BANG!, the Spaghetti Western board game is coming to Apple iPhone, iPad HD, iPod Touch, Atom Netbook and PC in December.

Already a massive selling board game, BANG! The Official Videogame allows users – whether they have an iPhone, iPad HD, iPod Touch, Atom Netbook or PC – to play this exciting interactive board game together collectively, no matter what device or machine it is played on, creating the world’s first truly interactive multiplayer experience.

Daniele Azara, Production Director of Italian production company Palzoun said, “The MultiCross-Platform Multiplayer feature of BANG! is a very important milestone. BANG! will, for the first time, allow players who each own a standalone platform to play the same game together. For this, we have adopted a new but familiar definition which links the well known concepts of ‘multi-format’ with ‘cross-platform’ functionality. Aside from this revolutionary advancement, BANG! is a fantastic board game that will appeal to gamers and even those who don’t usually play these games but fancy trying something different. These two facets together make this is a great product.”

Giovanni Caturano, President and CEO of SpinVector, the Italian developer of BANG! said, “Our MultiCross-Platform Multiplayer technology means that of course we have created multiple versions of our code and content, one for each platform. All versions have been optimised and re-designed but the key is that they all ‘talk’ together. Obviously, each platform has different capabilities (e.g. high definition graphics, touch-screen etc) and therefore there are small design differences, but overall the game is represented in exactly the same way across each version, ensuring players get the same multiplayer experience regardless of whichever platform BANG! is played on.”

Daniele concludes, “Beginning with BANG!, we are all enthusiastic in building a new and exciting bridge in videogame technology. This game represents a clear direction of how our companies can interact with players and the market; developing simple and quality games with broad appeal.”

Following their live action teaser trailer, a brand new BANG! gameplay trailer has gone live. Illustrating single player ‘quick draw’ card gameplay and providing a sneak peak of the multiplayer experience, the new trailer can be viewed on www.bangvideogame.com and www.youtube.com/palzoun. Follow BANG! Official Videogame on Facebook and Twitter for exclusive updates.

BANG! will be available worldwide in December 2010 via the iTunes AppStore, Intel AppUp (Atom Netbook) and PC direct download.

BANG! – JOSÉ DELGADO – The Mexican

“Born to a poor Mother and Father in a Mexican village, José always knew there was more to life. From a young boy, he was as quick on a horse as he was on the draw, so when he was old enough he decided to join the Mexican army and make his name. However, he didn’t like taking orders (especially for drinks) and decided to find fame and fortune on his own. A loner who rarely smiles, José Delgado is one motivated Mexican”.

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QUESTO NATALE PC, NETBOOK, iPHONE, iPOD TOUCH E iPAD HD GIOCANO INSIEME A BANG!

Dentro la tecnologia Multicross-platform: oltre il Multiplayer.

BANG!: le prime release  arrivano a dicembre per  PC, Atom Netbook e Apple iPhone, iPad HD, iPod Touch.

Dopo il grande consenso di pubblico e vendite dell’ormai classico bordgame, BANG! The Official Videogame consentirà agli utenti – siano essi dotati di iPhone, iPad HD, iPod Touch, Atom Netbook o PC – di condividere l’emozione di giocare tutti insieme, non importa da quale dispositivo siano connessi, creando esperienza di interactive multiplayer che è una vera novità mondiale grazie alla tecnologia Multicross-platform.

Daniele Azara, Production Director della production company italiana Palzoun, spiega “La feature MultiCross-Platform è un passo avanti molto importante in termini di tecnologia e giocabilità. Per la prima volta, BANG! consentirà di condividere la stessa sessione di gioco da più piattaforme diverse. Per battezzare questa innovativa funzionalità abbiamo coniato una apposita definizione che lega il ben noto concetto di ‘multi-format’ con quello di ‘cross-format’, ovvero di piattaforme incrociate.
Il primo a beneficiare della nuova tecnologia sarà quel fantastico boardgame che è BANG!, pronto ad appassionare non solo gli affezionati del gioco da tavolo, ma anche e soprattutto I tanti giocatori casual e le famiglie con un’ esperienza di gioco accessibile senza costi aggiuntivi e ricca di contenuti. Questi due aspetti insieme convalidano BANG! The Official Videogame a un profilo di alto livello nella categoria dei prodotti casual”.

Giovanni Caturano, Presidente and CEO di SpinVector, l’azienda ugualmente italiana che sta sviluppando BANG! prosegue “La nostra tecnologia MultiCross-Platform Multiplayer significa non solo abbiamo creato versioni multiple di codice e contenuti dove tutte queste versioni sono ottimizzate per le performance e il design di ogni singola piattaforma, ma anche, e questa è la chiave dell’innovazione, che comunicano tutte tra loro senza limite. Naturalmente, ogni piattaforma possiede caratteristiche uniche (grafica ad alta definizione, touch screen, ecc) per le quali sono state realizzate le implementazioni opportune, ma alla fine il gameplay è identico e la rappresentazione ottimale in ogni versione, assicurando ai giocatori la stessa esperienza multiplayer al di là della piattaforma da cui stanno giocando BANG!”.

