via hpana

Electronic Arts (EA), the company behind the Harry Potter video games, set up a "Fan Council" last year to get feedback on what people would most like to see in the upcoming Order of the Phoenix game. The first meeting of the council was in August 2006 and last Thursday the group was invited back to see what had been achieved in the intervening eight months.

Charlotte, HPANA's correspondent in the UK, made the trip and filed the following report.

Our day started at 10 a.m. with all the fansite representatives gathering at EA's new studios in Guildford for breakfast. There were many familiar faces among the EA team but unfortunately no Matt Birch (the extremely enthusiastic game producer was missed by several of us who met him last time).

We were officially welcomed to the studios by Harvey Elliott, the game's executive producer, who emphasized how important the feedback they've received through the Fan Council has been. The team checks the forums on the various fansites regularly and they've been really pleased to see your reactions to the screencaps, interviews and videos as they've been released. Harvey also showed us the opening sequence for the OotP game: A camera follows Hedwig through the courtyard, into the entrance hall and around Hogwarts, before coming to rest on Harry's arm in the Gryffindor Common Room (GCR). When we visited in August, only the GCR had been completed in any detail, so to see that the rest of Hogwarts was now completed to the same high standard was fantastic.

Producer Justin Manning and designer Chris Roberts then told us about what the team had been working on in the last eight months. They have:

Built 70+ Hogwarts locations, Little Whinging, Grimmauld Place and the Ministry of Magic from movie blueprints and set photographs.
Designed and implemented 60 missions (examples include finding a book on healing balms in the Library after a detention with Prof. Umbridge, and playing games such as exploding snap, gobstones and wizarding chess).
Created 90+ characters to meet and interact with. Over 9,600 lines of dialogue have been recorded and 22 actors from the movies are voicing their characters. The dialogue includes a mixture of lines from the book, the movie and some new material written by a professional scriptwriter (which they've tried to ensure is in character).
Made the game on eight platforms in 23 languages.
They also talked about what they've learned from you, the fans:

You want to play more of the story
You want to meet the characters you love from the fiction
Characters should be like they are in fiction
You want Hogwarts to look and sound like it does in the movie
You want to explore Hogwarts and use magic
You want to see the ghosts and talk to the portraits
You want to go to classes
You want to play wizard games
You want elements that the film leaves out
To respond to these concerns the number of characters has been dramatically increased since Goblet of Fire. There are students from various houses, both male and female; and there are ghosts (including Moaning Myrtle who looks after the "Room of Rewards") and portraits to interact with. Dialogue from the book is there including Hermione's famous remark that Ron has the "emotional depth of a teaspoon", and music from the movie soundtrack is ever-present as the rights to Hedwig's Theme were licensed.

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News/release from Chilly Willy:


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via chilly wily ...

Beatwho has updated his Warlords Game for DS:


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News/release from Archaemic: - UPDATED WITH THE BUGFIX RELEASE

PSPComic v0.9.7 Beta is here, with a long list of new features:

v0.9.7 Beta (2007-05-05)
- [Feature] Configuration file is now XML
- [Feature] New manga mode, which makes comics start from the right instead of
from the left
- [Feature] Menu now shows current state of togglable items
- [Feature] New battery meter shows remaining battery percentage in the menu. If
the text is red, the battery is low. If it is yellow, the power is plugged in.
- [Feature] The clock frequency menu now allows any value between 20 MHz and 333
MHz to be selected
- [Feature] Bookmarks have been added. For more information, please see the menu
options section
- [Feature] 8-bit images now support resampling
- [Bugfix] Fixed scrolling bug, which made the program stop scrolling after
some time with the D-Pad
- [Bugfix] Removing an open RAR or CBR file while the program is using that file
will no longer cause a crash when the page is changed.
- Sped up resampling
- And many more minor changes...

The zoom box and precaching will be added in the next release. The zoom box requires a rather large internal reimplementation (but it will be possible to do) and precaching requires some advanced threading, which I should be able to do, but I'm not sure. Please note that precaching will only speed up image loading, not image resizing, which is the primarily where speed is being lost.

