RagDoll Kung Fu

#1 Yeah, it is awesome =) Seems like the same idea could be used with T2D

#2 Yes that's what I was thinking. It's just really amazing how much you are getting for 15 bux.

#3 Very interesting game. I bet that core concept of nothing being defined can be taken a very very long way.

#4 An indie developer is making what seems to be a platformer using concepts similar to ragdoll kungfu. They have a quite fun test demo. The controls have a way to go but it is still fun to play with.

www.steviegoodwin.plus.com/RagDoll.zip

#5 You this could be a genre defining game. Who ever thought a bunch of grown men would be playing with Ragdolls... lol

#6 Good game, but only as an experiment. The controls are way too sloppy to be genre-defining or anything like that, but it is a wonderful experimental game that is alot of fun to play for a while.

Plus, the low budget kung fu movies are hilarious.

#7 I think if you could find a way to tighten the control scheme a bit you could make something a little more solid. I think more people should focus on the openess of the moves. But I doubt you would have much time to appreciate them as it seem really difficult to do things on purpose... if you know what I mean?

#8 Looks like it would be a fun game, but after Half Life 2 I promised myself I'd never buy another Steam distributed game again.

#9 Looks interesting, but Why Steam? I've still not played HL2 because of Steam. Stream is the software equivilent to a Nuclear Warhead to crack a nut.

#10 What bothers me about RDKF is that there is no demo/trial version. They currently expect you to buy the game without playing with a trial version.

#11 Interesting how a community of indie developers reject Steam, the greatest attempt yet to make online distribution (our chosen medium) mass market.

I agree Steam has it's problems. Valve made a mistake, pure and simple, by requiring you to be online whenever you try to play Half Life. However, nowadays people have very few problems. The creators of Half Life were putting their asses on the line to try and remove our dependence on publishers, and for some reason even those of us who should be most patient are the first ones to turn their backs.

Ian

#12 I do agree with Ian on this one: yes, it's not perfect, but the concept/theory behind Steam is possibly an incredible and generational leap for indie developers. Of course, it could turn out to be "retail chains online", but if/when they work out the issues people have with it, the possibilities it opens for us are pretty incredible.

#13 OK, I don't want to derail this thread too much, Ragdoll Kungfu looks amazing and deserves to do well, but I believe Steam will be a major problem for games released using it.

And we may be removing our dependance on publishers. but we're placing our dependance on something else instead.


What happens when the steam servers close down? Or the company gets into trouble, is brought out? All those games which rely on steam for authentication to install won't be able to be installed anymore. I install old games all the time, HL1 for example... But to re-install HL2, you have to re-authenticate your copy via steam and if the server's no longer there or no longer supports your game.. what do you do?

A Game is for life not just for Xmas...
Please tell me I've missed the point or I'm being way too negative or I misunderstand the concept completely...

I'd be all for a piracy provention, online distribution mechanism which allows the consumer to be able to have all the freedoms to play the game any time they want to whilst preventing pirates from stealing my hard work.. but at the moment, all security mechanisms in software and hardware impose some level of user inconvenience.

#14 I don't mind a bit of inconvenience, but Steam just hacks me off. I was under the misguided impression that buying HL2 at retail would reduce my dependance on it. The only difference is that I have a CD with the software on rather than having to download it.

I really enjoyed the original Sin game, but as the new episodes are also going to be released on Steam, that's another game (or set of games depending on how you look at it) that I won't play.

As a developer, I'm sure Steam offers lots of great incentives and gives you a huge market that you perhaps normally wouldn't reach. As a consumer, it's a PITA and I have no intention of purchasing any more games that make use of it.

#15 Well, Valve just has a huge ego, I am sure they will do something about it.
And this game looks very interesting...

#16 I don't think Steam means an awful lot really. Next thing is that publishers will start using similar delivery systems to distribute their games, and instead of having to go to EB to buy older AAA titles for $20 or less saving money ob packaging, disk fabrication and transport. Making it even harder for indies to sell products that don't have the same kind of marketing clout behind them. I imagine steam is the first of many such systems that will arrive in the next couple of years. A few months down the road nothing will have changed really.

#17 Philip, you at no stage state what your problem with Steam is. "a PITA"? Do you mean you don't want to be online all the time? Very soon the idea of not being online all the time will be ridiculous for all but a few.

Jason: I belive that is the one true problem with Steam, but one of two things is going to happen. Either :

(a) Steam (due to peer pressure) will stop requiring you to register each time.
(b) A single, global, goverment backed organisation will become responsible for activating online products. This is done to reassure people who refuse to buy software online, and thus to increase sales by the software company.

I agree that Steam has it's problems, but conisider this: your average consumer (and I mean average) will not do something "new" for the first time without a big push from friends, advertising, or a trusted company. They are scared of it. There are millions of people who would never have bought a game online until Half Life 2 came along and offered them a big incentive for doing it. The problems with Steam are well documented because they happened to the hardcore: the people who tried to buy on day 1, and the people who get all up in arms about some horrible company owning their software. The other category of people who had problems with Steam are those who have intermittent connections, and remember that those people were effected whether they bought HL2 online or at retail.

My point is this: Valve made a huge mistake by requiring online checking each time you play the game. But Steam has bought On-line Games Purchasing into the "mass consciosness", which is a hell of a lot closer to hugely increasing our possible market than we were before.

A final counter-argument to Adrian: there's no (or very little) barrier to entry to publishing online. In shops, you must have expensive advertising to be noticed above the throng because advertising is all that the average consumer has to go on. Online, you are three clicks away from actual reviews, and even the average consumer knows to trust a review over an advert.

It's very difficult to change anyone's mind in a forum-discussion, but those are my opinions on the subject.

Ian

#18 "My point is this: Valve made a huge mistake by requiring online checking each time you play the game. But Steam has bought On-line Games Purchasing into the "mass consciosness", which is a hell of a lot closer to hugely increasing our possible market than we were before."

They don't. They only require one online check per game, after that you can play them just fine offline.