Slashdot Mirror
Grad-School Thesis Becomes PS3 Game
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes, "USC student Jenova Chen's Flash game, 'flOw,' attracted interest from Sony, which commissioned an enhanced version that will be sold through its PlayStation Network, WSJ.com reports. From the article: 'Gameplay is incredibly smooth, particularly for a Flash game. But it's the design touches that set flOw apart. Players will notice faint outlines of the creatures lurking at lower depths, a foreboding sign that vicious manta- and squid-like enemies await. The water darkens as the creature advances to deeper levels. The game's ambient sound is somewhat hypnotic. The intuitive controls and design simplicity are among Mr. Chen's mandate: build immersive games for people who don't consider themselves gamers. 'My parents and grandparents don't play games. My girlfriend, she doesn't play either,' he says. 'I want to make games that those people can appreciate.'"
No wonder he has the time to create games. Poor bastard.
DUPE
Sigh, I miss the lucas arts adventure games days. Crap graphics, damn good fun.
Fighting over religion is like seeing whose imaginary friend is best.
For the grandparents, try suggesting "The Depression: Revisited" It will be an MMORPG based on the hardships of 30's living. You will get to experience the thrills, and the excitement of living in this time. You can choose to live in a Hooverville, even better, work someones field for them at a nickle an hour, and maybe you will be able to buy a few pieces of bread to keep your character alive. Feel the excitement of jumping onto a train! If you miss, well your fault. Blood and gore of bodies cut in half by the trains. Go to work in a factory! You can start producing weapons to bring back those good time memories of the beginning of World War II.
Dupe!
Yea.. when I want my father or my girlfriend to play a game, I just tell them "Keep playing.. THERE'S SQUID!"
:)
I don't mean this to be a troll.. I'm just saying things like Nintendogs are a little more compelling than "Find the darker water with the giant squid. Then kill it, and you'll find even MORE, DARKER squids!"
For non-gamers, Cute puppies > Ugly squid, that's all I'm saying.. and that's not even bringing Sims 2 into it.. my girlfriend couldn't understand why I liked building houses and stuff until she actually got the hang of it. Now it's one of her primary relaxation games, and frankly, her being entertained is worth a hell of a lot more than what I spent on it (especially since it frees the TV up for me to play Saint's Row hehehe)
Not a fanboy of any system, just my own experience and opinion
Sounds interesting and would like to check it out... :(
At night I drink myself to sleep and pretend I don't care that you're not here with me
Katamari Damacy
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Not surprising it was duped - almost noticed it the first time.
but wasn't "flow" that minigame which was inspired by the first level of Spore? So wouldn't the "production version" of that game, be, umm, Spore? Or are we not making Spore now?
How we know is more important than what we know.
I've got a March '06 build of Flow. Besides really capturing the feeling of being a microorganic predator (if that's actually a feeling), the different thermoclines added lots of neat touches--'hunting' by dashing down one level and back up, retreating, lots of fun stuff. It was the simplicity and fluidity that really made it jump out at me, like the article mentioned. No manual, no UI... just jump in and immediately 'get it'.
The music also was very reminiscant of Homeworld.
I'd love to play a more in depth version. Is there a more recent build to toy with?
Iloveflowbees.com
God spoke to me.
The link to the website only seems /.'ed
w _04142006.zipo wing/flow_04142006.zipo wing/core.swf
p 1 42006.zipf
The direct links are still alive
Try the Coralized links first
Offline Version
ftp://intihuatani.usc.edu.nyud.net:8090/Cloud/flo
http://intihuatani.usc.edu.nyud.net:8090/Cloud/fl
The SWF
http://intihuatani.usc.edu.nyud.net:8090/cloud/fl
-ftp://intihuatani.usc.edu/Cloud/flow_04142006.zi
-http://intihuatani.usc.edu/Cloud/flowing/flow_04
-http://intihuatani.usc.edu/cloud/flowing/core.sw
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I think my folks are holding out for the action-packed title "When I Was Your Age: Walking Home From School In the Snow, Uphill, Both Ways".