Daniele conclude, “Come primo prodotto a sfruttare il MultiCross-platform, BANG! ci sta concendendo la grande ed emozionante opportunità di costruire un nuovo ponte tra le piattaforme, regalando ai videogiocatori un nuovo tipo di esperienza. Siamo davvero entusiasti di aver raggiunto, insieme con Spinvector, un obiettivo così innovativo. Questo è stato possibile soprattutto per l’impegno di entrambe le aziende non solo di realizzare un prodotto, ma anche una vera piattaforma di gioco, che indica chiaramente con quale stile vogliamo proporci ai nostri utenti: qualità, semplicità e intrattenimento senza frontiere”.

Dopo il trailer live action, un nuovissimo trailer di gameplay è online su  www.bangvideogame.com and www.youtube.com/palzoun con l’anteprima della modalità ‘quick drow’ single-player e un assaggio dell’esperienza multiplayer. Per tutte le novità disponibili anche le pagine di BANG! Official Videogame su Facebook e Twitter.

BANG! Official Videogame sarà disponibile worldwide a dicembre 2010 via the iTunes AppStore, Intel AppUp (Atom Netbook) e PC direct download.

BANG! – JOSÉ DELGADO – El Mexican.

“Nato da madre e padre poveri in un villaggio messicano, José aveva sempre saputo che c’era di più nella vita.
Fin da ragazzo, aveva dimostrato di essere sempre pronto al sacrificio se intravedeva un vantaggio,
così, quando fu abbastanza grande decise di unirsi all’esercito messicano per farsi un nome.
Tuttavia non gli piaceva prendere ordini e decise di cercare fama e fortuna da solo. Un solitario che sorride di rado, José Delgado è sicuramente un messicano che sa il fatto suo”.

This week we space out the BANG! Official Videogame characters gallery with a gameplay preview screenshot and a comparison between real deck characters and digital deck artworks. Enjoy!

BANG! Videogame gameplay preview (from beta).

Real deck character and digital deck artwork.

]]> http://www.palzoun.com/blog/bang-the-official-videogame-more-preview.html/feed 0 http://www.palzoun.com/blog/please-dont-shoot-environment-room-for-improvement.html http://www.palzoun.com/blog/please-dont-shoot-environment-room-for-improvement.html#comments Fri, 16 Apr 2010 12:44:42 +0000 Claudio Scolastici http://www.palzoun.com/blog/?p=734 CHAPTER 4 ENVIRONMENT

Usually a shooter environment is pretty much hostile, and overcrowded with enemies with an intention to kill the main character. Anyway, at some point game designers started to feel the need to give a more subtle and character-friendly role to the environment. Let’s see how this goal has been achieved.

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Take cover!

Another step on the path of evolution of the genre (but in this case I am just talking about 3rd person shooters) was the implementation of a cover system integrated into the game controls. I don’t mean that players used to blindly run in front of the enemies before this feature was added to games: no news in covering between a pillar. But this outcome is achieved, so to say, “hand made”, crouching behind walls or taking advantage of a barrel.

With Perfect Dark in the beginning, and once and for all with Gears of War, the addition of a cover system in the game controls became a must-have. In Gears to send the character into cover you simply get him close to a vertical surface and press the designated button, and Marcus “magnetically” attaches to the surface, shielding himself from enemy bullets.

Once the character is attached to a cover, several options unfold: to move along the cover, to lean out to shoot precisely or to shoot without aiming, and without exposing, too. Or even to dash towards a different cover.

Tactical movements to approach and flank the enemies transform into well-coordinated dances from one cover to the next. Although this actions once in a while can result frustrating, when everything works fine the game provides good satisfaction.

This way the environment is more than just the “box” where the character moves: it is a mean of survival for the player, which implies an increase of the gameplay space.

The following chart shows the improvement of the gameplay extension field on the ENVIRONMENT axis achieved by Gears compared to Doom.

Gears‘ cover system is so much appreciated by players, that when a game is released, and it is a third person shooter, if it does not implement a cover system, one of the first things that will be said about that game is that “…it doesn’t implement a cover system…”

Integrated cover systems offer 2 kinds of benefits to designers: first is that players are provided with more refined controls for the character movements, so that their actions result more efficient, and thus satisfying.

The second benefit is that, besides the 3rd person camera, players get far more involved into the action represented on screen, which results more “real”.

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Men at work

An interesting feature that allows players to take advantage of the environment in a different way is displayed in Fracture, by Lucas. The gameplay in Fracture is wrapped around the ability of the main character to modify the environment geometries to fight the enemies and overcome the game “puzzles”.

