Category Archives: game

Quora – What are the pros/cons of webgl?

game,

http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-pros-cons-of-webgl
For those burnt in the past by VRML and propietary 3D web plugins (Adobe Atmosophere, Google Lively et al), this is a good place to start.
One question nearly keeping me up at night (but overshadowed by the unpredictable demands of a two year old) is how do you get around using a technology to design 3D virtual places despite the technology (html 5) not having a physics engine? For virtual heritage I think it is it an interesting question and it can be answered.

3D Flash in October?

design, game, ,

http://twitpic.com/22qyzo/full

next generation 3D Flash Player “coming in October”.

Flash Player 3D Future at MAX, Wednesday room 503

Join Sebastian Marketsmueller, Adobe Flash Player engineer, for a deep dive into the next-generation 3D API coming in a future version of Flash Player. Marketsmueller will unveil exciting new APIs and demos never shown before, including some exclusive content you cannot miss as a Flash Platform developer.
Audience:Web Developer, Application Developer
Skill Level:Intermediate
Speaker:Sebastian Marketsmueller
Products:ActionScript, Flash Player
Times:
Wednesday, October, 27th, 11:00 am – 12:00 pm

The Tartan Online : Minput makes movement a new way to control small electronics

design, game, virtual heritage,

Minput, a device that hopes to solve the problem of space and visibility in small devices and screens, is being developed by Chris Harrison and Scott Hudson, who are both part of Carnegie Mellon’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute. Harrison has already been featured in The Tartan for his work with Skinput, which turns the arm into a touchpad.

When sliding Minput over a surface, sensors on the bottom can register movement to control various software on the device. In this respect, Minput is a mouse with the computer screen attached, and it can be manipulated without having the user’s fingers block the screen.

Minput allows mouse control and optical tracking to be applied to small mobile devices.

According to a demonstration in Harrison’s video, Minput could be operated anywhere a user could possibly use the device, including on a table, on the leg of one’s pants, and on a user’s palm. Because there are two sensors on the device, a variety of motion can be detected, including twisting the device on a table. According to www.chrisharrison.com, the optical devices use negligible tracking power. According to the video, Minput supports three “input modalities,” or ways the user can manipulate the device. Gestural input modality involves motions like flicks and twists and was demonstrated using photo-browsing software. Flicking the device in a certain direction changes the image, while twisting changes the number of images on the screen, like a zooming function. These inputs can be changed to perform many functions on different programs. The variety of motions allows programs on the devices to change certain settings without having to navigate complex menus.

video at http://thetartan.org/2010/4/26/scitech/minput/slideshow?start=1

Unreal Development Kit

design, game, , ,

Chris Blundell at www.plutonicdesign.com told me he is highly impressed by the free editor and that it creates better game levels than found in the game!

But.. still only for PC..I do wonder how much it costs for a game to go commercial though when sold as an educational game by an educational institute-hundreds of thousands? Or do they take a percentage of the profits (which seems a more desirable option!)

It seems to me that a free game editor is one great leap for indie and educational games (i.e. Unity, XNA-kind of, UDK) but there also needs to be a cheap path to Playstation 3 or XBox..any such pathway out there? Perhaps Blender can be ported to Playstation or XBox?

Microsoft Research Image Composite Editor (ICE) free for Win machines

design, game, virtual heritage, ,

Microsoft Image Composite Editor is an advanced panoramic image stitcher. The application takes a set of overlapping photographs of a scene shot from a single camera location and creates a high-resolution panorama incorporating all the source images at full resolution. The stitched panorama can be saved in a wide variety of formats, from common formats like JPEG and TIFF to multi-resolution tiled formats like HD View and Silverlight Deep Zoom.

CFP: International Journal of People-Oriented Programming (IJPOP)

design, game

***CFP: INAUGURAL ISSUE*** SUBMISSION DUE DATE: 1st May 2010

International Journal of People-Oriented Programming (IJPOP)
www.igi-global.com/IJPOP

Co-Editors-in-Chief: Steve Goschnick & Sandrine Balbo
Published: Semi-annual (both in Print and Electronic form)

Mission of IJPOP:

The International Journal of People-Oriented Programming (IJPOP) is cross-discipline in range yet singularly focused on empowering individuals to conceptualise, design, program, configure and orchestrate Internet-powered mashups, game mods (modifications), aggregate and structure personal media and build standalone cloud-based and client-side applications (on smartphones, netbooks, laptops, desktops, home network and novel appliances) – into self-fashioned tools and products that ultimately suit the user’s own unique needs and aspirations. Other individuals may well take up such apps, mods and mashups for themselves, further customising, enhancing and embellishing them, or they may in part be used in a social or family context (to the benefit of the collective aspirations of those Social Worlds of which the individual is a part) – nonetheless, the focus of composition, development and customisation is on a product for oneself, upon theory, concepts, techniques, methodologies and ultimately tools that service a market of one. Our mission is to be the first journal that comes to mind to academics and practitioners alike and remain the best with regard to all aspects of People-Oriented Programming. Our papers and reviews will be insightful and compelling to both educators and researchers, and often to a wider audience too – the people for whom this paradigm of software development has come about.

WebGL

design, game,

Is this a wow!?…Still digesting this..

http://www.abakia.de/blog/2010/02/10/webgl-my-first-impressions/

3d computer graphics in web applications seem to be still a topic thats is heavily associated with technologies like flash, shockwave or other plugin based platforms. This may become history soon. At least if the development of WebGL browsers will proceed as it currently does. If you already use a WebGL enabled browser and had a look at one of the several examples as they appear constantly on http://learningwebgl.com/, then you will figure out quickly what I’m talking about.

multiplayer editors

game, , , , , ,

With the apparent demise of Oblivion Online I feel the need to record a list of interesting multiplayer editors.First in the list is a free multiplayer editor of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas:

Multi Theft Auto (MTA) is an open-source software project that adds full on-line gaming support to Rockstar North’s Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas PC game, in which this functionality is not originally found. It is the first open-source modification that adds a highly customizable network play element to a commercial closed-source single-player PC game.

There is of course still Warcraft III (Mac and PC) and Oblivion (single player) if you wish to try the multiplayer hacks..

April 29 there may be a multiplayer editor for Dante’s Inferno..

Of course if you have a Playstation III there is always little big planet but I don’t know how unlimiting it is. Unlike of course Crysis that is perhaps too umlimiting.

Most of the above include in-game assets, but if that is not required, unity 3D, shiva or perhaps Esperient Creator are options.

cross-cultural interactions in virtual worlds

game,

I was emailed some questions out of the blue by a student on the Worldplay Research initiative project. One question of particular interest to me that I should be able to answer (but cannot, just yet), was how games are designed for different cultures.

Apart from my wondering if perhaps their project should be called Worlds play rather than worldplay, and my wondering if I should have mentioned my discussions with psychologists on worlds and worldfulness in relation to mental health, there are some important and interesting questions in their project.

dev tools for the iPhone-costs?

game, , , , , ,

what are the costs?

I am sure there are other tools out there. Interestingly the Torque 3D is cheaper than Torque 2D, and there is no Linux version (yet?)..

update: http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/09/preview-of-webkits-webgl-canvas3d (a watch this space alternative)

I imagine there should also be a list of tools for Google’s Android Operating System..(“3D libraries – an implementation based on OpenGL ES 1.0 APIs; the libraries use either hardware 3D acceleration (where available) or the included, highly optimized 3D software rasterizer”)..

a 3D game for Android..