Category: Games

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From Engadget: Developer won’t patch XBLA game because Microsoft would charge ‘tens of thousands’ of dollars

That is terrible that Microsoft would charge so much to developers for fixing games!  Boo!!!

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Developer won't patch XBLA game because Microsoft would charge 'tens of thousands' for the privilege

Seeing as how so much software is moving to online distribution, the significance of this controversy might extend far beyond gaming and XBLA. For now, however, the spotlight is firmly on Microsoft and the way it charges developers for testing their games and patches, after a well-known developer made an unusually public complaint. In a post on its official blog, Polytron said it would not patch a rare game-saving bug in its popular title Fez, because Microsoft would charge it “tens of thousands of dollars to re-certify the game.” It added that “had Fez been released on Steam instead of XBLA,” the problem would have been fixed “right away” and at no cost to the developer, which strongly hints that it’ll jump to another platform as soon as its XBLA exclusivity expires. Responses to the story over at our sister site Joystiq are decidedly mixed, with some folks outraged that Microsoft’s high maintenance attitude could hold back improvements in this way while others suspect Polytron of blame-shifting.

 

from Engadget

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From Ars Technica: NASA partners with Microsoft to launch its first console game

NASA / Microsoft

In the past, NASA has used everything from websites and mobile apps to coverage on its own TV network to get the public excited about its space exploration efforts. But the run-up to the planned August 5 landing of the Mars rover “Curiosity” includes the organization’s first foray into the world of console game development.

Mars Rover Landing, available this week as a free download on the Xbox 360, was inspired by “the entirely factual and amazing sequence of events to land Curiosity on Mars,” Jeff Norris told Ars (Norris is the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab manager for planning and execution systems). Using the Kinect, players help adjust the landing module’s angle as it enters the Martian atmosphere, handle timed explosive charges to discard the heat shield, and deploy a parachute before applying thrusters to gently touch the rover down on the Martian surface (that last bit is in a mini-game somewhat reminiscent of the arcade classic Lunar Lander). It’s not the most complicated game on the market, but it does a good job of showing just how many things have to go exactly right to land a robot on another planet.

In real life, that entire automated process takes place during what NASA engineers refer to as “seven minutes of terror” when the Rover is unable to communicate with Earth. While NASA had previously detailed that sequence in a dramatic video from earlier this year, the organization felt there might be better ways to get the public involved in the story.

 

from Ars Technica

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From Autoblog: Video: This is how good car crashing in video games is about to become

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It is evident even with the most realistic car games that crashes have mainly been left off of the realism menu. Sure, hit a wall or another car and there will be some damage and crumpling, but it usually doesn’t look like a genuine car crash. A start-up company called BeamNG is working to change that, developing a physics modification for the Cry Engine 3 to create wrecks that appear to be lifted from a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration crash-test video.

They team has been at it for a while, and the latest multicore version shows off one- and two-car collisions that feature shattering glass and more realistic deformations. They’re still at work on it and have promised more improvements, but the video belowshows off just how real things are about to get in the world of video games. Well, once a game maker decides to use the Cry Engine 3 for a driving game, that is…

 

from Autoblog

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From Droid Life: OUYA: The Android-Powered Gaming Console That Wants to Take on the Big Boys

My two biggest gripes with mobile Android gaming are as follows: I don’t have a reliable controller for most of the games, and the screens are too small to really get immersed in. Kickstarter is hosting a very promising looking project called OUYA (pronounced ooh-yah) that looks to take mobile gaming back to the living room, and rival the big console makers. This Android powered console is calling on the powers of Android’s open development platform and the free-to-play model of gaming that has been all the rage recently. Can this grassroots program rattle the cages of Sony and Microsoft?

The OUYA team has created a prototype console that is based off our favorite OS and even uses parts that you might find in your phones today:

  • Tegra 3 quad-core processor
  • 1GB of RAM
  • 8GB of flash memory
  • HDMI connection to the TV, with support for up to 1080p HD
  • WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
  • USB 2.0 (one)
  • Wireless Controllers
  • Ice Cream Sandwich

All the games that work for Android now will work on OUYA and the developers of the console are hoping to entice game developers to make games just for their console, that are made to play on the big screen in your living room. Games like Shadowgun and Dead Trigger will look and play great on your TV and even Minecraft will be included in all this fun.

One interesting note from the developer states “We’re handing the reins over to the developer with only one condition: at least some gameplay has to be free.” F2P has taken off in PC gaming recently with most games going free and then allowing you to buy upgrades to the game for real money. Microtransactions are now funding Team Fortress 2 and League of Legends, even though some players never pay a cent to play them. It’s an interesting demand but in the long run it could be beneficial for any owners of the OUYA.

OUYA is looking to raise money through Kickstarter and their goal is $950,000 to get the project up and running fully. At the time of this post they are near half that already, with 29 days to go. You can reserve a username for as little as $10 but if you want to get a console for yourself, $99 will get you an OUYA before they hit stores. This little console definitely has a lot of potential and could redefine gaming on the Android platform, we’ll just have to see how we eventually get there.

Via: Kickstarter

from Droid Life

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From Geeks are Sexy Technology News: 100 Worthwhile DOS Games of the 90s

While surfing Reddit I found this image that depicts 100 of the best DOS games of the 90s and it makes me want acquire many of them to relive the nostalgia of my early PC gaming days.

Here is the poster, but you will have to click on it to see the full res version.

I love how the images are sorted on stylized floppy disk templates. I kind of wish this is how the games were presented back in the days instead of on black or beige floppies. It also staggers me that these disks each held 1.4mb. That’s with an “m” there kiddos. Megabytes. While most of these games did come out on multiples disks (and some on Cds too) it puts a lot in perspective when we consider our smart phones are now more powerful than the computers that ran these games.

On this list, the most nostalgic of them for me has to be Betrayal at Krondor. I played the crap out of that game. And the hidden gem Relentless: Twinsen’s Adventure and its sequel Twinsen’s Odyssey took up a lot of my time too.

Day of the Tentacle and Carmageddon were also pretty amazing. And it was Descent that earned the honors of being the first game to actually give me motion sickness with its 3D environments and 6 directions of travel.

Of course there are classics on this list that have franchises even to this day, like Elder Scrolls. However, Duke Nukem was better back then as the new long awaited version sucks.

I recently bought the Jedi Knight collection on Steam, which included the DOS version of Star Wars: Dark Forces from 1995. My monitor now supports six times the resolution that this was intended for, so I had to run it in windowed mode. The game was 72MB, so it downloaded and installed in a snap!

Some great nostalgia here as well as a potential poster for my wall!

 

 

from Geeks are Sexy Technology News