2000 - 2010, Best 2D Games

Hello again nobody!

It being mid-January, it seems a bit late to post something like this, but here goes, the greatest 2D Games of 2010. Indie and professional alike. To do this, I will pick a game from each year and compare them all.

2000

With Very few competent releases coming out in this awkward stage of gamings life span, especially in the way of 2D, the only game I even want to talk about is Diablo II.

2001

2001 was a good year. Bejeweled entertained us for a few minutes at a time, and Final Fantasy had just started being 3D (and sucking). My favorite though, out of the whole year, goes to Civ III!

2002

Can you name a good game that came out in 2002? Didn't think so.

2003

Oh the nostalgia. Sim City 4, or Warioware inc.: Mega Microgames. Obviously Sim City. Play it, love it, live it.(If, that is, you are a mayor.)

2004

I introduce to you, the ancestor of a game we all know and love. Fallout: Brotherhood of  Steel. It may be a "3D" game, but it plays like a 2D, so we will let it slide.

2005

I believe we were all touched in a special place by Warioware Touched. Best DS game, ever.

2006

DEFCON: Everybody Dies. You cant argue with that. 2006 was a mediocre year anyway, too old for innovation, too modern for classics.

2007

Some of you have heard of the critic Yahtzee right? Some of you may not know he made some games back in the day. Others may not know that one of those games, Six Days a Sacrifice, was the greatest ending to a series ever. One of those endings that made me sit in my chair and re-evaluate my life. It had everything a game needs, and only lacked some things they want. Of course, it may not have been as scary with good graphics.

2008

Oh were getting there. Exciting. So, N+. Fantastic gameplay, and one of the best flash endeavors out there. Leaping from walls never got old, and neither did the graphic imagery of me dying.

2009

I am going to have to give the title to Plants vs. Zombies.Fun game, and one of the only PopCap games that requires Gatorade.

2010

One cant help but think of 2010 as a peak in the mountain of gaming. Many games came out, both good and stupid. And so, for lack of a 2002 game, I will pick two games for this year. While I cannot include Starcraft II, as I was pushing the envelope with Brotherhood of Steel, I am left with Super Meat Boy and VVVVVV. You cant argue with either one, as super meat boy has all of the lovely and hilarious gore as could be wanted, justified by music crafted from the screams of dying mountain lion choir boys (all of which have been molested by Waroware touched), and gameplay that flowed like a river of gold, combined in equal parts with the witty irreverent spirit of Newgrounds. Super meat boy being a classic name, it only makes sense to balance it out with a game as innovative as VVVVVV, with retro-future themes and a chiptune soundtrack, with the childish charm you would want from a platform game, it takes a place as one of my favorites.

COUNTDOWN

So, to see which one takes the cake...

Number 10:

Civilization 3. Got old really soon.

Number 9:

Warioware Touched. In the words of Chris Hansen, you wont be touching anyone soon.

Number 8:

Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel. Horribly pales to the third one.

Number 7:

N+. Watching myself die didn't get old, but dying did. Minus a soundtrack, and you have every other flash game.

Number 6:

DEFCON: Everyone Dies. Not as entertaining for as long. While really fun while it lasts, gets old too soon.

Number 5:

Plants vs. Zombies. Lots of replayability, and a really fun soundtrack. There was also some nice humor in there that we can all enjoy.

Number 4:

Diablo II. Longest I've gone in a room by myself. Reminds me of having braces.

Number 3:

VVVVVV. Compared to Meat Boy and Six days. VVVVVV cant stand on its own. Despite the great gameplay and nice soundtrack, Meatboy is just a little cleaner and better, and the plot to six days blows the "ghost plot" of VVVVVV to bits.

Number 2:

This one was a tough decision, but I decided to make Six Days a Sacrifice second. It is a bit drawn out, and despite mind boggling me with incredible plot twists, most people don't have enough of an attention span for that sort of thing.

Number 1:

Yes, Super Meatboy ranks number one, simply because it pissed PETA off more than the others. Oh yeah, and the soundtrack was a beauty. Loved the every second of it just a little bit, whereas Six Days was fun through the whole game, but also headache inducing on the parts where it wasn't a brilliant pile of fantasticism with a solid gold plating.

Railsexy, railsexy, personal site.

Haven't even started on my personal site yet, been devoting all of my time to a site I am working on, called railsexy. Its a site for trainspotters thats supposed to be a free, cleaner looking, underground version or railpictures.com.

