It's been a long time, what with all of these exams that I have to do. However, I've had 10 days off between exams and I had an urge to be creative, so I've spent all week designing, editing and polishing some nice new videos for you! I've redone my 'Setting Up Source SDK' and 'First Map Tutorial' videos, going for a more traditional, segmented tutorial style which will be easier to upgrade should Valve change the way in which something is done. These videos aren't as comprehensive as previous tutorials, the reasons for that will become more clear once you visit the new tutorial page!

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE NEW TUTORIAL PAGE!

The empty spaces will be filled in over the next couple of days / weeks / years. I made this with the aim of allowing new mappers to visualise the tutorials and which ones to watch next, since there's nothing worse than starting the first of 30 tutorials, totalling about 4 hours altogether. For those of you who know a fair bit of Hammer already, you can ignore the first 3 videos I upload. The fourht one on lighting theory might be of interest though. Enjoy!

Wow. Just wow. I certainly haven't played the leak of Deus Ex Human Revolution, since that would clearly be illegal, but 'my friend' has played it and he can tell you, with out a doubt, that this is the best game that he's ever played. Now, both me and my friend are very similar. In fact, we have NOTHING that makes us different from one another. Apart from that I won't download an illegal program, since it's clearly wrong.

Deus Ex was a game my (other) friend told me to play. In short, it took me 2 years to complete. I'd install it, play it... get fed up because it was too hard and uninstall it again. Finally, after about 5 of these attempts, I got past the horribly difficult hells kitchen area and finished the rest of the game. And since then I've loved it. It got so much wrong, and yet it was still the best game I ever played. I can't believe it's taken 11 years for them to make a sequel! (Ignore Invisible War, it didn't happen. Clearly a conspiracy).

I've not been too interested in games lately. I'll play games like Gears of War and Total War, knowing that they're good, but not actually respecting them for it. But Deus Ex: the leak is different. When... my 'friend' plays it, he gets the same excitement that he got when he owned a Playstation 1 and one single game that he played 24/7. He got to know every flaw, every exploit, every line of dialogue off by heart from that game. The difference is, that was the only game he got to play. With 'my friend', it's simply so good that he doesn't want to play any other game. It's Deus Ex, with all of its flaws replaced with elements that are better than the good bits of Deus Ex. It's perfect.

Ignore the occasional slowdown, graphical averageness (My God, it really is paying homage to Deus Ex!) and glitchy ragdolls. This is the game I hope that everybody will play. After all these years of pestering people to play Deus Ex, they will FINALLY get around to playing the series, and they too will be hooked. I deliberately HATED this game because I didn't want my love of the series to make me love a consolised game, but I can't hate it. It's everything I love about Deus Ex and more. Download the illegal leak right now. You won't regret it. It's a superb game that retains the thrill of breaking into a house, sneaking around a police station and changing the life of some poor black woman for ever. No other game has the freedom that this one does and I can't possibly imagine another game this year displacing it from my 'Game of the year' augmentation slot. I didn't ask for this. Skyrim was going to be number one, but this has some how moved it to second place.

Ignore those people saying how battlefield 3, Gears of War 3, or Resistance Fall of Man 17 will be GOTY for sure. They have not played Deus Ex, and certainly haven't been a bad boy and downloaded the leak for this game. Just like when Oblivion came out, yet another one of the franchises I have sworn loyalty to has finally broken out of its niche shell, and will soon take the world by storm. An Ion Storm, perhaps.

Sure, you might not shed a tear when the Unatco music kicks in. You might not care when J Manderley comes up in an email. But you'll still love the game. Deus Ex: HR, you make m(y friend) proud. I pre-ordered the game immediately after (my friend) played the leak. I've never done that before. It's not the end of the world, but you can see it from here.

Just closing up my final year of University now, by the end of this week I'll have submitted my last bit of coursework and can get on to doing lots of videos and projects again! ...oh and revising for the exams, of course.

What exciting new stuff do I have for you today? Well, you can try out my new little game 'light cubed' which is my first flash project. I've learned a lot from it and have started up something called the 'cubicle brothers' which is my feeble attempt at starting up what could possibly become a bigger project with more people involved. Thanks to Rick Van Hale for the name!

I'm also going to make a lot of 'making of' articles, for anybody else wishing to start out on flash game design. I'll be talking about what I've learned from making the game. Might be worth a look if you're thinking of making flash games yourself.

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE CUBICLE BROTHERS PAGE!

This site has been updated.
* The Tutorials page has been revamped.
* Projects page is now improved.
* Fixed the bug with the 'Granny's Spaghetti' page, that was linking users to the, ahem- 'wrong' video.
* The picture at the top is now the same width as the rest of the page.

You can see how this site has progressed over the last 3 years in my new blog post!

Mr Tom and I have been working on a new game named Spellinx, over the last few months. Here is a making of video to give you a brief explanation of what the game is about.

