If you’re in the area and interested in independent games development, I hope to see you there!

Smoke from the Victorian bushfires mixes with clouds over Warrandyte. Photo: Nick Carson.

In February I announced I’d be making a donation to the appeal fund set up by the Australian Red Cross to help victims of the bushfires that were ravaging the Australian state of Victoria back then. Specifically, I promised to donate 50% of the proceeds received by yours truly from sales of Mayhem Intergalactic which occurred between Feb 7th and March 14th.

Red Cross receipt for the donation. Click for larger version.

Due largely to the inevitable lengthy delays involved in getting money from distributors and having it wired internationally, and also to this little thing I’ve got going on called “final year of university” and a lack of fondness for doing complicated accounting (this was harder to sort out than you’d think), I hadn’t done it until today.

Well, now I have (see image). Which means I can reveal how much money we raised:

$1,055.02. That’s one thousand and fifty-five dollars. And 2 cents. In Australian dollars – it’s “only” about $837 USD – but still, a grand is a grand! I’m seriously impressed it got that high. I have the best customers ever. I love you guys.

Unfortunately the bushfire appeal which I was intending to donate it to actually ended before I received the money (doh!), so I rounded up to $1,100 and donated the money to the Australian Red Cross’s “Where It’s Needed – Australia” category, that being the closest available. Mea culpa. I hope nobody is too disappointed with the category switch.

Happy Mayhem raising! Just… don’t do it on Earth.

“If you do, my robot protector named Gort will release insectile nanobots to scour all the pathetic life-forms from your puny planet! To, ah… save it from you. Yes.”

P.S. For the record, my stats show that, as expected, sales did not double during Feb 7th-March 14th – they merely continued their steep post-Steam-release decline – meaning that I now have less money than I would have if I hadn’t done this. Which was, of course, the entire point. I did it for its own sake, not as a nefarious capitalist stunt as some people have claimed.

What does surprise me a little is that the highest percentage isn’t higher – it’s pretty much impossible to play the game at all without triggering at least one achievement. Maybe lots of people are playing in Steam’s offline mode, e.g. as a result of not having an always-on internet connection, so the achievements never trigger?

Whatever the reason, it’s not exclusive to Mayhem Intergalactic. Audiosurf and Valve’s own Left 4 Dead have maximum percentages which are even smaller (77.8% and 74.5% respectively). Interestingly, Braid has one achievement which is right up at 96.6%, and almost half of the people who bought the game managed to finish it (which is pretty good going). Perhaps the people who wanted to play Braid but didn’t have always-on internet connections decided to buy from one of the other online distributors, rather than Steam. It’s worth noting that Audiosurf and L4D are Steam exclusives, and Mayhem Intergalactic is only available on Steam and directly from me. This might support the “offline mode” hypothesis.

Strikingly, less than half of the people who bought Aquaria are recorded as managing to reach the second area (Open Waters). I know the home area is pretty big, but still, this is a bit saddening. Maybe they got bored because the combat wasn’t difficult enough, or because they got bored by the pure exploration part of the game (before you get weapons)? Push on, people! The game gets better (and harder) the further on you go!

(That reminds me – I still haven’t finished Aquaria. I almost beat the final form of the final boss before I got killed – his stomach beam is nasty – and then wasn’t particularly motivated to start the battle all over again. It’s looooong. Must get to that sometime.)

Well, that’s all for this post. Keeping on making Mayhem, folks!

P.S. Despite the recent radio silence, I certainly haven’t forgotten about my bushfire appeal pledge – I’ll post an update on how much we raised as soon as I get time to do the accounting. Stay tuned.

Thanks, Good Game!

* At least, you’ll be able to do that once they fix the video player. In the meantime, the episode can be freely downloaded in full via the ABC’s vodcasting site, in either WMV format or MP4 format (~100 MB in each case). And you don’t even have to visit dodgy websites and infringe copyright to do it. Isn’t public broadcasting awesome?

Fires are still burning north and east of Melbourne, and the official death toll has recently risen to 209.

Even after seeing the devastation and dozens of traumatised victims on TV, it’s hard to imagine what it must have been like. It seems like half the state was on fire at one point or another.¹ I do have some inkling of what they’re going through, having had a bushfire come perilously close to my house about 5 years ago; but that fire, terrifying as it was, was piddling in comparison to these bushfires. It “only” killed about 2 people and destroyed a few dozen homes. Even that much left scars on our community which took a long time to recover from. The scale of these fires in comparison staggers the mind.

At times like these, it is up to the rest of us Aussies to help, knowing that the people affected would do the same if our positions were reversed. That’s why I’m pledging 50% of Inventive Dingo’s proceeds towards helping bushfire victims, dating back from the day the fires took hold (February 7th) and lasting until the end of the month March 14th.