It's a sort of FPS/RTS hybrid game. The atmospherics alone are going to blow your mind.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
"immersive games for people who don't consider themselves gamers" doesn't describe PS3 games. That describes the Wii mentality.
well, there goes his college's server(s). I bet all the web dev students using the servers for final projects and people paying next semester's tuition online are just delighted over that one. And youtube is down at this very moment too so now they REALLY have nothing to do in the meantime. Hope they got Wiis or something :P
btw he should have asked for a better offer from ANYONE before accepting Sony's cuz they'll screw up his idea into a horrible, twisted, crap version like they do with most of their other products cuz they think they'll make more money *cough cough PS3 cough* I'd be surprised if it didn't eventually come out classified as a racing game/RPG with strong anime undertones.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Wow, the first level of spore has been upgraded to ps3 level gameplay, I have to say I'm impressed.
Now if sony could actually finish any of their games.
Ironically, the captcha is looser!!
Speaking of...
What's the deal with Spore? Wasn't that game supposed to come out this year, now some places have its release date as late next year!
That is not cool.
You take it, I don't want it...
It's a great idea, and Nintendo's doing it perfectly.
But what casual-gamer is going to drop $700 on a PS3? Come on.
I'd be unhappy if I'd paid money for this. I'll admit that it stopped me from falling asleep for six minutes, but that's as far as I'll go.
immersive games for people who don't consider themselves gamersThat mandate looks as if it were ripped straight from a Wii marketing promo. Hopefully the fact that fl0w is on PS3 won't preclude this dude from trying his hand at a Wii game; they could be a perfect match.
We'd also have a stream of "wii fl0w" jokes to keep us occupied.
-f
Your brain is not a computer.
...the launch titles are so crappy.
I really like the online services that all the three next generation consoles offer - I am really looking forward to simpler, yet still fun, games being able to be developed and bought for far less than the tradtional blockbuste games cost.
Somehow in the middle of playing the game "who copied who" people seem to have forgotten that the point of all this is to give us gamers more options.
Now the race is on to see who takes this segment of the market seriously and really gets behind a lot of smaller but innovative games for the online market.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The game is great itself. Though the entertainment value isn't as good as the typical games that you would pay for today, the concept itself is good. The construction of the game is also very smooth. Though the goal of being a relaxing game is sometimes not achieved, considering that competitive gamers could get frustrated with not being able to "grow larger".
Definitely something everyone should try out. Keep in mind though that the Flash game itself is incomplete, but you can post on the forums to give suggestions and discuss the concept with the creator.
If you haven't played fl0w before, go check it out http://intihuatani.usc.edu/cloud/flowing/. I used to work for the dorms at my school, sitting at the front desk for hours at a time. I spent many hours sitting, watching this game because it is truly beautiful. After about 3 times through it's kinda old, but still, those first couple times were pretty amazing...
I always thought that chick from Final Fantasy 7 was a play on Jehova.
Anyone can "stand up for what they believe", but it takes a very brave individual to change what they believe. - Loundry
Fight on.
For a game thats touted as being so excellent, its pretty boring and shallow.
I played fl0w for about 30 minutes.. you just grow this creature in a pretty limited fashion by eating things on different z-depth levels.
The stuff I've read on flow is all about freedom of choice, and playing how you want, and being simple to pickup, and the sense of satisfaction - After 30 mins, it becomes extremely boring, there is no sense of satisfaction, and it gets surprisingly hard (well i guess its hard.. these other huge "creatures" try to eat some bulby bits off you.
Perhaps there is some amazing part of fl0w that I've missed - other worlds, a "level up" feature, some ability other than swimming to the mouse cursor
This game is not fantastic, however, the ideas behind its design are great
...how about a game I can control not with hands but brain waves? Or with speech but in a truly, truly seamless unambiguous manner? Something like VR but which actually exists outside of a dedicated muli-million dollar facility? Maybe it's asking too much, but still, anything that I need to play using the keyboard and/or mouse has limits to how much it can 'flow', at least for myself.
Then again, good game design is always a huge thing. Brings to mind the snake game in Nokia cellphones...almost perfect flow, with nothing to learn.
was that it was a nice little inuitive game. This crys out to played on the DS or the Wii (more likely the DS).
analog stick mouse touch pad
I think the wrong super power bought this game - in the same way as trying to squeeze GTA onto a DS would be stupid.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
You start out on a yellow screen as a circle monster, after finishing off the centipede looking creature on the bottom of the first set of blue levels. The centipede drops a yellow dot, you eat it and evolve into a circle monster creature. I keep eating stuff and made my way to the bottom using the red "go deeper" dots and eventually fought a long snake creature, like I was on the first level. After deafeating him, I worked my way UP to the top and was able to kill off the large orange paramecium type creatures, that before I had to run away from. After I got back to the top - no more levels to do.
