Mark Jones

This is Mark Jones website and gallery.If You, like me, remember fondly the times of Amiga games, then You should check it out, he did artwork for Darkmere which looked fantastic, awesome palette, awesome pixel power ! Kudos, Mark !

More Jeff Vogel insights

RPG Vault has a nice article about addictive elements in RPGs, by Jeff Vogel. Worth reading.

Listen to the man !

All brave indie developer should listen to people who "made it".

Someone I really admire, look up to and worship is Jeff Vogel from Spiderweb.

Yes, the man, the myth, the legend.He does "his thing" since more than a decade, and he is doing it his way, and he is doing it good.

Jeff, You rock man ! Kudos !Keep those RPGs coming !

Adventure Screen

This is a WIP from a graphic adventure (old school style) I am developing.

Catching up with the classics: Jade Empire (Xbox)

Thanks to Moe I just was reminded that although I purchased JADE EMPIRE a while ago, I never took the time to really play it.Started it now and played for two and a half hours.Its good.The graphics are great (beating anything I have seen on Cube or PS2 except maybe for FF12) and its very moody.Not to mention the fabulous concept art.Once I am through with it, I will write a little review here.Then I will go on with Knights of the Old Republic.

More game stuff...

The Don and Voodoomaster...old stuff from school...

And while we are talking spaceships...

...that's one I once made for a game that is still in the making, secretly :)

Great Star Trek stuff !

The Lightworks is an awesome site with fantastic Star Trek related artworks.
The provide breathtaking intros for Star Trek conventions ! Tobias Richter, who runs the studio, is what You would consider a veteran in the biz.
He also started out back on the Amiga, where he did artwork for Black Gold, or "Oil Imperium" as it was called in germany.On Amiga he also made a Star Trek fan game, which I purchased.
Great guy, and great stuff.

Sacred 2 (xBox 360) suxx

Okay, so me and the lady played Sacred 2 for about two hours.She has played both parts on PC and LOVED them.After two hours we gave up on it.In our opinion, its a waste of time.The graphics are not "next gen" (constant problems with the frame rate, sudden jumps to new locations, colour choice is quite strange, and when playing together on one screen, the chars are so small You hardly see anything).
The controls are OK.The atmosphere is severly lacking, too much text.The sound is buggy, sometimes NPCs move their mouths and You hear nothing.And all in all, for an RPG, there is not enough You can do with Your character (no change of appearance, no good choice of races or classes).At the end, its a pretty huge yet generic action hack'n'slash that never reaches the class of its predecessors nor the ultimae competitor DIABLO 2.
So we hope and pray Blizzard will bring Diablo 3 on XBox 360, because that we will preorder twice :D Heck, we will even buy a second XBox for that game.Come on BLIZZARD !!!

Talk About Android

Talk About Android

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Indiana Jones and The Staff of Kings (Wii) minireview

Indy is back, and this time he's bringing old gameplay mechanics, unfair restart points, non-skippable tutorial and cutscenes, bad (voice) acting and less-than-intuitive controls.
For all fans who played through the other Indy games, this one is nothing special.It has better graphics than both Infernal Machine and Emperor's Tomb, but the general acting is bad, the voice acting in particular, and the WII controls are less than perfect.
Add to that the fact that especially at the beginning You have to sit through the same tutorial texts and speeches over and over again if You fail (and most of the time You fail without knowing why), and You get a cumbersome and not-so-rewarding Indy experience.
I really wanted this to be great, I love Indy, and the whip-based gameplay was a very appealing idea.Alas, the execution is so poor that even a fan like me can't spend so much time redoing parts just because I failed near the end of a chapter.
I recommend this only to die-hard fans, because at least the graphics are nice and it's INDY.

STOP SMOKING

Went to my dad's tomb today.He died 5 years ago from lung cancer.All I can say: You definitly do NOT want to end like this, fighting for weeks, fighting for every single breath, needing all Your strength to fight for oxygen.If You smoke: stop now.If You don't: don't start.
If You have children: stop smoking.Don't be weak.
My dad was a strong man, and a strong smoker.And I miss him each single day.

Bad start today, our bathroom door couldn't be opened anymore.So we had it opened by a professional, and that was over 100 Euro (including new lock).
Started reading Perry Rhodan Volume 39 "Paladin" today.Love that story, its getting "faster, more intense" all the time.Will start posting art stuff quite soon.

Blu-Ray micro review: Wall Street and Robin Hood-Prince of Thieves

Last weekend we watched both movies, and compared to spectacular stuff like BladeRunner or 2001 , these two have not been properly remade for the big format.The picture quality is (maybe) slightly above the DVD quality, the picture looks flat, as well as the colours.
Soundwise they're ok, but only just.If You have the DVDs and a player that upscales, don't bother buying those two as Blu-Ray.

We are not worthy :)

Larry Shultz, also known as SPLINEGOD has interesting stuff on his website, if You look for things LightWave, then this is the place to go for training.
Larry is one of the most dedicated and experienced LightWave artists in the world.He more than knows his stuff.Kudos, Larry !

Janosch Obenauer, more than worth a look

Janosch Obenauer (aka Jaymo) has a cool website where You can check out his art and design works.He's an excellent artist with plenty of experience.

Transformers 2: Every schoolboy's wet dream

Ok, so yesterday we went watching what seems to be THE blockbuster of the year.What can I say, its a big badda-boom, some nice glamour shots of sexy Megan Fox and a bit of nasty teeny jokes à la American Pie.Good special FX, but I am through with gigantic, transmutating robots.The story is getting...rusty.

Absolute Blue

Here's a trailer for "Absolute Blue", a great retro shooter game (SHMUP) we made.For all fans of classic action games, this should be worth checking out
at intermediaware.

There is also a little free game You can download.

Very interesting book

NFGman has a book out which I would like to recommend to any games artists who is interested in pixel art and pixel art history.
Nic stuff about Henk Nieborg, one of the absolute best artists out there.

My friend Arne is working on his website...hopefully soon back...