Hey.  Happy new year,  happy Valentines, and blah blah bleh .

It’s been a while since the last (decent) post. So I’m here to give you a heads up on what’s cooking here at VG.

First cooking, another Swarmz update. This one, we shall call the “online” Alien Swarmz. Achievements, Trophies, the ability to carry your highscores and other stats with you, all, with a single account. Introducing the All-Awesome Game Jolt Trophies System.

Game Jolt is a nice site for developers. It offers us nice tools, like the trophy system. It saves us the pain of creating our own system. It also gives you the pleasure of being able to compete with your friends with a wide variety of these games. And we’re happy to announce that Alien Swarmz 1.5.3 will be compatible with this system at its launch.

Alien Swarmz 1.5.3 will feature trophies. Mainly. It will also feature the ability of carrying your settings, stats, and other nice things with you (your save file, basically), bound to your account. Perfect for school computers and the like. And the online highscore system will be improved. Nice.

Basically, most Vetra Games from now on will support this new system. So start making your Game Jolt account! You’ll find Alien Swarmz there. Or here’s the link: http://gamejolt.com/freeware/games/arcade/alien-swarmz/156/

Game Jolt Website pic.

However, this is not what we’re here to discuss. We’re here to discuss much more awesome things.

Firstly, we’re here to announce that we’re researching into developing for portable platforms… like BlackBerry, for example. We’re not making any promises but you can start making up space for some of our games running on open platforms like Blackberry, Palm OS (doubtful), Palm webOS, and Android. We’re mostly sure about Blackberry, having the nesessary hardware to test the game on. We have Palm OS powered devices, but games in this platform by us shall be mostly experimental and it will be odd if we actually launch anything on it. webOS and Android powered devices may have support and testing through emulation, but, once again, no promises. Finally, we haven’t forgotten Apple. We have the hardware to test the thing on, but we lack the hardware to develop the thing on… we need a Mac. And we need an App Store license, which costs. So Apple is the hardest of the five. But don’t get your hopes down!

Another 2010 prospect is in the form of a completely new game. We’ve been talking with some people about how we can reinvent the platform videogame genre. After all, computing hardware nowadays is much more powerful than 15 years ago and platform games today should be much diffrent from 15 years ago. However, they remain mostly unchanged (we ourselves have made a platform game like that, Bort the Block). However, we’re not looking at flashy graphics here, we’re looking at squeezing some CPU power out of today’s overpowered computers. Yes, I think computers are overpowered. They run old, bloated operating systems like Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. Those are old, and they have grown fat with age. So let’s squeeze some juice out of that spare CPU power in your computer. This is experimental stuff once again, but it could materialize!

Finally, the news you’ve been all waiting to hear… Legends of Warlords.

LoW is a complete marvel for us at Vetra Games. It represents the pinnacle of lots and lots of learning, design, storytelling, graphics, and music. And a bit of research.

So far, LoW has mostly been a one man project, with people comming in and helping out but not finishing what they started. Although the help of these people is EXTREMELY appreciated, and they all left something for LoW which shall make the game even better, in the end, their unfinished work has to be thrown out to the wastebin.

I started coding LoW at a certain skill of programming. Then I improved. And adding features that JUST WEREN’T PLANNED at the original code inception bloated the program and kinda replaced the original code, spaghettifying it. Too much loops. Thus, here comes the following news.

LoW’s development had been reset. It shall be rewritten from scratch, with not a single line of code from the old version.

The old game was powered by Vetra Game’s LOW server (the Largely Optimized Windowsserver). The new LoW shall be powered by the Vaanra server, a little inception of some leftovers by VetraSoft. It’s a UNIX-like server (okay, it’s a program, not an operating system), which tries to imitate the way a UNIX server runs with some cool Vetra technology on the mix. It’s incomplete, and it’s a concept. Basically, Vaanra is paper at the moment. But it’s a good concept. Thus, LoW shall now be powered by Vaanra instead of LOW. Nice.

We’re looking for anyone with experience in 3D modelling. Apply to ugriffin@vetragames.com

Yep. That’s Vetra Game’s little plans for the future. So, now, some blabbing. I’d like to introduce a device that both sucks, and that is actually the future of computing:

Apple's iPad.

Looks familiar? Here’s why it sucks.

1. It’s a locked down platform. It’s not open like the computer I am on, which means Apple decides what apps can be installed on the device.

2. No Multitasking.

3. iPhone OS? For a Tablet?

And, here’s why it is the future:

1. iPhone OS. On a Tablet.

2. The touch. It took a device like this to make me realize that THIS is the future of computing. More later.

3. The simplicity. Forget about the troubles of today’s computers.

4. Minimal boot time.

So yeah. In my opinion, Apple made some critical mistakes (listed above) that stopped the device from being plain revolutionary. From reinventing the computer. You wanna know why devices like these (with some modifications) are the future? Simple. Yup, they’re simple. The computers of tomorrow will be driven by the touch interfaces that are the latest trends today. And, yes, like I also said above, computers are overpowered. A nice light operating system is what most people need. Nerds, Geeks, Graphic designers, programmers, and techies will probably keep buying computers like the ones you see today: fast. Powerful. Flexible. Hackable. Everybody else doesn’t need Microsoft Windows to check their Mail or do some work on the device. Here’s what the thing needs:

Physical keyboard. My BlackBerry Pearl 8120′s keyboard, even though it’s a half keyboard, is way better than my iPod’s full virtual keyboard. Make it a slide out keyboard like on the Nokia N97, which shall make the device a laptop-tablet hybrid and you’re good to go.

An Open Platform: Yes, the App Store ensures quality. But we also need stuff Apple doesn’t approve of, and jailbreaking is not the answer. Open up your device, Apple. Warn them about the security risks involved. And then let them install whatevery they want. It’s THEIR iPad after all.

Multitasking: A device that only does one thing at once is lame. Palm almost went broke for it. Don’t do the same mistake.

iPhone OS: It’s a mobile OS, Apple. iPhone OS’s lightweight system and touch are awesome. The fact that it was designed for a phone is not. Make an iPad OS, or Mac OS touch, or something MADE for larger, faster devices.

So yeah, people who NEED stuff that a slower computer can’t give them shall stay with their lappies, and stuff. People who want to watch YouTube shall migrate to the simpler, faster, sleeker stuff that Apple and Apple’s copycats shall soon offer. After all, who wants to wait two minutes to view Facebook?

In some three years you’ll see an increasing number of students working on their little new tablet. Real computers will also evolve, and become… touchy (with an included mouse for those who need it ). But they will keep their two minute boot times. That won’t be avoided. But be prepared to watch your parents migrate to the sleek, fast (the irony), simple, and advanced new tablet device. Apple did the first step to the future. Too bad they tripped a bit, and Google or Microsoft might take the real loot.

-ugriffin.