Cracked Rabbit Gaming

Kodu Game Lab: Full Game Video Tutorial with Narration! – Generic Wars

Tommy Gun — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 22:45:33 +0000

You can download this tutorial as a single divx file from the Downloads page. See my previous Kodu Review if you're unfamiliar with it.

Learn how to create an entire game from scratch with Kodu! This 4-part video will teach you how to make a Geometry Wars style twin-stick shooter. Kodu is only $5 on the indie games channel on Xbox live.

Part 1

In this part we'll learn about land tools, and setting up basic character controls.

Part 2

In this part we'll add walls, some enemies, AI, a path for a wisp. We learn how to use pages, and mess up the programming with a misplaced "random" tile.

Part 3

In this part we'll program a 60 sec clock on an invisible rock, add music, and bump some enemies.

Part 4

In this final part we'll add some lights, and put the finishing touches on our game. We learn how to add some text with a keyboard, add glyphs, and mention land types.

You can download the "Generic Wars Tutorial" game from the Kodu servers. Also look for my advanced version called "Generic Wars Infinity."

Update: This got linked on the Kodu blog! :)

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Kodu Game Lab video tutorials: 3 Keys, Popcorn Popper

Tommy Gun — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 22:14:08 +0000

You can download both of these videos from the Downloads page. See my previous Kodu Review if you're unfamiliar with it.

Note: I also put up a much longer tutorial showing how to create a whole game from scratch!

3 Keys Tutorial

Here's how to use three separate keys to open color-coded doors, all using a single variable (score). This isn't really needed now that they've released Patch 1 (more variables), but it still may be interesting and give you some ideas. It will at least teach you how to use keys in general.

The Popcorn Popper

A game I made just for fun.

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Kodu Game Lab is out! Remember Kodu? Anyone?

Tommy Gun — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 22:34:54 +0000

Kodu, you may remember, is the game programming tool shown at CES by "actual 12-year-old girl," Sparrow. It was cartoony and cute and bright, and many people wrote it off instantly: "LBP rip-off!", "Stupid rock-carrying game?!", and so on. I really wanted to try it out, and now, apparently, it's out. I say apparently because it's gotten almost no press, and the only way I found out was by randomly browsing the Community Games channel and seeing it there. (Okay, Joystiq and other sites did post about it, but I had relatives over for the past two weeks so maybe I just missed it.) Still, after the CES demo I thought its release would be a much bigger event, and it would show up somewhere on the Xbox dashboard (Spotlight). It's too bad it wasn't released on XBLA rather than the CG channel, the place where no one dares tread.

Anyway, I've been playing around with it for the past few days, and it's great! You really can create all sorts of games, from FPSs, to side-scrollers, to racing games. The interface is very well designed, for the most part, using nested pie menus for all of the actions/objects. There are lots of different lighting options and ground materials to help change the look of your games, so don't think everything created has to be blue-skies-and-rainbows. The programming is easy, but surprisingly deep if you learn how everything works. Because it was initially designed for kids, it's also very fast. You can go from editing your level to playing it in under a second.

I was programming a dual-stick shooter for a video I hope to put up, and my roommate started watching. "What happens when you run into the UFOs?" he asked.
"They blow up and damage your ship."
"Is that what always happens?"
"Well no, that's what I made them do. I can program it to do whatever. I can make them…turn into apples, if I wanted to."
"Do it!" Literally twenty seconds later I had it working that way, just for fun. The Kode (yes, I just called it that):
WHEN bump puck DO vanish me
WHEN bump puck DO create apple
Crazy how simple it can be, isn't it?

There are definitely limitations though. One of my biggest complaints is that not every object has every option available to it — you can create a tree that shoots missiles, but a soccer ball can't follow a path the way lights and bots can. I was hoping each object would simply look different, and have sliders set differently (bounciness, speed, etc.), but could be programmed however you want. If you like how one vehicle controls, but wished you could use a different 3D model, you're out of luck. But this is where extreme creativity shines. With these limitations, how far can you take it? Some game types seem impossible, but someone will figure out how to make it work. Kodu comes with a bunch of samples and prebuilt games, so you can learn how the more advanced games are programmed (they're all editable). Be sure to check out "gawlf" to see how they brilliantly used the health bar to act as your swing power meter.

