Showing posts with label iPhone. Show all posts
Showing posts with label iPhone. Show all posts
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Duke Nukem To Go!
To tide you over while the 3D Realms legal wranglings over the future of The Duke continue, old school Duke Nukem 3D is now available via the iPhone App Store. If ever you were worried about aliens invading your morning commute, the iPhone now has you covered. And, as I noted when commenting on the Duke legal disaster earlier this year, you can still get still get The Duke in all his glory on PC for $5.99 from Good Old Games.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Doom is Back
Doom is coming to the iPhone. Ok, thats no surprise. Doom has been ported to just about everything that uses electricity, and probably some things that don't. This one is different though. It isn't a port. id themselves are releasing classic Doom for the iPhone I love it when old classics live on, and it doesn't get much better than original Doom.
This was first announced earlier in the year, and the trailer is available. It was shown at WWDC this week, and the reviews are impressive. While the graphics are dated, they are pure Doom. Some reviews claim 30 FPS; that seems high for the iPhone, but I am not one to question the ability of id software to extract every once of power out of any system. The five hours of game play is also impressive. Unfortunately, some reviews say the game will be on rails. I'd prefer totally free camera controls, but rails can work if done well.
Word is the title will be released next week. In the meantime, there is a fantastic article from John Carmack himself on the technical challenges of moving Doom to the iPhone. The article is fairly detailed and well worth the read whether you are an industry pro, a casual gamer, or just plain bored. If like me you were wondering about this mythical toaster that John Carmack refers to... I'm sorry but I just couldn't find it. Here's the best I can do. I don't think any of those are available at your local kitchen store. How disappointing.
This was first announced earlier in the year, and the trailer is available. It was shown at WWDC this week, and the reviews are impressive. While the graphics are dated, they are pure Doom. Some reviews claim 30 FPS; that seems high for the iPhone, but I am not one to question the ability of id software to extract every once of power out of any system. The five hours of game play is also impressive. Unfortunately, some reviews say the game will be on rails. I'd prefer totally free camera controls, but rails can work if done well.
Word is the title will be released next week. In the meantime, there is a fantastic article from John Carmack himself on the technical challenges of moving Doom to the iPhone. The article is fairly detailed and well worth the read whether you are an industry pro, a casual gamer, or just plain bored. If like me you were wondering about this mythical toaster that John Carmack refers to... I'm sorry but I just couldn't find it. Here's the best I can do. I don't think any of those are available at your local kitchen store. How disappointing.
Monday, June 8, 2009
Next Up: WWDC
With E3 out the door and safely on its way, we can turn our attention to the next industry event. Kicking off this morning in the Bay area is Apple's World Wide Developers Conference. Perhaps I am somewhat unorthodox for listing Apple as a company relevant in any way to gaming, but work with me. I can make you a case that what happens in NorCal this week will have a greater effect on the long term future of gaming than what happened in SoCal last week.
The one gaming sector in which Apple dominates is mobile gaming. The iPhone and the App Store have basically rewritten the rules regarding what is possible for cell phone gaming and beaten all expectations in terms of delivering those games to the player. Any numbers I put here will be outdated later today, but I have no doubt that if you pay attention to the press releases and speeches made at the WWDC, you will hear that a startlingly high percentage of App Store downloads are games. In terms of raw downloads, if Apple is not the largest digital distributor of video games, it has to be near the top.
And yet, that may well be the side show. Also expected at WWDC are more details regarding the future development of OS X, and that means more details on how Apple will continue to leverage OpenGL. Apple is one of the companies that directs the development of this graphics standard, and they have used it to great effect in their operating system. If PC gaming is ever going to become truly platform agnostic and not perpetually tied to Microsoft's DirectX, OpenGL is the platform's best hope.
Now, I'm not expecting to see any major announcements that studios are abandoning DirectX in favor of OpenGL anytime soon. However, if this competition between OpenGL and DirectX runs in like manner to other open source vs proprietary competitions in the past, expect OpenGL to surpass DirectX in capability sometime in the near future. With the ever greater need to push graphics into new levels of realism, it is inevitable that one day OpenGL will be the graphics system of choice, not DirectX. There are just too many major players in the OpenGL camp for it to be otherwise.
