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I wish they had made it easy for casual games developers like us to port or develop titles. Instead they had to behave like they were Sony and have us sign our life away before we even could evaluate the potential. Oh well. At least the xbox 360 is getting that part right.

Best regards,
Emmanuel

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Fairies: new hit puzzle game from the makers of Atlantis
http://www.funpause.com/

.. prepared me to the thermal shock of my wife having twin girls, and bringing them home, a year and a half ago. There's no way you can learn to be a dad from books; I just take it one day at a time. Still a good initiative I guess (albeit shameless astroturfing).

Best regards,
Emmanuel

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Fairies, the new smash hit game by the makers of Atlantis
http://www.funpause.com/

The King Kong game was created by Ubi pictures (a division of Ubisoft located in South France), makers of Ray Man, Tonic Trouble, and Beyond Good & Evil. Not sure what that all has to do with EA except they may be distributing. They had a ton of news coverage here with Peter Jackson visiting the developers and whatnot. Would journalists be guilty of hyping an empty story? .. Nah..

Best regards,
Emmanuel

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Hit ball matching game for Windows and OS X, Atlantis: http://www.funpause.com/

Fairies, new game from the makers of Atlantis, just out!

Casual downloadable games are a great market indeed. My latest title, Atlantis, is #1 in sales on big portals right now (Real Arcade and BigFish Games at the moment), and direct sales, in number of units, are way into the 4-digits range after three months out. We get to make the games we like and have direct contact with customers to help them out and gather suggestions, which is fantastic.

Best regards,
Emmanuel

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Smash hit ball matching game for PC and Mac:
http://www.funpause.com/atlantis/
Currently #1 on RealArcade and BigFish !

How about "manufacturer releases LCD display where pixels don't commit suicide as soon as you look at the screen sideways"

Or "manufacturer releases LCD display where black is black, not grayish"

Or "manufacturer releases LCD display that is actually usable in a heavily lit environment"

Even for movie professionals I'd guess that this is at least as important as being able to see sweat pores on an actress' skin :P

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Smash hit ball matching game for pc & mac, Atlantis: http://www.funpause.com/
Currently #2 on RealArcade!

I guess, while non-lethal, it might keep the immune system of 'insurgents' busy.. Ever tried to operate a rocket launcher shortly after getting vaccinated?

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Smash hit ball matching game for mac & pc: Atlantis
http://www.funpause.com/

I've registered but I can't seem to login. Don't know if the slashdotting effect is already operating at full force or if I can't type (probably the latter :).

Casual games are getting huge. My first ral foray into them is Atlantis - http://www.funpause.com/. This title is doing really good, but the bar is getting really high and it's getting really difficult for new entrants.

Best regards,
Emmanuel

Japanese CE engineers have eaten TRON for breakfast since they were little. CE devices have outgrown TRON now that everything requires handling digital file formats and releasing code on tight schedules while not crashing the whole device if possible. The transition to Linux in Japan is massive (teams I worked with or talked to at Hitachi, Matsushita, Mitsubishi, NEC, all make Linux-based devices). Montavista Japan / ELT is a growing force.

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Hit action puzzler for mac and pc, Atlantis: http://www.funpause.com/

French newspaper "Le monde" published a story today that the PSP sold 250,000 so far, and that shops are restocking shelves several times a day.

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Atlantis, smash hit puzzle game for mac & pc: http://www.funpause.com/

Surely not urinating in public, although that would be important to track, too.

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Atlantis, a runaway hit, ball matching game for mac: http://www.funpause.com/

I make a really good living selling games for Mac (most indie developers think that if a game isn't a big hit on PC it won't be on Mac.. oh well less competition).

The news about CW are terrible. xcode is really, really bad; it's probably easier to use gcc with your own build scripts and text editor. I've made Atlantis (http://www.funpause.com/atlantis/) in about 250 hours with codewarrior and ptk; with xcode I don't know how long it would have taken. Even compilation on xcode is slow, thanks to gcc 4.0-apple :P The game is already well paid back for now tho.

Ball matching game for MacOS X: http://www.funpause.com/atlantis/

I got the game, my balls still don't match. Thanks for nothing.

.. since $500 for an annual developer subscription just to get the right to buy a $1000 intel mac is a bit steep. I'll make it back in sales by reassuring people about my games' upgrade path, but i love my mini and would just like the same thing with an Intel.

Ball matching game for MacOS X: http://www.funpause.com/atlantis/

They would have to have another autonomous vehicle attached to this one to carry the batteries :) (allright, I'll go out now)

Ball matching frenzy for MacOS X: http://www.funpause.com/atlantis/

.. what other brand is there in consumer IT right now? Steve knows how to reach his target market.

His latest decision, moving to Intel, is nice in the long run but has hurt my sales for a bit, while people were wondering if it was a good idea to buy new PPC software at all. It's back to normal so I guess they figured it is, plus I'll support Intel Mac OSX software for free anyway.