Back to the topic of the personal site, I have the week off, so maybe I can start on it then.

Chiptune!

Myself being an avid gamer, and a huge fan of indie developers, I recently bought VVVVVV. The gameplay was okay, it was pretty funny and had a good feel to it. The soundtrack however, was fantastic. It brought me to the realization that any monkey can write a decent song given coffee and Reason. Writing an epic song of glory with three saw synths that sound like cats is real talent.

Pick it up today if you can, or at least check out the demo. If I remember right, it's only like 5 bucks anyway.

Excellent trick for sites, all pages in one.

Introduction


So, ever since I first learned web design, I have wanted to make a tutorial, and in my recent endeavors, I learned a trick that allowed me to streamline my sites design with a couple lines of PHP. Now, I have the ability to get to any page from any other page with ease.


How will it work? Its really quite simple.


**NEWBIE do not read if you know about $_GET**


PHP has a snazzy little trick where you can get information from the URL from the page. Have you ever seen a page that has something like ?login=true, or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-YX1WyP8JY on a site?  It really is just ?[VARIABLE]=[VALUE];


Read up on it here. http://www.w3schools.com/php/php_get.asp
If you still don't understand, no worries. Well use it later on in this tutourial.


**/NEWBIE**


Step One


So, presumably, your website will have one spot on it where the content is, like the spot where whatever content of your site will be read at.


What do you normally do to change the text in that space? Most likely, you have other pages that are exactly similar to it, like blog.php, index.php, or register.php, but with just that part changed. How many times are you repeating things that don't even change? 


Well, forget all of that, and put your main area into a single file. Now do something along these lines. If you don't understand, I will explain it all afterward.

echo "<div class=content>";
switch($_GET["p"])
{
case 2: //?p=2
include "pages/forgot.php";
break;

case 1: //?p=1
include "pages/reg.php";
break;

default: //?p is empty or not 1 or 2
include "pages/blog.php";
break;
}
echo "</div>";

Where to start? Well, echo "<div class=content>"; starts the box, assuming you have set a style for it. That second switch($_GET["p"]) bit says what to do depending on what ?p equals. So, if ?p is at 1, reg.php is put into the box. If its at 2, forgot.php. If it isn't there, always go to the blog. Finally, echo"</div>"; closes the box. Simple enough?

Step Two

Now, the next step is quite similar. What will the <title> tag make of your odd means of doing business? It wont. So, we do a bit of improvising. Based on what ?p is, we can also decide what the title is. The code will be something like this:

echo "<title>";

if(!isset($_GET["p"])) //just makes sure that we are on a page.  

$_GET["p"] = 0;

echo "Test :: ";

switch ($_GET["p"])

{

case 2: //?p=2

echo "Fogot my Password";

break;

case 1: //?p=1

echo "Registry";

break;

default: //?p is empty or not 1 or 2

echo "Blog";

break;

}

echo "</title>";

So, the echoes at the beginning and end obviously are html title tags. echo "Test :: "; is so the title will have the name of your site on it, so that should say: HappySite Central or whatever. The rest is just the old script, but with text that reads the title instead of including what is in the page.

Put simply, the script will put Test :: Forgot my Password if ?p=2 and so on.

Links

Links. Links links links. Forms and links. Its gonna be pretty simple. You want a link to go to your registry? <a href='?p=1'>.

You may think this would work with forms too, and you would be right, because you are one smart cookie.

Conclusion

To finish you all up, ill just tell you what that helped.

You basically just

1. Saved space
2. Made it easier to get to anywhere from anywhere
3. Changing one page applies it to everything
4. Learned more PHP
5. Made loading even faster
6. Made me famous

This is my first tutorial ever, so please do ask questions if I was unclear on any points, or if there are any techniques that may enhance this code.


And as a final note, please make sure that you do not use the name of the file, like ?p=blog.php. It makes it easier for people to maliciously manipulate our magic code, so make sure that you follow this tutorial to the letter and nothing should go wrong.

Gentlemen... BEHOLD!

This is my blogspot... As you can see, its a blogspot. Myself being a web designer, I am personally offending myself with this, but as it happens, I have very little time and money to devote towards a personal site. Hopefully, such a condition is only temporary.

As for what this blog will be about? Cream pies, and all of their related creamy wonderment. Now find something to do.