Minecraft Adventures: The Underground City, Progress and Hellish Prisons

Well a few weeks ago I was back at Richy D’s place for another round of Minecraft creation fun, we decided to continue working on the underground city we had previously started building. I apologise for the lack of screenshots as I was kinda busy at the time and forgot to take enough and I also forgot to take a copy of the world so I could take more screenshots.

A cool looking cave Richard had blasted out

 I started finishing off the houses that I had previously built and Richard fixed up the quartz paths and made a street light. We built two ‘luxury’ houses along the path and I say luxury because they were fairly luxurious compared to the other houses that had been built, Richard made a single level L-shaped house while I made a two-level large rectangular. Mine was supposed to be the 5-star house if I was still working off that initial idea that I had for the villager accommodation so it was properly made of bricks, wood and wool for carpet unlike the others which were made of a mixture of wood and stone or just stone. After I finished building I realised it was too low and the windows touched the ground (and I like them to be one block up so hence why it’s got a sort of sandpit around it. I didn’t know what else to do as you wouldn’t be able to get grass down here, it’ll probably look pretty good with some cacti around though I still dunno what we’re going to do for plant life around here, mushrooms maybe? We could use mushrooms of all sizes and mycelium as the basis of the underground ecosystem, especially since they are technically the only plant life underground apart from moss, anyway it’s an idea. 

My main house on the top and Richard's on the left

Back view of the new house I made.

 The underground city was starting to form pretty well, Richard made a cool looking lighthouse tower thing with lava then after that we were deciding what to build next, and for some reason we decided we wanted to build a jail, right in between two of our houses (including mine) no less. So we started building this jail and right away I knew it was doing something different then the norm something more disturbing than the normal happy Minecraft building. I didn’t really have to think much about what block I was going to make the structure out of: stone brick of course, I think I love it a bit too much though it’s the most fitting for an underground jail, plus stone slabs for the floor rounded it off quite well. For the design we decided on two levels, the top level would be predominately for villagers while the bottom basement level would house all kinds of nasties, such as blazes, zombies and skeletons. 

Far view of the underground city inc Richard's 'Light Tower'

Main hallway of the prison

Additional cells

I designed the top level in a sort of L shape with a long hallway at the front which has the stairway to the basement on the right and leading to another room and more cells on the left, I also did my usual heightened roof with iron bars all around. The cells were narrow but reasonably long, I liked the way when you put villagers in there as prisoners they stood on their beds near the window trying to get towards the light outside. I didn’t put much in the cells just a bed, chest and desk with chair, I used iron doors obviously with switches outside to control them. I went downstairs to see that Richard had made a hellish monster ridden dungeon with skulls and a torture rack, which gave me an very sinister idea. 

Cells and Villager prisoners

 

I decided to the main room upstairs into a sort of Hostel-esque room where unfortunate prisoners deemed are tortured then chopped up on the table then the body parts disposed into the nearby lava chamber, I made the room complete with a victim cage so they could watch prisoners before them being killed and adorned the rest of the room with other benches furnaces and dispensers. I also got the idea to light up the building with redstone torches instead of normal torches as it created a darker gloomier effect which suited the prison much better. Only after finishing this place did I realise that this was pretty f’ed up though I took value in the situation that we may have been the first people to make something like this in Minecraft. 

Richard's underground dungeon

The "humane" bodily disposal room

Alternate view

Throughout our building Richard had decided to turn monsters on so there were monsters all over the place on the houses etc, though because it was on creative they did not attack us they only attacked the villagers so it got pretty funny when we were building and testing out the cells. Because of the zombie hordes mechanics we sometimes had 10 zombies outside a cell that a villager was in and because they come from up to 16 blocks away I had zombies coming in from every direction, they’d literally walk right past me looking at me and continued down the stairs to find the villagers and I had to sue fire to clear them out occasionally. Weirdest time I’ve had building ever.

