Phosphor Beta 1 - First Person Shooter in Shockwave Coming Back April 1st

From the beta site it looks like this amazing Unreal Tournament clone will be coming back online April 1st. Let's hope it's not an April Fools joke...

Chocolate Caste from Lexaloffle Games

Chocolate Castle is a charming puzzle game from Lexaloffle games. You have 4 cute little animals that love to eat chocolate - and they must do so in a certain way in order to solve each puzzle. The graphics are retro and very cute. A great game for kids and puzzle fans alike.

Trillian Astra in Adobe Apollo!

Ok am I speaking a foreign language? No - instead the folks at Trillian have managed to port their new version of Trillian over to Abobe Apollo. Amazing! I believe that seeing something like this makes me think that I am going to need to spend some serious time getting up to speed with Flex/Apollo...

Numenta: The Beginning of a New Wave of AI?

Jeff Hawkins has created several new theories of human intelligence. He's taken these theories and applied them to software to create a site called Numenta. It appears to be at the barest beginnings, but who knows how far things will advance in the coming years.

Finding Indie Games...

Independent Gaming recently pointed to a place in their forums where indie game developers can post their game announcements. This makes that forum a great place to be the first to discover a new game - snazzy!

Roguelike Games Overview from Retro Remakes

From the site:
This is an informal history of a special genre of games, the roguelike game. Those of you unfamiliar with the term may be asking, “what is a roguelike game?” Well, it’s a game that’s like Rogue. More specifically, it’s a game whose gameplay and presentation are similar to the game Rogue. Opinions vary on what exactly constitutes a roguelike, but at its heart it is a roleplaying game (RPG). This means it’s a game where you create an alter ego and send them on quests through an imaginary world. Characters are typically defined in both RPGs and roguelikes by three basic sets of traits: attributes, race, and class.

Apollo Tutorials at EverythingFlex.com

There are some handy dandy basic Apollo tutorials over at EverythingFlex.com - which is great for the busy developer who just wants to get something working to try out the technology.

Apollo testing

After spending about an hour poking around with Apollo via the Eclipse plugin I'd have to say it doesn't suck. I'm so used to no handholding with other apps that I use that having it "just work" was suprising. The fact that you can take just any web page that you might already have created and simply embed it into an apollo application and make it a desktop "app" is pretty powerful -- even if you didnt know a lick of mxml, flex, or other stuff. Here's a really really lame example - which simply demonstrates that you can take just any foo.html file and include it - and have all the javascript and stuff work.

Spinlet: little pieces of web 2.0 sites for your blog

Taking nuggets of coolness from one site and embedding it into another is nothing new. However, this site claims to have a new and easy way to embed content such as youtube into your blog. So far all it is is a fancy flash splash page, and some marketing spiels, but we'll see how it pans out. Definitely worth bookmarking for when they actually release something.

Top 20 Freeware Shmups of 2006 pt. 1

From one of my favorite indie games sites comes a featurette about some of the best shootemups to come out last year. If you dig "shmups" you'll find some nuggets of gaming goodness there.

OpenLaszlo 4.0 Released

OpenLaszlo is one of the first RIA tools to allow for cross runtime deployment of web apps. Choose Flash or DHTML and build your application using LZX. It's easy to get lost in all the Apollo ferver and forget there are other great web application tools out there that are free and open source.

More Whirled Info from Wonderland

Wonderland blog has some additional information about the new MMO Whirled - the user generated content game coming from the creators of Puzzle Pirates.

New 3D Printer That's Not Insanely Expensive.

Fabbing is coming folks. The revolution in creation of 3d stuff in the home is going to happen very soon. Having a printer under $10,000 is a huge step forward. Check out the site and imagine the possibilites.

Fairy Godmother Tycoon Released!

Just in time for the new Shrek movie, Godmother Tycoon looks to be another hit game from Reflexive. From the site:

Build your potion empire on your way to making a fortune! Buy supplies and upgrades to create and sell magic potions in many different enchanted lands. Use your earnings to try different marketing techniques, like junk mail, brainwashing and the ever-popular endless infomercial, to help increase sales. Defeat your competitors through superior store management and overall customer satisfaction! It's supply and demand, fairytale style, with Fairy Godmother Tycoon!

