Today’s Indie Links include articles on certification requirements, software patents, and modding.  But if you’re just interested in articles about new games, don’t worry; we’ve got those too.

Modding Ideal For Aspiring Devs, Says DayZ Creator (Develop)
“Speaking in an interview with Develop, Dean Hall said Modding allowed devs to learn about how seasoned professionals had created their game, and also how data structures and engines work. He said that developing over an existing title could be better for aspiring industry professionals than diving straight into C++ programming, as it could teach you various techniques to implement when creating your own engine, or using another vendor’s tech from scratch.”

The Games Of Arab Game-Jam Game Zanga (IndieGames)
“GameTako is a gaming portal for Arab gamers and developers that holds a bi-annual Arab region-wide game jam entitled Game Zanga. As the latest Game Zanga resulted in 43 games under the community-selected theme “Freedom” and we really hadn’t covered any Arab games lately we thought we (well, I) should guide you through some of the jam’s more interesting and less text-heavy games. You can of course find and play all 43 of them here.”

Life After Dyad: Are Indie Games All Grown Up Now? (Gamasutra)
“After weeks of positive preview buzz, Right Square Bracket Left Square Bracket’s hallucinogenic racer Dyad has just released on the PlayStation Network to a widely warm critical reception in the consumer press. There’s something funny about the reviews, though. I’ve read the reaction from several prominent sites, and most of them have something in common: The writer hastening to inform readers that Dyad, which uses bright colors and abstract imagery, is not, in fact, the kind of liquidy visual experiment players might expect from an indie game.”

Data Jack (PixelProspector)
“Data Jack is an isometric mission based stealth action game that reminds a bit of the SNES version of Shadowrun.”

Driving Discussion: Jordan Hemenway On Nitronic Rush (IndieGames)
“The DigiPen-developed Nitronic Rush actually has no racing opponents. Instead, this free game offers an experiment in survival driving on Windows that has become widely acclaimed, earning the 11-person team recognition from IGF, Indie Game Challenge and Independent Propeller Awards and more. Nudged by continual fan interest, Nitronic Rush has already received four major updates since it released last year. In this discussion, Jordan Hemenway of Team Nitronic shares his thoughts on what makes the game so special. He explores the hurdles developers have to overcome in creating a driving game, while presenting a vast area ripe for indies to tap into.”

Wot I Think: Anna (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“Anna, with its single location, reactive horror elements and folklore-based story, seemed like it could be the game to scratch a lot of my itches. After playing through twice, to see how different the scares and the conclusions might be, I’m ready to share wot I think. Am I itch-free or have I got sixteen layers of my own skin sloughed up under my fingernails?”

How Certification Requirements Are Holding Back Console Gaming (Ars Technica)
“Independent game developers face a lot of obstacles, from limited funding and AAA competition to marketing challenges and getting attention from an easily distracted press. But those hurdles can multiply when an indie developer decides to release a game on a console. Fez developer Phil Fish highlighted this fact last week, with a highly publicized complaint about being asked to pay tens of thousands of dollars in recertification fees to Microsoft in order to patch a known issue with the game”

DRM Firm Uniloc Files Infringement Suit Against Mojang’s ‘Mindcraft’ (Gamasutra)
“The firm previously filed a patent infringement suit against Activision Blizzard and Mac game specialist Aspyr back in 2010, also naming Sony, Borland Software, McAfee and Quark in the same suit, alleging that the defendants infringed on a patented anti-piracy product activation method for software. Now Uniloc has filed a patent infringement suit against Swedish studio Mojang, claiming that the company is infringing on its patent ‘System and Method for Preventing Unauthorized Access to Electronic Data.’ It has also filed similar suits against numerous other companies, including Electronic Arts, Square Enix, Madfinger Games, Gameloft and Halfbrick Studios.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Links Round-Up: This Old House

Today’s Developer Links discuss the importance of optional subtitles, getting your program to crash properly, and teambuilding and vacations.

Fun With Subtitles (The Witness)
“Lately I have been doing some difficult puzzle design. Today I woke up and wanted a break from that, so I decided to nail down one of the loose ends that hadn’t been thought about yet: displaying subtitles during the in-game voice recordings (of which there are a lot).”

