<![CDATA[[GameRatty] tag: test]]> http://gameratty.com/tag/test Thu, 04 Dec 2008 13:17:35 +0000 iRatty Engine http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss <![CDATA[Homeage: Bases on 4 Ancient Myths]]> http://gameratty.com/article/1829ba001973907d9c32669428dea9e6 http://gameratty.com/article/1829ba001973907d9c32669428dea9e6 Fri, 05 Dec 2008 10:18:45 +0000 ancient myths beta test beta fantasy mmoprg homeage bases greek mythology december 18th egyptian mythology roc Homeage: Bases on 4 Ancient Myths <![CDATA[HealthyToys.org Wii contaminate test results may have been tainted by aftermarket component]]> http://gameratty.com/article/bcbf131e56457009470b78dd782e67c7 http://gameratty.com/article/bcbf131e56457009470b78dd782e67c7 A couple days ago, we talked about a list from HealthyToys.org that showed the Wii testing positive for Bromine, not something that scores you high marks on the contaminate test. While the news is upsetting, we now find out that there is a chance that the results weren’t from an original Wii part. The gang at HealthyToys has said that the contaminate may have come from a part that isn’t originally included with the Wii. They are going to redo their test, and have the new results in about a week’s time.

Link

]]> Fri, 05 Dec 2008 06:31:00 +0000 wii test healthytoys original wii results couple days ago org weeks time marks HealthyToys.org Wii contaminate test results may have been tainted by aftermarket component <![CDATA[Study looks at why successful FPS games use a lot of close combat]]> http://gameratty.com/article/180e1cce1805bd8c61c161cc246c19f8 http://gameratty.com/article/180e1cce1805bd8c61c161cc246c19f8 Gears of War 2 - Image 1


Emsense, a San Francisco-based technology company, recently conducted a study linking players' emotional response to specific gameplay elements on several popular FPS titles. Included in the list of test games were Battlefield 2142, Call of Duty 3, F.E.A.R., Gears of War, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2, and Resistance: Fall of Man, Halo 2 and Half-Life 2.

They gathered over 300 hours of data by hooking gamers up to biometric scanners and then recording brainwave activity, heart rate, respiration, eye movement, temperature and motor response over 90 minutes of gameplay.

After a thorough analysis of the data, they concluded that emotional response was generally highest and most positive during moments of frantic close combat. They said on the subject:

Close combat was the most reliable method of creating engagement, adrenaline, reward, and all the emotions that make shooters so much fun. Certainly, this is nothing new to the genre, but the next-gen games that excelled in this area were exceptionally strong at creating high-paced close combat frequently.


As a personal point of interest, the data shows that sword kills in Halo 2 reward 30 more positive emotional response over the genre benchmark.

You can view the full study and data in the source link below.


Related Articles:


]]> Thu, 04 Dec 2008 22:39:54 +0000 close combat positive emotional response close combat frequently emotional response games frantic close combat gameplay study data Study looks at why successful FPS games use a lot of close combat <![CDATA[Study looks at why successful FPS games use a lot of close combat]]> http://gameratty.com/article/e758e647a6ca95200333421d13f0dd9d http://gameratty.com/article/e758e647a6ca95200333421d13f0dd9d Gears of War 2 - Image 1


Emsense, a San Francisco-based technology company, recently conducted a study linking players' emotional response to specific gameplay elements on several popular FPS titles. Included in the list of test games were Battlefield 2142, Call of Duty 3, F.E.A.R., Gears of War, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2, and Resistance: Fall of Man, Halo 2 and Half-Life 2.

They gathered over 300 hours of data by hooking gamers up to biometric scanners and then recording brainwave activity, heart rate, respiration, eye movement, temperature and motor response over 90 minutes of gameplay.

After a thorough analysis of the data, they concluded that emotional response was generally highest and most positive during moments of frantic close combat. They said on the subject:

Close combat was the most reliable method of creating engagement, adrenaline, reward, and all the emotions that make shooters so much fun. Certainly, this is nothing new to the genre, but the next-gen games that excelled in this area were exceptionally strong at creating high-paced close combat frequently.


As a personal point of interest, the data shows that sword kills in Halo 2 reward 30 more positive emotional response over the genre benchmark.

You can view the full study and data in the source link below.


