Last year’s shockingly awesome superhero title inFamous boasted a massive sandbox world known as Empire City — a playground full of climbable, grindable, shootable objects. It was an impressive environment, made all the more impressive by a startling piece of information revealed by Sucker Punch’s Nate Fox during a recent GDC panel: The whole city was created by a team of just 12 artists.
Fox explained that this feat was accomplished with the liberal reusing of the game’s catalog of environmental assets. For example, there were only two types of cars in the game, differentiated by hue shifts and decals. The map was partitioned into a hexagonal grid — the inspiration for which came from the popular board game Carcassonne, Fox explained. Edges of each hex were designed to effortlessly fit together, allowing designers to make minor changes to each compartment, and paste the location into another chunk of the city.
This might sound like a cheap tactic for a developer to employ, but Fox explained that a developer’s time and resources are limited. By swiftly executing the creation of a game’s setting, the developers are given more of an opportunity to focus on designing “evil lairs” and other memorable landmarks. Oh, and according to Fox, the industry term for these outstanding structures is “Weenies.” Yes, for that reason. Yes, that is wonderful.
GDC 2010: How Sucker Punch built inFamous’ big city with a small team originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | Comments
-
Under :
Featured, Joystiq
-
Tags: aol, days-ago, dlc, game design, infamous, joystiq-playstation, joystiq-podcast, nintendo, playstation, podcasts, sucker-punch
Attendees of Tokyo Game Show 2010 will have more to see and do — or, perhaps, more to wish they could see and do while they’re in line for a Final Fantasy demo. CESA announced several new additions to the show, which takes place September 16-19.
New segments of the show floor will be devoted to PC hardware, gadgets, and mobile. An International Career Pavilion will help companies recruit foreign talent, and a PC Online Game Business area will “provide opportunities to present and discuss licensing, sales, and partnership regarding PC online games.” Also toward the goal of boosting business, TGS will host an Asian Game Business Summit.
Publishers will now be able to sell games in the Merchandise Sales Area, in addition to swag. The Kids’ Area will be expanded into a Family Area, with no restrictions on the number of games on display. Some of the additions seem to be focused on promoting Japan in general: tours will now be available for foreign visitors, along with an Asian Culture Hub.
TGS organizers announce plan to expand for 2010 originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Being a giant, beloved video game blog has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we’re giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with Markus Hofer of Blackish Games. His studio’s feeding that dirty little addiction you know you developed during the Winter Olympics with Age of Curling.
Joystiq: How did you or your company get started?
Markus Hofer: I had a pretty good job as a graphic artist, but I always rather wanted to work on my own stuff. I figured it would take me about a year to make my first game and so I saved as much money as I could. I looked into all sorts of tools, talked to a lot of people and once I was confident I had found everything and everyone I needed, I quit and got going …
Continue reading The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Blackish Games
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Blackish Games originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | Comments
Game Informer’s latest “TidBits” column features a a glorious list of “inside baseball” stats from Dragon Age: Origins. Some of the numbers are simply cute, while others are positively frightening: “QA analyst Bruce Venne played 1,957.55 hours of Dragon Age PC in 5,352 games.” Consequently, “The Bruce” was awarded to staff that played more than Venne in a single month — the honor was bestowed only once.
While the list is mostly packed with numbers, there are some notable non-numerical did-you-knows, like the staff’s affectionate nickname for the Ogre, “Fluffy,” and, unsurprisingly, the revelation that one of the BioWare crew makes chain mail “from scratch.”
Check out the full list of Dragon Age tidbits on Game Informer.
Dragon Age ‘TidBits’ drop stats like a Fluffy punch originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 10:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Game Informer’s latest “TidBits” column features a a glorious list of “inside baseball” stats from Dragon Age: Origins. Some of the numbers are simply cute, while others are positively frightening: “QA analyst Bruce Venne played 1,957.55 hours of Dragon Age PC in 5,352 games.” Consequently, “The Bruce” was awarded to staff that played more than Venne in a single month — the honor was bestowed only once.
While the list is mostly packed with numbers, there are some notable non-numerical did-you-knows, like the staff’s affectionate nickname for the Ogre, “Fluffy,” and, unsurprisingly, the revelation that one of the BioWare crew makes chain mail “from scratch.”