Friday Flashback #26: Going OnLive (Broken Rules)
“You might have noticed last week’s silence. We apologize for that. Our excuse – we’ve been adding content, features and new stuff in general to Chasing Aurora. The design sessions are crazy-productive and our brains are overheating from all the brilliant ideas we’re hatching. And, not surprisingly, we’ve also come to the point at which a few changes were necessary and just right to give us direction and keep us going.”

Announcing Lunch Bug! (Lost Decade Games)
“Today Geoff and I are very excited to announce our first major game in almost 2 years, Lunch Bug, a free-to-play, strategy puzzle game built using HTML5. Lunch Bug is available to play now on Pokki, the Chrome Web Store, and the open web. It even works in mobile browsers like Mobile Safari and the Android browser! For more information, please see the landing page and media kit.”

The Red Cross (Instant Kingdom)
“This is something we’ve been planning for a long time, and now we’ve finally gotten around to doing it. We’ve decided to donate a significant part of the income from Driftmoon to charity, namely the Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund.”

More Adventures In Failing To Crash Properly (AltDevBlogADay)
“In last week’s episode we discussed how 32-bit processes on 64-bit Windows might corrupt the exception state after a crash, and how any processes on 64-bit Windows might actually continue running after a crash. Serious stuff. This week’s installment of “Failing to Fail” is less dramatic, but still important for developers who want robust software, as we cover failure to terminate and failures to record a crash dump.”

Young Horses Vacay (Octodad Blog)
“People always talk about how important things like team building and vacations are. Around June of this year we realized that we had actually been a team and had been working on Dadliest Catch for an entire year already. We’re always keeping track of how much work is getting done every week and things like that, but to realize you’ve been working on a project for an entire year is sort of a jolt to the brain.”

Lunch Bug 1.20.16 (Lost Decade Games)
“In version 1.20.16, I’ve added the ability to skip the tutorial, as well as an animated hand image to indicate when users are asked to interact with the board instead of a button. These simple changes should help make the game both easier for new players to understand and less frustrating for returning players.”

It’s A Beautiful Evening To Be Hunted (Big Robot)
“James has created a gallery showing off one of our alternate times of day: a pinky dusk. Ooh, lovely. Head below for more. Might make some good desktops, eh?”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Dev Links: Sunset

Today’s Indie Links include articles on EVO 2012 and indies ushering in a new era of survival horror games.

Dyad: The Kotaku Review (Kotaku)
“To say that Shawn McGrath’s Dyad is intense is an understatement. The game may technically count as a mind-altering drug, and believe me, that’s a good thing. In my video review, I break down not only the experience of playing Dyad but also where it’s roots lay and why it goes above and beyond them.”

Super T.I.M.E. Force, SpyParty, Aztez, Super Comboman Dev Talk at EVO 2012 (IndieGames)
“At EVO 2012, four indie developers of the inaugural Indie Showcase walk their audience through their games and field questions on breaking into the industry and creating their titles. Justin Woodward of Interabang Entertainment shows off sticker-collecting beat ‘em up Super Comboman. Ben Ruiz of Team Colorblind walks players through the brawler half of Aztez (there’s also a strategy component). Finally, Nathan Vella of CAPY shows off Super T.I.M.E. Force, the XBLA exclusive run-and-gun platformer: think Contra or Gunstar Heroes combined with Braid.”

Hotline Miami: Me Vs. Level 4 (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“Level 4 is not the hardest level of Dennaton’s neon-hued orgy of sado-masochistic violence, and RPS’ official Best In Show at Rezzed, Hotline Miami. Oh, not by a long shot. It’s just the one that, once I finally beat it, made me feel like a god. I had a plan. I made that plan work. Every single action I took, every single movement I made, was with surgical precision. A dozen men died, and their little dog too. I never knew their names. I never cared to know their names. I didn’t even know why they had to die. I just knew they had to die.”

Driving Discussion: Mario von Rickenbach on Krautscape (IndieGames)
“Michael Burgdorfer and Straight, No Chaser and IGF finalist Mirage developer Mario von Rickenbach are working on their first racing game with gorgeous landscapes that allow for flying or driving to get to a goal, somewhere in space, as quickly as possible. While the leader in a multiplayer race creates the path with the direction he or she veers, others can create shortcuts often by flying to take the lead.”

