How times change… I remember how I grew up with computers and computer games and I remember how we have been playing games then and how games are played now. I remember exactly the intensive matches at late nights in front of our monitor and I compare that times with now but let’s start from the beginning.

The last three months I bought more games than in the past few years. That’s because of getting more involved in some great projects about game programming. I thought it would be time to get some of the latest games. If you read the previous blog posts about Steam and censorship in Germany you know that I bought the Half-Life series and added also Crysis, Fear2: Project Origin and Far Cry 2 to my list. It’s no secret that I have my favorite games like Blood, Quake and Doom series and anything that is id Software related. I thought now it would be time to get something new and see how the progress is. When it comes to sequels I like playing them from the first part to the last. You don’t start watching Terminator 4 and then continue to watch Terminator 1, 2 and 3. Back to the story I bought the complete Half-Life series on Steam with all add-ons and start playing it. After finishing it I continued with Far Cry 2 and Fear2. I played Dead Space and continued with Prey. Ok these are not only new games but since I did not played them I thought of giving them a try. With every game I finished I got more and more disappointed.

Back to the times where Doom and Quake ruled my world. I remember how fascinated I have been when I first installed my Wolfenstein3D copy and played it. Wow. It was a non-stop wow effect. Something like that was never seen before I thought (not only me but friends of mine did also but I will still talk for myself in this post). Short time after a friend gave me a Doom copy to play. I installed and that wow effect was now “damn wow²”. Impressed? No. I was impressed². This was more than groundbreaking. Tight atmosphere, great graphics… everything. Doom 2 was released and the expectations were met. Cyber demons and imps. This was my world. I have never been so addicted to any game like I was then with Doom. I was a big Ghosts’n Goblins fan, I was a big Bubble Bobble fan and was addicted to The Great Giana Sisters. Everything which run on an Amstrad CPC and on a Commodore C64 was good and even better on an Amiga but owning a PC you don’t really had good games. This should change soon, and the start did id Software. While we learned the terms deathmatch, rocket launcher and spawning we eat, drink and sleep Doom! Not for long. The next groundbreaking game hit the grounds when Quake was released. These guys are awesome I thought. The gave us Wolf3D, Doom and when there comes a moment where you think “This cannot be done better” id software showed us that Doom was just a breadcrumb. I won’t talk for other genres since they did not interest me very much (or they did not interest me at all to be honest). I was totally Quake :)

Soon other companies came up with interesting games and the whole computer games branch became a lucrative business. Games like Unreal, Half-Life etc. dominated the shooter world either with groundbreaking technology and graphics or with tight stories. So years passed and we are now in the year 2009. I played as I said the games mentioned above. Some of them new games, released in 2009, others released the last 3 years. Not one of those games could impress half the way they should. I mentioned already that I got disappointed with each game more and more. Let’s take Far Cry 2 as paradigm. This game looks awesome and starts with introducing you to the story. After that you spend nearly 80% of the time walking, driving or riding through the world, 15% with matches and 5% with story. It was more boring than playing 3 years Tetris non-stop. Let’s take Fear2 as example. This game was played within 3 hours. It was shorter than anything else I have seen. This cant be true. I thought a good game is balanced between some new graphical experience, some tight story and having fun doing the things in the game world, the developers want you to do. All games (Half-Life2 is an exception) I played have no fun and are either too long or too short to play.

Next point is the fact of sequels. How can a developer still think he can release a sequel if a title was successful? I know this is a pure monetary reason, but are they kidding? I think FarCry was a good game and was from the technical aspect great. Far Cry 2 sucks. No relation to the first part, absolutely no fun and way too long. In fact, having a long play duration would be usually a good thing but if the long parts are boring because nothing happens it’s a very bad thing. How can you release a sequel which doesn’t have anything in common beside the title? I mean that’s like Quake2 would play in Russia. In Quake you learned about the stroggs (or you heard about them since there was no story in Quake) and you would expect Quake2 to continue with the stroggs (like it did) but id software would say: “no let’s do something better. You are a lone marine in Russia and have to fight against yetis”. WTF. Let’s take Fear2. I loved Fear. I played it late night with the volume turned up and I was frightened, shocked, impressed and wanted more of Alma. That’s the reason why I bought Fear2 and with my enthusiasm I started playing it and to my surprise I finished it the next evening. Ah Ok. It’s business as usual in our days if games are sold for 49€ with a duration which is not even half the money worth. I mean the Quake or Quake2 add-ons cost about 20€ and have longer game duration than Fear2.