Did I mention it's only five dollars, which is a steal? I easily would have paid $20, and with a more robust system it could have been a retail game. I should mention that Kodu does a pretty poor job at introducing you to the game. They desperately need a "play tutorials" button on the main menu, with a list of tutorials that get checked off as you go along, each one with a hint system (where's Clippy when you need him?*). There are just three tutorials that come with Kodu, mixed in with the other games, and they don't actually explain anything. I guess they thought it was so well designed it didn't need any explanation. So I recommend watching some video tutorials (online — none are included) first to get an idea of it before you jump in (I hope to have some tutorials up in the near future).

You won't be able to make the next Gears of War, and you won't even be able to make exactly the arcade game you had in mind, but new ideas will appear, and you'll have fun doing it. If you have kids, buy Kodu. Even if they can't use it on their own, you can create things with them. If you've ever had a game idea of your own, buy Kodu. It's designed to get you thinking like a programmer, and it succeeds.

Other Notes:
Right now game sharing sucks — you have to be friends with the person, and both be running Kodu at the same time. They are working on a patch though, which will add three dedicated servers! There's also a bug where levels seem to get deleted — if it happens, restart Kodu and it might fix it (more info here). The patch will also fix this and other issues.
The patch is out! Delete Kodu and re-download if you don't have it (there's no "update" function).

Links:
Kodu fan forum
Audio interview with Matt MacLaurin — back when it was called Boku.
The Kodu Blog

* Please don't include Clippy. In anything. Ever.

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Totally addicted to Ninjatown (DS)

Tommy Gun — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 08:22:49 +0000

Ninjatown is a tower defense game for the Nintendo DS, starring a whole bunch of Shawnimals characters. The whole game is absolutely adorable, with great animations, and lots of strategy. I was expecting to be able to play this while listening to music or podcasts, but it's surprisingly involved. If even one enemy gets through, you won't get an A. In stages where you're protecting an object, just one strike from an enemy will take you down to a B rank. The enemies are fast, so you need to constantly be scrolling around the map watching for anyone who breaks through your defense, and be ready with your special powers (you can use wind to blow enemies back, or fry them, etc.). Here's a quick summary of the game by the developer:

You step into the shoes of Ol’ Master Ninja, tasked with defending Ninjatown from waves of enemies trying to make their way through the town. To stop them, you construct Ninja Huts along their path, from which Ninjas will emerge to engage the enemy. Building each hut costs you Ninja Star Cookies, the currency of Ninjatown, and as you defeat enemies, you earn more cookies. You then re-invest these cookies into building and upgrading huts to deal with the ever increasing waves of enemies. You can also build something we call Modifier Buildings, that will endow any adjacent huts with a special ability. These include buildings like the Training Dojo, which can increase your attack power, or the Tea Shop, which makes your units move faster.

That’s only the basics though, among the new gameplay elements we introduce are Ol’ Master Ninja (OMN) Powers, which are unlocked throughout the game and help to supplement your defensive abilities. These give you powers like Get Off My Lawn, where the player blows into the microphone to push enemies around on the map, or Magnifryer, which lets you direct a beam of scorching hot light on your enemies.

The ninja huts you build are what you'd expect — slow powerful ninjas, fast weak ones, snipers, ice/fire ninjas, and so on. There are also building modifiers, which raise the attack power of the surrounding ninjas, increase their range, or get you more cookies (money). You can upgrade the huts, but that takes time, so you need to do it between waves, or hope you have enough ninjas out there while upgrading.

I just beat the game, getting A ranks on every stage (with the help of strategies on a couple stages). It's an incredibly fun game, and its biggest fault is its length! It's not that it's so short, but it's so much fun it leaves you wanting more, and there were so many obvious, easy ways to extend it!
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Read the rest of Totally addicted to Ninjatown (DS) (454 words)

Review: Guitar Hero World Tour

Tommy Gun — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 13:16:48 +0000

Why has it taken me this long to post a review for GHWT? Is it because:

I didn't buy it until just now, because I've been broke
the blistering speed of the new songs melded my hands to the guitar, leaving me unable to use a computer keyboard
I've been so addicted to GHtunes that I've spent every moment creating and playing new songs
although we bought it on day one, it's not very good so we haven't beaten it yet, and instead simply unlocked all the songs with a cheatcode and played the ones we liked in quickplay, then went back to RB2

Yes, it's the last one (though I've played it more than that). How can a game that seems almost identical to RB be so much worse? It's the little things…
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Read the rest of Review: Guitar Hero World Tour (1,657 words)

Site upgrades!

