The Only Video Games Blog

Great tactics at Empire Total War Battle

2010-01-10T15:01:00.000-08:00

This is a online battles at Empire total war where a great player PrinceOfMacedon uses a tactic that i really liked and so i post it
it was really clever move

My top 10 pc games of 2009

2010-01-03T06:31:00.000-08:00

This is my list with the best games that i played last year

1 call of duty modern warfare 2

2 Dragon Age: Origins

3 Operation Flashpoint 2

4 Assassins Creed 2

5 Empire total war

x-men origins wolverine

7 Prototype

8 Batman: Arkham Asylum

9 Resident Evil 5

10 Risen

Console sales for the last month of 2009

2010-01-03T03:20:00.000-08:00

Console	Weekly	Total
	1,688,427 (+123%)	116,458,047
	1,066,463 (+49%)	58,373,806
	763,990 (+110%)	27,878,344
	481,402 (+57%)	34,203,373
	325,272 (+59%)	53,323,440
	163,443 (+88%)	133,286,271
Total	4,488,997 (+84%)

source vgchartz.com

Sony Puts In-Theatres Movie On PlayStation Store

2010-01-02T16:33:00.000-08:00

Sony accidentally offered Armored - a movie that's still playing in theatres - for download on the PlayStation Store. What's more, they offered it for free. Whoops.
It was all a big mistake, of course, and one that was corrected in around five hours, but during that window it was available, people grabbed it, and people are now watching it on their PS3s and PSPs. For free.
Interesting that, mistake or not, the movie had already been processed and cleared for digital download, indicating its actual, intended release may not have been that far away.

Judge Takes Day Off To Play Modern Warfare 2 [Britain]

2010-01-02T16:25:00.001-08:00

"Will Statton" - not his real name - is 48 years old. And when Modern Warfare 2 was released, he was up at midnight to get an early copy, then took the next day off to play. Problem?
See, according to a report in Britain's The Times, Will (guess he was spilling anonymously) not only bought the game and stayed up late, he called in the next morning and said he was "sick", when really he was up to his eyeballs in knife-fights and dead Russians.
Harmless day off, you say? Would be, were "Will" not a judge. A judge of 15 years, at a county court in Britain.
Some will be upset at this. Think a judge is too important a man to blow off a day's work for some video games. But you know what? Judge's gotta play games too, man. Judge's gotta play games too.
Meet the secret gamers [The Times, via VG247]

Call of Duty now a $3 billion franchise

2010-01-02T16:24:00.000-08:00

Activision announced that, according to data garnered from the NPD, ChartTrack, GfK and internal estimates, the Call of Duty franchise has accumulated $3 billion-with-a-b in sales over its lifetime. As all but the densest among you have likely deduced, CoD was put over the top by the release of Modern Warfare 2, which moved $550 million in its first five days on sale.

For a bit of perspective, $3 billion is pretty darn close to the gross domestic product of the Kingdom of Swaziland, a comparison that's especially appropriate when you realize that 54 percent of Swazis have a Gamerscore over 20,000. ... Oh, wait, this doesn't say "a Gamerscore over 20,000," it says "access to clean water." Sorry, smudge on the page.

The most humiliating Modern Warfare 2 kill in the world

2010-01-02T16:18:00.000-08:00

Gamers can't really be called "courageous" for their pretend exploits in pretend wars with pretend characters, but if we could award at least one man for his out-and-out brass balls, it would be whoever the guy in this video is. He can't seem to spell worth a crap, but he can certainly take out snipers in the most humiliating way possible.
Witness the thorough shame, captured on video for our twisted pleasure. You wish you could be half this cool in a videogame, but you never will be. You're just not uncool enough to real life to get this good.

Emulators and the law

2010-01-02T15:38:00.000-08:00

Emulators and Roms are Free Programs that Simulate Classic Video Games on your Computer Over the last ten years programmers, hackers, and gamers have been using emulators, such as MAME to allow them to play their favorite old console and arcade games on their home computer.

Emulators and roms (the games they play) are illegal in most cases. However, there has not been a significant crackdown on them by the video game and console companies in about five years. The only way that playing an old game on your computer would truly be legal is if you owned a physical copy of the game. Otherwise, you are breaking the copyright laws that apply to the game.

In 2002, some of the video game manufacturers got together with Sony and Nintendo to pressure the courts system in the United States to make it illegal to create, distribute, or own an emulator. The court system would not allow this since it was not interested in the headache that could be caused for the banning of certain types of programs

The court did allow these companies to go after some of the companies and web sites that allowed roms to be downloaded. At the time, many rom sites had to close down because of legal pressure. The court protected many of those that had downloaded roms since it would be a hard case to prove that they knew that they were doing something wrong.

Once the initial strike against roms passed, many new sites popped up online to distribute roms. Sony and the other companies gave up their fight for the time being. There was not any major action directly against roms until last year when some companies brought up a question about old games that no longer had owners.

These games, called Orphans, are games that were created and copyrighted by companies that no longer exist. The companies that were bringing this up were trying to see if they could buy the rights, and go after rom sites. This case has been tabled into oblivion.

Many companies such as Capcom and Atari started coming out with compilation games that covered many of the old games that people were downloading in rom format. While many of these compilations did well, the roms and emulators still exist.

source www.associatedcontent.com/article/249756/what_are_emulators_and_roms_and_are.html

Star Wars The Force Unleashed PC

2009-12-28T07:04:00.000-08:00

I just rent the Star Wars The Force Unleashed for PC and have uploaded my fist game video. I think that it is a really good game but i liked the Jedi Academy better. I will post my review as soon as i will finish the game

Heli attack 3

2009-12-06T15:57:00.000-08:00

These is one of my favourites action flash games

Heli Attack 3

My MTW2 online battles

2009-12-06T05:58:00.000-08:00

I have uploaded a bideo with my first online battle at Medieval 2 Total War
My first on line battle in MTW2
i have the holy Roman empire and my opponent had the Venice

