all sorts of blame on for problems related to this site, and various other things that are completely unrelated to the topic at hand.

err… not liking a game, rather.

damn, I triple posted again.

Edmund, stop. That’s like telling a film critic he can’t critique a film because he’s never made one.

Er, that they dislike something, rather.

Damn it, I can’t do this anymore. This is so pointless that I am hardly even keeping track of what I’m saying anymore.