Slashdot Mirror

Here's the educative games I suggest.

http://www.food-force.com/ Made by the U.N. Free, MacOS X or Windows. (sorry no Linux afaik) Probably the best one in my list for the 6-8 years old.

http://www.tqworld.com/ - Tranquility. After years and years, this game has something no other game offers. Well suited for the youngsters. Free, but not open source.

http://www.stopdisastersgame.org/ U.N. too. Free and web-based. Excellent. Probably best for 8 years old (older ones of your range). Surprisingly informative.

http://www.stepmania.com/ Not sure that ones counts as edutainment, but it sure is good for the children! Open source and available for all platforms.

http://www.openttd.org/ A railroad tycoon open source clone (gosh I'm getting old ;-). Suitable for your oldest ones?

For the curious ones, here's the other worthy (subjective) open source games I discovered with time. http://del.icio.us/Satri/game+opensource

It had characters, a story, and themes? Video games don't need ANY of those to be art. Tranqulity is a beautiful, artful game and it has none of those. If video games are going to be valuable as an art form they need to do something that other art forms don't.

I wasn't making an exhaustive list, just mentioning two in which the eventual outcome is the same no matter what you do. (Defcon and Darwinia are made by the same people, incidentally.) Another game I have always considered artistic is tranquility.

Flow reminds me a lot the game "tranquility" found on SGI workstations as early as 1993. A modern version is available at tqworld even though this was originally a single player game.

I find it strange that the PhD thesis does not reference this game at all, as the concepts are very similar. I guess if I was the author's advisor, I'd point this out as a correction to make...

Well, Tranquility is a really relaxing game too (and free or 6$ for extreme gamers).

You want an ADHD game?
Play one written by somebody that has it and that truly understands the ADHD mind: http://www.tqworld.com/

• American's McGee Alice - admitedly it's not more than a 3D Mario in terms of game play, but oh does it have style.
  
• Rez - abstract shooter with great soundtrack and original graphics.
  
• Tranquility - Abstract 3D flying game. Unlike anything else I've seen, has the simplicity of Tetris.
  
• Gish - 2D platformer with very original gameplay due to the lead character's physical properties

I've been playing tranquility for a couple years now.
I't great to just be able to pop in, play a while to relax, then get back to real life.
Sort of a virtual vacation spot.

I spent a few minutes Googling, and here are some links showing the kinds of things I am thinking about:

• Wild Divine (which has been reviewed on Slashdot)
• Mindgames (From the website: Our focus on demonstration is designed to challenge organisations to not only think of how they might use our ideas in their products but also to imagine how their products can reach out and change the lives of everyone in a positive way. We believe that technology should be designed to facilitate us building a more constructive humanity.) They seem like a cool group, and like they're doing some really neat research. I'm not saying they are bad, I'm just saying that these things could easily be combined with new age philosophy.
• Tranquility This is pretty close to the game that I was thinking of, but I'm not sure if it's it. Similar note to the above item.

Please note that I'm not saying that "meditation is bad" or things like that -- I'm definately not saying that. Relaxation is a very good thing, however I've just seen a lot of this stuff combined with pantheistic theology as a way to "transcend to higher consciousness". I'm just calling it as I see it, and I'm just saying that there are video games with a lot of new-age theology underneath them out there.

Oh yeah, almost forgot about Rag Doll Kung Fu. *VERY* cool looking game, definately "religious", definately *not* "Christian". :) Not all games need to be Christian -- the grandparent was asking for non-Christian religious games, and I'm pointing him in that direction.

If you're taking the time and effort to write "a galactic scale civilization-type" game that's written well enough that it's worth the time for others to play, why not go all the way and do the GUI from scratch too?

Are you in a hurry to get it out? Running out of steam? Face it. Odds are it's largely an academic exercise and your game isn't going to be the next Unreal super-hit anyway , so why go the extra mile and innovate instead of imitate? If it does turn out to be a super hit, wouldn't it be best to hand-craft a quality game from the ground up?

Besides, If you were really clever you've got most of the hard part already done in the game components,
so perhaps you can use the game engine itself, and it's active elements, to build the GUI as well and come up with something that's totally new.