I am not so good at this game but i am getting better and better

Rise of the Argonauts for PC

2009-12-05T11:48:00.000-08:00

My new review is about a game that it supposed to have a plot based on the Greek mythology. Rise of the Argonauts is a game that releashed the previous year (2008) and it is a third person action adventure game developed by Liquid Entertainment and published by Codemasters for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The game's plot supposed to be based on the myth of Jason and his Argonauts as he searches for the Golden Fleece. I say it supposed to be because the plot has nothing to do with Greek mythology. There are some known Greek hero names from the story of the Argonauts and from other Greek stories but they have nothing to do with the original ones. You will see Jason, Achilles, Hercules, Nessus, Atalanta etc but their history is completely different from the famous journey of the Argonauts. I mean that i can not accept this Achilles is the gamous Trojan hero...
In Rise of the Argonauts you control Jason, who is a King of Iolkoss. Jason is about ot get married with Alceme but she is assassinated and Jason avenges her by killing the assassins after that he learns that there is only one way to bring her wife back to life, thegolden fleece. Traveling to Delphi, Jason learns from the Oracle that the only way to learn where the fleece is kept is to find three people that of the bloodlines of Ares, Hermes and Athena.

Jason start his adventure with Hercules by his side and during the game meets and take with hime Achilles, Atalanta and Pan . Its of his companion has his own abilities and helps Jason during the battles. While you play the game you will visit Iolkos, Delphi, Saria, Kythra, Mycanae and Tartarus. Ok, i did not liked the story of the game because i wanted the original one. Except of that fact i did not liked the Xena wat that the developers sees the Greek mythology. The famous ship Argo is fully automated, with mechanical parts, Daedalus is black and is a Rastafarian , Achilles acts like a parody of Brad Pit's acting at Troy and has a double spear that i am sure that is based on Darth Maul's lightsaber, titans (like Prometheus) and some other characters are designed like they are copied from Xena or Hercules (crap) tv series. And i have to mention that the developers do non know history, the present Ionians as a non Greek tribe, unacceptable. The only part that i liked about the game plot was the story about imagined about the creation of mankind and the golden fleece. It is a fission of the history of Prometheus and other greeek mythological events and i really liked it. Ok, i will let the story and the characters behind and i will stay into the game features.

The Graphics of the game are good but not so good for a game of 2008. It has a little better graphics than God of War 2 for ps2. The levels are well designed. especially the palace of Iolkos, Tartarus and Kythra. The sound of the game is really good and the voices of the characters even better. Really there is no lack on these features. The game-play is fun even if it gets boring in some places, most of the time you will want to see what is going on later on the game. The battles are too easy to beat, Jason has always three weapons with him a spear, a sward and a mace that you can combine to perform combos. Except of these you have skills to use that you can improve by completing quests and gaininf god favor points. So Jason get abilities like turning the enemies into stone etc. As i said Jason has companion to help him during the battle during the most time of the game you will have another one or two hero(s) at your side.
I thing that an experienced player wil need about 15 hours to finish the game and an average player about 20 hours. I do not thing that you will sit and play the game again after you finish it one time. I will rate the Rise of the Argonauts with a 5/10. you will have some fun during the gameplay but the low-end graphics, the short time to finish the game and the fact that this story and chaacters will be liked only by those you like the Xena tv series bring the game really down. It is really sad becouse with these characters and some ideas about the battles that exist in this game it could be a really hit

I have uploaded some videos of the game

Thief 4

2009-12-01T04:09:00.000-08:00

Eidos Montreal has admitted that the development team had made improvements on their work for Thieft 4. It is too soon to have any specific words about the title but we have logos, a photograph and a site www.thief4.com. The web site does not contain any information but it has an active forum where developers chat with users and there are applications for artists, writers and people with creative ideas in general that can be useful for the new title. There are no people from Looking Glass Studios that participate at the new project but Eidos try to communicate with some of the original developers to hire them but this has not happened yet.

Eidos Montreal knows that Thief franchise is very popular and has many hardcore fans, and study every step at the development and marketing of the game to avoid any action that will bring negative responses before the release of the game.

X-Men Origins Wolverine ending

2009-11-28T12:37:00.001-08:00

I am posting a video that i made from the final battle of the game and the ending cut-scene

X-Men Origins: Wolverine for PC

2009-11-28T12:17:00.000-08:00

After the ds version of the X-Men Origins: Wolverine i rent and played the pc version. X-Men Origins: Wolverine for PC is a fun action game with influences from games like devil may cry and prince of Persia. The game plot is based on the movie but it is not exactly the same. The story describes Wolverine's life when he was a soldier and sent to Africa to find adamantium and after he has gotten the adamanium into his bones. The most characteristic part of the game is the over the top violence. Wolverine fights with his claws so every strike leaves blood on your screen and human body parts on the floor. The most notable ability of Wolverine is the fast heeling process and this ability is really embraced in this game. Wolverine will bleed and heal every time it get a hit. You will see him covered with his blood, you will see him with holes in his body, you will see even his bones and some seconds later Wolverine will be fine. The game has a decent gameplay and satisfies the gamer.You will fight in the african jungles, in Canadian mountains, scientific labs and other places and you will be against soldiers, African natives, mutants and robots. The big bosses of the game are well designed but since you have the healing power every battle is easy to win. OK you have Wolverine so the game had to be an easy one. The bosses that you will fight are Gambit, Blob, Sabretooth, Sentinel, Dead Pool and some minor mutants that are designed for the game. As you play the game you will gain new abilities, upgrades and combos, The way you fight reminded my Devil May Cry and i liked it , most of the time you will be surrounded by a number of enemies and you will be jumbling on them, throwing them onto sharp objects and you will be kill them extremely violently. Since in every battle there will be different enemies combined you will have you se different combos and strategies to go against them and you will not be bored of the fights. During the game you do not do any save, there are plenty checkpoints during the missions and when you die you just play from the last one. The graphics of the game are good but not something that you have never seen before, the cut scenes are well designed but some of them (like the ending when wolverine looses his memory) should be better.It took my about 12 hours to finish the game at normal mode and after that i wanted to play it and at hard. I really enjoyed that game even if it is easy and small i recommend it. Every fan of Marvel, Wolverine and x-men will like ti. I rate this game with a 8.5

