My pals at Pixowl dropped me a line to say that The Sandbox has been updated with “retina display” support for iPad, in addition to 19 new creation elements. For those of you not familiar with this refreshingly inventive title, The Sandbox blends puzzles, pixel art, and “god” gaming. It’s free to play with in-app purchasing options. If you have an iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch then I recommend giving this game a go. If you check out the retina-display boosted version of The Sandbox, please share your thoughts on it in the comments section.
Coming soon from Hironobu Sakaguchi’s Mistwalker Corporation is…a surfing shooter?!? It’s true. The creator of Final Fantasy is back with Party Wave for iOS. The game blends shooting and platforming elements in an atypical setting; you play as a surfer adventuring in the ocean. Party Wave has been submitted for App Store approval and will cost $1.99 when it’s released.
As most of you know, I’m a Sakaguchi and Mistwalker mark. Of course I’m going to buy this game. I like surfing. My brother lives in Hawaii and my parents are moving there soon. The game will make me happy. Most importantly, I enjoy supporting Sakaguchi-san and his awesome moustache.
Incident Technologies’ gTar is a cool Kickstarter project that has been getting a ton of attention this week. This combination of an electric guitar and an iPhone app teaches people how to play guitar. Things start off easy, with prospective Joe Satrianis only needing to hit the right string. Naturally, more advanced learning requires users to hit the proper frets and strings at the proper time. gTar is compatible with the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S. Here’s a clip from the product’s Kickstarter page:
The gTar is a fully digital guitar that makes it easy for anybody to play music, regardless of experience. All you have to do is dock your iPhone in the body, load up the gTar app, and an array of interactive LEDs along the fretboard will show you how to play.
You may be asking yourself what it means for a guitar to be “digital.” While most guitars have pickups to amplify the sound of vibrating strings, the gTar has none — instead, we’ve designed the gTar with sensors that detect exactly what you’re playing in real-time and relay each note to your iPhone, which then produces the actual sound. This makes it possible for us to do all kinds of exciting things.
Judging from the product description and the video above, gTar looks like a pretty sweet product. It looks like it will be a fantastic educational tool beginners, but it also has tremendous creative possibilities for advanced players. Additional apps by Incident and other developers could make the gTar a wonderfully diverse digital guitar. As a longtime (and not very good) guitar player, I usually judge a guitar by its wood, craftsmanship, etc., but the digital nature of the gTar has me geeking over a six-string in a whole different way. This is some very cool tech and I’m happy to see that Incident has already blown past its Kickstarter goal.
Any thoughts on the gTar by Incident Technologies?
At GDC 2012, I was smitten by Pixowl Games’ The Sandbox for iOS. The game is a wonderfully creative blend of “god” gaming, puzzle solving, and art creation — very cool and very unique. The Sandbox is now available through the iOS App Store. I encourage you to check it out. It’s free-to-play so you have nothing to lose! If you’re into puzzles, pixel art, and controlling worlds (and really, you should be into all three of those things) then there’s a great chance that you’ll dig The Sandbox.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about programming tools that allow you to make games without needing to code. One of the ones I mentioned was GameSalad Creator, which allows you to make games for Android, HTML 5, iOS, and more. Previously available for Mac OS, GameSalad Creator is now available for Windows. If you’re interested in the product then you can sign up for the beta here. To give you an idea of GameSalad Creator’s look and feel, check out the image gallery at the end of this post.
Even though GameSalad allows designers to make games without coding, it’s still a very powerful tool. In fact, the company has had great success (like Borat) on the iOS platform. Here’s more from GameSalad director of marketing Jonathan Hunt:
The GameSalad developer community is both passionate and productive. In just three years, our platform has been used to create more than 60 Top 100 Games in the U.S. App Store, including a game that earned the number one slot. We are thrilled to welcome Windows users to our community and expect that this will open up a floodgate of creativity, resulting in even more high quality games for players everywhere.
I know that many of you have game design ideas floating around your head. I also know that most of you are Windows PC users. Any of you willing to give this product a shot? Perhaps the RPad.TV community will be playing the chart-topping iOS-game you created with GameSalad Creator for Windows!
TMZ has posted a couple of photos of Ashton Kutcher dressed as late Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs for the upcoming biopic Jobs: Get Inspired. When I wrote about the casting for Slide to Play, I thought it was good fit. They have similar facial features and similar heights. It also helps that Kutcher is a savvy tech nerd. These photos, on the other hand, have me feeling lukewarm. Kutcher looks more like my friend Geoff Chapman than he does Steve Jobs.
Why would anyone purposely want to look like Geoff Chapman?!? What do you think of Ashton Kutcher as Steve Jobs?
One of the most consistent rumors on the next iPhone is that it will have a four-inch screen. The Wall Street Journal recently added another log to that particular fire. For five generations, the iPhone has rocked a 3.5-inch screen. There have been dramatic improvements in resolution and image quality, but the size has remained the same. Apple’s competitors, on the other hand, have been pushing larger and larger phones, even hitting a whopping 5.3-inches with the Samsung Galaxy Note. Is the time right for Apple to finally use a larger screen for the iPhone?
The argument is usability vs. visibility. For most users, one-handed operation (get your mind out of the gutter!) with a 3.5-inch phone is ideal. Larger screens make one-handed use difficult or impossible (unless your name is Paul Wight). That said, larger screens make video content, web browsing, gaming, etc. more enjoyable. While the iPhone 4S is a fantastic phone, I just can’t deal with the screen size. I’m thrilled by the potential awesomeness of an iPhone with a four-inch screen; it seems like it would hit the sweet spot for most people in terms usability and visibility.
