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Vertigo Gaming Inc. Entire Catalog Now on Steam!
Aw yeah, I’m thrilled to announce that Shellblast, Spirits of Metropolis, greenTech+ and The Sandbox of God is now available to purchase on Steam! You can get all of these games (including the Oil Blue) as part of a new Steam Bundle, the Vertigo Gaming Inc. Legacy Collection, at 50% off!
These are the standard releases, as because of the older engine frameworks these games used I wasn’t able to go back and add additional content like I did with the Oil Blue. So that’s part of the reason why I’m offering a very deep discount on the entire package. If you’re experiencing any issues with running the games on Steam, you can find some troubleshooting guidelines here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/840730/discussions/0/1696046976476317269/
If you bought any one of these games in the past on vertigogaming.net, good news! You’re eligible for a free Steam key! Just send me an email at support(at)vertigogaming.net with the email or name you used to purchase the game and I will send over a key as soon as I can, likely within five business days.
Enjoy these ol’ games and be sure to leave a review!
My First GDC: 2018
It has become something of a yearly ritual where I get an email from Mike Dailly over at YoYo Games asking if I’m going to GDC, and I respond with my reason of why I’m not going. I’m in the middle of game development, I’m in the middle of something, literally anything that was going on right at that moment was enough for me to skip another year of GDC. Maybe next year, maybe in two years, who knows.
This year was different, in that I didn’t really have any particular reason not to go. My game was fully released, I was in a good place as far as patches go, I had money in the bank. This was the year. I had to commit. I knew if I didn’t go this year, I would never go.
It’s not that I didn’t want to go, it just became easier to say no. That came hand in hand with a lot of things in my life, I think. At that moment, I had reached a breaking point. I was tired of letting myself be the only reason I wasn’t going to do something.
Yes, I responded, I am absolutely pretty sure I’m going this year, maybe, and I’ll let you know at the end of January for sure, or maybe early February.
I’m not particularly out going, though I’ve been making hard strides to do so over the last few years. The hard part of going to a convention, I would soon realize, is that I didn’t have a team to bring along with me. It has mostly just been me and freelancers over the last few years. Someday I’ll change that and open my own studio. I had hoped GDC was going to be helpful in showing me that path.
One of the first talks I attended, Failing to Fail: The Spiderweb Software Way, seemed a great place to start. I had somehow misread it and assumed it was talking about the Spiderweb Solitaire game on the Xbox 360 that I really enjoyed playing. Looking it up now, there’s not even a game that exists that is called “Spiderweb Solitaire” nor can I find anything like remotely resembles the game in my head so I am at a complete loss as to why I thought any of this.
“A lot of you probably don’t know me or any of these games” Jeff Vogel said as his array of titles was displayed on the projector, most of which were hardcore RPG games. That’s a weird path to a Solitaire game, I wonder how that happened? It was a fantastic talk, with lots of humor and self-depreciation. He commanded the room easily, which was completely full, many of whom who knew exactly who Jeff Vogel was, unlike me apparently. It didn’t matter, as by the end of the session, I was a fan. It was a great start to my GDC week.
On Tuesday I had a chance to go to the Humble party, as well as the NoClip documentary that was showing later that night with a live Q&A with Danny O’Dwyer. The doc seemed like a natural place to be- I really enjoyed NoClip’s docs, I wanted to meet Danny, and the social interactivity would be low. Perfect.
Outside on the street, I was frantically looking for the entrance to the screening room. The entire center is a maze of doors, stairs, exits and entrances, and by the time I had found it I had wasted twenty minutes. As I walked up to the door, someone exited. “Session is full.” I couldn’t believe it.
I stormed back to my hotel room, mad that I missed it, angry at myself for being so stupid in not finding the entrance fast enough. There was still the Humble party, something that I likely wouldn’t have gone to if I had been able to go to the screening. I felt that all-too familiar feeling of having myself be the one reason not to go somewhere. In a sense, maybe I was going to the screening so I didn’t have to be left with this decision of not going somewhere because I was too afraid to do so. What was I scared of, really? No one knew who I was, and if it’s not something I liked, I could leave easily. I grabbed my coat, opened the Lyft app, and somehow found myself on the way to a party.
“Yo welcome to the Folsom Street Foundry we got a ton of pizza so be sure to head to the back and grab some slices!”
As I shifted through the crowds I became acutely aware of how I looked: head darting back and forth, aimlessly wandering through people, not really with any purpose or direction. Immediately I looked to see if anyone was doing the same thing, and there were. I went up to introduce myself to them.
There is a certain relief when the first thing I tell someone is that I don’t normally do these things and I’m a bit nervous and they respond in the same way. If you don’t go to parties, you don’t go and meet people who also don’t go. It was only at GDC where you felt like you were surrounded by equally nervous people who were in the same position as I was: doing something out of their element. I talked to one person, then three, then five and ten. It got easier and easier.
