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Tag Archives: Development

VMoteGirls trailer (censored version)

Here is the VMoteGirls trailer. Words can not describe this or do it justice, all I can say is that it is a sex game based off of using a Wii remote, Nintendo should be proud.

How do you work on the development of something like this and what kind of office does this have to be? I can only hope that this is some kind of twisted joke.

Hit the jump to see the user’s manual.

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256 players online… too many

PS3
Even though the graphics of MAG looked spot on and at first glance having 256 players on at the same time sounds pretty great, how will this work logistically?

MAG was announced for the Sony PS3 and is boasting 256 player online action, broken up into squads of 8 man teams. So you basically have 32 teams battling, with a leader on each squad/team based on skill and experience. Will the leader of each time have some control of the members of his team? If not it will be utter chaos. Having 256 players running and gunning will get hectic and probably dilute the experience by having a large percentage of players that are clueless or off doing their own Rambo thing.
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Sony Takes You Back to School

PS2 PSP Dev Kits

In an effort to aid game development at the college level, Sony has instituted the PlayStation-edu program. Here’s what you can expect:

PlayStation-edu is a program for universities and colleges to get access to PS2 and PSP development kits…the same ones that professional developers use to make the games you love to play. You get the development software, the hardware, and the SDK to learn and experiment with. SCEA wants to make sure that students who are graduating from college are ready to program on PlayStation hardware and that means getting it into your hands.

So normal students won’t be able to pick this up. Your computer science department will have to get on board and actually purchase the dev kits. It’s a great way for the younger crowd to get experience in game development before graduating and moving on.

Forza Devs Could Make the Next Project Gotham

pgr41.jpg

Since Bizarre is now part of Activision, they won’t be handling the development on future Project Gotham Racing titles. In fact, they already finished up everything for PGR4, so they’re all done with Microsoft’s racing franchise. So who might take over? Turn 10, the internal studio at Microsoft who handles Forza might get the job. According to an interview with Shane Kim:

You know, we have a great internal racing studio in Turn 10, the creators of Forza Motorsport. And our goal is to roll the studio so that they can do more creative execution within the racing space. So you can imagine a future where they would develop a new version of Project Gotham Racing. We don’t have anything concrete there, and I do think that after four versions of PGR, it’s really important for us to take a fresh creative approach to it and to really think about what we want the next version of PGR to be if we do that.

I think taking a new approach to the series is a great idea. I’d love to see some new innovation with Gotham. I loved PGR2 and 3, but PGR4 seemed like just another game in the series. We’ll see what happens.

Top Spin 3 Developer Q&A

Top Spin 3 Screen 1

I got to spend a little bit of time today talking with Anthony DeLuca, the Producer for 2K Sports upcoming Top Spin 3. We discussed a lot of topics surrounding the game’s development and upcoming release.

In the eyes of the development team, tennis games were starting to become static and they wanted a more fluid gameplay to complement playing tennis is real life. Top Spin 3 does this as it more realistically portrays what you are doing on screen with the inputs you give on the controller. New methods of control with the right analog stick have been implemented to give a more fluid feel to the game. For the Wii, how hard you swing and the angle of the Wii remote determines your shot type and speed, which is pretty cool.

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G.I.R.L. Scholarship sponsored by SONY Helps Boost Female Gamers

G.I.R.L.
SONY recently ran a survey and got back feedback from female students at The Art Institute and found some interesting stats:

The survey interviewed female students currently enrolled in Game Art & Design, Visual & Game Programming and Visual Effects & Motion Graphics at The Art Institutes schools. The SOE-sponsored survey revealed that:

- 61% of students surveyed believe male dominance in the industry is a deterrent to women pursuing a career in gaming
- 42% of those surveyed would like to see women portrayed as leaders in video games
- 35% of the students surveyed want to create more games that are fun and interesting for women to play
- 31% of those surveyed want to become involved in gaming because more women need to represent the industry

I know a lot of guy gamers out there feel that there aren’t enough female gamers playing, but studies have shown that 40% of all gamers are actually female, of course they just don’t want to talk to you over Xbox LIVE.

