Mobile Games and Technologies

Federico Elinger, owner of Pocketsol Games, wrote this exclusive article for us. Pocketsol Games creates high quality mobile games for the mobile phone based java platform (J2ME). The development studio is in Argentina where fun and addictive games are created for most of the actual mobile phones.

Mobile Games and Technologies

Currently, we can forget the keys of our house when we leave, but not the mobile phone. People are everywhere with their phones talking, chatting, the phone has a very important place in our life. Mobile phones are not only a communication device, are computer themselves, with a cpu, ram memory, persistence storage.

Games in this context are very important because you can get full advantages of the capabilities of a modern mobile phone that becomes this way a game console. Today, people of all ages play with their phones. They get fun and share multiplayer games over Bluetooth or Internet.

The technologies that involve games development are: Java (J2ME, Symbian, Windows Mobile, Linux, Brew). Each one has different capabilities depending on which device are installed.

An important issue is about the technological limits of the devices. Each one has different limits of memory, cpu, color depth, resolution. That push us to do a porting solution of every game to reach the greatest number of mobile devices. This limit obliges us to be more creative, makes us seek how to entertain people with simple games with a few levels. We must create images simply using the old technique of pixel art.

Mobile games are experimenting a constant evolution. In few years, most of the mobile phones will have 3D graphics accelerators such as Nokia N95 phone. The future is very promising, we will find devices that can compete with Sony PSP and Nintendo DS.

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Raymond Thoughts about Games and Arts

Today we interview Raymond Jacobs, owner of Ethereal Darkness Interactive. Founded in 2002 Ethereal Darkness Interactive is commited to developing quality indie games with high production values. Raymond talks about his latest project, Morning’s Wrath 2, about videogames, Arts and technology.

Raymond Thoughts about Games and Arts

Manuel Marino: You are working on some new features for your next game…

Raymond Jacobs: yes, it is going to be Morning’s Wrath 2, the Sequel to our first game. You would be the first news source to really mention that!! As for the new systems… they are some various forms of internet integration with our new engine (The S3Engine 2.0) (version 2.0 of the engine used to make Malathedra). They will allow players to directly in-game leave comments to the developers about what they think of the game as well as submit any errors encountered via the internet automatically.

This is part of our new ‘internet technologies integration’ initiative as well as trying to know the minds of our target market better so that we can provider better games and faster fixes.

Sounds really innovative! The game reminds me Ultima Online…

Somewhat, though it is a single player game. In MW1 you had to fight off an invading army from taking over your castle along with learning the ways of magic though in doing so you get stricken by a terrible ‘dissease’ since the magical elixer that you use (mana) is by nature poisioned.

MW2 continues with this story, having morning lead her army across the continent to strike back at the invading Ashidian Army; and her search for a cure for her poisioning which is slowly driving her insane. It will likely be done in episodic format, and 3 episodes are currently slated.

Can we say that videogames are a form of Art?

Personally I consider videogames as a major form of Art but I don’t believe that people yet see games as an Art form, at least not the vast majority. They are still mainly an entertainment source however indie developers are definitely causing a movement of games as an Art form.

As for my company everything we do is first a source of artistic inspiration and second a business endevor. We feel that without the artistic and creative backbone, what we develop isn’t likely to be enjoyable.

How technology fits with creative skills?

We limit ourselves to fairly proven technology, choosing not to push the technological envelope very much; but instead create a platform for creative expression; by creating a limited and finite set of functionality on existing technology it forces us to be creative, rather than to rely on technology to turn heads.

The newest HDR rendering may be very pretty, but beyond that it says nothing about the depth of a particular game, so in short, we use technology as a pedistal from which to express our creativity.

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Art, Communication, Connectivity

Michael Marcus (also known as “Jacques Treatment”) is a published author, poet, artist, and game designer; with George McVey, he has been publishing comics as “The Hamtramck Idea Men” on the very sensible grounds that they live in Hamtramck, have many ideas, and they are men. Joint work can be found at http://idea-men.us while his earlier work sits at http://www.treatmentlabs.com.

