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http://calmcrisis.shabbyshackles.com/

or

http://cc.shabbyshackles.com/

The third game on the list is Final Fantasy XIV Online.

Final Fantasy XIV Online (that’s 14 for the uninitiated) is a game in development by Square Enix. Square Enix has experience in the mmo market. They created and have run Final Fantasy XI Online for the last 8 years (6 1/2 years in America). I played FF XI for a few months before I begun playing World of Warcraft. And while I just thought the game was decent, I love that Square has continued to support the game and promote their vision of the game. While some games (most notably WoW) are changing their stance on issues to accommodate the largest possible user base, Square has stood firm on the core of their gameplay. I, for one, admire that.

The game is presenting a slightly different spin on leveling. “Leveling” will be centered on advancing different job skills. The job skills are broad concepts and there are currently 4 of them planned for the game. These 4 disciplines are the Disciples of War, Disciples of Magic, Disciples of the Land and Disciples of the Hand. These 4 broad concepts are further narrowed down to several of what could be considered more traditional rpg classes. The only discipline currently publicly fleshed out is the Disciple of War grouping. It allows the player to be archer, lancer, gladiator, marauder and pugilist. So, even within the job skill you choose to progress, there are several options available for exactly what you’ll be doing.

The change-up Square Enix is throwing at the usual leveling up system, is that changing between these various disciplines is as simple as changing the gear and weapon you have equipped. Once you change equipment, progressing that particular set of “classes” is as simple as fighting and completing quests with that class of armor equipped. Thus far all signs indicate that you’ll be able to freely switch between these sets of armor and level them at your own pace.. whether that means getting your Magic set up to level 10 then going back and getting your War set up to level 10 or playing your Magic set to the level cap and then changing gear essentially making this an alt when you see fit.

I find this ease of “switching classes” or “sub-classing” to be quite intriguing. And I will definitely want to see how or if any abilities cross over or if each discipline exists 100% independently of your levels in other disciplines.

This is the breathtaking trailer from the game that was released at the Tokyo Game Show in 2009. Square Enix does this kind of stuff as beautifully as anyone in the business as far as I’m concerned.. It says absolutely nothing of what the gameplay will actually look or play like, but it definitely gets the blood pumping about the game.

Thankfully, one area that was lacking in FF XI has seen some special attention from Square Enix for FF XIV.. questing. Quests in FF XI felt like more of an addendum than a core and important part of the game. They did a wonderful job at presenting and progressing a story but were so hard to come by that when you did come across one, you weren’t “trained” in how to get it and begin hunting down the area and npc’s (people or mobs) necessary to progress in it. And the reward for completion was often so paltry that the story was the main motivation in completing the quest anyway.

The official website and current interviews available describe the process as the player visiting the major city’s guild and being offered a work pass or multiple work passes. The available work passes change at regular intervals, which I think is an interesting concept. The info indicates that you’ll be able to complete a given work pass in around 30 minutes. There is also the option of bringing together a group with multiple work passes for an epic adventure.

The aspect I fear the most about a Final Fantasy Online game is the combat system. I feel like the (brilliant) designers at Square Enix don’t have a lot (to my knowledge, none) of experience making a real-time combat system. The single player games have tended to be turn based and FF XI was clunky. It felt very stilted and while that may have been acceptable in 2002 or 2003… it simply isn’t now. If you want to go turn-based, that’s fine. But if you’re going to give me a real-time combat system, make it feel real-time!

This footage of in-game content points out one great change in my opinion and one worrying non-change. The bad first… the combat system looks very similar to FF XI’s. I’m hoping to see some more fluid combat. Preferably with some nice animations to make the game feel more interactive as well. Now, the good… this party of players moves to the mobs! Having played in the neighborhood of 10 mmo’s now, I know that I am far more fond of my party moving to the mob than the inverse.

P.S. – This is 8 minutes long… there’s no reason at all that you should watch beginning to end unless you just care about the game THAT much. Skip around and you’ll still get the general feel of what’s going on.

Final Fantasy XIV Online is slated for release on the PC and PS3 simultaneously in 2010, with an XBox 360 version to follow. As the game still hasn’t begun the beta testing phase, many have speculated that it won’t see a release before very late 2010 (November or December). We’ll see how it all plays out.

So, nothing to show just yet and probably not for rest of the weekend but I suspect a new theme will be done before next weekend. Web design is usually one of my least favorite parts of putting together a project.. but that is not the case right this moment! I’m excited about getting to put together a theme at least somewhat under my control.

Real life actions have taken a front seat to the site in the past 2 weeks or so and that is why there has been a lack of updates. But I think now they are sorted out enough that I can return some of my attention to my very fun hobby!

The 5 Games I’m Anticipating in 2010 list will be seeing updates and completion. I have a listing of about 8 games that are vying for those final 3 spots at the moment and I’ll be narrowing that down and getting the articles written asap.

Project Dooley will see some updates and “completion” as it hits version 1.0. I feel like the feature set I’ve taken on adding between 0.9 and 1.0 was a bit larger than I initially took it to be, but that it will result in a solid final project.

Project Albatross has been chosen as the next project. It will see some of its base features getting locked down and made into reality in pretty short order. Agile development and the iterative process will definitely be in play. I liked the results it yielded on Project Dooley.

The site will probably see an overhaul in the March-April time frame. The redesign will be kind of happening in the background until that time. I’ll be checking out existing themes and/or frameworks and then the actual process of making the changeover will probably happen in one fell swoop.

