wee doors banging

In a posting on one of their blogs, Capcom have announced that their forthcoming multiplatform action game “Dark Void” is to get all new in-game graphics and marketing materials inspired by games from the 1980′s.

Dark Void’s plot centres around a cargo pilot named Will who crash lands in the Bermuda Triangle. From there, he is teleported to a parallel universe where he encounters other humans, called Survivors. Together, Will and the survivors must battle the alien race who control the parallel universe in order to return to Earth.

Regarding the move to a retro style more at home on an Amstrad CPC than a Playstation 3, Capcom simply say:

“…Cell processors, complex shaders, and dual analog sticks, although modern, really don’t capture the essence of what we set out to accomplish.  Additionally, extensive market research has taught us that “photo-realistic graphics” are so totally last-gen…”

But 8-bit graphics aren’t their only bright idea. They’re going for the whole retro package with redone packaging, title music and they’re even implementing a retro-innovative “pass word” system for saving your progress through the game, so doing away with those tedious storage devices and save states found on Dark Void’s contemporaries.

Dark Void's all new old style title screen

Dark Void is being developed by Airtight Games and published by Capcom, on Unreal Engine 3, for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Windows.

Now that it’s got a retro-revamp, I’m really looking forward to it!

John Girvin is a software engineer, sci-fi buff, cyclist and retrocomputer fan (ie: nerd) from Belfast, Northern Ireland.

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Battlestar Galactica, the much praised “re-imagining” of Glen A. Larson’s classic 1970′s science fiction series of the same name, came to and end this week. I was hooked on the new show since 2003′s astounding mini series that introduced us to the new cast of characters, including advanced Centurions, Cylons that looked like humans and a female Starbuck. These are my thoughts and rantings on the three hour series finale, “Daybreak”.

Spoilers ahead!

The Playpower Foundation is using “the world’s most inexpensive home computer” as a platform for learning games in order to improve educational access for millions of children around the world. Motivated by the availability of this radically affordable platform, their goal is to design and discover high-quality 8-bit learning games and make computer-aided learning affordable for people everywhere. Playpower are looking for volunteers to design and develop all aspects of educational software (including games) for their system. Think you can help?

If you’ve come here expecting girv dot net, DON’T PANIC! After running the Wee Doors Banging blog on girv dot net for around a year, I found that I was writing articles covering three main topics: technical, cycling and “everything else”. Taking stock, I felt that these three subjects didn’t belong under one roof, so I’ve recently carried out a bit of reorganisation and split the original blog out into two standalone sites under their own domains. I now maintain four “personal” sites covering different topics…

I’ve been suckered into taking part in another Facebook meme – the album cover.

Instructions:

1. Go to Wikipedia and click Random
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
   The first random article you get is the name of your band.
2. Go to “Random Quotations”
   http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
   The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.
3. Go to Flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
   http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
   Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4. Use Photoshop, MS Paint, Paint.NET or similar to put it all together to make an album cover.
5. Post it to Facebook with this text in the “caption” and tag the friends you want to join in.

May I therefore now present my first album, “Capital to form a Corporation”, by Ned Berdard Stonehouse.

John Girvin is a software engineer, sci-fi buff, cyclist and retrocomputer fan (ie: nerd) from Belfast, Northern Ireland.

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