Expect more updates over the next couple of weeks, we'll expand it from a one-screen example to a sprawling, explorable world. We'll also be modifying the gameplay depending on what's most fun. Save games now should still work as the game moves to later stages. Level up now! It might become harder in later versions!

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE DOWNLOAD PAGE!

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE PROJECT PAGE (WHERE WE WILL ANNOUNCE UPDATES)

Good, constructive day today. For the first time this year I have found a decent tune to work on for my new album (Yes, it took 8 months to find a good song to work on). But enough of that, the main news is a new tutorial! Sorry about the wait, it's been half done for WEEKS but I didn't get around to finishing it until today. Hopefully it's more polished than ever, after this video I'll probably move up to full 1080p just to say I have.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE NEW TUTORIAL SCREEN!

Revision is boring. Very boring. On the 21st I'll be free and can start on some fairly ambitious projects I have planned. Next week looks very interesting for a number of reasons and if I didn't have exams almost every day then I'd certainly be more enthusiastic about it. Let's have a look at what's going on.

Today (LATER) - Breaking Bad Season 3 final episode! You've probably never heard of this program. I hadn't until recently. It's by far the best TV series ever and if you watched the episode last week, I'm sure you're just as excited about it as I am.

TUESDAY 15th - THURSDAY 17th - E3 2010! I'm not normally that interested in E3 but I have a sneaky suspicion that this year's event will be one to remember. There's almost certainly going to be news on a new Half Life game / episode. Portal 2 is also due an appearance (and it looks as if it's based on a new engine version that supports real-time lighting!). Speaking of real-time lighting, the Deus Ex franchise is back after a failed second outing (the lighting still slows my computer down) with Deux Ex: Human Revolution. It looks set to change Deus Ex's trademark blue, dystopian future with a warmer, more colourful bronze tone. Hopefully the absurd conspiracy theories and free-form exploring remain intact. I'm hoping that ID Software's racing game 'Rage' is also at the show to showcase their new iD Tech 5 engine. Is it just me or does all of their concept art bear an uncanny resemblance to Half Life 2's levels? What ever. You've got to love their complicated, ingenious rendering techniques. What will they come up with next? Voxels?! :D Zenimax (they own the makers of the Elder Scrolls + fallout games) have also acquired ID Tech. Does this mean that the next Elder Scrolls game could be based on the ID Tech 5 engine? Probably not. But who knows?! HERE, have SOME PICTURES of what the engine looks like. There could also be a surprise announcement about the Elder Scrolls series at E3. This is shaping up to be a very good year for computer games...

SOME TIME SOON - new Counter Strike Source update to bring it up to date with the latest Source engine version! This means that you'll be getting real-time lighting on your flashlight and a motion blur effect if you spin too quickly. (I'm sure that everybody will remove this when playing competitively any way).

NEXT WEEK - I'm free of exams! I have lots of plans but I don't want to talk about any of them since I'm terrible at keeping promises.

To keep you busy until then, I have made a new computer game named

KILL MAIM DEATH 3: CIVILIAN MASSACRE

It's set in a future... street, where everybody has become brainwashed by violent videogames and has gone on a rampage. As one of the few sane people left, it is your job to KILL everyone! Controversial? Yes, but there's a reason for it. Yesterday, I got back from an exam and received a strange PM from a fake-account asking for help. Apparently he was signed up to an online game design course but he reformatted his PC, lost the game he had been making, bought a Mac (?) and then, conveniently, lost his MMF2 disc. And that he urgently required me to make a game for him by the end of the day. Don't ask. I set to work making a technically accomplished, yet horrifically racist and controversial game that would cause any online examiner to suspect the maker of having serious issues. The game took 3 hours and I have already spotted some bugs, but what do you expect? Thanks, Rabro101 for inspiring me to make a game. I'd happily swap my studies for yours any day.

I have exams coming up and I've been revising hard. Like a good boy. Until I have time to get interesting stuff done, have some juggling videos to look at.

...and here's a timelapse from a window.

And if you've been following 24, you'll know that it's now finished. Read my rant about how useless the endings were and how I could obviously do a whole lot better HERE

Since I'm such a hateful, grumpy old person, also have a rant about people ranting about 3D HERE

That's enough rage for one news update.

I have added captions to most of my popular videos, but that's not the main news. No, the main news is that DEATH GIVER 2 has been released!

I have begun adding captions to all of my videos, so they can now be read by everybody. This should hopefully put an end to problems (Oh no a GLITCH or Oh no a ZIT ?) and will clear up what Z means for ever. Now you can finally understand this video!

Okay, I'll admit it, I've been quiet recently. I've had a couple of University things to do, mainly presentations which I absolutely hate. I've also been watching 24, great program and I recommend watching it if you haven't already. Though the end of the 4th season is a bit useless.

I've also updated this site, you should find a lot more stuff on it now.

Here's a new tutorial, just in case you thought I was dead

...NO! I just haven't posted anything on my main page. Here's what I've been up to. (From the beginning of January to the end)

Mad? Yes. But dead? No.

CLICK HERE FOR OLDER NEWS