Following in the vein of “Maniac Mansion” in “Day of the Tentacle”, and “Pitfall” in “Super Pitfall”, we have Doom in Doom III. I love these kinds of projects. As they illustrate how far technology moves.

The Terminal DOOM demo is a DOOM3 port - of sorts - of the Classic DOOM source as originally released in 1997. The playable demo is available for Windows and Linux, and supports all shareware and retail versions of DOOM. You will have to have the retail version of DOOM3 installed, and you will have to apply the version 1.3 patch to be able to run the Terminal DOOM demo. Once you applied the new patch, download the demo here from the mirror kindly provided by Ryan Gordon.

Fully Interactive Surfaces

Mmmm.. recursive gaming….

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I’m a 2d gamer, plain and simple. I enjoy fighters and shmups and not much else. The best way to play my favorite style of game? An arcade stick. I stumbled across this website of a very talented gentleman who contructs some stylish and sexy joysticks. If I had unlimited disposable income I would purchase every stick this guy makes. Check ‘em out and enjoy.

Some guy has made a video game that works on bio feedback. The trick is however, you have to relax to win.

Simmer Down Sprinter is a two player, sit-down, arcade style video game I designed and programmed in which players compete to move runners around a track. The game is controlled by player’s bio-feedback. The more relaxed the player becomes, the faster the runner moves around the track. Essentially it is a game of competitive relaxation.

The game is controlled by player’s bio-feedback. The more relaxed the player becomes, the faster the runner moves around the track. Essentially it is a game of competitive relaxation.I take the role of the runners in the video game, complete with track outfits in red and blue team-colors. Players rest hands on “team-colored” arm rests. The metal contacts detect changes in body temperature and galvanic skin resistance - similar to what is used for a polygraph test. When the player is more relaxed, the video of me running the track speeds up. If the player tenses up, the video slows down.

Fascinating take on a game system. But one question… do we need to be MORE sedentary while playing video games?

Steve Lambert » Simmer Down Sprinter

(from Boing Boing)

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Via Slashdot comes this Kotaku article from the creator of Tringo, on how you too can make a hit casual game. If you don’t know what Tringo is, or if you are just curious. Check out the article!

By now you’ve probably heard of Tringo, the Tetris-meets-Bingo game created in the user-created on line world Second Life– it’s the casual game that became so popular in-world, its creator sold the rights for a Web spin off, a GBA port, and now, incredibly, for a TV game show. This is possible because SL’s Terms of Service allow subscribers to retain the IP rights to anything they create in-world. That feature, plus a potential audience of a quarter million SL subscribers and growing, plus the ability to sell the in-world currency you earn for real US$, and you’d think Second Life would be an indy game developer’s dream platform.

But Tringo hit the world in early 2005, and since then, no SL game has come anywhere close to its success. When I was still on staff with Linden Lab (the company behind Second Life), in addition to my work as the world’s embedded journalist , I helped design and run Linden’s annual Game Developer Contest, promoting game creation in SL. I brought in veteran designers like Harvey Smith (Deus Ex) and Doug Church (Thief: The Dark Project) to help judge the entrants; like me, they were impressed by the ambition and talent that went into them. But even with their imprimatur, none of the winning games went on to become the next Tringo.After co-creating three such contests, and watching other SL games come and go, I’ve managed to synthesize my observations on what works and what doesn’t into a handful of tips.

The Game Developer’s Guide to Pwning Second Life - Kotaku

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Mark my words now - Spore will forever change gaming. We’re talking the entire industry, here. And not just in one direction, either.

A game has never spanned so many genres. Arcade, Diablo, RTS…

A game has never shipped with so many amazing creation and tools. Effectively the game is the editor (it doesn’t ship separately) . From creatures, to buildings to vehicles - you create these ‘things’ and let them go

The game world is the biggest we’ve ever seen. Bigger than you can imagine. Galactic Big.

And because the game uses procedural functions to expand data from small seeds (more later), this galaxy can fit on your laptop machine, maybe even handhelds.

And all of the other creatures you meet out on your planet, and in the galaxy, are creations made by other players. They were downloaded seamlessly and in the background while you were still teaching your creatures how to use pointy little spears, and they have their own cultures, behaviors, and physical abilities designed by other people across the world.