Best regards,
Emmanuel

Cartoon mini golf for MacOS X - http://www.funpause.com/

The only people using Linux prior to 1995 are the folks on Slashdot with 4-digits-or-less user IDs. In other words, old-school hard-core geeks. (Not that there's anything wrong with that!)

Hmm, so my user ID is a dead giveaway of geekiness? :)

Cartoon mini golf game for MacOS X: http://www.funpause.com/

Damn, I just barely started making 2D games that use the 3D card for rotation, blending, zooms and stuff. Great, what am I going to do with all this now ;)

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Cartoon miniature golf game for Mac: http://www.funpause.com/

It just needs a decent internal HD now and it'll be a nice box.

Cartoon miniature golf for MacOS X: http://www.funpause.com/

There's already two functional Unix platforms that supports all of the Mac mini hardware.. That's MacOS X and Darwin (F/OSS). Most useful linux apps will compile without trouble on MacOS X, if they aren't already available via the excellent Fink project.

Cartoon miniature golf for Mac: http://www.funpause.com/gardengolf/

My sales have dipped a bit starting exactly when people forked out $150 for Tiger (yes, it's worth that much, I know :P) and are playing with the numerous freebies with no money left to buy additional software this month :) (well, it's coming back up now)

Cartoon mini golf game for Mac: http://www.funpause.com/gardengolf/

Their website was announcing that they were going to opensource CherryOS. I guess a 1 KB diff mainly to remove copyrights wasn't enough to build a community on :P

Good news, one less parasite. I know it's against Apple's business model, but I wish they'd allow usage of MacOSX on PearPC officially, it's a damn useful too to get PC programmers introduced to the Mac at no cost (the mini is cheap, but still an expense). Hey Apple, it's in your long-term interest to get more applications on OSX :)

Cartoon miniature golf for MacOS X: http://www.funpause.com/gardengolf/

Don't tear the guy a new one :) It's still interesting to recent switchers like me.

Cute minigolf for Mac: http://www.funpause.com/gardengolf/

Anyone knows if there's "official" support for partitioning the disk to support several versions of MacOS X? While I'd love to write code on Tiger (and must make sure my games work on it), I also need to support older versions. I know how to install multiple versions on the same Powerbook, just wondering if there's any known side effects or differences from a 'virgin' mac :P

Cartoon-like miniature golf for Mac: http://www.funpause.com/gardengolf/

I'm a recent switcher, see http://www.funpause.com/gardengolf/ for my first title.

Why oh why do I come here, I get to spend more money that I make :P

First of all, originality is in my opinion the only way to be heard above the noise, with virtually everyone doing free or shareware games, most of them of excellent quality, this year, it seems like.

Then of course when you're original, people don't know that they need or want your game, so you may not have many players even though the game is fun once you actually try it!

Gameplay for a very original game is even harder, you have no reference point. The gameplay for my debut game as an indie, Garden War is good but I've learned a lot for my next game.. Notably, how to reward the player more often, instead of only when you finish a level, etc., otherwise people rightfully feel that the game is slower paced than, say, arkanoid 30000 :P .. and also what knobs to tweak to increase difficulty progressively.

Maybe that'll bring enough customers to Linux to justify porting my games :P

</shameless_plug>

I've also started an indie gaming company, FunPause, with the normal stuff (free game downloads and then you can get the full version).

Our first strategy game for everyone (the casual gamers), Garden War, is up, here. At the moment, it is Windows-only, but the game wouldn't be a massive effort to port to Linux. As a self-assumed geek and early Linux fan (hello GGI guys if you read me!), I'd love to, but as a business person I am stopping myself from doing it. There's a wealth of hardware issues, multiple distributions, and the fact that fellow indie game producers reported abysmal sales.

If I was to start out, I'd need AT LEAST:
* hard sales data that a Linux version is worth it
* a cross-distro fancy (graphical) installer?
.. at the bare minimum.

The intention is there, if I could get some convincing info that I'd better make a Linux version than spend equal amounts of time on promoting my already selling Windows version !

I've also started an indie gaming company, FunPause, with the normal stuff (free game downloads and then you can get the full version).

Our first strategy game for everyone (the casual gamers), Garden War, is up, here. At the moment, it is Windows-only, but the game wouldn't be a massive effort to port to Linux. As a self-assumed geek and early Linux fan (hello GGI guys if you read me!), I'd love to, but as a business person I am stopping myself from doing it. There's a wealth of hardware issues, multiple distributions, and the fact that fellow indie game producers reported abysmal sales.

If I was to start out, I'd need AT LEAST:
* hard sales data that a Linux version is worth it
* a cross-distro fancy (graphical) installer?
.. at the bare minimum.

The intention is there, if I could get some convincing info that I'd better make a Linux version than spend equal amounts of time on promoting my already selling Windows version !