--
Looking for short term neural disruption? Play tranquility

And yes about the US and it's drug policy, but what did you expect from a country so stupid as to vote Bush into office.

You might be pleased to know that those of us who honor him have indeed worked around the stupidity of american politics... our own contribution can be found at tranquility - which most people say makes them very happy / stoned / better.

Tranquility is another game with great, surreal graphics.

Sorry, but this article is just misinformed crap.

It implies that MMPs are the only type of games still being played on PC, which is dumb. Not only that, it also states that "their growth appears almost stagnant" which is, of course, completely false.

I'm a game developper working on MMPs.
I've been hearing about the demise of the PC as a gaming platform for *years*.
Every year brings its new fad : consoles, cell phones, set top boxes, PDAs, next-gen consoles, online consoles, you name it...

And you know what ?
The PC is still alive and kicking.

And you know why ?
Because as long as PCs are bought, some people will want to buy games to play on them, and some developpers will want to take advantage of a free platform.

A platform where they don't need to beg for development kits.
A platform where they don't have to pay a for the privilege of releasing a game.
A platform where they are free to develop whatever game they wish without going through the hoops of "concept approval" (going through the hoops of a publisher is bad enough).
A platform where their imagination isn't restricted by the DRM crap that console makers are going to shove down everybody's throat.

So maybe all the big action/sports/movie franchise will keep moving on consoles. And who cares really? It's all the same old, boring stuff anyway.
But I'm pretty sure you'll keep on seeing original, cool games appearing on the PC first. And it won't be just the MMP games...

Here's a couple of links to prove my point.

The day the PC as a gaming platform dies, is the day the PC dies.

I'm glad someone beat me to the punch on that. If you hadn't I really would have needed the tranquility.

We've got just the game you're looking for: tranquility.

It's totally abstract, non-violent and highly mathematical. We have several schools that play tranquility
as a group activity. Download the game and give it a try, then drop us a note on our site support form and
we'll set you up with free accounts.

You know, for kids!!

It's the same premise. Although tranquility introduces the concept of needing to bounce off and through things to gain height (i.e it introduced that vital element to all games: gameplay )

So as a comparison Tranquility trounces it. Although to be honest I'm not a fan of Tranquility: perhaps the name and description on the site made me expect some trippy mindless departure from reality (like Rez maybe) but the game is actually very frustrating to play. Particularly during any level where you have to bounce though spinning polygon staircases: when you fall off before reaching the top you can't help but reach for ALT+F4...

tranquility is simple to learn, yet takes months to master.

Playing through all it's levels takes most players over 100 hours.

It's a great way to show off what your G5 can do and looks amazing on a big Cinema Display.
It's good for you, it's cheap, and if you talk to it nice it might wash your car.

There's no other game like it (and there's probably a reason for that...)

I would say that the game "Tranquility" might possibly fit into this category. It's available for Mac and PC and is amazingly addictive, though simple.

http://www.tqworld.com/

Yes folks, another shameless plug for tranquility.

It's so much the "anti-game" that we've got more non-gamers playing than anyone else.
Much of our email feedback tells us that. We get a lot of comments like: "I don't normally play
video games, but tranquility is great, I just had to write you...".

Over one third of our players are women. In fact, the big hole in our demographic seems to
be where other computer games are popular. Guys under 20 just don't get us at all.

We are also very big with technical professionals. A bunch of players come from .gov sites like
NASA JPL, NIH, and the Dept. of Energy. There are at least two doctors that we know of
that use the game as part of a therapy regimen for treating post-stress, trauma, and sleep disorders.

We're also highly addictive (once you find out about us, and "get it"). Our game levels are
generated on-the-fly uniquely for each player from our servers, so we can track who's playing
and for how long. We've got one player in particular that signed up back in 2001 and has
played the game for over 1200 hours at last count. Much of that is due to the hallucinogenic
and vertigo inducing effects of playing the game. Many of the reviews on the 'net about tranquility
talk about how it gets you quite stoned, dizzy, and disoriented. (That was the real point of the game).
Many liken it to that game on the Star Trek episode that got the crew hooked. We agree.