Back in March Will Wright (The Sims, SimCity, Raid on Bungeling Bay) drove a Mack truck through an otherwise standard day at the Game Developers Conference. Officially Wright’s presentation was billed as a generic talk about game design. But as his presentation developed, the audience quickly realized that Will Wright was actually announcing his new game. Spore will have the largest scope ever attempted in gaming. Design a creature starting from the microscopic level, alter it through generations up and through the stone age, then influence its culture and its social planetary footprint (ie: conquer your neighbors) until your creatures are ready to move out into the unknowns of space. From here you’re given a UFO that contains many unlockable abilities - from the basic ‘transport your creatures’, to terraform tools, the genesis device, weapons, SETI tools, etc.

Sounds absurdly complex, bloated, out-of-control huge right? Well there’s an added kicker. Will thought long and hard about the future of the industry. He realized that blockbuster publishers spend money up the wazzo on artists who design game content to make their title bigger, brighter, more eye catching than their competition. This, of course, kills a huge potential on profit margins. Don’t get him wrong - he doesn’t wear a suit and he’s definitely not all about the money, but he does have a point here. Smaller game studios have been clossing left and right while the behemoths like EA continue to do well. Why? Because companies like EA own their own Motion Capture Studios, they have armies of artists, they’ve inked deals with Music companies for soundtracks… they effectively have all of their content-creation talent held on retainer. Smaller studios do not, and they’re suffering for it.

Wright hopes to change the way we think about game design. He wants users to design their own content. When you fire up Spore, you’re going to be given a blank canvas with which you physically design your own creatures from scratch. The editing tool looks like a breeze to use - you can add new limbs, stretch bones, affix weapons to your creature, etc. And instead of Maxis whipping the backs of in-house artistic talent to predetermine all possible behaviors for any bizarre creation gamers come up with, they’ve instead created procedural algorithms to determine the physics of motion of your creature. If you guy has 3 legs and a tail, then the game figures out how these limbs coordinate how to step forward, counterbalance with the tail, etc. It figures out what weapons you have (spiked tail, giant mouth) and attacks/eats other creatures accordingly. The game is all about emergent behavior that you create and control. It’s a giant sandbox of life from the microscopic to the galactic.

These algorithms are all over the place, too - small seeds of data are fed through algorithms which dictate creature behaviors, the layout and weather of planets, the solar system , etc. The game is sooo good at compressing data down into the seeds that the game can, and does, eventually move on the galactic level. You can zoom out and hover your mouse over distant stars to listen for radio signals from another civilization that’s living in this universe. If you chose to visit them, then you’ll come across creations that another player’s computer uploaded to the Spore repository and your computer fetched seamlessly while you were busy playing around with your critters. Picture an entire living galaxy of thousands of moving systems (stars age, explode, and then reform new planets over time) each populated with content created by players the world over, and it’s all contained right there on your laptop.

Out of control. Mind blowing.

Anyway - I recently fished up the original GDC presentation where Wright released Spore on the world. You’ll have to register on this site, but you can use bogus information (there’s no ‘we’ll email you with a password’ phase). The presentation is in flash - note that the slides on the right never appear, but yes - you will eventually see footage of the game in the video window. My recommendation is to NOT fast forward through the parts where you see Will speaking. This man is a genius. Everything that man says in the presentation is so golden and true, and is on the cutting edge of game design. Simply put, he ‘gets it’.

Enjoy.
–DDB

Today I received a cool little email from Alias (makers of Maya 3D tools) about their 3December Seminar.
This year it will be held just outside of Boston at BU’s Center for Digital Imaging Arts. This quote from the Alias Site Says it all:

“Fun will be the backdrop for presentations from a star-studded cast of industry experts. See how some of the most significant work in the entertainment and design industries was done. Take away new insights on your art and your career while you mingle with friends—old and new. It’s a valuable experience and a great way to network.

Whether you’re just launching your career or are a seasoned pro’, join us. “

Over the years I have become a big fan of the Maya Tools, if you’re interested in attending the links in this post can point you to registration. Hope to see you there.

Boston Registration

Saw this on BoingBoing :

Mario Level Editor

A level editor for Super Mario World. Crazy. More fodder for the Mame crowd. Awesome. One of these day’s ill get around to getting emulators on my PSP. But I’m just lazy

Lunar Magic is a level editor I created for Super Mario World (SNES). It’s the first and, as far as I know, the only level editor available for this game. I began looking into making an editor for it shortly after releasing the SoM VWF patch, mostly on a whim to see how hard it would be. It wasn’t intended to be a long term project, but things would turn out otherwise…

P.S. First person to make a whole new super mario world gets a cookie.
P.P.S. Note that I made some new categories. Emulation and Custom Gaming.