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Apple Releases Social Gaming Platform Dubbed Game Center

September 10th, 2010 Nicod3mus

Apple announced quite a long time ago that it would be releases a social gaming framework called Game Center for the iPhone and iPod. We started working with the code about 1 month ago but until a few days there were so many bugs we couldn’t really complete anything. The Gold Master Seed was released a couple days ago and we started finishing up some of our games to submit. As of now there are only a few games using some of the frameworks and none using the multiplayer frameworks as far as I know.

At-any-rate Game Center is a social gaming platform providing frameworks for things like voice chat, achievements, multiplayer matching, and some other cool social stuffs (like being able to see what your friends are playing) that could end up being nice little marketing channels. So we have been into multiplayer 3G and Edge gaming for quite some time, as far as I am aware we developed the first true multiplayer platform for the 3G and Edge gaming. Of course we got no recognition for building systems that even the biggest developers had not attempted….

So Game Center could be really cool for us and get some recognition for some of the awesome multiplayer games we have developed over the last few years but in all honesty….. the frameworks we built we much more extensible, scalable, functional, and secure than the frameworks Apple offers in Game Center. Do you find it hard to believe that our little development house put together better stuff than the mighty Apple. Well you shouldn’t because in all honesty it isn’t that rare. I mean really….. all you have to have is a jailbroken phone and you can totally hack some of Apple’s implementations…… w34ksauce.

I’ll do a follow-up as soon as we get something on iTunes with the Game Center integration.

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Blizzard Releases StarCraft II Ladder System Hotfixes

September 9th, 2010 Nicod3mus

Blizzard released some pretty cool hotfixes for the StarCraft 2 ladder system. Considering some of the fixes actually effect the outcome and balance of a competitive multi-player system I think they are pretty significant. They made some changes to the matching system that makes play more fair and balanced in some arranged team scenarios, they improved the team arrangement process, and sped up some other matching stuff. All-in-all looks good, here’s an excerpt that talks about the changes:

Improved Matchmaking for Teams

While the matchmaking system as a whole is looking very strong, one area we identified for improvement was matchmaking for arranged teams that were still in placement matches. We found these first few matches for arranged teams were giving them an unfair advantage against their opponents. Since so many new arranged teams were being created every day, this was resulting in a noticeable amount of imbalanced matches for team games. The corrections we’ve made should show an improvement for many team players, especially in the sub-Gold leagues.

Improved Placement for Teams

Another related issue we’ve received feedback on and experienced firsthand is the difficulty of placing in a high league while in an arranged team. We made two changes that should improve the experience. 1) The improved matchmaking mentioned above will help teams find opponents of similar skill sooner and, as a result, help to more quickly place teams in the league in which they belong. 2) We also found we were being too conservative in how teams were being placed in leagues and have made some adjustments to allow teams to be more easily placed in higher leagues. 3v3 random and arranged teams will likely notice this change the most.

Team Matchmaking Improvements

We found conditions where the matchmaking system was forcing certain teams and players to wait longer than needed for team matches. Those conditions have been addressed and the wait times should be reduced without affecting the quality of the matchmaking.

Here’s the full post: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/785422

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StarCraft II Map Contest Closing Soon!!

September 9th, 2010 Nicod3mus

If you have not been following it Blizzard has been running a map contest with a $5k prize and it will be over soon. If you are one of those map maker people get on it. Here’s the snippet from the official site:

We just wanted to remind you that the first ever StarCraft II Custom Map Contest will be drawing to a close on September 11, 2010. If you’re hoping for a chance to have your map featured at BlizzCon, win a trip to the convention, and score a cool $5,000 in the process, then put the finishing touches on your map and submit it before the deadline.

Read the full post here: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/778343

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Day[9] Productions – Awesome Zerg vs. Protoss

September 8th, 2010 Nicod3mus

I loved this one because I have been playing protoss a lot lately. Get some hawt Void Ray rush action in this installment from Day[9]. This guy got the choke blocked, and then proceeded directly to void ray mahem. A great watch thanks again to Odom & Aige/8thSamurai and of course to Day[9] as well!

