17th March 2011 by Martin
Lessons learned from Pocket Legends: Don’t forget the hardcores in your casual game
A couple of weeks ago at GDC 2011 in San Francisco Cinco Barnes from Spacetime Studios talked about their experience with Pocket Legends on iOS and Android devices (the complete summary of the session is here) . As you might know, it is working out quite well for them, not just on iOS, especially expanding into Android territory gave revenues a huge boost. Surely a key factor of this success is delivering a quality product in a niche (it won’t be a niche much longer but while competition is getting tough on iOS, there is still a bit more room on Android) and getting the gameplay right for the audience.
In the Spacetime Studios case, some assumptions about how MMO’s should work on mobile platforms were spot on, some others were surprisingly wrong. I thought I would share the most notable.
Tags: Android, app, apple, Avatars, Balancing, Blackstar, Cinco Barnes, gaming, GDC, Instances, iOS, iPhone, MMORPG, Mobile, Mobile gaming, PvE, PvP, Spacetime Studios, Studio
Posted in Events, ICO Partners
(4 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)28th June 2010 by Martin
Gun Range shows iPhone 4s gyroscope in action
Recently I expressed my interest in games using the gyroscope built into the brand new iPhone 4. Sadly, I won’t receive my device before middle of July, but Apple has already sold 1.7 million iPhone4s within 3 days. Ngmoco, an experienced iPhone games developer, already placed a game using the gyro in the app store, showing off what can be done with it.
I couldn’t test the game, Gun Range, myself but there is a video on YouTube and while it seems to offer a very basic gameplay, it’s obvious how much closer this way of aiming in video games comes to the real thing. Instead of using a controller or swiping the screen to rotate the character in the game, the player actually has to move around with the iPhone, thereby changing the viewing angle in the game.
Posted in Events, ICO Partners
(1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)14th June 2010 by Martin
iPhone 4 gets a gyroscope and becomes a window into virtual worlds
Steve Jobs announced in his WWDC 2010 keynote that the iPhone 4 will have a gyroscope. The numerous developers in the audience applauded and are obviously looking forward to working with this new piece of hardware. This is not surprising as it adds exciting new functions for gaming in a 3D environment.
Until now iPhones have been equipped with an accelerometer which has been used in some games but was very limited in terms of sensitivity and precision of the movement. Now the accelerometer and gyroscope will work together and enable iPhones to sense precise motion on six axis – up/down, left/right, forward/backward. Additionally airplane-like movements like pitch, yaw and roll can also be detected. Similar techniques are used in Wii controllers and the upcoming Playstation Move.
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Tags: Accelerometer, apple, Apps, development, gyro, gyroscope, hardware, iPhone, Jenga, virtual world, WWDC
Posted in Events, ICO Partners
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)