New Widgets Version From Yahoo!

Looks like Yahoo! is updating the engine in which many many widgets live. There are several interesting new features, like canvas support, the "dock" etc. Check out this preview article about what to expect. Cool stuff!

Help Save Net Radio

It may already be too late. However, if you dig sites like Pandora, then let your voice be heard. Organizations like NPR are trying to fight back.

Puzzle Quest Bejeweled Meets Diablo

I was really suprised to find this game. I had a very similar idea for a gameplay mechanic a year or so ago, but of course not having any time to do development outside RL kinda puts a kink into things. Anyway if you enjoy RPG's as well as casual games like bejeweled, you'll probably really dig this game.

ZgameEditor updates to 1.0

A cool new 64bit game creation tool called Zgameeditor has reached the coveted 1.0 status. It has some interesting features that indie game developers might enjoy...

First Papervision 3d game

Papervision is an interesting new 3d engine for flash. It's getting quite a bit of attention by the Flash world, and seeing games created for it is simply the next natural evolution. Time for someone to create a Zelda style game using this engine :)

Adobe Apollo Alpha Available Anon

Ahhh. Another great reason to be a web developer. Leverage your skills to build real double-clickable applications. I'll be waiting around to see if the alpha shows up tonight, but it bodes well for web and xml developers.

Check out this desktop demo app from finetune.

Itty Bitty RPG update

I finally had a few mins tonight to add some more coding to IBRPG. It's not much but it's using all the latest and greatest stuff from YUI. Not worth visiting yet, but I'm getting dialogs and such working.

Kompoz: music collaboration

This is a kinda cool idea. Set up a site were you can lay down a track and also contribute to other's music as well.

Novashell Gets Particle System!

It appears that Seth is starting to add a particle system to the extremely promising game engine Novashell. This is insanely great news for RPG builders -as you can never have too many fireballs, spell effects or twinkly lights :)

Novashell is going to take the game making world by storm...

Will Wright KeyNote at SXSW

Gee, to be a fly on the wall at that conference. It is so frustrating to be filled with ideas, yet drained of the ability to bring them to life. To have a head full of exciting characters and stories, but it's a room with no door - no way to let the creative worlds overflow into reality.

Just gotta keep turning the crank. Hopfully the clown will eventually pop out of the box...

(What has this got to to will Will Wright? Just that he's managed to find a doorway to let his ideas come to life. )

-got this link from Raph's Website.

Sick as a dog...

What is it about this time of the year? I remember around this time last year I was deathly ill and could hardly speak. Well, it looks like whatever it was has decided to pay me a visit again. Being sick sucks!

Whirled: Finally a Successor to Game Neverending?

From HypeFighter:
Joystiq talks about a new casual MMO from the creators of Puzzle Pirates called Whirled. (you know - like WORLD).
If it is anywhere near as fun and addictive as Puzzle Pirates, you'll be seeing another round of sleepy eyed teenagers and game fans who stayed up too late playing :)

Storyquared: Collaborative Story Writing

Storysquared is a fun little site which allows you to write a paragraph or two of a story, and let others add on to it. Might be fun for play-by-post folks.

Casual Game SDK from PlayFirst: Playground

From indiegamer comes news of a new (at least to me) SDK for creating casual games. It appears to be a c++ framework similar to popcap. If you try it out, let me know what you think!

New Universal Widget API from Netvibes

The promise of a write-once run anywhere widget API has grown potentially more interesting with the release of the UWA from Netvibes. Here's an excerpt from the site:
The UWA relies on a soon-to-be-released open-source JavaScript runtime. Through JavaScript best practices, our components and templates, the UWA makes it easy to assemble a widget for any given web service. Since our primary announcement, some great platforms contacted us to collaborate on expanding the reach of UWA widgets.