Related Articles:


]]> Thu, 04 Dec 2008 22:39:54 +0000 close combat positive emotional response close combat frequently emotional response games frantic close combat gameplay study data Study looks at why successful FPS games use a lot of close combat <![CDATA[Study looks at why successful FPS games use alot of close combat]]> http://gameratty.com/article/6d963b54b11d23087db8dc7f5033ec89 http://gameratty.com/article/6d963b54b11d23087db8dc7f5033ec89 Gears of War 2 - Image 1


Emsense, a San Francisco-based technology company, recently conducted a study linking players' emotional response to specific gameplay elements on several popular FPS titles. Included in the list of test games were Battlefield 2142, Call of Duty 3, F.E.A.R., Gears of War, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2, and Resistance: Fall of Man, Halo 2 and Half-Life 2.

They gathered over 300 hours of data by hooking gamers up to biometric scanners and then recording brainwave activity, heart rate, respiration, eye movement, temperature and motor response over 90 minutes of gameplay.

After a thorough analysis of the data, they concluded that emotional response was generally highest and most positive during moments of frantic close combat. They said on the subject:

Close combat was the most reliable method of creating engagement, adrenaline, reward, and all the emotions that make shooters so much fun. Certainly, this is nothing new to the genre, but the next-gen games that excelled in this area were exceptionally strong at creating high-paced close combat frequently.


As a personal point of interest, the data shows that sword kills in Halo 2 reward 30 more positive emotional response over the genre benchmark.

You can view the full study and data in the source link below.


Related Articles:


]]> Thu, 04 Dec 2008 22:39:42 +0000 close combat positive emotional response close combat frequently emotional response games frantic close combat gameplay study data Study looks at why successful FPS games use alot of close combat <![CDATA[Everyday Shooter Blasts onto PSP Today]]> http://gameratty.com/article/af7542d993b0b03bbc0e254ae8c7f76d http://gameratty.com/article/af7542d993b0b03bbc0e254ae8c7f76d Hi all, it’s Rusty again from the Santa Monica Studio. We are getting ready to launch Everyday Shooter PSP on the PSN store today, and we are really thrilled about how it has turned out. Between Jon Mak, Backbone Entertainment and us, we have Jon’s thoughts about how everything went on getting this made. Hope you all like what we’ve done.
_______________________
First things first: the seaweed is gone, but the hashbrowns are still in the freezer.

So Rusty wanted me to write a little blog post about Everyday Shooter for PSP. I don’t really know what to talk about so I guess I’ll start chronological and see where that goes.

I actually tried porting Everyday Shooter to PSP way back around December 20th, 2007, and stopped around December 27th, 2007. Here’s an old video I found from back then:


WHAT!!??!? WHY DIDN’T YOU RELEASE IT!?!?? WHY DID YOU SIT ON IT FOR 239846921487 MONTHS YOU SON OF SO MANY UNMENTIONABLE THINGS!!!!!!!

I thought the same thing until I remembered that it crashed every eight seconds, had a ridiculously low frame rate, was missing graphics and effects, and generally blew.

Yeah, Everyday Shooter PSP really worried me at the time. I was convinced to get the game running properly it needed to be hacked to shreds - reducing the number of enemies, changing all the
backgrounds, changing the enemy graphics - ugh, this is going to SUCK.

So I dropped the idea until Rusty contacted my agent, Warren, and I, saying Sony was interested in putting Everyday Shooter on PSP. Immediately, the floodgates opened to the stress of so many potential problems sweeping my soul to the faraway depths of darkness where it was then beaten repeatedly at three frames per second before crashing…

But Rusty said (paraphrased): “Jon, this is how it’s going to go down. We’re going to hire this developer [Backbone], and I know this guy, he is one of the best programmers I know. And the deal is going to be this: if they even hint at a suggestion of messing with your vision, we are going to fire them and find a new developer. This is going to be a straight port, we are not going to mess with your vision.”

Skeptically, I replied “and the boobies?” To which he answered “no boobies.”

Honestly, I was still skeptical.

I was also told that the original QA team for ES-PS3 was brought in to test the PSP version too, so I’m quite confident that it was left in good hands.