Our biggest problem is with marketing a game that's targeted at non-gamers. This happens
with every publisher we have had contact with. Some publisher staffer falls in love with our game,
then when it comes time for Mr. Type-A Decision Maker to take a look at it, it's so unlike any
other game, they just don't get it. This reaction happens every time, and it's due to the design
of the game itself. Tranquility actually attempts to induce a tranquilizing effect in the player.

If you play aggressively and start thrashing around with the mouse, the engine tightens up
and makes it more difficult to play. You have to relax to make the game work.
Unfortunately, the upper-level execs got to that position by primal aggression, so when they sit
down to give us a try, they can't play the game at all and refuse to let go and submit to the game.

So we're stuck with mainly word of mouth marketing, which is why I end up writing posts like this.

Is there an i86 binary of it?

Yup right here:
http://www.tqworld.com/tranquilityWIN.exe

It's not brand new, but it's the most original game I've ever seen -- you move in a 3D world bouncing off platforms chasing a "spinner".

What's really appealing is that the game is definitely a great stress reliever, very relaxed, with outstanding music (AI generated, which means it rarely repeats itself) based on your moves, and a highly, highly trigonometrical figures assembled on some of the most interesting mathematical curves you can think of...

Reminds me of the 3D Simpsons epizode, where Homer falls into a black hole into the real world :)

See it at tqworld.com.

NB: I'm not affiliated with the developers in any way, I don't make money off the game and in fact I've never purchased an account on their servers (though I did offer help with their Linux port at one point, but never did anything about it)...

You want abstract video game fun?
I've got your abstract video right here, pal.

Download tranquility from www.tqworld.com and give it a try.

As an experiment, I've made a single, free, slashdot communal account so you can see what the
game does beyond the demo levels.

login: slashdot
pass: tryit

With several people hitting the same account, the server might gripe about some things,
but let's give it a try and see what happens.

The very odd cult game tranquility has used this concept for a long time, and also does the "auto generation" trick with it's game geometry as well.

ZenStrings almost seems...inspired.. by tranquility's soundtracks. Especially the example/sample "Tranquilitatus".

Almost half of the registered tranquility players are women.
A women also holds the game record for highest score and number of hours/levels played.

Case in point... just 2 weeks ago a player wrote the following EMail to us (which is also posted on the sites home page)...

• So my girlfriend's online, looking for interesting games to download, when she mysteriously comes across your site. She downloads the game, but doesn't think much of it, I have a look.

  It's pretty good. Sort of fun. Okay, I guess. Ten dollars to play the game for real, huh?

  When I found myself wanting to pay, I thought, what the hell is going on? This game isn't that great -- or is it?

  It was then that I realized I'd been playing the game nonstop for hours. I paid my ten bucks, and I've not regretted it. Yesterday, I laughed out loud at the geometrical shapes floating around. Needless to say, that hasn't happened before. And I find myself at work thinking... "Just another couple of hours of this drudgery and I can go home and play Tranquility."

You'll note the similarities to addiction here... first, addiction doesn't hit everyone the same way. The girlfriend tried it, but it wasn't her cup of tea. Where-as the EMail author tried it and not only lost track of time, but now apparently finds himself thinking about it at inappropriate moments.

Since the games are created and served via the Internet we also can watch to see how people play the game. Some people use us once a day - often at the end of the day for stress relief. Some people use us weekly or monthly. Others use us randomly. But we have a select group of users who use us RELIGIOUSLY... that play day and night, all the time. Since the game servers never duplicates a game or a musical track, some of our users have played the entire series (441 total games) over and over again. One user has played the entire series of games over 45 times - unbelievable (that's 19,845 games... to ONE person).

Yes, SOME players get addicted... very addicted. I believe that, at least for our game, it's a combination of the patterns the game produces in junction with the sound. Almost hypnotic, and that draws SOME people deeply into the game structure.

But that makes sense... who can resist staring at the beams of an oncoming car at night. We lust for patterns, lights, flashing. It captures our attentions and captivates our minds. This is why music is so important to us - and also why raves, dance floors, etc... combine music with flashing lights - it does something hypnotic to us. GOOD plots can also do the same thing - make us feel a part of the plot - as if we're living a different life. Is this also not true of the Internet itself, for some people? Of course it is.