I understand the extra long developing time since it’s not easy today to release a competitive title within a year. Engine programming, textures, sounds, scripting, threading, networking all that shit takes time. Some failed since they were arrogant enough to think they could produce a game within 2 years and stay competitive with their title (hello Daikatana). Others just are kidding and telling lies about their production (hello DukeNukem EVER? now never). But hey. Talk to your publisher and tell him that it’s realistic to release a very good game in 3 years and having it sell good or to release it in 2 years and it’s not worth the money.

Yeah that's the year 2009. The times where Quake dominated the game scene we had fun, fun, fun. Now we have empty pockets because of the high prices and no fun, and we still say thanks to the publishers. I will avoid now the discussion why publishers have a lot of nerve to change the content of a game only to sell in Germany and Australia. This would take too long. But it’s important to mention that if they wouldn’t do this and would spend the money for changing the content to improve the released game they would most probably have better sale numbers. It’s only an idea. While it’s order of business to change content just to sell in countries with strict laws this is also the wrong way. Microsoft didn’t sell a game in Germany just because the changes in content would have changed the story that much that it would be a complete different game. Id Software never censored their games just because of Germany and however everyone here owns id Software games. They did not become bitches of the German government. If others would follow this example the German government would change its laws since selling something means taxes and taxes means money for the government so software developers should really think about.

Where are the good old times where playing computer games means fun and not filling the gap between TV-serials and lunch. where are the good old times where developers have been idealists and produced games with content and story and not this bitchin censored stuff just to make some dollars more.

Just some thoughts of someone who enjoyed playing games and now suffers from the capitalistic behavior of software developers.

Ok let’s go with the story. It was end of August 2009 and I was bored. I wanted to play some cool games. I’m the ego-shooter guy and I was looking for something I haven’t played and so I thought it would be time to get Half-Life 2. You guys are rofl now I know… There have been some reasons I didn’t play HL2 until today. The first reason is that I really never missed it. I have read all the critics, tests and articles since release of HL2 but I found it never interesting enough to buy it. I’m the proud owner of all id Software games, I’m the proud owner of the Blood series, I own several other shooters uncut (for those of you who live in Germany know how important the words “uncut” and the complete id Software series really is). The second reason is that I never had have really time to continue to play games. I have my own collection and played my games more than 5 times. So what did I do to get HL2? I searched through internet to buy it and here the odyssey begins…

I went to the Steam website and found the Half-Life Anthology pack which offered HL, HL: Blue Shift, HL: Opposing Force and Team Fortress Classic for only 14,99 €. Wow I thought and put it in my shopping cart. Before playing HL2 let’s play through the complete HL1 story so things will be more clear and more fun guaranteed. So I also put the Half-Life Orange Box in my shopping cart. The Orange Box includes HL2, HL2: Episode 1, HL2: Episode 2, HL2: Lost Coast, Portal and Team Fortress 2 for 29,99 €. I thought I did a good job with getting those two packages. Of course I read the details on the product page carefully to avoid any problems with my newly acquired hardware. After paying I started download over Steam and after finish I started playing Half-Life. At first of course I didn’t recognize anything weird. It was cool to play and I felt like those days when Half-Life was released and we were all in this skeletal animation fever of Half-Life ;)