I’m amazed at the job Backbone did:

They actually ported it without altering any of the graphics, effects, or gameplay! How!?? No seriously, how did you do that!? Like, even the backgrounds? I was expecting to have to do this whole back and forth about what graphics needed to be changed and redesigned, what enemies needed to be reduced, gimping the game just for the sake of performance… NO! Not at all! They just somehow made it work. What is this sweet juice of hexadecimal that you drink from and where do I get it?

Then again, I’m not technically a great programmer, so maybe there’s some simple secret I’m not aware of. I generally just multiply things by negative one if they don’t work because in math, to get the opposite of something you just multiply it by negative one. Since the opposite of “doesn’t work” is “it works,” multiplying numbers by negative one should yield a correct result. Unfortunately, when
applying this strategy to Everyday Shooter PSP it still didn’t work.

Thus, and clearly thus, there was no solution.

Of course Backbone proved me wrong.

I think this is a pretty accurate port of the game. I mean, I played it till my hands cramped, jotting down every subtle problem, some bordering on imaginary, but yet still fixed. For example, the first
few builds I played, everything looked great and seemed to be in working order but something was weird. I kept getting beaned by the game! I mean, I couldn’t even get to level 4! Suspecting my own
skill level, I busted out the PS3 version just to make sure and to my surprise, I was still able reach the final stage with just three starting lives. It’s got to be the port.

Okay, so how do you convince someone that this is actually a bug and not because of some lack of skill on my part? I mean, otherwise, the game felt exactly like the PS3 version, so there was no factual information to draw from except for “well, Jon thinks it’s too hard now.” For weeks, I kept thinking they were going to ignore it, and it’ll get released, and the internet will swallow me whole, and then it will hurt a lot.

But amazingly, the bug was found. Apparently (and from what I recall — I might be wrong), it had something to do with timing issues since Everyday Shooter PSP runs at a much lower simulation rate given that the PSP isn’t as powerful as the PS3.

To this day, I’m still not sure if anyone believed me on this, and I’m not even sure if I believed myself (I’m quite positive it was way harder, though), and I totally see that the whole thing just sounded nuts and imaginary, but either way, Backbone was gracious enough to give me the benefit of the doubt and make this change. I know some people who paid a silver dollar only to have their ports birched by shoddy developers, so I’m very grateful for the amount of effort and attention Backbone gave to the project.

Anyway, we tried to make this as accurate as possible. Warren called me a few weeks before the final build asking whether I played the PSP port yet and what I thought of it. I replied, “I don’t know what to say. I mean, it’s basically Everyday Shooter PS3, except it’s running on a PSP.”
_______________________

]]> Thu, 04 Dec 2008 16:52:44 +0000 psp everyday shooter psp version everyday shooter psp everyday shooter ps3 psp port job backbone backbone backbone entertainment Everyday Shooter Blasts onto PSP Today <![CDATA[Trukz Giving Away an 8 Foot Tall Optimus Prime Made of Scrap Metal]]> http://gameratty.com/article/9666c52073d7a1b60a907d9adeee9ba2 http://gameratty.com/article/9666c52073d7a1b60a907d9adeee9ba2

optimus prime

Trukz, the online trucking simulation game has a contest going on, and the big winner will get a VERY cool 8ft tall Optimus Prime made from scrap metal (and weighing a quarter of a ton).

The Giant Robot Competition, which is ongoing until December 14 has tens of thousands of drivers driving over 250 million in-game miles since the start of November, and the winner of the statue will be announced in-game on the 15th of December.

Trukz is the trucking RPG, allowing players to embark on a virtual career as a truck driver or logistics company owner. With a host of new features being added to the game throughout December including in-game achievements, Australia, and an overhauled contract system, exciting times lie ahead for the Trukz community. So if you want to have a chance to win the most awesome, 8ft robots in the world for warding off burglars, Decepticons or just to scare the bejesus out of everyone who visits your home, go sign up.

About the game: Trukz.com allows you to play the role of a truck driver, working for companies or independently delivering cargo between cities across North America and Europe. Delivering cargo on time earns you in-game currency which can be redeemed against new trucks and equipment to make your journey more successful, while avoiding speed traps, police checking your hours of service and accidents along the way. The game features dozens of routes and different types of cargo for you to haul. The game also features hundreds of companies for you to join, giving you access to additional cargo, repair and fuel discounts, and exclusive routes to work.

