There is a great show on the History Channel that I have been watching a lot lately and that is Human Weapon. In the show, hosts Jason Chambers and Bill Duff will learn a new martial art each week and then have it tested in final combat at the end, usually against a master.
During the show, they show segments with 3d models where they explain the force of blows in scientific terms and things like leverage. Its a great eye opener. If you make a game that focuses heavily on combat, it is your responsability to make it as a great as you can. If your your game is about combat, combat is king.
Check it out [here]
I was just Perusing the vaguely videogame related Something Awful when I saw this recent article by Hassan “Acetone” Mikal. It is written in a Tongue and Cheek style. Strike that, its written in the Something Awful style, but it still raises some interesting questions about the way Physics are used in games. He goes as far as to differentiate Asshole physics from mere violence. Here’s a sample.
Because most people can’t read and comprehend at the same time, there is some confusion as to what Asshole Physics really is. The basic recipe is composed of the following ingredients.
* A realistic physics engine such as Havok
* A living, breathing interactive world that has some order
* Uppity NPCs who are performing some kind of menial task such as homemaking and react to your presence
* A bunch of objects you would find in an everyday setting, such as lamps, trash cans, and hookers
* A method to pick up and throw objects
I have seen some games such as Saints Row and Skate incorrectly identified as games with Asshole Physics. Both however, miss the mark. Saints Row may feature a physics engine, NPCs, and numerous objects, but the world is anything but orderly. Running over a guy and sending him into orbit is hilarious, but a little more than assholish. You can’t elicit an irritating reaction from a dead man. Believe me, I’ve tried.
I think its interesting that developers use physics all the time in order to crush, pulverise, sever and other wise maim NPCs, but not to merely annoy them. I see this as a whole other level that is worth exploring.
[Read Article]
I can’t believe this, but I just now discovered that Warren Spector has a blog. I was scanning through the various postings when one in particular caught my eye. “Am I a gaming hypocrite?” In the article Warren discusses both the shortage of games of a similar play style to his own, and also the virtues of not having to think to play a game. Heres a preview.
So it’s a fair question, why DON’T I make games like that? Why do I spend so much time playing and ranting about stuff that doesn’t give players much to think about or much control over their experience? Why do I love games with no story at all? Why do I spend hours and hours staring at a screen until my eyes bleed trying to figure out how to beat some boss monster in some dungeon in some fundamentally silly game that’s nothing more than a way to pass some time? And why oh why did I spend all that time fighting some dude named O’Chunks?
It’s an excellent read, check it out here.
The Australian site Gameplayer has an interview up with the Director of Dark Sector at Digital Extremes, Steve Sinclair. In the interview he talks about how UE3 is causing games to be delayed.
“A lot of promises were made about the Unreal III engine, particularly on PS3. But as we see now, the time frames haven’t been met and now a lot of games using it are being held up.†Digital Extremes wanted to dictate its own release schedule.”,
I personally find this hillarious as Dark Sector was originally announced in Feb 11th, 2000 way before Unreal engine 3 was available or considered yet they somehow choose not to use it anyway. It’s bad enough that Dark Sector was originally a Massively Multiplayer FPS with space travel (a wicked sweet concept) and now its a Sci-fi stealth game but Digital Extremes takes 8 years, making a game using their OWN engine and they cast judgement on Epic? Maybe Digital Extremes should have used the unreal engine. Maybe then they would have released the game already.
My good friend Rick Stirling has put up another in his series of “Game Art for Beginners”. This episode in the harrowing journey from polygonal wimp to digital maven is called “Introduction to Alien Brain”. For those that are not in the know, AlienBrain is a revision control system or “Asset” control system in this case, since it is aimed primarily at artists.
There are free alternatives like Subversion, which while free are not designed specifically for art assets but do work pretty darn well for versioning and reverts and the various things you do with such a system.
So go ahead and click on the article and enlighten yourself to toys the big boys use.
[here]
I thought Sony made a good move lowering the price of the PS3 by $100, and obviously it was a good move by sony too, increasing their sales, at least as far as amazon.com can indicate. Then I read this on Kotaku
We’re no longer in production for [the 60GB PS3], so once that product is gone from the retailers shelves, then we’re back to the $599 SKU only, so it’s not like we have a two-price strategy here in the US market, which we found out very early on, that consumers react mostly to having one SKU as opposed to two.
Ok, so sony didn’t REALLY lower their price by $100, they are just having a firesale to get rid of an inferior product. When the 60gb PS3 sells out, that means that the lowest end model of the PS3, is still going to be $599 and for that extra hundred dollars everyone gets $7.20 worth of Hard drive.
At the going rate of $0.36 a GB (thanks pricegrabber) 20 Gig comes out to $7.20
Thanks Sony.
It appears that both Sony and Nintendo are refusing to allow the AO rated Manhunt 2 by Rockstar. You know this would be an opportune time for Microsoft to ready their Money cannon. Being as how they just dropped 50 million for GTAIV DLC exclusivity.
Actually, I do have something nice to say about Sony. The PS3 is currently the front runner, by a large margin on Folding@home. Folding @ Home of course is the protein folding distributed computing project that is utilizing protein folding, in order to find cures for alzheimers and other neurological diseases. Tho, I must say I get a kick out of how many Teraflops the PS3 is computing. (at least when this gif was made.)
Credits for the image, and original story of course go to Tom writes a blog
You know, I really have to hand it to Sony. With games like Little Big World and interfaces like Home (second life, only interesting, with good graphics)
I thought, maybe Sony really is going to do something different with the PS3 and be a worthy contender for the money of consumers. Then some doofus at Sony had to go and say this.
Home is a first of its kind 3D community that allows for open interaction between consumers, SCE and third party partners. It is a truly interactive, global community of users. Xbox Live is a static, 2D, text-heavy environment that can’t match the rich community features found in Home. Xbox Live community interaction is much more passive and limited to the members on that friend’s list.
Yes Sony, I would much rather run for 5 minutes, to the muliplayer room to see if anyone is playing my favorite game. I entirely believe that home could have stood on its own, without comparing it to Xbox live, but Sony felt compelled to throw some lemon juice on the wound. Great PR move.
…at least that is my take on it. According to this article, the european PS3s are going to be less backward compatible than their american equivalent. So let me get this right, not only do they have to pay more for the PS3 but they get a less capable SKU
I am not a fan of the PS3 by any means, but I do believe in a Gamer’s right to buy the console of their choice, something Sony is making it increasingly hard for their supporters to do.
