Our team just finished the teaser for Kid the World Saver:

If you’ll be at GDC look for us at the IGF pavilion.

Its such an honor to have made it into the student showcase with Kid the World Saver. There were some really cool and high quality things submitted this year and I was sweating bullets till the very end.

Just from USC there was some fun stuff like Mike Rossmassler’s Flora, Andre Clark’s multi-screened Minor Battle, and Jamie Antonisse’s Spectre which offers some real innovations in interactive storytelling.

I’m still trying to process it all. I just hope we can have a strong showing at GDC.

I just finished uploading the free full version of Jezz Cubed to the games page.

Enjoy!

Over at the University of Rochester’s Synchronization group I did a bit of work on the multithreading in games issue. Michael Scott and team have been working on a Transactional Memory system called RSTM. The whole goal of TM is to try to make multithreading easy by giving coders easy to use deadlock free atomic sections. The result of my work was Swarm, the scalable multithreaded game engine.

The results offered by swarm also led to a conference paper that is accessable from Michael Scott’s website.

I’ve just completed a prototype of a digital version of Legos. There were a series of interesting design challenges associated with making the transition from physical toy to computer game, but the end result seemed to turn out ok.

You can grab the game here. Left click to drag the bricks, and right click to detach them. Escape will clear them and end the program.

Of course the game could use a bit of polish, but I think it demonstrates the concept. If you are really interested in the design choices behind the demo, you can grab the writeup in pdf form here.

In case you’ve been missing out on the latest and greatest Civilization game, you should check out Civilization Revolution. It’s been out for a week and its a lot of fun. Keep in mind I’m a bit biased, having done some coding work on it, but still it may be the best creative work of all time in this and any parallel universe.

In all seriousness, the game really does a nice job of moving all that civ goodness to consoles. Its still got that “just one more turn” feeling that makes the series so compelling. Keep in mind that the main man Sid Meier was at the helm, so you know its good.

Just played the latest title from Kenta Cho at ABA games. He focuses on shooters and is probably most famous for Tumiki Fighters, a side scroller inspired by toy blocks in which you can collect defeated enemy ships and attach them to your own. The game gained enough attention to earn a port to the wii under the name “Blast Works.”

His newest game is called Mazer Mayhem and while the gameplay is different from his previous works, visually it still has that unique Kenta Cho style.

He does a lot of interesting stuff with polygon alpha values which gives a very technological feel that is interesting to look at. I recommend checking the game out, its a fun time killer.

Beyond the gameplay differences, it seems this is also the first ABA Game developed for XNA, Microsoft’s new game creation system. Unfortunately as a result its necessary to install the XNA Game Studio to play the game on a PC. On the plus side, XNA allows for playing the game on the Xbox. All in all its an interesting development platform and part of Microsoft’s push to “democratize” game development. I’m not sure if it will achieve that goal, but it is certainly a big part of the indie game scene currently.

In case you haven’t heard, the folks over at Metanet Software are making headlines with their “frank” assessment of XBLA. I had played and respected their hit game N but never got into it. Given the buzz, I decided to give it another go. Of course, despite knowing full well the game prides itself on being difficult, I started on the hardest mode.

Once I figured out how to jump (Shift key) I was on my way. After dying many times I finally made it to the box at the end and I couldn’t help but laugh when I realized that the switch, rather than leading to the next level, only opens the door back on the other side.

The game reminds me a lot of Mega Man. (I never played Lode Runner, which is supposedly even more similar.) The style is very different, but that die then try again gameplay has an old school platformer feel. Unfortunately I don’t have the time to spend being killed, altering my plan, and then being killed again. Still I like both the style and the gameplay.

Basically everything about the game is based around simplicity. Some would say that this is “the easy way out.” They didn’t have to make complex art assets and the gameplay consists of only a timer, gold, platforms, and various ninja killing devices. I’ll grant that constructing N was probably not a great undertaking. However, coming up with something so simple that is fun and unique is quite a task.

I still haven’t remedied my not getting into the game though. Hopefully I’ll find the time to die thousands more times.

It is finally possible to get an English subtitling of the first anime in the Rebuild of Evangelion series, “You are not Alone.” If you are a fan of the series you’ll enjoy it, and I recommend “acquiring” a copy for evaluation purposes until you can buy it here in the states.

It was a lot of fun to watch. That being said, it does support the theory that Evangelion was an accidental masterpiece. In this version, Anno makes many of the symbols and themes much more explicit. As such, the anime feels somewhat like watching crib notes for the original series.

One of the reasons Eva attained its status is because of its ambiguities. It was impossible to actually give a concrete explanation of the entire series, and that was why it captivated so many. Shakespeare is being studied today because he wove his stories such that they still keep his audience guessing. With Anno, he seems to be admitting that the questions audiences have about Eva are because he failed to achieve his vision and now he is fixing this with a “second draft.” In the end, watching the rebuild is a lot like watching a magician explain how he does his tricks… which can be a lot of fun to watch.

In terms of the animation, the addition of CG is the most noticeable new feature. The special effects are cool, but sometimes its a bit overt. Also, they did some work on Ramiel, my favorite from the original, which I haven’t decided if I like or not. Unfortunately I haven’t seen a high quality version, so its hard to judge the animation. I’m looking forward to getting my hands on the DVD when it comes to the States. It will also be interesting to see how long it takes for Adult Swim to acquire the rights.

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