USA Games News 1/24/2008
Introduction Greetings gamers, I would like to begin this news letter by wishing everyone a happy new year. For USA Games we have some interesting plans and projects in the works that we feel will improve the accessible gaming community as a whole. While all the things mentioned in this news letter might not exactly appear in 2008 we are at least considering them for the future. On a personal note I want to extend an apology to those on pre-order status for Montezuma's Return. I know over the last month or so updates have not been released with my usual promptness, and I think I should give a little summary on what has been happening behind the scenes. Some of it you probably know, and some you might not. After Montezuma's Return Beta 8 was released in early December I began looking into some of the mysterious bugs that were causing some users troubles such as the jump and hang bug, the registration application failing to close after successfully registering, etc. Unfortunately, to this date those bugs still are giving me issues, and I admit I probably spent too much time working on those bugs rather than working on areas of the game that might have been more productive. After that, there was the Christmas and New Years holidays. As I might have mentioned I went away on vacation during that week or so, and while I could have worked on the game I chose to take the time off. Honestly, I really needed the break from the game. Following the Christmas/New Years holidays I began moving the USA Games web site, email services, and mailing lists to my new web host. That took allot of time away from Montezuma's Return, but I am really glad we made this decision to move. More about the web site will be mentioned in this news release later. As it finally happened I didn't actually take up work on Montezuma's Return until well into the month of January. I spent about a week or so on Beta 9, and released it a few days ago on the new web site. That pretty much brings us up to current events. Montezuma's Return Currently USA Games is working on an update for Montezuma's Return. In addition to some late breaking bug fixes we are now working on levels 7 through 11. The all new levels feature invincible monsters, more dark rooms, and are far more challenging than levels 1 through 6. USA Raceway Of late we have been getting quite a number of questions and requests for more information about USA Raceway. Rather than attempt to reply to each and every person directly we felt it best to write up a summary here in this news letter, and hope that we are able to answer most if not all the questions at once. We have been getting a number of people asking when USA Raceway will be ready for release. Unfortunately, we honestly can not guarantee any specific release date. We had mentioned a while back we hoped to have some sort of release in 2008, and some have taken that comment to mean that Raceway would be completed in 2008. What we meant was we plan to begin testing in 2008, but it is more realistic to see Raceway finished in 2009. Recently, we had polled some gamers opinions about making Raceway platform independent by converting the game to Java 6. While some were in favor of the change others strongly objected to the move to Java. The primary reasons for the disagreement was over reliable Sapi support in Java and strong reliable force feedback game controller support. While neither issue is impossible to solve our cost assessment of licensing the Java speech sdk for Sapi 5 was too expensive for us to pursue at this time. Also in light of the number of people waiting on a finished product we have decided the time required to convert the game from .NET to Java is not in the games best interests. So as a result we will complete Raceway 1.0 using .NET 3.0 and DirectX August 2007. Some have asked to Beta test Raceway when it is released. Like Montezuma's Return we will offer it on our web site through the paid Beta testing program. Gamers, anyone, can purchase the Alpha or Beta version, test it, and will be given a free upgrade to 1.0 once it is released. We feel this is the most fair and reasonable way to test a product as well as earn the money it requires to license tools, music, sounds, etc that aid in the development of the project. It all comes down to the old saying, "it takes money to make money." Tomb Raider Over the passed couple of months questions and comments have been flowing into our info email address asking for more information about our Tomb Raider project. A lot of people have asked why there is not a lot of information about the game on our web site, and why we are keeping it so low key. That may confuse some, but the answer is actually pretty simple. Unfortunately, the Tomb Raider trade marks, sounds, etc is all copyrighted by Core Design and Edos Interactive. Creating an exact clone of any of the Tomb Raider games could land me in some very legal hot water. If I release it as free ware, fan fiction, they might be willing to look the other way. If I want to sell the game it is possible, though unlikely, they might choose to take me to court over it. So I have to plan the games development carefully. One way to keep the same degree of mystery, excitement, and the Tomb Raider theme is to simply create our own unique character, story line, and call it something like Tomb Hunter. It would be basically the same concept, but not an outright copy of the Tomb Raider games. I think I can make the game close enough to the original to have the same end user experience, but different enough to keep Edos from making trouble for USA Games. Java VS .NET As a lot of you know USA Games is currently researching the possibility of writing some multiplatform games in Java 6. Research is going well, but it could take us several months to design and produce a prototype game for testing and distribution. While I know the Java language there are some Java packages such as javax.sound.sampled that I have never worked with before. While it looks as though javax.sound.sampled will do the job I still require some hands on experience with it before I begin cranking out games. Also I have written Montezuma's Return in C# .NET and through the course of that project I have written a lot of source code which I could easily attach to a new game project. With Java I have no ready to use source code some of my favorite custom classes in C# .NET would have to be converted to Java before I could use them in new games. That obviously will take some time. For example, I have a custom C# .NET class called calculate. This special class is used for doing lots of the common game calculations as well as picking random numbers, etc. So before I can write Java games I will first have to convert my C# calculate class to Java. As far as our research goes we do think Java may look promising long term for USA Games products. The javax.sound.sampled package is not quite up to the DirectX DirectSound API standards we are use to, such as 3D virtualisation, but it does feature frequency shifts, volume changes, and stereo panning which would work fine for side-scrollers like Montezuma's Return, and for Space Invader clones like Aliens In the Outback, Dark Destroyer, Troopenum, etc.However, there is an OpenAL implementation, JOAL, that is very near our DirectX DirectSound standards we are use to. One area we are very impressed with is Javas support for networked applications. We have been researching it, and we are very excited to see how much easier it is to write multiplayer networked games in Java. This might prove useful if I decide to ever write any multiplayer board games, racing games, card games, etc. In the end we are still doing research, but we hope some of our future projects will be able to take advantage of what we have discovered. Though, for the moment games like Monte, Raceway, and possably the Tomb Raider project will remain .NET based projects as we already have the built in support and some working code to use for those projects. Web Site Earlier in January the USA Games web site has moved over to Shaned.net web hosting services which was a far better hosting plan for us in the long run. We now have double the disk space, double the bandwidth, and we now have been putting all of our mailing lists under one domain and web service. Also this change will allow us to expand in ways we couldn't before. One of the new changes to the USA Games services is the all new game developers list. This list has been setup for game developers new and old who want to discuss the ins and outs of programming games in Java, Python, C++, or .NET. On this list you can ask questions, share code, and discuss any aspect of creating and developing accessible games. You can find out more about this list at http://www.usagames.us/lists.php which is our list page. In addition to the developers list USA Games is working on adding a developers center to the web site with language documentation, example source code, and game programming tootorials. WE are also planning on adding a Linux center for blind computer users interested in learning or researching the Linux operating system. Such topics will discuss the Gnome desktop, orca screen reader/magnifyer, and some accessible applications for Linux. Most of all some getting started guides that will be written for the average computer user, from the blind persons point of view, for a blind/low vision audience. Obviously, not all of this will happen at once. Much of this is still very off in the future. However, we are thinking about adding these new services and training courses to educate as well as inform our fellow blind/low vision computer users around the world of a variety of technologies. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED] If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