Art, Communication, Connectivity

When first approached by Manuel Marino to write an article, I found myself excited in the extreme — first, because I had been noticed in the vast sea of high-noise/low-signal called the Internet as someone worth approaching, and second, because it would be an opportunity to promote the work that George McVey and I were doing with our comic books, games, t-shirts, and other fine arts, and third, because it would give me an opportunity to vent about the apparent lack of creativity in the comics biz and why we are producing the finest comic books in the field. Then, when I sat down to write, I thought I would write about my own particular love of game design and how it mixes the art (and in some cases, storytelling) with what is essentially a mathematical process to produce something attractive and entertaining without giving one player or another an inherent advantage. In the end, however, as passionate as I am about both subjects, attempts at writing the articles proved dry to any but the most familiar of audiences, and the last thing I wanted to do is bore people. Instead, the subject that came to mind is the one behind everything I do: communication.

Communication is inherent, even if it is nearly forgotten, in almost every work of art. Whether it is the artist communicating an idea to the canvas or, eventually, to an audience by means of the canvas, the interaction spawned by the processes of a good game, the telling of stories by a good book or comic book, or the conveyance of mood and message by a good song or other musical piece, it is the very fact THAT there is signal being transferred and translated that often gets lost. Whereas Marshall McLuhan may have said, “The medium is the message,” I would hold instead that it provides a context wherein meaning is derived — while a book may describe an experience, for example, a comic book or film may share the same experience more clearly, but the same message carries differently with the immediacy of dramatic theater, wherein the wall of the participants and the audience can find itself weakened or even torn down by force.

What, then, of surrealist work, or work done by surrealist means, wherein chance plays the greater part in creating the artifice than does a preconceived message? That depends on the type of work being attempted, whether it is to provoke a sense of whimsy or provide an initiation into an otherworldly space, whether it challenges the audience to “fill in the blanks” through a sense of mystery or negative space, or whether it encourages the reader to follow along with the author’s thought processes and achieve a similar critical or rational context along the same lines as the author. Where automatic writing encourages the latter, for example, Gysin’s “cut-ups” (wherein the pages of a written piece are quartered and refitted before publication) invite the reader to “connect the dots” and reassemble meaning, providing a disorienting challenge to the mind in the process. It is in this way that the surrealist confronts his or her audience with a work of art that engages the human tendency to attempt to make order from chaos, when the primary meaning is in the confrontation itself (and the secondary meaning is in the absurdity, whimsicality, or atonal nature of the process).

This, then, illuminates why I design games, write prose, paint, and create other things the way I do: They provide a context by which I might share an experience, or, more likely, the effect that something that I have experienced has had upon me. This is why I find that the most successful works that I have done are not necessarily those which I have created in a state of inspiration as much as those where I have had more of a dialog with the medium of the communication itself–that is to say, the pieces that seem to communicate best to the people who experience them, whether by being viewed (in the case of visual arts) or being played (in the case of a game), are the ones where I studied the piece itself as it proceeded, even if the result has less craftsmanship or less of my personal interest in the piece itself. For example, in my portion of the Hamtramck Idea Men art gallery the piece that has the most meaning for me is “Augmentation of Chaos,” which is gives chaos a “face” based on its connotations to me. The one, however, that seems to garner the most favorable interest is “Frustrated Joy,” which came to that title based both on the color scheme (the “Joy” in question) and how much it failed, at every step of creation, to become anything like my visualization and plan for the piece. It is as if the piece radiates my energy through the process of creation despite the fact that it has the least meaning for me.

If there is one thing that I have noticed with the advent of technology, it is that more and more experience come without the direct interaction of two people; the computer becomes an intermediary in most communication; this is true even in chat-rooms, where the users’ ability to edit what they say (at the very least, since some adopt alternate personae that they role-play) changes the nature of the exchange. Similarly, analog photographs lose some of their resolution (and with the advent of PhotoShop, still more of their original content), brush strokes lose some of the wondrous elements of their textures, and even digital sampling loses some of the fidelity of sound quality (even the best sample fails to be perfect). This is why, when I designed Gamer’s Dozen, I desperately wanted to create a set of games that anyone could play, face-to-face, at any skill level, with nigh-infinite replayability. I wanted something that facilitated communication and interaction between people without computer interfaces in the way. That, then, would have to be the source of my desire to create–to make a connection with the outside world, something that tends to be rather difficult these days.

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Auditioning for Postal Babes

ManuelMarino.com, in partnership with Vince Desi (photo) and Running With Scissors, is auditioning for Postal Babes.

Models and amateurs from all the world can both apply. Girls need to be 18, Italian, and must submit contact info with photo and a short bio about themselves, languages. Must be able to travel.

