Rankz at Monaco Ironman 70.3

Rankz It has been a while since my last update here and unfortunately there is not enough time for me to write longer entries at the moment. However, we’ve some news concerning Rankz, our high speed ranking calculator for sports events.
Rankz will be used at the Monaco Ironman 70.3 on September 3rd. It’s a pity that none of us will be on location in Monaco, because of other important tasks we have to complete to get another project done on time, but we will provide remote support. Monaco Ironman

OpenAL Sources on Windows and Linux

Somehow it seems that a fair amount of my development entries start with something like “I’ve been playing around with…”. So let’s celebrate this tradition.

I’ve been playing around a lot with OpenAL on both Linux and Windows machines in the past few weeks. Sometimes, I wanted to smash my head against a wall, over and over again. Especially when a feature worked perfectly on Linux, but not on Windows. Here is a funny example:

[code] AL10.alSourcef(sourceId, AL10.AL_BUFFER, bufferId);
[/code]
Note that I was using LWJGL with OpenAL 1.0 here. The code above basically associates a buffer with a source, so that it can be played. This line works without any problems on Linux, but would result in a fatal crash on Windows, where you get an invalid enum error.

After bugging around with the code and wondering, I tried this line here:
[code]
AL10.alSourcei(sourceId, AL10.AL_BUFFER, bufferId);
[/code]
And hey, that line works on both platforms. Comments highly appreciated.

Talking about Projects

There has not been published a lot of information about the current project from the project development team so I certainly won’t anticipate them. There is an idea which is probably beyond the scope of realization today and I see its time after the beta/final.

Watching music television

How many computer games have you bought in a shop this year? Ok – great, that’s very close to my answer.
You watched VIVA or MTV in the last months? You’ve seen the endless series of bothering ads for mobile games? So for that reason it is quite obvious that the project should be also playable mobile.

Playing Anno 2006

Years ago we all played some Anno 1602. When I was looking around a few days ago I saw Anno 1503 on the web. But not the outdated version for the personal computer … right – a version for mobile phones. First I couldn’t believe that, but the screen shots are looking good and it’s likely to be playable.

Why would I buy Anno 1503 for my mobile?

  • I know the game principle.
  • I like the game principle.
  • I know that playing it will make fun for more than half an hour.

Although I can think of funnier things than playing it without a mouse it is surely entertaining.

Making trendfuc*ers happy

Another future project I thought of is the “general purpose shooter” (sorry for the naming). It’s a shoot’em up generator for average games – special features only decelerate the development process. (Best example for this is the Mohrhuhn game and relatives). The business concept is not founded in game technology but in fast reaction to events occurring in the world.

  • Osama crashes the twin-towers – On 9/12 there is a game out with Osama as Mohrhuhn.
  • Zidane headbutts some Italian – the next day you can release two games: “Materazzi’s revenge” and “Hit it like Zidane”.

I agree that this concept is definitely not what a company wants to make for years (besides the designers), but it should be sufficient to establish connections to the publishers and other channels of distribution.