Keeping a Genre Alive

2009-11-27T03:17:00.000-08:00

This si a very interesting article that i just read from the wall street journa and i want to republsih

In a Bid to Rekindle the Text-Only PC Games Of the 1980s, Fans Write New Adventures

By VAUHINI VARA | THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE

You are at the edge of a clearing with an impressive view of the mountains. A trail splits off toward some standing stones to the southwest, while the main road emerges from the forest to the east and continues westward down the hill, via a series of switchbacks.
So begins "A New Life," a computer game created by Alexandre Owen Muñiz, a 31-year-old programmer who lives in Tigard, Ore. Unlike today's hit videogame titles, Mr. Muniz's creation doesn't include splashy graphics or booming sound effects. Instead, "A New Life" consists of nothing more than text on a screen, and a blinking cursor awaiting players' commands.
Mr. Muñiz is part of a cult group of gamers that are going back to basics. Their craft recalls a time before "Grand Theft Auto" or "Doom," when computer games were about as visually compelling as a Microsoft Word document. The scene was set with a block of text, and the player advanced the action by typing simple commands like "go west" or "read sign." In the early days of home computing, such games were a hit: A company called Infocom was one of the leaders of the genre, and sold more than one million copies of its flagship game, "Zork," before being acquired by Activision Inc. in 1986. In that game, the player's first move was to type the words, "open mailbox."
Now, two decades after the heyday of text-based games, people like Mr. Muñiz are trying to keep the genre alive. Fans post their own text-only adventures online for free, and meet in chat rooms dedicated to the craft.
And once a year, they participate in the annual Interactive Fiction Competition. The contest, going on now and in its 11th year, serves as a sort of Super Bowl of the genre.
"Console games are demanding," says Mike Snyder, a 33-year-old computer programmer in Wichita, Kan., who discovered the hobbyist community in the late 1990s and has since entered several games in the competition. "With text games, you can sit there at the prompt, go make a sandwich, then come back and play more."
The plots of the games are often as minimalist as the graphics: To win, players must solve a series of puzzles, like finding the key to a castle door. Many are set in dark, gothic worlds with fantastical villains. One entry in this year's game contest offers an "evil animated tree."
This year, game designers worked for months -- or longer -- to finish their games by the competition's Oct. 1 deadline. Mr. Muñiz, for his part, began writing his game four years ago, but devoted more time to it after he lost his full-time programming job last year. For the past six weeks, users have downloaded the 36 entries, played them and cast their votes. Most of the prizes for the competition are donated by the participants. Up for grabs this year: $500 in cash, a $50 gift certificate to Amazon.com, several pre-owned computer games, and other prizes. Voting will be closed at the end of the day Tuesday.
In the old days, a text adventure game was built to take about 20 hours to play, so that customers would feel that they were getting their money's worth. The rules of the new amateur competition dictate that games must be designed so they can be completed in under two hours. As a result, many writers have dumped the labyrinthine puzzles of the classic games in favor of a more literary approach. Some show off punchy language. Others highlight character development. Still others experiment with style: "Photopia," the winner of the 1998 contest, leaps back and forth through time and space, and between characters (it can be downloaded here). "Shade," an entry in the 2000 competition, is a dark, existential piece set in a one-room apartment (play it online here).
Game creators need some computer savvy to create the new games, but they don't have to be computer geeks. The new games are built using free software tools that take care of much of the programming, allowing authors to focus on the story rather than lines of computer code.
While a goal of the contest is to pay homage to the genre, today's creators don't hesitate to jettison some of the trademarks (and clichés) of the older games. Characters with amnesia and games set in dark dungeons are "stale," says Jason Devlin, a 21-year-old biology and chemistry student in Nanaimo, British Columbia. Mr. Devlin, who came in fourth last year, is a favorite in this year's competition. His entry, "Vespers," follows a monk through a plague-ridden monastery. For research, he searched the Web for descriptions of plague symptoms and read bits of Giovanni Boccaccio's "The Decameron." "My game has a lot of dying," he says. "I want it to be scary."
In another entry this year, "Tough Beans," players take on the role of a young woman who must get through a day of work after discovering her boyfriend is cheating on her. The game's author, Sarah David, 26, is a technical writer for a software company in Annapolis, Md. Ms. David says she takes character development seriously: In "Tough Beans," the player gets points for making bold decisions like breaking a mirror after spotting a lipstick stain on the boyfriend's shirt. ("Sometimes it's good to take out your aggression instead of bottling it up inside," suggests a page of hints that accompanies the game.)
Last year, just 174 people submitted votes in the competition, and no more than a few dozen regularly visit an online chat room for the group. Those involved say their hobby raises plenty of eyebrows. Mr. Devlin says his friends find it "quaint." "They're like, 'You know they make those with pictures now, right?' " he says. Ian Shlasko, 24, another contestant this year, managed to find just one person to test his game: his mother. "She loved it," says Mr. Shlasko, who works as a programmer for a Wall Street firm. "Then again, even if it was horrible, she would have loved it."
So far, the competition remains an amateur affair. Steve Meretzky, one of the best-known game developers at Infocom, says he receives occasional emails from fans, but has not participated in the online community. The creator of popular text-based games like "Planetfall," "Leather Goddesses of Phobos" and "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" now works at a company that designs cellphone games. The 48-year-old says he doesn't have time to write text adventures for fun. "I have to pay the bills," he says.

source online.wsj.com/public/article/SB113035964379680346-Sm_Xo6VCeinwEXHBnVDawW_8grI_20061115.html?mod=blogs

Using True Vision to Create 3D DirectX Animation in C# and .NET

2009-11-26T06:28:00.001-08:00

Introduction

It has always been a little painful creating 3D animation using Microsoft DirectX... until now. True Vision 3D has created a nice wrapper around DirectX 9 to simplify the task of doing animation and game development in .NET. With this well defined game engine, you can get going creating moving objects right away. This article is based on a tutorial written by the author Fatima Ahmed describing how to use True Vision to create a furnished room.