To a degree, ANYTHING can be abused and become adictive... even slashdot ;)) It's not about the substance - but how an individual REACTS to that substance.

My partner and I run a small game house, TQworld.
We publish only one title, the offbeat (and often misunderstood) 3D game 'tranquility'.

Next January will mark our third year. Granted, our game didn't have the 'hit' impact that we
had hoped for when we were in development, but we've enjoyed a steady growth
in players. We're still in the black, mainly due to keeping expenses low and by not having
profits siphoned off by publishers, distributors and investors.

Another reason why we're still around is due to the design work within the game and it's
support system during the development phase. Because we use a client server model
for tranquility, we never have had any problem with piracy. We also offer so much of the
game for free that there hasn't been a big incentive for players to circumvent our system.
We keep scoring and game progress on our servers but all game play resides on the user's
machine. If they want to give out account information to others it's fine with us, it only affects
the user's score. We also only distribute the game online. We've tried working with publishers
but because of our unique un-cheatable commerce model, publishers can't run the show.
That seems to turn them off so we've never been able to find a publisher that can deal with us.

We also aren't greedy when it comes to profit. We give away lots of free accounts. Why not?
It's just a miniscule load on the servers and it's well worth it just to make somebody happy
to play our game. We also haven't been greedy when it comes to updates. Once somebody
pays for the game, they can run it on as many machines as they want. We've got a version
for Windows, OSX and Mac OS9 and they can run any or all of them. We also never charge
for updates. Somebody told me once that you should worry about the customers you have,
not the ones you don't that aren't paying you. We liked that approach and so we've ended
up using that commerce model. Granted, it's not the money maker model that Apple or
Microsoft uses, but when you sell a game called tranquility we want to keep our customers
as stress free as possible. Like the Golden rule, we treat them like we would like to be treated.

Another part of the game (that people never see) is the support structure that we built in at the
same time as the game itself. The servers let us know who's buying, who's playing, where
they are at in the game, what kind of hardware, who's visiting the web site and who is asking
for support. It's tied in with the game itself so once we brought everything up a few years ago,
it's almost self-supporting. This means that we can be responsive to users that need assistance,
we can quickly see the result of special promotions or potential compatibility problems with
new releases or new OS releases on the platforms we support, without having to hire a staff to
keep our customers happy. Although this was experimental and somewhat radical at the time,
because we were not beholden to investors and shareholders at the time, we could take whatever
steps were necessary at the time to build things the right way. It took 1 year for two developers
to build both the game and the support system and we released it when it was ready and hit the
ground running on day one.

Finally there's the game itself. Yeah, we know it's weird
and certainly not for everyone, but that's a large part of it's charm.

tranquility started out as a simple demo game that I wrote for the SGI boxes, especially the
Indigo ten years ago. I would get fan mail every so often asking for updates etc. so we knew
we had something interesting to use as a foundation. After kicking around ideas, when Apple
announced plans for OS X, it looked like there was a consistent enough target to write for, with
an eclectic enough audience that might enjoy the alternative experience that tra

My partner and I run a small game house, TQworld.
We publish only one title, the offbeat (and often misunderstood) 3D game 'tranquility'.

Next January will mark our third year. Granted, our game didn't have the 'hit' impact that we
had hoped for when we were in development, but we've enjoyed a steady growth
in players. We're still in the black, mainly due to keeping expenses low and by not having
profits siphoned off by publishers, distributors and investors.

Another reason why we're still around is due to the design work within the game and it's
support system during the development phase. Because we use a client server model
for tranquility, we never have had any problem with piracy. We also offer so much of the
game for free that there hasn't been a big incentive for players to circumvent our system.
We keep scoring and game progress on our servers but all game play resides on the user's
machine. If they want to give out account information to others it's fine with us, it only affects
the user's score. We also only distribute the game online. We've tried working with publishers
but because of our unique un-cheatable commerce model, publishers can't run the show.
That seems to turn them off so we've never been able to find a publisher that can deal with us.

