O'ReillyGMT - Tech News from 4 timezones either side of the Greenwich Meridian

Linux Gaming Rig - Bytemark, LUG Radio Live

Yonks ago, back at LUG Radio Live, Bytemark set up a Gaming Rig for the use of the attendees. Matthew Bloch kindly talked me through the whys, wherefores and whatevers of how it worked and what it was all for:

Bytemark - Linux Game Server - LUG Radio Live from oreillygmt on Vimeo.

2007 Flash Lite game contest

Giorgio Natili writes:

After the successful Mobile Game Contest 2006, where 65 great entries were submitted, we are happy to announce the Mobile Game Contest 2007. Express yourself, impress your friends and show off your creativity by submitting your Adobe Flash Lite content before 15th February 2008.

All entries into the 2007 Flash Lite Game Contest are through the Playyoo platform and will also be entered automatically in the Playyoo Game Contest.

Regional sections
The 2007 Flash Lite Game Contest will be organized into three regional sections:
Americas http://www.mobilecontest.org/?q=node/6
Europe and Africa http://www.mobilecontest.org/?q=node/9
Asia Pacific http://www.mobilecontest.org/?q=node/8

General requirements
In order to participate in the 2007 Flash Lite Game Contest, you must create a user account at https://www.playyoo.com/login.html. In the registration form you should select which Regional section you wish your games to be considered for.

Game categories
There are no restrictions on the themes of games which can be entered in the contest. Remakes and new versions of existing games are permitted, subject of course to copyright. The preset categories are as follows:

Action
Adventure
Arcade
Card
Casino
Fighting
Puzzle
Racing
Role Playing
Shooting
Simulation
Sports
Strategy
Other

Technical requirements
Games must be produced in Flash Lite, and must use the Playyoo template which is available for download from www.mobilecontest.org and www.playyoo.com. Instructions on using the Flash Extension which installs the template are included with the download. You may use Flash Lite v1.1 or 2.x. Playyoo offers the option to upload several versions of the same game, allowing you to optimize for a wider group of clients. You can upload different Flash Lite versions, and different aspect ratios. Such different versions are together considered as one game.
Game file size should not exceed 300kb and should include instructions as appropriate

Prizes
The prizes for each of the 3 Regional sections of the 2007 Flash Lite Game Contest are:

1st Prize - A prize of YOUR choice valued up to US$ 5,000 sponsored by Playyoo.
2nd Prize - Adobe software licenses
3rd Prize - O’Reilly books

The prizes for the Playyoo Game Contest are:

1st prize: $10,000
2nd prize: $7,000
3rd prize: $3,000
4th prize: $1,500
5th prize: $1,000
Plus 5 prizes of $500 each.

Judging and criteria
The winners of the Regional sections of the 2007 Flash Lite Game Contest will be judged by a panel of judges comprised of representatives from Playyoo and Adobe as well as leading Flash Lite game developers worldwide. The criteria will include innovation in concept, game-play, graphics as well as an evaluation of the technical merits of the game, such as memory optimization and loading times.

The winners of the Playyoo Games Contest will be judged by the Playyoo community. Prizes will be awarded to the most popular games as measured by download statistics and community ratings up until 23.59 GMT on February 28th, 2008.

Cricket Animation on Cricinfo

Cricinfo has built an animation feature around the text feed from its online commentary. The ball-by-ball, blog-like game updates are provided by Cricinfo reporters at the match, and then represented on a video game-like pitch using Shockwave:

Sky Sports claim that this eats into their rights as exclusive broadcasters of live action from the World Cup. I can't see it myself. No one with a choice would choose to watch this animation rather than watch the real video footage. I think the animation is fantastic, and I've enjoyed having it playing in the background while I've been working, with commentary from BBC Radio streamed in online to fill out the picture, but there is so much missing - the fielders for a start, expressions, gestures, the crowd - that to claim it detracts from Sky's offering is a joke. Sky are clearly getting their objections in early before the quality of the animation improves, and the action on the real pitch can be mapped to online avatars who mimic their real life counterparts nuance for nuance. At present, the animation is still up there, and I hope it continues to be, unlike the BBC's football equivalent, which was intended to echo Premiership matches but which disappeared within days of going live.

Cricket is well served by the Internet. It's a slow game played over a long period of time, which means it's a game that you can can keep an eye on as it plays in the background, allowing you to get on with other things - much like I've got a tab open in Firefox right now updating me of the score between South Africa and Ireland. Cricket matches take place seemingly randomly through the week, and it's been much easier to keep track of what's going on through websites like Cricinfo than it ever was through newspapers. It's also a sport that thrives on statistics - cricket scorers are the archivists of the sports world, logging every ball in the time-honoured tradition of the Victorian academic lineage that cricket spins out of. But as good a job as they've done categorising the modes of play and the wonderfully colourful terms they've used to describe the positions of players and the vagaries of the action, (the arcane insider jargon that rewards sustained involvement in the game, such as silly mid-on, slips, gully, point, backward square leg, length, short of a length, line and length, yorker, third man, sweep, pull and hook) the essence of the game cannot be captured in a scorer's scorebook. Cricket in its pomp is a bewilderingly varied drama that works best either close-up on-screen where you can dissect the players' technique, character and courage, or from afar, with the song of the radio commentator lulling the imagination out of hiding, singing the game into being in the cauldron of your brain. It's great to go through the game afterward either in the paper or online, picking the stats apart and reconstructing the fall of the wickets to re-enact the battle, but it can never capture the true nature of the tension wrought of a bowler bearing down on the popping crease knowing the batsman 22 yards away at the other end has only his bat and his nerve-ends to keep him in the game. Like the batsman, the crowd is straining its every last sense to get the earliest glimpse of how the delivery will turn out, and while Sky have the rights to this raw footage, they don't have anything to fear from an animation, regardless how good it gets.

(via BoingBoing)

Mario Bros Lego

From Nancy, France, via BoingBoing, a stop-motion Mario Bros flash built with Lego:

      

Mobile Game Contest Results

Mobile ActionScript.it presents:

The 2nd mobile game contest has ended and we are proud to  announce the 2006 winners...

You may find the complete list here.

Thank you to all the participants who have joined the challenge (65 submission) for their works and their patience.

PS3 available pre-installed with Linux

Linux distributor TerraSoft is accepting pre-orders for Sony Playstation3 gaming devices pre-installed with Linux, alongside the PS3's native gaming OS. Additionally, TerraSoft, IBM, RapidMind, and Vivendi game publisher High Moon Studios are offering seminars to help game developers exploit the PS3's Cell architecture.

A Yellow Dog Linux (YDL) distribution has been available for the PS3 since October, thanks to a development deal between Sony and YDL publisher TerraSoft. However, YDL so far has not been bundled with early PS3 shipments, despite earlier indications from Sony Entertainment's CEO, Ken Kuturagi.