www.youtube.com/watch?v=jv0NAueoXnI

The point here is that both players see the same view of the game, so that when you outrun your opponent far enough he can not see his bike anymore. Increase the distance a bit more and he explodes and you get a point.

On the other hand, you will not see much of the track ahead when you are in the lead. This provides a quite natural negative feedback loop, which is good. Negative feedback loops means that the player in the lead is given a disadvantage.

What do you all think? Looks fun?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5CZ6TqCgps

Unfortunately the post got lost in a pile of changes going on at the time. What do you guys think?

We really want a "gore mode" ourselves so if we get 20 comments, from different individuals, saying "Yej - give us a Bloody Bill mode", we will give you (and ourselves) a "Bloody Bill mode" as a thank you for patiently waiting for the multiplayer (and to Tobias for working really hard on the multiplayer):

I am taking the rest of the day off as I have to prepare for a weekend long NHL 2010 war by zoning out to "Mogwai fear Satan"

Take Care!

Joel

If you save the score for each game session you will end up with a database similar to the scores table below.

The example above has two game sessions. In the game called A there were two players and in the game called B three players. If we look at player 1, we can see that she lost the first game but won the second.

Usually we'd like to look at all the game data we've stored and say how many game sessions a particular player has won. But how do we do that automatically with a database SQL query? It seems simple enough since it's such a small table, but it can be a little more tricky than you would first expect.

Below is one way to do this. The idea is that we calculate the total number of games the player has participated in and subract the number of games she lost.

SELECT total.number - lost.number
FROM

(SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT scores.game) AS number
 FROM scores 
 WHERE scores.player = '1')
AS total,

(SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT my_scores.game) AS number
 FROM scores AS my_scores
   INNER JOIN scores AS other_scores
   ON my_scores.game = other_scores.game
 WHERE my_scores.score < other_scores.score
   AND my_scores.player = '1')
AS lost;

So if you're making a game that saves scores this code might come in handy for you.

Do you see what would happen if two players have the same score?
Do you know how you can improve the performance?

The spring finally hit Umeå, I'm off to enjoy it

Have a great weekend

Peter

It is weird how you sort of shut down just before it is vacation time ey? This Friday and next Monday are public holidays here in Sweden, so we all begun a four day weekend yesterday.

I need your help coming up with a great idea!  All I could focus on yesterday was snowy picnics and drinking games involving Worms 3D. I love my job, but yesterday my office head was filled with jello and my irresponsible play head was filled with guarana - all n' all weird n' wonderful.

Anyways I need your help:

What kind of game would you pitch with the following constraints:

It has to involve a shipbroker, a psychologist and a company distributing plastic cards such as the credit card you used to pay for Mad Skills. The game is NOT supposed to involve pitching the companies and you should play for about an hour. It does not have to be playable in a browser.

Great ideas will be rewarded! Email me at joel@turborilla.com

Happy Holidays!

Joel

The pic above is from the very early development stage of the sequel to Planet M.U.L.E. A few days ago we tested a prototype. We have forked off a few bastardized modifications of PM and reused all graphics, networking and crap, but changed the game mechanics. We wanted to compare the funniness between two of those versions. One was a Real Time Strategy thing with all players running around simultaneously doing whatever actions they like, and the other a Boardgame type game played in phases with more structure and the players having to wait for each other to take their turn. The boardgame type may sound like the original but it had some changes and new expanded, strategic fluff added.

During the test we were three guys crammed in one room at our office. Me, Joel and our conscientious intern Fredrik. We had another dude on loud speakers through Skype and a fifth guy playing from Germany. Three of the testers had never played MULE before and I had to quickly brief them on the rules as we played. That's why we were in the same room. The boardgame version gave us lots of laughs. After a while all players got the hang of it and they started to screw each other over by some self-sacrificing, mean tactics. There was especially much laughter during the auctions, which some earlier newbie testers have found to be the most boring part of the game. Interesting indeed.