..........FULL STOP.
reminds me of Nokias Snake or Intellivisions Snafu so what is the deal?
Try it - it is also enjoyable and innovative, has nice graphics and sound... no squids though. There was a PSP version called Every Extend Extra, but it was not as good.
You can download it from here :http://nagoya.cool.ne.jp/o_mega/product/e2.html
If you want to read a little more about it before and see screenshots, my mini-review is available here :
http://bartsnews.blogspot.com/2006/11/every-exten
Move around, eat something, grow larger? Kind of based on the classic BSD (I think) and other early computer game, "Snake." (But with fancy graphics, smooth navigation, and Z levels.) Cool, yes. Revolutionary? Ummmm...
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
I played it until I morphed shape to a different creature. Anybody who says "Oh good to see a game that's about gameplay instead of pretty graphics", did you actually PLAY the game? The pretty visuals are its only redeeming quality. As for intuitiveness, it's not. The feedback or clues about the point of the game are just SHINY CIRCLES. Great communication with the player, thanks! I don't see how this could appeal to anybody except the most abstract-computer-art-obsessed people.
It's just glorified snake.
Like Duke Nukem Forever?
If you have not played it yet, do so. It is interestingly addictive. My girlfriend watched me play it for a long time, what seemed like an hour but could have been much shorter or longer. In the end I got frustrated because we could not figure out how to get me to evolve into what I would consider the third level of the game -- I had already eaten everything there was to eat. Maybe it was just a bug in the version I downloaded.
I guess this is Sony's attempt to appeal to "people who don't consider themselves gamers"... Because "people who don't consider themselves gamers" are willing to spend $600 on a *gaming console*
I hear tell that the pixel artists are so hard to find that that's causing the delay....
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
sony is going to charge for this??? it had better at least use the tilt feature of the controller to justify the charge. especially since numerous flash versions exist and a 480p version is bound to show up on wiicade.com
My nephew is 6. He's been 'playing' the N64 or Gamecube games for 3 years. Granted, at 3 he was just running zelda around the big field, ocasionally swinging his sword at random objects, but he played. He is growing up knowing how to navigate an avatar in 3D space as naturally as he can draw on the kids menus mazes. He can hit pause, sneeze, and unpause to re-attack mid-battle now at a speed that impresses me. Odd to think the connections that will from in his brain this way.
The other day, i broke out the Atari Joystick that has the origional Asteroids, Missle command, etc games in it to show a friend 'the good old days'. My nephew, saw asteroids on the screen, with the flat triangle ship and 8 sided boulders rolling across the screen and ask "is that a video game?" It was so crude, he barely recognized it, then proceeded to pay for an hour.
A game with the exact same premis and idea was released long ago for the SEGA Dreamcast. This is FAR from being original.. Maybe his thesis should be reconsiddered for plagarism..
The fact that a graduate student made a game similar to early levels of Spore.
The fact a graduate student thinks a casual gamer is going to buy a 600 dollar console.
Or the fact that the graduate student thinks a console is better for a casual gamer than a flash?
somebody had to do it
there's no place like ~
They are so copying Nintendo. Come on people. Nintendo is focusing on Gameplay rather then flashy graphics. Damn you, sony. Be original for once.
fl0w is in the same boat as Gnome or KDE games -- all there have cheap graphics.
\
http://www.mirrordot.com/stories/c50bd8a291fca13bf 800b6e9d05087a4/index.html
Players will notice faint outlines of the creatures lurking at lower depths, a foreboding sign that vicious manta- and squid-like enemies await. The water darkens as the creature advances to deeper levels.... Mr. Chen's mandate: build immersive games
Funny, but when he said, "build immersive games," I didn't think he meant it literally.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Yes, I know. Its amazing how cheap it is to get a fully functional 3.2GHz+ home computer that will handle word processing and flash-enabled web browsing with a high end video and sound system for 3D gaming. Not to mention being very quiet and sleek looking, and we all know how cheap quiet is for a HTPC right?
