We have had a Tetris bulding. Some students had extra time, 10000 light bulbs, too much network cable and Linux. So the biggest Tetris game of the world was born. They converted the whole building to a Tetris display.
here
In year 2000 there was a Finnish company called Wapit. The company building, which was located in central Helsinki, had a huge LED display on its wall. You could send SMS to a certain number and your message appeared on the display.
I have been following N-Gage development and marketing very closely. I am living in Oulu, Finland, which is one of the fortresses of Nokia. Here Nokia employs around 4000 people. Nokia has 80% cellular market share in Finland. The Finns have similiar relationship with Nokia like Czech people have with their Skodas. They take it almost personally.
Nokia's way to handle N-Gage has been a big disappointment for me. Here are my opinions why Nokia failed in the points listed by Gamespy and some additional views for the case.
Sin #1: Second-Hand Library
Nokia marketing team has pushed hard to make N-Gage attractive platform. However, the game companies haven't accepted N-Gage. I have made some N-Gage programming myself and I have heard various stories about N-Gage development. Developing for N-Gage is painful because of technical problems. For example, the sound server is descripted as a "hack" over Series 60 user interface. The sound server cannot play sounds seamlessly and simultaneously. Game companies don't believe to the success of N-Gage and have doomed it because of its technical problems. Thus game companies avoid N-Gage projects.
There is no special hardware in N-Gage (same hw as in 3650, etc.). Direct hardware manipulation like in GBA is not possible due to Symbian OS layer. OS and mobile phone fuctions gulp some of the precious CPU cycles. The 100 MHz of N-Gage is not effective 100 MHz for a game engine.
Sin #2: Screen Scream
As a cellular phone N-Gage uses the Series 60 user interface which is designed for a 176 x 200 screen. Nokia didn't want to make a new user interface layout for N-Gage and chose the same traditional cellular screen as in other Nokia phones (3650, 7650). Maybe they thought saving some developing time taking this shortcut. This greatly decreases gaming experience, although N-Gage is marketed as a "game deck". Techical design and product strategy don't meet.
Sin #3: Game-Change Chaos
Symbian and Series 60 wasn't designed for hot pluggable MMC cards. Nokia made it impossible to hot swap MMC to avoid accidental data loss and OS redesign. This was a shortcut in the development. Again, this is against enjoyable playing on the "game deck" marketing strategy.
Sin #4: Talking Taco
Yes, it looks a very funny. I am personally a N-Gage owner. I have heard a lot of comments about side talking from my friends. In my opinion, this isn't a such big deal. Mobile phones creep toward PDAs and screens begin to cover the whole flat side of phone. There is no more a traditional place for a microphone. More and more phones will have a microphone placed as in N-Gage. I believe Nokia "multimedia terminal" (7700?) has this layout too. Side talking loses its weirdness like talking into a mobile phone in public did in the first place.
Sin #5: Pricey Platform
It's a expensive gaming deck, but a cheap modern cellular phone. A mobile phone has naturally more technology packed into it than a plain game boy, making it more expensive. Nokia could have directed its marketing more to "cellular/gaming deck" from pure "gaming deck". Customers should understand the additional value of mobile phone features.
Sin #6: Not A Pretty (Inter)face
Nokia has been famous for its easy menu driven user interfaces originally introduced by 3110. This is one of the major success keys of Nokia. Pity, but when Nokia kept adding more stuff into their phones they lost clue on this matter. When phones have more features they need more menus and icons. Nokia didn't found a good solution manage all this in Series 60 phones. Series 40 (6550, 8xxx & co) have succeeded better, because they have monolithic software. Series 40 has less flexibility making it easier to make "obvious" user interfaces.
Sin #7: N-Gage vs. Goliath
I just read the SNK history article of GameSpot. In Neo Geo Pocket section GameSpot stated that no one has succeeded against Game Boy. Nintendo has very famous licences (Mario) and knows how to make good games
Slashdot Mirror
> Good texture maps, and especially bump maps can alleviate the need for a lot of triangles.
Technology is called normal mapping. It's not new anymore. E.g. Cryengine implements it.
