Gaming on iPhone

Yes, we all know that iPhone is cool and all, but the very first question every true gamer should ask is “Are there any games on it?“. (I admit that my first thought I’ve had when I first heard about running unofficial code on it was “I wonder if I there will be ZX Spectrum emulator for iPhone?“, but we all know I’m a freak.)

I didn’t check gaming prospects right after buying the damn gadget, because I was too busy with jailbreaking and hacking SIM (umm, yes, there were problems). Also, my non-digital life was pretty busy, so the guilty pleasure of gaming unfortunately had to wait.

Finally, I have now investigated the subject and I am pleased to announce that the situation is better then I expected, even though there is no ZX Spectrum… ahem. So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, the situation is as follows :

• we have a port of Doom that is supposedly nearly playable in widescreen, if you trust YouTube video that is
• we have a NES emulator that I don’t really give a damn about since Contra is unplayable on touchscreen (but hey, for showing off it is good enough)
• we have a SCUMMVM port that might allow me to finally finish Day of the Tentacle
• we have a PSX emulator that is molasses slow and probably will never reach playable speed (but if I’m wrong, I will be very happy)
• we have some wicked physics game that looks intriguing (in fact it is just a port of Crayon Physics)
• and, last but not least, we have a quite good Gameboy Advance emulator!

Final Fantasy Tactics

The last one is my grand favourite so far. There are still glitches, speed needs improvement, some games are not emulated – but heck, being able to play Final Fantasy Tactics on my damn cellphone makes up for all of it.

Arcade games won’t ever be the same experience, because touchscreen makes it impossible to have the same reactivity level as on the regular pad and buttons combo. This is what makes NES emulator so crappy (though I appreciate the effort). Gameboy Advance, however, has a large library of premium RPG and strategy games that don’t require that fast reaction time and allow for accidental pressing of wrong direction button. Advance Wars, Final Fantasy Tactics, Fire Emblem, Final Fantasy IV, V, VI… It’s a pity that Golden Sun doesn’t work yet, but hey, it’s just the beginning.

Advance Wars

Although there is still room for improvement, I am fairly certain that the successive updates will bring this emulator into near-perfection. After all, when GBA emulation begun on PSP, it was much worse in the beginning, but then became full-fledged emulator. And iPhone has more processing power onboard, even if it doesn’t have dedicated graphics unit, so the chances are we will be seeing solid improvements relatively soon.

Now, about that ZX Spectrum emulator port?…

Gaming on iPhone

Yes, we all know that iPhone is cool and all, but the very first question every true gamer should ask is “Are there any games on it?“. (I admit that my first thought I’ve had when I first heard about running unofficial code on it was “I wonder if I there will be ZX Spectrum emulator for iPhone?“, but we all know I’m a freak.)

I didn’t check gaming prospects right after buying the damn gadget, because I was too busy with jailbreaking and hacking SIM (umm, yes, there were problems). Also, my non-digital life was pretty busy, so the guilty pleasure of gaming unfortunately had to wait.

Finally, I have now investigated the subject and I am pleased to announce that the situation is better then I expected, even though there is no ZX Spectrum… ahem. So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, the situation is as follows :

• we have a port of Doom that is supposedly nearly playable in widescreen, if you trust YouTube video that is
• we have a NES emulator that I don’t really give a damn about since Contra is unplayable on touchscreen (but hey, for showing off it is good enough)
• we have a SCUMMVM port that might allow me to finally finish Day of the Tentacle
• we have a PSX emulator that is molasses slow and probably will never reach playable speed (but if I’m wrong, I will be very happy)
• we have some wicked physics game that looks intriguing (in fact it is just a port of Crayon Physics)
• and, last but not least, we have a quite good Gameboy Advance emulator!

Final Fantasy Tactics

The last one is my grand favourite so far. There are still glitches, speed needs improvement, some games are not emulated – but heck, being able to play Final Fantasy Tactics on my damn cellphone makes up for all of it.

Arcade games won’t ever be the same experience, because touchscreen makes it impossible to have the same reactivity level as on the regular pad and buttons combo. This is what makes NES emulator so crappy (though I appreciate the effort). Gameboy Advance, however, has a large library of premium RPG and strategy games that don’t require that fast reaction time and allow for accidental pressing of wrong direction button. Advance Wars, Final Fantasy Tactics, Fire Emblem, Final Fantasy IV, V, VI… It’s a pity that Golden Sun doesn’t work yet, but hey, it’s just the beginning.

Advance Wars

Although there is still room for improvement, I am fairly certain that the successive updates will bring this emulator into near-perfection. After all, when GBA emulation begun on PSP, it was much worse in the beginning, but then became full-fledged emulator. And iPhone has more processing power onboard, even if it doesn’t have dedicated graphics unit, so the chances are we will be seeing solid improvements relatively soon.

Now, about that ZX Spectrum emulator port?…

Behind the scenes – OpenOko

I had the pleasure to bid a visit to OpenOko, small Polish game development company, and spend some time with Marcin Rogucki, the Lead Programmer and my friend from high school.

