hot hot hot
It’s hot. Not something friendly like sunny or warm. It’s hot. Think of white hot charcoal, a furnace, think of burning air and lava streams. This is what it feels like. Good thing we have a new coffee machine. Not. We’d need a chest freezer with crushed ice now. So this is summer. We’re not used to these kind of temperatures in Hamburg. Usually good weather in Hamburg is when the rain falls vertically. Interesting trivia: Hamburg lies to the north of London (as far as latitude is concerned) has has more rainfall, too. But: the city is full of canals and has more bridges than Venice (although there aren’t any places to sit in the shadow at the canals anywhere). It’s still the nicest city and Game Developer Capital of Germany. It’s just … hot!
End of May was a happy date for brain exercise game lovers. Finally, the hugely successfull “Dr. Kawashima” series well-known from Nintendo DS finally became available for PC and Mac.
Developed by Munich-based game developer Chimera, the game features not only tons of puzzles and brain training exercises but for the first time users can also compete in a world-wide online ranking.
Online connectivity was implemented using Exit Games Neutron. Also noteable: Unity technology was used, making “Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Exercise” the first boxed Unity game.
Today, an article on Exit Games was published on the Ericsson Developer Connection website. Our EVP Marketing & Sales, Robert, talks about Exit Games’ products and what connects us with Ericsson: “We share with Ericsson a common vision that community gaming is a vital part of the whole mobile services ecosystem. We also like Ericsson’s program for managing the relationship with developers. And of course, Ericsson’s global reach is very beneficial to us and helps us realize our vision of worldwide game roaming.”
Read the whole article on the Ericsson Developer Connection website.
Apple asks developers to check their apps for compatibility with iPhone OS v3. Today, we did. And we are.
The iPhone OS v3 Beta 5 SDK for iPhone, however, is not compatible with iPhone OS v2.x: although the new iPhone SDK relies on the existing SDK it is partially incompatible. Some steps of the update can’t be reversed and it’s huge for a small device. Here are some of the issues: Continue reading ‘We run on iPhone OS 3.0!’
We found this article on USA Today, featuring the World Golf Tour game and the fact that WGT is working together with USGA to present the virtual championship on the Bethpage Black Course. “World Golf Tour provides the most realistic simulation of golf courses I have ever seen online,” PGA Tour veteran Ryuji Imada said. “The photographs of the courses are stunning and the game helps players experience the same type of course management decisions I am faced with every weekend on Tour.”
Read the feature here: “Video gamers can take swing at qualifying for virtual U.S. Open“
Photon’s humble beginnings are found in the Neutron Server’s development and while that was giving us stability, it also left us with “wrong” filenames. Today, at least the server side files got renamed. Also new: extended API to get a peer’s IP, extended documentation (short description for performance monitoring) and a renewed trial license. Concurrent users are limited to 100, but it’s unlimited otherwise.
Register and get the SDK on photon.exitgames.com
A big sorry-in-advance goes out to every C++ developer who is about to update her/his project to the upcoming Neutron/Photon client lib, version 5.7.2 !
We just achieved “const correctness” throughout the whole library, which means that we pretty much had to change the signature of each and every method in the whole Neutron / Photon SDK. Joyful hours of pleasant anticipation lie ahead, while you will be adapting your code, looking forward to more stability, a clearer interface and the fastest Neutron / Photon C++ library ever released!
Here’s two examples of the changes in detail: Continue reading ‘Next Stop: Const Correctness’
Very funny. New coffee machine. Now we’re out of coffee 
A nerve-wrecking week has passed. Worst nighmares had become true. Our coffee machine was broken.
As you may be able to tell by interpreting this highly complex chart from American Scientific there is a close relationship between productivity and coffee. Have a look at the slope in the morning and see for yourself how coffee verifiably increases the incline. Also, lunchbreak is but a light dent and in the afternoon productivity stays high.
Today, our new coffee machine was shipped, installed and coffee was immediately implemented. All is well now. No-one had to die. We are all thankful we survived this terrible time.
World Golf Tour, offering today’s most advanced HD online golf browser game (and powered by Exit Games Neutron) just announced that 100 million shots have been made in roughly 8 million rounds which have been played – during the beta phase only!
And other developments from the side of WGT are also noteworthy: World Golf Tour have now started a Video Blogger Contest. The winner will cover the Virtual U.S. Open starting May 25, and will be flown to Bethpage Black to cover the practice rounds of the real U.S. Open. Deadline to enter the contest is May 11th. Here’s how to enter.
If you’re interested in what other contestants have submitted so far, search for “2009virtualusopen_contest” on the YouTube website.
And here’s a fun example of a Golf Tournament Video Blog