Crajsh (PixelProspector)
“Crajsh is a fast paced multiplayer snake game for up to 4 players on 1 PC. It is a tribute to the DOS game Crash and was created by the developer of Wormhol.”

Endless Forms Most Beautiful (TIGSource)
“Endless Forms Most Beautiful is a Locomalito remake of a fairly recent (February 2012) ZX Spectrum game by David Hughes. Spanning 15 levels, the goal of the game is to collect all the imps on each level while avoiding various monsters. Moving around takes a bit of getting used to as it defies convention – you can travel up and down on teleport pads but only if you’re standing on top of a pad. Also, by leaving the screen you’ll end up either on the row above (if you went left) or the row below (if you went right).”

A New Age Of Survival Horror Games, Thanks To Indie Developers (Gamasutra)
“Horror in video games is constantly evolving. Where we may have once associated increasingly action-based franchises like Resident Evil as being the pinnacle of what horror games can offer, the dish of the day is now fear and tension: the idea that something may be lurking just around the corner that you cannot easily fend off.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Links Round-Up: Soaring

Developer Links include articles about music, procedural content, and, of course, the Ouya, because everyone’s still talking about that.

Procedural Content Generation: Thinking With Modules (Gamasutra)
“Manually creating gaming worlds takes time, and storing it all takes massive gobs of space. Since the days of Starflight and Elite, developers have worked towards getting computers to the point where they can be boundlessly creative… In this article, we’ll talk about PCG’s history, problems, solutions, and methods we’ve discovered while using it in our 2009 title, AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! – A Reckless Disregard for Gravity(Aaaaa! for short) and our upcoming 1… 2… 3… KICK IT! – Drop That Beat Like an Ugly Baby (akaUgly Baby).”

Mr Roboto (Hello Games)
“Joe Danger The Movie takes place on the set of the greatest action film ever made. This is one of the bad-guys, we call him ‘Mr Roboto’. He’s from the distant, shiny future and has been sent back to destroy the planet! I like to think he’s still a nice guy though. He can fire slime from his arms. So he’s been sent back in time to coat everything in green goop.”

Music (Vlambeer)
“Ever since we started out, we’ve tried to work with cool musicians for our games. We’ve had the luck to have worked or jammed with amazing talents like Eirik ‘Phlogiston’Suhrke, Jukio ‘KOZILEK‘ Kallio, Adam ‘Doseone‘ Drucker, Brother Android and Alex Mauer. We think that the music in our games is a big deal -imagine any of our games without their music and audio!- and based on what we’ve gathered in our mailboxes,Twitter and Facebook, you think so too. So for all you people that love the music in our games, here’s a long, long blog-post about music with some announcements hidden in there, too.”

Screenshot Saturday (Catapult for Hire)
“The game was recently shown at Rezzed and though I recieved a lot of great feedback, some of it reinforced why I needed to reinvigorate the beginning. I’m very happy with the new direction the game is taking and I can’t wait to start playtesting. All of these screenshots are from the new opening.”

Colorblind Mode Support (Cliffski.com)
“I’m working on adding this as an option for Gratuitous Tank Battles.  If you are red-green colorblind can you let me know if this looks better?”

Lostcast Episode 20: Ouya or Ooh, No? (Lost Decade Games)
“Lostcast is our podcast about HTML5 games. In episode 20, we discuss the much buzzed-about OUYA, Onslaught! Arena on Brass Monkey, and the launch of our new game Lunch Bug.”

Splice Screenshot Challenge (Cipher Prime)
“The point of this challenge is to be creative with the game mechanics. We want to see what interesting imagery people can come up with given the structures available in Splice. We’ll be selecting up to 7 screenshots to be featured as downloadable desktop backgrounds. Entries should be taken at the highest resolution available and in full-screen mode .”