To be clear, by “proceeds” I mean the money which I actually receive, calculated after e-commerce fees and conversion to Australian dollars. So about 45% of the purchase price of each direct Mayhem Intergalactic sale will be donated. The percentage of the purchase price in the case of Steam sales is slightly lower, since my cut is lower than in the direct case. The dates reflect the times that the sales are made, not when I receive the money (there is usually about a month of lag time).

The money will be donated to the Bushfire Appeal set up by the Australian Red Cross; 100% of the donation will go directly towards assisting victims and reconstruction efforts, as they have promised not to use any of that money to fund administrative overheads.

I figure it’s the least I can do.

1. The burnt-out areas in Victoria actually comprise about 1% of the state’s land area, which is a pretty significant chunk of land. As a point of comparison, Victoria is larger than the average US state, according to Wikipedia; 237,629 square kilometres, compared to an average of 183,238 square kilometres (calculated based on the total land area of the 50 mainland US states).

Edited 14/2/09: Updated number of houses destroyed and hectares burnt.

Edited 21/2/09: Appeal extended for two weeks, until March 14th. Updated official death toll.

In addition to the amusing version number (well, I’m amused) this update introduces a new feature and fixes a number of bugs and annoyances. It is compatible with savefiles from versions 1.2.1 and 1.2.2 (but not from version 1.2.0 or earlier). Similarly, version 1.2.3 clients can play on version 1.2.2/1.2.1 servers and vice versa, although some features will be unavailable when playing on older servers.

New/changed features

• Private chat. To send a private chat message to a player called Bob, type /msg bob Hi Bob!. Names can be abbreviated. /whisper or /tell can be used instead of /msg.
• The message log on the information bar (click the button at the top-left or press Tab) now features improved formatting and scroll buttons.
• Chat box will now stay open permanently during the multiplayer pre-game settings screen. If it’s empty when the game starts, then it closes itself automatically.
• Chat messages now have a partially-transparent black background to aid readability.
• You can now see your own ping.
• If only AIs are left in a multiplayer game (including if all human players are in disconnected state), end the game.

Bugs fixed

• Fixed: Rifts sometimes weren’t visible to remote clients.
• Fixed: Observers were being assigned starting planets on custom maps, and could attempt to send orders to the ships on those planets (without success).
• Fixed: Players in disconnected state didn’t get sent to newly-connecting observers.
• Fixed: /ban command was crashing server in presence of non-networked players.
• Fixed: /kick command could be used on oneself.
• Fixed: Removed ghostly grey “e” near End Turn button.
• Fixed: A mistyped console command showed up as chat.
• Fixed: Some bugs in internationalisation support.
• Fixed: Invalid map errors no longer crash the game.

Bugs fixed (Steam edition)

• Fixed: mayhemig.exe would sometimes hang around using 100% of the CPU after game exit.

Steam customers will receive the update automatically. All other customers are encouraged to upgrade for free. The demo has been updated, etc. etc. You get the idea.

This, believe it or not, makes 3 updates in as many weeks, each with a fairly substantial list of changes. I think that’s a record! Getting a surge of newcomers to the game does wonders for my motivation and productivity.

On that note, I’d like to take a moment to thank each and every one of you for playing Mayhem Intergalactic, and for all the suggestions that you’ve sent my way in the three weeks (has it really only been that long?) since the game was released on Steam. A game is worthless if it isn’t played, and I couldn’t ask for a better bunch of players. You rock.

Good morrow, citizens of Mayhemsville! I have been instructed to congratulate you on the excellence of your stonework! Or... something like that.

New/changed features

• Increased maximum length of player name from 15 to 50. (Name will be truncated back to 15 on v1.2.1 servers.)
• Font size of chat text and battle messages reduced by 20%.

Bugs fixed (all editions)

• Fixed: Numlock capability was permanently disabled regardless of actual numlock state after a window focus change (alt-tab out and then in).
• Fixed: When someone in a multiplayer server obtained one of the “kill X enemy ships” achievements, everyone else in the server would too, even observers.
• Fixed: Typing a ^ character as the first character in a textbox would crash the game.
• Attempted to handle some networking errors more gracefully
• Accessing the Options screen during a multiplayer game would crash under certain circumstances.
• Observers joining multiplayer games could cause the server to forget that players had ended their turn, and hence not progress to the next round (until the turn timer expired).

Bugs fixed (Steam edition)

• Significantly reduced achievement progress spam
• Fixed dodgy game timer (was displaying additional hours when set to upwards of 6 minutes).
• Fixed: The game would crash under certain circumstances when Steam was in offline mode.

Steam customers will receive the update automatically. All other customers are encouraged to upgrade for free.

Late-breaking release note: The Steam edition mistakenly still reports itself to be v1.2.1. If you think you haven’t received the update, try restarting your Steam client and running the game again.

Those of you who use it will be happy to hear that Mayhem Intergalactic is also now available on Steam, the leading digital distribution service for PC. It’s also 50% off, for one week only, so get it while it’s hot and Steamy!

