Casual Gaming: WiiSports, Halo 2
Game party tomorrow: 9/7/07, Student Center rm343, 5 PM to 11 PM
Membership dues next week (9/13/07)
News:
-Rumors of Mario Kart on the Wii: up to 16 players at once, rumor not confirmed
-Nintendo officially says no to cross-platform MMOs. This only applies to Final Fantasy XI on the Wii.
-Oblivion: Shivering Isles update disk being made available
-Peter Molyneux: Xbox Live "far more impactful" than Wii waggle
-MOrello a villain in Guitar Hero 3
-Red Octane says Wii will have GH2 online play, but no initial DLC
-Nintendo trademarks Body Controller (hula hoop attachment for Wii), and other strange
Wiimote attachments
-Parental controls that support game timers being made available being Xbox Live
-PS3 becomes second-best selling console in Japan
-Harvey Birdman for the DS releasing on November 13
-Lair "Hot Coffee" code. It's just coffee being made. Waste of your time.
-Army of TWo will allow you to use tampons to staunch wounds
Dev Topic: Game Creation Tools
Toolsets: RPG Maker, Oblivion tools, Warcraft 3 level editors,
Advantages of these tools are that they are easy to use and almost anyone can pick it up and use it. Unfortunately, you are bound by the rules of the game and you can't use it to create things for other games.
Online dev kits: Flash, Java
Flash: You can make a game from scratch, use your imagination. Of course, that means you're on your own if you're a newbie. It really simplifies the graphical elements of things for the sake of game creation or just graphics. It's biggest advantage is that it can be loaded in a browser and easily distributed. It is limited in its 3-D capacity. The most limiting factor about Flash is the high cost of the software.
Second Life: All content created by users (very Web 2.0)
Building games from scratch, with no libraries: Terrible.
Review: Mad Maestro (PS2)
-Old rhythm game, you conduct a band to play a symphony in order to save a concert hall from aliens
-Unique in that instead of playing to crazy techno from Europe or J-Pop, you conduct classical symphonic music
-In addition to rhythm, the strength of your button presses is measured (soft, hard, medium), and is used in place of pressing different buttons (X, O, etc.)
-Controls are really simple, but responsive
-Short game, more geared toward a casual audience
-7/10: it's fun enough if you like rhythm games, but it is more geared for more casual gamers