Celestial Apotheosis – Uni Edition (hannardynamite)
“For my Gameplay and Game Design module in university, I “borrowed” Celestial Apotheosis from myself. This turned out to be a great decision as I received a fantasticmark of 92%. With this grade, and the various other successes I’ve had from using this game concept, I finally have the confidence to start/continue working on this game properly. I’d lost confidence, and interest really, in this for a number of various. But getting a glimpse of how good this concept is (good to one studio, and my uni, anyway!) has started to spur me into getting this game out there.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Dev Links: Go Fish

Aside from the usual links to articles about various games, today’s Indie Links also include indie developers’ take on the Ouya console.

Influential Indies On The Brouhaha Around Ouya (Joystiq)
“[W]e want to know what prominent and plucky indie developers actually think the Ouya can do for the industry. So we asked a few, includingMinecraft‘s Markus Persson, The Binding of Isaac‘s Edmund McMillen, Retro City Rampage‘s Brian Provinciano and five other indie starlings. Their thoughts are collected below in the order each developer responded to the email thread, because that seems more fair than arranging them by “best hair” or something.”

The Bunny Homicides: Hands On With Overgrowth (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“I was going to say Overgrowth is ‘early in development’, as it’s still in early alpha and doesn’t have anything approaching levels or objectives. But it’s been in development since at least 2008. To temper that lengthy development cycle, Wolfire have been releasing weekly alphas to pre-orderers. The version I’ve been playing is ‘a185‘, which shows you just how committed they are to this process. It’s still early in terms of the progress, though. They’ve focussed on how you do things over what you do, ensuring the player feels like a skilled, kung-fu bunny. There are a few test levels that I augmented with a community launcher that adds fan-made maps to the game’s menu. Soon, I had a lot of content: not particularly polished or game-selling, but enough to get a feel for what’s there.”

Hyperspace Invaders I (PixelProspect0r)
“Hyperspace Invaders I is a frantic vertical shooter with abstract graphics and minimal controls. Move left and right, blast away hordes of enemies, collect their souls and dodge thousands of bullets (your hitbox is the blue dot in the middle of your ship and thus pretty small)”

Indie Games Festival Comes To Boston (Develop)
“A new event celebrating indie games is scheduled to take place in Boston on the 22nd of September, and the organisers have announced that submissions are open for the debut games showcase.”

Deconstructing The Dyad Design With Creator Shawn McGrath (Joystiq)
“Shawn McGrath, creator of PSN-exclusive tunnel shooter Dyad, exits his workplace – a house in the north side of Toronto – and lights up a cigarette. The rental home is lined with out-of-control weeds McGrath steps over to lean against his car, which sports novelty license plates with a leet variation of the word ‘hacker.’”

Letters From A New York Indie #2: Chaos From Order (Hookshot Inc.)
“Last time I wrote about why I like short games. I’m also fascinated by simple games. Part my attraction to small games is their relationship to minimalism — that magical thing that happens when a tiny set of simple rules creates something complex and beautiful. But my interest in minimalism doesn’t always pull me in the direction you might assume. I’m fascinated by games that apply their minimalist components to create something that feels like the antithesis of minimalism. I like games that create chaos.”

Dyad Is An Overwhelming Audiovisual Thrill Ride (Ars Technica)
“I’ve never taken hallucinogenic drugs. I’ve always kind of wanted to experience the type of transcendent, out-of-body experience I’ve heard other people describe when on them, but I’ve always been a little too concerned with the potential long-term effects on my brain chemistry. But now I’ve playedDyad, so I’m no longer so concerned about what I’m missing out on.”

Wot I Think: Rune Masters (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“Here’s what I find interesting about an average puzzle-game/RPG: I spent all morning playing one. An awful lot of games pass over my screen of a week, and many don’t really grab my attention. I’m really not sure that CodeDaedmons‘ Rune Masters should have, but I can’t deny that I played it from 9am to 12am without stopping. And in the end, it proves itself a very useful measure of what this peculiar sub-genre can get so right and so wrong.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Links Round-Up: Kill The Wabbit

In today’s Developer Links: Audio design, finding programmers, and how to talk to the press.