Check out the full list of Dragon Age tidbits on Game Informer.
Dragon Age ‘TidBits’ drop stats like a Fluffy punch originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 10:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
As Steam shows no signs of slowing its dominance of digital distribution for PC (and Mac!), it’s only natural that more niche services would arise; not really to oppose, but to compliment Valve’s service. Enter Desura, a distribution platform similar to Steam, save for one important aspect: It’s focused on independent game developers.
Primarily, Desura will try to give a home to those games turned away by Steam. Though the service won’t just open the floodgates to everything, its creator (and indie mod site) ModDB says it hopes to make acceptance or rejection much more transparent than Valve’s process. Desura is described as a community-based service, intended to foster better, more symbiotic relationships between developer and fan.
Desura isn’t slated to go live until April, but you can get an early look over at Rock Paper Shotgun.
[Thanks, Ramy]
ModDB presents Desura: an indie take on digital distribution originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 09:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Kyle Gray and Kyle Gabler, of Henry Hatsworth and World of Goo fame, respectively, have formed a new studio, along with Experimental Gameplay Project co-founder Allan Blomquist. In announcing this new “Tomorrow Corporation,” the group managed to lampoon both indie developers and large studios, with statements like, “The secret to a truly great indie game is that special human touch, which our producers have scheduled for insertion shortly before the product ships.”
Tomorrow Corporation has yet to announce a game, though it has been working on “an actual real game for months now.” If only there was some sort of developer-centric event, maybe one with a specialized indie component, during which they could make an announcement. Perhaps … tomorrow?
[Via Gamasutra]
Veteran indies announce Tomorrow Corporation studio originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Codemasters’ new FPS from Black creator Stuart Black has been revealed by OXM UK — and then promptly unrevealed, when the article was taken down. Bodycount is not based on Ice-T’s metal band Body Count, because the world couldn’t possibly be that beautiful. However, the cover of OXM (accessed through a Google cache of the article) calls it “the ultimate shooter.” Since there won’t be any shooters after this one, we assume that means it’s really cool.
We’ll find out more this week as the magazine arrives in UK homes, and presumably when an announcement is put online for good. Given the venue of announcement, we at least know it is an Xbox 360 game.
[Via Destructoid]
Codemasters’ new FPS, Bodycount, announced briefly originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 08 Mar 2010 10:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
BioWare’s space opera epic, Mass Effect 2, is Amazon’s “Deal of the Day.” The Xbox 360 version is currently $40, which is $10 cheaper than you’d pick it up at your local Quarian pawn shop. A PC copy is 40 percent off, with a $30 price tag.
At that price, one could pick up Mass Effect 1 and 2 for the regular retail price of the sequel. For those who like their sci-fi soapy and their shooters refined, this is a deal worth going through the Omega 4 Relay for — see, if you play the game, you’ll know what that means.
[Thanks, Russ P!]
Amazon’s galactic deal of the day: Mass Effect 2 originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 08 Mar 2010 09:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
It’s debatable whether or not the server crashing this past week was a symptom of Battlefield: Bad Company 2’s success. What isn’t debatable is the game’s explosive debut on the UK’s Chart-Track all-formats chart. The multiplayer-centric shooter, which we’ve been thoroughly enjoying, outsold the original Bad Company’s launch week numbers almost 3 to 1. According to Chart-Track, BC2 is the “best ever launch for any game released this early in the year.” Interestingly, 53 percent of BC2 sales went to the Xbox 360 version, followed by 31 percent and 16 percent of sales for the PS3 and PC, respectively. (The game also topped the three, individual platform charts.)
Of course, lurking in the corner was Just Dance. The game will not go away and continues to stay in the top three week after week after week. Last week’s top game, Heavy Rain, slipped down to fourth and the battle of Aliens vs. Predator held onto third. Check out the complete top ten after the break.
Source – Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is a born leader [GFK Chart-Track]
Source – Latest UK Software Charts [GFK Chart-Track]
Continue reading Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is new king of UK sales charts
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is new king of UK sales charts originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 08 Mar 2010 09:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