Tommy Gun — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 19:19:46 +0000

You may have noticed some changes around the site. I've added a "recent comments" section to the sidebar, so you can see what people have been discussing lately, and now there are "related posts" at the bottom of each post, directing you to other points of interest. Categories are now a drop-down menu, to help reduce the clutter. More changes will be coming soon, as well as some new writers. Are there any other features you'd like on the site?

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Rock Band Expert Drum videos now for download

Tommy Gun — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 07:31:18 +0000

I put up high quality divx versions of all the drum videos. You can find them all here:

http://crackedrabbitgaming.com/download/Rock-Band-Drum/

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Rock Band Expert Drum videos!

Tommy Gun — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 19:30:44 +0000

I finally put up some drum videos. There are eight of them; the first three have a separate camera for the bass pedal, the rest are zoomed out to show both hands and feet. The three with the separate bass camera are Chiron, Indestructible (gold stars), and Inside the Fire — I did those specifically for people who bitch "why does HMX put out songs that are impossible to play with one pedal?"

Because there are so many different things happening, the compression is terrible, so clicking "watch in high quality" is definitely recommended. My drums drop tons of notes, but oh well.

YouTube playlist for my drum videos

I will put up downloadable divx versions later.

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Hayley Williams almost a capella (Paramore)

Tommy Gun — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 13:14:30 +0000

Why this was done: So you can hear Hayley's voice almost isolated.

How this was done: The video you're seeing is not what the audio came from. The audio was captured by turning off all sounds (crowd, instruments, etc.), and playing with No Fail mode turned on, with a full band (but not playing). Some tracks can still be heard, as well as some booing, but it's fairly quiet.

The video was done a second time, vocal only (no fail) just so you don't have to stare at the full band charts. You can see my Hayley character singing (it's hard to get an actual likeness with the RB creator).

That's What You Get:

crushcrushcrush:

Frogger: The Later Years (image)

Tommy Gun — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 06:19:14 +0000

I made this image for a random online game, but since it's very game related I figured I'd post it here. I made it in response to this caption:

It might be entertaining for the video game fans, but all those hours spent trying to cross the road to get home have left frogger extremely sleep deprived, and exhausted when he gets up for work in the morning.

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Well I feel like an idiot. Comments approved!

Tommy Gun — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 07:17:47 +0000

This site gets so much spam (don't they all?), that I really don't bother checking the "marked as spam" comments (I have yet to see a false-positive in there). I have the site configured to email me whenever a real comment gets held for moderation, but for some reason, it stopped emailing me months ago! I haven't been posting a whole lot recently, and when I post videos I figure most people simply comment on youtube, or on the various sites (NeoGAF, rock band forums, etc.) where I link to the video. Well I finally was going through some settings and found there were tons of comments held for moderation that I didn't know about! So I went through them all and approved them, and will make sure that doesn't happen again. Very sincere apologies to anyone who took the time to comment! They were not lost, just delayed!

Of some note are all the great comments on Half-Life 2: Episode 2 – "Little Rocket Man" Gnome Achievement Tips. Nine months later, and people are still leaving comments, which can now be seen! Thanks for all the extra tips!

Another good comment is the review by Eugenio, posted under my Getting Up Review.

So aside from that stuff, I'd just like to say that I will definitely be putting up some Rock Band videos! I wanted to wait until I had better drums, but I don't know if that's going to happen anytime soon. I'll be sure to get some full band videos — we may be having a "Rock Band 2 BBQ" in the next week or so.

I'd also like to get more content up, maybe some more podcasts (I wanted to do a GTAIV podcast, but my roommates took forever to finish the game! I beat it in three days). Now that I promise your comments will be seen — what do you want to see more of on this site? Guides? Gameplay videos? Rabbit Runs? Podcasts? More papercraft videos? :)

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Video: Tommy Gun's Rock Band 2 Manual Calibration Guide (papercraft)

Tommy Gun — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 23:24:25 +0000

I spent a bunch of time messing around with the RB2 manual calibration settings (I don't have the new Strat), and decided to make a short video explaining them clearly and simply (I hope). I used this method to calibrate my system, and it works really well. So if you're confused about exactly what the settings do, and which way you need to move them in order to sync up the game, this should explain all of that. I use the drums as an example, but obviously this also works with the guitar.