After playing some time I noticed that the soldiers are missing. Ah ok we have robots here so it was clear I was playing a German censored version. In Germany all games or media which don’t meet some specific criteria are censored. An institution exists called BPjS which play the games (or watch the movies) and decides if it is ok or not. Criteria is explicit gore, explicit sex, strong language and stuff like that. The idea of the BPjS is not bad at all and in theory I would support their doing. Bad is the realization of their ideas. In fact everything that seems to be violent (in computer games) is forbidden like in a dictatorship or communism. German readers of this blog know exactly what I mean. I was browsing the steam forums and noticed other people face the same problem. There were rumors to change the language for Steam and so Half-Life and other censored games will be with the unlocked or uncensored content. I tried nearly every solution provided there except the most logical: to contact the Steam support. So I got my support ticket and started to wait. 2 days, 3 days finally a reply. The reply told me the sadly I live in Germany and Steam is not allowed to sell Half-Life uncensored in Germany since it is censored here. They are only allowed to sell the damn fucking censored version. Ok I’m 33 years old and I knew hard it was in former times to get our Blood or Blood 2 copy or to get our Quake copy. Now in times where you can buy and download your games over the whole internet there is someone who cares what stupid laws here in Germany are?

I’m not angry on Steam, it’s only a platform who sells games. I’m not angry on German government, they showed and show and will show in future that they are able to be No 1 in most stupid laws on the world (hey US guys don’t laugh, you guys elected George W. Bush, the most stupid president of the world, twice :)).

Back to the story. I contacted the Steam support telling them that this is absolutely inacceptable since nowhere on the product description was a note that Germans get a censored version. I noticed that on the Left 4 Dead product description there was a big red note on German “gore reduced version”. Oh damn what does this mean. A shooter who is gore reduced? Would you ever play a racing game without racing cars? Imagine Need for Speed without cars. Imagine a strategy game without strategy?!? How stupid is that? They should reduce the price of the German version.

While some discussions on forums claimed Steam guilty for this censored shit, others named Gabe Newell as cause of this disaster. What really made me angry is the fact that the German government created the institution which is controlling media, movies and computer games and censored what they think.

Here is an example: You will be able to download Dead Space (a great game btw) from Steam (even from Germany). Nothing is censored, blood gore, all the good and bad things what makes us play those action games. But you won’t be able to get Half-Life, FEAR 2, Left 4 Dead or games like that over Steam.

1. BPjS sucks. BPjS is the German institution which play dictatorship here in Germany. They censor computer games because of violence and gore. What about all the strategy games where you make war against whole countries and destroy and mass destroy whole continents? 
2. Software companies and publisher suck more than German government. I mean they develop cool games and than change the content to meet the requirements of German and Australian laws? How stupid is that? That equals the fact that if Lithuania had a law which allows all foreign car brands to use only 3 wheels instead of four Mercedes Benz would change their SL to 3 wheels? Software companies did not understand that if their games are not half enjoyable if they are censored? id Software did not fall on the knees and so they never provided censored content. That’s what it all is about. Even Wolfenstein3D is more fun than Half Life with censored content. Software companies have to realize that if someone in Germany wants their game, there are enough possibilities to order it from Austria (see links below), Switzerland, Greece, France, Great Britain with delivery times within 3 days. There is no reason to care about governments.

What did I learn from all that shit above? I liked Steam very much and the idea is very good having one platform where you can buy all of your games having them downloaded and up-to date. If you buy a new PC just install the Steam client and after login into your Steam account all your purchased games are installed automatically on your new machine. It works and the idea is great, at least if you don’t live in Germany. If you live in Germany and use Steam you are an idiot. There are plenty of import shops from Austria where you get German uncut versions. I started to buy there and am to 100% satisfied. I won’t buy on Steam again, not as long as I live in Germany (I think Australians face similar problems). Or would you drive a car with three wheels only because of your government?

"Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it." - Mark Twain

On www.quake.de I noticed a news post talking about an online petition against the planned ban of action games in Germany. It’s not a secret that since Wolfenstein 3D and Doom Germany was somehow against those games, because of the excessive violence in those games. Let’s avoid starting this endless discussion if those games influence people in their doing (THEY DO NOT!!!), but you cannot avoid something in Germany as long as our government put something in mind. Sadly the rampage which occurred near Stuttgart (Fellbach) and some copycats started the whole discussion again.

