PhysX Games

After getting the computer up and running, I decided to take a look into what can be done with the nVidia Geforce GTX 260 (and PhysX).

These are both nVidia simulations which show off some of the effects of the graphics card and the PhysX capabilities. Admit tingly, I have not played may games that take full advantage of the technology. I have played Unreal Tournament 3 (plus the PhysX mod) and GRAW 2, CellFactor would not work.

From what I noticed in these games is that the PhysX component of them is only a small part (extra breakable objects) , nothing which the CPU cant handle. I have been having a great time playing Crysis Warhead, I enjoy the physics in that game, being able to shoot down the trees and blow up the houses, I wonder what it would be like with PhysX.

Sacred II takes advantage of PhysX so I will test that out and see how it changes the game, Mass Effect, although on the supported games list, does not have any changes.

Falling Sand, Oe Cake, Phun, Cortex Command would all be great with PhysX or multi-core support but unfortunately I have not found anything which can do this at this stage.

Edit 1:
I download Warmonger,  alot of the walls and cover is destructable which is actucaly pretty fun when playing.  The cloth looks very nice as it blows in the wind, and shooting it tears little holes into it.

iPod touch

Well I have an iPod touch. I am going to give it a review, I should also point out that I am typing this review onto the device, so please ignore the spelling.

So I got the Touch two weeks ago and have been using it for various things since. After about 1 week of trying a number of free apps I descided to jailbreak the Touch.

Back to the apps, there are a ton of applications (some good physics games too). There are also a number of emulators such as mame, gba, psx, nes, snes which I have yet to test out properly.

The screen itself is pretty sharp, watching movies and reading text is pretty easy. There are a number of applications to convert video into the iPod Touch format and they work alright. The only issue with the touch is the inbuilt speaker, the quality is pretty poor in comparison to the iPhone, but that is expected. uTube works well on the Touch, there are also applications which allow you to save the uTube videos to the device for later viewing.

One thing that stands out on the iPod Touch is syncing with contacts, email and calenders using Google. If you use Google for any of these things then setting up syncing on the Touch is very simple, you can also sync the contacts and calenders to iCal, Outlook and probably a few others, its almost like Mobile Me.

Games I enjoy playing:

• AquaForest
• Edge
• Crayon Physics
• Touch Physics
• Enigmo

Applications I like:

• Cydia
• WifiTrak
• WinterBoard
• BlogPress
• IM+
• TED

Pro’s:

• Display
• WiFi syncing
• Games
• Jailbreak

Con’s:

• Lack of iPhone features (loud speaker, microphone, camera)
• Finger prints
• Wifi download speed (a bit slow I think)

Update:

I have re-written most of this on a computer to fix up some mistakes.

Mobile Blogging from here.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPod touch]

Stunt Hampsters

I have just been playing a game called Stunt Hamsters. It’s a 2D physics game where you have to get a certain amount of hamsters from a cannon to the portal. I played this game for awhile and I must admit, it is pretty damn fun. You have a certain amount of hamsters in you cannon, and you can use the physics to help get them to the portal in various ways. It’s possible to stack the hamsters into a pile so that the upper ones can get to the portal, in some levels there are various obstacles with will light your hamsters on fire, or cut them into half.

You are required to use these obstacles to your advantage, say, if your hamster is too big to fit into a hole to get to the teleporter, you need to get it to fly though the spinning blades to get it to cut in half. In a level I was playing, it was required to move a rock out of the way so I could access the teleporter. To do this, you need a pile of hamsters, then you light one on fire and land it in the pile, this will result in a explosion that moves the boulder.

The controls are incredibly simple, you use the mouse to position the cannons, and the mouse to click on hamsters to remove them if necessary. I would also like the ability to stop the cannons from firing just so I can position them and thing of how the level works. There is also sound in this game, with little hamster noises if they hit the ground too hard, also some background music that I didn’t take notice of. This is a game that should be played if your wanting to play a little physics puzzle game.

Operation Cleaner 2

Operation Cleaner is a game that keeps appearing on my computer every now and then. It is a simple looking 2D game where you are in charge of a demolition company that has to complete various jobs. In each job your objective is to destroy a building using strategically placed explosives. You have to take into account their location, the material the building is made out of as well as how many explosives you decide to use.

Collapse of a building

When you detonate your explosives, you get to see the building collapse down onto itself and hope you destroy as much of it as possible. If you don’t position your explosives correctly, you may just be left with a building with a few burnt out holes in it, or even worse, blowing up the building next to it too, costing you a lot of money.

Each job you get will give you a certain amount of money. To make a profit, you have to use a small amount of explosives, be careful not to damage other property and try and demolish a majority of the building to save on cleanup costs. You can also specify how much equipment your company has and I imagine this would effect the cleanup times, although the default settings appear to be fine for casual gamers.

There is some form of story involved in the game, where you start in one city and once you finish the 15 or so jobs there, with your money you can fly to another city to finish a number of jobs. There are probably about 100 jobs during the campaign and once you are done you get to put your name on a scores list.

The game it self takes about an hour to complete once you get the idea. There is also a mission editor which allows you to create your own landscape and buildings. Unfortunately I had it crash on me a number of times and got frustrated with it.

Other then a few small hick-ups here and there, Operation Cleaner 2 is a great game and fun to play just to watch buildings explode into little bits.

Dinorun

The menu screen for Dinorun!

Dinorun is somthing that I have recently been playing to fill in those gaps of time inbetween calls or when I have nothing better to do.  Dino run is a 2D side scrolling racing game where you play as a dinosaur who has to run to stay alive.

The game play is fairly basic, you run and jump, you can eat smaler animals for points or grab power ups that will give you various benifits such as a much needed speed boost.  Although the game has basic gameplay, there are some good physics involved, with boulders to dodge, other dunosaus to jump over (or even ride on).

