The remaster of Gunstorm is just about complete and everything is now working and ready on Steam. I now need to wait for the official approval process, which can take a week or so, then I'll get going with Gunstorm II. It's been a huge amount of work.
The digital process reminds me a bit of contemporary music. Perhaps games have pioneered the way that digital culture is created and vended, but the other arts have rapidly followed suit. Now, thousands of games are released weekly (or daily?), but much of the content is mediocre.
An elephant in the room is automation. AI created games and content that is as poor as books written by AI. Nobody likes this sort of stuff; it's rubbish, but it's 'better than nothing' so will can catch on a little. AI created content is nowhere near a threat to art or artists, the problem is that its sheer quantity and utter rubbishness can drown good art by enthusiasts. This is really sad. I recall now how the Amiga PD Scene ('public domain') of games was indeed full of rather poor things, but all hand made and lovingly made by hobbyists. The automation factor may now lead to an explosion of huge amounts of very similar, poor quality content. It's odd that even the real products sold by Amazon exhibit this feature. One will often find the same camera or sound recorder or tripod, looking identical to 10 others, but with a different brand name.
Well, my games are different because they're from a different era, and I utterly despise and reject AI content. As with my music I've never used 3rd-party game-engines or plugins; everything I make is my own from scratch, which is why my games takes so long and are so much work. The treadmill of using other's engines isn't that much less work though, because things keep changing and 'upgrading' every few months. This dispiriting aspect of technology drove me as crazy as coding does generally. My nerves and body can't cope with programming for long. The process is too exacting, too intense. Programming is like making a house of cards anew each day; an ultra-delicate process, always knowing it's quivering structure must remain intact, and that a collapse means doom and disaster. All programmers feel this; its a neurosis created by computers which has infected the human population as a whole. It's little exaggeration to say that everyone I know as Asperger's Syndrome or ADHD (usually both); but they don't, it's a computer neurosis caused by the social influence of electronic minds.
After Gunstorm, I had thought about updating Bool or Firefly (or both at once), but that can perhaps wait. Having checked, the original Gunstorm game sold 4 copies, and the sequel 8. This update is a much better game, but I expect similar results. I've made it quickly, and made it available, which was my key aim. The game is part of my art, now an odd hybrid between the first decade of the 21st century and its third. I may update Future Snooker and Future Pool with the new engine at some point, but now I'm exhausted and ready to file things.
Here is Xodar, in his new High Definition, wide-screen form:
Deb said that the game was transformed compared to the old version, and it is. Some features are there, and now work correctly; like controller support and an end-game sequence. Both games are now as good as each other. Many of the gameplay features from Gunstorm II are now in Gunstorm I, but the first game has some unique elements too. The second lacks a 'continue' for the classic game, for example, or the Asteroids game.
One game I've not mentioned is Outliner. The new updates to Gunstorm have rather made it obsolete in gameplay. It was always a budget variant of these games (I've made lots of this type over the years: Roton, Xenex, Outliner on Amiga; and Roton, Outliner, Gunstorm 1 & 2, and the Flatspace training - it's all part of the same genre). Aside from its style (of course, style is vital, style is the essence of art - not content - it's absolutely true so say that a bad note played with élan is better than the right note played timidly, and the same applies in all art) Outliner's unique feature are its two-player options, which only Xenex on Amiga had. Xodar, the villain in Gunstorm, incidentally owes the inspiration for his name to Xenex.