Figure 1 - 3D Animation of Objects using DirectX, True Vision and .NET

Understanding the 3D World

There are a few concepts you will need to understand before tackling the world of 3D animation. Much of 3D design is based on the concept of meshes. Meshes are these wire frames described in terms of 3d vectors. You can think of a mesh as a bent up piece of chicken wire that forms the shape of the desirable object. A mesh is rendered from its vector components into a solid object using some fancy algorithms handled by Direct X. In order to give the "chicken wire" a more realistic look, the wire mesh is covered with a texture. Textures are simply bitmaps that fill in the polygons in the 3D mesh. In additions to textures and meshes, the 3D world has the concept of lighting in order to give objects an additional dimension. Colors in the scene are made lighter or darker to give the illusion of different concentrations of light. Developers often use programming tools such as 3D Studio, Lightwave 3D, or SoftImage to create meshes, textures, and other aspects of game development.

Thinking in True Vision

The concept behind DirectX (and wrapped nicely by True Vision) is that you create all these meshes as objects in your scene, and rotate, translate, color, or illuminate them separately. Anotherwords, the steps to animating meshes are this: change the meshes in your scene, render the whole scene. Then repeat: change the meshes in your scene, render the whole scene. When do you change the scene? You can change the scene in response to user input, or in response to a timer, or whatever event in your application is suitable for triggering a change.

The Program Structure

The application initializes the True Vision Engine at the time of the load event of the Windows Form. Inside the load event handler, we create all our mesh objects. Then we kick off the main loop. The main loop, which is common to all directx applications, just spins a loop that continously renders the scene filled with meshes. Rendering is handled in 3 steps: step 1) clear the previously rendered objects. step 2) render the new scene in memory 3) display the newly rendered scene on the screen. These steps continue to loop at a predetermined frame rate. The loop is exited only after the program sets the loop variable to false. In our program the loop variable is set to false when the user presses the exit button or closes the form.

Animation
In order to see some interesting animation from our mesh objects, we have to transform them. We added a routine inside the rendering loop that rotates some of the objects in our scene. You can rotate any mesh object in the scene that you want using True Vision, but we chose to rotate the dice and the sunglasses. This strange rotation of objects in the room gives you the illusion that the room is haunted. To animate, we just add a line inside the rendering loop that calls the method RotateSomeObjects. This method changes the position of the sunglasses and dice each time through the loop. At the current frame rate, the dice and sunglasses look like they are spinning.
The Code
Let's take a more detailed look at the code to understand what we talked about so far. Initialization takes place in the form load event. The first method, SetupTheInitialScene, sets up the engine, and creates the scene and all the mesh objects. The Main_Loop call starts the loop and asks the scene to render itself every time through the loop.
Listing 1 - Loading the Scene and starting the Main Loop

private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            // set up the initial scene
            SetupTheInitialScene();

             // show the form and give it focus
             this.Show();
             this.Focus();

            // start up the main loop, setting the loop guard to ON
             DoLoop = true;
             Main_Loop();
        }

Let's take a look at these two methods. The SetupTheInitialScene in the form first calls the InitializeTrueVision method in our form which initializes the engine. Then the SetupTheInitialScene method sets up the lighting and textures to be used by the mesh shapes. Finally SetupTheInitialScene creates the walls and mesh shapes needed to render the scene as shown in listing 2:
Listing 2 - Setup the scene and create the mesh shapes in the room

private void SetupTheInitialScene()
{
// initialize true vision details
InitializeTrueVision();

// create a new scene
_scene = new TVScene();

// set the scene background color
_scene.SetSceneBackGround(0f, 0.3f, 0.9f);

// set the lighting of the scene
SetupLighting();

// Load Textures
LoadTextures();

// create wall
CreateWalls();

//Set the position of the room mesh
_meshRoom.SetPosition(x_move, y_move, z_move);

// create different shapes in the room
CreateMeshShapes();
}

The InitializeTrueVision called from SetupTheInitialScene, initializes the true vision engine and sets up texture and mesh path information. This method also points the engine to render inside the picturebox in our form. As you can see, initialization of the True Vision framework is pretty sttraightfoward with just a few lines of code.
Listing 3 - Initializes the True Vision Engine

void InitializeTrueVision()
{
// create a new game engine
TV = new TVEngine();

// set the engine to point the picture box so all rendering will
// occur inside the picture box in the form
TV.Init3DWindowedMode(this.pictureBox1.Handle.ToInt32(), true);

//This is the path where our media (texture and meshes) files are placed
TV.SetSearchDirectory(System.Windows.Forms.Application.ExecutablePath);

// set the rotation angle to be in degrees
TV.SetAngleSystem(CONST_TV_ANGLE.TV_ANGLE_DEGREE);

// We want to see the frames per second
TV.DisplayFPS = true;
}

The LoadTextures method called from SetupTheInitialScene brings in all the textures used in the scene as shown in listing 4. Textures are bitmaps such as jpg or bmp files. You only need to refer to the texture file's relative path because in Listing 3 we already told the engine what the search path for media would be. The call which loads the texture assigns a keyword so the texture can be referred to in the code by the keyword. For example the marble.jpg texture file loaded into the scene is assigned the keyword "marble".
Listing 4 - Loading the Textures into the Scene

private void LoadTextures()
{
_scene.LoadTexture("textures\\marble.jpg", -1, -1, "marble");
_scene.LoadTexture("textures\\cinder.bmp", -1, -1, "wood");
_scene.LoadTexture("textures\\granite.bmp", -1, -1, "granite");
_scene.LoadTexture("textures\\metal.bmp", -1, -1, "metal");
_scene.LoadTexture("textures\\sandstone.bmp", -1, -1, "sandstone");
_scene.LoadTexture("textures\\oldrock.bmp", -1, -1, "oldrock");
}