Eight Things All Indie Developers Should Do When They Talk To The Press (Hookshot Inc.)
“A question I’m asked a lot at games conferences and other events is, how do I get my game covered by the press? A mistake far too many young developers make is to spend a year beavering away on an astonishing iOS title, only to finish it and then think, ‘um, what now?’ Discovery is THE major challenge of the digital distribution era and it shouldn’t be taken lightly. Quality doesn’t just magically rise to the surface, and Apple can only recommend so many titles. As a studio, you must plan for this.”

Creating Audio That Matters (Gamasutra)
“‘Immersion’ has become cliché. It’s often just another buzzword when talking about how great a game is, but it’s all too infrequent that those discussing games will actually break down the finer details of what that immersion entails. Like all pieces of the puzzle that is game design, audio must work in concert with graphics and game mechanics to help immerse the player into gameplay experiences of all shapes and sizes through its ability to convey vast amounts of the detail to the player, often without their knowing.”

Developers Can “Get Into A Lot Of Trouble” Worrying About What The Audience Things, Says Gilbert (VG:24/7)
“Speaking with The Gameological Society, Gilbert said ‘anybody creating anything,’ should have no responsibility when it comes to managing audience expectations. ‘You have to do what you want to do, and you have to do what you think is the right thing to do and what you think is the best thing to do,’ he said. ‘People who like what you do and are fans of your work are just going to like what you do as long as you do something true to yourself.’”

Pursuing Excellence (AltDevBlogADay)
“If a game can be objectively bad, can a game also be objectively excellent? Are there no concrete goals and standards we can make for ourselves in pursuit of excellence – or do we really just throw our hands up in the air and say ‘Just do your best and love what you do!’ and then hope other people enjoy what we make?”

Indie Tools: Petit Computer (IndieGames)
“Petit Computer won’t be something for the professional or the experienced developer, but it will be an easy-to-use and apparently cheap way to develop simple games for the Nintendo DSi and 3DS and, thus, have some excellent and most creative hobbyist times. Besides, the only thing that will make you a better game designer is to actually design more games on all sorts of platforms.”

Splice Featured In The Pax 10 (Cipher Prime)
“Splice made the PAX 10 selection! Turns out we’ll be at PAX Prime this year after all! This is a huge accomplishment for us, and we couldn’t be happier and more grateful for the opportunity to stand alongside some of the great indie developers of today. If you’re going to be at PAX Prime, be sure to come by and visit us at our booth. We’ll be giving away tons of swag! Plus, you’ll have a chance to play our games and talk with the developers.”

Programmer Moneyball (AltDevBlogADay)
“What’s the secret to hiring great programmers? Do you have to have a Google-style cafeteria, or Microsoft-style interviews, or Scrum or Agile? All of those things help, but keep in mind that it’s also possible to find great talent the major companies let slip through their fingers.”

Cook, Serve, Delicious!: Everything You Need To Know (Vertigo Gaming)
“Cook, Serve, Delicious is the next big game from the creators of the Oil Blue, which was part of the Christmas Indie Royale bundle and featured in the “250 Indie Games You Must Play” book by Mike Rose.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Dev Links: Jumping At Shadows

From today’s Developer Links, you can learn things like what goes into a successful RPG, how to succeed on Kickstarter… and how not to go insane working from home.

Waves: The Postmorteming (Squid In A Box)
“On Monday Waves sold it’s 15,000th copy during it’s Daily Deal on Steam. That’s not bad for a game that’s been out a little under 6 months and was made mostly by just one man. So with 20k copies looking very far away indeed right now it seems like a good time for a look back at Waves to see what went right and what went wrong.”

SpyParty At Evo 2012 Pics! (SpyParty)
“I’m back from Evo, and finally mostly rested.  It was a lot of fun!  I had no idea what to expect and so I went in with no expectations, and that’s good, because it turned out to be quite different from previous playtests. The show floor was a small part of the overall event, and the main focus was obviously on the competition, so attendees were able to enjoy the Indie Showcase titles without the long lines that always happen at PAX. For SpyParty, this meant people could play for longer, come back more often, and explore more of the game’s depth.”