We also aren't greedy when it comes to profit. We give away lots of free accounts. Why not?
It's just a miniscule load on the servers and it's well worth it just to make somebody happy
to play our game. We also haven't been greedy when it comes to updates. Once somebody
pays for the game, they can run it on as many machines as they want. We've got a version
for Windows, OSX and Mac OS9 and they can run any or all of them. We also never charge
for updates. Somebody told me once that you should worry about the customers you have,
not the ones you don't that aren't paying you. We liked that approach and so we've ended
up using that commerce model. Granted, it's not the money maker model that Apple or
Microsoft uses, but when you sell a game called tranquility we want to keep our customers
as stress free as possible. Like the Golden rule, we treat them like we would like to be treated.

Another part of the game (that people never see) is the support structure that we built in at the
same time as the game itself. The servers let us know who's buying, who's playing, where
they are at in the game, what kind of hardware, who's visiting the web site and who is asking
for support. It's tied in with the game itself so once we brought everything up a few years ago,
it's almost self-supporting. This means that we can be responsive to users that need assistance,
we can quickly see the result of special promotions or potential compatibility problems with
new releases or new OS releases on the platforms we support, without having to hire a staff to
keep our customers happy. Although this was experimental and somewhat radical at the time,
because we were not beholden to investors and shareholders at the time, we could take whatever
steps were necessary at the time to build things the right way. It took 1 year for two developers
to build both the game and the support system and we released it when it was ready and hit the
ground running on day one.

Finally there's the game itself. Yeah, we know it's weird
and certainly not for everyone, but that's a large part of it's charm.

tranquility started out as a simple demo game that I wrote for the SGI boxes, especially the
Indigo ten years ago. I would get fan mail every so often asking for updates etc. so we knew
we had something interesting to use as a foundation. After kicking around ideas, when Apple
announced plans for OS X, it looked like there was a consistent enough target to write for, with
an eclectic enough audience that might enjoy the alternative experience that tra

I preordered Panther and was super happy when yesterday, 4:00 PM, Fed Ex pulls up in my driveway with a box from Apple.

Beat the crowd scene totally... and I didn't have to take off my rubbah slippahs at the airport, or surrender my box cutters.

It's up and running nicely... everything is brushed metal. Lots of windows popping up and then disapearing - I'll love Expose'.

Tranquility runs like a dream - improved frame rate.

Go Apple - Too bad it wasn't free.

He plays tranquility .

...The lack of documentation for thread priority switching and timing came about, actually, from my writing a multi-threaded audio application.

I'm running 16 threads with 250 simultaneous stereo audio tracks in my game tranquility
and it's doing it while drawing 10,000 objects in OpenGL. Sometimes, if not always, you have to dig for the right information,
but most things are possible immediately or eventually, or you end up taking an alternative approach to solving the problem.

I gripe about Apple's sparse or non-existent documentation as much as anyone, but what I was addressing was the
accusation that the iApps etc. were built on intentionally non-published APIs and I don't think that's a fair assessment.

With every non-trivial app there's always some aspect you get stuck on when trying to get things just right (or just working),
but Apple's pretty good at disclosure, and getting better as time goes by. The new FireWire SDK is an excellent example of that.

Closer to the truth is that internal development of applications at Apple drives the extensions of the toolkits more than third
parties do. A team is building something like iPhoto against a specification and when they need some specific part, they
either write it, or ask the department in another building to extend an API to accommodate their needs. So naturally, Apple
gets first crack at the new functionality. Eventually that new functionally gets documented and tested, and Apple publishes
it to developers. But that's not a real-time pipeline.

but people like you are embarrassments to the platform
That's not true. I'm a unique and beautiful snowflake. There's no one like me.
And besides, to Apple, anyone that buys a few Macs isn't an embarrassment to the platform.

Does anyone out there (current level 5 posters havn't had this info) have a SITE we can go to, to learn the specifics of this?

Since we're a very very small company we won't be putting up any "headquarters" in europe.

Who do we pay? How frequently do we pay? What laws do we need to follow in terms of documentation? How long do we need to hold onto records? Where to we go to find out if tax rates have been changed, or even what they are?

