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451 - IMPACT REPORT - Droplets turns Cobol _yes, Cobol_ - 7 MAR 2005[1]Since introducing support for Micro Focus Cobol in early 2004, Droplets, a vendor of rich Internet applications (RIAs), has worked to establish a full relationship with Cobol market leader Micro Focus, a relationship that now appears ready to take the company to a different level of business than it is used to. As amazing as it may seem, there is a huge population of Cobol programmers (approximately 1.75 million of them in fact) still operating at the enterprise level. Cobol programmers have their own conferences and user groups, and continue to play major roles in the enterprise space. What Droplets provides is the ability to give Cobol programmers a way to deliver interfaces that until now have only been possible through Java (J2EE/J2ME). The combination of Cobol support and the new Java-based capabilities Droplets delivers - which are critical for mobile applications - and the emerging relationship with dominant Cobol vendor Micro Focus looks to us to be a winningFOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEmobile devices on a PC environment. GAP funds are used by the companies to advance technology development or move them to the next stage of business development. "The investment by CIT's GAP fund will assist in accelerating private capital attraction to the company by angel and venture capital investors" said Peter Jobse, CIT president. "MPowerplayer represents a significant advancement for mobile gaming and the CIT Investment Advisory Board recognized that the company has an opportunity to bring great, innovative solutions to market." "MPowerplayer enjoys strong relationships with a number of strategic partners in the rapidly developing games distribution and development markets," said Guillermo Sohnlein, CEO of MPowerplayer. Mpowerplayer, Inc. is the premier developer of innovative enabling technologies for mobile gaming vendors, developers, publishers, aggregators, distributors, and carriers. The company's flagship product, the MpowerplayerT, is a Mobile Java runtime that postcard_back_rebecca cannonThe Kill Yourself Game is a Java game for the mobile platform, designed for people who are so bored they'd rather be dead. Mobile games, are after all, a catharsis for transient boredom. This parody shoot'em up game involves choosing a character who `looks like you feel', and repeatedly killing them whilst listlessly meander-ing through `Happy Town'. The game is designed to increase in difficulty relative to player self-hatred. About the artists Rebecca Cannon is a digital media artist, curator and writer interested in computer games as an art form, the politics of software licensing and freedom of information. She currently curates the online archive of art games `Selectparks'. Karen Jenkin has worked four years with Telstra Research Laboratories designing prototype mobile applications that utilise advanced technologies, such as speech recognition and intelligent agents. Mobile JourneysuntitledDeliver full-motion, full-sound games your customers will play, and pay for. Games are big business for console manufacturers, software developers, book publishers, and Internet portals. The inherent two-way capability of broadband IP net-works makes it a natural environment for interactive game playing. The industry's lead-ing game providers - those that will drive rapid adoption and build loyalty - won't develop for just any platform - they have high standards for their characters and game experiences. Games on TV are as exciting as games on the Web. Plus, developers have to write the game in limited Micro Java, C++ or a proprietary language, which means not only diluting game play, but eliminates the opportunity to incorporate the latest versions of Flash, Shockwave and other animation and multimedia technology. Another drawback is that, in most cases, you won't have the opportunity to repurpose existing, popular games for TV. Watered down games aren't likely tountitledProvide visually rich, gaming experiences with animation, sound and all the "bells and whistles" game players want. The industry's leading game providers - those that will drive rapid adoption and build loyalty - won't develop for just any platform - they have high standards for their characters and game experiences. Finally, HeadendWare enables true games portals that produce numerous game-related revenue streams including interactive tutorials, game strategy guides, advertising and promo-tional tie-ins with movies, TV shows, music and events. Plus developers have to write the game in Limited or Micro Java, C++ or a proprietary language, which means not only diluting game play, but eliminates the opportunity to incorporate the latest versions of Flash, Shock-wave and other animation and multimedia technology. Another drawback is that, in most cases, you won't have the opportunity to repurpose existing, popular games for TV. Watered down games aren't likely to meet theasgmt4Rather than develop a new internet application from scratch, we are going to take the game that you developed for the last assignment and adapt it to the internet. To do this you will first have to decide how the game can be played through the browser. We will be providing a dedicated web server that will offer you a writable cgi-bin as well as java server pages and servlets. You can continue to use Java RMI to communicate from the middleware to the server, but you may also choose another appropriate technology if you wish. Note also that you will have to provide front end web pages both for connecting to an appropriate game and for playing the game. - A web page that shows the user all the active games and lets the user choose among them. If possible, this should update dynamically as new games are started. If you can't figure out how to do this automatically, at least provide an update button on the page to let the user see the cur-rent set of games. - One orWebct_JavaInstall & Enable Java Note: You will need to have Java enabled in order for WebCT to work properly. Installing Java 1. First test your browser to see if java is installed. If you see the magic cube game, you have java installed. 