Independence & Control Vs. Productivity (Cliffski.com)
“if I rely entirely on middleware and someone else’s engine (Unity + EZ-GUI + some sound stuff + whatever) I can be extremely productive. I don’t waste any time wondering about correct vertex buffer creation flags or optimising sprite rendering, i can just work on the game. But then when there is a bug in EZ-GUI or a feature missing from Unity, I am totally screwed. Suddenly I’m coding what they support, not what I want to create. Similarly in business, if I rely entirely on steam for my sales, I don’t waste any time worrying about website design, visitor numbers, bounce-rates, chargebacks or coupon/discount processing, no worries about web server stability, demo download speeds, CDNs and other fluff. I can just work on the game.”

Ugly Baby Darkish July Shots (Dejobaan Games)
“Here’s what we’ve been working on over the past week. First up, the “Arc Complex” — a tunnel of vertical slabs surrounding a column of sliced washers:”

How To Succeed On Kickstarter (AltDevBlogADay)
“Kickstarter is the hot new word in indie gaming and beyond. Inspired by the successes of Tim Schaffer’s DoubleFine campaign and many others, countless aspiring game developers have taken to Kickstarter to raise funds for their game. Yet many of these game developers are seeing their projects fail to raise funding, and without serious celebrity status it’s hard to generate significant interest about your project. I’m a member of the Stanford Graduate School of Business mailing list, and last week there was a question about how to effectively use Kickstarter as a game studio. What resulted was a treasure trove of valuable advice, which I wanted to summarize for everyone below.”

Firefox Audio Canplay Bugs (Lost Decade Games)
“We’re getting geared up to launch our new game Lunch Bug, so we’ve (finally) been testing the game more thoroughly in browsers other than Google Chrome. In the process, it looks like I may have found a few audio bugs in Firefox.”

How Not To Go Insane While Working From Home (AltDevBlogADay)
“You’d think the transition from a regular, office job to one working out of your home would be an easy one. No boss micromanaging you, no set hours, no dress-code, no phones ringing, etc, however the transition from office peon to home office productivity machine wasn’t a smooth transition for me. I thought I’d take a moment to share a few of the things that help my productivity as an indie developer working from home, and help retain my sanity while doing it. It’s also an exercise for me to reaffirm some of these things I may be slipping on as I fall into unproductive habits while work continues on our newest title, Vex Blocks! :)”

What The Witcher Taught CD Projekt About RPGs (Gamasutra)
“In this interview, key staff members from CD Projekt RED take a moment to discuss the upcoming sci-fi RPG, detailing how the studio approaches its licensed properties and adapts them to an interactive medium. Along the way, the team reflects upon The Witcher series, noting what it got right, where it went wrong, and how the games have affected the studio’s plans for the years ahead.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Dev Links: Punked

Today’s Developer Links have a lot of character… or a lot about characters: how players express themselves through characters, what makes characters (or character races) good or evil, replaying a character’s actions, and more.

Ouya, Steam Greenlight, And The Future (Radiangames)
“I decided early on that I’d back the project (only the second Kickstarter I’ve backed), but there’s varying amounts of skepticism surrounding it in the games industry.  Penny Arcade Report is the latest to jump on the “too good to be true” bandwagon.  But if you’re going to be skeptical of the device for a reason, be skeptical of their ability to deliver what they promised.  DO NOT be skeptical of there being good games and software on there.”

Games Are Art: An Elephant In The Room (AltDevBlogADay)
“The equivalent of games and music isn’t cinema, it’s theater. Actors play/interpret plays in theater, like musicians play music, and players play games. And then I realized, people seem to be getting something terribly wrong. They seem to think that the default thing to do with music is to listen to it, and that the default thing to do with games is to play them.”

The Good, The Evil And Those That Don’t Care (Purple Orange Games)
“I’ve been thinking about a race being Good, Neutral or Evil and what would this imply to them. Here’s a some quick rules I though would add the right flavor to the game, these rules would be optional.”

On Player Characters And Self Expression (Gamasutra)
“There is no such thing as a player character” is the kind of tagline that gets me into trouble in some places. So is ‘the emotional connection between player and character that many game makers believe exists in fact does not.’ Both contain a powerful subtext, questioning everything from a player’s sense of identity to the validity of their experiences. Read the wrong way, they can seem to say that all the emotion you feel in playing games is made up.”