After playing one full game of each version the conclusion was unanimous. All testers found the boardgame style more fun. The main problem with the real time version is that it feels like you're playing alone with a bunch of other unimportant guys running around in the perimeters. There was not enough interaction between players. Instead of trading with others, which is a core component of Planet MULE, players rather produce all goods they need themselves and sell it to the store. To make the RTS float we'll have to come up with something to make players more dependent on each other.

Even though we believe that an RTS version could be made fun, and we have some nifty ideas on how to improve it, we'll be exploring the turn based approach for now. Personally I think a turn based MULE will turn out the most fun in the end.

Happy Holidays!

And don't forget to hand in your leaderboard ideas to win a full version of Mad Skills Motocross.

Peter

We will test asking you questions, utilizing you thoughts, in incremental steps and hopefully we can deliver value in exchange for your ideas and solutions. Value defined as an increasingly better game, but also in the form of individual rewards and more importantly, cred. If you come up with great code, graphics or ideas, you will be recognized for it.

The first inquire - a Facebook leaderboard?:

We need to create a leaderboard solution, we are considering using facebook and dividing it in to regions but we have not written any code yet. Do you have ideas, applications, examples of games that currently use a great solutions or example code for a facebook application that would work well for Turborilla and Mad Skills? Write to tobias@turborilla.com or joel@turborilla.com. Post your questions as a comment below

The three best suggestions gets rewarded, even if we like a suggestion but decide not use it you'll get your full version.

all the best

Tobias

Speaking of Joel, he is the latest star of Turborilla. We hired him three weeks ago and he still hasn't learned to use the apostrophe correctly.

Look at all the posts made by Joel, he is writing gangsta like ya'll but instead of an apostrophe he uses the acute accent as in ya´ll. I find that infinitely annoying. Don´t you?

He is also practicing to be a cheerleader, but more on that later. I am off to work on a solution for choosing tracks in Mad Skills multiplayer

Tobias

You guys have been pushing hard for a [MSM=http://www.madskillsmotocross.com]Mad Skills Motocross[/MSM] (our motocross game focusing on pure, fast paced fun) multiplayer. We are therefore working hard on developing the multiplayer feature. We would like you all to be a part of giving it the final touch though. Therefore we want you to get busy with the questions we`ll post here.  We really like the idea of involving you in our process. Our plan is therefore to include you in the development of "Planet Mule 2" as well. Planet Mule has been described as "monopoly mixed with risk - on crack" and has approximately 15000 online players at the moment. Judging by the initial tests of this version it will be AMAZING!

We hope to get you quite involved, but can only test this in incremental steps, so stay alert.

Since we are superdedicated and fear nothing, Tobias sent us all on a inspirational hillbilly trip last weekend -his buddies are iiiiinsane, check the pic`s above or the movie with the coolest stunt the Mad Skills team could muster below:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5EBBCKx8Ng

I`m off to a meeting bout` leaderboard solutions for Mad Skills - take care!

Joel - Turborilla

oh - I just commenced work with the boys here at Turborilla, they all got cool taglines for themselves, felt like the nerdiest thing ever initially......but now I want one....if anyone got a cool tagline for me.....email me at joel@turborilla.com, the current suggestion is Joel - the stick, I dont like it

Some call it the grandfather of all realtime strategy games, while some call it "the best game of all time". In short it's a 4 player game about economics where players builds factories to produce goods and sell for high prices to other players. The winner is the player who makes the largest profit.

Simple huh? No. If you haven't read the manual or seen the (soon to come) instruction video you won't have a chance to understand this game. It's probably the genre furthest away from Mad Skills Motocross.

About a year ago Blue Systems contacted us with the idea of a remake, and since then we've been working on it. Now it feels great to finally release it. The development has been a bumpy ride where we've tried lots of different play styles and graphics. What we settled on is what you can find here: www.planetmule.com .

As I'm writing this Planet M.U.L.E. has over 2600 registered users and the number has been growing steadily since the release. With all the good feedback from the fans we're now working on getting an update out to improve the game.

As you can see, not many voted. So, for the next time you know that your vote really makes a difference.

So, time for me to dig down and start working on those ip-numbers, packets, NATs, latencies, TCP, UDP and what have you. I'm pretty good at this stuff and I think I'll enjoy most of it. The boring part will, as always, be the GUI code.