Hidden in one of the numerous XIX century tenement houses of my hometown of Łódź, the studio occupies surprisingly nice apartment – in contrast to very steampunk’ish (to put it diplomatically) interiors through which a visitor has to find his way first.

The corridors and staircases leading to OpenOko could
one day be used as a level in one of their games

So far the team has produced a couple of very low-budget games that they are still ashamed of (judging by the fact they are not listed on their official site) and one more complete product – Dragonblade : Treasure of the Cursed Lands. The game has been distributed in Russia by Akella and entered the top five of best selling games by the end of 2006. Curiously enough, you won’t find a mention about it on their English website, only in Russian – click here to see it. In Poland you can buy the game in 3Kropki internet shop – check that it has different cover artwork.

Dragonblade trailer on YouTube

Dragonblade is definitely not Half Life 2, that’s true, the influences of Witcher and Painkiller are obvious and the game has its share of issues, right, but nevertheless it features some interesting models, good lighting, and generally allows the player to get some shooting/fighting action in dark fantasy world. On a side note, I dare say that the main protagonist bears slight resemblance to Dante from Devil May Cry as well – but maybe it’s just me. If you want to learn more, here you can download the offical English game presentation.

Dragnoblade : Treasure of the Cursed Lands

Unfortunately, in Polish reality the choice is simple – either the game costs 20PLN (about 7 USD) and sells in large number of copies, or it costs 50PLN (18USD) and sells in too few copies for the company to make a living.

The reason for it is the fact that target demographic are essentially male gamers 12 to 16 years old – they are the majority of game market audience. For them lack of originality (yet another 3D shooter) is not a problem, because they want another game similar to what they already know. They don’t have too high expectations of cheap games either, because being realistic in their judgements they can tell the difference between Valve and OpenOko. And they definitely don’t have big budget to spend on the game.

Therefore, it boils down to sad, but unfortunately very real-life choice : either you make a very polished game, which impacts development time and the cost of final product to the point where it becomes not commercially profitable, or you consciously make a game of lesser quality, but the development cost is lower and therefore the gain margin allows you to keep on going.

Inquisitor – one of the titles in development by OpenOko

If you are a gamer for longer time (like me), you surely remember one or two studios that gave us truly great titles and then ceased to exist due to financial reasons? Well, the economic reality in Poland is even more harsh than in States, therefore managing a game development studio requires making this kinds of difficult decisions.

But don’t worry, with every accomplished project the arsenal of tricks and special effects that OpenOko team has up their sleeve increases. Each new game contains some elements which may then be used in the next games, such as nice bloom effect, very realistic water, lens effects, smarter AI and so on.

Please note the water reflections, the haze effect and the amount of detail in weapon

Already their new project is shaping up nicely, judging by what I have been shown during my visit. Contrary to what you may read on OpenOko website, the next project is going to be a tactical shooter, codenamed GBR (from Russian Grupa Bystrego Reagirowania – Quick Response Group, as in “armed response”). Probably you will be the first ones to discover the screenshots from the game – it is in fact an exclusive.

GBR feels right at home – is it a Russian truck under the crane?

This is of course work in progress, as you can observe (no commands on the menu yet, lots of debugging info, minor glitches), but I have to say I was positively impressed by the overall quality of what I was shown, especially taking into account the number of people working on it. It was also very interesting to see how the features developed for current project are already being considered for application in future titles.

I really hope that OpenOko will survive on the market and continue to deliver new titles, each next one better than the previous ones. Good luck, guys!

Behind the scenes – OpenOko

I had the pleasure to bid a visit to OpenOko, small Polish game development company, and spend some time with Marcin Rogucki, the Lead Programmer and my friend from high school.

Hidden in one of the numerous XIX century tenement houses of my hometown of Łódź, the studio occupies surprisingly nice apartment – in contrast to very steampunk’ish (to put it diplomatically) interiors through which a visitor has to find his way first.

The corridors and staircases leading to OpenOko could
one day be used as a level in one of their games

So far the team has produced a couple of very low-budget games that they are still ashamed of (judging by the fact they are not listed on their official site) and one more complete product – Dragonblade : Treasure of the Cursed Lands. The game has been distributed in Russia by Akella and entered the top five of best selling games by the end of 2006. Curiously enough, you won’t find a mention about it on their English website, only in Russian – click here to see it. In Poland you can buy the game in 3Kropki internet shop – check that it has different cover artwork.

Dragonblade trailer on YouTube

Dragonblade is definitely not Half Life 2, that’s true, the influences of Witcher and Painkiller are obvious and the game has its share of issues, right, but nevertheless it features some interesting models, good lighting, and generally allows the player to get some shooting/fighting action in dark fantasy world. On a side note, I dare say that the main protagonist bears slight resemblance to Dante from Devil May Cry as well – but maybe it’s just me. If you want to learn more, here you can download the offical English game presentation.