Looks like SONY is taking note of the drastic increase in female gamers after all and providing a nice scholarship for a lucky female gamer to further her video game career. Not only will you get $10,000, but also a ten week internship at SONY, pretty impressive hookup. Entries begin April 1 and need to be in by or before April 15.

Hit the jump for the full press release:
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Insomniac Providing Free Development Tools

Source Code

Hot off the heals of Sony’s PhyreEngine announcement, Insomniac is providing a free library of development tools, labeled Nocturnal Initiative.

“The Nocturnal initiative is designed to encourage greater communication and information sharing among the development community because it will ultimately enable us all to create better games at a lower development cost,” said Mike Acton, engine director, Insomniac Games. “And, in the end, it’s all about making great games.”

Essentially, Insomniac is giving other developers access to their source code in an effect to expedite and reduce the cost of game development, mainly on the PS3. This can only be good for gamers out there, as this new sharing of information at no cost will ultimately mean better games in your living room. Kudos to the industry players stepping up here!

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Sony Unveils PhyreEngine for Free Cross-Platform Development

PhyreEngine

In what could be one of the biggest quiet announcements of GDC, Sony is making their PhyreEngine free to all developers. In case you don’t know, the PhyreEngine is a graphics optimized for multi-core systems that run on OpenGL or Direct3D.

According the presentation, the package includes full documentation, “70+ samples” and “full source code and artwork” for a few sample game templates. And all that’s required to get your game running on the PS3 is a “simple recompile.” It works with standard tools like Maya & Max exporters as well as Bullet, Havok, and Ageia Physics engines. There’s already a few games on the market using the PhyreEngine cross-platform, including DiRT, fl0w, and GripShift.

So what does this really mean? Well, Sony’s free development tools are aiding the development of games for PC and Xbox 360, as well as their own console. Since a lot of developers have been neglecting PS3, making it easier for them to develop games in a single environment for release on all platforms is a great idea.

More news is expected in the coming days, weeks, and months on PhyreEngine as Sony is dubbing it “the new hotness.”

[via Joystiq]

EA Still Struggling With PS3

PS3 Horizontal

Development for the PS3 seems to still be a struggle over at EA, as they acknowledged they’re having trouble when using the Xbox 360 as the lead platform. As discussed during Thursday’s conference call:

“But in circumstances where we either led with the Xbox 360 or ran parallel production, for the most part, we’re still experiencing some delay on the PS3. It’s a little bit more of a challenging development environment for us.

“It’s probably only a third of a problem for us as it was [nine months ago]. But there still remains some catching up to do on the engineering side for the PS3.”

Hopefully EA and other developers get their hands around coding games for Sony’s console. If you remember, the PS2 had similar issues. Hopefully Sony steps up their developer tools to make it easier for everyone to bring their games to the PS3.

[via NextGen]

Warhawk Patchs in the Works

Warhawk Screen

Warhawk will be seeing two patches in the near future on the PS3. The first patch, v1.1, will be hitting a console near you in the very near future. This patch will introduce both server-side and client-side fixes for the game. Here’s what you can expect fixed in v1.1:

Server-side updates
* Stat database stability improvements
* Improved server stability
* Max Clan limit changed from 32 to 64
* Viral Rank-up bug fixed and correct for players that were accidentally ranked up.
* “Time-in-Vehicle” Stats fixed so certain awards can now be granted properly.

Client-side updates for Patch v1.1
* Stat connection, fetch/post fixes
* Significantly improved client connection stability
* Quad “????” Ping display bug fixed.
* Added support for Player-Ranked Servers.
* Game synchronization fixes due to fluctuating network conditions (packet-drop).
* Crash fixes for end of game and split screen.

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