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Day[9] Productions – Awesome Terran vs. Zerg Match

September 8th, 2010 Nicod3mus

Day[9] Productions has put together some awesome recorded StarCraft II game broadcasts with commentary on their UStream channel. I played the original for a few years back in the day but these guys have a ridiculous amount of StarCraft knowledge. I just started watching this game today and IMO even hardcore vets could learn from these. Definately check it out. Thanks to Odom and Aige/8thSamurai for turning me on to Day[9]! This match starts out with a sweet little reeper rush an then some serious banchee pressure, both defended very well and it’s on from there, enjoy!

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StarCraft II First Look – Less Suck Than The Rest

September 7th, 2010 Nicod3mus

Let’s face it. Consoles have been driving the gaming industry revenues for the last several years and the publishers have in large part abandoned the PC game market. Like Microsoft with Halo, they have forsaken us that made them ub4r. What ever, old news. The point is this: The PC gaming landscape is pretty barren. The days of having to choose which monolith title you were going to purchase are long gone. I have this to say, “Thank you Blizzard for delivering something that sucks much less than the rest.”

I have only played for about two days and my skill level is such that I can beat the A.I. computers on medium difficulty most of the time. Even with very little playtime I can tell that StarCraft II sucks much less than 99% of the drivel that has been tossed at the PC game market of the last few years. Good single player campaigns (even though I won’t be playing anymore of it), good graphics, much more complex gameplay than the original, great multiplayer system with skill based matching and easy-to-use “play with your buddies” functionality, and even some Facebook battle.net integration for adding friends.

I was late to the game for several reasons: 1) PC games have been pissing me off lately so I haven’t rushed out to get them like I used to. 2) Work sucks. 3) Work sucks. 4) Was messing around on a Aion private server. 5) Work sucks. I should have listened to my buddies when they were all freaking out on release day but I’m gun shy…. the last 50 games they told me to get cause they were “awesome” or “had a great end-game” ended up being horrible. So long story short: I would go get StarCraft II if I were you. I’ll write something up when I get further into the game.

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World of Tanks? World of WTF!

September 2nd, 2010 Nicod3mus

I was scanning through news on MMORPG.com when I came across this thing called World of Tanks. Is it an MMO or not? Regardless why would anyone play this ridiculous thing?

World of Tanks is billed as MMO of some kind where everyone drives tanks around and shoots at each other, at some point there will be control points supposedly, and you can upgrade your tank in a garage or something. How in God’s name do people get funding for crap like this. As an independent developer with an incredible creative and development team I know how hard it is to get funding for a game and how hard it is to compete in today’s market. If someone pitched me this game idea I would laugh them out of our conference room.

The article on MMORPG.com centered around the debate on whether or not this game was actually an MMORPG. It appeared the conclusion they cam to was that it isn’t and it will be removed from the official list. The first thing that came to mind when I read it was, “Who cares what it is it sucks.”

I will admit that I am sometimes wrong in my assessment of a games popularity (which I always credit to the masses being stupid) but holy brown cow Batman, anyone who plays this thing should seriously find something better to do with their time. Info and source links below:

MMORPG.com Article: http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/544/feature/4478

Official Site: http://www.worldoftanks.com/

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Dust 514 – Persistent World Console Shooter From CCP Games

September 2nd, 2010 Nicod3mus

After reading the article on the new Carbon technology that my buddy Tim ( golen.net ) turned me on to I was browsing around and saw the Dust 514 stuff on the CCP site. Dust 514 is a persistent world first person shooter being developed for consoles by CCP Games.

Dust 514 is set in the EVE Online Universe. A very cool tie-in! The battles played out in Dust 514 will take place on the planets that exist in EVE Online. If it were only staged in the EVE universe that would be one thing but according to what I read on IGN, CPP’s official site, and fansites, it appears the game will actually interact with EVE Online! Battles in Dust 514 will determine who controls regions of space and EVE Online players will have to contract Dust 514 players to stabilize or destabilize regions of the universe!

This has to be one of the coolest ideas I have heard in gaming and I am on the edge of my seat for this one….. although the reason might be something other than what you might expect. I have been playing games for a long time (pathetically enough). I started writing and playing MUD’s back in the day, I remember the first graphical PC games, I had all the first consoles and still buy the new generations as they come out, I had a gameboy, DS, DS Lite, PSP, etc. I’ve been around the block.