Weapons allow in fact to create pits, raise hills (that can be used to smash enemies on the ceiling, for example), make tunnels o create singularities that suck enemies in on a given spot. This system, working with realistic physics, gives the players a completely different and innovative way to relate to the game environment. Players are requested to not only “read” the level design, but also to “make” it: emergent level design, we could say.

Another way to to operate on this field is to have a “destructible” environment, as it happens in Red Faction: Guerrilla. In this game the player has several ways at his disposal to crush buildings, open breaches, destroy bridges and trigger any kind of wrecking; obviously involving the enemies too.

This system, sometimes incredibly satisfying and powerful, provides creative and not-so-common ways to get rid of the enemies, and accomplish the different game assignments.

We don't need no water let the motherfucker burn! Red Faction Guerrilla.

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CHAPTER 5 ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT

By the end of the analysis, i’ll try to spot some alternate routes to convey our game design efforts. Is there anything else a weapon can do, besides shooting?

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ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT

So far we focused on what was already done. This a necessary starting point, but more important is what can still be done, how to innovate and be original. Even if originality in videogames is a tricky demon, that broke the dreams of many, those in particular who wanted to innovate too much. Let’s say then that the best option is to try to be “mildly” innovative.

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Please don’t shoot

An option to be original while developing 3D shooters, in my opinion, is to change the relation between enemies and the weapons at player’s disposal. In a field where realism of the action is a dominant aspect of gameplay, if you act like a mercenary and shoot in the face of a regular soldier with a AK-47, you cannot expect that the soldier starts talking another language, or shape-shifts into a penguin. You shot him in the face, and he has to die, better writhing in pain and blood.

If we switch the regular soldier with a alien\demon\zombie\robot\mythical creature, “the song remains the same”: we shot, he\it dies!

Sometimes the killing dynamic is a little more complex than “i shoot, you die”, but the aim (to kill) is basically always the same.

For example in Dead Space (that we will welcome in the shooters genre for less than a minute) weapons’ purpose is to kill enemies, but to achieve that you have to dismember your enemies piece by piece. The fact that the game clearly declares that shooting the head won’t affect very much you enemies proves how much the killing attitude is linked to the idea of 3D shooters gaming in the player’s mind.

The request to hit specific locations in order to expose the real critical spots, hitting which you can deal real damage to the enemy (typical final boss mechanic) doesn’t change very much the axiom.

In Dead Space, to kill the bad guys you have to dismember them.

Let’s try then to think of a multiplayer shooter with all the features that today’s games have: realistic physics, realistic weapons with realistic feeling, and a well varied arsenal like Call of Duty 4 or Far Cry 2.

Now, let’s imagine that the effects of the bullets on the enemies, on the other hand, are not realistic at all.

In an arena players are challenged to shoot puppets 4 meters big , each player having his own puppet to hit. When you hit “your” puppet it halves its dimensions. If you hit a player’s character you don’t cause him any harm, but if he was about to shoot, then he looses the aim, and maybe gets paralyzed for a few seconds. If you hit the puppet belonging to another player, it doubles its dimensions.

Puppets are as agile as a ninja who goes into amphetamine, jumping all over the place.

The goal of the game is to make your designated puppet fall into small pits that somehow cover the floor of the arena. To achieve that you need the skill to hit your own puppet in order to half its dimensions, until it is small enough to fall into a pit. At the same time, you have to avoid that the other players achieve the same goal. How? Shooting at them and at their puppets.

How much room for innovation to extend the gameplay field opens up, when you give up on realism? Does the lack of realism damage the fun factor of a game?

I’ve always been thinking that the best thing in videogames is that they allow you to temporarily detach from everyday reality, and act in a simpler world, where you do little to achieve much. But many (maybe too many!) games today move towards a manic representation of realism.

To me the search for realism in videogames looks like a little bit hypocrite: imagine an iper-realistic platform where the character, right before a difficult leap, turns to the player saying “I’m not gonna jump. I could fall and hurt myself!”.

Let's be serious for a second: if you were Altair, would you leap?

If fun doesn’t belong to a specific genre, why realism should? So, if platform games can be non-realistic, could 3D shooters be non-realistic, and still fun to play?

Let’s try now to draw a last chart to represent the gameplay extension field of a non-realistic shooter.

Which direction the new axis, the one that estimates the non-realism of the game, goes? My impression is that it goes “up”, on the third dimension, for it is orthogonal to the other 4 axis. In fact non-realism is not a feature for itself, but it is an entire macro-area that contains thousands of unexplored (yet!) other features.

In other words, the non-realism axis is on a higher conceptual level compared to the others, because all the features that are on the 4 axis can be expressed in the sphere of non-realism.

The result is that we have an alternative path to follow to expand the gameplay extension field of 3D shooters; a path that can hold everything (almost) that was done so far, and that can open new gameplay frontiers.

Someone interested to venture?

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Disclaimer: all pictures belong to their rightful owners.

Claudio Scolastici is a skater-psycologist who's completely into videogames. He is a member of Noname Creative Team at Palzoun.

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