Dragnoblade : Treasure of the Cursed Lands

Unfortunately, in Polish reality the choice is simple – either the game costs 20PLN (about 7 USD) and sells in large number of copies, or it costs 50PLN (18USD) and sells in too few copies for the company to make a living.

The reason for it is the fact that target demographic are essentially male gamers 12 to 16 years old – they are the majority of game market audience. For them lack of originality (yet another 3D shooter) is not a problem, because they want another game similar to what they already know. They don’t have too high expectations of cheap games either, because being realistic in their judgements they can tell the difference between Valve and OpenOko. And they definitely don’t have big budget to spend on the game.

Therefore, it boils down to sad, but unfortunately very real-life choice : either you make a very polished game, which impacts development time and the cost of final product to the point where it becomes not commercially profitable, or you consciously make a game of lesser quality, but the development cost is lower and therefore the gain margin allows you to keep on going.

Inquisitor – one of the titles in development by OpenOko

If you are a gamer for longer time (like me), you surely remember one or two studios that gave us truly great titles and then ceased to exist due to financial reasons? Well, the economic reality in Poland is even more harsh than in States, therefore managing a game development studio requires making this kinds of difficult decisions.

But don’t worry, with every accomplished project the arsenal of tricks and special effects that OpenOko team has up their sleeve increases. Each new game contains some elements which may then be used in the next games, such as nice bloom effect, very realistic water, lens effects, smarter AI and so on.

Please note the water reflections, the haze effect and the amount of detail in weapon

Already their new project is shaping up nicely, judging by what I have been shown during my visit. Contrary to what you may read on OpenOko website, the next project is going to be a tactical shooter, codenamed GBR (from Russian Grupa Bystrego Reagirowania – Quick Response Group, as in “armed response”). Probably you will be the first ones to discover the screenshots from the game – it is in fact an exclusive.

GBR feels right at home – is it a Russian truck under the crane?

This is of course work in progress, as you can observe (no commands on the menu yet, lots of debugging info, minor glitches), but I have to say I was positively impressed by the overall quality of what I was shown, especially taking into account the number of people working on it. It was also very interesting to see how the features developed for current project are already being considered for application in future titles.

I really hope that OpenOko will survive on the market and continue to deliver new titles, each next one better than the previous ones. Good luck, guys!

Riviera PSP impresisons

I actually almost bought a GBA, drooling at Riviera trailers and gampelay videos. You can imagine my joy when I learned that there will be a PSP version. I managed to put my hands on a Japanese version – here are the impressions.

Generally (although I seem to abuse this word, I’ll take a risk once again) – disappointment.

Basic gameplay is annoying with lots of repetitive battles and strange interface for moving/exploring. Most of sprites are upscaled from GBA version, which often results in nasty pixelisation. What passes on GBA as top notch, does not necessarily look good on PSP. The development of story is painfully slow, which made me think about how much time I would need to sacrifice to finish the game… I shuddered and left the game to others – I assume its audience will be composed of professional game reviewers and hardcore Japanese RPG fans.

If I were to say something nice about the game, there are three positive things that I found about it :
- game art direction is really nice and stylish;
- there is full voice-over in PSP version;
- the cat character is absolutely lovable (see below);

All in all, it is not a bad game, but just not for me.

A link to the past…

In the wake of recent experiments with Amiga emulation, I have tried emulating Gameboy. Yes, the very same 8 bit Gameboy Classic, the first real portable gaming console. At the time I was in love with the system and it took me some time before I actually got to own one.

In fact, my brother finally snatched one in more or less ’95, and I could play in the rare moments when he got bored with it (which of course happened to be definitely too scarce). To be honest, I have bought my own private one out of nostalgia just last month. What? It cost just something under ten euro, I can afford that. And no, I am not strange, thank you so much – it is not much for a trip back to the roots.

The first and the last generation of portable gaming.

Emerging from the depths of my memories, let’s get back to emulation. In order to be able to play your favourite old hits, a homebrew emulator called RIN will be necessary. The latest version is 1.32 and it handles the task flawlessly. Everything runs smoothly and there is absolutely no game that would cause any compatibility problems. RIN also emulates everything up to Gameboy Color (like Super Gameboy and such), so there is a variety of titles to choose from. It is also much easier on the eyes to play those games on nice and shiny PSP screen (yes, backlit LCDs were not used back then). You can apply different color schemes, contrary to the dark-green-on-light-green Gameboy screen.

I have to admit, though, that I only really play some titles using RIN. Why? Because, well, I only do own a few games (all of them absolute classics) and I think playing games that you don’t own and that are still available on the market (be it Ebay or second-hand console rentals) is piracy. Which is bad, by the way.

Anyhow, if you want to refresh your happy childhood memories and try a few rounds of Mario or Zelda without bringing your ancient (and heavy, I might just add) Gameboy Classic, now there is a way to do it comfortably on your PSP. Plus it also allows you to play some Need for Speed should you get bored, although for us, the dinosaurs of the 8 bit era, no NfS can beat the adventures in the cosy monochrome shades of green.