Slashdot Mirror

If Cyan had the money, you can bet that they would want to port Uru (flash warning) to the Wii. The control scheme of the Wii is ideal for their games, and the Plasma engine would not be hindered by the speed of the Wii's processors. However, it has been a long time since Cyan's games were meant to be played at 640x480.

Come to think about it, I might go buy a wiimote just to use with my pc for Uru. Yay for bluetooth!

In all these comments? Sheesh, and I thought you guys were nerds :)

Demos have been doing procedural textures for years... almost a necessity when you're trying to squeeze x number of minutes of... stuff into a 64k binary file. Take a look at fr-08: .the .product by farbrausch for a pretty stunning example of the amount of compression you can get when you need it. They've also got a proof-of-concept FPS that uses all procedural textures and fits into a 96k binary.

They've even released a tool for procedural generation publicly.

Given the benefits of procedural generation in terms of space, I wish more games would look into using them... especially online MMORGS or other situations where bandwidth is an issue. It's probably faster and more efficient on a decent CPU/GPU to create procedural textures than it is to download a bzipped version thereof. (Nudge: Can someone at Cyan Worlds please hire these guys as interns?)

And what happens when I want to play a game like the amazing Uru Live that is to be released these Christmas holidays? I'm hoping that they never cut Windows XP support as I want to support the game, but refuse to buy any future versions of Windows or any version of the Apple Mac. The latter because it uses DRM to ensure the OS only runs on Apple's official hardware.

Who knows, perhaps by the time Uru Live cuts support for Windows XP, it will have been ported to Linux. But I wouldn't hold my breath, and so I do worry about being able to support amazing games that push the boundaries on what is considered necessary to make a successful game, with such games being reliant on companies like Microsoft and Apple (if Uru Live ever gets ported to the Mac).

According to Cyanworlds, they're going to release the game with a free "visitor" mode. Anyone and everyone can access the game for free, but will be restricted to a few areas unless you pay for a GameTap subscription. (...and you will be able to join Uru Live regardless of the fact that GameTap isn't available outside the United States. They are planning to make Uru Live accessable worldwide.) So the client itself will be free, and you can check it out without committing to a subscription.

According to Cyanworlds, they're going to release the game with a free "visitor" mode. Anyone and everyone can access the game for free, but will be restricted to a few areas unless you pay for a GameTap subscription. (...and you will be able to join Uru Live regardless of the fact that GameTap isn't available outside the United States. They are planning to make Uru Live accessable worldwide.) So the client itself will be free, and you can check it out without committing to a subscription.

According to Cyanworlds, they're going to release the game with a free "visitor" mode. Anyone and everyone can access the game for free, but will be restricted to a few areas unless you pay for a GameTap subscription. (...and you will be able to join Uru Live regardless of the fact that GameTap isn't available outside the United States. They are planning to make Uru Live accessable worldwide.) So the client itself will be free, and you can check it out without committing to a subscription.

Uru Live is planned on being available as a standalone client that operates outside of the GameTap client. Uru will be eventually available worldwide. Only the GameTap service itself is restricted to the United States for the time being. (According to the Uru Live support site here.)

Gametap's evilness doesn't matter to me (and not just 'cause it isn't available outside the US yet). For the most part, if there's an older game, like a Sierra classic, that I would enjoy, I already own it. Yes, the originals, not some hastly-downloaded greyware. I treasure my favorites. (:

So for the most part, Gametap doesn't have much to offer me, and it would ordinarily slip under my radar.

Except that I'm big on Myst, and thus super-excited about Myst Online: Uru Live, which Gametap is resurrecting and making available via the Gametap network. Super-fun time.

Turner is smart. They're not just playing reruns on this station; they're going for some premium exclusive content here: Uru Live, Sam & Max, and I hear rumblings about a few other things in the works.

And this is going to kill the game industry how?