Now that we have our textures, we are ready to create our mesh shapes. First we will create the room walls. Lucky for us, the True Vision engine has built-in methods to handle the creating of walls as shown in listing 5. We simply use the AddWall3D method. This method takes the texture as its first parameter. The texture id is looked up through the keyword we assigned in listing 4. Our walls are all cinder blocks, so we will bring in the cinder block texture. The next 4 parameters in the AddWall3D method specify the x and z 3d coordinate positions defining the wall rectangle. The last two parameters specify the tile dimensions of the texture. There is a separate call to draw the floor called AddFloor and before you know it we have a room! Listing 5 shows the calls for creating a mesh room and figure 2 shows the rendered result. (Note the room isn't actually rendered until the Main_Loop).
Listing 5 - Creating the room walls using the True Vision Engine

private void CreateWalls()
{ // create a new mesh object and call it "room
_meshRoom = (TVMeshClass)_scene.CreateMeshBuilder("room");
// add the walls to the room
_meshRoom.AddWall3D(global.GetTex("cinder"), 350.0f, -350.0f, -350.0f, -350.0f, 350.0f, 5.0f, true, false, -50.0f, 5.0f, 5.0f);
_meshRoom.AddWall3D(global.GetTex("cinder"), -350.0f, -350.0f, -350.0f, 350.0f, 350.0f, 5.0f, true, false, -50.0f, 5.0f, 5.0f);
_meshRoom.AddWall3D(global.GetTex("cinder"), -350.0f, 350.0f, 350.0f, 350.0f, 350.0f, 5.0f, true, false, -50.0f, 5.0f, 5.0f);
_meshRoom.AddWall3D(global.GetTex("cinder"), 350.0f, 350.0f, 350.0f, -350.0f, 350.0f, 5.0f, true, false, -50.0f, 5.0f, 5.0f);
_meshRoom.AddFloor(global.GetTex("sandstone"), -350.0f, -350 - 0f, 350.0f, 350.0f, -50.0f, 10.0f, 10.0f, true, false);
}

Figure 2 - The Rendered Room

Now let's see how to create all the cool shapes in our room. Listing 6 creates all the shapes in our room: 2 chairs, 2 dice, a table, a sphere, and a pair of sunglasses.

Listing 6 - Creating the interesting mesh shapes inside the Room

private void CreateMeshShapes()
{
// create a table with a transparent tabletop
CreateMeshTable();

// create a chair
CreateChair1();

// create another chair
CreateChair2();

// create dice
CreateDie1();
CreateDie2();

// create sunglasses and place them on the table by adjusting the position
CreateSunglasses();

// create a sphere inside the sunglasses
CreateSphere();
}

In order to create a shape, we just need to load an existing mesh object from a file, perhaps give it a texture, and set its position in the room. The mesh file format for direct x is the x file format (sounds a bit like TV show). The extension of this format is .x and is used for creating games for the X-Box and other DirectX applications. True Vision also excepts the 3d studio (3ds) format, but our example uses X meshes. Let's see how we create a mesh object for the table. First we create a mesh object, this can be done directly from the scene the CreateMeshBuilder method. Next we load the X file from our meshes directory and place it at the desired x,y,z coordinates in the room (using SetPosition). We want to size and rearrange the table a bit, so we scale it by a factor of 3 and turn it 25 degrees. Finally we apply the sandstone texture to the table by calling SetTexture as in Listing 7.

Listing 7 - Creating the mesh table, size it, rotate it, and apply a texture

private void CreateMeshTable()
{

// create a mesh object called table
_meshTable = (TVMeshClass)_scene.CreateMeshBuilder("table");

// load the object from an x file
_meshTable.LoadXFile(@"meshes\glasstable.x", true, true);

// set its position
_meshTable.SetPosition(80.0f, -50.0f, 340.0f);

// make the table 3x larger
_meshTable.ScaleMesh(3, 3, 3);

// rotate it 25 degrees around the Y 3D Axis
_meshTable.RotateY(25, true);

            // set the tables texture to sandstone
            _meshTable.SetTexture(global.GetTex("sandstone"), -1);
        }

All mesh objects are created in a similar way. They are just loaded from there corresponding x files. For example, the sunglasses are from the sunglass.x file and placed on top of the table by putting them in the same position as the table.

Listing 8 - Creates the Sunglasses to be Rendered

        private void CreateSunglasses()
        {
            _sunglasses =
            (TVMeshClass)_scene.CreateMeshBuilder("sunglasses");

_sunglasses.LoadXFile(@"meshes\sunglass.x", true, true);

          // place glasses in the same place as the table,
         // and it will appear
        // as if they are resting on top of the table

            _sunglasses.SetPosition(80f, -40.0f, 310.0f);
            _sunglasses.RotateY(25, true);
            _sunglasses.ScaleMesh(15, 15, 15);
        }

When you are creating these scenes, you'll find you might need to play around with the coordinates and mesh sizes to get the scene the way you want it. For example, placing the sunglasses at a different y coordinate makes it look like the sunglasses are floating above the table. Another words, changing SetPosition to

_sunglasses.SetPosition(80f, 100.0f, 310.0f);

Renders the scene shown below:

Figure 3 - Changing the y Coordinate Position of the Sun Glasses

The Main Loop
The main loop consists of a simple loop that just continually renders the scene until the guard condition (DoLoop) is set to false . It is in this loop that you can capture input from the user, check for collisions between objects, implement state machines, and animate objects. In our application we have inserted the call RotateSomeObjects into our main loop to make things slightly interesting by animating some of the mesh objects on the screen.
Listing 9 - The Main Loop that Renders the Mesh objects each time through the loop to Produce the Scene

private void Main_Loop()
        {
            int fps;
            // We loop through all of this over and over until the DoLoop isn't True.
            while (DoLoop == true)
            {
               // allow normal window events to take place
                System.Windows.Forms.Application.DoEvents();

           // for games, we would add input and movement checks here
          //      CheckInput();
         //       CheckMovement();

//Get the Frame per Second
fps = (int)TV.GetFPS();

// rendering is started by clearing the image
TV.Clear(false);

// rotate some of the objects set up in the form load
RotateSomeObjects();

// render all the mesh objects inside the scene in memory

_scene.RenderAllMeshes(true);

// display the rendered objects on the screen

TV.RenderToScreen();
}

            // We ask to quit.
            Main_Quit();
        }

RotateSomeObjects rotates the dice and the glasses. One dice appears to rotate along its length, while the other appears to rotate along its vertices. The sunglasses look as though they are rotating around the sphere.