It's one thing to demand a VAT... it's another thing entirely to make sure we get the proper information in order to implement it correctly.

We've been avoiding any typical genres with our game tranquility.

Apple's review said this about us:

If you've watched those old movies or TV shows that fantasized about what our lives might be like in the future,
you've probably seen people playing futuristic games in ultramodern settings. And you may have thought,
"Wow. I want to play those games. I want to be there."

Guess what? You're there. The game's called tranquility, and it represents an entirely new kind of game.

We use the term "game" loosely to describe tranquility, because it's like nothing you've ever played before.
And while it does have definitive objectives, it's also a highly sensual environment that you can enjoy without
pursuing any kind of goal at all. In fact, if you want to, you can just bounce around to music. "

Doesn't sound like a typical title does it? But it's a hard sell.

It appears that, at least in the US, if it doesn't have a gun, or a car, or a spaceship, or little puppets running
around, the mainstream game market sees it as "pointless", even if pointlessness is pretty much the concept
behind most games anyway.

Another part of the problem might be that the money men, the guys running the publishers, are too Type A to be
able to comprehend something where the goal isn't to dominate and vanquish your opponent. That's why we
see mostly things like Quake and GTA clones. Beyond that, it's the 10,001th version of Breakout or Tetris.

Sure, some things slip through the cracks like the Sims series but that took them like ten years and even then,
they keep pushing variants of the same idea.

Would they do this? Sure, in a rats ass moment they would... first, it would bring them revenue from companies who want to get software published (CHARGE THE DEVELOPERS!!!)... second, they would have to certify it so they would require the source code... hmmmm... look at what they're doing in this chunk of code (SUE!!!!) or ... hmmm, look at what they're doing in this chunk of code (STEAL, PATENT AND SUE!!!!). And consider someone perhaps M$ doesn't like... guess what, it doesn't pass certification... period.

As an independent game development company without the resources of the giants, this type of move scares me shitless.

I'd say aloha in leaving, but I have no aloha for the likes of bill gates and his ilk.

Click here to see what Apple themselves had to say about the game. Download is free and there are lots to do for free in the game.

Aloha and Enjoy!

There's lots of games that will scare you or give you an anxiety attack, but tranquility is the only game that will get you high.

In my game tranquility, I'm seeinga solid 10% increase in frame rate. Very nice Apple! Thanks.

Alternatively, perhaps it could learn a thing or two from the related work already done in tranquility. From the tranquility website (see introduction -> technology):

The audio composer is named JukeBox. It is the task of JukeBox to create a pleasing song to go with a particular game. JukeBox is an AI that has a rudimentary understanding of musical rules. It also understands what audio samples are available to it. JukeBox first creates a particular tune. It will then look at the available instruments and will assign them to the various tracks based not only on the tempo of the tracks, but also on how the instruments combine (it knows that not all instruments sound good together, and that an instrument that sounds good at one tempo or pitch, may not sound good at a different tempo or pitch).

JukeBox also understands how to underdrive and overdrive some of the sounds to produce special effects. It works these effects into some songs based on what it thinks will sound pleasing.

Additionally, JukeBox assigns sounds to the platforms and spinners that augment and "fit" the basic soundtrack.

In agreement I have to say that if you are pursuing a competitive first person shooter, etc... you require a large staff with many graphic artists, prgrammers, etc. You are also going to pour lots of money into marketing and getting big names for voices etc. Additionally, getting into some of the console markets is near-neigh impossible unless your a well known and established company with millions.

However, in disagreement I offer our own experience. In our view, an indie is most at risk if they (1) accept funding from investors and (2) try to release games that mimic the current genres and (3) do not pay close enough attention to stability (e.g., support issues).

Our game has been fairly successful, and continues to grow, due in part to the fact that it bucks the traditional genres. We have no problem staying afloat because we funded the venture out of pocket and never once accepted money outside the company. This allowed us to retain total control over the direction of the game. Because we retained total control we also had the ability to ensure that we did not release anything until WE were happy and WE were certain it was stable.

