Small and big kids will love her !
Marguerite, the tiny 3D cow, is no longer a simple moobox. Both little and big children can now interact with Marguerite and her meadow friends.

Be careful though, as Marguerite has a mind of her own. She won’t be happy if you pull her ears. You could even make her cry.
Marguerite loves to be scratched and will lick or nibble your fingers if she gets the chance.

Discover how to interact with her and 8 other animals. She has a variety of moods with which you can play : her 18 reactions and expressions make her so adorable !
And, of course, you can always turn Marguerite upside down, just like a traditional moobox.

The first Moobox was dowloaded over 230.000 times ! Thank you for all users!
]]> http://blog.gamepulp.com/marguerite/feed 0 http://blog.gamepulp.com/mr-elements-overview http://blog.gamepulp.com/mr-elements-overview#comments Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:49:24 +0000 Guillaume http://blog.gamepulp.com/?p=769 At this moment, Gamepulp team is working on the mockup of Mr Elements. Here is a video trailer which explains who is Mr Elements.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Project supported by CNC
Music : Studio Cleophas

Voodoo Zombie is a rail shooter on iPhone. You hunt the living dead and only your speed will save your brain.

A unique technique on iPhone allows zombies to have realistic reactions under your shots.

At last, thanks to another great innovation on iPhone you will become a fierce hunter with the Power slicer, an ultimate weapon which slices arms, legs and bodies !

Gore lovers will have a plate full !

The second step in prototyping : trying the gameplay.

We include mixing tests between character animations and the ragdoll setup. The purpose is to have probable movements, the nearest of animations made in Cheetah3D (inverse kinematics), on reacting models to physics and to impacts thanks to the ragdoll in Unity.
There are first graphic elements for buildings. The zombie will be completely remade.

At last, we can use one of musics created by Johan Holmström, who we recommend to all producers.

We are very proud to announce CNC offered us a subsidy to create a model of a new game : MrElements.
We’ll give news about it.
Thank you to CNC !

]]> http://blog.gamepulp.com/le-cnc-encourage-gamepulp/feed 2 http://blog.gamepulp.com/shooting-zombie-at-the-street-corner http://blog.gamepulp.com/shooting-zombie-at-the-street-corner#comments Sat, 03 Oct 2009 14:52:10 +0000 Christophe http://blog.gamepulp.com/?p=637

- Poème en alexandrin -

Qu’il est bon de shooter du zombie dans la ville.
Mais morts-vivants, qu’il est ardu de vous trouver !
Alors sur iPhone, agitons nos doigts agiles
et que s’apaise enfin notre instinct de boucher.

Déchiquetons, broyons et shootons avec grâce
Les polygones morbides des citrouilles abjectes,
Des chauve-souris et de tous ces monstres pugnaces.
Faisons goûter notre colère à ces insectes !

Gamepulp veut vous aider à cette noble quête,
Par le miracle des ragdolls, des meshes détruites,
Vous pourrez découper bras, jambes et têtes.
Regardez, braves gens, les vidéos qui font suite.

Les ragdolls :

Un ragdoll transforme littéralement les personnages ou tout autre élément, réactifs à la physique (gravité, collision, chutes). Le problème vient du fait qu’on perd les animations. La recherche ici est de pouvoir concilier les deux, pour plus de réalisme car dans la réalité, on est en mouvement tout en subissant l’environnement. Parfois, ça donne des résultats étonnants.

Le Gameplay :

Prototypes pour voir ce que va donner un shooter sur rail.

Destruction de mesh :

L’essentiel de l’attrait du jeu viendra du fait de pouvoir découper les zombies à loisir et de les voir réagir de manière réaliste aux coups qu’on leur portera. Recherches sanglantes !

Kellee Santiago, game designer on the project, gave us a look at the complete design process. All through this process, they kept in mind the feelings (peace, love) they wanted to give through the game. This simple idea allow them to define clear  gameplay mechanics following this guide. But I think the most interesting (for me) thing was that with 5 gameplay mechanics defined they took months (15 exactly) to playtest it (at the frequency of 2 playtests per week and 1 at the end). One by one, prototyping the mechanics with Flash or other.
I think this working method reduce considerably the mistakes in the production… This is maybe an exception in the industry to have so much time prototyping but it clearly gave strong basis to the production itself. In facts, Flower was made in 2 years that is to say only 8 months of production !

Next to this conference, “Designing women” starring Kellee Santiago and other women game designers was more of a debate.  Not only on women in video games or as gamers but also on diversity in the industry. They really want to give a different point of view and feelings in the design concept and I totally agree with them that it is essential and enthousiastic !

As gamers, it appears that women and girls (because researches focus on young girls games) don’t learn to play the same way as boys. When a boy directly rush an unknown game and learn from his mistakes, girls tends to observe first how the game works before starting to play (obviously it’s not a law which is confirmed each time). You may suppose that it is not the only difference between boy and girl gamers.
I think that our work as game designer must take into account its established fact… You know that currently 40% of all gamers are female ?
And the same parallel can be made with the age of the players whhich do not cease to increase.

You may suspect what it remains to be made ? To diversify !

One of the most famous for me was David Cage’s one, Quantic Dream’s founder, with his speech “Writing Interactive Narrative for a Mature Audience” and this sentence “We need to be proud of who we are” about the censorship (which resonating especially in this GDC in Germany).
He asked why making games should be always for teenagers with big weapons, big tits and poor mechanics. We can assume to be adult and we can show others feelings than kill-jump-kill… and it’s not dirty to see people kissing in a game, or making love. That can be shown without pornography, like movies.

“Movies”. It’s the word around this speech turned. And it’s there I found the argument went too far because video games was automatically compared to movies, to conclude video games are only like children toys.

Perhaps it’s a misunderstanding by me about what said David Cage but video games needn’t to have the same language of movies. No to count a story doesn’t mean not to give mature emotions.
In his speech, he explained video games can have two playing ways : The sandbox (the most of games) and a Rollercoaster (rare).
He told us he prefers the Rollercoaster than the sandbox, where a child are caught for God, pushed by simplist feelings where as the rollercoaster offers an emotional trip… but we can be very passive in a looping and waked up inventive in a Sandbox.

We can assume to make “toys” without meaning “childish toys”.
Playing is a shame for an adult ?

Why saying “we need to be proud of who we are” and being mixed up by the cinema ?

Gamepulp offers Unity training right now!

Windows users waited for this event for a long time: Unity technology comes to their favourite platform with the 2.5 version! They can develop multiplatform games much easier than ever now!

Unity is:

• A complete visual and user-friendly editor.
• Can publish for Windows, OS X and wen browsers via a powerful but light plugin, with which you can stream assets for the same rendering like standalones.
• A transparent importation process with several 3D software (Maya, 3DS MAX, Blender, Cinema4D, Cheetah 3D, Carara, Lightwave, XSI…) and 2D with Photoshop.
• A flexible terrain engine : paint your landscapes!
• A GUI system like stylesheets for all interaction needs.
• A lot of integrated scripts for a lot of behaviours: platform, FPS, puzzle, etc. Solo or online multiplayer!

You can learn how to make your powerful games with Gamepulp, in France, right now! Contact us here!