Girls chosen for this special Marino’s Italian Postal Babe Search will become Postal Babes of Italy, would be featured at RWS Website and would appear in an International Calendar. [Vince Desi could organize also a party and a photo shoot].

Game developers Running With Scissors made a name for themselves back in 1997 with the release of their first title, Postal.

More recently, Running With Scissors has confirmed that Postal III is in production for PC and Xbox 360, marking the series’ first foray onto consoles.

Postal III will employ the Source engine (the same technology Valve® created to drive Half-Life® 2) to deliver a new and advanced technical level of social satire and politically incorrect virtual violence.

“We started this series back in 1997,” recalled RWS CEO Vince Desi, “and while the franchise has grown into an international computer game sensation during that time, it has always been our goal to bring it to the videogame console marketplace. For many years I’ve been asked by gamers around the world when Postal will appear on console. I’m so proud to be able to answer our fans’ prayers.”

Postal III will include motion-captured performances by a wide array of celebrities – from film stars to Playboy Playmates – as well as a storyline that offers gamers vast latitude in terms of their behavior. “We’ve always maintained since publishing the original POSTAL that the game is only as violent as the player wants it to be and we’re committed to expanding this unique form of gameplay in this next addition to the ongoing storyline,” Desi vowed.

Posted in Games, Site News | 1 Comment »

Music-Emotion Driven Game Engine

Dr. Roberto Dillon has written this article about his Music-Emotion Driven Game Engine. I think this idea to really have potential.

Music-Emotion Driven Game Engine

In the fast developing world of videogames, sound has traditionally played a less important role than other features, such as graphics. Nonetheless, recently, due to the latest technological advances, both developers and audiences alike have understood how much sound and music can do to enhance gaming experiences and increase the overall realism and emotional impact of virtual worlds.

Today, many music games are being released with great acclaim on different formats but many of these games tend to be in the rhythm/action category where the player is actually “reacting” to music while a real and natural “interaction” with this medium is still lacking.

This aspect is currently being addressed by a team of researchers and developers at Nanyang Polytechnic in Singapore, led by Italian computer engineer Dr. Roberto Dillon, with a project codenamed M-EDGE (”Music-Emotion Driven Game Engine”) which is fully supported by the National Research Foundation of Singapore.

The underlying idea of the project is to assess and further investigate music related cognitive science topics and integrate the results into games by designing and developing an interactive and emotionally-aware musical game engine that enables players to experiment with a completely new gaming interface.

In fact, by using this engine as a development tool, game developers will be able to build content on top of it where players are not limited to control their actions in the virtual world by using standard interfaces, like a mouse or keyboard, but also to directly affect the game progress by expressing emotional content through the playing of a real musical instrument.

To accomplish this, M-EDGE will be developed to recognize different basic emotions (like happiness, sadness and anger) as expressed by players in their musical playing on an instrument of their choice like flute, guitar, violin or drums.

This information can then be used to control the game accordingly by allowing the player’s in-game character to perform particular tasks or by developing the game story in particular directions. For example, one of the games currently being designed by Dr. Dillon to test the system capabilities is based on the well known legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. In the game the player will impersonate the Piper himself by actually playing a flute and go through the storyline, including its multiple endings as described by different versions of the original legend, according to the emotions he will be able to express through his very own playing and hence decide the fate of Hamelin young people.

Obviously, this kind of games would be a great tool for players who have previous musical knowledge and know how to play a musical instrument, nonetheless special attention will also be dedicated to give a chance of successful playing to people who never played music before. This will be achieved by allowing prospective players to experiment with simple percussive instruments so as to give a chance and an incentive to get into the fascinating world of music making through games to as many people as possible.

The Singaporean team believes the concept of an emotion-based music game engine like this would represent a leap forward within the music games genre and could also have a strong potential for commercial exploitations, besides having a valuable educational side. In fact, as suggested, it will actually encourage people to learn and practice music through a challenging and fun tool where all players, from beginners to professionals, will be given a chance to freely express themselves through music, something no other game has ever done before.

Besides these, more serious and medical applications could also be possible: the final framework could, in fact, be a valuable tool in assisting emotionally impaired people to practice and experiment with their feelings under supervision of a physician/psychologist.

The project, though still in its early stages, is raising a good interest in the gaming community and has already been presented at the Game Convention Asia Conference in Singapore last September. For those interested, slides of the presentation can be downloaded from Dr. Dillon’s website.

Posted in Arts, Games, Ideas | 6 Comments »