Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Humble Voxatron Debut

humblebundle.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 41 posts

Re: The Humble Voxatron Debut

#31

Post by egypturnash »

nirvana wrote: post #18
ido wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: do you really don't know what the humble bundle is, or are you just playing devil's advocate?

Remember, even if you've been exposed to something in the past, it doesn't mean you know what it is. I clicked on the article on the HN page, by reading the title, and didn't see the domain until I went to click on the back button. I can't say that I didn't have any inkling that it was a game, and whether it was from the mine craft like picture or the url I can't say (though I don't know for sure that humble bundle i…

This Humble Bundle is a bit of an abberation; normally the deal is like 5-6 games for pay-what-you-want. So the value proposition is normally a lot better - "dude I can get SIX GAMES for like TWO DOLLARS!" and that tends to be enough to draw you down to click on the games' icons and find out about them.

Re: The Humble Voxatron Debut

#32

Post by eru »

mdanger wrote: post #3

I remember there being some discussion around the Humble Bundle brand getting "diluted" by the Frozenbyte bundle last time, and I have to wonder if that's becoming the case.

I was initially sceptical, but actually Frozen Synapse is quite a good game.

Re: The Humble Voxatron Debut

#33

Post by rlbaker »

joshu wrote: post #8

I adore indie games. Someone should build an iTunes for indie games, or something.

There's Indievania! (http://beta.indievania.com/)

From the About section: Indievania is an online indie game marketplace for independent developers to sell their games directly to players, where 100% of the cost of the game goes to the developer.

Re: The Humble Voxatron Debut

#34

Post by robinhouston »

The developer’s blog post http://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=260 has some more details about the game and the planned development process.

Here are two bits I found especially interesting:

“In general, I don't think it's a good idea to keep a project in a constantly presentable/releasable state. For technical reasons, it encourages short term hacks and a reluctance to take things apart and design them cleanly. And especially from a creative position, once something is observed by other people it often seems to freeze into an unmoveable state, in the expectations of players and the mind of the designer.”

“Voxatron is based on a virtual 128x128x64 display. It's a buffer of 3d video memory that is rendered out to the screen at the end of each frame, much as an old-school 2d display is. You can POKE bytes into the virtual memory, and they come out as voxels. I don't compromise on this — even the menus are drawn into the voxel display. Hopefully one day I can get hold of a real physical 128x128x64 display and play Voxatron on it with almost no modification.”

Re: The Humble Voxatron Debut

#36

Post by watmough »

Voxatron.

  Frantic-ish action.
  Plays like Robotron. (hold down fire key to strafe)
  Voxel effects are awesome.
  Great sound, much less harsh than Robotron.
  Lots of power-ups.
  Very fun game.
I happily paid $10, as it's supporting both charities ($1.5 each) and the developer ($5.50).

Re: The Humble Voxatron Debut

#37

Post by morrow »

ido wrote: post #26
MrFoof wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A valid question in return would be, "Do you know how many people don't know what the Humble Bundle is?" Moreover, what percentage of the population is even aware that A) you can buy games to play on the computer, and B) that didn't come from a big box retailer? I'll tell you this -- it's very much in the minority, especially when you look at the 30-and-up crowd. Much older than that and the percentage of the populat…

Right, but we're on HN, and Humble Bundle Inc is a YC company that gets on the front page with some regularity. I'm sure I'm in a bit of an echo chamber, but it just seems strange to me since it's been so widly discussed here and in other places I frequent (e.g. reddit - another site I don't expect my parents to know but would be surprised if the common HN-er didn't hear about it).

Just my opinion, but I too didn't know what voxatron was until I played the video (which was great, by the way). I know what the Humble Bundle is, but I think what threw me off is that I usually hear it referred to as "the humble indie bundle", and since it contained neither the words indie nor bundle, I assumed it was somebody using intentionally similar phrasing to promote an unrelated product.

Re: The Humble Voxatron Debut

#39

Post by keenerd »

mdanger wrote: post #3

I remember there being some discussion around the Humble Bundle brand getting "diluted" by the Frozenbyte bundle last time, and I have to wonder if that's becoming the case.

With the Frozen Synapse bundle, I had come to the conclusion that there is be sufficient market for the HIB to never stop running (eg, a new bundle every two weeks) if they only did one game at a time.

One game a month is a little more sustainable. Hopefully there will still be a big packs once in a while.

Is it better or worse? Not sure. Though it is telling the HIB guys did not even record a trailer for this one.

Re: The Humble Voxatron Debut

#40

Post by extension »

For those wondering what this game is all about, this is the interesting part:

"Voxatron is based on a virtual 128x128x64 display. It's a buffer of 3d video memory that is rendered out to the screen at the end of each frame, much as an old-school 2d display is. You can POKE bytes into the virtual memory, and they come out as voxels. I don't compromise on this -- even the menus are drawn into the voxel display. Hopefully one day I can get hold of a real physical 128x128x64 display and play Voxatron on it with almost no modification."

The game is a top-down shooter in the vein of Robotron, but with 3D environments. It features volumetric equivalents to many basic 2D graphics operations: a scrolling background, sprites, animations, particle systems, physics, etc.

Everything is destructable too. If you shoot enough holes in an object, it will collapse in a heap of voxels.

It even includes a level editor.

The game looks fantastic and I've never heard of anything like it. If you are even remotely interested in games or realtime graphics, you need to see this.

Post reply on HN