Session: WiiFit: Creating a Brand New Interface for the Home Console
Feb 20, 2008
Speaker: Takao Sawano WiiFit Examples Family weighing themselves and tracking health * Father doing push ups on balance board * Mother doing yoga on the board * Games: Kid taking headers playing soccer goalie * Games: Grandfather using ski-jump * Games: Mother walking on a tightrope Sold over 1.4 million units Europe: April 25th * US: May 19th Wii Fit Package Contents Balance Board and software Not born of strategic process,…more
Session: Rules of Engagement: Blizzard's Approach to Multiplayer Game Design
Feb 20, 2008
Speaker: Rob Pardo, Blizzard Entertainment Rough notes below Game Balance solo to max level important role in a group, raid, and group PVP Starcraft - Race totally different Better players can win games fast Offense over defense (don’t want Starcraft 2 as a Sim City simulator) Creative strategies Every unit has a counter Be fun Game Balance…more
Session: Taking Xbox LIVE Arcade Games to the Next Level
Feb 20, 2008
Note: I’ll be regularly blogging on session at GDC (Game Developer Conference) _Rough _notes Speaker: Scott Austin: Xbox LIVE Arcade, Microsoft I just interviewed Scott and we’ll be posting the video on Channel 9 in the next few days Games N+ - Level editor * P2P versus server (doesn’t need to be policed) * RezHD Input Achievements GeoWars * Pacifist - 60 seconds of living * Drives different behavior * Tetris Splash * Every unlocked achievement adds new fish to your fish tank * Small Arms * Buzz around non-descript achievement * You had to play against someone who had the achievement * Then play against someone who has the achievement * Indirectly played against someone that has the achievement (2 devs had it and achievement spread from there) * Braid * Coming out soon * 65 levels * Uses time as part of the game mechanic * Parallel time stream, distort time, reverse time * Meta story - find the meaning of life * Similar to bioshock * Ikaruga * Polarity - Black or white * Black kills white * White kills black * White ship shooting white actually helps you * Schitzoid - * Co-op - only black can kill black, only white can kill white * Every Extend Extra Extreme (E4) * Allows you to integrate your music into the game, not allowed to integrate your music into rhythm game, (ex: can’t do guitar hero with your music) * Rip music off your DVD - E4 will figure out rhythm and analyze the music automatically * Texas Hold ‘Em - Statistics * Analyze win/loss, flop, turn, bankroll, hands you’ve received * Undertow * Art/graphics to a new level for an arcade game * Cut scenes in-between levels, immersive experience * 16-person multiplayer game * Double Dragon (retro games) * Extras section - read storyline, original artwork, hints and trips * Take away * Innovation is really important to us * Innovate in any direction * Push the envelope * Questions * Statistics - Do we have stats on how many games are selling?…more
AddOn Studio for World of Warcraft now available!
Dec 14, 2007
I’m proud to announce that AddOn Studio for World of Warcraft is now available to download from CodePlex! This was one of those personal projects done in my “free” time, but its amazing to see how well it turned out, kudos to our extensibility team and to the amazing folks at EPAM for building a kick-ass IDE experience! **Video Demo **You can watch a video demo from TechEd Europe with me building a custom addon that uses Halo 3 game sounds into World of Warcraft here.…more
Wiimote Library for Developers on Coding4Fun
Mar 14, 2007
Brian Peek just published his latest article, a .NET library for easy programming of a Nintendo Wiimote controller. His article and project on Channel9 includes the full source code for the library and how he built everything. The cool part is of course how easy it is to use the library as shown below… **Create a Wiimote class ** VB: Dim WithEvents wm As Wiimote = New Wiimote()…more
XNA Game Studio Express RTM'd - Create Pong on your Xbox
Dec 11, 2006
Congratulations to the XNA team for getting XNA Game Studio Express out the door! You can Download Game Studio Express here Clint has a good summary on the Coding4Fun blog XNA Blog Announcement Details To get you started, Coding4Fun’s ZMan has a how-to article on building your firstXNA game, Pong, err, TinyTennis. **XNA Party Tonight (Monday Dec 11th) **Anyone and everyone is invited to the XNA Open House party tonight, in Building E from 6-8pm PST.…more
VS Express New Partner Announcements: Z-Wave Home Automation & Flight Simulator X
Oct 18, 2006
Last week, at Digital Life, we announced **two new partnerships **which expand the reach of hobbyist and enthusiast developers even further than before. ** Intermatic and ControlThink Partnership **Microsoft has partnered with Intermatic to better enable DIY developers to create custom home automation projects using Intermatics HomeSettings Kit. The goal here is to provide the hardware, API, and tools to make home automation easy. In fact, the HomeSettings kit even includes Visual Studio and SQL Server Express in the box :)…more
Warcraft "Motivational" Posters
Aug 25, 2006
I just discovered these…. love them! Epic Loot 50 DKP Minus Talent Review PVE Servers my defensive response: I was #1 on KBs yesterday on the cross-server realms so I know this is BS :) Pugger Guild Drama Agro Control Classes Druids Druids #2 Paladins PVP Mage Ganked (Rogue) Full list here (discovered through WoW Map Blog)
E3 Reactions on the Web
May 18, 2006
I’ve been on vacation but been totally fascinated by the blogosphere news on E3, but it sounds like Nintendo and Microsoft did well at the show, but Sony seemed to have bombed. The Inside Microsoft blog had a post “Reaction to Sony @ E3…Uh…Not Great” with lots of links to stories talking about how Sony bungled E3 during their launch year. Joystiq even had a post asking 8,876 readers who was the keynote master at E3.…more
Half Life 2 Rube Goldberg Device Contest
Feb 11, 2006
There’s a Half Life 2 contest using Garry’s Mod to create Rube Goldberg devices (an incredibly complex device designed to accomplish a very simple task). This video shows a hilarious one Source: Digg.com