Inventive Dingo forums

Hi there! My name is Chris Pelling, and I'm the author of this here little game. I live in Canberra, Australia, and work where I live; my office is my bedroom. I currently attend university, and plan to graduate at the end of 2009.

But that's not an introductory paragraph. This is an introductory paragraph: While university is in, my daily commute involves a saddle and a kangaroo. There is an infestation of drop-bears in the trees near my house, although you're more likely to be killed by the snakes, the spiders, or the stingrays. No worries - she'll be right. (The trick is to distract the spiders by setting them onto the snakes, tie an umbrella to your kangaroo for protection against drop-bears, and then hop for it because stingrays don't move very fast on land.)

My interests include programming, gaming, making games, and trying not to be distracted by forums and email and Windows card games while engaged in the aforementioned pursuits. Very occasionally I spout Japanese phrases at random, though my knowledge of Japanese is minimal at best. Minasan, konnichiwa! ("Hello everyone!")

Please go ahead and introduce yourselves. :)

Well hello. I might as well drop by here to say hi :)

I'm from Singapore, currently doing National Service in the Army. Compulsory conscription is a bloody waste of time and a real test of my patience toward my loyalty to this country, but that aside, yeah most of my time's spent either playing indie games, Quake Wars or modding. I'm currently doing a mod for Jedi Academy called Open Jedi Project

Will be going to University after my National Service. Prolly be taking psychology or Economics or Business Administration, not sure which yet

Oh right, born in the year 1988. Don't know what else to add here though, so... :p

Hi udm! National Service sounds like a pain; my sympathies.

Still, at least you get plenty of time for gaming (http://www.inventivedingo.com/mayhemig), right? ;)

Wish I did! I only have 1-2 hours of gaming every weekday, though weekends tend to be a bit better!

Ah, I see, I misread. :-[ Hang in there!

Heya Chris it's your big cousin Melinda, in Brisbane (Game Developer/ Gaming Co. capitol of Australia!) How you doing? I saw you on TV. You rock dude! I look forward to checking out the game (keep me posted on when you get a Mac version too)

Mel (aka SpaceFairy)
www.spacefairy.com/blog

P.S. Awesome- I'm a Space Cadet!! (How did your forum know?!? LOL)  ;D

Heh, hey there Melinda. Thanks for dropping by! :)

Why, hello there Crispy. :P

I'm James Picone, a South Australian software-engineering student (Currently third-year, funnily enough. :P). I've sort of vaguely known Chris from a game-development suite called BYOND, which hosted an early version of Mayhem Intergalactic.

I've still got MI installed in a folder called YAGSACG. :P.

Also, incidentally, Chris - what's the behaviour of MI if there aren't enough names in planetnames.txt to fill all the planets that have to be named? Just wondering whether having a significantly smaller custom planetname.txt could cause issues in large maps (The file is http://www.byond.com/members/Jp/files/planets.txt , incidentally)

Hi to all, sorry for my poor English, my name is Fabio from Italy, engeneer 51 old , I am entusiast of space games , pc wargames end so on .
My preferred boardgame is speed circuit, the rules game I improved and also trasformed to pbem.
Actually we play the game at www.pbemitalia.it  with people from any place.
I played for many and many  time two fantastic games: Reach for The Stars (SSG) and Spaceward Ho (delta tao).
RFTS is one of the first so called 4X and was a game running on C64 and after on PC, remains the my space favourite game.
I hope for an upgrade of Mayem to give to the game a little more  complexity.

Prez

Welcome Prez, and welcome back Jp. It's good to have you here. :)

The remaining planets will all be called "Unnamed planet". It doesn't break anything to have multiple planets with the same name, it's just hard to remember which is which!

I decided my introductory post was boring, so I spiced it up a bit. See what you think. ;D

Seems like we're getting an influx of members, so feel free to jump in here and tell us something about yourself!

Hi, I'm Minus. My internet handle comes from this (http://www.kiwisbybeat.com/minus.html) webcomic. This (http://www.kiwisbybeat.com/minus10.html) is my favorite strip.

Hey, I'm PLAYLIFE from Tallinn, Estonia. I'm working as an analyst in banking.

I spotted this game on sale on Steam, tried the demo and immediately bought it.  ;D

Welcome, both of you!

That is an excellent webcomic, Minus. :)  Dragging myself away from it because I want to get something done today, heh...