Despite the fact that this release is numbered 1.2.1 rather than 1.3, it constitutes a sizeable update on top of version 1.2. This version features the new achievements feature, and also includes a wealth of bug fixes and usability enhancements:

New/changed features

• Achievements! In exchange for completing certain tasks in-game, you will now receive small digital trophies to commemorate those achievements. (Details…)
• In timed games, a clock of time remaining is now shown.
• Minor improvements to text rendering.
• Widescreen rendering improvements to in-game background, ship sending dialogs, and help bubbles.
• Players now have the ability to surrender in multiplayer games.
• The game waits and attempts to retry for a short period of time after receiving “Could not bind to port” errors when attempting to host a multiplayer game.
• Some network errors now quit the game when the loading/connecting screens are displayed.
• Saved games are now deselected when you type in the saved game name box, to avoid accidentally overwriting old saved games. So that you can prevent your saved game list from getting cluttered, however, there is now also a ‘Delete’ button.
• Note that v1.2.1 clients are not able to participate in multiplayer with older clients, so everyone is encouraged to upgrade promptly. However, be aware that your old savefiles will no longer work once you upgrade.

Bugs fixed

• Fixed: When building up a very large convoy (over 4 million ships), the number of ships in the convoy could “wrap around” to 0, causing the loss of 4 million ships. Now, convoy sizes are capped and cannot grow past ~4 million, which is still imperfect but definitely an improvement. (Fix prompted by Danial B.)
• Fixed: View drags with the right mouse button were also counted as clicks with the right mouse button, which could cause “send ships” dialogs to pop up a lot when you didn’t want them to. Now, the game makes an attempt to differentiate drags from clicks to preven this. View drags with the middle mouse button were not affected. (Reported by Danial B.)
• Fixed: Music sometimes wouldn’t restart properly when restarting a game.
• Fixed: Could click through the background fade of the Options screen when in-game.
• Fixed: Saved games didn’t remember whether the game was a Quick Start game or not.
• Fixed: Moving the slider on the “set rally point” dialog could cause a crash under certain circumstances.
• Fixed: Selecting items on lists now works more reliably when lists are scrolled.
• Fixed: A few rare network errors are now caught and displayed instead of snowballing.
• Fixed: When a multiplayer game ended and returned to the lobby / setup screen, the chat box would closes and any text in it was erased. This was a usability annoyance. (Reported by Danial B.)
• Fixed: Modifier keys (ctrl, alt) would sometimes get “stuck on” upon task-switches, causing an inability to type. (Reported by Sinfall.)
• Fixed: Support for graphics cards which can’t handle textures larger than 1024×1024 has been reinstated.
• Fixed: The list of saved games is now sorted correctly, even when very old and very new savefiles are present together.

Owners of previous versions are encouraged to upgrade for free. New customers always receive the latest version, and the demo download has also been updated.

Enjoy!

Let me know if there’s a particular achievement you were hoping for that didn’t make the cut, and I’ll see about adding to the list in a future update!

Without further ado, here they are:

The achievements screen, displaying an example set of achieved achievements. Achieved achievements are colourful, and unachieved achievements are grey. And yes, fitting this many occurrences of the word achievement into one caption is quite an achievement.

• First Blood: Win a Quick Start singleplayer game.
• Natural Intelligence: Win a Quick Start singleplayer game with the AI difficulty set to Highest.
• Perfect!: Same as Natural Intelligence, but additionally don’t lose any battles.
• Things Fall Apart: Destroy 1000 enemy ships in a single game.
• The Center Cannot Hold: Destroy 2500 enemy ships in a single game.
• The Blood-Dimmed Tide is Loosed: Destroy 5000 enemy ships in a single game.
• Maker of Multiplayer Mayhem: Win a multiplayer game.
• Master of Multiplayer Mayhem: Win 10 multiplayer games.
• Maestro of Multiplayer Mayhem: Win 100 multiplayer games.
• Vindictive: Destroy 1000 native ships, over multiple games.
• Bully: Destroy 2500 native ships, over multiple games.
• Slaver: Destroy 5000 native ships, over multiple games.
• Freebie: Conquer an undefended enemy planet.
• Mechanized Intelligence: Use rally points to connect all planets in a Quick Start game into a single network.
• Prime Directive: Win a game without destroying any native ships.
• Red Ones Go Faster: Win a game as the red player, taking no more turns than there are planets.
• There’s No Place Like Home: Keep control of your home world for an entire multiplayer game.
• Swapsies: Conquer an opponent’s home world, but lose your own home world to that opponent.
• Famous Last Stand: Defend your last planet from an invader.
• Am I talking to Miranda now?: Conquer a planet named Miranda.
• Avalanche: Conquer 5 planets in a single turn.

Check out the awesome icons by Fernando Yi in the screenshot! My personal favourite is the alien wearing a monocle. Fittingly, it’s also the most difficult achievement of the lot.

"I say! Could you spare a moment to direct me to your leader, old chap?"