TechWire

Tag - Games

OverWatch is FREE on this Valentine’s Day!

Put aside your boring hats and get into your gaming shoes! Growing in popularity yet again, Blizzard’s best-selling First Person Shooter game comes to your home this weekend absolutely FREE!. For all the gaming enthusiasts out there, who haven’t tried this awesome game yet, now is your chance! Gear up and experience the thrill of “Overwatch”.

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Call of Duty will be back with World War II

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Call of Duty: WWII

Await the surprise which will be launched in November 2017 for all the Call of Duty fans. But, this year’s Call of Duty will go ‘back to its roots’.

Unlike the conventional space-based warfare, the latest COD is coming back with “World War II”. So, what can you look ahead in the latest game?

You’ll play the role as Ronald “Red” Daniels, a United States Army private. Red is a member of the US 1st Infantry Division. World War II’s well-known battles, including D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge, will be lead by Red in his tour of duty.

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Monument Valley – A unique mobile gaming experience

What makes a good game? Is it the graphics? the gameplay? or the storyline? Actually all that aside, it is how playing the game makes you feel, that really defines it. In that sense Monument Valley a puzzle game tops it off, as the experience playing the game is fantastic. Although there have been a bazillion games released on Android, I haven’t enjoyed a game this much since Royal Revolt.

Monument Valley Screens

In short Monument Valley, is puzzle based game where you have to direct Princess Ida through 10 beautiful levels of 3D mazes. Beautiful might be an understatement. The mazes are minimalist and gorgeous, together with the geometric illusions are a treat to the eye. I agree with the Designer Ken Wong, that the image of each level is beautiful enough to frame and hang it. Princess Ida is guided through the maze by touching the pathway. The path needs to be altered through the movement of ledges and columns to bring her to the end point. The animations and gameplay is smooth, but that is on a Quad core phone so can’t really comment on whether there will be performance issues on lower end phones. The lovely background music complements the graphics and together creates a wonderful experience. The puzzles are enjoyable, designed with imagination and creativity, but not that difficult. It would have been nice if the difficulty was notched up higher.

Monument Valley Screens

Monument Valley however disappoints with having only 10 levels. For one the game can be finished in a couple of hours. Secondly since the game costs around $4 dollars, 10 levels might seem a bit insufficient for that price. But looking at the number of downloads on iOS and Android it seems people don’t mind dishing out a bit extra for novel game.

Monument Valley brings out a unique experience that you should definitely try out if you are willing to pay $4. And hopefully we will see a sequel with a lot more levels released in 2015.

Download it on Android from the Play Store or on iOS from the Apple appstore

Making your own games for Windows Phone

Windows Phone is one of the major smartphone operating systems available today. This article is focused on guiding anyone who is interested in game development to develop games for Windows Phone 8/8.1 devices.

Choosing a game engine

There are several game engines which support Windows Phone 8/8.1. These are some of the well know ones.

  • GameMaker – https://www.yoyogames.com/studio
  • Cocos2d-x – http://www.cocos2d-x.org/
  • Construct 2 – https://www.scirra.com/construct2
  • Corona SDK – http://coronalabs.com/products/corona-sdk/
  • Unity – http://unity3d.com/

In this case we are going to use Unity. Unity is game multiplatform game engine which allows us to create both 2D and 3D games. It has a free version which can be downloaded from here. The Pro version of Unity comes with more advanced features, but the free version is good enough if you’re working on a simple 2D game.

Setting up the development environment

  • Download and install Unity.
  • Download and install Visual Studio 2013 Express.

This includes the Windows Phone SDK which allows you to build your project.

Creating the project

1. Open Unity and create a new project.

File > New Project…

Browse for a folder to save the project and set the project defaults to 2D.

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2. Create these folders to store different types of assets.

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3. When you create a new project in Unity, by default the target platform is set to PC. We have to change the target platform to Windows Phone.

Go to File > Build Settings and choose Windows Phone from the list. Then click “Switch Platform”. Now the project has been converted to a Windows Phone project.

4. We are going to use some free graphics assets in our game. You can download them from here.

Visit kenney.nl for more awesome graphics.

Extract the folder and drag and drop the graphics into the Player folder you created in your project

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Now we are going to create a simple animation. Select all the character sprites and drag and drop them into the scene. You will be prompted to save the animation. Save it with the name “Walk”.

Now select the character and change its position.

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Select the Main Camera and set its size to 1.5. They hit play and you will see the animated character on the screen.

5. Save the scene and go to “Build Settings”. Press “Add Current” button to add the scene to the build. Connect your device to the PC and unlock the screen. Then hit “Build and Run”. Select a folder to save the Visual Studio project. Then the game will be deployed to your Windows Phone device.

I hope now you have a basic understanding about deploying your Unity projects on Windows Phone. Stay tuned for more tutorials.

Swing Copters, the return of Flappy Bird?

Flappy Bird was removed from the App Store this February. No one thought it would flap to the top position of app stores. However it became the most downloaded app in Apple’s App Store and Android Play store for some time.

Flappy Bird was developed by a Vietnamese developer called Dong Nguyen and it was available in Apple app store since May 2013. But it was unnoticed for months. Then some players started to tweet about its absurd difficult and the game went viral.

The game got global attention in February 2014. Flappy bird became an overnight sensation and reached the top position of App Store and Google Play. Once Nguyen claimed that the game was generating $50, 000 a day from ads.In the end the developer pulled the game out of the app stores saying that it had become too addictive.

Then he promised to re-launch the game with some changes according to the tweets below.

New-Flappy-Bird

Finally last week, Don released the next game called Swing Copters. However The dynamics are similar to flappy bird but instead of moving in the horizontal direction, you have to move in the vertical direction. And also it is much harder which is confirmed by the low rating and feedback.