So, how far away are we from Ubuntu, or any other non-Windows OS, being a major gaming platform? Far. But keep an eye on the development of OpenGL anyway. Today, it may be a minor player in the gaming space, but it won't stay that way. Long term, the development of OpenGL may have more impact on the of gaming than anything that went down at E3.
The one gaming sector in which Apple dominates is mobile gaming. The iPhone and the App Store have basically rewritten the rules regarding what is possible for cell phone gaming and beaten all expectations in terms of delivering those games to the player. Any numbers I put here will be outdated later today, but I have no doubt that if you pay attention to the press releases and speeches made at the WWDC, you will hear that a startlingly high percentage of App Store downloads are games. In terms of raw downloads, if Apple is not the largest digital distributor of video games, it has to be near the top.
And yet, that may well be the side show. Also expected at WWDC are more details regarding the future development of OS X, and that means more details on how Apple will continue to leverage OpenGL. Apple is one of the companies that directs the development of this graphics standard, and they have used it to great effect in their operating system. If PC gaming is ever going to become truly platform agnostic and not perpetually tied to Microsoft's DirectX, OpenGL is the platform's best hope.
Now, I'm not expecting to see any major announcements that studios are abandoning DirectX in favor of OpenGL anytime soon. However, if this competition between OpenGL and DirectX runs in like manner to other open source vs proprietary competitions in the past, expect OpenGL to surpass DirectX in capability sometime in the near future. With the ever greater need to push graphics into new levels of realism, it is inevitable that one day OpenGL will be the graphics system of choice, not DirectX. There are just too many major players in the OpenGL camp for it to be otherwise.
So, how far away are we from Ubuntu, or any other non-Windows OS, being a major gaming platform? Far. But keep an eye on the development of OpenGL anyway. Today, it may be a minor player in the gaming space, but it won't stay that way. Long term, the development of OpenGL may have more impact on the of gaming than anything that went down at E3.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Return of the Grue
Let's try something. Fire up your trusty copy of iTunes, wander over to the iTunes Store, pop into Applications and search for "RPG." Surprised? Well over 100 titles readily pop up. A quick scan of the titles reveal such intriguing buzz words as "knight", "vampire", "racing", and "pets." Now, dig deeper. Click on a few, look at the screen shots, read the descriptions. Admire the Doom-ish graphics on this one, the interesting color palette on that one, the nice text-based game over there. Wait... text based? As in, text based RPG? As in, "You are likely to be eaten by a grue" style text based RPG? Indeed. Go ahead, check your calender. I'll wait.
Welcome to brave new world of mobile gaming. The runaway success of the iPhone and iPod Touch has spawned a new wave that nineties favorite, the text based RPG. Now it is far to early to say if any of these titles will achieve the success and happy memory quota of such classics as ZZT, Zork, or Mines of Moria. Regardless, I love this trend. In the modern gaming market, there is no such thing as an outdated genre. For every game there is a gamer, and for every gamer a game, even gamers who do not yet know they are gamers. Just as many of the current generation of avid players got their start lighting torches with slash commands, it is certainly possible that a new wave of gamers are about to get their first fix by means of the enormous array of titles and options available on the iPhone and Andriod. That means there will be more game companies, more places for talented developers to ply their trade, and more creativity to capture our dollars.
It couldn't happen to a nicer guy either. That poor grue has probably been lonely all these long years, alone in those dark and abandoned dungeons. It is good to have him back in the spotlight where he belongs. Not literally, of course.
Welcome to brave new world of mobile gaming. The runaway success of the iPhone and iPod Touch has spawned a new wave that nineties favorite, the text based RPG. Now it is far to early to say if any of these titles will achieve the success and happy memory quota of such classics as ZZT, Zork, or Mines of Moria. Regardless, I love this trend. In the modern gaming market, there is no such thing as an outdated genre. For every game there is a gamer, and for every gamer a game, even gamers who do not yet know they are gamers. Just as many of the current generation of avid players got their start lighting torches with slash commands, it is certainly possible that a new wave of gamers are about to get their first fix by means of the enormous array of titles and options available on the iPhone and Andriod. That means there will be more game companies, more places for talented developers to ply their trade, and more creativity to capture our dollars.
It couldn't happen to a nicer guy either. That poor grue has probably been lonely all these long years, alone in those dark and abandoned dungeons. It is good to have him back in the spotlight where he belongs. Not literally, of course.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