It is apparent that it will be a slow and steady climb for us (our first release was in 2001) to get to the point where bigger names take notice, and console manufacturers want to talk - but as with anything, if you are tiny and innovative you can overcome most obstacles and become a david among goliths (sorry :).

Gah! I still don't get full screen visuals in iTunes with my ATI Radeon 9000! And there are still two things in tranquility that don't look right: the compass and the spinner! These broke with my new card, not an update. I'm wondering if the stock 16MB Rage card in my dual 450 was a better idea...

The game let's you build not only personal levels for yourself and to share with friends, but also allows you to post your favorite personal levels into a TQ Universe where other members can play your games as well.

Additionally, TQworld has begun to open up the internal language (the forum on the TQworld site has this information beginning to appear). Since the games are stored on your hard drive in clear-text format, you can tweak them (or completely rewrite/design new ones) in your favorite editor.

In my game tranquility, reducing brain activity was the overriding design goal.

I avoided any features that used short term memory, there's no paths to remember or pattern matching skills used. I even tried to remove all of
the text during game play so you could turn off that part of the brain too. I made the mouse movement sensitive to minimal movement so
you could basically sit like a blob in a chair and play. If you start moving the mouse in an aggressive way, the viscosity of the environment is
increased which makes game play more difficult. The music is also quiet and trance-like. When the game progresses and the graphics get
more dense, the music in turn gets sparse so it's a sliding balance between two kinds of sensory stimulation. It's a big feedback loop that
attempts to reward moving towards a vegetative state.

What's cool about this is that we get lots of players that tell us that they essentially get stoned playing the game. (Something that Quake just can't do.)
Not just a mild effect either, but quite profound according to some of our players. It's more of a reefer or opiate high as opposed to a buzz.
The effect also seems to persist for an hour or so after playing. I don't know of, or have had any reports of, long term effects (your honor..).

Well, a dual 450 in my case, which IMO, still isn't dated.

Geforce2MX? Hmmm, I have one friend running an usupported Voodoo3. Or was, until he upgraded to an nVidia chipset, which now freezes his computer upon startup. (Out of curiosity, if you don't like the Geforce, which seems to be a de facto standard in the PC world, what do you suggest? ATI?) A suitemate last year was having video problems in the form of artifacts when dragging windows. This was also attributed to the video card, whatever it was. In contrast, my 16 MB ATI card runs fine. Who really needs more than 60 fps in tranquility?

5400 RPM drive. Well, I have never had a Mac hard drive crash. Ever. A different last year's suitemate seemed to think that the OS factored into it. How else could I be using Maxtor hard drives?

Keyboard and mouse? Flimsy? Again, any time our computers get packed up for transport, it's my PC friend who keeps losing pieces off his keyboard.

Finally, if you don't like that stuff, you can upgrade it at the Apple Store. Even the keyboard. Get the Western Spanish version. (Or is that the OS? Oh well.)

This cool game, tranquility, can help you relax in that flowing, feeling-like-plankton kinda way, you know?

There's no dying, all levels are custom built for you by with help from their server ... and more weird stuff that I've found myself addicted to.

Works with OS X, OS 9, Win 98 - XP, while a Linux version is in the works.

J

When a new user joins a game he does so through the primary game servers, which identify the user and issue a code to the users client program. In addition, the server also issues a *handful* of IP addresses and codes for other players *near* the user (near being in terms of where the player is within the game). This handful of addresses and codes we term the *circle* - and you can think of it as being a circle of friends known to the clients game program.

Once received... the client program then does direct peer-to-peer communication with the *handful* of client IP's that it received from the server.

Now... as new gamers arrive, invariably they are handed some of these same IP's... each time they contact another game client they give their code... and they then remember it.

With each gamer coming online... the *nearest* game clients then *know* about that gamer. However, other clients may not, since they are not *near* the gamer at that point. As they enter the gamers area they, of course, broadcast their codes and positions, not only to their known circle of clients, but also back to the primary game server.

When a gamers client sees a new client code enter their area (as told to them by one of their circle of clients) -- they simply *ask* their circle who that player is. If none of their circle of clients know, they ask the primery server. Anytime they receive the new info, they not only update themselves, but they also tell their circle of clients.