2. If you do not see the game, you can download Java from java.com. 3. After you have installed the java plug-in, test again to see if you can load the magic cube java applet. Enabling Java Netscape 4.5 or Higher 3. Select the boxes that say Java Console Enabled and Java Logging Enabled.Peer-to-Peer Support for Massively Multiplayer GamesPlayers participating in the game form an overlay on which many of the game functions are implemented. While games like EverQuest allow limited user designed game extensions, security and performance concerns will limit the scope of such extensions since they would need to be hosted on the game servers handling the core game. Although cheat-prevention is a major concern for online games [4], it is a separate issue from the basic performance and availability of P2P gaming. In general, games where a player is guiding an avatar rather than directly controlling the game action can better tolerate latency. Networked games and distributed real-time simulations have exploited this property and applied interest management [27] to game state. Since different game states have different access patterns and consistency requirements, we split game state management into the classes presented below. This section discusses how to map distributed game states to an P2P overlay and howThe initial success of entertainment contents in Japan 1999 caused manufacturers to introduce phones with color displays, polyphonic tones, cameras, Java programs and these functions are supported by other technological improvements like faster microprocessors, larger memory, and faster network speeds. Java is currently the most popular program for doing this although other programs exist and the competition between these programs is not over. Although games were initially the most popular content for Java programs, many news and other text-based sites now offer their contents as part of a Java program since the use of Java programs can reduce the data downloading requirements of text and the user waiting time by as much as 80%. Although some phones can now save more than 100 Java programs, if all content providers offered their own Java programs from which users were expected to download information, users would still only be able to save a small fraction of these programs. GF4J (GameFrame for Java) has been written with usability in mind and you should be able to figure out most of the functionality by reading the JavaDoc reference documentation and just trying out things. After reading this document you should be able to start creating games without any need to worry about the minor technical details. Input polling that is easier to synchronize with the game, than the normal listener methodology. GF4J has months and months of development time invested in it so that you can skip all the nasty parts of game programming. You still need to be aware of the differences in Java class libraries that you use, but GF4J acts the same way on all platforms. To use the libraries to make a game may seem a simple task, but when you first run the game and witness horrible garbage collector trashing and constant frame rate drops you'll start wondering if Java really can be used to make games. These varying restrictions make development of good applet games aThe Game of ControlThe Game of Control is played between two players, white and black, on a chessboard. The objective of the game is to control as many squares as possible before the time limit expires, or to make it impossible for the opponent to move (by controlling enough squares around his pieces). The game is asynchronous and "real-time" in the sense that a player does not have to wait for his turn to move. The game is available as a Java based multiplayer game where two users on different computers play each other. The board is a standard 8 x 8 chessboard, although variants of the game can be played on larger boards. When it reaches zero the game ends and whoever controls most squares wins the game. For game play it does not matter at all who listened and who connected, but for starting the game this is important. You can also choose different game speed (this affects only the timer for delays between moves) and game length. This is available for free from www.sun.com (click onMobile Entertainment: Challenges and Possibilities Consumer PerspectivesConsumer Perceptions and Practices To roll out a new consumer technology and/or service, be it GPRS, java games or always-on network connections, is not in itself enough to ensure the success of the mobile entertainment industry. There is an economic imperative not to adopt the `build-it-and-they-will come' model of technology provision. The availability of a technology to consumers or the integration of a new service (such as WAP) into mobile device does not itself create need or space for consumer use. Increasingly there is evidence of consumers buying new technologies but not routinely using them. This is usually referred to as the `assimilation gap'. Above all consumers currently value the core functionalities of mobiles phones which offer them the means to keep in touch with friends and family: such practices are profoundly social and extensions of non-mobile routines. Issues of clarity are firmly based within consumer's desire to have cross-network transactions, gameOrlando_PosterWarthan 1997). Each of the web-based edutainment products available on the SERCC website fall into one of three basic categories: games, activities, or resources. 