Let me know if I made any mistakes, and I can add some annotations to the video.

** Download the high-res divx version on the downloads page **

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Quick "Rock Band 2" Review

Tommy Gun — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 00:54:47 +0000

Yesterday, I got up and played Rock Band 2 from around 8am until 10pm, with a few breaks to eat. I still have a lot to unlock. My roommates were gone, so I played the whole thing Solo — which is a great new feature. World Tour can be played alone, and since I'm pretty good, I was able to amass stars and fans very quickly, which meant new venues kept unlocking and I didn't have to replay many songs.

There are a lot of features I have yet to try, but let me run down some of the biggest improvements (and worst removals) Harmonix has made, and suggest some more changes. I haven't played online at all, so I can't comment on that, nor do I have any of the new instruments. I'm calling this a "quick" review only because I'm focusing on specific things that matter to us RB-obsessed players, not reviewing every part of the game.
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Read the rest of Quick "Rock Band 2" Review (1,592 words)

Some news about the Rock Band ION drumkit

Tommy Gun — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 15:50:11 +0000

As I've mentioned before, I have an electric Yamaha drumkit, and I would love to use it with Rock Band (my RB drums are pretty messed up now). Since the ION kit uses 1/4" plugs, I was hoping I could just buy their brain and use my pads with it. I started a thread about it on the RB forums, and a lot of other people want it too (see whole thread). I emailed the company and actually got a direct response back:

Tommy,

Thanks for getting in touch. While we do expect to eventually offer the controller module separately, we intend to do so to allow Drum Rocker users who own multiple consoles to use a single Drum Rocker kit with all of their systems.

The module was designed specifically for use with the Drum Rocker drum and cymbal pads, which have a unique set of output characteristics (as do all electronic drum and cymbal pads). Lots of work has been done to ensure that Drum Rocker is optimized for Rock Band performance, in terms of trigger sensitivity, crosstalk rejection, latency, and more, and the design of the module has been tuned to deliver the best possible performance in conjunction with the Drum Rocker pads. Plugging another set of pads that happen to have 1/4" outputs into the Drum Rocker module will not yield the same results as using a Drum Rocker kit, and in fact may not work at all, so we don't recommend it.

However, if your goal is to have a single electronic drum set that can be used with your existing drum module and Rock Band as well, you can go at this from another angle. We would suggest that you get a Drum Rocker set, and use the Drum Rocker pads with your existing electronic drum module. If it's got 1/4" inputs and its input sensitivity can be adjusted, you should be able to combine the Drum Rocker pads with your existing module, and have exactly what you're after – a single kit for playing games and playing music!

Hope this helps!

Customer Service – DrumRocker
Ion-Audio

So of course their solution is to have me buy the whole drumkit, as you'd expect — no thanks. I hope someone buys the brain anyway and tries it out.

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Rock Band: 5-starred Blackened! (expert drums)

Tommy Gun — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 10:23:22 +0000

I really didn't expect to do that; I guess it's all thanks to my new pedal. I still need work on Kool Thing, Hammerhead, The Perfect Drug, and a few others. I added some of my high scores to ScoreHero, and will add more later.

I've also been trying to raise my career score, and have almost broken the top 500 on the 360 leaderboards. I've been reading about the best overdrive paths to use, so I just thought I'd let everyone know:

Public Service Announcement

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The Best Rock Band pedal, 5-starred Disturbed Expert Drums

Tommy Gun — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 06:52:17 +0000

I haven't been able to play Rock Band for the last week and a half because our 360 Red Ringed. Luckily, a friend came over today and brought his Xbox, so we swapped HDDs, bought some new songs, and played for a while. I've been really wanting to play the MTV pack, and now the new Offspring/Avenged Sevenfold.

I finally decided to just mod the pedal that came with my Yamaha DTXplorer, since I play Rock Band more than Drummania nowadays (and it doesn't disable the pedal or anything). This is the best Rock Band pedal there is now (click for large):

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Read the rest of The Best Rock Band pedal, 5-starred Disturbed Expert Drums (117 words)

Dark Sector, and Poor Game Design

Tommy Gun — Mon, 19 May 2008 09:30:10 +0000

My roommate just signed up for GameFly, and got Dark Sector. I was never really all that interested in the game, but I figured I might as well play it since he's only renting it. I'm not going to write a full review since I haven't finished it (and probably never will), but I want to talk about a few things. For the record, I got to chapter 7 (out of 10) before I stopped playing.