I was rolling on the flour when I followed again the discussion about “killer games” in german TV. All the discussions were held very subjective and failed the complete point. German politicians, educators, teachers and even representatives from church had the same opinion that those “killer games” do influence the players. How stupid is that? What the fuck do those monkeys think? Now whole germany talks about banning ego shooters. I pay an ass full of taxes every month hoping that the politicians who get paid from my money do something meaningful. Hoping that they will release laws who help people. You say I’m completely wrong. They have nothing else to do but discussing about themes they have no idea about. That's not stupid but a reason to fuck them of (in case you would have a rocket launcher ;)

The game industry defuses ego shooters which have to be sold in Germany. There are many popular examples, like Half Life, Unreal2 and so on. In those german conversions you kill robots instead of human NPC. Instead of blood you see something green which could be oil. This is censorship in its finest art. I thought this is only in dictatorships but Germany should be a democracy or am I wrong? Ok, lets try to not be so polemic.

One of the first games I ever played was Wolfenstein 3D. I remember the time where we exchanged the shareware version of Wolfenstein 3D and shortly after some time Doom on two 3,5” floppy discs. I continued playing Doom2 and Quake and am one of the lucky ones who found Blood and Blood 2 in stores and was the first in my town who got his copy of Quake 2. Until today I played to 99% ego shooters and have in my collection nearly all “killer games” I could ever get including Kingpin, Sin, Quake3 Arena, Unreal, Unreal Tournament, all mission packs to Quake and Quake2, Fear, Doom3, Quake4 and so on. And I’m also lucky since all versions are not versions for the german market but the originals ordered from UK and USA. And do you now what the best is????

 

YES I LOVE KILLER GAMES, AND NO I DON’T PLAN A RAMPAGE ON ANY SCHOOL OR ELSEWHERE

Why is the fact ignored, that everywhere in the world where the original copies of those ego shooter games are played, the number of rampages is not higher than here in Germany? We have one famous example with the rampage at Stuttgart for a long time. And the discussion heated up, just because police found a copy of Counterstrike on the computer of the gunman of Stuttgart. Oh my god how stupid are our politicians really?

It there will be a law which forbids ego shooters the crime associated with obtaining those games would rise immensely but who cares, right?

Dear politicians, please go back to work (in fact start work even if it’s the first time in your life) and care for real problems which we have here in Germany and don’t loose time with things you have no idea about and where you are definitely wrong in your thinking. You are wrong because you tried to find the guilty for the disaster in Stuttgart. Not the computer game was the reason for the rampage but his fucked up family affairs, his father for not securing the gun and keeping the gun in a place where nobody has access to it. Every 5 dime psychologist will tell you that. Ah I forgot. German television was clever enough to let psychologist talk, but those kind of psychologist who tell you that, what you want to hear (or at least the opinion of those who pay their bills).

Some things never change, and as a passionate developer my big love are still games. No not playing them, but developing them. I was cleaning up my harddrive today (I should do this more often) and found a very old project I wanted to start some years ago with my class mates. We did some basic project management and ended up with a design document for a game which we found very cool. So some of the graphic artists put together this very basic screens for a teaser which I’m releasing here. OK the younger guys reading this blog will now be laughing because they are used to Quake 15, Doom 21 and Duke Nukem Never graphics and this is a simple but cool 2d game but that’s ok. Try to develop your own game and you will see what I’m talking about.

Now I found a very basic framework for this game and while browsing the project folder the feeling of then came up in me and I decided that it’s time to get this finished. I will put things together the next days and try to see what I have, what I need and what I’ll get and will try to finish this. Are you excited in a 2d game of an old-school game developer who will use Dev-Cpp and DirectX as API for the complete game? Then watch the video below and tell me what you think.

You are a passionated game developer, graphic artist, sound specialist or simply love contributing anything to a game then contact me. It will be a pleasure to get this done…

[mediaplayer:urban.flv]

About WinSnake 

WinSnake is a nibbles clone created by ZoE from Gringo Productions. Although there are enough nibble clones out there this is kind of different. The most important thing is that WinSnake is configurable. That means that you are able to make custom mazes and provide them to others. Of course this is not the asskickin' feature of all times, but it makes a lot of fun.