Ajax 3D - A Canvas Based 3D Engine

From Ajaxian comes a link to a new 3D engine created using the Canvas tag which is supported in all modern browsers. (Note you have to use some compatibilty layer for IE)

Javascript Tip of the Week #001 : Using the YUI DOM

In this first installment of what I plan on making a weekly series, I walk you through the very basic steps of adding YUI to your own page, as well as accessing one of the DOM methods to get an element on the page. I hope to continue each week and give you either some very simple javascript technique or YUI tip/trick.

New Version of Trillian to support MySpaceIM

My wife just "discovered" myspace. I know.
Anyway they have something called myspaceIM which seems to be their own protocol. The next amazing new version of trillian called Astra will have support for this protocol as well as GTalk and many others.

Primera: Web Based RPG Chat

From Ajaxian:
Primera is a multiplayer environment where you control an avatar that
moves around an isometric-scrollable map and you are able to see what
other people are doing/saying, and it runs entirely on dhtml.

Itty Bitty RPG update

I've been completely swamped with work and family issues lately - which is your standard excuse for not seeing progress. I have however been learning a bit more of of the YUI this week, and it will be translating into some seriously cool features.

Anyway - excuses aside - I'm shooting for a new version by next weekend. Here's to hoping!

New "HTML" Tag for Openlaszlo - allows DHTML in Laszlo

From the site:
I’m pleased to announce the introduction of the snappy new "html" tag for DHTML. Essentially, it allows an HTML page to be embedded inside any OpenLaszlo component.


It only works in DHTML mode right now, but it's very cool! It's basically a resizable iframe that lives well in a laszlo window.

YUI Effects from Davglass

From the site:


This is my attempt to somewhat mimic & improve upon the Combination Effects in script.aculo.us (http://wiki.script.aculo.us/scriptaculous/show/CombinationEffectsDemo)

The YUI libraries are fantastic, but coming from developing tools with script.aculo.us, I kind of miss the simple combination effects. The power of the YUI libraries is outstanding, if I want to make all of my effects manually.

Wakfu - Tactical Web-based MMORPG

From the creators of Dofus comes a new tactical MMORPG called Wakfu. The game is flash-based with very high production values. Check it out. Heard this from indygamer.

Game Previews at Gamezebo

Gamezebo is doing a great job of going out and finding the latest new casual games and writing up previews. Big gaming companies like IGN and Gamespot don't typically cover these games. I've noticed that posts I've made to reviews at Gamezebo are getting lots of traffic. So as a public service, here's a link to the overall preview page.

The Open Source Game Property Initiative

Imagine for a moment you are in a parallel world. In this parallel world there is a new web initiative for creating game content. Great minds come together and create game characters, worlds, and artwork which is open for anyone to modify, build upon, and enhance. Via creative commons such sites as the great games experiment feature contests using this open game property base - where awesome games are created that are open, remixable, and (given the creative commons license) able to be profited upon. The body of artwork, models, code, and other game components explodes with creativity free from the constraints of worry over copyright or licensing issues. Game engines like Gamemaker include packs of artwork from this body of open game properties, which allow novice game developers a chance to create interesting and fun games.

Now, remember, this is in a parallel world. This is not the reality in this universe. Wouldn't it be great if it was?

Neon Asteroids: Echoes

Take Tempest and mix in some Asteroids and you might get something like this.

Social Network for 3D Model Creators: Teapotters

It's an interesting idea with interesting features and stuff. Check out the link from solutionwatch for a review of the site or go there directly.

Augmented Reality - another future meme

Augmented reality is computer CG overlaying realtime video -- think 3d objects moving in realtime in your glasses as you walk along a street. Combine this with Fabbing and you have some really good insight into what the future might look like.

Almora Online - gamemaker based MMO

Now that Gamemaker 7.0 is out, I wonder what sorts of new great games we'll see based on this excellent tool. Almora is a game I ran across when listening to a game music artist Rob Westwood.

New Aquaria Trailer!

This one shows a bit more gameplay, and some dialog from the main character. 2D games with 3D acceleration are going to be the next big trend in indie gaming. Mark my words.

Playfuls.com - Science and Gaming News

This site has an interesting hybrid approach to web news. It seems to combine gaming news, science news, and other interesting diversions such as web games. I guess I fall into their demographic as most of the things there are of interest to me. Check it out.