I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as Infiniminer,
is in fact, GNU/Infiniminer, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Infiniminer.
Infiniminer is not an fame unto itself, but rather another free component
of a fully functioning GNU voxel game made useful by the GNU mono implementation
comprising a full game defined by GSJ.
Many computer players run a modified version of the GNU voxel game every day,
without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU
which is widely used today is often called "Infiniminer", and many of its users are
not aware that it is basically the GNU game, developed by the GNU Project.
There really is a Infiniminer, and these people are using it, but it is just a
part of the game they play. Infiniminer is the core of the game: the program in the system
that allocates the machine's resources to the other programs that you run.
The core is an essential part of an game, but useless by itself;
it can only function in the context of a complete voxel game. Infiniminer is
normally used in combination with the GNU voxel game: the whole game
is basically GNU with Infiniminer added, or GNU/Infiniminer. All the so-called "Infiniminer"
distributions are really distributions of GNU/Infiniminer.
I'm Zach Barth, the creative director of the game studio Zachtronics. I've been making "indie games" for a while now, including Infiniminer, SpaceChem, Ironclad Tactics, Infinifactory, TIS-100, SHENZHEN I/O, Opus Magnum, and the recently released EXAPUNKS.
Today I'm here with the Zachtronics team to answer your questions! We recently launched EXAPUNKS, our 90s-inspired, maybe-cyberpunk-maybe-not, hacking/programming/open-ended puzzle game, and would love to answer any questions you have about that, or any other game we've made, or anything else that has to do with Zachtronics.
EXAPUNKS: http://www.zachtronics.com/exapunks/
PROOF: http://www.zachtronics.com/proof.txt
EDIT: If you're going to post EXAPUNKS spoilers, put them in some spoiler tags! >!Like this!<
I'm Zach Barth, the creative director of the game studio Zachtronics. I've been making "indie games" for about 10 years now, including Infiniminer, SpaceChem, Ironclad Tactics, Infinifactory, TIS-100, SHENZHEN I/O, and the newly released Opus Magnum. Also, some dubious educational games that were 66% about pooping. We've arguably pioneered multiple genres of games, including Minecraft clones and design-based puzzles. Possibly also real-time, card-based tactics games, but we don't talk about that game much.
I guess there was also that time that I closed down Zachtronics for a year and worked at Valve on the SteamVR team, where I was one of a few people who worked on Xortex 26XX for The Lab. We can talk about that too, if you want, but try not to ask too many questions about working at Valve.
Today I'm here with most of the Zachtronics team to answer your questions! Our newest design-based puzzle game, Opus Magnum, was just released to Early Access on Steam last Thursday, which is ostensibly why we're here. It's very pretty. Despite that, I have no intention of making this a Rampart-style AMA, so please ask us about anything that interests you! We've been at this for a long time and have a lot to talk about!
PROOF: http://www.zachtronics.com/proof.txt
EDIT: Looks like we're done for now, thanks for all the questions everyone! If there's something you still want to know you can always email me at zach@zachtronics.com and I'll try to help you out!
Hey there, Reddit!
I'm Zach Barth, the creative director of the game studio called Zachtronics. Over the past seven years I've worked on a bunch of interesting indie games, like:
- Infiniminer, the game that started the "block game" genre without making any money whatsoever.
- SpaceChem, a programming game about fake chemistry that somehow made enough money to fund a game studio.
- Ironclad Tactics, a card-based tactics game that nearly bankrupted us.
- Infinifactory, a snazzy 3D factory-building game that plays like a version of SpaceChem that wasn't made by an asshole.
- TIS-100, an absolutely inexplicable game about assembly language programming that includes a 14-page manual instead of a tutorial.
- MetaboSIM, HabiTactics, and FAKTR, three educational games for tablets, two of which involve pooping as a game mechanic.
We just released Infinifactory, which was previously in Early Access and is now available on Steam! That's merely the occasion, though... it's time to ask me ANYTHING!
PROOF: https://twitter.com/zachtronics/status/616299830931906560
EDIT: It's been 10 hours, so we're probably done here. Thanks for all the great questions! I'll leave you with one final story, which I don't think I've ever told before:
Toward the end of my career at Microsoft I worked briefly on a team inside Microsoft Game Studios making games for Windows Phone 7. I was a programmer, but everyone on the team knew I wanted to be a game designer (especially considering I had designed and launched SpaceChem by that point). There was a meeting scheduled inside MGS to talk about plans to bring Minecraft to Xbox 360, and our creative director (who also worked with the XBLA team) thought it'd be a good idea to bring me along, since I had made Infiniminer and that might be relevant. So there I am, sitting in a conference room, completely outranked by MGS executives wondering who the fuck I am and why I was there. Story of my life.
Actually, that's kind of a depressing story, so I'll leave you with a better one. That same creative director found me another game designer in MGS to act as a mentor and help me figure out if and how I could shift to a more design-focused role at Microsoft. We go out to lunch for our first "mentorship session" and his is advice to me is, I shit you not, to quit
... keep reading on reddit ➡http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/131fno/gabe_newell_talking_about_how_valve_works_chris/
Just linking back to the original story at first because there's already a selection of highlights there in the comments, as well as a response from the channel creator that I think is worth seeing (they do free legal advice/services a la the EFF for game developers).
