Urban Dead – Zombie MMORPG
“Urban Dead is a low-tech massively-multiplayer zombie apocalypse game where the living and the undead compete for the control of a quarantined city.”
Awesome stuff… The user starts by selecting their player type (civilian, military, scientist or zombie) each with different strengths and weaknesses. Then they start the game, stranded in Malton City… looking for a safe house, food, weapons whatever it takes to survive the undead apocalypse. So far I'm alive… having avoided some zombies, found a baseball bat and made it to the sanctury of a Necrotech building (my character type is a Necrotech Lab Assistant), I have to wait a while there while my action points replenish… then it's back to streets 🙂 – this looks addictive, it's even inspired some to create a quasi-religion!
Game Theorists win Nobel Prize
Simulating and predicting the outcome of life threatening conflict through gaming:
“Game theory was first developed by Hungarian mathematician John von Neumann in the 1940s and 1950s as a way to understand decision-making in the real world where several parties were bargaining, perhaps with unequal resources and information.
It developed into a mathematical theory of strategy, which helped explain which decision, to cooperate or not with rivals, had the best pay-off.. ” link
Current reading / viewing
Picked up some good reading & viewing material over the last week:
How to draw Manga, Macromedia Flash Techniques
Exactly what it says on the tin, really needed this because my colouring in technique could be a lot better… this book shows how to get beyond flat fills in flash (thats a lot of FL's) and make real professionally coloured, fleshed out flash based illustrations. link
Specialten DVD – Issue 11
A bunch of music videos and some documentaries, packaged in a nicely designed folder/magazine package. A load of different stuff in there. link
Everything Bad Is Good For You
Have just started reading this, basically it's about how instead of dumbing us down, consumer/media culture is making us smarter… link
Uzi Magazine (DVD) – Issue 1 'Tokyo Brainstorm'
Really good, a documentary where some Swedish design heads went to Tokyo and connected with innovators in Japan's graphic / fashion / product / game / film / everything design. Made through still photographs against a great soundtrack and interspersed with lo-rez still cam/mobile phone mpegs, no voiceover is used… the images speak for themselves. link
Nintendo Revolution Controller
Nintendo's new controller for their forthcoming Revolution console has been unveiled at the Tokyo Games Show. A lot are unimpressed by its tv zapper style look, but looks are deceptive. The gyroscopic control aspect of it should hopefully bring new gameplay possibilities to tv screens just as the touchscreen and stylus combo has for handheld gaming through the DS. With the Xbox 360, PS3 and Revolution looking very similar specwise this is what's needed by Nintendo to stand out and innovate. Whether or not innovation translates into sales though is another thing, while the DS has many admirers the straightforward power and thrills of the PSP have it the winning handheld of the moment. Also, a lot of the games for the Revolution will be arcade ports or simultaneously designed for the rival consoles/pc, so how the controller can stand up to 'normal' gameplay will have to be seen. Anyhows I was getting pretty bored of the latest next gen race but this development has recharged my optimism about the next level of gaming innovation. It's great to see a developer realising that video gaming's development needs more that just raw processing power. Hopefully the Revolution will live up to its name!
links:
Gamespot / bbc online / Engadget
Random Scribbles
Some links to pencil drawn stuff I found on my webserver…
(1) some character drawings
(2) concept characters for 'Fantasy Wars' , a LOTR type game from Nocturnal
(3) A robot… I'm a robots kind of person 🙂
Images from Japan
Back in March I was in Japan for a couple of weeks, most of that time was spent in round Tokyo with a day to the old capital Kamakura. For a graphic designer / comics / animation / video game / technology fiend like myself it was like no other place, as i read someone say once 'Japan rewired my brain'. Anyhows I uploaded a few photos from it here
Ultimate Arcade Games
The first commercial video game title that I’ve had a contribution towards gets released this October. Ultimate Arcade Games by Melbourne based Nocturnal Entertainment is published by Telegames and is a compilation of 13 retro styled arcade games for the Gameboy Advance.
I produced some sprite art and animations for the horizontally scrolling shoot em up ‘Omega Force’ (specifically the copter, some missiles, basic foreground tiles, the house, the blue silo, red missile, the tank, the big tank and some other bits n pieces!)…
Released for the Nintendo Game Boy Advance in 2005. I can claim credit for the helicopter, missiles, and the house which gets blown up. I also drew and animated some tanks and scenery tiles. These graphics were also used for a demo game bundled with the Catapult game development system by Nocturnal in 2003.
It’s a great buzz to see this get published! IGN have posted a preview (including screenshots and video footage) of the game here.
links:
Ultimate Arcade Games at Telegames.com
Ultimate Arcade Games at Moby Games
Mac OSX on PC
“Imagine if your next Mac cost you only $300, and ran faster than any G4 or G5 you've ever used.
That future may already be unfolding: Hackers have found a way to bypass a chip designed to prevent the Mac OS from running on non-Apple PCs, which are often cheaper than Macs.”
Opens up the floodgates to a super hispeed mutant mac os / generic pc clone hardware hybrids…
Real and virtual realities colliding
Augmented reality security system: link