My apologies for the on-again/off-again ‘End of day’ thoughts. I have been so busy due to the holiday season, and I’m trying to do final preparations for the live-stream charity event as well (this Saturday, 8 AM to 8 PM EST)! Once that event is over, I should be back to my normal ‘End of day’ routine. Thanks to sticking with me through this busy time! If I am going to keep up, I have to get some rest! I’ll see you guys in a few, short hours. Hope you have a great morning!

I actually squeeze in some time to play Sonic Unleashed during the wee hours of the morning. It was just over an hour’s worth of gameplay, and I’ve been left with some fresh impressions in my mind. We’ve been fed trailer after trailer, screen after screen of Unleashed for a long time now. Remember when all of this started with a rumored leak containing a batch of screens? Well, we finally made it to launch day…for Wii and PS2 that is. Is this the Sonic game that finally brings the hedgehog back to his once high standing? I don’t know that yet…but I do know that Unleashed feels like two games in one.

The good part…the Sonic levels are actually fun. I think it has a lot to do with the amount of control you have. Sonic’s 3d games have been pretty lame, due to the amount of time you play instead of watching the action. It’s just not fun watching Sonic perform awesome moves unless you are doing them. I want to run, slide, dodge, and drift! Well, in Sonic Unleashed you can do all of that. You feel like you’re really in control of the action…which would seem like the most basic point of any game. Somewhere down the road, Sonic lost that. So far, with my time in Unleashed, I feel like Sonic has finally gotten some of that missing element back.

(more…)

• Midway not axing UK studio working on Wheelman
• Midway: The Wheelman faces high expectations
  

The XNA Creators' Club is being touted as a way for semi-pro and amateur developers to bring their designs to the masses via XNA Community Games, which launch alongside the New Xbox Experience today.

At its recent San Francisco XNA Community Games event, however, it became clear that a lot of the developers who have created the most polished and ready-for-market games on the service actually do have professional backgrounds.

At the event, we had a chance to speak with Nathan Fouts, founder and president of Mommy's Best Games (as well as its only full-time employee.) His game, Weapon of Choice, is a neo-retro throwback that brings to mind classics like Contra while embracing contemporary design choices.

Despite its hardest-of-hardcore looks and (nearly) one-man creation, it sprang not from the mind of an enthusiastic amateur, but a seasoned professional.

Though Fouts left Insomniac Games to found his own company, Insomniac CEO Ted Price, when recently asked, called him "an instrumental part of Resistance: Fall of Man... one of the most creative programmers I've ever met."

What is it that drove Fouts to leave his job at one of the most successful independent developers in the country and strike out on his own, and why through XNA Community Games? The answers may surprise you.

Did you have any sort of professional background in development before you started this project?

Nathan Fouts: I've been in the industry for over a decade now -- I guess I'm getting old! I've worked at Running with Scissors, I've worked at N-Space, I've worked at Insomniac Games.

I actually designed and programmed the weapons on Resistance: Fall of Man, the launch title. And I did the bosses on Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction.

So you actually have extensive experience on high-budget, next-gen projects. You decided to give that up and make your own project?

NF: Yeah. It's kind of crazy. We were making good coin at Insomniac Games.

They still are, without you. (laughs)

NF: Oh, yeah. Everybody there. That place... it's a great place to work. Basically, though, we had a child -- I don't know if you guys are interested in this from a developer standpoint, but because we're getting older, a lot of people, a lot of the professionals I'm friends with have had kids.

We had a baby and we decided to move back to the Midwest to be closer to my parents, so they could be with their grandson. This wasn't going to work, working at a big place. So a couple of years ago I started to think about forming my own place. And we didn't know how, and we knew that we couldn't pull it off until the whole downloadable thing started, with the new systems, basically.

Once Live Arcade started moving, I thought, "Wow, if we can get our money together, this might be possible." When XNA came through, and when Community Games announced that you could make money through it, that's when I knew we could do it.

How many people did you have working on the title?

NF: Me.

Really?

NF: Okay, that's extreme. But basically, I did original concept, design, art, programming, animation, sound effects, and then I had a really talented musician out of Tucson who did the music. I wrote the skeleton for the story, and then I had a science fiction writer friend write the story and the dialogue. So, basically, 95% of the game.

Wow. How long have you been in development?

