USA Games News
May 1, 2008
Introduction
Greetings gamers,
I know it has been a long time since USA Games has said anything
official about our products and services, but I personally felt that a
news release was well over do. We have a lot going on, and USA Games for
the most part has spent the last three months in a period of research
and testing. We have experimented with a wide range of technologies,
looked into several operating systems, researched several devices, and
now have concluded our research. All of it was time well spent.
One of the major points of our research was the feasibility and the
practicality of creating accessible games for Windows, Mac, Linux, and
cell phones. While our researched results showed it was certainly
possible using Java, Python, etc it quickly became apparent that
creating accessible games on non-Windows platforms and devices is not
very practical. The game development tools are less advanced on Mac and
Linux, and we would not be able to deliver a game such as USA Raceway to
those platforms without dropping some of its selling features such as
support for force feedback racing wheels, virtual 3D audio support,
built in MS Sapi 5 support, etc. We felt the loss of these features were
simply an unacceptable compromise.
Besides the technical aspects of targeting non-Windows platforms and
devices we needed to look at the non-Windows user base. What we found in
looking at the Orca mailing list for Linux and the Mac Visionaries list
is that there are very few exclusive Mac or Linux users out there. The
majority of Mac and Linux users out there still use Windows as well as
Mac OS or Linux. I myself choose to use Linux for my home business needs
using apps like Open Office rather than MS Office, Evolution for
appointments rather than MS Outlook, etc. When I want to play games,
manage family photos, edit sound effects, watch dvds I turn to my laptop
which is running Vista.
Bottom line a lot of blind users out there are doing the same kind of
thing. Which forced me to conclude that from a strictly financial view
there isn't much money to be gained by targeting Mac and Linux directly
since most users still have access to Windows for this or that
application anyway. Yeah, I can understand the Mac and Linux users
desire to have Mac and Linux games, but it isn't currently financially
or technically appealing to a game company such as USA Games at this time.
During our research we did examine some cell phones owned by friends and
family members doing some initial testing for accessible games. The main
problem we discovered was memory. The cell phones we looked at didn't
have large amounts of memory so whatever we made would have to take that
into consideration.
Since we are mainly going to break into the First Person Action games
with our Genesis 3D engine we want to be able to have realistic virtual
3D audio support. With the Windows DirectSound and XAudio2 libraries
that isn't a problem. The cell phones we looked at didn't have anything
remotely like that which wouldn't do for our current game projects.
Then, the cell phones we looked at had very small buttons. Different
button layouts aside the cell phones I personally examined had extremely
small buttons and touch pads. I'm not an expert on cell phones, but I
felt from an accessibility standpoint if cell phones buttons are going
to be so small and difficult to feel there is a lot of room for error
and difficulty in playing games with complex button layouts. Perhaps
there are other cell phones with better buttons, but the ones I examined
I didn't like.
In conclusion I felt simple games like Monopoly, Checkers, Text
Adventures, card games, and so on would work fine on a cell phone. If
the game was going to be a USA Raceway, Shades of Doom, or something
like that the cell phone is impractical for that kind of game. Since USA
games doesn't have an interest in writing text adventures, card games,
and board games we won't be targeting cell phones at this time.
Finally, one of the major reasons we started our research in the first
place is back in November 2007 Microsoft announced they were dropping
development support for Managed DirectX 9.0C. As all of our games are
based on that very technology we needed to know what alternatives were
out there for us. We also wanted to know, do to major changes in
DirectX, where the mainstream gaming market is heading. While we
currently are focused on delivering support for Windows XP and Vista we
would also like to think a little ahead and make sure we can support the
next Windows operating system, code named Windows 7, when it is released
sometime in 2010. Seeing what changes are currently going on in DirectX
it is pretty clear that a C++ developer supporting XAudio2 etc will
stand a better chance of long term support than anything else out there
at this time.
Another reason we were doing this research is when James North
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