Listing 10 - Animating some of the Mesh Objects

        private void RotateSomeObjects()
        {
            // rotate first die around the X Axis 5 more degrees
            _die1.RotateX(5, true);

             // rotate second die around the X Axis and Z Axis
            _die2.RotateX(5, true);
            _die2.RotateZ(5, true);

             // rotate the sunglasses around the Y Axis
            _sunglasses.RotateY(5, true);
        }

Dealing with Input

Perhaps we want to allow the user to stop the sunglasses or die from rotating. To do this, we need to get user input. We can use the True Vision TVInputEngine object to get input from the keyboard or the mouse in order to control the rendering on the screen. As an example, let's allow the user to stop the sunglasses from spinning if the user types 'S' and stop the dice from spinning if the user types 'D'. If the user types 'R', the dice and the sunglasses will both start spinning again. If we uncomment CheckInput from the main loop we can check the user input each cycle through the loop. The CheckInput method would use the Input Method to set flags that will control rendering as shown in listing 11.

Listing 11 - Check the Input and Set the Flags that Control the Rendering in RotateSomeObjects

TVInputEngine InputEngine = new TVInputEngine(); // constructs the input engine

       private void CheckInput()
        {
            // check if we want to stop the sunglasses
            if (InputEngine.IsKeyPressed(CONST_TV_KEY.TV_KEY_S))
                _rotateGlasses = false; // stop the glasses

            // check if we want to stop the die
            if (InputEngine.IsKeyPressed(CONST_TV_KEY.TV_KEY_D))
                _rotateDie = false; // stop the die

            if (InputEngine.IsKeyPressed(CONST_TV_KEY.TV_KEY_R))
            {
                // restart both glasses and die

                _rotateGlasses = true;
                _rotateDie = true;
            }

}

Now we just need to slightly alter the RotateSomeObjects method in listing 10 to respond to the _rotateGlasses and _rotateDie flags.

Listing 12 - The Altered RotateSomeObjects Method that Rotate Objects according to Input Settings

         void RotateSomeObjects()
        {
            // rotate first die around the X Axis if die flag is set
            if (_rotateDie)
            {
                _die1.RotateX(5, true);

                // rotate second die around the X Axis and Z Axis
                _die2.RotateX(5, true);
                _die2.RotateZ(5, true);
            }

            // rotate the sunglasses around the Y Axis if sunglasses flag is set
            if (_rotateGlasses)
            {
                _sunglasses.RotateY(5, true);
            }
        }

Conclusion
DirectX has never been easy to program. The True Vision library makes a great attempt at simplifying the use of DirectX 9 with a well thought out .NET library. In this article we have shown you how to use True Vision's engine to create a scene and render it to the screen. We have given you some insight into how to create 3D animation, and we have shown you how you can take advantage of True Visions Input Engine to control the animation. Hopefully this article will get you started in creating your own great games or creative visions in the world of .NET.

source www.c-sharpcorner.com/UploadFile/mgold/TrueVision02212006001458AM/TrueVision.aspx

Max Payne 3

2009-11-26T06:08:00.000-08:00

Some news about Max Payne 3. The 3rd game is under development by Rockstar and not Remedy Entertainment that has developed the previous Max Payne games. This time the creator of Max Payne, Sam Lake will not interfear with the development. Another one that will not be seen, or better will not be heart is the voice actor James McCaffrey, because Max is older and his voice must be different or at least this is claimed by Rockstar. Max will be older ,mature, more cynical. His appearance will be a lot of different too. He will be bald, with facial hair and some extra kilos. The new story will take place at Brazil and special at Sao Paolo twelve years after the second game where Max is working as a security manager for a rich family. The Game was programmed to be released at fall of 2009 but it will be releashed at June of 2010. The game will has multiplayer mode but there are not extraa information about that. The game engine that is used is RAGE of Rockstar, the same one that used for Grand Theft auto and will be combined with Euphoria of NaturalMotion that guarantee realistic enemy reaction when they are hit by guns and to enviromental changes.

Far Cry 3

2009-11-26T05:37:00.000-08:00

A new Far Cry 3 is under development by Ubisoft, but it is too soon yet to know the release date of the game. It is not known if the action will be placed in african or the developers will choose another enviroment but anyway the sequel of one of the best action games of 2008 will be most welcome. The release date will not be soon becouse many developers of Far Cry 3 have worked for Avatar: The Game too, and the game had to be fineshed first to be sychronized with the movie. But now they give all the energy into far cry and we are waiting something really good.

