The revival of Co-Opp has not been as exciting and speedy as I had hoped, but hey – when was the last time YOU reanimated the dead? These things take time.
Battlefield 3 looks to be just what the doctor ordered, but lets just wait and see!

What this means for developers is that every extra option they put in for the player to do something a different way costs a lot more money than back when Black Isle were producing some of the greatest RPG’s to ever be produced, so every one has to be justified within the main story and random encounters are discouraged. Sadly this has caused a considerable deterioration in the quality of series like Final Fantasy (Compare the complexity and depth of a game like FFIX to a FFXIII) and an overall decrease in the playtime of pretty much every single player game on the market because you just cant afford to animate, design and voice a 100 extra hours of sidequests.

The other big detriment that all this technology has on game development is in reducing innovation from the big developers, its hard to justify to shareholders and investors risking millions of dollars on an untested IP or a new game play style when you can be like Activision and push out pretty much the same game every year like they do with the Call of Duty series. Fortunately it does have its advantageous side in that with the advent of digital distribution options reducing the cost of entry into the market Indie developers have been able to push into these niches with games which while not looking as pretty as Crysis or Final Fantasy XIII give you something new and refreshing to enjoy (See games like Audiosurf and Magicka).

There are however some great pieces of work on the horizon like LA Noire from Team Bondi that are making the games industry a much more varied and interesting space and bending the lines between Novel, Movie and Video Game because of technology.

L.A. Noire

It has allowed them to bring real life and emotion to the characters through an amazing technology called Motion Scan to capture the expressions of real people, however as you can see while the game looks good, they have obviously sacrificed top end graphics to push more resources in to telling the story.

Progress is a great thing, I just wish more developers knew when they didn’t need the latest and greatest technology and shifted the resources to other parts of the product instead.

Facebook Links

I’ve added Facebook “Like” buttons to all blog posts and forum topics. You can now share Co-Opp links on Facebook and they’ll look all pretty with a custom icon and proper meta tags. Admins of the Co-Opp group will be able to keep an eye on the Facebook analytics by going to Facebook Insights and adding Co-Opp.net to your list

Photos | Video

Co-Opp 2011 Mobile Homepage

Accessing Co-Opp on your mobile smart phone will now show a super mobile-friendly version of the site.

It’s made utilising CSS3 Media Queries so that any user with a window size of less than 800 pixels wide will be presented with this version of the site.

Most desktop browsers support on-the-fly media queries, so you can resize your browser to see the mobile version, right now! Woah!

I’m also keen on implementing another media query for widescreens, let’s say 1440+ wide, that will show a fullscreen version of the blog, much like how the forum is.

The forum also resizes to the mobile dimensions when scaled down, however I ran out of time yesterday so it’s a little messy. In the coming days I’ll clean it up a bit.

Note: I believe current Blackberry and Nokia default browsers do not support media queries. Future versions of these phones should do so.

I’m writing down some flowcharts now, but I’m interested in what you guys think!
How would YOU structure the forums?

Leave your comments below!

People had moved on in life – they went to university, they got a ‘real job’, they started families. Without even realising, gaming had all but disappeared from their lives.
clan ohnd itself had been inactive for over a year for the same reasons. It would have been the perfect time for me to follow suit and just move on.

But for what ever reason, I couldn’t do it.

I couldn’t bring myself to put the clan down, even though it was clearly already dead.
Was it pride? Was it hope? Was I simply holding on to the memory of something great? I don’t know, I never really thought about it that much.

But all this reflection is meaningless, as clan ohnd will be attempting a come back in 2011.

Yep. That’s right!

Sometime over the next month or two, candyman will be back in the saddle, and he is looking for a challenge.
It’s not yet known what shape Co-Opp will take, or if it will even be able to get off the ground after being neglected for so many years – only time will tell.

All I know is – if it works, clan ohnd may just live on forever.
If it fails, I promise I will allow clan ohnd to die a honourable death.
With fire.

And explosions.

Be sure to invite others to the event page and get signed up! Let’s make this once again an awesome LAN. More details to come and be confirmed within the next few weeks so stay tuned and watch this space for big announcements.

Instead of reviewing the strengths and weaknesses of the device as a whole, I’ve decided to do a series of blogs reviewing a variety of apps available on the iPhone, which ultimately are what I feel make it the leading smartphone, being an exceedingly well-designed mobile platform for the consumption of other media, despite Apple’s walled garden policy (There are of course ways around this, if you’re comfortable with potentially voiding your warranty). Oh, and you can apparently use them to call people too.