This works similar to DNS... in that... because a particular game client only knows about a few other game clients - the amount of traffic is minimal, but eventually everyone knows about everyone through the *circle*. For anyone that is not known, the master game server knows and is polled. This puts the primary amount of activity in the clients, and peer to peer - as opposed as client to server (the server basically only records the initial entrance of a gamer into the game... and also takes care of responding to any confused clients who can't find out about a gamer from it's local circle).

We recently rewrote our game tranquility, originally for SGI, to run on OS X (100% rewrite, not a port). We selected OS X over MS because of two major reasons... (1) we hate MS and (2) we love UNIX. OS X gave us the ability to completely work around a shifting (and shifty) MS playing ground... and because OS X is based on a UNIX kernel, we felt that stability and capability were superior.

We were not wrong. OS X is a blast to write games for. While our game servers are SUN (though they could be MACs)... the client internet code was written on a SUN and compiled straight away, with no errors, on the MAC. This type of simplicity and uniformaty indeed make OS X a beauty to write for.

However... we also selected OpenGL as the clients drawing system, simply because it matched the needs of the game (which was originally written in SGI GL). Apple has yet to release its version of OpenGL in source form to developers. Releasing it would help developers to support it, increase its efficiency, as well as remove a couple of the remaining problems (it IS open source, after all, but Apple has made some changes within the code). Instead, Apple seems to prefer its game developers to use its alternative (and prop. platform)... which immediatly removes porting possibilities.

Furthermore, and sadly... Apple enjoys Objective C... which quite frankly I've never been able to properly sink my teeth into. Bastardizations of a standard language such as C, into deviants such as C++ and Objective C, do nothing good for anyone. It makes porting or even rewriting difficult... and obscures readability of the code. It also wastes development time in learning a new language.

My upshot? OS X is a WONDERFUL game platform, if you ignore Apples desires and stick to the UNIX layer and standard C, as much as possible, for your designs. Specialized tools, libraries and langauge only serve to make programming more difficult.

...legal way for you to [write software for PS2] (without alienating their licensees, who pay money to be allowed to write for the console).

The problem with these game consoles is that unless you work for a multi-million dollar company... and pay SONY ultra-big-bucks... you can't write for them. This greatly limits the number of fun games and useful products that could exist for PS2 and other devices.

Case in point... we would like to port our tranquility game (tqworld) to PS 2 -- but Sony won't even return our calls - why? because we arn't a BIG COMPANY with a BIG NAME and a BIG SAVINGS ACCOUNT from which to write SONY BIG BUCKS.

What this means is that we are held at bay by a limited number of games - in a limited number of genres - from a limited number of manufacturers.

The OLD BOYS CLUB.

Now sure... it's SONYs right to decide who can and can not create games for their devices... but their devices would be *oh so much more popular* if they opened up the game interface and allowed us regular joes to throw our programming talents at it.

Additionally... SONY seems to prefer to fund companies who create extremely violent games -- while ignoring companies who create games that are non-violent -- a highly unbalanced playing field.

Think, a moment, what would happen if MicroSoft, or Apple... removed the ability for you to put compilers on their computers and write your own code. What if the computer manufacturers would ONLY allow code from *licensed* companies to run. That would not only kill the entire programming profession, it would create a huge unbalance of software and capabilities.

Now consider what happens when Game Consoles MERGE with computers... will this be the outcome? Only writing programs for Microsoft if you PAY MS big money to be the privledged one to do so?

...I didn't think so :)

We've learned a lot from what users have been asking for in the past month of our initial release.
Even early on, we wrapped a scoring mechanism around it because people desired some sort of unit, or metric to measure their progress vs. the investment of time in playing.

We're a client/server game. All the level descriptions and behavior are downloaded from the net into our 3D client where the geometry is constructed and displayed. But it's not a multiplayer game, nor are there objects to shoot or things to shoot them with. Users have been asking why they can't see other players in our "world". No doubt the next thing they will ask for is a weapon so they can vaporize the other players and make them disappear.

I think that you see the kinds of games that you do because the majority of people can't function on a non-zero-sum environment.

Bill Romanowski