Watching

I watched the UbiSoft E3 conference, yesterday.

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The Mario game looked ok, but a bit slow for me. You all know my thoughts on games being slow. I'm writing AGameAWeek, here, I can't spend 10 minutes trudging through a boring menu driven interface to make my player do a single attack.
If the combat were more fast paced, much like the Multiplayer Mode from Future Cop : LAPD, then I'd be more interested.

Other than that, pretty much every other game they showed looked like something I'd enjoy if it were a TV show. This is an issue I'm having a lot with modern AAA games. "Games" appear to be nothing more than glorified cutscenes, and in a majority of cases, those cutscenes are the better bits, outstripping the gameplay by a million miles.
The actual gameplay of a LOT of recent games simply comes down to "You have a gun, shoot the other people", and I can do that just as well if I open Unreal Tournament Classic, with it's epic amount of variety, from a multitude of mods, maps and mutators.

I'd say I'm "Too old" for gaming, but.. No ... I'm not!
]Nobody that creates AGameAWeek could possibly be too old for gaming!
I'm just not a AAA gamer. And I'm ok with that.

Note : I didn't watch the Sony one.
I know that Sony are doing a lot with VR, but that my motion sickness and health-related balance issues are wildly incompatible with VR. It's put me off watching Sony's output for the past year or so :

Development

RetroRaider's level generation got a lovely big boost, yesterday, and things are getting immensely more difficult. I'm actually going to have to scale things back a little for earlier levels.
Today I need to decide on what kind of menu system to have.
I'm currently thinking a good old fashioned "999 levels!!!" list, but .. hmmm...
Another option may be available.. (?)
We'll see!

SoCoder2

Meanwhile, over on SoCoder2, I got the start of the Search function implemented yesterday.
I've built a new reusable search that can be added to different areas of the site, where needed. So, for example, if you head to a user's "Blog" page, it lists their latest blog posts along with their recent Showcases.
Rather than hard-code these SQL Queries, like in the original site, I've simply used a single line of code that asks for 6 search results. It's infinitely easier to tweak in the future, and makes for a much neater script.
Today I'll be continuing to work on the search, adding extra options and complicated search facilities.. .. Or giving up on search and shoving in a link to Google!!

Size wise, Socoder2's "includes" currently total just over 300Kb.
By conparison, the original site's include folder is over 900Kb, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. There are various php files scattered all over the root folder, and I'm not even sure, any more, which are used and which aren't.
It's a absolute mess!!!

SoCoder2, however, is all neat and compacted into an easily manageable selection of files. Gud stuff!

Daily Doodle : A Jelly Friend

Platdude's met up with his old friend JellyFred TriangleHead.
He's complaining about the weather, again.

Misc..

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If you'd like to stuff my mailbag, (Please do!!) you can do so right here, at https://bit.ly/AGAW_Mail. Send comments, questions, game ideas, thoughts and more, and they'll usually show up on my daily blog, the very next day.