Unity, Replayed (AltDevBlogADay)
“Replaying actions in a game is a surprisingly common feature. There are match replays of course, but recorded actions are also used in cutscenes, ‘ghost’ players in racing games, and a variety of puzzles, like those for Clank in Ratchet & Clank:A Crack in Time. Many engines support at least a limited ability to record action in-game, as opposed to recording a movie, the demo command in Source for example. Unity, however, does not.”

Building A Titan In Drunken Robot Pornography (Dejobaan Games)
“A 16x speed video of us building a Titan for DRP. This is a pretty simple one, but it shows off the Titan Builder tool that we also want players to be able to use in the full game.”

Antifascista And Drowning (Auntie Pixelante)
“i heard about antifascista (link to play online) through my friend porpentine, an editor for freeindiegames. i think she’s correct in saying that this game really wanted to be hypertext of the kind that twine enables – there were a few instances where i got hung up on guessing the next thing to type, where all the choices in the game are fairly straightforward. it’s that kind of text game. nevertheless, as an american queer bobbing around the poverty line, the message of this game resonated with me. it reminded me where my hope comes from.”

A Super Hexagon Approaches (Distractionware: Devlog)
“Check out what I got working!”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Dev Links: In The Crosshairs

Today’s Indie Links include a fan-game based on a classic action figure line, a game patterned after some of the most beloved games of the SNES, and plenty more.

The Indie Game Section Of Comic-Con, Conveniently Located Near The Cookie Stand (Kotaku)
“On a rinky dink table near the expensive Mrs. Fields kiosks stands Nader Parvini, Exploding Rabbit’s unofficial PR person, offering free demos of Super Mario Bros. Crossover to anyone interested. He told me about upcoming additions to the free game, soon to be running on Unity, including a super-secret Zelda II skin coming soon to the retro crossover title.”

Seedling Is Zelda: Link To The Past In Your Browser (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“Wow. I just spent an hour with Seedling, an incredibly overt love letter to SNES-era Zelda games that just sprouted up on Newgrounds, and it’s a pint-sized wonder. To call it a Zelda clone would be unfair, because “clone” immediately brings to mind notions of soulless piggybacking, and that couldn’t be further from the truth here. This brilliant little freebie has its own meticulously crafted world, mythology, soundtrack, sense of humor, and – at least from what I’ve played – emphasis on hands-off exploration that captures the spirit of Nintendo classics just so. And that’s something even Nintendo arguably has trouble doing these days. Go play it, or – if you must – read a few more thoughts of mine after the break.”

Introducing Hello Games (Eurogames)
“The four of us were looking at our PR photo. That first image the world would see of Hello Games, our videogames start-up. I think we were supposed to be walking nonchalantly through a park – or at least, that’s what we thought we had done.”

Sockman (PixelProspector)
“Sockman is a challenging single screen platformer with low res graphics. Collect green pixels, avoid spikes and enemies and reach the exit in each stage. Moreover be sure to listen to the really good Mr. Sockman song from the trailer.”

The Day After #ScreenshotSaturday 3 (IndieGames)
“Leading off this week’s ScreenshotSaturday selections, Lone Survivor developer Jasper Byrne is working on something too new to describe in words. However, it appears to be a first-person title that uses the RGB color model. The green entity looks rather spooky.”

This Fan-Made Game Might Be The Best G.I. Joe Game Of All Time (Kotaku)
“This was completed sometime back in early spring, but only yesterday became known to the public at large: It’s Attack on Cobra Island, a fan-made G.I. Joe video game that shows a lot more effort and love than previous check-cashing G.I. Joe adaptations.”

Cactus Goes Commercial: How One Indie Moved Beyond His Freeware Roots (Gamasutra)
“Jonatan Soderstrom has made an unusual reputation for himself among independent game developers. More often known as “Cactus,” the Swedish developer has created dozens of games, yet he’s never sold a single copy. Until now, his experimental freeware titles have defined his career as a game designer.”