Oh well, the Underground city continues

My mother would be proud

The Past and Times of Yore: Spyro the Dragon and the illustrious series of Spyro, platforming excellence

Just a note, I’m going to start leaving scores on these reviews similar to the Gamefaqs style of a score for each section then an overall score (story, gameplay etc) but I’m not going to break it up into sections or advertise it in my facebook posts etc, it’s just go give an idea of what I think (or thought) anyway I’ll see how it goes.

 Release Date: 15/11/1998
Genre: Platformer
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment

Developer: Insomniac Games
Platform: Playstation
Players: 1
Classification: E (Everyone)

 
If there ever was a defining era for modern platformers In my view it would have to be in the era of the 4^th generation consoles where the Nintendo 64 battled for dominance against the first Sony Playstation console, though the Playstation did sell more units during that period (125 million to 33 million) it’s arguable which machine was more popular. It was during the mid 90’s that pioneered the era of 3D gaming and specifically the 3D platformer. It was always going to be a major move for Nintendo, how to do Mario in 3D? But they pulled it off, and pulled it off well a 3D platformer may have been difficult and somewhat cumbersome judging the gaps and dealing with the “floating camera” style view but Mario 64 as well as Rare’s Banjo-Kazooie and Conker series were a rousing success. For me though it was a different path as I don’t know how or why my brother and I decided to get a Playstation but fortunately for us the Playstation was rich in 3D platforming goodness with the likes of  Ape Escape, Rayman 2,  Gex: Enter the Gecko, the infallible Crash Bandicoot series and the lesser known Croc: Legend of the Gobbos though with all these great games I didn’t end up owning any of them, I had the arguable Crash Bandicoot series ripoffs of Mario Kart  64 and Mario Party.

Crash Bandicoot: A classic PlayStation series

What I did have though was the Spyro series and what a great series it was in the aptly named “Golden Years” of Spyro on the Playstation consisting of the first three Spyro games developed by Insomniac Games who went on to create the Ratchet and Clank series which is also very good I hear, I must have played them through more than three times each as they were the best 3D platformers that I have ever played. The three games put together gradually got better, the first Spyro the Dragon was set wholly in the Dragon Worlds while the Spyro 2: Gateway to Glimmer was set in a whole other world of Avalar and the third Spyro: Year of the Dragon gave some new insight to the Dragon origins. All three were very similar in gameplay, graphics and sound, with the gameplay and features only changing slightly each game which made them all so great.

I'll mention here that these screenshots were taken with ePSXe which is a Playstation Emulation software so they may not look correct, they may even look a bit more high resolution, also I apologise for the black bars.

Insomniac games, creators of Spyro's golden age of the first 3 games

After Insomniac left the Spyro mantle was handed down to various developers, the first iteration on the PS2: Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly made by Check Six although was a great looking game and didn’t differ from the Spyro formula much all, it had a multitude of gameplay and graphical issues inc invisible walls, incorrect hitboxes, frame rate jumping and irregularity and very slow loading times. The second PS2 Spyro title was Spyro: A Hero's Tail which I believe was the best one for the PS2 and last real Spyro game to date, this game changed quite a few things in the Spyro gameplay and universe but was by far the best since Insomniac so hats off to Eurocom for that one before everything went bad, so very bad.

Some footage of A Hero's Tail (because I couldn't get a screenshot)

The Legend of Spyro series which originated on the Playstation 2 was an entirely new trilogy-to-be with an almost completely new storyline with Spyro actually being brough up by Sparx (his dragonfly companion’s) family (which I found kind of ridiculous) though Sierra Entertainment seemed to pull out all the stops and managed to get Elijah Wood and David Spade to voice Spyro and the Sparx respectively with Gary Oldman as one of the four Dragon Guardians. After borrowing the first of the series The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning (yes borrowing from the video store I still did that back then) I watched the intro and found the animation and voice acting to be awesome, then when I actually started playing the game I found that Krome studios had done something terrible. The gameplay was much more action based with Spyro pulling off punches, kicks and headbutt combos to defeat enemies who now had health bars and could no longer be killed in a single hit, they had effectively turned Spyro into a  linear beat-em-up. Rather than focusing on platforming i.e. exploring an area, defeating enemies and looking for treasure you now went on a liner path from room to room and had to defeat all enemies in that area before moving on to the next.

