Archive for the ‘Funny Facts’ Category

Funny Fact #4

Funny fact number 4 involves our logo again and the ways it has been used… Case you don’t know I have our original logo and the logo from our first game tattooed on my left shoulder.

Don’t take my word for it, here it is…

The first one was the logo and it was a bang! No one really expected I actually tattooed our logo. The tattoo artist asked: “What if it goes wrong?” and I answered in a very zen way that “it is the symbol of the path we already travelled.” I got a discount!

Let me tell you that Marco, who I believe was impressed with it, decided that the best thing to do about it was to mock me… it’s a guy’s thing! So he did this:

And the caption reads: “Tattoos – it’s really sissy stuff” but it didn’t end there… Marco just sent me this wonderful image I had completely forgot.

I’m 100% sure but I think this is Diogo’s birthday cake two years ago!

Looking to all these images it strikes me that our logo is a lot how we symbolize how much we care for this project to the point we have it on our desktops like everyone would have I guess… on our avatars like many people would have… but we also have it in our skin, in our every thoughts.

Encyclopedia of Players

Disclaimer: this post, unlike most of this blog, does not have the intention to present information or discuss any particular item. It is a fun motivated post, one that should be taken lightly, with a smile and nothing else.

Most if not all flash game developers have read comments about their games that triggered some feeling. Many times we fail to see the positive side and focus on the negative side. We are taking content to an audience and nowadays that means that either we like it or not, that audience will voice an opinion. Is is much easier to take the strong opinions with a smile and I hope this helps giving you that smile.

The 100m athlete

His only motivation is to be the first. He wants to, he has a lot of competition, but sooner or later he will be fast enough to be able to write:

FIRST!!!!111

and he won’t rest until he is banned! That’s his gold medal!

The obvious

It could be better.

O’rly? It could, I admit, but how? It’s like saying that it is a game, isn’t it?

The nonsense

This type of player is really unpredictable. We never know what’s his next comment. It can be something like:

LOL OMG it’s yeah!

to something really strange like:

Loved the game! 1/5 because I don’t like the name!

We never know what to expect… by the way, this last quote… true story.

The sober policeman

This player plays a lot of flash games. He knows the portals, he knows the developers, he knows if a game was uploaded by someone that is not the rightful owner. What can I say? The sober policeman is a real helpful player in many ways.

The drunk policeman

Ok… I only wrote the previous one so I could write this one. This player plays a lot of flash games but all games that look alike were stolen! What was the stolen game you may ask? Easy! The first game of the same genre he played. He also assumes that a sponsored game uploaded by the developer was, without a trace of doubt, stolen by the developer.

Games with stolen IPs are ok though, as long as he is a fan, like a Mario clone or something that remotely looks like Zelda… with Zelda graphics…

The analyst aka flash game journalist

This is a real, typical comment from this player type:

It feels… restricted. As far as I can tell, it is perfectly unclear as to how money is being earned. It just hands it to you at the end of the level. Similarly, there is almost no indication as to whether you are hitting something, unless it dies. Having scrollwheel weapon change is bit odd, considering that most people will be playing tihs in a browser.

I honestly love these guys (and gals)! They usualy know what they are saying, they write well, take the developer hardwork into consideration. They pinpoint problems the game has and they do so in an elegant way. Bottom line, they are really helpful.

The needy

Needs upgrades…

Needs badges…

Needs ketchup…

Needs more levels…

<insert your favorite need here>

Now that I think about it, usualy it’s not the game that needs it. It was designed like that so, that’s what it is for better or worse. Who needs something is the player.

The nice guy

I don’t like this game. It’s boring! I have better things to do than to waste 5 minutes of my life playing it. But since you used red in the logo and my dog is running after his tail, I’ll give it an 8.

Thanks mate, very helpful!

The complacent father of all developers

Really funny… he assumes that ALL developers are 13 years old. It’s really easy to spot! If you make one mistake, serious or not, he will say something like

The mute button is not working! I don’t expect that you 13 year olds can do a proper game.

or (and this is just hilarious) if you do something that he doesn’t like, it is not a mistake, bug or problem, he just doesn’t like that…

You 13 year olds still have a lot to learn. Ice towers also deal damage, not just slow down.

The uber game designer

This is probably the only type of player that I really don’t like and that annoys the hell out of me, but there are so few of them that their presence is rarely noted, thankfuly. This is someone that took a couple of hours to create something that remotely looks like a game and that from that moment on feels he has all the know-how to trash every single game that he doesn’t like.

