Integrating the Web Into Games 52
Got Game recently announced the launch of an in-game web browser called Rogue, designed for concurrent use with modern games for those who don't care to to switch back and forth. Their aim is to make it so gamers can more easily keep themselves entertained during downtime in games, and to streamline information retrieval without missing any of the action. An anonymous reader writes with related news from Gamasutra:
"This article details the practical steps for game developers to add a video recording feature to a game, encode gameplay footage in the Theora video format, and share the recording on YouTube. Spore's Creature Creator, PixelJunk Eden, and Mainichi Issho already support YouTube, but not only commercial games benefit. By hosting the videos, YouTube puts this feature in reach of indie game developers who might otherwise not be able to afford the server resources."
How long (Score:5, Funny)
Just fix the MMO (Score:3, Interesting)
Have you played an MMO? (Score:2)
There are many reasons to want to do this -- I often run MMOs in a window, rather than fullscreen, for this reason.
For one: Maybe you're stuck on a quest, and you want to look up the answer. So you bring up a guide, leave it onscreen, an refer to it as you do the quest.
For another: If it's got a decent community, you may find yourself spending a fair amount of time in-game just to socialize. If that's the case, the game can be serving the same function as an IM (or IRC) client -- and I don't know about you,
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I actually run all my games in Windowed mode.
If i come across a game that has no support for it, and i can't find a patch file anywhere, it is going bye-bye, returned, deleted, whatever.
Note to any fellow developers reading: STOP MAKING FULL-SCREEN ONLY DAMN IT!
And learn to deal with alt-tabs too, for those lazier ones, it isn't that hard.
I would be shocked if an MMO actually lacked a Windowed mode, communities are a large part of MMOs.
There needs to be a poll on whether people do more single-tasks, or seve
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If i come across a game that has no support for it, and i can't find a patch file anywhere, it is going bye-bye, returned, deleted, whatever.
The ironic part is, while almost no Linux games don't have their own Windowed mode, there's one trick I can only apply to Windows games -- run them in a Wine "desktop window", rather than letting them draw native windows. Then, they think they go fullscreen, but they're actually inside a desktop window.
I would be shocked if an MMO actually lacked a Windowed mode, communities are a large part of MMOs.
Nexus TK did for a very long time. I played it the way I described above, and people frequently asked me for help making it windowed -- of course, most didn't want to make the switch to Linux just for that!
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I'd say Counter-Strike is fun, but having to sit out a round which can last up to five minutes while two idiots try to out-camp each other is the perfect situation to use this in game browser.
Meh (Score:5, Funny)
Rogue? Isn't that a bit old? Come on, people would be a lot less bored in their MMOs if they at least had something like Nethack!
Re:Meh (Score:4, Interesting)
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I'm new school, I need my 2d graphics to appreciate nethack, yeah yeah I know, sacrilege etc..
Re:Meh (Score:4, Funny)
If people are bored with MMO's, they should play paladin-type characters and watch more porn. [imageshack.us] This embedded browser makes it all the more feasible.
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I'm concerned that you care WAY too much about WoW. You seemed to have missed the point of the previous joke.
Hope CCP picks this up (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hope CCP picks this up (Score:4, Informative)
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Why? Eve Online is one of the few games I've used where they have gotten DirectX to play nicely with the rest of the window management. Run Eve in a window and you can move your mouse around from it's window to every other window, including your web browser, and there's no problem. It even goes into the task bar as a normal window. I, personally, play Eve on a second computer which I have connected up to my primary computer via Synergy [sourceforge.net]. I play it full screen, and yet, moving the mouse from my main mach
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Re:Hope CCP picks this up (Score:4, Funny)
No one actually plays Eve, though. It's basically a partially interactive movie: you watch the computer play eve, with practically "choose-your-own-adventure" style decision points. The whole back-end appears to be run by Progress Quest.
EVE Online (Score:3, Informative)
EVE has had an in game web browser for at least 4 years that I can remember though it may have been in at the game's launch.
Initially it was only (roughly) HTML 1 compatible but it was subsequently improved to HTML 3 standards plus CSS support.
It is really only useful useful for browsing sites designed for EVE due to rendering speed, compatibility (obviously) and plugin suppot (pfd, flash etc). But there are now many sites designed for it such as player corporation (~guild) sites with information about recruitment, sales and member forums. There are also various guides and calculators.
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Don't both HL1 and HL2 allow servers to just have the MOTD display their webpage?
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The real idea behind this... (Score:5, Insightful)
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The key here is the browser isn't really apart of the game, it's more or less injected. The browser itself can't interact in any way with the game environment or interface. If it could, as far as World of Warcraft is concerned, it would be considered a third party program / exploit / hack. You really wouldn't need a browser to load targeted advertisements within the game world if it was desired, but because players pay to participate it his highly doubtful that such annoyances would ever be necessary.
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Planetside has had advertisements for movies in its main hub zones for some time now. It took them about a week to make the things invulnerable to weapons fire. Beyond immersion-breaking, they weren't particularly good movies either-- the Deuce Bigalow sequel was one mentioned in gaming blogs.