Some footage from The Legend of Spyro a New beginning, you can see the way Spyro now fights through different areas and how the game had partially evolved into a beat-em-up

Needless to say I found this absolutely unacceptable, and threw the disc out the window, well actually I didn’t do that but I did stop playing, there were two more games of that same tripe and don’t even ask me about that over-simplified toy advertisement Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure in which it seems Spyro is now shoved into the series in a cameo role like an old past-their-prime actor who everyone used to respect but is now just getting tired of them. I’ve never bought another Spyro game since A Hero’s Tail and by the way things are going I probably never will.

So that in a longwinded way of saying things is what brought me back to the original Spyro the Dragon, many times actually. I still carry the opinion that the original Spyro was the best as there’s wasn’t really anything added to the game since then that stood out in a big way with the possible exception of the areas where you played as Hunter in A Hero’s Tail, that guy deserved his own game.

Spyro the Dragon title screen,  as you can see the emulator does a pretty good job of smoothing out the models but not the 2D graphics.

I first found out about Spyro through one of those many demo discs we used to get in Playstation magazines/showbags etc and immediately found it quite enthralling, the environment, graphics, the music it was nothing like I’d ever seen before, I’d only previously played 2D platformers on the SNES and when I experienced running and gliding around a fun new majestical world, well it was intense, I remember just running around the beautiful Artisian Homeworld going “wheeeeee!” I then knew that I had to buy the game, it was too good not to.

My favorite homeworld: The Artisan

The story of the game is quite simple, Spyro is a young Dragon living in the Dragon Worlds he also seems to be the only young Dragon at this point. The start of the game shows two of the Elder dragons being interviewed by what appears to be a TV crew about the Dragon Treasure and the threat of Gnasty Gnorc who is obviously the main protagonist and has apparently found the ability to turn the Dragon treasure into minions. The scene cuts to Gnasty  apparently watching this on TV in the Dragon junkyard where he was banished and he gets enraged when the Dragons mention he is ugly and no threat and uses his magic mace to turn all of the Dragons into crystal except for Spyro who is too small for the blasts to reach, Spyro then takes it upon himself to free all of the dragons, defeat the gnorcs collect the treasure and eventually defeat Gnasty himself.

The big guy himself: Gnasty Gnorc, here in all his blockyness.

I could ask a few questions about that into like how do the Dragons and Gnasty have cameras, microphones and televisions? Eh magic I guess. 

"I'd like to thank everyone for their support: my fellow Dragons and the Fairies who helped me alomg the way and I'd also like to thank Stewart Copeland for an excellent soundtrack, really kept me going."

Anyway so after that you start in the Artisan homeworld right in front one of the dragons trapped in crystal and after breaking him out he tells you what you need to do, find the dragons, collect the treasure etc and that’s pretty much it then you went off into the Artisan world. That was the beauty of that game, unlike some of the other titles which had cutscene after cutscene (especially at the start) this just goes straight into it. The game is split into six different homeworlds of the Dragon Realms which in turn have portal around the area that lead to levels within the world. Each world had a sort of theme to it, the Artisan world is peaceful and tranquil and has ornate gardens, architecture and castles, whereas another world I am fond of is the Magic Crafters which is set up on a fantastic looking snowy mountain with enemies that can levitate and move around walls, objects and the ground itself and other which shoot ice and lightning at you.

