Sunday, October 28, 2007

The A-Team Are Back

Few days ago me and a few designers were sat down stairs in the studio making coffee. We walked up stairs to our desks to find to our amazement the A-team van just opposite our studios. "Harbouring terriosts are we?"

Most of us had a good laugh, but it still hasn't moved... at all!

Maybe we are under watch be the A-team.

Some of the team say they have spotted BA Baracus in the local supermarket probably buying some hardcore cupcakes.

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Friday, October 19, 2007

New Job

Last week I went for an interview for a game design position, later to find out two days later to be offered the job to be in charge of a new project. I can't realy release any info on it yet, which is a shame as it's a very exciting concept and am happy to be on the project.

Hopefully more to come in later months on some infomation.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

What Do You Get If You Cross An Ex SEGA Rally Artists With Shockwave?

You get Xcar - City Racer.

I decided to look into Shockwave games. Now that the internet seems to be booming with big buisness's making a-lot of money off these web based games, i thought it would be a bit of fun to see if i could have ago at web game making. To be honest I realy enjoyed it. I had complete control over my own little racing game. Below is screens from my little game project: Xcar - City Racer.

I'll upload the game soon when I get some free time. I have another one in the pipeline as well.

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Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

MMO 2.0, Yes 2.0

So here we are in this era of web 2.0. Is it a technological break through or are company's just claiming they have it on there business plan to make millions?

Well to be honest web 2.0 is all about connecting, merging and social. So why we all are seduced to this web 2.0 demon? Well it’s supposed to make our lives on the net easier or even real life. We will be able to access all sorts of social things from our mobile devices as-well as build a huge network of sites which link to one thing. With blogs and rss feeds and MySpace pages all in one. We can access data easier...

Moving on, We like web 2.0 well some of us do. So there's always around the corner of the talk of MMO 2.0. Many people are reading going what?

Exactly what is MMO 2.0?

Well for one thing it's a integration of the web in the massive multiplayer online game. As MMO maps are huge we could very well be seeing MMO's adopting the Google Maps technology so the game map is displayed with cities and towns and even player housing locations. I'm sure that would make it a-bit easier. We could turn on our mobiles and boom our MMO map will be on there constantly changing thanks to Google map software, but it isn't just Google maps there's more MMO’s can adopt to make them more interesting and social (as you kind of guessed now) web 2.0 is Social.

Many players love to write stories and record there journeys. Many MMO's don't even have the journal feature let alone anything else advanced. What happens when you need something and there's no one around? Well the solution could be hitting MMO's very soon. Wiki's seem to be the top choice for collaborative information. Developers could build the basic wiki and let the players fill the advance stuff in. Many community sites for MMO's are like this. Star wars static’s are one of a kind for info on all SWG stuff, from items to city contents it's all there. Problem is it requires all this link clicking ect. So why not Wiki our information? Sure would make life easier.

Now many MMO's will start to undergo this step soon. Tech is getting much better. One example would be BigWorld Tech who is now supporting mobile platforms. So say you've just killed these level 10 monsters and need to get back to home town to meet with friends, but oh you got work to go to. Well sitting on the bus you load up the MMO on your mobile (it won't be fully graphical based yet) and navigate your character to your hometown ready for you to meet your friends when there on. Accessibility is the word here. MMO's are internet based. Mobiles, PDAs, ifones, Internet points all have the option of the internet so why not make our MMO's to be accessible on it. Some MMO's I myself am working on one in production at the moment. Use a web browser based client. Meaning no download require you just type that address in, login and play. What does that mean? Well it means I can load it on my mobile, my ifone and even go to a internet point around London and play it from there.

Now this is still a prototype and I know only one MMO to have this in working alpha at the moment. Couldn't we start to command our avatars in the game from IM? An msn type IM were you can have all your MMO friends as-well as the ability to command and navigate your avatar. That is still a very early concept and requires a web browser based client from my knowledge.

Dynamic worlds are kind of obvious but seeing I’m making a list of the MMO 2.0 I thought I would add it. Dynamic worlds in MMO's are here at the moment although there not greatly done we can start to learn from virtual worlds such as second life how popular a evolving world is.

Last but not least the Social aspect. It's pretty obvious we will be having MMO's with features for players such as blogs and podcasts along with the fan sites but digging deeper into 2.0 meaning we can start to look on giving players a MySpace page environment (all ran by the MMO company) players could have social networks of different guilds, races ect. Helps players gain more friends. You could post up your daily screenshot or maybe a YouTube type section for players to upload that awesome battle with a level 40 dragon they had. Video sharing and other media sharing are starting to get more and more popular. People are creating social networks because of this new way to share info and media. That's a big hook for a MMO to get players. The good thing as-well many MMO's have already huge variety of ready made social networks so giving them something cross between MySpace/YouTube/flickr could top most the MMO market out there.

I myself am aiming on the MMO 2.0 concept. Hopefully in a few years time this will be a normal aspect to MMO development. Although at the moment MMO's are starting to dye in my eyes. Virtual worlds are taking over. So we need to rise up to MMO 2.0 development and help give the players a more social and fun experience.


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Monday, October 01, 2007

Vehicle Concepts

I came accross this video on Sclipo. Showing off how easy it is to make vehicle concepts just from basic shapes in photoshop.