NF: Like I said, we saved our money for a couple of years, and then I quit my job at Insomniac, and then I started full time in November last year. So it's almost been a year now.

I can imagine that's been like perpetual crunch.

NF: You know what's funny? Just, again, for the other developers' standpoint, working at home, it's been perpetual crunch that has been doable because I get these, like, mini-breaks.

You have dinner, there's your wife, your kid, and then you keep working. It's not as bad as a real place. I've done plenty of crunch before, and it drains your soul. But this hasn't been as bad. Anyway -- it's just different, working at home.

It's something, as you said, that people are facing. People want to start families. Everyone comes coastal to work in development. You don't really have a lot of choice in the matter.

NF: We didn't love Los Angeles, honestly. We lived there a couple of years. The only reason we were there was to work on games. There are a ton of places there. It's easy to move around. It isn't nice, but...

The interesting thing is, with the internet, it was possible to do our game in the boonies. We live out in the country, in Indiana, actually. And so it was actually possible to keep in touch with people, share files, and actually share the game itself, so that actually made it possible.

And your wife worked on it, too, right?

NF: Well, I did the development side, and she's like business, and producer -- well, quasi-producer. She does marketing, and helps with the press and that kind of stuff.

She's actually a fundraiser grant writer by trade, so she's really good at talking with people and working with them and everything. It's kind of like the Frank Zappa scenario. His wife managed him and did the marketing, and he did the music.

We actually have a couple of guys, very freelance, who helped me with the art, off and on. So I wouldn't mind expanding, but it's a really touchy kind of thing -- you have to be really careful about it.

I heard this story from Kathleen from Microsoft -- she said it's based on a concept that you had when you were 17, and then your wife found the designs, and it kind of grew from there. Can you tell me about that?

NF: Sure. I don't want this to turn into a... what's that Silicon Knights game?

Too Human.

NF: It's not a Too Human.

(laughter)

NF: I've always been playing games, and as a kid, as a middle-schooler, I'd do game design. And then I would send in game designs to, like, Electronic Arts, and get refused. And then I'd send them to Tecmo, and Sega, and places like that.

Now, with my wife, we're actually living with my parents, and she was digging through these old boxes, and found my old drawings.

And the funny thing is, they look similar to the new stuff that I've been working on -- but the game design is totally different in this. It's just the fact that I was doing this old style...

Well, the game is very reminiscent of a 16-bit aesthetic. It was a semi-credible story.

NF: No, it's true. It's fine that they say that, but it's a conscious thing -- I wanted to make a new 16-bit kind of game, that looks better, that plays better, that's more fluid, but it plays like that.

In the game there are a lot of elements that make it more playable, nowadays. It's an instant-kill game, but there's an element called "death brushing." Everything slows down, and you have this brush with death. It can happen as often as it needs to, and it's infinite, and it makes it a lot more possible to not die. It's an old-style game with new influences.

It's such a small thing, but the title screen really looks like a TurboGrafx or Genesis game to me, aesthetically.

NF: Exactly! That was a conscious decision. Another comparison that Steve Wik, of Postal, the game designer there -- he said, "I'd expect it to be on a marquee for an arcade machine from, like, '87." Yes!

I love that kind of art. I just love that you can see the pencil drawing in it, and you can just imagine the guy laboring over it, and I wanted to bring that through -- and I labored over it.

And the other thing is, and this isn't a negative on Resistance: Fall of Man, but when you go from one thing to another, that game is, the color palette is really kind of... low-key.

Brown.

NF: Okay, it's brown. It's Brown World. It just gets to you. Ratchet was very full and colorful, but that did not cure me. From working on Resistance, I was like, "Man, I want insane aliens, and I want crazy colors!" I've been seeing forum posts that have been saying it looks like an acid trip, and I've been like, "Thanks!" You know? Cool!

It reminds me a lot of 16-bit games, but more so. Based on what I've just seen.

NF: That's the idea. A lot of the weapons -- the other design idea behind the weapons is that each character has a weapon. It's his weapon of choice. But each character has a weapon, but when you play him, he's a life.

So when you play him, you're stuck with that guy. And even though you think you may not enjoy that weapon, you get to explore it more, and every weapon has a lot of depth to it. So it's easy to use at first, but then there's a lot more things you can do with it, and hopefully you'll grow to like all of the different weapons.