The Beast Makers world with it's swamps, temples coupled with Gnorcs with electrical weapons make for very unique area much unlike the usual flow that these kind of platformers tend to take, lava world, jungle world, ice world etc

I love the way the game starts off as a very low difficulty level, in the Artisian homeworld there are no enemies that can hurt you you just need to run around defeat the enemies and collect the treasure, I also love the way some of the gates are located in an area that suits their environment for example the portal to Dark Hollow is through a small hedge maze and the portal to Ice Cavern is in a tunnel to the underground. Your goal in each world/level is to free the dragons, collect all the treasure and as a side quest, collect all of the dragon eggs that have been stolen by thieves in the first three worlds, ahh it’s so simple isn’t it?. The last level of each world is usally the most challenging and ends with you needing to defeat a boss character, after that you would have either saved enough dragons, collected enough treasure or dragon eggs to satisfy the worlds Balloonist to take you to a different world.

The Ice cavern portal entrance leads to an icy zone in the middle of a desert so it is fittingly located in a cavern itself.

Controlling Spyro is pretty easy especially in the first game, you can charge, breathe fire, jump, glide and dodge/roll diagonally you can also look around Spyro with the shoulder buttons or view the environment through a camera on top of Spyro’s head and that’s pretty much it, the only qualm is you have to make sure the camera is set to “active” otherwise it doesn’t quite snap into view when moving well enough. As a platforming game Spyro is pretty simple, you jump around, you may have to do some tricky glides but that’s it, the only challenges I think come with the Supercharge pads (especially on the Tree Tops level) and the flying levels that allow Spyro to fly and the objective is to flame/charge all the enemies/objects within the time limit. The worlds have many whirlwinds  which act as lifts and allow you to reach high up places to glide from, sometimes whirlwinds activate after you have climbed a hill or building. To collect treasure you just basically defeat enemies, charge or flame chests or find keys to unlock chests, you health is monitored by your dragonfly friend Sparx who changes colour (from gold) every time you get hit until after 3 hits he disappears and on the 4^th Spyro is defeated, Sparx also helps you by collecting treasure in your immediate area.

Crystal Flight: One of the levels where Spyro has to fly around and flame all the targets within the time limit

The graphics and music in this game is a large part of what makes it so good, the graphics were great for their time and the visuals and sounds are so unique, especially in the first game , if I ever heard the music anywhere I was I would instantly know it was from Spyro, the mix of percussion instruments that I really wouldn’t be able to tell you what they were. Every world/level as the appropriate music for the area as well i.e. calm and happy for the Artisans world, upbeat and militaristic for the Peace Keepers and slow and quiet for the Beast Makers often the movie starts off slow or ominous (especially on the boss levels) and is quite scary then it gets into its main beat. The sounds are also great, charging enemies and breaking chests with Spyro’s charge attack is especially satisfying and also collecting the games for the sounds they make. It’s really hard to explain in words which is why I have a movie linked below.

Kapow!

When you first enter into worlds and the levels inside that world the environment, objects and enemies fit right in, there are various types of Gnorcs though most of the other enemies are unique to the area, I especially like the Dream Weavers world where some of the wackiest creatures and enemies are found. I find myself just wandering around looking around various levels especially at the little nooks and crannies where treasure can be hidden, as I’ve probably said before I love the Artisan world the most, it’s what probably made me enjoy the first levels of most adventure games as their so easy and peaceful. The worlds consist of a mostly fantasy settings in plains, valleys, mountains, deserts and swamps with vibrant colours, most of the enemies wield medieval weapons if any with the exception of some worlds where the Gnorcs use guns, cannons and electricity. The polygonal graphics in this game although they glitched and teared at some points they were great for the time and I just loved the simplicity, looking at every little bit of water flowing every castle, every intricately designed cave and vibrant colourful sky. If I had one word to sum up the sound and graphics it would be unique.