In all the years I have been wasting my time shooting things, grinding XP, or finding the right knob to turn, one thing has always been true. There are two very distinct types of gamers, shooters & MMORPG/RPGers. Thats a fact Jack. I have always leaned to the shooter side playing competitive BF2 and Halo back in the day while maintaining a healthy PVP MMORPG appetite.At-any-rate these two genres of gamers have always been about as far from each other as can be.

For those of you that may not get what I am saying here, these are two very different kinds of people. You have guys in Call of Duty or Battlefield 2 two screaming, “F*&^( Y*& DIE!” over voice comms half drunk with the football game on in the background and then on the other side of the spectrum you have a guy typing. “How art thou good fellow?” into a chat bar while running an errand quest with Lord of the Rings on the TV. VERY DIFFERENT PEOPLE….

If Dust 514 works this will be the first mainstream example of First Person Shooter type gamers and MMORPGers working together towards any kind of end within the same game world. To me it kind of looks like the guy who went to MIT and became an aerospace engineer working with the marine grunt on the ground. From a sociological standpoint it’s intriguing. I can’t wait to see how it plays out and Kudos once again CCP. Links to trailer and sources below:

Source IGN: http://xbox360.ign.com/objects/027/027065.html

Youtube Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzVjggarRns

Official Page: http://www.ccpgames.com/en/products/dust-514.aspx

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CCP Games Reveals The Carbon Framework

August 31st, 2010 Nicod3mus

No doubt many of you already know CCP Games, the Icelandic development company that brought you the international hit EVE Online. I played EVE back in the day (beta through early release) and loved it. We had tons of fun in the game but left for Lineage 2. Lineage 2 ended up being the most fun we have had in about any MMO ever so we stayed for a while. By the time we actually quit playing Lineage 2 we all felt it was too late to go back to EVE because of the skill training system, skills train over time so if you are not training them it takes forever to catch up and there is nothing you can do to speed it up.

I had some issues with CCP customer support and billing early on. They billed my card for months after I canceled, they were impossible to get to answer the [hone being on Icelandic time, etc. In the end CCP became one of the development houses out there that I respect the most.

CCP just released an article outlining the framework they use to manage, maintain, and develop their games, this framework is called Carbon. They also discuss the Core technology group, or essentially the development group within CCP tasked with maintaining and developing the Carbon framework.

What is Carbon?

As CCP and EVE continue to grow, it makes sense for us to consider our existing technologies and re-use these if appropriate across our projects as part of the Carbon framework. This becomes more appealing if those technologies are proven (or, as we call it, ‘battletested’) in the crucible that is a game being used by a passionate, resourceful and sometimes devious player base. Furthermore, as our new projects continue to mature, we can take the technologies developed by them and apply them to EVE. This means that the EVE development teams get some great new technologies which it hasn’t had to spend any developer time creating. Having the CTG take the strain making this happen ensures the EVE developers can concentrate on developing EVE and make best use of this common technology.

It also makes sense for a central group (the CTG) to build brand new Carbon technologies which we know can be shared. This group can then deploy and support the technology across CCP to whoever needs or wants to use it.

CCP also released a video in this post that takes a look at some of the cool new Carbon character technology  that uses Nvidia Apex. This video shows some of the new hair and fabric shaders that Carbon uses, video capture or not it looks great. Great article and a great read. CCP continues to be on the forefront and I for one am looking forward to the next game they bring to the table.
You can read the whole article here: http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=788

You can check out the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gf26ZhHz6uM

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Runes of Magic Part Duex

August 30th, 2010 Nicod3mus

In search of an MMORPG to play until Star Wars The Old Republic comes out we once again are trying out some Runes of Magic. I’m sure we will tire of it relatively soon (again) but at least it’s open PVP.

I know there has been a few expansions and it was either Runes of Magic, Vangaurd, or Age of Conan. Seeing as they all suck, the free one (Runes of Magic) won in the end. If anyone wants  to join us in shooting some people in a crappy game then by all means hit up Teamspeak.

Keep an eye out for the follow-up to see what we think about the current state of Runes of Magic. We usually just rag things out so don’t expect much else…..Ciao!

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