“Hey we just got another batch of pizza delivered everyone, so come grab a slice or three because we have way too much pizza! Seriously let’s all go to town on this pizza, don’t be shy!”
What I found to be the easiest thing in the world to enjoy were videogames, which were stationed all around the hall. The power of videogames can always bring a group of people together, and I found myself having a great time with several people who had never played a game of Gang Beasts/Duck Game/Nidhogg and other games on the multiplayer circuit. I did a high five with someone when we beat a Cuphead boss, explained the dynamics of Duck Game to three other people who I easily steamrolled over but kept it close to make it exciting, and lost miserably in Gang Beasts, one of the few games that seems to level the skill level even if you’ve played it for years. None of these experiences were particularly new to me, but the added dynamic of strangers in a new city playing and having a fun time was a warm comfort blanket in a cold city.
“Last Call is going to be at 11:30 everyone, and please be sure to grab a few slices of pizza because we still have plenty! Let’s all enjoy some pizza!”
I did another round of aimless walking and found a random sofa with two people sitting in it, one of whom looked like Rami Ismail. Is that him? That totally looks like him! I quickly grabbed my phone, pulled up his twitter profile, and compared a photo of him. I am 75% sure its him. 85%. Did more photo searches. 95%.
He got up, and I asked, hey are you Rami? Keep in mind that whatever the correct way to pronounce Rami I did the opposite of, that I am 100% sure and I will never look it up to find out otherwise.
“Yes I am!”
“Hey, my name is David Galindo! I made Cook, Serve, Delicious!”
“What?”
“COOK SERVE DELICIOUS!” (I would typically tell people who I am immediately because it was an easy way to remind myself that I wasn’t some kind of fraud/phony and that I actually deserved to be there, a nice side bonus of impostor syndrome).
“Oh yeah!”
“I loved Luftrausers!” (I love Luftrausers).
“Thanks!”
“This is my first GDC!”
Someone came up behind Rami and wanted to introduce him to a friend of his. My time was up, but I was happy. I did it. I started to walk away.
“Wait wait!” Rami told them. He turned back to me and gathered his thoughts for a quick second. “What are your goals for GDC?”
My goals? I literally had no other goals that night but to talk to someone, let alone talk to an industry star. I found myself answering, “to learn,” which is just about the most generic stupid thing you could hear anyone say.
What surprised me the most is that Rami didn’t want to brush me aside, he wanted to make sure we finished our conversation before talking with someone else. That meant so much to me. I got a firsthand account on why Rami is so loved in the industry.
“Look I’m going to be real with you all: we ordered way too much pizza. Please, please take some, we have to throw it all away after tonight. Please! We have so much pizza! Please!!”
The next night, around the time Rami was getting his GDC Ambassador Award in front of a massive audience, I was inside the screening room for the last film in the festival, called Insert Coin. I was determined not to miss this one and showed up about an hour early in the rain. I struck up a conversation with some people in line, which had the added benefit of being in a mostly empty lobby. In a city where a quiet space was about medium yelling to the person next to you, the silence filled the room. I never appreciated a quiet conversation more.
As we ushered into the theater, I saw a crowd of people come into the theater. Oh my gosh, I told the person in front of me, do you know who that is? It’s Ed Boon!
She didn’t respond immediately. “The creator of Mortal Kombat!” I followed up. “Oh, yeah, of course!”
The documentary was not finished, and we only saw three segments with some temporary audio mixes, but it was immensely entertaining. Setting up the rise of Midway in the coin-op arcade glory days, the film talked mostly about Mortal Kombat and NBA JAM in the segments we saw, with some of the familiar beats (Mortal Kombat: corrupting today’s youth?) and some truly astonishing revelations I had no idea about (NBA JAM made one billion dollars in revenue…in quarters.)
The lights went up and questions were asked to some of the Midway people in attendance. I was somewhat unfamiliar with the history of NBA JAM, which was the main focus, and I missed out on that golden era of arcade gaming. But I was determined to ask a question…something, anything. I quickly put together some ideas in my head.
“Ok, a question in the back?”
Something to do with the rise of arcade violence? No, that was covered already. What about other NBA games? I didn’t know enough to reference anything. I wanted to ask a question, but finding an actual good question was harder than I thought.
“Ok how about you?”
Maybe Mortal Kombat? What about its competitors? Think of some…Eternal Champions, Primal Rage, yes, those games make me feel like I know what I’m talking about. Ok, I can do this!
“And time for one last question…yes?”
“Yes, how did y’all feel at the time about competitors nipping at your heels with cookie cutter games like Eternal Champions and Primal Rage?” (Nice, I nailed it.)