The Dreamweavers world, a wacky place

I think I’ve played this game at least 4 or 5 times through, that and the trilogy made by Insomniac are just that damn good. Even now I would recommend this game to anyone who wanted to see what a true 3D platformer should be and yes it does beat Mario 64 in my opinion. Spyro was just magical in almost every way, sound, visuals, environment and gameplay The Playstation had a great bunch of 3D platformers going for it and this was the best of the lot.

Story - 9
Gameplay - 10
Graphics - 9
Music - 10
Sound Effects - 10
Play Time - 9
Replayability - 10

Overall: 10

JD

Press the jump button twice to glide, and don’t be afraid

My Usual Spiel: Sub Rosa, trust, deceict and greed simplified

Release Date: 17/8/2012
Genre: Indie Team-based FPS
Publisher: Cryptic Sea
Developer: Cryptic Sea 
Platform: PC/Mac/Linux
Players: Online Multiplayer
Classification: Unclassified

The Latin phrase Sub Rosa, meaning “under the rose” in English basically means anything secret or confidential, it is also the name of one of the best small indie games I’ve experienced. I found out about it through my good friend Brok Power who had previously shown me the original Ace of Spades.

Sub Rosa is a 3D FPS (First Person Shooter) which brings so much more to the table than your average FPS that you may not understand it all until you actually play it. Set in an alternate laissez-faire 1980's city, you join one of three corporations with one goal: making money. Gameplay involves tense deals, double crosses and car chases between these opposing teams or ‘companies’ named Goldmen Inc (Gold), Monsota (Blue) and OXS International (Grey) situated in a very plain looking city at various levels of sunset.

 
Sub Rosa Gameplay (version 0.7b)

Sub Rosa was originally created by Cryptic Sea for the 7 Day FPS game jam, hence it’s simplistic nature, like Ace of Spades the first primarily noticeable thing about Sub Rosa that is the graphics are minimal at best, you’re in a city of tarmac roads and 3 dimensional block buildings with not much else other then parking garages and grassy areas, if you can call the green parts grass that is, there aren’t even any trees (as yet) and the characters and vehicles are all of a similar minimalistic style, it’s often hard to distinguish what team you’re driving past as only their ties are coloured which makes it hard to see from a distance. Of course this is all expected in which the original version was made in 7 days for a competition and I think they’ve done a pretty good job, after all it’s still in beta. The plain black/white/grey menu screen fits perfectly and I am impressed by the amount of options available, I found the game is not able to be alt-tabbed but you can get around this by playing in windowed mode which isn’t too bad, there are a few servers available but none in Australia though the ping seems to be ok in most cases.

A Three-way deal gone wrong at the highway near the park, you can actually see the bullets whizzing around.

Once you enter into a server or the very useful driving or shooting ranges you immediately notice a few ways that Sub-rosa differs from your normal FPS, the basic controls are mainly the same, WASD to move left mouse button to shoot, E to enter vehicles, TAB to show the map etc, when you first move around you’ll notice you character doesn’t quite stop as soon as you take your finger off the move button they sort of slide to a stop, making general moving around and especially getting into cars a bit awkward. 
 

"What a mess" "You're tellin me"

The game uses a one-hand one-object way of handling items and uses the number keys as an ‘inventory’ rather than a “click 1 for main weapon” click 4 for knife” etc style so for example if you can only pick up an item or drive a car if you currently have nothing in your hands (or hand) and you “store” an item by pressing the number keys which have 5 slots. This makes things kind of tricky when you’re starting out or trying to do things quickly i.e. pick up suitcase, pick up disk, select suitcase, open suitcase, insert disk, close suitcase, put away suitcase , get gun out etc you can spend a lot of time remembering what to do (especially dropping items which uses the tilde ~ key- very annoying trying to explain to every new person how to do it) but I spose you do get used to it after a while.

"No I'll take the disc, drop it, you need to press tilde, yes the little squiggly line next to the 1 key, oh wait we're in a car" "How the hell do we even speak we have no mouths" "Will you two shut up back there!"

