MentalFish

Archive for the ‘Games’ Category

An amazing world, great style and good gameplay from what I can tell. Check out the interview at indiegamepod.com or just enjoy the trailer:

Hurry peeps, pre-order Unity 3.0 before it is released and save a few hundred bucks. I just got my upgrade to Unity 3.0 and an upgrade of the basic iPhone license, so it saved me 300$.

Also, check out the video of the Beast lightmapping demo, total awesomeness!

Awesome asset management in Unity 3.0
http://blogs.unity3d.com/2010/06/15/unity-3-feature-preview-asset-management/

Yes! Eric Chahi, creator of Another World is back the business!

My oh my, I think I blew a fuse when I saw this!

Go watch the HD version at GameTrailers.com

Pure mind blowing awesomeness. Now, if only Mr. Lucas could get his wallet out and hand over some dosh to Blur to do this as a full time TV series Anyone know if the live action TV show is on the way?

No matter what, I am giving the game a go when it is out, even though it can’t be as mind blowing as this cinematic.

Just letting you know there will be some additions to the Unity Proto Pack, such as heli- and space ship flying modes. All existing customers of the pack will get it as a free update.

The first product is a prototyping pack for Unity, with some simplistic setups for player, camera and enemy behaviours.

http://mentalfish.com/store/

In the recent turmoil around Apple changing the legalities around development for iPhone, John Gruber posted his thoughts on it. While I agree with many of his comments, there is a rather strange statement, or claim if you will, at the end of his post:

Cross-platform software toolkits have never — ever — produced top-notch native apps for Apple platforms. Not for the classic Mac OS, not for Mac OS X, and not for iPhone OS. Such apps generally have been downright crummy. On the other hand, perhaps iPhone users will be missing out on good apps that would have been released if not for this rule, but won’t now. I don’t think iPhone OS users are going to miss the sort of apps these cross-platform toolkits produce, though.

http://daringfireball.net/2010/04/why_apple_changed_section_331

What the heck? So these games are bad and no one would miss them if pulled off the App Store?

I don’t think its even a necessary to tell why these falsifies the statement of John Gruber. Unity games have many times over been in the top 10 of popular games, and Zombieville USA is constantly high on the lists, bobbing up and down in the top 100.

Now onto the reason of why this even matters to me. The reason I got a Mac in the first place was Unity, before it was released on Windows as well. First I got a Mac Mini to get rolling with Unity. Later on I got a MacPro 8 core xeon, early 2008 model, a really good deal at the time, unlike the more recent ones. Then I got a Macbook Pro for working on the go and use in meetings. I also applied to become an iPhone developer, got the Unity for iPhone license, got an iPod touch 2nd gen and later a 1st gen for testing. Finally I also got an iPhone 3GS.

Unity turned me into a Mac user. I started to like the system for its underlying BSD foundations, general stability, apps such as Quicksilver and other small clever tools, not having any of the system rotting I have experienced in Windows ( that said, I have been told that its a thing of the past with Windows 7 ). I set up LightWave on my Mac, got the Mac versions of any and all plugins I have purchased earlier, got a Mac license of NukeX and have now been considering to get Final Cut Pro.

If the final word in this situation is that Unity will not be allowed for use as a dev tool for iPhone, iPod, and iPad, then I will most likely end up migrating back to Windows, as I have realized, I am not as much a Mac user as a Unity user and developer. If I am a follower of any sort of technology, its of Unity, and not Apple. The quality of Apple products is good, but if this Apple-Adobe pissing contest will cause too much turmoil in my toolbox then I am a outta here…  I hope and cross fingers that the widespread interpretation of the recent legal changes turns out to be mostly smoke and little fire. One good thing from all of this is that it has reminded me not to put all my eggs in one basket, hence why I offer interface design, VFX workflow tools, web and graphic design, rendered and realtime 3D for industrial visualization, game design and prototyping.

The best thing for now is to wait for official word from Unity, not listen to rumors or interpretations and go back to GSD (Get Shit Done).

Oh glorious open source efforts!

http://code.google.com/p/ps3mediaserver/

I came across this media server solution for connecting up my Mac to the PS3, no more need for USB sticks or being annoyed by a lack of format support i.e. QuickTime… This media server plays everything, even stuff that other commercial solutions don’t support.

There was some issues with setting it up though and it can be summed up with one thing. Port forwarding. To make sure the Mac finds the PS3 and vice versa, I had to set up port forwarding in my router. So, I changed the IP on my Mac to be static, and then I went into the web-interface for the router and forwarded all communication on port 5001 to that IP.

Since I am on a Mac Pro, I have two connections on the network card, shown as Ethernet 1 and Ethernet 2 in the Network Preferences. Under the hood these values are shown as en0 and en1, so for the PS3 Media Server to know which one to use, you should select it here here: General Configuration > Force network on interface > en0 (or en1) > Save > Restart HTTP Server, and you should be ready to go.

<rant mode=”on”>

What is the value of creative efforts, often described as intellectual property? And by value I don’t talk about monetary measures alone.

Envision this: You have an idea with a small technical scope and you share it with others. Later on, the exact same idea is presented and implemented as somebody else’s new and brilliant idea, just before your own implementation of it is completed… Would you consider this to be ok, it’s just your own fault you didn’t implement it fast enough after revealing it?

If an idea in itself has no value, and is up for grabs for anyone as soon as it has been verbally or textually expressed, then I don’t think I will spend a lot of time sharing ideas in any open fora, or even closed ones for that matter. Game concepts and game mechanics will be under a lid and seal until the game is finished.

If I spend 90% of my time working out the gameplay and 10% of my time goes to producing graphics and code, then the time spent on gameplay is where the value of the game reside. If you spend 90% of your time on the graphics, and someone traces it to create “their own” version of it, would you accept it as decent behavior? What about re-record the in-game sounds and changing the pitch to create their own version of it?

I am not saying people shouldn’t make another tower defense game (we at illustrata just made one), or not make another physics stacking game, but there is a difference between making a similar game in a category of several variations, and recreating one specific game with only microscopic changes and reduced polish.

If you are a cloner from Kamino insisting on identically cloning other game concepts, at least have the decency to clone something that has already been released and not something you have come across being in development for the same target platform and audience you are aiming for.

Then again, this might only be me being overly sensitive to injustice and what i consider to be rude behavior.

</rant>