Our Ragdoll Metaphysics columnist Jim Rossignol has already done a fantastic job of documenting the depth of insular and near-inexplicable tactics that take place in the world of EVE Online, but Ten Ton Hammer has updated with a wonderful look into the “jagged fissure of insanity which runs through the heart of the EVE playerbase, a kind of feverish bad crazy that you simply don’t find in other online games.”
The money quote? Right here:
I was approached by one of the leaders of Red Alliance… but almost immediately we were down the rabbit hole. Much to my surprise, the RA director didn’t want in-game information from me; he wanted us to use the forensic resources of our intelligence agency to trace down The Enslaver’s home address. At a coordinated time, armed with this information, a RA member would apparently cut the power to The Enslaver’s house in the real world, and in EVE a RA capital fleet would assault the abruptly pilotless Titan. Yikes.
Joining Simon Parkin’s excellently single-minded Box Art tumblr (which has ever so slightly slipped in the past week [but ended on a high note] — everything ok, Simon?) as my new favorite follow is pixelstyle, a new tumblr devoted solely to “showcase and celebrate the aesthetic of pixels, whether from games, demos, original artwork, or anything else.”
There are some slightly NSFW pixels currently roaming around the front page, but for the most part enso’s stuck to inspiring game landscapes, and I’m very much looking forward to seeing where he takes us next.
I suppose it couldn’t have started at a better place: a long series of rumors and follow-ups yesterday has rewarded Ars Technica with confirmation that Sony will be using the upcoming release of its Rolito-art-directed strategy game Patapon 2 as a test bed for pure digital downloads for the PSP.
Soon to be available on the PlayStation Network for $15 alongside the other recently converted digital download releases, Sony will continue to support retail with an empty UMD case that simply contains a slip with a download code (and a demo version, if you reserve at select retailers, that — like the original game — will give you a special item that carries over into the full release) for $5 more.
Or imagine it playing out this way: games are the ephemeral experience, the ones that — especially now — we don’t need to purchase in a box. Why not go a step further and sell us some other companion piece to keep retail in the loop (a toy? a shirt? a print?) and let the game exist purely in byte form?
[Correction: As Metanet‘s Raigan Burns has very correctly pointed out, this isn’t the first purely digital PSP game: Queasygames‘ excellent handheld port of Everyday Shooter and, more recently, Realtech VR’s No Gravity are more obvious examples, but this is the first time Sony’s tried to run both digital and retail routes stateside.]
If you’re not a dedicated Mac fiend it may not ring a bell, but Through the Looking Glass holds a distinct honor in Apple’s history.
Folklore.org tells the history in better detail than I will here, but the gist is this: what started as a side-project demo created by Steve Capps on the company’s ill-fated Lisa (Capps would soon leave the Lisa team for the Mac and contribute to the first version of the Finder) became Apple’s only first-party developed and published game.
(Side note: true to the company’s values, it came as gorgeously packaged as any Apple product you might buy today, in a mock cloth-bound-storybook-like case.)
While it never quite got its due on its original platform, history has now wrapped around on itself, as Capps himself has brought the game to the iPhone as AliceX [iTunes link].
The game plays essentially like an arcade version of chess: Alice takes on the movement properties of particular pieces and hops around the board attempting to capture a full slate of CPU-controlled opposing pieces that advance toward you in real time. The iPhone version can be played at its original four different speeds and, on very quick trial, has adapted itself perfectly to the touchscreen.
Even curiouser, AliceX comes with new game skins including a reworked board of hip-hop pieces and — true, I suppose, to the anarcho-cynicalist roots of a game which included a hidden Dead Kennedys logo on its cover — a ‘Bush Memorial’ skin which turns the chess pieces into jester/pope/jockey-hatted Bush administration officials and color-coded Homeland Security alerts being taken out by a clip-art Obama.
It’s true: Nintendo has granted board-game/pop-culture mash-up artists USAopoly — the same company behind the frankly kind of wicked Donkey Kong Jenga and Nintendo-themed Monopoly — the rights to produce a Super Mario Bros version of chess.
Which is nice, particularly if it helps ease the youths into the game, but I’m still puzzling over how the designers came to their character assigning conclusions. Luigi as Mario’s queen over Peach herself? Granted, she is just a princess (and needed that Princess Daisy counterpart), but.. Luigi? And no one could think of a better mate for Bowser than his own son?
Maybe I’m approaching this too literally. Kudos, though, for the cute pawn selections on both ends.
Those additions? Along side the new Baiyon music for each level, Q-games has implemented a new “three-seed smart-bomb” powerup where every “prowler” on the screen will explode into pollen after jumping into three seeds in a row — which will also now work in the original game itself.
The expansion will also add a “zero-G” item that will let you float through the level for a limited time, with appropriately designed puzzles in that particular garden, plus a new “mirror” garden with portals in and out of its double, with subtle changes in between
And finally, Q-games is teasing at a new easter egg for the end of the expansion that “will enable you to play the entire game again in a completely different way.”
The expansion will be available with this Thursday’s regular PlayStation Network update.
The winner of the just-ended Breakpoint 2009 demoscene competition? For reasons that will become obvious as soon as you see the video (higher-res YouTube), RGBA and TBC’s Elevated, all the more impressive when you realize it was created with just 4K of code.
A few years old but still as fresh and perfect for Tuesday morning listening as the day it was released, Tobiah‘s I Love Your Music is looping, twisted house for lonely computer pen pals.
Hear and download more Tobiah via his official site, including I Love Your Music and my other favorite, I Don’t Really Exist, which comes from that same tragically isolated virtual dance house.
Every bit as mile a minute and ponderously technical as talking or listening to the man himself, Chris Hecker — one of the chief technologists and animation team lead behind Maxis/EA’s Spore — has begun documenting the five year process that lead to the final release, and, despite the technicality, it’s a fascinating and revealing read.
Hecker covers everything from his very first efforts in late 2003 nailing down how skin would hang over an infinite variety of creations (at left, a 3D print of Hecker’s first created creature) to the process of dynamically texturing that skin, to early prototypes of the animation system (along with test videos), and how “Bugs + Player Creativity = Features”.
For further reading, there’s also my feature-length snapshot in time of the larger team’s mindset and goals in 2006 reprinted over at RockPaperShotgun.