So it sounds like you've definitely put a lot of thought into how to evolve the design of a 16-bit game and make it compelling for a contemporary audience. I mean, we all have a lot of nostalgia for old games, but Mega Man 9 notwithstanding, it's a bit hard to approach them.

NF: And I'm playing Mega Man 9! And it kicks my butt. And it's a wake up, man. When you start those old games -- I still play a lot of those old games -- but when you start them, they smack you in the face! And in this one I wanted it to be a little bit more of an ease-in.

Again, I studied all of those old games really carefully. This is a game where you restart from the beginning -- which not everybody's psyched about -- but you do restart it from the beginning, I wanted to make it interesting every time you play.

So say you only play 10 minutes, and you fail. Then, you restart from the beginning. But when you restart, there's a lot of different paths to take. And within the levels themselves, you can actually branch and go a whole different way, and the story changes.

So if you keep trying this one path, and it starts to get boring, you can say, "I'm going to try this other path," but as you go, you're also picking up new operatives, so you're picking up new people with new weapons.

So say that one path you didn't get too far in -- it was too tough for you. You manage to save a new guy, you restart the game, and you have four guys -- four extra lives -- and now you are able to get further down the path. And that's how we make it playable for everybody. We've focused a lot on that.

To talk about something a bit different -- you said that your original inspiration was that you thought you could go on a traditional download service -- you made it sound like you were going for Xbox Live Arcade, when you initially had this idea to do it yourself as an independent developer.

NF: Absolutely.

But you ended up moving into the Community Games space. That has the benefit that you don't have to wend your way through getting picked, and everything, but obviously you don't have the same level of support.

NF: Right.

Can you talk about that decision-making process, and your expectations?

NF: It's a hard thing to talk about, but I'll just tell you, we got refused from Live Arcade. The initial game didn't look as good as this one.

Basically what happened -- and this is for everybody else who's thinking about it -- we went in, we pushed the game through to them, and they thought it was really interesting and fun.

But they thought the art style just wasn't enough, so we actually took that and spent a month and a half redoing just about every single thing in the game, and it was just horrible.

What I did, initially, was really static, and since then I've re-animated everything -- all the trees, all the grass, everything moves. I've had Xbox people say it's even stronger now, and because they want to bump up Community Games, they want to keep it on Community Games!

I'm cool with that, because I like Community Games. But it's been tough. I wanted it on Live Arcade -- or I thought I wanted it on there. But this whole thing's been a blessing too, so it's really come out great. And the [Dream Build Play] contest was pretty amazing, so I'm really excited about the whole thing.

Link

Sing It boasts 35 songs from Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana, High School Musical, Aly & AJ, The Cheetah Girls, and the like and both single-player and multiplayer modes. However, it’s nearly impossible not to notice the game’s pitch-tracking issues (with the possible exception of the “You’re On Your Own” mode, where pitch cues don’t obscure the video).

FunCom has rolled out a major content update for Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. Players levels 55-63 will now find Ymir’s Pass open. This new outdoor area features quests that include new storyline elements. The Amphitheater dungeon has been added as well. FunCom is promising the Age of Conan community “one of the most epic and memorable monster encounters ever created for the game.”

“This is an important update that opens up a lot of new gameplay content for players who have already passed the level fifty mark,” says Game Director Craig Morrison. “In the months ahead we will introduce even more new content, and coming up soon are two exciting new high-level dungeons intended for players who have reached the maximum level. At this stage adding more content and keeping people entertained is very important to us!”

There are many other tweaks including a solution to female avatars squinty eye issue. Its not as big a deal as the earlier breast reduction bug, but I’m sure it will be appreciated. Full update notes follow the break.

---
Related Articles at Gaming Today:

• Age of Conan Servers and Beta Update
• Age of Conan Character Creation on "Set" Frozen For Time Being
• Age of Conan: Community Q&A #2
• The Age of Conan Comic Now Available Online
• Age of Conan: The Barbarian Class

Recently, That VideoGame Blog conducted an interview with Steve Schnur, EA’s Worldwide Executive of Music and Marketing and President of Artwerk (EA music publisher), to discuss how EA is expanding their involvement in bringing new music into games. Artwerk signs new talent and brings their songs into EA while also delivering master recordings, film and TV sync deals, advertising placement and distribution that goes far beyond games. If it has to do with music in many of EA’s games, he’s the one to talk to. So we did. And he had some pretty interesting stuff to say about how big the music world is getting within the gaming world.