“Hah, actually we have a Primal Rage dev here today!” He points to a man in the front row, who immediately looks behind him to see who asked that question.
There are so many more stories I have to share, like the moment where, upon finding out that PixelJunk Monsters 2 was announced, I made a dash to the Chunsoft booth which turned out to be a conference room, slid some money under the door and tweeted about it, and by the end of the day ended up getting a hands on private demo by none other than Dylan Cuthbert himself (due to the tweet, not the money). I am confident that I was the biggest PJM fan in attendance, and if they didn’t know it then, they knew it when I was asking a ton of inside ballpark questions as the demo was played.
Another story is being able to meet some people for the first time and tell them how much they changed my life. Meeting up with friends that I only knew online but finally met that week. Meeting new people, but not enough new people, something I’m already working out in my head for next year. Feeling a renewed sense of purpose, of loving game development. Experiences I’ve never had before. Moments I’ll never forget. Moments just for me.
For that one week, game developers took over the city. That’s what it truly felt like, with our badges flopping around all over downtown. You could not be in the downtown area without passing by a fellow convention-goer.
As the conference ended and I left one last party that Friday night, I made a quick detour to Super Duper Burger to grab a shake. I walked back down to my hotel one block away, and I saw many people walking but no one was wearing a badge anymore. No one was left from the conference, no one was walking to any sessions, there were no other events or parties to attend, and I suddenly felt very alone, back to how it always has been. Maybe I should change that.
I haven't played much yet, so please forgive me I have so much adulting to do. But does CSD 2 have a hot dog recipe known as NY System Hot Dogs?
It does not, but looking it up, maybe I should!
Anonymous asked:
With all the talk right now being about CSD, I do apologize for throwing a bit of a curveball in... but I'm actually a long-time Vertigo Gaming fan, and I've got a small question. So I know that Shellblast is pretty much a revamped version of Acidbomb 2, but I actually remember playing AB2 before Shellblast was even a thing. What I'm wondering is if the game's still floating around out there somewhere for me to pick up and play again, or if I'm out of luck and oughta buy Shellblast.
Yeah, that was a thing wasn’t it? I actually found a copy on archive.org! https://archive.org/details/Acidbomb_2_-_RearmedI always loved the aesthetics of those games. Something about it still looks neat to me.
Anonymous asked:
Could we get some CSD merch? I'd love to have my very own "eat eat eat" or "eat or die?" shirts!
I’m thinking of a few things that could be cool! More news possibly to come. :)
Announcing a major new expansion for Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!! http://steamcommunity.com/games/386620/announcements/detail/1653257072169935247
Anonymous asked:
I'm sure you get this asked a lot, but will you be making a mobile version of CSD2 in the future? I really hope so! 🤞🤞🤞
I want to get the PS4 version done as well as look into other possible platforms, and once I do that I can start to see if mobile is a good way to go. I think it definitely makes sense, but this sequel has a much higher tech requirement and memory will definitely be an issue for iOS. But it’s been so long since I’ve made an iOS game so it’s very possible significant improvements have been made on that front. It’s just hard to say until I really dig in.
To better answer that question- I will probably look into it and have an answer around summertime.
Anonymous asked:
Are there still plans to add Steam Controller support into CSD2 to the same level as with CSD1? You mentioned Steam Controller support a few years ago, but it doesn't seem to be available in-game (unless I've missed some option somewhere). CSD's Steam Controller support was fantastic, and I'd love to play CSD2 in the same way!
I do have some plans that will support the Steam Controller in a much better way than the original game; I don’t think it will make the next update but I definitely want to add it in the game in the very near future!
Mega Update v1.5 released for CSD 2!
The biggest update yet for CSD 2 has just been released! Check it out! http://steamcommunity.com/games/386620/announcements/detail/1576688908109110423
Preview: CSD 2 v1.5
A preview of v1.5 coming next week has just been posted on Steam, check it out! http://steamcommunity.com/games/386620/announcements/detail/3066253941342441099
Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!! v1.12 now live! Christmas decor and more! http://steamcommunity.com/games/386620/announcements/detail/1469726757016616662
CSD 2 v1.1 now available!
The biggest update yet for the game is now available on Steam! Enjoy! http://steamcommunity.com/games/386620/announcements/detail/1466347451614480575
Anonymous asked:
Hi, after the last update there are too many chores. its impossible to play anymore. And food decaying quicker
The chores and food freshness features of the game were not changed at all with the last update. The only change is that you can do equipment upgrades now that reduces those chores.
Anonymous asked:
Are emails and chore upgrades coming to CSD 2?
They are! The 1.1 update is coming this month, hopefully I can get it into testing by early next week and have it released soon after.