The one-year trial of Anarchy Online is dotted with billboards advertising real-world services and products. Likewise, freebie access to an earlier Telling of A Tale in the Desert
Advertisement has been seen before (not in-game) (Score:2)
I presume one the key applications they had in mind was ingame advertising.
Blizzard's various Battle.net clients (I remember in particular Warcraft 3) have shown ads while you're not playing (e.g. joining or creating a game, chatting, etc.).
Taking up valuable screen real estate by showing ads while playing is probably a big no-no if you want happy players. I think the happy variety pays the most money...
(other than just browsing while your on a loading screen)
That's one hell of a long loading screen if you can do meaningful browsing while it's on. Which games are we talking about here? I want to not buy those.
Virtual Billboard (Score:2)
Taking up valuable screen real estate by showing ads while playing is probably a big no-no if you want happy players.
If it's screen real estate : yes, probably player will hate it.
If it's billboards showing advertisement within the level, I don't think this will cause that much more outcry than the current fake-ads you see on modern-day themed levels.
Downtime in games? (Score:1)
Their aim is to make it so gamers can more easily keep themselves entertained during downtime in games
Blimey, I hope he's only talking about games that are obviously online-only, such as Counter-Strike. During a single-player of SimCity, *boom*, DRM server goes offline. Voice of GLaDOS: "Sorry -- this game is temporarily available."
*shudder*
Speaking of Counter-Strike... (Score:2, Informative)
Counter-Strike: Source actually already has an in-game browser. It's an embedded Internet Explorer ActiveX control that pops up whenever you connect to a server. Admittedly, it's not very useful as a browser, as clicking any links within the page will minimise the game and launch a real browser.
Also, Second Life uses an embedded Gecko browser (based on Gecko 1.8) in its official client, which is much more functional as a web browser. Mind you, it's a lot slower than using a real browser, as you have the o
Missing an "un-"? (Score:2)
Sorry -- this game is temporarily available
It has to be one shitty game if you have to apologize that it's available ;)
A rather appropriate typo, though (Score:2)
. . .Don't you think? After all, fundamentally, DRM-ed games *are* only temporarily available, by definition. Someday the user *will* be locked out of the game.
What you do in WoW while on a flightpath... (Score:3, Informative)
Play Bejeweled [popcap.com]
My solution: (Score:2)
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Well my solution is even simpler:
don't play the shitty games that are so boring, you need to constantly alt-tab to a browser to entertain yourself.
useless (Score:2, Redundant)
WoW makes a good OS, now all it's missing is an MMO game.
Lynx + Nethack (Score:2)
Better yet, VMs! (Score:2)
Imagine integrated a virtual machine into a game! Imagine a sort of computer nerd-oriented infiltration game or something, in which you'd get to sneak into some place, sit at a computer and get 'hacking' the in-game local network, for real, with real virtual machines running real OSes with real virtual servers at the other hand, and so on. Only a real computer nerd could enjoy it, but damnit that would be immersive.
I know, a game that consists in sitting on a chair at a computer playing a guy who's sitting
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Don't tell Shampoo..
Not telling Shampoo was invented by Shampoo.
Rogue: A summary (Score:1)
Yeah, paying to be bored. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Some people's First Life avatars are rather disturbing [today.com].
(You wish that was a Photoshop job.)
Take a lesson from Steam... (Score:1)
I dont really care about being able to browse the internet in game, but I want to be able to instant message. In steam, you can place an overlay on the game in order to use the Steam friends community stuff (ie, messaging) but it only works for the steam community. Thats a problem for talking to my friends who dont play at all or just aren't playing at the moment. I can hardly demand they register for steam and use it just so I can talk to them. If they could incorporate yahoo/aim/msn into that overlay, I w
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Nice. I had heard of Xfire before but I thought was strictly its own service, meaning they would have to register for it as well (fat chance). You make me look into it a bit more and I found a plugin to reroute it through miranda. Gonna give it a try later.
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yikes (Score:3, Interesting)
This is completely the wrong problem to solve.
How about playing games that don't suck instead?
meh? (Score:1)
has no one here heard of multiscreen setups? game on one screen, email on another, and gasp, a web browser on another! all you need is more pixel space on your desktop. easy peasy.
An already solved problem. (Score:1)
Uh, you could already do this on Windows by embedding MSHTML, and quite a few games do - many games are rendered in IE directly, in fact. Civ4 uses IE, for example, as does Stars!, as does Master of Orion 3. On Mac, substitute Safari; on Linux, substitute KHTML. Also, Apollo did this portably within Flash something like a year and a half ago. Or you could use Dillo, or etc.
I mean, it's a cute little technology and all, but it's nothing new; this is just more Slashvertising, no?
Already happening I think. (Score:2)
What , You mean like this ?
http://www.thehunter.com/about.php [thehunter.com]
The engine looks pretty tidy too !
http://www.thehunter.com/trailer.php [thehunter.com]
Saw this a while back - and i gotta say - I dont think anyone else is trying to integrate web and game like this.
N.