But to give you some more direction: Chris Avellone talks about the events that culminated in Black Isle's closure, and what it was like starting up Obsidian with Feargus Urquhart (the CEO). He also talks about the painful process of interacting with publishers ("If they haven't given you money yet, assume the game isn't happening")
Gabe talks about the flat structure of Valve, its advantages and drawbacks, and how "straight A" students fall into the abyss (and out of their employment) when confronted with Valve's company structure. He also talks about their constant experimentation with ways to connect players to content, and giving players who create value roles, viewership, and incentives (monetary and otherwise) to keep providing that value.
Jordan Weisman (creator of MechWarrior, Shadowrun, and the "I Love Bees" ARG) talks about creating products that can spawn large universes, how to manage licensing your IP out to other companies, as well as licensing the IP of others to make a game in another company's universe. Something to note is that Jordan and Chris both gave the same advice: Don't put your money into your workspace.
Those are all the ones I've had time to watch, but the channel's interview playlists include the aforementioned Edmund McMillen (of Team Meat), Zach Barth (developer of SpaceChem), and many others. Can't wait to wade through them.
This is a formidable puzzle game where you use your intelligence, creativity and imagination. But be warned this game is so hard it will cause a sudden need to plan things out, excessive whiteboard purchases, dehydration and low blood sugar due to not eating, sudden need to eat quickly, more planning, frustration, telling your significant other for the tenth time just another 5 minutes, ramming head through monitor, finally solving a puzzle bringing more satisfaction than sex, giggling maniacally, and wondering where your significant other went. Alright I might be joking about all that but if you like figuring out how something works and if you like to be challenged, then Glyphs Apprentice has many hours of exciting puzzles for you to play.
Check it out on the Steam Summer Sale for 50% off for $5 at: http://store.steampowered.com/app/592120/Glyphs_Apprentice/
Verified? (This bot cannot verify AMAs just yet)
Date: 2015-07-01
Link to submission (Has self-text)
| Questions | Answers |
|---|---|
| Hi Zach! My favorite Zachtronics game is TIS-100. When did Zachtronics become a full time job for you? Can you shed a little light on the history and growth of the company? Was Ironclad ultimately successful? | When we released SpaceChem, I told my wife that if it made $100K I'd quit my job as a developer at Microsoft and start running Zachtronics full-time. When we reached that point I didn't feel comfortable leaving, as a game that took a year to make and only made $100K wouldn't actually be enough to sustain a small company. So, we bumped the target up to $300K. We ended up making Ironclad Tactics, which started off much more like The Bureau of Steam Engineering but gradually traded steam engineering for card mechanics until it became the game it is today. During the two years we worked on Ironclad Tactics we scaled up to 7 full-time employees, partially for Ironclad Tactics but also because we had started making educational games for a company called Amplify. |
| In the process of scaling up, our burn rate increased from under $100K/year to almost $500K/year. We had figured that since Ironclad Tactics was far more playable than SpaceChem it would do better, but after release we learned that this was not the case; Ironclad Tactics went on to make about 1/3 as much as SpaceChem, far less than what was required to sustain our burn rate for the development of another title. In all honesty, had we not been also making educational games for Amplify we probably would have gone out of business. After wrapping up work on Ironclad Tactics, its add-on campaigns, and the educational games for Amplify, we downsized pretty dramatically and started working on a game that we could make cheaply and reliably: Infinifactory! I feel that I'm a fairly versatile game designer, able to make a passable game in almost any genre, but engineering puzzle games are absolutely my wheelhouse. That, combined with the strong fanbase from our previous puzzle games, gave us the confidence that Infin |
Game Information
Game Title: The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes
Platforms:
- Xbox Series X/S (Oct 22, 2021)
- PlayStation 5 (Oct 22, 2021)
- PlayStation 4 (Oct 22, 2021)
- Xbox One (Oct 22, 2021)
- PC (Oct 22, 2021)
Trailer:
Developer: Supermassive Games
Publisher: Bandai Namco Entertainment
Review Aggregator:
OpenCritic - 74 average - 51% recommended - 40 reviews
Critic Reviews
Cerealkillerz - Manuel Barthes - German - 7 / 10
>After Man of Medan and Little Hope, Supermassive Games doesn't manage to surpass Until Dawn with House of Ashes either. This is not due to the unfamiliar setting, but to the characters in it. Completely overdrawn and clichéd, the player is rather happy at the beginning if he accidentally gets rid of one. To make matters worse is the technical quality, which from the graphics to the control is hardly convincing. Thanks to a strong last third, House of Ashes still manages to turn things around and brings it to a positive conclusion.
Cultured Vultures - Nick Meekham - 6 / 10
>If you enjoyed the first two games, there is some fun to be had in House of Ashes, but glitches, a predictable story structure and some boring jump scares holds it back from being a truly worthy sequel.
Destructoid - Jordan Devore - 6 / 10
>As much as I feel like this series is stuck in the shadow of Until Dawn for a large part of the audience, collectively, The Dark Pictures Anthology is becoming something memorable in its own right. I’ll keep enjoying these games as long as I can, House of Ashes includ
... keep reading on reddit ➡Do your worst!
I'm surprised it hasn't decade.
For context I'm a Refuse Driver (Garbage man) & today I was on food waste. After I'd tipped I was checking the wagon for any defects when I spotted a lone pea balanced on the lifts.
I said "hey look, an escaPEA"
No one near me but it didn't half make me laugh for a good hour or so!
Edit: I can't believe how much this has blown up. Thank you everyone I've had a blast reading through the replies 😂
It really does, I swear!
They’re on standbi
Buenosdillas
Pilot on me!!