Out of curiosity, which iPhone rumor excites you the most? Are you drooling over the prospects of metal construction? Do you long for an iPhone with an LTE radio? Or is it all about the iPhone having a four-inch screen?
My friend and colleague Scott Foe kicked off his blog with a post titled “What the F*ck N-Gage?” For those of you that don’t recall the device, the N-Gage was Nokia’s failed foray into the gaming market. Scott used to work at Sega during the Dreamcast days and was a key player at Nokia during the N-Gage period. He knows all about failed consoles and labels himself as “the undisputed most-spectacular failure that the games industry has ever witnessed”. I respectfully disagree with that self assessment.
Scott’s rant covers all sorts of topics, but my favorite part covered the failure of the N-Gage. Here’s a snippet:
Who could deny that the N-Gage was a spectacular failure? A “failure,” because, today, there are more people who own my self-produced album of J-Pop lounge-covers, Sakura Scotty, than own N-Gages. A “spectacular” failure, because there wasn’t a man, woman, nor publisher-side producer in the games industry that didn’t see it fail.
The logic of Nokia’s games strategy was so straightforward as to be un-ignorable, “We are Nokia, the largest handset manufacturer in the world, absolute masters of sourcing and logistics, capable of buying component parts for cheaper and putting the products for sale in more places than any other organization on the planet. The games industry is worth billions, and when we throw our winter cap into the ring, we will take a piece of that market.” The logic was also terminal due to a very straightforward lack of heart.
I covered the hell out of the N-Gage back in 2003. I loved the idea of a connected gaming platform integrated into a mobile phone. The potential was awesome and realized today in Android, iOS, etc. The problem was that Nokia was never (and still isn’t) great at software; expecting the company to build a robust backend and an intuitive frontend for gaming was a little ridiculous when viewed through the good old retroscope. The other problem was that Nokia was (and still is) great at making hardware, but laid an egg with the N-Gage. Nokia made (and still makes) some of the most beautiful phones in the history of the business. The N-Gage doesn’t look or feel like Nokia hardware at all.
Anyway, kindly read Scott’s blog when you have a chance. It’s witty, insightful, and intelligent.
Apple and Google have been conducting their little (okay, not so little) cold war for years. A lot of the fighting has happened in executive boardrooms and courtrooms, with consumers not seeing the fallout. It looks like that’s going to change with the release of iOS 6. Rumor has it that the iOS 6 version of the Maps app will drop Google Maps in favor of the technology Apple has been buying up. Here are the details from AllThingsD:
Between 2009 and 2011, Apple acquired three mapping companies in quick succession: Placebase, in 2009; 3-D mapping outfit Poly9 in 2010; and in 2011, C3 Technologies, a second 3-D mapping company. Three mapping-company acquisitions in as many years. But for good reason: Apple has been hard at work developing its own in-house mapping solution for iOS, and now it’s finally ready to debut it.
Sources describe the new Maps app as a forthcoming tentpole feature of iOS that will, in the words of one, “blow your head off.” I’m not quite sure what that means, and the source in question declined to elaborate, but it’s likely a reference to the photorealistic 3-D mapping tech Apple acquired when it purchased C3 Technologies. C3 did use missile-targeting technology to develop its gorgeous 3-D models of major cities, so …
Apple has been taking steps to ween itself off of Google’s numerous products. It was interesting to see Siri use Wolfram Alpha instead of a Google-based solution. Watching the company move away from Google Maps is another telling step. It looks like Baidu will be the default search engine for iOS devices sold in China. Can you imagine a day when Apple uses a non-Google search engine as the default choice for the rest of the world?
What do you make of Apple apparently ditching Google Maps on iOS? Do you think Apple’s new Maps app will blow your head off? What does that even mean?!?
Welcome to Coffee Talk! Let’s start off the day by discussing whatever is on your (nerd chic) mind. Every morning I’ll kick off a discussion and I’m counting on you to participate in it. If you’re not feelin’ my topic, feel free to start a chat with your fellow readers and see where it takes you. Whether you’re talking about videogames, Floyd Mayweather’s surprisingly exciting victory over Miguel Cotto, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame 2012 inductions, or remembering MCA, Coffee Talk is the place to do it.
Do you ever dream about making your own games? Perhaps you have a sweet game in your head, but can’t get it on screen because of a lack of coding skills? Here are two visual programming tools that can help you make games without knowing how to code. First up is GameSalad Creator. This robust editor allows you to make games for Android, HTML 5, iOS, and more. It offers an almost shockingly diverse amount of options, including a robust behaviors editor. GameSalad Creator is free, with a more powerful Pro version available for $299.
A simpler and more focused visual programming tool is Codea for iPad. This $9.99 editor allows you to make games for the iPad on the iPad. It offers a mix of drag-and-drop and straight code editing. To give you an idea of what Codea can do, TwoLivesLeft has published Cargo-Bot. While it’s not as diverse or as powerful as GameSalad Creator, Codea offers a surprising amount of power considering its price and platform.
Don’t expect either of these editors to let you make the next Skyrim or Gears of War. These tools are meant for people that don’t know how to code or don’t like to code. With that in mind, of course the options are relatively limited. That said, they do offer numerous and powerful ways to unleash your inner game designer.
Are any of you interested in making games this way? Do products like GameSalad Creator and Codea interest you?