Final Fantasy XIII

2009-11-20T06:47:00.000-08:00

Square Enix announced today the highly anticipated street date for FINAL FANTASY XIII. This latest project in the multi-platinum FINAL FANTASY series will be available for both the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 on 9th March 2010.
FINAL FANTASY XIII marks the dawning of a new era for the celebrated series, bringing the series to multiple hi-definition consoles simultaneously for the first time in its history. Expanding upon the rich tradition of the series, producer Yoshinori Kitase (FINAL FANTASY VII, X, X-2), director Motomu Toriyama (FINAL FANTASY VII, X, X-2), character designer Tetsuya Nomura (FINAL FANTASY V, VI, VII, VIII, X) and art director Isamu Kamikokuryo (FINAL FANASY X, XII) combine their creative vision to deliver the latest masterpiece in the FINAL FANTASY universe. Additionally, Masashi Hamauzu (FINAL FANTASY X, DIRGE of CERBERUS -FINAL FANTASY VII-) presents a sweeping soundtrack while movie director Takeshi Nozue (FINAL FANTASY VII ADVENT CHILDREN) and his team of artists adorn the game with seamless cinematic sequences of unparalleled calibre.
"FINAL FANTASY XIII promises to be a huge event in the 2010 gaming calendar," said Phil Rogers, president and chief executive officer of Square Enix Europe. "This is truly a landmark title, arriving simultaneously for multiple platforms for the first time in the history of the series. We are also immensely proud to be able to bring the game to the European and PAL audience much earlier than was publically anticipated."
Multi-platinum, Grammy-nominated singer and songwriter Leona Lewis has come on board with Square Enix to provide the theme song for FINAL FANTASY XIII. The song is entitled "My Hands," and is featured on her highly-anticipated second album ECHO (J Records/Syco Music) set for release on November 16th.
"When Square Enix approached Leona about including her song, "My Hands," in FINAL FANTASY XIII, she was honoured to be partnered with such an iconic and groundbreaking video game series," said Tom Corson, EVP/GM, RCA Music Group. "Leona is a natural fit with the game’s powerful themes and strong female protagonist. We’re delighted to be part of this effort, bringing great musical artistry to FINAL FANTASY XIII which is a riveting and dynamic gaming experience."
Introducing new worlds, memorable characters and extraordinary stories with each new instalment, the FINAL FANTASY series has continued to reinvent itself over the last two decades and has shipped over 85 million copies worldwide.

Programming games for Nintendo WII part 1

2009-11-20T06:16:00.000-08:00

The first thing that you need to start Wii programming is to get the proper development tool. You will need the DevkitPPC witch is the part of the DevkitPro toolchain used for Wii and Gamecube development. These guides describe setting up such a system.

Installing devkitPPC forWindows

Go to this page and download the latest Windows installer.
Let it install to the C:\devkitPro\ to make it easier to follow the tutorial for now.
When installing it, you can deselect devkitARM and devkitPSP
Click next until it finishes installing

Setup your project folder

Under no circumstances should you place projects within the devkitPro folder. The windows updater can and will overwrite/delete your files.
Create a new folder outside the devkitPro folder, c:\projects\wii for example. This path should not contain spaces.
Copy the folder C:\devkitPro\examples\wii\template\ to this new directory and rename it to "helloworld" so that the full path is c:\projects\wii\helloworld\

Compile the Hello World Example

Assuming you installed Programmer's Notepad through the installer, double click the .pnproj file in your new project.
Click on Tools->make or use the ALT+1 key combination
The output window at the bottom will show the build progress

Note: If you are having trouble compiling some programs under Windows Vista (eg. libogc cvs), try unsetting PLATFORM variable. (in msys shell, "unset PLATFORM")

Run the Hello World Example on the emulator

Now, browse to the helloworld folder. There should be a helloworld.dol file here now.
Run the hellworld.dol in an emulator. As of 31-Mar-2009, emulators for the Wii are not 100% compatible and feature complete. Dolphin can successfully run some homebrew. See the Dolphin page for more information. Another emulator is Gcube. Gcube does not run homebrew compiled in Wii mode, but can run homebrew if compiled for the GameCube mode. See the Gcube page for more information.

Run the Hello World Example on the Wii using wiiload

For this to work, you need to have the Homebrew Channel installed on your Wii and a way to access the Wii via TCP.
Get wiiload.exe from the Homebrew Channel archive (should be in wiiload\win32) and copy it to C:\devkitPro\msys\bin.
Set the environment variable WIILOAD to something like "tcp:192.168.0.30" (replace the IP with your Wii's IP). This can be done via Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Environment Variables. Then restart windows.
Start the Homebrew Channel on your Wii.
Click on Tools -> run or use the ALT+R key combination.
The output window at the bottom will show the upload progress (so does the Homebrew Channel) and the example will be started on your Wii when it's done.

Installing devkitPPC for Linux

Installing through the repositories

It may be possible to install devkitPPC via your linux distro repositories. Try searching for devkitPPC MYDISTRO [1].
If you are using Ubuntu or Debian, there is a repository with .deb files maintained by UCLM university.
1. Add to sources.list file the lines

deb http://arco.esi.uclm.es/~francisco.moya/debian ./
deb http://arco.esi.uclm.es/~francisco.moya/debian-amd64 ./
deb-src http://arco.esi.uclm.es/~francisco.moya/debian ./

2. Execute sudo apt-get update
3. Execute sudo apt-get install devkitpro-ppc
The files will be installed at /opt/devkitPro with read-only permission. You can do a copy of the examples directory in your user space and then compile and run in the normal way.

cp -r /opt/devkitPro/examples/ .
cd examples/wii/template
make
make run

Installing devkitPPC from DevkitPro packages

Download DevkitPPC, libogc,libfat-ogc and the Wii examples (optional)

A premade archive of these files (organized according to the directory structure below) is available here

Note: The US mirror for DevkitPPC can be slow, so you might have to switch to a European one.

Note: Extract the files from the devkitPPC tarball using "tar -xvjf " to preserve symlinks, etc...

Create a folder for devkitpro and extract everything into it such that you have this directory structure:

devkitpro
  devkitPPC
  wii-examples
  libogc (extract the libfat tar under this directory as well)

Edit ~/.bashrc and add

export DEVKITPRO=/path/to/devkitpro # replace this by your actual path
export DEVKITPPC=$DEVKITPRO/devkitPPC
PATH=$PATH:$DEVKITPPC/bin

Optionally, find out your Wii's IP with the homebrew channel and add

export WIILOAD=tcp:192.168.1.5 # replace this by your Wii's IP

Restart your terminal or type

source ~/.bashrc

Compiling a Hello World

Enter devkitpro/wii-examples/template and simply type

make

To run the example on your Wii, start the homebrew channel and type

make run

Voilà! You just compiled your first Wii program!