Hi PLAYLIFE! Glad you like it. :)

Hi all, I am from Texas, USA and just saw this game in the new Steam News update. Thinking about giving it a whirl, but I don't know anyone who has this game. Perhaps my brother-in-law would like the guest pass because we play Risk sometimes.  Anyway, thought I would post something.  Also, I was reading some of the other threads and was wondering what does it take to make the graphics in this game. (I mean what programs do you use to draw the ships, backgrounds, etc.)

Welcome StraxusD! Let me know if you have any questions before you buy the game. :)  There's a demo if you want to try it out, by the way.

Graphics were mostly done using The Gimp (an open source image editor). The graphics contributed by other people were done in Photoshop. The ships were made as 3D models using 3ds max, and I rendered them to images using Blender (an open source 3D modeller).

Most people in the game development industry use some combination of Photoshop, a commercial 3D animation package (3ds max, Maya, Lightwave, etc.) and a bunch of other tools like level editors which are in-house or engine-specific. None of these come cheap, which is why I stuck with The Gimp and Blender. :)

Too bad I didn't keep my copy of 3ds max, I used to be alright with it.  Have to check out The Gimp and Blender though. I downloaded the demo about to try it out.

Here's a decent Blender tutorial which I found helpful: http://www.gamedev.net/reference/art/features/blender1/

After learning 3ds max and Maya, Blender's interface really did my head in! Some people swear by it though.

Hmm, I will have to give it a go then maybe.  Always looking for something creative to do to pass the time.

Hey all,

My name is...well my alias for the Internet is well "Stixsmaster"

I am a webdesigner coder...and well I love to play games...a little bit of everything...of course the only sports game usually is racing...

I own my own website...the url is in my profile here...I would post it but due to so many forums I am already apart of...I feel the rulse apply here...(no spamming)...so yea...

I am 19 years old and turn 20 in March on the 25th...

I graduated from Midlo High in 08 and well the past year have been just doing little crap jobs...and well I am currently planning to go to college for 2 years to get 2 certificates...1 for webdesign another for web development...

Well its been a year...but I am certified for sumthing...but dang...never had to recall what it is for a job yet...I have the certificate...sumwhere...but I will remember or find out and post what...and it is related to computers...got it when I went to a tech skool for part of my senior year...

I have made a website for a small business that works near where I live...the url well...if you want it PM me...but the business is a house repair business...and well the site is just simple tables and what not and colors...nothing special...and I only got 70$ for the work...so yea...

If you goto my website you can see my true work...I am best known for working with the php script Wordpress...

On my website...I have created several of my own themes for it...well they are modified themes from another theme sumone released...but I left credit where needed...and well I released 1 of the 3 I made...and am still working on releasing the second...and the third is what I am using on my site now...and is the only 1 I will not be releasing to public...

BTW CAUTION FOR ALL THOSE UNDER THE AGE OF 18...MY SITE HAS MUCH LANGUAGE ON IT! I EVEN HAVE A FLASH MP3 PLAYER ON IT THAT IS CURRENTLY PLAYING SOUTHPARK MUSIC...UNCENSORED...SO DO NOT VISIT WITHOUT PERMISSION...

---Stixsmaster

P.S. want 2 know more...lol lemme know...I can go on forever...

Hi Stixsmaster. I've already talked to you on other threads, but welcome to the forums. :)

Hello. Internet handle is Lucid Nightmare.

Also hailing from Australia (the duller western side though). Tried the demo of this game on steam, thought it was pretty awesome and then bought it. And that just about sums up my life. Riveting isn't it?

Hey, I know I was glued to my seat the whole way through. When's the sequel coming out? ;)

It's good to have another Aussie around. Welcome. :)

Hello all. I'm from Turkey. Thanks for such a great game Chris. Just bought it on Steam.

On holidays i visit my parents and my old pc is there. Needed a game to play there, and i was getting sick of Freecell  ;D

Welcome, SerGeanT! Enjoy your new game. 8)

Freecell isn't so bad... I know I've wasted lots of time on it over the years. ;D

Hey, My internet alias is "Ray Tracer" (Or mainly Ray), I found this game after my steam crashed, When I got steam running again there was about 3 new steam game announcements, It seems only Mayhem Intergalactic caught my eye, I played through the demo and got additced.. So I just bought the game, I (kinda) regurally check online for active multiplayer games. I live in Melbourne, Australia and is aged 15. I'm also friends with Minus and Boris (Not personally but through steam). :D

Another Aussie! G'day. ;D

Hope that nasty Melbourne heatwave isn't getting you down too much...

Hey, Walter here. I just bought the game through the website yesterday, after playing the demo for several days on Steam.

You've created a truly awesome, addictive game here Chris, and it's really quite a simple idea. That's tough to do. Many props to you.