Angry Birds – 4/5

This is the obligatory Angry Birds review. Some pigs have stolen your eggs and are hiding in non-council approved fortresses constructed from stones, planks of wood and oh so brittle glass. You get your eggs back by flinging your birds at the preposterous pig fortresses with a giant slingshot, all in the hope of bringing it down on their smirking piggy faces. It’s cheap, it’s casual and it’s fun. On the rare occasion it’s phone-smashingly frustrating, but only rarely. Get it.

http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/angry-birds/id343200656?mt=8

Fruit Ninja – 3/5

You’re a ninja. Ninjas hate fruit. Cut the fruit.

Basically, a variety of super juicy fruit flies onto the screen and you swipe your finger/sword to cut them, showering fruit and pulp everywhere. As you progress, there’s more fruit, miss a few, and you lose.  This is even simpler than Angry Birds, with the benefit of actually calming you (It even has a non-score/time/life based ‘zen mode’) rather than inducing violence (Fruit excluded). It’s cheap and fun. At the risk of scurvy, get it.

http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/fruit-ninja/id362949845?mt=8

Godville – 4/5

This has been described as a ‘zpg’, or zero-playing game. You are a god. You have a hero. Your hero wanders around fighting monsters, exploring and you mostly just watch. If that didn’t grab you, it gets better. It’s text based! If you’re still reading this, there is hope yet.

You will spend most of your ‘playing’ time reading the hero’s diary. As he explores and fights he will record his thoughts in a regularly updated diary. This is in great part one of the strength’s of this game. The entries are humorous and regularly reference gaming and pop-culture. Users can submit entries and scenarios and even item names. As your hero levels up, the amount of interactivity increases, though from the start you can influence his actions through use of your ‘God Voice’, or the Encourage/Punish commands, which all ultimately have an effect on your hero similar to the pet system used in Liongate’s Black and White games. There is a degree of mutliplayer and sociability involved, you can duel the heroes of other gods and your hero can join guilds and pantheons.

It’s clever and it’s free,  get it.

http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/godville/id353421868?mt=8

Rogue Touch – 3/5

Rogue on the iPhone. If you don’t know what Rogue, or rogue-like is, for-shame. Do yourself a favour and find out. You may be familiar with the more recent ADOM (Ancient Domains of Mystery), another old-schoolish ASCII rpg. These games are traditionally complex and frequently involve dungeon crawling and the death of your hero. Rogue Touch is an iPhone port featuring actual (low-bit) graphics and touch controls, abolishing the need to remember or write down the countless commands necessary to play their PC ASCII based counterparts.

This isn’t for everyone, but still worth checking out if you’re new to the genre or already a fan.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rogue-touch/id303471870?mt=8

Real Racing 2 – 5/5

The Forza or Gran Turismo of the iPhone. The graphics are amazing, especially on the retina display of the iPhone 4. The gyro controls are responsive and highly customisable. It features licensed vehicles and multiplayer. My only complaints would be the lack of vehicle customisation and it would be nice if their were more vehicles, but utimately these are minor gripes.

Get.

http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/real-racing-2/id386568787?mt=8

Infinity Blade – 3/5

This ‘rpg’ has been much hyped. It has amazing graphics, utilising the Unreal 3 engine and the art direction is also impressive. The gameplay and story are relatively simple. Your father has been slain by the ‘God-King’ in some sort of recurring eugenics experiment. Your goal is to avenge your father by fighting through the minions in his castle until you reach the formidable God-King himself. You will die, at least a few times. Everytime you die you start a new ‘bloodline’, essentially restarting but keeping your inventory and skills, and facing off against new and higher level minions. This occurs until you eventually have amassed high enough skills and inventory to take down the God-King. The developers do release updates with new content, ranging from inventory to new areas and mobs. Combat is touch-based, intuitive and cinematic. Combat is also most of what you’ll be doing. When not in combat, you’ll be on a short walk between mobs, to get into some more combat. I’m not bored yet, but without regular updates, I could envision this eventually getting repetitive.

Worth checking-out.

http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/infinity-blade/id387428400?mt=8

Aralon: Sword and Shadow HD – 5/5

This is Morrowind for the iPhone. The graphics, whilst not on par with Real Racing 2 or Infinity Blade, are still quite good. A fully featured open-world rpg, with guilds, faction systems, fishing, mounts and for the iPhone, a massive world, along with a shitload more. Most other reviews i’ve read seem to say the same thing, with the only downside that usually pops being some technical faults and bugs. I’ve yet to encounter any of these, but then again, i’ve barely scratched the surface.

Get.

http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/aralon-sword-and-shadow-hd/id399045373?mt=8

In the past it’s been used when the site goes down, or to post pictures (Ok, well maybe only one picture).
But from now on, It’ll be used a little more effectively!

You’ll get notified when we think an important blog goes up, or when the next event is just around the corner. If you’ve found you don’t visit the forums that much any more, but are on Facebook every day, this could be a really good way for you to keep up to date with whats going on.