Archive for the ‘Feature’ Category
Volition on co-op play in sandbox games
Last Updated on Saturday, 13 March 2010 02:14 Written by Michael Lemm Saturday, 13 March 2010 02:14
Saints Row 2 developer on the hassles of including cooperative mode in their game, and why it was worthwhile in the end. Who was there: David Bowring, designer for Volition, the development team behind open-world games such as Red Faction: Guerilla and Saints Row 2. Co-op was tough to achieve in Saints Row 2. What they talked about: Saints Row 2 was not only critically well received , it was also one of the few games in its genre to feature cooperative multiplayer. In his GDC 2010 talk titled “Co-Operative Design for Open World Games,”, Volition designer David Bowring said any developer potentially looking at including co-op in their sandbox game needs to be aware that they’re in for “a lot of pain and suffering”. When it came to Saints Row 2’s QA process, almost 37 percent of bugs found were directly related to the co-op aspect of the game, Bowring said. “You have to bear in mind that every system you build has to be coop friendly, and that every system touched could break coop, and an enormous amounts of bugs were created,” he said. So why do it? Bowring said despite the hassles, the inclusion of co-op in Saints Row 2 was very gratifying, with Volition’s figures showing the people who played co-op generally played a lot more of the game. Bowring said most players also now had the expectation that games would feature some sort of multiplayer, and that providing social content helped make a game more relevant as well as extend its shelf life. Takeaway: Untethered open world co-op is difficult to achieve, so Bowring’s advice to would-be open world co-op developers is to design everything with co-op in mind right from the beginning. Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot ” Volition on co-op play in sandbox games ” was posted by Randolph Ramsay on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:14:15 -0800
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Volition on co-op play in sandbox games
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Tags: david-bowring, design, game, hassles, mode, people, ramsay-on-fri, randolph-ramsay, snow leopard, the-development, the-expectation, windows xp 7, world-games | Posted under Feature, PC Games | No Comments
Independent Developers Show Off their Mac and iPhone Games
Last Updated on Friday, 12 March 2010 09:50 Written by Adam Fletcher Friday, 12 March 2010 09:50
For the past twelve years, the Independent Games Festival has been a platform upon which indie game developers could showcase their work and receive some constructive feedback in return. The event is held annually at the Games Developer Conference and is the best place to see up-and-coming developers strut their stuff. This year, we got to talk to a developer whose team used Utility on their Macs to produce an engaging top-down platformer, and two developers who are utilizing the accelerometer on the iPhone to develop imaginative mobile games.
Tags: background, games, iphone, maclife game week, news, obstacle, puzzle, puzzle-bloom, rhythm, videoRelated posts
Tags: background, games, iphone, maclife game week, news, obstacle, puzzle, puzzle-bloom, rhythm, video | Posted under Feature, MAC, MAC News | No Comments
OnLive Readying Subscription-Free Cloud Gaming
Last Updated on Friday, 12 March 2010 08:42 Written by Gary Hendricks Friday, 12 March 2010 08:42
Though online game streaming service OnLive will initially only be available to those willing to pay a monthly subscription of $14.95, the company has revealed plans to launch a subscription-free service–dubbed OnLive Game Portal–before the year’s end. As OnLive CEO Steve Perlman explains : The OnLive Game Portal is for gamers looking for direct access to OnLive games without being required to subscribe to the features of the full OnLive Game Service. Through the OnLive Game Portal, gamers will be able to play select games directly on a rental basis as well as game demos for free; subject to available OnLive service capacity and whatever usage limits are associated…
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OnLive Readying Subscription-Free Cloud Gaming
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Tags: basis-as-well, being-required, direct-access, Feature, features, gallery, online-game, onlive, portal, portal-before, rental-basis, result, service-through, snow leopard, steve-perlman | Posted under Feature, PC Games | No Comments
iPad Will Read Books Aloud, Support Open EPUB Format
Last Updated on Friday, 12 March 2010 07:00 Written by Cedric Price Friday, 12 March 2010 07:00
Eager to be the first on your block with an iPad? Apple started taking orders for the tablets on Friday. Wi-Fi models running from $499 to $699 will be available on April 3; 3G models, costing $629 to $829, won’t be available until late April. Along with the advance orders, Apple released some details on what’s expected to be a key app for the new device — e-books. Promoting the iBooks feature of the iPad, Apple’s web site explains, “iBooks works with VoiceOver, the screen reader in iPad, so it can read you the contents of any page. Even with all these extras, reading is so natural on iPad, the technology seems to disappear.” The site also promotes iBooks as a totally new reading experience. “Turn iPad to portrait to view a single page. Or view two pages at once by rotating to landscape. Change the text size. Even change the font. Touch and hold any word to look it up in the built-in dictionary or Wikipedia, or to search for it throughout the book and on the web,” the site says. Support for EPUB Format And in a positive sign for open-source books, Apple announced the iPad will support the EPUB format for digital books — even those that are not offered through Apple’s e-commerce sites. “The iBooks app uses the EPUB format — the most popular open book format in the world,” Apple’s site says. “That makes it easy for publishers to create iBook versions of your favorite reads. And you can add free EPUB titles to iTunes and sync them to the iBooks app on your iPad.” EPUB features advanced presentation for digital books, including in-line raster and vector images, embedded metadata, digital-rights management support, and Cascading Style Sheets styling. Authors Demand a Voice That support could go a long way to making the…
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iPad Will Read Books Aloud, Support Open EPUB Format
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Tags: book, change, dictionary, Feature, ipad, natural-on-ipad, Orders, raster, result, sheets, voice, wikipedia, Windows 7 | Posted under Feature, The Latest News | No Comments