Quick Thoughts

Dark Sector isn't a terrible game if you're a fan of the genre, but there are a lot of weaknesses. Enemies respawn far too often, which amounts to you ducking behind a wall for ten minutes shooting the same enemies. It copies Gears of War too much, including things that don't make sense: as GiantBomb pointed out, your running and sprinting speed is the same as GoW — which makes no sense here as Hayden (your character) is a skinny guy, not a giant man in armor.

The "glaive" is great, and is one of the only things that sets this game apart. It's a blade that acts as a boomerang; throw it to slice enemies in half, and it'll come back to you. You'll gain an "aftertouch" ability which lets you slow down time and actually direct the glaive mid-flight, which is what I spent most of the game doing.

Aside from that it's a pretty standard shooter.

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Read the rest of Dark Sector, and Poor Game Design (1,010 words)

This picture speaks for itself.

Tommy Gun — Fri, 16 May 2008 12:15:11 +0000

No, I don't care about Gold Starring it!

Now that my drums are working almost perfectly, I'm trying to raise some of my scores. I just re-calibrated Rock Band, because it still felt off. I tried harder this time and tested it, and it really felt like it made a difference. I basically have to just guess the settings though, because the "calibration tool" never works.

I five-starred a whole bunch of songs: Dead on Arrival (as you can see. I don't think I've played it since the first month we got RB), Next to You (Yes!), March of the Pigs (although I think I've only played that one once before, not a huge NIN fan), and some others. I still haven't gotten 5 on Run to the Hills, but I'm closer (4 and 3/4?).

I even passed Blinded by Fear for the first time (3 stars), but I played cheaply and purposely missed half of the hi-hat notes. If you just alternate hands (hi-hat, snare) and still hit the bass pedal, it's not too hard, and you'll still maintain your health. I don't think I can physically play that song correctly all the way through, it's just too fast.

So now I only have a small bunch of 4-stars left (including DLC), and just that one 3-star!

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Podcast #2 – Rock Band Drum Mods (Tommy Gun + Mojo)

Tommy Gun — Tue, 13 May 2008 23:56:10 +0000

There are a whole bunch of mods that can be, and should be, done to the Rock Band drums if you're serious about playing. How do you increase the sensitivity? How do you dampen the noise? What about that crappy bass pedal that always breaks? We discuss all of these things, and the different solutions people have come up with.

See a quick video of the mods at the bottom of this post, along with links to all things discussed (you might even want to watch the video first so you know what the stuff looks like when you listen). I also posted some score pics below to show my drums are working pretty well.
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Read the rest of Podcast #2 – Rock Band Drum Mods (Tommy Gun + Mojo) (275 words)

The Rock Band Drum "In-between Sock Mod" (guide now up)

Tommy Gun — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 10:19:51 +0000

The Rock Band Drum "In-between Sock Mod"

Here's a little guide I wrote for a Rock Band drum mod (based off of another mod). It's working great for me, but I'd love to get more feedback on it. If you try it, let me know how it works!

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Cracked Rabbit Gaming

Kodu Game Lab: Full Game Video Tutorial with Narration! – Generic Wars

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Kodu Game Lab video tutorials: 3 Keys, Popcorn Popper

3 Keys Tutorial

The Popcorn Popper

Kodu Game Lab is out! Remember Kodu? Anyone?

Totally addicted to Ninjatown (DS)

Review: Guitar Hero World Tour

Site upgrades!

Rock Band Expert Drum videos now for download

Rock Band Expert Drum videos!

Hayley Williams almost a capella (Paramore)

Frogger: The Later Years (image)

Well I feel like an idiot. Comments approved!

Video: Tommy Gun's Rock Band 2 Manual Calibration Guide (papercraft)

Quick "Rock Band 2" Review

Some news about the Rock Band ION drumkit

Rock Band: 5-starred Blackened! (expert drums)

The Best Rock Band pedal, 5-starred Disturbed Expert Drums

Dark Sector, and Poor Game Design

Quick Thoughts

This picture speaks for itself.

Podcast #2 – Rock Band Drum Mods (Tommy Gun + Mojo)

Contents:

The Rock Band Drum "In-between Sock Mod" (guide now up)