Ship Simulator 2008

Leading computer software publisher Lighthouse Interactive and developer VSTEP, invite you to sail the open sea in the World’s best nautical simulator. Today they announced that Ship Simulator 2008 has begun shipping to major retailers across Canada and the US.

This true-to-life naval simulation for Windows® includes many great new features, such as: multiplayer (LAN and online), a highly customizable mission editor, 16 new ships, and three vast new environments (San Francisco, Marseille and Southampton/ Cowes/ Solent). A bilingual French/English version will be released in Canada for Francophone fans. Ship Simulator is available in 20 countries and 7 languages, selling over 280,000 copies to date.

SUMMARY

With the growing number of Ship Simulator users worldwide, VSTEP is continuously adding new content and features. In Ship Simulator 2008, players will need to perform a multitude of tasks, all set within stunning 3D environments. They will take control of a wide array of vessels – from massive cargo ships and ferries, to speedboats, yachts, water taxis, personal watercrafts, and even the mighty Titanic! The waters you sail are as varied as the ships, including the harbors of New York, the Thai Phi Phi Islands, Rotterdam and Hamburg, plus three newly added harbours: San Francisco, Marseille and Southampton/Cowes/Solent. Ship Simulator 2008 incredibly recreates real locations from around the world and presents players with the challenges of commanding the vessel of their choice on the open sea.

FEATURES

• Dynamic ocean waves, with realistic ship motions
• Long distance travels, open ocean voyages between ports
• Visible damage system
• 50 new complex and challenging missions
• Extensive day, night and weather systems
• Open sea, plus 7 harbour environments including San Francisco, Marseille and Southampton/Cowes/Solent
• 16 ships, each with walkthrough functionality and interactive bridge controls
• Controllable container crane
• Advanced vector graphic sea chart based on realistic 3D seabed models, with full-screen display option, transparency setting, and high level of detail on text and depth readings
• Advanced damage system showing dents and holes in vessels after severe collisions
• Free-roam mode allows players to choose a ship, an environment, weather conditions, time of day, and set their own waypoints
• Extensive mapping options for keys and joystick buttons
• Advanced rope system, which allows you to connect and disconnect player ships to other ships or mooring boulders at will (anchoring is now also possible)
• Mid-mission save function
• A system for sinking ships when damaged below the water line
• Advanced system for scoring and ranking in different ship type classes, linked to your online profile on the Ship Simulator forum
• Mission editor, so you can create your own adventures and share them with your fellow players on the forum
• Multiplayer free-roaming, including towing and chat
• In-game downloading of new missions, created by other players

To find out more about Ship Simulator 2008 and to keep up with the latest news, visit:
www.lighthouse-interactive.com and www.shipsim.com.

RealtimeUK & Buzz Monster Rumble

2006 saw Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) launch the junior range of their highly successful Buzz! franchise, with RealtimeUK producing intros for both Buzz! Junior: Jungle Party, and Buzz! Junior: RoboJam – so we were pleased to be invited by SCEE to produce the intro for the third in the Buzz! Junior series, Buzz! Junior: Monster Rumble.

The brief from SCEE for Monster Rumble was to introduce four very cheeky monsters, in a 60 second intro that would act as a teaser for the game. As the game is aimed at young players aged between six and nine, SCEE’s focus was on fun, humour and mischief – with just the right amount of scariness for our younger audience.

The RealtimeUK team started by playing a demo of the game to gain an understanding of the monsters and the game itself – and to make sure they could reflect the game accurately in their intro piece. SCEE provided some concept artwork and reference material to inspire the team when putting together the script and storyboard for the intro.

RealtimeUK’s Animation Director, Chris Fenna, explains, “Our task was to encapsulate all the fun and mischievousness of the game within a 60 second intro. With four cheeky monsters and a Transylvanian Castle to play with, we had plenty of source material to create a movie; the challenge was to distil this into one minute.”

RealtimeUK’s solution features a mad professor in his lab performing a Frankenstein style monster creation, which takes a turn for the worse as he ends up creating four mischievous monsters. The monsters then stage an escape, hurtling through the house and into the swamp outside, leaving the mad professor bewildered at what he has unleashed on the world.

While the monsters closely reflected the in-game creations, the mad professor, being a brand new character, was created entirely from scratch by the RealtimeUK team.

“One of the more challenging aspects of this project was the highly stylised modelling, as this is one of the most cartoony-like animations we have produced”, says Chris. “The animation was pushed to be as creative and funky as possible and the monsters were developed to be entertaining and full of bounce.”