Of course even an EA man has to attribute a lot of that success to Rock Band and Guitar Hero (though Madden was making artists famous before that). Those two games are making big bucks right now and as Schnur points out, “a recent survey shows that among all boys and girls in the 8-17 year-old age group, the upcoming Guitar Hero World Tour and Rock Band 2 are the ‘most wanted’ games this holiday season.” So without a doubt, there is high demand and big bucks there. And we were curious if Schnur knew anything about an EA rhythm game in the works.

“We have some pretty awesome things in development. Naturally, they’re all top-secret. In the meantime, keep your hands on a controller and your eyes and ears open!,” he said after asked if EA and Artwerk had any plans for music style games in that vein. Definitely sounds like EA might be entering the plastic guitar scene some time soon — they couldn’t let Activision have all the fun could they? Of course not.

Nintendo fans have been practicing parkour with their very own platforming princess since the 8-bit days. Now it seems another traceuse is stepping in on the territory Samus pioneered. On the surface, it doesn't seem as if Mirror's Edge has very much in common with the Metroid franchise. Yet,the respective series heroines' exploits can be experienced and enjoyed in either first person 3D or 2D sidescrolling viewpoints.

Mirror's Edge 2D is currently in the beta stages of development with its destined platforms still unannounced. It hasn't yet got any of the fascist oppressors seen in the 3D version, but they'd only get in the way of the acrobatics that are on impressive display here. Rarely do we get to control such fluid and graceful 2D animation, and it makes the treat all the more delectable when you get to do it with a Wii Remote.

When Mirror's Edge 2D's development is finalized, like it's 3D counterpart, it probably won't have you running rampant on a killing spree. You may instead be challenged to avoid confrontation with whatever enemies will eventually be placed in your urban playground, using a repertoire of climbing, rolling, sliding and jumping maneuvers. This platformer is almost like Sonic in how the fun is not so much in the collecting, exploring, and combat as it is in just trying to move through a level as quickly and gracefully as possible. Even though the superb animation does a lot to mask it, using a keyboard to control a character as agile as Faith feels sort of stiff and unresponsive. It's funny how often I struggle to play a game with a keyboard and think to myself, "I bet this would work so much better with my Wiimote!" While I don't always win that bet, I believe I did with ME2D.

Would you like to try it for yourself? Well, just copy and paste these seven lines of code into GlovePIE and start running!

Up = (Wiimote.SmoothPitch > 35) //Pitch up to wall run, climb
S = Wiimote.A //Jump
Down = Wiimote.B //Crouch, roll, slide
Left = Wiimote.SmoothRoll < -20 //Tilt left to move left
Right = Wiimote.SmoothRoll > 20 //Tilt right to move right

M = Wiimote.Up //Toggle music
Shift + P + I + E = Wiimote.Home //Stop script running

I toyed with the idea of using only motion controls to move around, but testing proved that to be unreliable -- largely in part to my inability to process the thoughts for flicking the Wiimote in a direction while simultaneously rolling it in another. I can't walk and chew bubble gum at the same time, either. I resorted to having Faith's upward and downward motions controlled by the A and B buttons respectively, similar to how those controls are mapped to upper and lower shoulder buttons on the HD consoles' controllers. It's fairly intuitive, and combined with motion controls for left and right movement, you can keep Faith's momentum going for perfectly timed long jumps, and to skid to a stop for high jumps. I couldn't get the timing right to pull off a high jump for the life of me with just the keyboard, but using the Wiimote brings all of those formerly unreachable areas within grasp.

Mirror's Edge 2D is being developed by Borne Games, in partnership with the 3D version's publisher, EA. The version I played was 06, but at the time of this column's publishing, the beta had already been upgraded to version 08. It's impossible to tell what impact the inclusion of enemies will have on the flow of gameplay, and some more controls will have to be mapped for defense and attacks, but this beta has given a glimpse of a game that could easily be brought to the Wii (as WiiWare perhaps?) and enhance the spirit of its gameplay themes through use of motion controls.

Revolutionary: On the Edge originally appeared on Nintendo Wii Fanboy on Wed, 19 Nov 2008 20:08:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Ads by Google