He usualy shares pearls of wisdom such has:

This game sucks! Collision detection fails more than 50% of the time!

These pearls of wisdom usualy meet the following logic: the game in question does not have collisions, or even if it had, how does he know that it is more than 50% of the time? It’s funny because it’s true.

The spell checker

The typical spell checker is usually also a complacent father of all developers. But there’s a weird breed of spell checkers… I can’t really explain how they are, so here’s a comment…

LOL u dont now how 2 spel aphrodisiac

and last but not least… The follower

The follower is cute in a way. Followers simply follow an opinion that is from someone else. For instance if a uber game designer says that the game has a problem with collision detection, even if the game doesn’t have CD at all, he will just state that he also noticed that. A lot of followers follow spell checkers, I don’t know why. Followers are good if you have a good game and bad if you have a bad game.

Hope you like it!

Like I said, this post is for fun and kicks, don’t think too much about it. Many comments are really good and helpful and we have to look at pointless comments as part of it.

Funny Fact #3 (or not)

Vlad, bringing you another funny (or not) fact about Vortix Games Studio. Since our internal buzz is our ultra secret (or not) engine, I thought… why not telling how I named it Bold Pixel Engine?

To make a long story short I wanted a cool name for it, mostly because of the directory name. Yes… I’m a fashion victim, code wise case you are wondering… anyway, I was in the middle of a brainstorm and I thought of really cool names, mostly of work of people I admire and that was already done, like Lachhh’s engine, Photonstorm’s Pixel Blitz…

…Crytek’s engine… Unreal… yeah, I was aiming high (or not)…

Then I looked at a chat window I had open with Marco. Both of us have Vortix’s logo with different colors on our Google Talk avatars (which will be another great funny fact by the way) and I rememebered why we have that logo. It is the evolution of a design school project of Marco, which he explained here.

The direct translation of that project is “Naughty Pixel” but I wasn’t really up to use the word “naughty” since it doesn’t really take me to a technology context if you know what I mean and I can only imagine what keywords would search engines index us to. So I looked around for similar words until I found “bold” which I imagine as something strong, determined and hopefully not that bugged, so “bold” it was…

…and Bold Pixel Engine it is…

Vlad out!

Funny Fact #2

Hi again, Vlad in the keyboard here!

This is not really a funny fact, more of a funny story and the opportunity to present the guys here to you.

The Vortix Trio

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Diogo

I decided to start with the younger of the three. Diogo doesn’t work with us unfortunatelly. He is a coder at Sony Entertainment where he codes for console games.

This should be enough to show how smart he is. Diogo is an excelent programmer with a lot of know-how and experience for some so young. I’m sure we’ll work together again when we buy Sony, right after we sell a couple of licenses to our next game.

Really… just a couple…

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Marco

Marco designed these avatars, all the graphics for all our games and so on and so forth. He is the creative mind behind all that is graphical and lately many design issues also.

He is known here in Portugal as a reference for all videogame related graphical direction and production. Add to it that he rock’n'rolls with his band like there was no tomorrow and you get a full creative package!

By the way… he has a site!

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Vlad

The guy with the big Jumbo ears is, unfortunatelly… me.

I’m basically a control freak. Born to the computer game industry as a wanabe designer, reborn as a producer/coder, I handle pretty much everything that needs to be done, from code, to mopping to hired assassination.

I’m the oldest of the three but also the one that has the nicest dog!

And the funny story

Marco created these graphics for a corporate presentation I worked on. When I took a look at the graphics I said that the one that was clearly closer to the actual guy was his, which is something quite impressive to do. I also noted that for some weird reason – although jealousy is presumably the cause – he was the better looking and told him that to which he replied:

“Well, I drew it, but anyway if my pic is the better looking guy, it is good because it translates reality!”

Funny Fact #1

I guess everyone could write a nice bunch of (hopefully) funny facts about themselves. As I was reading Marco’s post about our logo, it struck me that there are funny facts about Vortix Games Studio that can be shared on our blog.

Since it’s Saturday and I’m having a nice relaxed weekend, I decided to start-up a funny fact category, just for kicks.

When I was younger, so much younger than today, I used to play guitar in bars. Usually the evenings ended on some 24/7 establishment that had either hot chocolate or beer, depending on how the night went.

So I was drinking a hot chocolate and a cat approached me. To make the story short, the cat followed me home and was my pet for about two years. I named her Vortix for no particular reason and the same name was later on other things and finally on Vortix Games Studios.

Note 1: The cat in the picture is not my cat
Note 2: The Beatles line was intended