See PolyBump section
Also, there is already open source (LGPL) mesh optimizer called GNU Triangulated Surface Library. There are some impressive screenshots how well it performs.
We have had a Tetris bulding. Some students had extra time, 10000 light bulbs, too much network cable and Linux. So the biggest Tetris game of the world was born. They converted the whole building to a Tetris display. here
In year 2000 there was a Finnish company called Wapit. The company building, which was located in central Helsinki, had a huge LED display on its wall. You could send SMS to a certain number and your message appeared on the display.
I have been following N-Gage development and marketing very closely. I am living in Oulu, Finland, which is one of the fortresses of Nokia. Here Nokia employs around 4000 people. Nokia has 80% cellular market share in Finland. The Finns have similiar relationship with Nokia like Czech people have with their Skodas. They take it almost personally.
Nokia's way to handle N-Gage has been a big disappointment for me. Here are my opinions why Nokia failed in the points listed by Gamespy and some additional views for the case.
Sin #1: Second-Hand Library
Nokia marketing team has pushed hard to make N-Gage attractive platform. However, the game companies haven't accepted N-Gage. I have made some N-Gage programming myself and I have heard various stories about N-Gage development. Developing for N-Gage is painful because of technical problems. For example, the sound server is descripted as a "hack" over Series 60 user interface. The sound server cannot play sounds seamlessly and simultaneously. Game companies don't believe to the success of N-Gage and have doomed it because of its technical problems. Thus game companies avoid N-Gage projects.
There is no special hardware in N-Gage (same hw as in 3650, etc.). Direct hardware manipulation like in GBA is not possible due to Symbian OS layer. OS and mobile phone fuctions gulp some of the precious CPU cycles. The 100 MHz of N-Gage is not effective 100 MHz for a game engine.
Sin #2: Screen Scream
As a cellular phone N-Gage uses the Series 60 user interface which is designed for a 176 x 200 screen. Nokia didn't want to make a new user interface layout for N-Gage and chose the same traditional cellular screen as in other Nokia phones (3650, 7650). Maybe they thought saving some developing time taking this shortcut. This greatly decreases gaming experience, although N-Gage is marketed as a "game deck". Techical design and product strategy don't meet.
Sin #3: Game-Change Chaos
Symbian and Series 60 wasn't designed for hot pluggable MMC cards. Nokia made it impossible to hot swap MMC to avoid accidental data loss and OS redesign. This was a shortcut in the development. Again, this is against enjoyable playing on the "game deck" marketing strategy.
Sin #4: Talking Taco
Yes, it looks a very funny. I am personally a N-Gage owner. I have heard a lot of comments about side talking from my friends. In my opinion, this isn't a such big deal. Mobile phones creep toward PDAs and screens begin to cover the whole flat side of phone. There is no more a traditional place for a microphone. More and more phones will have a microphone placed as in N-Gage. I believe Nokia "multimedia terminal" (7700?) has this layout too. Side talking loses its weirdness like talking into a mobile phone in public did in the first place.
Sin #5: Pricey Platform
It's a expensive gaming deck, but a cheap modern cellular phone. A mobile phone has naturally more technology packed into it than a plain game boy, making it more expensive. Nokia could have directed its marketing more to "cellular/gaming deck" from pure "gaming deck". Customers should understand the additional value of mobile phone features.
Sin #6: Not A Pretty (Inter)face
Nokia has been famous for its easy menu driven user interfaces originally introduced by 3110. This is one of the major success keys of Nokia. Pity, but when Nokia kept adding more stuff into their phones they lost clue on this matter. When phones have more features they need more menus and icons. Nokia didn't found a good solution manage all this in Series 60 phones. Series 40 (6550, 8xxx & co) have succeeded better, because they have monolithic software. Series 40 has less flexibility making it easier to make "obvious" user interfaces.
Sin #7: N-Gage vs. Goliath
I just read the SNK history article of GameSpot. In Neo Geo Pocket section GameSpot stated that no one has succeeded against Game Boy. Nintendo has very famous licences (Mario) and knows how to make good games