GDC 2004

I'm so lucky to be able to go to the GDC held in San Jose recently.

Independent Games Festival Awards & 4th Annual Game Developers Choice Awards (Civic Auditorium)

The festival was really successful. When the audience saw their favorite games show up on the nominated and played on the huge screen, the applause was no worse than that from Oscar. Yes, it was gamers' Oscar. Knights of the Old Republic and Prince of Persia III are the big winner this year. Although my favorite Beyond Good & Evil didn't won any prizes, it was nearly nominated in all the awards.

Though I'm a game hard core who spend 4 hours on game play everyday. I still met a lot of new games on the festival. After the festival I went to tried all these new games. Viewtiful Joe is the most impressive one. Fascinating fighting and slow motion, humorous film and comic style attracted everybody passed by. And the highlight of Viewtiful Joe was that it is a perfect game not only entertain the player but the audience behind the player.

Interesting Input Devices on GDC
Tracking Glove

Don't be confused with the glove used in Virtual Reality. This glove is fairly cheap and simple. By connect two wire on the gloves, the mechanic tracking ball can feed back the two hands positions. The latency is nearly zero. This device completely fit one of my game concept about a combat simulation. And the game on the screen is a boxing game. After tried the game, I felt that the game-play I imagined is realized in this game. The total prize including the glove only cost $90. I highly recommend you guys to try it.
http://www.in2games.uk.com/testsite/index.php

Tracking_Sabre

From the same company of the gloves above. This sabre was actually a handle, which offers two point poistion so that you can countrol the katana in the game demo. But it didn't support yaw, which is a big problem to simulate real fence.
http://www.in2games.uk.com/testsite/index.php

Mobile Key

This tablet support more than 25 isolated keys. User could assign different key on the keyboard to the tablet here. They also support macro which means u can arrange a serial combination of different keys to one key. Although the manufacturer claimed it was designed to simplify the players input method and offer them more comfortable composition of the keys, I found another useful area for this invention. Instead of put these keys on the board, why not stick them on the other devices or even on hands? However, the manufacturer said these keys are now only working on the tablet. Fortunately, they have the technology and available to do further development.

Eye Toyish Input

It works just like eyetoy, but the game they put in use is different from eyetoy, you have to use your body to control an aircraft.

Other Comment
Simplified Facial Modelling

This is a new British company. Different from FaceGen, this facial modelling software can scan the photos and make model by itself. You can also export one emotion to other faces. It is not a mature product, but will be great helpful in large number of 3d characters required game.

Unreal Tournament 2004 Editor

As I expected, Unreal Tournament 2004 renew the Unreal editor. The particle system and the mount system have been improved a lot. We can try more interesting and more complicated design in this engine.

I was lucky to be photoed in Yahoo News

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/040325/480/caps10303252230

Posted by Jenova at March 26, 2004 9:47 PM