Stefan Sundin

Today I want to release a few Elasto Mania maps that I made about 4 years ago. There are 4 levels, and I have made recordings of my best times on them. You can download them here.

Here are the levels:

rec1 – “Noobs only”: A pretty easy level where speed is important. My best time is 1:26:23. Screenshot.

rec2 – “Climbing Hour”: A tricky level in which you can save a lot of time by properly bouncing to an apple. My best time is 51:49. Screenshot.

rec3 – “Bumpy Ride”: A very short level with a lot of bumps. My best time is 14:97. Screenshot.

rec4 – “Authorized Elites Only”: A pretty long and difficult level. There are plenty of risky timesavers here. My best time is 3:35:02. Screenshot.

I will try to put the recordings up on youtube as well. I also have a fifth level in the works, but I’m not sure if I will release it.

Let me know if you beat my times!

Today I want to write about something that I made back in April 2007. This was about two weeks after Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars had been released. Command & Conquer is a franchise that I really like. Well, before EA decided to kick Westwood in the butt anyway.

What I really like about C&C is the story. It has a truly awesome story. So after I had played through C&C3 I wanted to see how the planet had been ravaged by Tiberium. What is sad is that there were very little information outside of the game. The only place where you could see a globe with information about what places had become blue/yellow/red zones was in the introduction video, and it was really hard to make out the details.

In any case, I somehow got the idea to make a map of my own. I found a map with the various zones online. So I went to Google Maps and re-created the map there. When I was done I imported the map into Google Earth and recorded a short video.

Video in mkv container. Watch with VLC.

After that I made a thread on the official C&C forums (which no longer exists) and a thread on the Pure Pwnage forums, linked to the video and explained what I had done, and there were much rejoicing. A few people noted that my source image was inaccurate but overall the reaction was positive. Those who posted agreed that information on how the various places in the world had turned out was really scarce.

Not much happened after that…. But after about two weeks, EA announced that they were releasing something called Tiberium Earth. Looks familiar? Well, it should! The idea is identical to mine. In plain text: they ripped me off!

And did I get any recognition at all? No!

This is as good as an example as any of EA’s inherent evilness. I would have settled for an email from Apoc telling me “Good job. Thanks for the idea.” or something like that. I wouldn’t have required anything except a little recognition! But no, they don’t care.

In any case, the effort from EA seems to have died right after they launched Tiberium Earth. I have seen no news about it after the announcement. The Tiberium Earth site have not been ported over to the new C&C site either. The KMZ file is no longer available at their site… I had to look it up on the web. You can get it here: TiberiumEarth.kmz.

Final words? Apoc: It’s not too late to give me recognition for the idea.

Planetoids is a game me and a buddy made in school last year. I wouldn’t say that it’s fun but it is something you might find interesting if you want to see how it works. It uses formulas we learned in physics class to calculate gravitational forces between bodies in space. You can download either a binary-only archive or an archive that also includes the source code. The program is written in C++ and the source code is licensed under GPLv3 or later.

Click the image to view it larger.

You can also create your own planetary systems, let me know if you create one.