Compiling Insight Debugger

A custom version of the Insight graphical debugger is included as part of the DevkitPro package, however currently there are no linux binaries available. In order to successfully compile the source under linux, you need to run the following sequence of commands from the directory where you unpacked the source:

for f in `find`; do dos2unix ${f}; done
./configure --target=powerpc-gekko
make
make install prefix=/directory/to/install/to

Using DDD (GNU Data Display Debugger)

An alternative to Insight is DDD
It has the advantage that you won't have to compile it on linux
For instance to install it on ubuntu just use the following command:

sudo apt-get install ddd

Then you use ddd with powerpc-gecko-gdb with the following:

ddd --debugger path-to-powerpc-gecko-gdb

And finally you can use the console at the bottom to connect to your wii and load the symbols as you would using gdb from the console
For instructions on how to use gdb or insight for remote debugging, see Remote Debugging with GDB

Installing devkitPPC for Mac OS X

First make sure you have Xcode tools 3 (note that this requires Leopard) or above installed then go here and download the latest Mac distro (actually we don't have the latest release as pkg. Try the higher release with a pkg. If you see the latest release with a pkg, please remove this). Also download gcube emulator for mac.
Double-click the devkitPPC.pkg and follow the set-up instructions then log out and back in or restart.

Compile the Hello World Example

Launch Xcode
Select "New project..." from the File menu
Select "devkitPPC Wii Project"
Name your project, and pick a place to save it
Hit "Build"
The completed .dol file will (by default) be found in build/Development

Run the Hello World Example

To run the file again open Terminal and type “gcube ~/Desktop/WiiBrew/devkitPPC\GameCube\Project/build/Development/devkitPPC” no quotes obviously.
The resulting dol should be compatible with the Twilight Hack. Unfortunately dols compiled with CVS libogc and future stable releases will not be compatible with Gcube.

Some Code snippets

libogc provides a jump back to the loader through the standard libc exit function. exit(0) will immediately return, all other values will display a console screen with the exit code.

Add this in your main while loop, under "VIDEO_WaitVSync()":

PAD_ScanPads();
int buttonsDown = PAD_ButtonsHeld(0);
if( (buttonsDown & PAD_TRIGGER_Z) && (buttonsDown & PAD_BUTTON_START)) {
  exit(0);
}

source wiibrew.org/wiki/Devkitppc_setup

New Aliens vs. Predator Announced; Aliens: Colonial Marines Delayed

2009-11-19T06:34:00.000-08:00

Original Aliens vs. Predator developer, Rebellion, doing all-new PC, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 instalment! However, the new title launches early 2010, before Gearbox's Aliens: Colonial Marines, marking a significant delay for the co-op shooter:

SEGA of America Inc., SEGA Europe Ltd. and Twentieth Century Fox Licensing & Merchandising (Fox L&M) today reveals exciting new details of their increasing portfolio of upcoming games based on Twentieth Century Fox’s Aliens universe. SEGA will publish an all-new Aliens vs. Predator (working title) game in early 2010. The game is currently in development with independent developer Rebellion, creators of the original 1999 Aliens versus Predator; a legendary title that went on to define an entire generation of multiplayer gaming. With the opportunity to publish what promises to be a landmark game, SEGA has strategically updated the release of the other upcoming Aliens titles currently in development within its portfolio.
“The innovative new AvP game presents an exciting opportunity for us,” says CEO of SEGA West, Naoya Tsurumi, “It represents a fantastic addition to our growing Aliens franchise and the reinvention of one of gaming’s most cherished iconic titles. By adjusting the release of our other Aliens titles to accommodate it, SEGA will ensure that every title lives up to the high expectations of Aliens and AvP fans.”
“SEGA continues to create masterful games based on our Aliens franchise and this new addition is sure to continue their successful track record,” said Gary Rosenfeld, Senior Vice President, New Media for Fox L&M.

Don't forget, Obsidian's unnamed, yet-to-be-revealed, Aliens RPG is also in development.

Medieval 2 Total war Great battle

2009-11-17T15:58:00.000-08:00

I am just posting a battle that i have seen at youtube and i liked

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

2009-11-17T14:45:00.000-08:00

Amazing and beyond every thought is the acceptance that shows the gamers to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Everybody was talking about the success that will has the game but the sales that happened was not foreseen by anybody. During the first 24 hours of the release Modern Warfare 2 earned the record profit of 310 million dollars only in the north America and Great Britain. This amount of money means 4.7 million copies. The previous record belonged to Grand Theft Auto 4, Activision estimates that Modern Warfare 2 has exceeded the 11 million of sold copies during the two first months after the release.Activision in deed had organized the previous days a enormous campaign to arrest those who would try to traffic illegal or legal but earlier from release copies. Concretely, Activision, in collaboration with the private company of researches IPCybercrime.com found companies that where selling bundles of Xbox 360 with Call of Duty one week earlier of the release date. These copies had been stolen from shop deposits.

The deleted dialogs of Monkey Island

2009-11-17T14:12:00.000-08:00

Adam Bormann game designer of the Special Edition of the famous adventure game Monkey Island, decided to publish some unknown dialogs from the game Secret of Monkey Island. He writes

My name is Adam Bormann, and I was one of the designers on the Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition. One of the things I worked on was the new hint system, which meant a lot of digging through the old original SCUMM source code to figure out how Ron Gilbert, Tim Schafer and company were tracking the state of different puzzles and whether Guybrush had completed something or not. One thing I quickly noticed was that Ron and Tim had left a lot of notes in the code, explaining why things were the way they were, or putting a date when a certain bug was fixed. This was fascinating to see and read. The other thing I noticed is that when they made some changes, they left the original versions of the code in there, but commented out, so that it wouldn’t be used.

Now I know some of you are wondering why we didn’t add this content back into the game for the Special Edition. But we felt like Ron Gilbert and the team had good reasons for removing them in the first place, and a lot of it doesn’t really fit with the game that shipped or puzzles the game had. We did want to share the deleted and extended scenes with you though, because we were excited to discover them, and we think they’re pretty cool.

The deleted dialog texts contain words of Fester Shinetop, Guybrush, Elaine, Otis, Meathook, Carla, Stan and Lemonhead that must be read.