All this is available free to play in your browser and ove 1.5 billion in-game miles have been logged since the game launched in April 2007. Therefore it is safe to assume that it is pretty popular indeed. So, if you want in on this contest, here are the official rules and details.

---
Related Articles at Gaming Today:


]]> Thu, 04 Dec 2008 13:33:54 +0000 game simulation game million in-game miles in-game currency in-game achievements billion in-game miles features hundreds features game features dozens Trukz Giving Away an 8 Foot Tall Optimus Prime Made of Scrap Metal <![CDATA[Warhammer Online : Age of Reckoning: PTS and 1.1 Update]]> http://gameratty.com/article/3029f77f6498aa21c44f5a943bc2c94f http://gameratty.com/article/3029f77f6498aa21c44f5a943bc2c94f Thu, 04 Dec 2008 13:23:06 +0000 rvr influence system public test server warhammer herald public quests classes information war highlights patch Warhammer Online : Age of Reckoning: PTS and 1.1 Update <![CDATA[Runes of Magic Goes Invites Players into the Open Beta]]> http://gameratty.com/article/d8b28c110579f96b5efcdc82aabee15f http://gameratty.com/article/d8b28c110579f96b5efcdc82aabee15f runes of magic

Frogster Interactive will open the Runes of Magic servers for all players on Monday, December 15th. With the start of the open beta, MMO interested players can explore the complete content that has been integrated so far into the fantasy MMORPG.

This version is open to all players after a short registration on the official website . All players that have registered so far, without being invited to the closed beta, will receive automatic access to the open beta. All players that are already active in the closed beta will keep their account. Right from the beta start the needed client software can be downloaded already on FileFront and the official website.

To thank all closed beta participants for their help in optimizing the game, a special ingame event beginning December 7th will take place. Darkness will befall Taborea and evil demons will start terrorizing the game world. Accompanying the event, the official website will continuously report about the communities efforts to repel the evil forces. After the final of the event on December 10th, the servers will go offline for last tests. This final test phase is likely to end in the first quarter of 2009 with the release of the title, but all characters that have been played until then will be available to the players after the game has been launched.

Daniel Ullrich, Director of Product Management at Frogster is extremely pleased with the closed beta:

“More than 170,000 registrations from players worldwide shortly before the start of the open beta show us, that we are on the right track with Runes of Magic.”

Interested players can still apply for access to the beta test here.

---
Related Articles at Gaming Today:


]]> Thu, 04 Dec 2008 13:17:35 +0000 beta players beta begins beta test beta start magic beta participants runes players worldwide shortly Runes of Magic Goes Invites Players into the Open Beta <![CDATA[Runes of Magic Invites Players into the Open Beta]]> http://gameratty.com/article/bf7344a179293df07fd50367cae5ef36 http://gameratty.com/article/bf7344a179293df07fd50367cae5ef36 runes of magic

Frogster Interactive will open the Runes of Magic servers for all players on Monday, December 15th. With the start of the open beta, MMO interested players can explore the complete content that has been integrated so far into the fantasy MMORPG.

This version is open to all players after a short registration on the official website . All players that have registered so far, without being invited to the closed beta, will receive automatic access to the open beta. All players that are already active in the closed beta will keep their account. Right from the beta start the needed client software can be downloaded already on FileFront and the official website.

To thank all closed beta participants for their help in optimizing the game, a special ingame event beginning December 7th will take place. Darkness will befall Taborea and evil demons will start terrorizing the game world. Accompanying the event, the official website will continuously report about the communities efforts to repel the evil forces. After the final of the event on December 10th, the servers will go offline for last tests. This final test phase is likely to end in the first quarter of 2009 with the release of the title, but all characters that have been played until then will be available to the players after the game has been launched.

Daniel Ullrich, Director of Product Management at Frogster is extremely pleased with the closed beta:

“More than 170,000 registrations from players worldwide shortly before the start of the open beta show us, that we are on the right track with Runes of Magic.”

Interested players can still apply for access to the beta test here.

---
Related Articles at Gaming Today:


]]> Thu, 04 Dec 2008 13:17:35 +0000 beta players beta begins beta test beta start magic beta participants runes players worldwide shortly Runes of Magic Invites Players into the Open Beta