Upon first launching the demo and viewing the tutorial, I honestly thought it would be too complicated for me to like it. I closed it out and didn't play it again until a friend convinced me it was simple to learn. Then, I finally got it. And I haven't looked back since.

I've since convinced 2 of my friends to buy it as well, and last night we had our first big multiplayer bash. Though I generally suck at strategy games, I somehow WON the longest and craziest of last night's rounds. Must be all the hours I sunk into the demo finally paying off  8)

Cheers Walter! Welcome to the forums, and congratulations on winning your first multiplayer game. 8)

Sounds like I haven't explained things very well in the tutorial. Do you have any suggestions for improving that? Anything in particular which put you off?

Well, take what I say with a grain of salt. I learn kinesthetically, and I'm somewhat of a purist when it comes to game explanations. I believe that gameplay design should be accessible enough for players to understand it intuitively within a few moments in the game. This is one of the cornerstones of Shigeru Miyamoto's games.
 
But what struck me in MI was how much text was necessary to explain the basic gameplay. It's daunting to new players, I think, for a game to need much explanation. However, once I launched a quick game and saw that what actually occurred on each turn was relatively simple, I finally got it. Minutes later, I understood (nearly) all the quirks of the game, and how to succeed. And obviously by then I was HOOKED.

A simple way to convey this I think would be to SHOW players the game through a pop-up tutorial in an in-game experience, rather than have a page-by-page explanation. Example:  Tutorial 1: select your main planet. This will show how many ships are docked in the planet (click). Tutorial 2: drag the ships to another planet... etc.

Good point. It has been my experience that people only really "get" the game by playing it - probably a mix of me being bad at explaining, and text not being a good way to explain it anyway. So I probably should do a tutorial similar to what you're suggesting.

Nope, The aircon has been keeping me cool. ;D

Ha. In that case, you're probably keeping cooler than I am. :D

Hey guys,

my nick is teufelernie, I am 25 years old and I love strategy games.
@reallife I am working at a european datacenter company.

A few weeks ago I stopped wasting my time playing World of Warcraft (got five high lvl chars there) and I decided to play some css in the evening. On the steam starting ad page which I have not disabled I saw this game. Tried the demo and then I get the full version.

If somebody like strategy games like command&conquer red alert you should like mayhem too  ;)
Won 16 multiplayer games, lost one... somebody here who like to decrease my fantastic statistics? ;p

Btw: please forgive me my bad english, I was never interested in english tense & continuative vocabulary  ;D


BR
teufelernie

Welcome, teufelernie!

Congratulations on kicking the WoW habit. ;)  I've purposely avoided playing MMOs because I'm sure I would get sucked in and spend far too much time on them!

Your English is pretty good, especially considering that this is the internet, where nobody cares about grammar. ;D

omg made my day  ;D
btw: normally we have to cry cus the internet make us so stupid  :-X

I've never thought the internet makes people stupid. I think it's where smart people come to be stupid.

Wisely spoken, Zen Master Minus.

Hey there! It's LordAndrew. You may recognize me from Giant Bomb. I'm the only person there who ever talks about this game.  :(

I'm a 22 year old Canadian guy, currently on break from college. I've found myself with a fair amount of free time, so I've been playing Mayhem Intergalactic a fair bit lately. Mostly because I wanted my monocled alien.  ;D I finally got that last achievement a couple days ago, but I don't actually think I'm ready to stop just yet. I recently played a few rounds of multiplayer against another human player, which I enjoyed. I thought I would never be able to do that, so it was certainly a pleasant surprise.  :)

I'll keep playing every so often, and hopefully I'll be able to play some more games against other players. I might also experiment with creating custom maps, and see if I can create something that doesn't totally suck.  :D

Hi LordAndrew, nice to see you around here. Thanks for being Mayhem Intergalactic's de-facto Giant Bomb ambassador! ;)

Congrats again on getting that last achievement. One of these days we might even be able to ramp up the multiplayer community a bit. :)

I purchased the game and joined this website on 24 March.

AGE > 59¾  :'(
LOCATION > Eastern Canada (Montreal region)
JOB > Professor of Greek Philosophy

I have been a passionate PC gamer since May 1994, when I started with Master of Orion (on DOS). I now own hundreds of games. That hobby has significantly reduced my intellectual book-reading and research time -- to the point that it has frozen me out of any deep academic career.  ;D

Welcome! I like your sense of priorities. :D

Hello I am jack I am new in this forum

Hello, I am Daisy Simpson, a university professor,and I like to believe that I'm a very good professional freelance writer. Now I work as editor at dissertation proposal.