Your web browser is your game platform

We’ve all seen Flash games, which is great for extremely portable 2D gaming experiences, but what 3D? Well Khronos (the OpenGL standards organization) and now Google are working on browser plug-ins for 3D content. Google just released their O3D plugin, which gives shader-based hardware-accelerated 3D graphics across platforms (Windows and Mac) and browsers. Will it be the next cool game development toolset, or just another VRML/Cosmo3D? Hard to tell, but there’s a lot more capable hardware out there now than there was in the last time anyone tried a major push for 3D web plugins. I’m hopeful.

Posted in News, graphics, industry news, sofware, technology | 1 Comment »

Games by regular people

Both of these developments happened (with some fanfare) over the past year, but together they’re particularly exciting for the opportunities they give for just about anyone (student groups, amateurs, small start-up companies) to create and sell games on popular platforms.

First is the iPhone app store. You can join the program and download development tools and a simulator for free. For $100, you can join the program to be able to develop programs that will actually run on a real iPhone or iPod touch. You can submit programs you develop to the iPhone app store at any price you choose (most are free or <$10), and get 70% of any sales.

Second, is the XBox Live community games. Actually, they were first with the ability of users to write their own games with XNA, and first to let you upload them to your XBox 360 with a $100/year creators club subscription (free through the Microsoft Academic Alliance), and first to let you distribute them for free, but the ability to make money on them came later. The terms are similar though, you can write and submit a game, choose how much it costs, and get 70% of any sales.

I think both developments are really exciting because they seriously lower the bar to develop and start making games, and potentially making money on them. The especially interesting part isn’t that everyone can make yet another clone of everyone else’s game, but that some new and really exciting game ideas might see widespread use. Portal without the period of hoping a Valve comes along to pick up the game. If you’ve seen some really unusual and cool user-created iPhone or XBox game, post a comment…

Posted in Game consols, iPhone, sofware, xbox | No Comments »

Make games for OLPC with the Etoys programming environment

Etoys is a computer environment and object-oriented programming language for use in education that is getting increased attention these days because it is included in the One Laptop Per Child XO. A post in Lambda the Ultimate notes:

“Etoys was invented by Alan Kay’s research group and is in continuous development and use as an integrated feature of Squeak Smalltalk. The Squeak/Etoys community includes lots of researchers, programmers, teachers, and kids around the world. Squeaky Tales is a series of short tutorial screencasts designed to each people to program with Etoys. I’m very excited that this may be what’s needed to make Etoys programming easy to learn for people at home. My experience has been that it’s easy and fun to teach Etoys programming face-to-face with everybody using their own laptop, but that it’s very slow and frustrating to try and learn Etoys by yourself just by installing it and clicking around. If Squeaky Tales makes it easy and fun to learn Etoys all by yourself at home then it’s quite a contribution to the world!”

Posted in CS, Programming, social media, sofware | No Comments »

Emergent releases new Gamebryo game development engine

Emergent Game Technologies has released the new version of their Gamebryo game development engine that includes support for multi-core processors. Gamebryo can produce games that run on a PC, Xbox 360, or Sony PS3. See the Emergent press release for more information. UMBC has a license for Gamebryo for use in courses and student projects.

Posted in Game engines, General, UMBC classes, sofware | No Comments »

Sun’s Project Wonderland is an open-source virtual world manager

Sun’s James Gosling demonstrated their open-sourced Project Wonderland at JavaOne this year.

Project Wonderland is a 3D scene manager for creating collaborative virtual worlds. Within those worlds, users can communicate with high-fidelity, immersive audio and can share live applications such as web browsers, OpenOffice documents, and games.

Sun’s goal is to create a multi-user virtual environment that has robust security, scalability, reliability, and functionality, enabling organizations to use it as a place to conduct real business.

“Organizations should be able to use Wonderland to create a virtual presence to better communicate with customers, partners, and employees. Individuals should be able to do their real work within a virtual world, eliminating the need for a separate collaboration tool when they wish to work together with others. Individuals should also be able to tailor portions of the world to adapt to their work needs and to express their personal style. … One important goal of the project is for the environment to be completely extensible. Developers and graphic artists can extend the functionality to create entire new worlds, new features in existing worlds, or new behaviors for objects and avatars.

If you are handy with Java, it might be fun to experiment with this, maybe by prototyping a usecase for a University community.

Posted in social media, sofware, virtual worlds | No Comments »