Low res proxy versions of the monster characters were used to drive the cloth simulation, which features during the opening sequence. “We started with default cloth parameters and then went in to make fine adjustments to achieve the best results”, continues Chris. “Matte paintings produced in Photoshop were utilised for all the outdoor background environments. These were based on concept work and in-game reference and were mapped onto flat planes and layered up in the backgrounds of each shot.”

The final animation was a massive success and SCEE felt that the brief had been fulfilled superbly.

Tony Prosser, Managing Director at RealtimeUK commented that “our team enjoyed working on the Buzz! Junior: Monster Rumble project. They relished the challenge of creating new characters and bringing these mischievous monsters to life. We look forward to working with SCEE again in the near future.”

TheFunded.com Featured at Casual Connect Europe

TheFunded.com and the Casual Games Association announced today that Adeo Ressi will be making an exclusive European appearance at Casual Connect Europe, the third annual Western European Casual Games Association Conference, on February 7, 2008. This will be Ressi’s first formal speaking engagement since the November 15, 2007 “Inside TheFunded.com” event in Palo Alto, CA.

Adeo Ressi is The Founding Member of TheFunded.com, an online resource for CEOs to research, rate, and review venture funds worldwide. Since its inception in 2007, TheFunded.com has grown to more than 5,000 members. Most recently, Adeo founded and was CEO of Game Trust, Inc., the leading community and ecommerce software platform for online casual game play. Adeo will be available to speak with press at Casual Connect Europe, who are encouraged to coordinate meetings with the listed media contacts.

“Casual Connect is a great event for developers and publishers in Europe,” stated Adeo Ressi. “I am excited to help the next generation of entrepreneurs at the show learn how to navigate the complex fundraising landscape.”

“As the casual game industry matures and investors are beginning to see the advantages of investing in the casual games space, understanding the investment community is of the up-most importance to developers,” said Jessica Tams, managing director of the Casual Games Association. “Adeo is a valuable resource for the casual games community in the process of working with capital.”

About TheFunded.com:

TheFunded.com (http://www.thefunded.com/) is an online resource for entrepreneurs to research, rate, and review funding sources worldwide. Founded in mid-2007 by a serial entrepreneur, Adeo Ressi, the site has attracted over 5,000 CEO members from a wide variety of industries, and TheFunded.com now provides a forum for exchange of strategies and tactics to build a successful business.

About Casual Connect Europe:

Casual Connect Europe is designed for industry professionals, industry executives, and professionals interested in creating, marketing and distributing games for players worldwide. Casual Connect Europe 2008 is the ninth conference organized by the Casual Games Association who also published reports on the industry and a regular industry magazine.
For more information on Casual Connect Europe 2008 please visit: http://europe.casualconnect.org/

TIGA Awards finalists revealed

TIGA, The Independent Game Developers Association, today announced the list of finalists ahead of the prestigious annual 2007 awards ceremony which takes at the Haymarket Hotel in London on 30th January 2008.

The eventual winning TIGA members will have been selected by their peers and will represent the cream of European Development industry talent. For the first time, the 2007 awards include two additional categories; 'Best technology' and 'Best cross-media application of games' designed to represent the diversity of the development sector.

The nominations are:

• Best PC/Console Game developed by a TIGA member 2007 - Geometry Wars: Galaxies – Doublesix (Kuju Entertainment), Colin McRae: DiRT - Codemasters Studios, Worms XBLA – Team 17

• Best Handheld/Console Game developed by a TIGA member 2007 - Geometry Wars: Galaxies – Doublesix (Kuju Entertainment), Crush – Zoemode (Kuju Entertainment), Star Wars Battlefront Renegade Squadron - Rebellion

• Best mobile game developed by a TIGA member 2007 - Championship Manager 2008 – Dynamo Games, Sonic Jump – Airplay, Tomb Raider Anniversary - Finblade

• Best Technology 2007 - The EGO Engine – Codemasters, Super Rub a Dub Water Effect – Sumo Digital, Alice Server – Nice Tech

• Best Cross Media Application of Games 2007 - Realtime UK, Audiomotion, Triage Trainer – TruSim Blitz Games

• Best Developer - Greatest contribution to independent games development during 2007 by TIGA member - Blitz Games, Sumo Digital, Denki

• Best Player - Greatest individual contribution to independent games development during 2007 - Ian Baverstock, Fred Hasson, Jason Kingsley

Commenting on the nominations, Fred Hasson, TIGA CEO said, "Despite increased competition from studios in tax-break countries we're very proud of the outstanding work delivered by our members. These awards are won by and voted by our members and this kind of peer-to-peer recognition of excellence is the most sought after"

Taking place at the Haymarket Hotel, London on the 30th January 2008, the 2007 TIGA awards were voted on by TIGA members. Voting is now closed, TIGA would like to congratulate all the finalists and wish them well for the night.