Swing-Copter-Screenshots

Check out the new app and let us know what you think on the app.

Swing Copters Google Play, Swing Copters Apple store

Sri Lanka Cyber Games 2013 – Let the games begin!

Its the marquee event all gamers are waiting for, Sri Lanka Cyber games 2013. The Kandy qualifiers are already done and dusted while the finals are just around the corner on the 13th, 14th and 15th of December. SLCG is being organized by gamer.lk the team who has kept gaming alive and growing in Sri Lanka. The event which is being held at BMICH, will hold competions for 10 games listed below.

Call of Duty 4

Counter Strike 1.6

DOTA 2

Halo 4

Fifa 2011

League of Legends

Mortal Kombat 9

Tekken Tag Tournament 2

Trackman nations Forever

NFS Most Wanted

So make it to the BMICH this weekend to witness some intense gaming, and some great deals on gaming equipment. May the best gamer win.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz-fUVoItek

What is the most played computer game ever written?

Wes Cherry. Have you ever heard of him? Well, he’s known as the creator of the most played PC game ever developed. It is Solitaire – which was built for Windows and installed on millions of PCs worldwide. The game was first coded by a Microsoft intern by that time named Wes Cherry, with the help of Susan Kare. Cherry decided to add a Boss key which when pressed would switch out from the game instantly, after him thinking the game will be a workplace hit. But later it was revealed that Microsoft has remove that option before it was included in Windows. One of the workers was fired in 2006, after New York city Mayor saw the Solitaire game on his office computer. The boss key feature would have saved him if it was included in to the game.

It was known that even though the game was used by millions of users there was no compensation or any appreciation was ever given to Wes Cherry. He was never benefited financially.

Below are the interesting answers given by Wes Cherry for some of questions that people have asked.

Are you bitter at not being paid for such a popular and essential utility?
Yeah, especially since you are all probably paid to play it!

I would like to compensate you for your fabulous game since Bill Gates won’t. How much money do you want?
One penny per copy. If everybody pitches in, I promise to throw you all a big party.

Exactly how much time and money has been wasted globally as a result of office workers playing Solitaire?
There was a global recession in 1991/1992, just after Solitaire was released. Thank you very much. Oh, and you can’t have your time back.

Have you ever been caught playing Solitaire in the office and passed it off as software testing?
There was a “boss-key” which when pressed would display some random .C code. Microsoft made me remove that.

Are there any cheats? What are they?
Yup. When playing Draw Three, you can hold down Ctrl-Shift-Alt and click on the deck to get one card. That makes

If toast always falls butter side down, and cats always land on their feet, what would happen if you strapped some toast to a cats back?
You’d get your eyes gouged out by a pissed cat.

Do you play Minesweeper? What’s your high score?
I did. I actually learned a strategy from Bill Gates to win at Minesweeper: Click as fast and as randomly as you can.

If you could choose someone who would be afflicted with only telling the truth for a day, who would you choose?
George Bush. Man, what an evil dude. I wish I had another Solitaire game up my sleeve. If so I’d unleash it upon the world, causing another deep economic recession, leading a summary one term pruning.

If you consider how many millions of potential hours of constructive international office time your game has turned into mindless skiving, do you think you’ve done a good thing or a bad thing? (I think good, so don’t feel like I’m putting you on the spot)
The thing about time is they are always making more of it. No harm done.

If you could take any object in the world and put it somewhere, what would that object be and where would you put it?
Me, Britney Spears.

If you had been paid $1 for every game of ms solitaire ever played, would you be in any fit state to do this interview?
It took me 11 months to answer these bloody questions. If you cheapos would have actually paid me I might have not been so tardy. So buck up!

(Source – Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solitaire_(Windows))

Eat em all – Android Game Review

In a nutshell: Strategic puzzle game with an Alien Invasion story line

Category: Games

Platform: Android

The Good: Addictive Gameplay, Cool graphics and sound, Nice story line, Free

The Bad: Not clear on star strategy

Description :

Photonfission presents Eat em all, a strategy puzzle game where you take the role of Troopie the hero and genius of Troop land. Troopland has been invaded by aliens and have laid alien eggs everywhere in the village, and it is up to Troopie to Eat all the eggs and save the village.

Eat em all Screenshots

This is a level based game, (such as Angry birds and Cut the rope) where in each level you have a puzzle which needs to be completed to move on to the next level.  In each puzzle you will get alien eggs laid in lines connected by red stop points. It is up to you to navigate troopie through the lines of eggs from one stop point to another. However once you have eaten a line of eggs you cannot move through that line again. Your final goal is to eat all the eggs without being stranded on a stop point with nowhere to go.

Eat em all Screenshots

The first few levels are quite straightforward, and can be finished easily. However as you go on you will encounter challenging levels where you need a lot of thinking. You will also encounter features such as strong eggs and powers like Thunder, Grenade, Timer Explosives, Flame, and Bridge. These features make sure there is something new to keep you interested and addicted throughout the 72 levels. The 72 levels are broken down to 8 areas. Three of the areas are free, while the rest of the areas you need to purchase. The only thing we did not understand was obtaining stars which are obtained when troopie eats them. Generally the number of stars are given on how well you complete the level, but in the levels we played you get all stars if you complete the level in any manner.

Overall the game is very impressive and addictive,  and by far the best Sri Lankan developed game that we have come across

The graphics and sounds are very good and have a very polished look. Overall the game is very impressive and addictive,  and by far the best Sri Lankan developed game that we have come across. We recommended that you download and play the game right now. Don’t forget to rate the app and spread the word to support these talented Sri Lankan developers.

Click Here for Eat em all on Google Play store. Go ahead and eat em all!!