I'm so sick of hearing about the PS3's price. Go buy one and install Linux on it and use it as your silent PC for a while then complain to me about how you paid a miserable $500 for it. When you decide its just barely worth the money for a fast and silent good looking PC, buy a blu-ray movie and watch one of those. If you're not into movies, try playing some PS3 games on it instead, assuming you enjoy video games. When you get bored of those features, just use it to listen to music for a while instead or to browse your photos directly off your camera.
God forbid anyone think about what they're getting for the money.
PS, if you really want a cheap gaming-only type system, the PS2 is about $100 with a memory card and game included these days, less than half the price of a Wii. Or buy a Wii. I don't care. But don't complain that the PS3 is too much money, its damn cheap for what you get -- I know how much it costs to build a decent silent home computer and it won't play games as well as the PS3 does and it doesn't have bluetooth support either.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Seriously, I read this submission like the greatest thing since sliced bread just came out and gave it a shot. I recognized the gameplay right off the bat. In fact I have a copy kicking around for the Apple II that plays close to this, download it here http://www.picofactory.com/abandonware/serpentine . still cool though, i use to play the old game a lot, very simple, very addictive. Obviously not as good graphics and there are differences, but not by too much - maze instead of water, keyboard instead of mouse, levels instead of "going deeper" and squids instead of serpents. I should re-write old games and call it innovative too!
So, this is a RPG where you are a grad student trying to finish their thesis? Cool! It's all about flow!
I went to the website but there was just this floaty thing moving around some dots. Maybe I downloaded the wrong game.
Sent from my iPhone
That's all fine and well as long as the damn PS3s actually work a year down the line. Since I've gone through three PS2s now because their DVD readers crapped out (usually within a year - so far my slim has not died yet, although almost immediately it decided it wouldn't read non-game DVDs), I frankly don't trust Sony anymore to provide high quality reliable hardware, especially in the first iteration of a system, and doubly so when that system was plagued by pre-release manufacturing issues relating to the new optical system that they are desperate to push.
Talk to me in a year, show me that your Blue-Ray drive still works and that there are some decent games out for the system, and then I'll consider admitting that $600 is not an insane price to pay for a PS3.
Uhhh, it looks to me like this game is just Snakes w/ a mouse. And without having to worry about running into yourself.
This is supposed to be new?
THe most recent article on current costs of the blu-ray component is $125 out of the $840 required to build a premium ps3. The reason standalone blu-ray drives are so expensive is because they are pc's that happen to have blu-ray drives included in them (don't believe me? look at the makeup of a current blu-ray drive).
e nt&task=view&id=4222&Itemid=46
Here is the link on ps3 manufacturing costs:
http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_cont
I'll be that in the next three years cost of making the blu-ray will go down from $125 to to $35 and lower (dvd drive components are below $15 dollars).
Hmmm... Pie...
It's here: http://malfy.org/
but analog! How ingenious is that?
I'm sure it'll keep people enthralled as long as centipede did... but I'm sure the version that works on a Ti-83 calculator will make it 10x more replayable.
I mean enjoyed it for whatever time he/she played it, try the Cloud Game. Its also made with the same relaxing theme in mind. Don't worry if you have trouble with the control part in the beginning, you will figure out the "how-to" part after a min or so.
Politicians and Pedophiles: Two groups of exploitive bastards who are most dangerous when they're thinking of children.
Which is a good thing.
Was I the only one who couldn't figure out how to start eating things?
I agree with you wholeheartedly on the hardware probably needing revision and/or fixes. That's how early adopter hardware always is though, its not just Sony. New TVs, new cars, new everything have problems right off the assembly line.
I'm waiting for a few months before picking up a PS3 and with or without games available, it will be a good BluRay player and PC platform for Linux. Each of which is worth more than the asking price. Its only 2/3 the price of a brand new BD player alone for that matter.
So while I understand your hesitancy, the "worth the price" issue is not related to its hardware reliability -- people purchase early adopter hardware all the time that die within 6 months (LCD and plasma TVs when they were first available come to mind).
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
I'm not sure, or is it Angband?
..........FULL STOP.