Alcides Fonseca

I’ve been reading tons of reactions to the launch of the latest best-game-ever GTA IV. I liked Penny Arcade’s the most. And real geeks are also impressed by GoogleMaps-powered Liberty City Map. It is a nice mashup indeed.

Today Luís remembered me of Google Drive where you could drive a little yellow car around the world in real streets. Then it hit me: What about joining the two of then, add some extra features, and get a javascript web-based GTA game, with the top-view, just like the original one (which I’m a fan of!).

Someone with a lot of free time? Anyone? Maybe you?

I grew up more a less at the same time as Nintendo’s GameBoy, so computer games were not that awkward to me. The first game that I was really amazed by was TIM (The Incredible Machine). For those of you who don’t know it, it was a simple game where you had to make a lot of elements like balls, balloons, candles, strings, cats, mice, electrical stuff, etc.. to work together in order to achieve a goal each level. If somehow I got that game again, I’d spend one month having all that fun again! Like I never had with games like Warcraft or Counter-Strike!

Sometime ago a friend showed me Armadillo Run a game of the same type, but more focused on physics and structures. Not as much fun as TIM. But after that a new game was being blogged about everywhere: Crayon Physics. It doesn’t have as many features as TIM, but it has a bonus: you get to draw your components. If you need a ball or a box, you have to draw it! I loved it!

But the demo was a bit short and the real stuff isn’t here yet… Nevertheless I found a flash game exactly the same, and with pins and hinges that gave it a brand new sense. I’ve finished it and now I’ve improving the number of moves per level.

You should REALLY try it!

Those who can read XFN already know I have a crush on Leah Culver, but there is one cute geek girl coming into my life: It’s just too bad she plays WoW.

Veronica Belmont brings to me Daily Mahalo, a nice (video)podcast I subscribe. Today she interviewed a few independent game makers at GDC. There are some neat concepts! Not much of a 3D fan, I really liked the last one.

I must say I love XNA! I like making games. I do not like C++ low-level programming. When I was (am?) a kid, I did some stupid games with Game Maker 6. I did all those games without a line of code! I really like that. XNA brings that concept, but to professional (and casual) game developers. Of course you have to write code, but only the logic you need. Under XNA there are all those low-level functions you don’t want to be writing and debugging.

Yesterday John Schappert revealed a bit of XNA future in the GDC. They want to have the “Youtube for gamers” (seems like Nintendo wants too with WiiWare) and their also targeting mobile devices. He showed a Zune running a XNA game!

That made me thinking… Will Zune be a competitor against PSP and DS? And will the iPhone/iPod Touch with the soon-to-be-released SDK also join this market? And where the Windows Mobile stands in this scenario?

This post is a best-of my feedreadings of today. Some people do del.icio.us posting and I’m getting infected too.

I found about Port25, a website where is explained why Microsoft hates OpenSource! (NOT) I’m curious about what will MS say about OpenSource in 10 years. When maybe Ballmer is enjoying his retirement and someone from a different background (and younger) will decide what direction will Redmond’s still-big Giant take.

IronRuby vs Ruby.NET, a nice post by the IronRuby developer John Lam, a bit more of what I mentioned between IronPython and Python.NET.

I want the new Windows Mobile 6.1 new interface! I guess 6.0 should be called 5.1 and this one it’s the one that is the real 6!

Developer’s Hymn: pretty much self-explanatory.

A fan of Desktop Tower Defense? And you also like World of Warcraft? There you go: Hordes of Orcs! But OS X only for now…

Feeds still messy. Sorry but no time to fix it. Please bear with me and come visit my wonderful website :)

Following my last post on Playful IAs, I found an interesting book on how social websites are games (or almost). Websites like Digg, Youtube and Facebook (the case studies) are built so they are not only useful, but also entertaining.

Some social networks work almost as a mmorpg where users have ranks, manage relationships, set trends, etc… And you can have the feeling of winning or losing too. Have this in mind the next time you use of this websites.

I recall Marco, in his Game Design presentation, saying that games must be addictive to be successful. Not addictive in a sickness order, but leaving a feeling in the player that he will want to play that game later on, or even buy the sequel. That’s exactly what web developers want for their sites. Visitors are wanted regular, that’s what generates statistics (for advertising purposes) and the community you need and target.

The book is available for free and it is a great learning tool to improve your website in order to be more fun. The author has also started a blog that I have already subscribed.