Please note that PSPComic is still in beta, and may be buggy, especially the bookmark functions.

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via archaemic ...

Skeezix posted this news/release:

Well, its a Friday, so why not get another build out there? Its not tested heavily, but I think its pretty stable!

A LOT has gone into the engine in the last week; play is still solid, though animations are a little tweaked and smoother, and theres more graphical flares thrown on. The menus and dialogs are much sharper looking, positioned better and nicely transparent. You can save and load to a single game (will add a virtual keyboard for naming soon), so you can keep playing one character over time. Win stats are kept. You can accrue gold and use it to buy some gear. Youv'e got a backpack and an equipped system, so you can put on and off various pieces for mixing up which statistics you want at any given time. (More gear and classes to come, but the systems are in place The AI is a touch smarter and uses his spells a little better. Long list of other changes but I forget offhand which things were in the last alpha

Download it here:
http://www.codejedi.com/battlejewels...-alpha-003.zip

I think its really shaping up, so take a look! Hope you enjoy it

jeff

Edit: The help system isn't built in yet, so you might want to visit the website for details; the triggers show character sheets for you and opponent, which helps a lot
Battlejewels home ...

via gamespot

Today, GameSpot announced its first PlayStation 3 tournament, centered around Sony Worldwide Studios president's Phil Harrison's favorite game--Motorstorm. Registration for the creatively named MotorStorm Tournament Challenge began today, and will continue through 12 p.m. PDT on Monday, May 7.

One hour after registration closes, the first round of the MotorStorm Tournament Challenge will begin, with seven more throughout the day. In each round, 10 players will compete on five different tracks. Only the five fastest players from each race will advance to the next round.

After subsequent rounds thin the herd, the final four top-ranked players of the tournament will be flown to San Francisco for the finals on May 18th at 4 p.m. PDT. The final round will be broadcast on Tournament TV, and the winner will be rewarded with the grand prize package, worth some $1,000.

Instructions on how to register and select opponents and matches can be found on GameSpot's official MotorStorm Tournament Challenge Web site. ...

New from Divineo China



Spider-Man 3 allows players to experience the actions of heroic red-suited Spider-Man and, for the first time ever, his darker, more mysterious black-suited persona. Set in a larger, dynamic, free-roaming New York City, the game gives players the freedom to choose their own gameplay experience through multiple movie-based and original storylines, fully integrated city missions and performance rewards including improved speed, combat maneuvers and agility. In Spider-Man 3, players draw upon Spider-Man's completely revamped combat abilities as they protect the city and defeat nemeses using expanded aerial fighting, finishing moves and dynamic webbing during missions and epic boss battles. ...

New from Divineo China



Spider-Man 3 allows players to experience the actions of heroic red suit Spider-Man, and for the first time ever, his darker, more mysterious black suit persona. Set in a 3D side scrolling world and delivering complete touch screen handling, players must draw upon Spider-Man's vast array of moves, attacks and upgrades as they choose their path and embark on a wide variety of city-based missions and multiple movie-based and original story arcs. Additionally, Spider-Man 3 for the Nintendo DS features local wireless multiplayer gameplay featuring with a variety of modes enabling awesome two-player head-to-head challenges like Brawler, Hot Potato, Target Practice, and Combo Challenge. ...

via gizmodo

Whenever there's an announcment about getting more file types to play back on the Xbox 360, PS3, or Wii, a lot of you always seem to want to remind everyone else that you're already running XBMC on your original Xboxes. Okay, we get it. It's great. Whopee! But if you are using XBMC, this $35 DIY kit can add IR-controlled On/Off to your beloved console.

With this installed, you can turn your Xbox on directly from your couch using the remote—or probably any universal remote—without having to run up and hit the power key. We wish our PS2 had this, since those three seconds of exercise are too much for our atrophied little hearts to bear.

More Info ...