The game has a multiplayer section where you can register a username and play with four other people.  The more you play it the higher the level you get.  This basicaly means you can play with people of your same level and get to make more customisations to your dinosaur.

The graphics give the game an old arcade style while still keeping alot of detail, the background seems to dynamicly change as a giant dust clode slowly gets closer to you and when it is right behind you, the screen is almost compleatly back and red.  Staying in this cloud for any length of time will give you bonus points to what is called doom surfing.  Standing on boulders will also allow you to get bonus points.

This game is free and will play in your web browser so go take a look if right now.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Puppets

Its not often that I find a game that can hold my attention for more then 10 minutes, but this game I must admit is pretty addicting. It is a simple 2D fighting game where you play as a stick figure trying to knock out your opponents in a small arena. The controls are fairly simple, you use the arrow keys to move your characters head and your body will follow, you use your limbs to punch and kick the enemies. You can play with multiple people, with AI team mates or in a death match style game. You can also play with various weapons, my favorite being the whip. It’s worth the download, being only 96kb and all.

 

Download from scene.org.

Powder Game

One of my favourite timewasters is the Power Game. If you have ever played the falling sand games then you will know how this works. The difference with the powder game is that it incorporates the use of wind. The wind is very well thought out with the use of low and high pressure areas. You can also have fire, which affects the dust (because heat rises remember). There is gunpowder which can explode and a few other ‘elements’.

Rocket 1.6

Rocket is a 2D racing game where your aim is to complete the course in the least time possible. The mouse is used to control your rocket’s speed and direction. The game have different materials that the rocket will pass through that will either speed it up or slow it down, making for some thinking involved.

If the game isn’t called rocket then forgive me.

Other Games 

Planetary Simulation

I don’t really know what this is called but it is another browser game based on physics from the dan-ball website. As the title suggests, you can position planets and starts to make them orbit each other. The physics are quiet amazing and even the smallest planets all effect each other in a small way.

The graphics are simple and effective and the controls are easy to master. Just click on the screen to place a object or click and drag the mouse to add velocity to it.

Link

Other Games 

Liquid Webtoy ver2.3 (Meta Water)

Liquid Webtoy is a great game where you can play with various ‘tools’ to interact with fluids and gases (and some solids). It seems to be similar to the falling sand games but in fact has it’s own unique style of graphics and physics. Since this can play in your browser, its highly worth checking out.

The site appears to be in English now too, so I actually can work out what all the tools do without translating the page.

Other Games 

Super Human Cannonball

This is a little game where your objective is to control a cannon so that the human cannonball will fly out and land on special things to get points. The concept and controls are very simple, you just press space to adjust the firing force, and the height of the cannon, then he flies.

If you achieve the task, of say landing on a mat then you get more points then if you splat on a building in a little cloud blood. (I modified the screenshot in paint a bit so you could see what happens better)

Other Games

Billiard Simulator

If your into billiard then check this game out. Billiard Simulator has great graphics, music and also has fun gameplay. You have the option to play against the computer on various difficulty settings or have human against human on the one computer. The game is about 30megs but if you like billiard then download now.

Other Games 

Vanish

This game almost made me cry. It’s called vanish and it is a puzzle game where you have a ball which you use to bounce off squares. Once it hits a square, it vanishes. The trick is getting the square to face the right angle so the ball then goes to the next square. All I can say is my brain isnt up to it. I dont know what level I got to either. It’s worth trying out though =D so what are you waiting for.

Other Games 

Hakaiman

It’s been awhile since I found a good little game that involves violence and stealth. Hakaiman is a game made by ikiki that invlves the player to do various missions, such as destroying or stealing objects.

You use the arrow keys to move around and Shift, Z and X to fire, use and change weapon. This combination makes the game a little hard but is still enjoyable. Knowing what the objectvices are is confusing because I dont read Japenese but it wasnt that hard to work out how to complete level 1. The game can be downloaded from here, I used winRAR to uncompress the file.

Other Games 

Jardinains 2

Jardinains 2 a game based on the concept of breakout. You have a ball and paddle and the objective is to hit all the bricks. Something I didn’t think I would enjoy until I actually played Jardinains. There are small creatures called ‘nains which are like little gnomes. They throw pot-plants at you and you get points if you knock em down.

There are plenty of different power ups like the fireball (seen in screen-shot). You can get ice ball that freezes and smashes blocks. There is also power ups that speed up and slow down the game play which work really well. They also slow down or speed up the sound effects =D Well worth playing if you are bored.

Other Games 

Kumoon

Kumoon is a free physics game you you play as a chicken that has to knock red boxes to turn them white. You can achieve this in various ways such as shooting at them, running into them, or pushing something into them.

If you touch them or fire one of your three weapons, you loose points, so the chalange is to knock them all over in a way that you have a positive score. This is done by having your bullets hit the boxes on a rebound. The more thing the bullet rebounds off, the more points you get.

Other Games 

Deadhunt (Demo)

Deadhunt is a FPS where the character’s mission is to kill all the zombies. The gameplay consists of running around firing at zombies and picking up various items such as health, infinite ammo, speed increase, armor increase or special items such as slow motion. The game appears to have no multilayer unfortunately.

The controls are what you expect from a fist person shooter. You move using the W,A,S,D keys and aim using the mouse.

The graphics are good and don’t cause slowdown on my system. You can shoot pieces of the zombies off, like its arms, legs and head. You can also see the bullet holes on their armor or blood on their body when you hit them. You can also see about 30 zombies on the screen at once. The sound effects are good along with the music.

The game is good for a short time but I got bored after the 300th zombie I killed.

Other Games