WWIIOL Damage Video

This is an oldie but a goodie recently redone with some voice over by our resident croc wrangler, a.k.a. DOC. This video really shows the guts of the sim, showcasing our damage and ballistics. You'll notice no hitpionts or look up tables are used. This, gentlemen, is the real deal. We'll be redoing this with the new graphics engine upgrade and the new models in the near future.

MMO for MilSim Application

Some older but possible still relevant reading material for me. You might like as well. This is a report on using games for MilSim and has some direct importance on what we do here for both WWIIOL and our "other" projects. I'm not sure why they talk about NWN ( I haevn't read this yet hence this post as a reminder to me...) but I've got a level 40 Dragon Disciple who could probably wipe a Brigade at minimum. Guess I'll call Col. Mustard and see if he's up for a game.

Thanks to Cid for the linkage on the beta forums.

2005_HFES_paper.pdf (application/pdf Object)

AGDC Links

I'm planning on writing up my time at AGDC this year as there are a lot of good tools that I came away with. In the interim, here's a list of links about the show that I need to read and you might find interesting as well.

Panels
MMO on Console - I missed this one but someone IS going to do it and they might even do it well. Ok yes, technically someone HAS already done. A few somebodies actually. The news here is making it cross platform, oh and probably also trying to make it suck less than previous attempts. NCSoft has already thrown their cape in with the PS3. Maybe even the PSP?

Defining Fun - I didn't see this but BLOO and many were very impressed. It defines fun through the PENS model (Player Experience of Needs Satisfaction) :
- Competence
- Autonomy
- Relatedness

BLOO notes:

This matches with other research and opinions of other game academics
and designers.

- Competence (PENS)
- Achievers (Killers in PvP) (Bartle Player Types)
- Game (Schubert)

- Autonomy (PENS)
- Explorers (Bartle Player Types)
- World (Schubert)

- Relatedness (PENS)
- Socializers (Bartle Player Types)
- Community (Schubert)


Richard Bartle:
Player Types In MUDS: http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm
Bartle Test: http://www.guildcafe.com/bartle.php

Damion Schubert: http://www.zenofdesign.com/

Tools
Vivox - Warcry covers the Vivox demonstration. Vivox is a cool voice technology we've looked at before and it include some cool multi channel command and control layering that might just work excellent for the game.

Big World

News
Matt Frior moves to ZeniMax. I've always admired Matt and his talks at AGDC are among the best. Very focused and down to earth. ZeniMax on the other hand...hmm...well, technically I probably can't talk about it, so I won't. Good luck Matt, you'll need it.

Star Trek Online - Killer Tribbles. Really, what else is there to say? Not much apparently.

Romero - Even less to say. I did sit next to him and Stevie Case one year flying out to E3. I remember thingking at the tmie "Wow, that chick is hot!". That was years before everyone starting talking about WoW. I'm visionary, you see, just like John!

Raph Koster - Interview. Raph really stole the show for me this year in the final panel. While I don;t think the big MMOs are going anywhere soon (and neither does Raph I bet), the success of web based and casual spaces is ludicrous to argue against. Habbo Hotel, more players than WoW and more importantly a 60% ROI? Seriously...

Cool Thing of the Day

Ahwulf sent this to me today. More procedural city building stuff. This is WAY cool. Be sure to read the SIGGRAPH papers.

Pascal Mueller's Wiki - City Engine

Cool Thing of the Day

I'm getting all set to head off to the Austin Game Conference and I'm already planning on the first night's activities. Drinks with MO you say? How about dinner at Stubb's BBQ? Maybe a little Red River bar hopping (Sixth Street is soooo passe they say)? Well no actually. I'm gonna see if I can fire this little flight simulator from Google Earth up and crash into a building. I wonder if that'll get me put on a list...

Google Earth’s Hidden Surprise: A Flight Simulator

Cool Thing of the Day

Many thanks to ahwulf for digging this up.

The ReDistricting Game

Really great game that delves into voting districts and how you can manipulate the map to achieve a desired outcome. Great little title for a serious game.

The ReDistricting Game

Cool Thing of teh Day

I've never had the chance to go to TED. That seems to be a mistake. I can;t help but think that this technology is somehow tied in with what's coming in Tech5. The idea that your image process should only be about the number of pixels you can draw on the screen, not the number of pixels in the source. So simple. So powerful.

Cool Thing of the Day

We like to kick around new ideas at the shop, hey who doesn't? Today we wandered off into the moral dilema that would be creating a game called Battleground Iraq. Ahh the free press. Ahh the uses for modern mil sim training. Ahh the death threats and car bombs.

Still there's a lot of cool technologies that came up with this one. Check out DI Guy for instance. If you think that stuff is cool try Baghdad in a box or maybe some of these outstanding models.

I guess its just a matter of time before someone does this game. The question is do we want to be the ones who do it.

Link

I Need This!!1

Lately we've been looking for some middle ware on which to base our next terrain editor. We've got some pretty steep requirements. Need to build a half scale map of Europe with several thousand towns with roads and rivers and satellite digital elevation data as the foundation.

In the past we've looked at many editors but nothing really designed to do what we need. I want it to be automated as much as possible. I'd like a cross between Sim City and Combat Missions. I don't need what most MMO engines have and shoe box shooters can't make stuff on the scale I need. Take a look at Blueberry or Terrex for something close for sim applications. Trouble is I don't want to use satellite pictures and I really need to have playable spaces out of all this.

Those guys have some cool stuff. I think we can work something out of it that might give us quick production and good results. Then I see this:

1 - Good screens of progressive generated interiors with objects.
http://forums.introversion.co.uk/introversion/viewtopic.php?t=566

2 - Mostly chat about the game history:
http://forums.introversion.co.uk/introversion/viewtopic.php?t=571

3 - Procedural cities. Code generated in a few weeks into the project....AMAZING! http://forums.introversion.co.uk/introversion/viewtopic.php?t=586

4 - Using the same basic algoritrhms from street and river and building placement you can do interiors as well.
http://forums.introversion.co.uk/introversion/viewtopic.php?t=600

5 - Chicken and the egg, need a dbase for the buildings before you can define the rules to build them...DOOM FTW!
http://forums.introversion.co.uk/introversion/viewtopic.php?t=683

6 - The buildings and streets...
http://forums.introversion.co.uk/introversion/viewtopic.php?t=733

To turn a phrase...F. Me.

Seriously!

This month the Escapist mag is covering Serious Games. Believe it or not, we're in the serious games genre as often as not. I haven't had a chance to read through the articles yet but I am interested in the topic. In my time here at the company I've had the opportunity to work on several cool projects with a serious bent. I remember meeting with a bunch of pentagon suits in D.C. one time and they wanted to use the game or a variant of it to track :"emergent behavior". I also remember stories from Killer about being at ITSEC and hearing brass and suits complain to their underlings: "look at that, 18 months and 7 million dollars" as they looked at our game. They naturally were comparing it to their own bloated and failed projects that couldn't show a helicopter and infantry in the same simulator. Read on then for more about serious games. I'm sure they aren't all war sims, just the fun ones.

The Escapist - Issue #82

P.S. The Escapist is one of those terribly laid out web sites that I can hardly stand to read. PDF here.