WinSnakEd tools
You are able to build custom game packages (game packages are the files containing the edited/custom data) with the WinSnakEd tools. These tools contain a maze editor and a package builder (necessary to build the packages). You are able to change any graphic image of the game (except the special goodies) and to replace any sounds and music with your own. The possibilities of creating new mazes are eternal. Of course you may also specify the design of your maze. Therefore we have created the section WinSnake game packages. If you have build a great maze or even a complete collection and want to provide it to the public contact us. We'll put your package with screenshots and a short description at the game package section. If you want to exchange information with others about WinSnake editing, the WinSnakEd tools or anything related to WinSnake take a look at our message board. Most probably the best questions and answers are there.

Credits
Thanks to DMA for the menu graphic. Since it's very difficult as an amateur programmer to get some graphic artists for the job, I had luck with this guy. Thanks goes also to RIP for not doing what I should do and spending the time over the net. I would also like to say thanks to the guys who did the music. Since I took all the sounds from samplers I don't know your names. If you think a track is from you and your name should appear here please contact me and I will put your name right here.

And now get WinSnake and have fun... 

WinSnake features 
DirectX support (DirectX 8.0 or higher required)
multiplayer support, play against others on the same machine.
editable content. Fully editable with the WinSnakEd tools. You will be able to create custom mazes.
fun, fun, fun...

WinSnake screenshots

 

WinSnake system requirements 
WinSnake was developed and tested on a AMD K6-2 500 MHz machine. A Trident 3D graphic card and a Terratec DMX sound card completed the system. Due to this low-end system WinSnake should run on every machine. Here we go with the official system requirements:

• IBM compatible pc with at least 400 MHz CPU
• DirectX graphic adapter with at least 4 MB RAM
• a minimum of 32 MB RAM
• at least 15 MByte of free disk space on your hard drive
• a DirectX compliant sound adapter
• Windows 98, Windows 2000 or Windows XP
• DirectX 8.0 or later

WinSnake was tested (worst case) on an AMD K6-2 300 MHz machine with 32 MByte RAM and Windows 98 and it did well. Your system should meet the above system specification to avoid problems. 
WinSnakEd 
The WinSnakEd tools are a collection of easy to use WinSnake editing utilities, to create custom mazes

 

WinSnakEd version
The WinSnakEd tools are currently v 1.0.0
That means that these tools are full functional and official released. Errors shouldn't occur but most possibly will. If you encounter any bugs please send us a short bug report and if possible the log file created by WinSnakEd. We will fix the bug as soon as possible.

WinSnakEd information
If you have any suggestions, ideas, enhancements or simply some questions about WinSnakEd don't hesitate to contact us. You can always take a look at the message board, where most answers are to find or simply contact us via email at zoe@g-productions.net

Features 
With WinSnakEd you are able to

• import custom images for background, for the snake and for the maze
• import custom sounds for background music, for eating a goody and for dying
• configure the look of the maze
• create complete game packages with up to 10 mazes per game package
• import media of any size you want as long as you stay within the WinSnake specification. For more details head over the WinSnakEd tec specification

Installing the game packages
After created the game package simply copy the created pkg file into your WinSnakebdata directory. WinSnake will detect the package and provide it in the maze menu. You are now able to select the game package and choose the maze on the left you want to play.

Contributing game packages
You have created game packages and want to provide them to the public? Contact us and we will upload your game package on the WinSnake site. Make some screenshots, include a readme file and you are ready to go.

WinSnakEd tec specification
Here are some important facts, necessary to know for developing

• WinSnake only supports 24 bit bitmaps. You can try 8 bit bitmaps or other image formats as tga, jpg, or anything else. It won't work
• WinSnake only supports uncompressed WAV files for sound and music. While there are currently also midi tracks in the standard game package you won't be able to get them work with WinSnake. Be sure to use uncompressed wav files.

Try the demo: wsnake_demo.exe (1,49 mb)

Download the full version: wsnake_setup.exe (3,53 mb)

Download the editor tools: wsed_setup.exe (3,26 mb)

Enjoy!!!