Aion is a game that I played for a bit during its beta period in late 2009. I never played it once it actually launched. But a friend who picked up the game talked me into starting during the double experience event that happened this past weekend. I played it and I have enjoyed it so far. There will definitely be some talking of that game going on. And hopefully it will continue to entertain me as much as already has.

So there’s a little rundown of what will be coming in the next 3 weeks or so. And now that I’ve posted it up on the site, I will feel compelled to stick to the plan, which is a positive thing.

The second game on the list is not so much a game as a platform.. XBox Live Game Room.

The concept behind the XBL Game Room is the same concept behind a real-life arcade. The service will have games available with 2 different means available to you to play the games.

There is a method of playing that is akin to how we already think of games on our console; you buy the game and then you’re able to play the game as much as you’d like. The step that intrigues me in this process is that, much like a real arcade, a person (in this case, limited to XBox Live friends) can walk up and watch you play the game! This is a concept that I absolutely love!! It is definitely one reason that I miss the college roommate days. I can recall many a day when I would not feel like playing a game so I would grab a sandwich and watch my roommate Blake play any game from Gradius to World of Warcraft.

But there is also another method of play XBL Game Room will allow. It will allow you to use Microsoft Points like quarters (or perhaps tokens is the better comparison). So you can play a game one time for 50 cents instead of buying the game outright. I’m less excited about this approach but I like the attempt to recreate the arcade feel.

I think this platform has some nice room for growth in the coming months and years as well. So far there is no online multiplayer component. To actually play multiplayer, the players will need to be sharing one console; hopefully that will change given time. And maybe the Microsoft engineers will devise a way to have the players with the highest scores in a given game be viewable by even people not on their friends’ list. It would be akin to the whole arcade gathering around to watch those two epic players compete in Tekken or Daytona USA.

The service should launch in Spring of 2010 with 30 classic games. From there, Microsoft is talking 7 new games per week! So the library of games should build up quickly. And just like XBox Live Arcade games, each game will give you a trial play so you can try before you buy (or waste 50 cents).

I cracked up the first time I saw it and it still has me laughing everytime I go back and check it out again.. as with Pulp Fiction itself, this is probably NSFW (not safe for work (for the uninitiated)).

Google Wave Cinema: Pulp Fiction

The first game on the list is All Points Bulletin also commonly called APB.

APB presents itself as a grand scale, multiplayer version of cops and robbers. The character customization videos that have been shown as some gaming/tech events is astonishing. When I watch the video, I think it goes so far that I lean to the side of this is TOO MUCH customization. I’m never gonna just be satisfied and get into the game…

Once through the epic character creation/customization phase, you presumably choose whether you want to play cop (enforcer as they call it) or robber (criminal). From there you exist in a persistent world (think MMO) playing a 3rd person action game. You choose the crew/gang of people that you befriend and strive to have the city run in your vision (rampant crime and graffiti for criminals or arrested criminals and keeping order for enforcers).

The gameplay sounds somewhat GTA-ish. There will be missions you can choose to undertake or you can simply move through the world distributing your form of justice as you see fit.

As it’ll be running on Unreal Engine 3, it will definitely have the capability of looking beautiful. It has a release date of Spring of 2010, but as it is MMO-ish in nature, I don’t really expect it to make a release date set so far in advance.. but I guess only time will tell.. and I’ll definitely be listening.

Project Dooley has reached a release version. I’ve termed it version 0.9. That is to say the game is fully functional and playable. And things should work smoothly and in reasonable amounts of time.

I’m giving it a 0.9 version instead of the full-fledged 1.0 because I want to add more content to the game. I’m going to get more images (puzzles) in the game and give the user the ability to select how many tiles to separate the puzzle into.

As I get those choices added and presented to the user, I will also be working on an XBox 360 port of the game. Hopefully that will be a pedestrian matter, but we’ll see, we. will. see.

Controls for the game are the arrow keys on the keyboard to slide tiles around and press the enter key to show or hide the numbers overlaying the tiles.

If you try the game, please don’t hesitate to leave me comments about its functioning and features.. I am open to working in some more features while I am adding the customizable aspects.

The Games section is your key to happiness (or access to download Project Dooley.. whichever happens).

The game shuffles the tiles by making numerous random moves. And the game is able to test for being complete. Those pieces of code were written and well tested during this iteration. There was also a little aesthetic tweaking during this iteration. I drew the “game board” and it took some tweaking to get it to the point that where I felt like it looked and fit seamlessly.

Iteration 3 will focus on providing a visual guide for the player and allowing the player to make moves. At this point, I’m taking my first guess at a date for a fully playable version that just needs tweaks to be completed. The guess I’m going with is the end of iteration 4. December 31 is the solid date I’m gonna put on it. We’ll see how things progress and if that comes to fruition.

I’m developing this project with my first attempt at agile development. The core of agile development is quickly creating a core, working version of the program and then iteratively adding functionality to the program. The idea is that you can test out the basic concepts of the program and ensure that things work as you expect (e.g. – that the game is fun). And that way, if (or maybe WHEN) time runs out on the project, you still have a functioning version. And if you’ve been designing things so that the most important features are added first, then you have a program that functions and has the most important features available for release with the lesser features to be added later.

So with that idea in mind, after this iteration of Project Dooley, the core of the game is in place. In fact, as I type this, I have the computer playing the game (by making random moves, so its HIGHLY unlikely that it’ll successfully complete the puzzle). So the game is loading correctly and in a playable state — I just haven’t added the keybindings for a human to be able to interact with the game board yet.

Iteration 2 will begin on the next day that I have some time set aside for programming. And I’m not even certain that Iteration 2 will add the ability for a human to actually play — that’ll likely be an Iteration 3 feature.