Tendo em conta a actividade que mais desenvolvemos durante as aulas, se calhar em vez do Macbook preto (com 2Gb de memória) devia ter comprado a fantástica peça de hardware que dá pelo nome de xbox 360p:

Jennifer Government is a novel by Max Barry about politics, consumerism, greed and how people survive in the between. It is in my “to read” list yet. So why do I mention it? Because it inspired a game, NationStates, that is now the daily talk between me and the guys.

It’s not a web-based MMORPG as you should be expecting (if you are looking for one, check this one!) but a politics game. You are the ruler of a nation you create and you have two issues per day that you have to either dismiss or choose one advice. Pretty simple, hein? But the issues are pretty hard to solve since, just like in real life, one option may benefit the people’s freedom, the other your economy and you may even have a third one that you can’t predict its consequences.

And if you want, you can also have external politics, since there is the “United Nations” that has its own political system, and depends on other players/nations to decide rules that apply to everyone in it. You can even vote for delegates or be one yourself.

So, if you are interested in knowing how your own politics will do to a nation, this is a pretty cool way of finding out!

For those of you who don’t know, TrackmaniaNations is a spin-off of the original Trackmania game, but targeting the e-Sports community. This point has really made the difference and that’s what made it a great success.

Instead of a simple race with high detailed graphics, the French studio Nadeo thought of a different gameplay, where F1-like cars would race in a stadium with wacky tracks featuring jumps, loopings, wallrides and other incredible stunts! Nadeo has also introduced a track editor that has contributed for their great success, since online servers have almost only custom tracks and some were even created specifically for tournaments.

I’ve been a fan of TrackMania Nations when it came out, but now I started to play again with some colleagues when pausing from school work. It is now kinda frustrating when having one the 10 best national players competing with you. It makes me want for this new game mode that differs from time-attack and rounds: a game mode where you win by having more point when the time is up. Crossing the line would give you some points, but you would also gain more by doing some tricks and stunts that TrackMania already recognizes!

Mais informações no blog oficial. Se gostam de jogar Wii e acham que chegam ao pódium, acompanhem o blog e inscrevam-se mal seja possível ;)

This post came up from an interesting chat with João Diogo (I’m sure one day I’ll write about him) where he asked me about Passively Multiplayer Online Games (PMOG).

Well, for those who don’t know this concept (as I didn’t), it’s the possibility to play a RPG just by surfing the web. It will build you a profile based on your browser history. This is the basic concept, but I’m sure there are plenty of details yet to be defined.

For now there is a Firefox plugin based Game called BUD but it is offline at this moment, so I couldn’t give it a try. However you can read a Mozilla Developer opinion on this.

Personally, I am not excited by this and I don’t even believe this will have any success. More and more, people like the Internet because they like to create their own content: Their blogs, their flickr pages, their twitts, etc. Well this means the thing that makes the Internet interesting is the possibility to be active, not passive as this gaming concept promotes.

There is also another thing: Internet people tend to be lazy. Maybe that’s just the profile of people who use the web: it’s the fastest and workless way of doing things. So, they like to focus on things. They like to read one blog then another, when they are watching youtube movies, they don’t do anything else, etc… (ok, 1337 people do multi-tasking, but they are not the majority) This kind of games requires your attention while you are doing some other thing (reading/interacting in a webpage). I believe that will not captivate players.

There is also another thing I don’t quite believe in PMOG: the unlimited freedom you have to play. For instance, DnD is a game where you have an enormous freedom to play (which in my opinion makes it an amazing game) but is only played by a small percentage of RPG gamers. The rest chooses to play World of Warcraft, Guild Wars and that kind of games where the rules are well defined. Maybe is the laziness again: people like to be limited to a sort of actions where the chose is quite fast and easy.

Well, let’s see how these games go, and see if my predictions were right or not.

Lately, I've been playing this game a lot. Since I'm addicted to real billiards, and I'm too lazy to go outside, I've installed this great game.

It has a lot of game types (Card Game, 8-Ball,9-ball,Rotate,3-ball, etc) and rooms. The amazing idea behind this apart from the online playing is making it a RPG.

You have online credits (chalk) and you can buy skills, effects, characters, skins, even some add-ons to your own game blog.

Check it out and see how they turned a simple game into a addictive RPG:

http://www.carom3d.com/