MCM Expo & Eurogamer Team Up

London MCM Expo and the Eurogamer Network have announced a media partnership which will see the two companies working together on the events in May and October this year.

Eurogamer will host the event's 'Games Village', which will help increase attendance to over 30,000 per event by the end of the year.

"We are delighted to be working with Eurogamer and feel that the combination of MCM Expo's young entertainment based audience fits perfectly with both companies target consumer, this partnership will help MCM Expo continue to grow in 2008," said a spokesperson for the event.

Eurogamer's editorial director, Kristan Reed, added: "I'm very pleased that we're partnering with such a key entertainment event here in the UK, and it's great that the Eurogamer brand is going to be associated with the Expo's videogames presence this year."

The two shows will take place on May 24-25 and October 25-26 at ExCel London

Visit www.eurogamer.net for your up to the minute gaming news.

Visit www.mcmexpo.net for more information on the 2008 Shows.

Geomerics Under The Spotlight At GDC

Geomerics’ Chief Technology Officer, Julian Davis, has been confirmed as one of the speakers at this year’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. His session, titled ‘The Art and Science of Lighting’, will look at the current state of video game illumination techniques, whilst examining some of the latest research into light and shadow modelling.


Julian’s session will also include a look at the latest version of Enlighten, Geomerics’ own real-time lighting solution, which brings full radiosity shading to next-generation consoles and PC. Enlighten’s real-time radiosity marks a generational step in light modelling techniques by computing dynamic bounced lighting with the quality of a pre-computed procedure at run time. This represents a major breakthrough for real-time illumination procedures, with radiosity shading also delivering a significant increase in the visual quality of in-game lighting as well as a host of colour reflection and re-emission effects. This in turn provides artists with a much broader palette for generating mood and atmosphere with their choice of light, reflection and shadow.


Dynamic real-time radiosity can also do more than transform the quality and naturalism of video game illumination. Enlighten’s versatility has the potential to allow real-world Cinematography lighting techniques to be used in the development process, with Enlighten’s real-time capabilities providing instantaneous feedback to developers whilst delivering stunning results for the end user.


Gary Lewis, CEO, Geomerics, commented "Julian's session at GDC '08 is great news. In 2007 we delivered well-received sessions at Develop and Montreal, but GDC is the event that everyone looks towards to set the agenda for the industry. It is a fantastic opportunity for us to lead discussion of video game lighting techniques and demonstrate what we are planning for 2008 and beyond.”

EA announce Play 4 Free - Battlefield Heroes PC video game Free download

At the Digital, Life, Design Conference in Munich, Electronic Arts today unveiled Battlefield Heroes, an all-new Play 4 Free cartoon-style shooter that will bring classic Battlefield gameplay to an all new mass audience. Available for download at www.battlefield-heroes.com this summer, Battlefield Heroes is EA’s first title that is offered completely for free, and features a built-in matchmaking system to ensure that players of equal skill are paired together for fair play. Developed by DICE in Stockholm, Battlefield Heroes is leading EA’s new web-focused free to download, free to play business model which generates revenue through advertising and micro-transactions. With zero barriers to entry, now anyone can be a hero on the battlefield!

“Online gaming garners a massive audience,” said Gerhard Florin, EVP Publishing Americas-Europe at EA. “People want to play games in new ways, with easier access that is quick to the fun. With Battlefield Heroes, EA brings its first major franchise to North America and Europe with a new distribution model and pricing structure adapted to the evolving way that people play.”

Battlefield Heroes is a brand new game from the team behind Battlefield 1942 and Battlefield 2. It’s fun cartoon-style graphics and gameplay caters to players of all skill levels. It is easy to pick up and play but with robust character customization and a deep online meta-game, gamers can spend hours building up their characters and conquering the world.

“We put a different twist on this Battlefield game going with the cartoon-style graphics and gameplay,” added Ben Cousins, Senior Producer at EA DICE. “There’s something here for all types of players -- be it our core Battlefield fans or casual gamers. With the new online model, we will continually add new content to keep the game fresh and keep players engaged, while integrating player feedback in real time. As a game developer, it is such a cool new way to make games.”

Battlefield Heroes will be released for the PC as a free download in summer 2008.