Before a match you start in your company’s base which contains your vault and available cars. You can purchase various items inc. guns, vehicles, bandages and stocks (by pressing Q), the mission items are provided and dropped for you. As you earn money you can purchase better items to help you succeed (the 9MM is always free but you cannot purchase if you’re money is on minus figures). I’m still not exactly sure how buying stock works but there’s a pretty good explanation on the Sub Rosa Gaming site which is a great source of information for the game.

The buying screen which you can use at any time while in your own base, that's our vault I'm standing in front of by the way.

Basically the gameplay is round based, with different game modes I've detailed below.  These modes often revolve around items like wads (or blocks) of money, suitcases and 8-inch floppy discs, yes you heard that correctly you’re killing each other over information stored on a piece of technology which is probably older then you, though that’s what they used in the 70’s and 80’s. These items are used in the game as objectives and for wheeling and dealing depending on the game mode, most of the time you have to acquire a certain colour of floppy disc as a primary goal and another as a secondary goal, the primary winning you and you company more money obviously, here is a brief description of each below.

"Ok drop the case, and I'm gonna check it too, so no funny business"

 Transaction: This round is the most frequent of the game modes, the three teams either start off with a disk, cash to trade for the disk, or nothing at all. This mode usually involves the teams with the disk and the cash organising to trade and the team with nothing often either pretends to have money or just comes in shooting- the object of most games is to retrieve your primary objective (disk or cash) and bring it back to the vault inside your base.

3-Way Deal – This mode is almost always the most tense, all 3 teams have disks and have a different colour disc as their primary goal, the teams must communicate to organise a clean trade or double cross.

Acquisition: In this mode all teams have to acquire the floppy disks from enemy NPC characters driving limos around the city. If you fail to do this the NPC’s drive out through the tunnels on the edges of the map and the round finishes.

Race: As the name says this mode involves a race around the city in a pre-determined track blocked off by barriers with white banners as gates. This is one of the most interesting game modes as it has a special rule that the first player who fires a gun they lose $10,000, though once any player on any team has shot everyone is free to shoot as they please.

Acquisition mode can get pretty nasty

 All modes apart from race usually involve some kind of communication with another team, you can do this by pressing the Y and U keys, there is no global chat (though there is same-team chat).  The city environment consists of flat and angled roads, buildings and some grassy spots with many key areas:

Company Bases: Located on 3 corners of the map, this is where you start in a round depending on which team you are on.

Buildings marked with letters: A, B, and C are parking garages, with some being multi-level. D is a large open building, often called the “factory” or “warehouse”. Brok likes to call it "where people go to die".

The Park: A patch of green near the middle of the map. Very popular for 3-way trades.

The Dead End: Yep that’s it, the only one on the map. A favourite spot for gold-blue deals.

Civilian cars be found on various carparks, in race mode barriers are set up to mark the course, there is also some other grassy patches, pillars and gaps around the city. You should be cautious if asked to perform a deal in the dead end or building D as these are places with limited cover and prone to ambush.

The city map and memorandum (mission briefing)

I must admit I’ve had a lot of fun in the game; it’s the unpredictability of it that leads to many fun albeit incredibly tense encounters when one loose shot can turn an already tense deal into a shootout where one team member grabs the case and limps bleeding through a hail of bullets back to the car before the driver screeches away and floors it back to base with another car in hot pursuit. My friend Brok and I have had lots of fun playing it while voice chatting and it’s makes it that much easier than trying to type everything, it’s amazing also the amount of strategy involved as you try to co-operate with or outsmart the other team. The only drawback I found is that if you’re playing over LAN you have to be all on the same team otherwise you’re going to hear each other’s strategy.

If you like Indie games or just FPS with a twist and are looking for something different, this is a good one. I leave you now with a video made by my friend Brok aka Mr. Pink

JD

We built this city....