Absent Heroes: Choose Your Own Interview II (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“I had a sweet time making the last Choose Your Own Interview, so this time I collaborated with long time Interactive Fiction heroes Adam Cadre, Emily Short and Andrew Plotkin to make you something special. The following is a heady mix of RPS fanfic, Interactive Fiction love letter, and slight autobiographical tendencies. Your secret content this time comes courtesy of a guest appearance by someone we all know and love. Enjoy, and keep me updated on your own adventures in text. Now let’s get really drunk. There must be a bar around here somewhere?”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Links Round-Up: In The Clouds

Today’s Developer Tools include some tips for working with sound and 3D on iOS apps.  For those not planning on developing for iOS, though, don’t worry; there are plenty of other articles to pique your interest.

Call For Industry Speakers To Address AltDev Student Summit (AltDevBlogADay)
“The AltDev Student Summit will be held November 10th and 11th, with the aim of bringing industry veterans together to explain to students the reality of life making games. Individually, many of us already do outreach to local education programs to provide these kinds of insights, so the Student Summit aims to centralise this effort by providing an online forum for this engagement – industry experts gain a much broader reach for their presentations, whilst students benefit from the experience of a much wider pool of potential speakers. As for all AltDev events, the intent is to hold the entire event online and record the sessions and share them with the community afterwards to further enhance the reach of the speakers.”

Cook, Serve, Delicious Update #10: Maintenance! (Vertigo Gaming)
“There’s more to running a great restaurant than producing amazing food. You’ll need to get down and dirty to make sure your kitchen is in tip-top shape… and, in some cases, bring a criminal to justice.”

App Switching And Graceful Music Handling In iOS (Hemisphere Games)
“We post few dev/technical pieces on our blog (I’d love to do more), but we ran into an issue recently that seems to plague many iOS apps on the store: Music not always playing on app resume. It’s not catastrophic when it happens – and can often be fixed by hitting the home button and trying again – but it is annoying.”

“Bringing New Life To Classic RPG Mechanics” At Pax Prime 2012 (ZeBoyd Games)
“Five Indie RPG studios team up for a panel to talk about what’s new in the world of Indie RPG’s! Panelists include ZeBoyd Games (Cthulhu Saves the World), Spiderweb Software (Avadon: The Black Fortress), Carpe Fulgur (Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale), Gaslamp Games (Dungeons of Dredmor) and Level Up Labs (Defender’s Quest: Valley of the Forgotten). Each team brings their own unique twist to a different classic ruleset. As well as taking questions from the audience, the panel will cover these specific topics: Battle Systems Stats and customization Characters, story-telling and world-building Removing tedium Improving pacing Offering meaningful choices Writing for immersion and believability So come, take a seat in the tavern, quaff a blue potion, and join us for this rousing panel discussion!”

Friday Flashback #25: Of Alps And Men (Broken Rules)
“We love the sun (quite frankly, why shouldn’t we?) but our office has become quite the heating oven, so we decided to look for alternative workspaces that are a bit cooler and allow us to concentrate on our work. Half of the team used the opportunity to house-sit in the alps, while the remaining half decided to pack their bags and venture to the Arkadenhof at the University of Vienna, where it’s a lot cooler than at the office.”

Leaky Abstractions (AltDevBlogADay)
“In a world of frameworks, simple to use engines and added layers of abstraction we are in danger of leaky abstraction, both in design and programming. While the concept is familiar to me a friend introduced me to the phrase at the pub recently as well as directing me to this brilliant article by Joel Spolsky. I wanted to publicise and explore this in the context of gaming using a graphics programming and motion design problem.”

Getting Stage3D To Work On IPhone, With AIR 3.2 And Flashdevelop (distractionware: devlog)
“Anyway, getting Stage3D to work on an iPhone took a LOT of messing around, more than these sorta things usually take, and I had a lot of trouble finding recent information online on how to do it – so, I’m going to be a good interneter, and write a short tutorial, for future googlers who might have to go through this horrible process. Here goes:”

Indie Tools: AMOS For Windows (IndieGames)
“AMOS, the Amiga-only successor to the venerable STOS, was one of the few easy to use tools available to Amiga users that allowed for the creation and distribution of proper games. AMOS was essentially a BASIC-like programming language accompanied by certain handy utilities that allowed you to create the graphics, sounds and core of almost any game you could think of. Provided it wasn’t over-ambitious and didn’t push the Amiga too hard, that is.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Dev Links: Cleaning Up