UK WEEKLY VIDEO GAMES CHARTS 12th January

All formats

Week ending 12 January 2008

1 CALL OF DUTY 4: MODERN WARFARE ACTIVISION
2 FIFA 08 ELECTRONIC ARTS
3 ASSASSIN'S CREED UBISOFT
4 THE SIMPSONS GAME ELECTRONIC ARTS
5 GUITAR HERO III: LEGENDS OF ROCK ACTIVISION
6 PRO EVOLUTION SOCCER 2008 KONAMI
7 NEED FOR SPEED: PROSTREET ELECTRONIC ARTS
8 WWE SMACKDOWN VS RAW 2008 THQ
9 TIGER WOODS PGA TOUR 08 ELECTRONIC ARTS
10 SUPER MARIO GALAXY NINTENDO
11 NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. NINTENDO
12 LEGO STAR WARS: THE COMPLETE SAGA LUCASARTS
13 FOOTBALL MANAGER 2008 SEGA
14 THE SIMS 2: CASTAWAY ELECTRONIC ARTS
15 KANE & LYNCH: DEAD MEN EIDOS
16 UNCHARTED: DRAKE'S FORTUNE SONY COMPUTER ENT.
17 CRASH OF THE TITANS VIVENDI GAMES
18 MySIMS ELECTRONIC ARTS
19 MEDAL OF HONOR: AIRBORNE ELECTRONIC ARTS
20 RATATOUILLE THQ

Disciples III: Renaissance Development Update PC video game

Now that we have all entered a new 2008 phase of our life, it’s time to reflect upon the progress made so far. Akella and .dat are pleased to report on completion of the set of important features in Disciples III: Renaissance that is drawing the game release nearer.

The storyline has been completed – there’s a script for all the 19 missions that’ll be featured in the game: 6 per race and one final mission.

The game will feature over 150 units. You can view some sample units in the game gallery.

All of the units and objects have been animated and textured.
The dev team has almost completed generating the game content: Elven Alliance and Legions of the Damned cities are templated; only minor fixing is ahead. Now the team is focusing on finalizing the city of the Empire.

The game designers are now working closely on perfecting the interface, completing the script (separate dialogues), making briefings movies, and finalizing arts.

About Disciples III: Renaissance

Genre: Strategy
Platform: PC
Publisher: Akella
Developer: .DAT
Release date: Q3 2008

Disciples III: Renaissance is the next title in the award winning Disciples series and represents a leap forward in the evolution of the turn-based RPG/strategy genre. Building on the successes of the first two games, DIII introduces a host of new features as well as the compelling gameplay that made the previous titles such hits.

As a Lord of one of the fantastical races of Nevendaar you must fight to restore your deity's rule over your world. There are three playable races to choose from; the Empire, the Elven Alliance and the notorious Legion of the Damned.

For the first time in the series the gloriously ominous and notoriously gloomy world of Disciples is rendered in full 3D, allowing the player to experience this realm as it should be. Disciples uses its own Virtual Dream engine to render the stunning 3D environments.

Key features:

• Three playable races - The Empire, the Legions of the Damned and the Elven Alliance. Each race has its own unique units and city design.
• Cities, locations, units and other game assets are now represented in full 3D.
• Advances in the gameplay allow increased fluidity in multiplayer games and less downtime when playing alone.
• A new upgrade system allows the player to assign attributes to your leaders. This RPG system employs inventories and new stats and abilities.
• Visual representation of character's equipped armor, weapons and artifacts.
  

Metal Slug 3 on Microsoft Xbox Live Arcade NOT actually in HD?

The Xbox Live Arcade version of SNK's Metal Slug 3. It's a pretty good version of one of my favorite Metal Slug games and a great price at $10 but I have an issue with how it's marketed on Xbox Live.

It's a port of a "24-bit " SNK Neo Geo game from 2000 with a resolution of 320x224 pixels. The Xbox version has an upscaling filter with edge smoothing to display it at whatever resolution your TV is running. Up-sampling lower resolution graphics and putting a filter on them is not really "High definition". Taking an 320x224 and scaling it to 1080p is not HD in any explanation of the term.

However there are several Xbox Live Arcade games that feature redone and redrawn versions of classic game graphics such as Rush'N Attack, Time Pilot, Double Dragon, Root Beer Tapper, Gauntlet and Puzzle Fighter HD. There are also several 3d remakes of classic arcade games in HD on Xbox Live Arcade.

I love the Metal Slug games and think that they are an excellent addition to XBLA with online co-op gameplay and I think that Metal Slug 3 features some of the best 2d hand drawn artwork and animation. Unless they are actually going to redraw the existing graphics to modern HD resolutions than they should not call it HD. Microsoft should knock it off because it is can be a bit deceiving to gamers expecting new HD artwork. I love co-op classic games on XBLA and I hope they brink a big heaping mound of Classic NeoGeo games to XBLA but just by scaling the old graphic and adding an edge blur filter does in no way give them HD graphics.

Source: 8bitjoystick