Description
Transhuman Design is a team of talented game programmers, artists, designers, website coders & sysadmins led by Michał Marcinkowski. Transhuman Design (THD) is an independent development group led by Michał Marcinkowski ‘MM’ - developer of Soldat, the indie classic that dominated the 2D multiplayer world and directly inspired games like N, Showdown Effect and Take Arms. Since then, MM has surrounded himself with a handful of like-minded people in order to do one thing: dominate the world with the most entertaining multiplayer game of all time!
History:
Transhuman Design starts in Poland back in 2001. Michał Marcinkowski ‘MM’ inspired by a finnish game called Liero begins work on a revolutionary 2D action game called Soldat. Computer games were Michal’s passion since the age of 4. Amongst his childhood hero’s were Jordan Mechner and Eric Chahi. Like his hero's before him he decides to make this game by himself. Soldat is released the next year. To this day the game has been downloaded nearly 2,000,000 times. What caught gamers attention was a never before seen blend of side-scrolling action, player versus player combat and realistic weapons. Positively reviewed by nearly all computer gaming magazines, featured on G4TV and received numerous awards including Top 10 in GameSpy’s independent game selection. For many years part of the Electronic Games League. Inspired many successors including N, Crash Commando, Showdown Effect and Take Arms. The game was praised for its simplicity and addictive qualities. Around 2008 MM started to depart from Soldat and left it in the hands of the large community that was created during those years. MM then started work on what turned out to be a 3 year project called Link-Dead. It gathered attention after a series of videos showing off the games 2D light and shadow effects. Link-Dead introduced real-time lights, HDR effects, ambient lighting and an automaton for simulating fog and dust effects. The game however after initial alpha release went nowhere. Mainly because it wasn't fun enough, a problem which was 'fixed' in THD's next game. In April 2011 MM secretly started developing a new game based on the Link-Dead engine. He did not announce this to anybody and made the game anonymously. He decided on retro pixel graphics looks and classic console gaming mechanics – pack it in a medieval scenery with knights and archers and add multiplayer. It was Soldat with swords and castles. Still undercover MM assigned a pixel artist to the project called Max Cahill “Geti”. Geti was a graphics guy and game developer popular on the Data Realms forums (Cortex Command game forums). After exactly 17 days the game was released on a game developer's website and then on DataRealms forums. The games popularity started there. King Arthur’s Gold was born, MM joined forces with Geti, and a new game development philosophy was formed - based on freedom from scripted sequences and cooperative multiplayer design. Transhuman Design has now all the ingredients to make the best multiplayer game ever made.
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We're feeling nostalgic today: Soldat, first released 14 years ago... Screenshot from version 1.7 #throwbackthursday
Jacob Janerka on Twitter
Stranger Things adventure game mockup by Jacob Janerka. We want to play it... badly.
Hello folks! Last night (or during the day for anyone in the EU), much of our infrastructure went down again. Most that went down is back online now. We're currently still working to get everything back running properly, but since there's some waiting involved (and only so much staring at a black box you can do in one morning) I'm going to use the time to explain the cause of all of this to you, the players. Transparency is a good thing, and our new host has given the all-clear to discuss the situation. THD infrastructure has been the target of a large, ongoing DDoS attack, of the order of >10 GB/s for some hours each day. This has completely overwhelmed our servers and taken our services out. Our main host for all our web infrastructure, who is a long term community player, host, and friend, is not able to continue hosting us as a result - it has been an incredibly expensive week for him and we are very sorry for the damage and expense caused. However, we have negotiated new web hosting - which we were already using for game servers - and started moving everything there. Moving has been slow because a lot of the databases have to be restored from damaged backups, a lot of specialised software needs to be installed and configured, and the attacks have been ongoing. The attacker is definitely targeting THD because the attacks have followed us to the new host. We have taken the option of DDoS protection with our new host, which has come into effect this morning, but that has required migrating almost everything behind new IP addresses, so there's a lot of reconfiguration involved. It also adds some latency to every request and costs money each month, but it's basically our only option at the moment. If worst comes to worst and the attacks don't stop, we should be able to get a good service out anyway, once everything has been properly configured. Until then, only some services will be available. In particular, steam authentication is currently not available. We've received no claim or threat or demand from whoever is performing these attacks. If anyone knows anything certain about them or wants to confess (and stop doing it), feel free to get in touch; however this is no time for a witch hunt in the community. We ask our players to continue to show patience as we deal with this frustrating issue. Thanks from everyone at THD
Hey Everyone! So, as promised, we've been working hard on getting everything running again. jrgp and Furai in particular have been working crazy long hours setting everything up at the new host. All in all, the major games (KAG, Soldat) are playable online again. This should appease a lot of you, but there's still quite a lot to do before things at THD are "back to normal". If you'd like to know more about specifics, please see the THD homepage. Thanks again for your patience and support, Love from everyone at THD
THD Web Servers are all currently down and being migrated. Due to circumstances outside of our control, we're required to change hosting for all our major infrastructure. This means that the KAG Site, TR Site, Soldat Site, THD Site, Game Servers for all games and the API are all out of action for the time being, which will make online play of King Arthur's Gold, Trench Run, and Soldat temporarily impossible. At the moment we are working to get a minimal service back underway; a static website with information about the current state of things first, followed by the authentication and server list system so people can play again. We are working hard to get a full service back as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience in this trying time, Love from everyone at THD
Pixel Heaven 2016
Last weekend was awesome - we showcased Butcher at Pixel Heaven and received tons of useful feedback. Thanks a lot for coming over, playing the game and taking the time to discuss it with us!
Timeline Photos
Everything's set up and ready to go! Come and kick some corpses around at our booth if you're at Pixel Heaven ;) #pixelheaven
i.imgur.com
The weekend is drawing near and PIXEL HEAVEN 2016. RETRO & INDIE GAMING FEST vol. 4 is just around the corner! If you're in Warsaw (or not too far away), there's no excuse not to attend! You'll be able to play an exclusive build of Butcher, so come say hello and eradicate some humans with us. Nothing more relaxing than painting the walls with blood, right? #pixelheaven
Timeline Photos
We're happy to announce that we're one of the finalists for Pixel Awards! If you attend Pixel Heaven this year, you'll have a chance to play the latest development version of Butcher at our booth :) We'll be posting more info about the event soon.
Butcher
15 seconds of mostly red pixels. This new Butcher video snippet features some ultraviolence, not for the faint-hearted.
Timeline Photos
Last chance to grab Trench Run for 10% OFF! The offer ends on 14th April. Also, we'd appreciate your feedback on the game: https://forum.thd.vg/categories/trench-run.221/ Thanks!
Transhuman Design's cover photo
Trench Run is now live on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/262100/ (for 10% OFF to celebrate the launch)
Quiz