3.1 Games Many of the games featured on the SERCC website employ the use of a Java applet to create an interactive user interface. Examples of games currently available on the SERCC website include a version of the classic game concentration that Activities available on the SERCC website provide the same level of edutainment as the games, but in a more general context. An example of an activity is the SERCC Coloring Book (Figure 3), which uses a Java applet and simple line drawings to allow users to explore their creativity while gaining familiarity with objects and concepts related to weather and climate. These "edutainment" products can be categorized as either games, activities, or resources and provide users with an interactive means of learning about weather and climate. The assistance of Dr. Alan N.Late last year, Forrester Research predicted that over 130 million Europeans would be playing games on their mobiles by 2005, while the Java Technology for the Wireless Industry (JTWI) expert group estimates that 20 carriers have deployed more than 50 million Java technology-based handsets worldwide. In practice this means that while Java technology is often thought of as the generic language of mobile gaming, in reality many developers will simply turn their back on mobile gaming because the fragmentation makes it too difficult to judge potential audience reach figures, and too costly in terms of time and expertise to create great gaming content. Fortunately the powers that be, when it comes to designing Java standards, have realised that something must be done to bring together this diverse collection of specifications and give games developers a real, revenue-generating Java platform target to write to. the Java extensions that enable companies to come to market early mayAnnual hacking game teaches security lessonsUnder a new set of organizers this year, the game pitted teams and individuals against each other to find and exploit vulnerabilities in their opponents' systems to score points. The game, dubbed "WarGamez" this year, put more emphasis on real-world skills compared to previous years, said Giovanni Vigna, associate professor of computer science at the University of California at Santa Barbara and the leader of team Shellphish, which won the event. "The game required skills that are also required by both security researchers and hackers, such as ability to analyze attack vectors, understanding and automating attacks, finding new, unpredictable ways to exploit things," Vigna said. The latest incarnation of the game--run by a group of security professionals who asked to only be identified by their group name, Kenshoto--attracted students, military computer experts, security professionals and hobbyist hackers. In previous years, the game allowed each side to run their own server,Player One, who has been awarded the first ever license to publish the 'The Grand National' mobile phone game, is using Bango to provide fast access and easy payment for the game. Now, mobile phone users can enjoy the thrill and excitement of the world's greatest steeplechase on their phone. Users in the UK text "go grandnational" to 83055 to access the mobile internet site where they can browse and buy the Grand National Java game plus video clips of racing action. Outside the UK, users go to bango.net on the phone and enter the Bango Number 4726362846625 (maps onto Grandnational). People can choose to pay on their phone bill, by credit or debit card or via PIN. "The Grand National game is a fun representation of the world's greatest steeplechase and will appeal to novice and seasoned mobile phone gamers alike." "The Grand National" is available across all networks from April 1st, to coincide with The John Smith's Grand National meeting on the 7th - 9th April and is A-356Abstract-- Considering educational games as interactive metaphors for learning material, we suggest in this paper that PlayStation-like gamepads are appropriate user interfaces that enable students to play with musical concepts without being hindered by their own instrumental limitations. Our proposal builds upon current pedagogical research that shows that fun games increase learners' motivation and foster collaboration, crucial issues in music practice. We then discuss a general framework within which games can be seen as proper vectors for music material. Finally, to substantiate our claims and follow "learning by doing" constructivistic principles, we introduce a specific example of a two-player jazz game aiming at improving students' abilities to express their own musical creativity. We intend to implement a version of this game focused on teaching sound control, improvisation and musical exploration within a Java-based game platform. Section 3 is dedicated to anInteraction design course for designers with professional experience. Focused on innovation with economic, technological and cultural issues in mind. 2002 Masters degree focusing on in depth studies of computer supported cooperative work and software engineering methodologies. Java Software Reuse Cafe The task was to develop set of components for a Java game, targeted at mobile devices. The fi nal is then a 24 hour code race to develop a complete game. The card has a build in Java Virtual Machine and the challenge was to develop services that would attract customers. Object ori-ented design with UML notation and implementation with Java, J2SE and J2EE. prefaceYou're a programmer who wants to apply your abilities to 2D, 3D, and network games programming, either for entertainment or as the first step in becoming a games programming professional. You want to write a game that uses the latest Java technology, not an applet showing a penguin waving its flipper. You've already done an introductory course on Java - been there done that. But you need information about more advanced stuff like the APIs for Java 2D, Java Sound, networking, and Java 3D. What this Book is About This book describes modern (i.e. fast, efficient) Java programming techniques for writing a very broad range of games, including 2D arcade-style, isometric (2.5D), 3D, and network games, with a strong emphasis on 3D programming using Java 3D. For those interested in J2ME games programming, I suggest: J2ME Games with MIDP2 Carol Hamer APress, June 2004 ISBN: 1-59059-382-0 http://www.apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=339 (But, it doesn't cover the 3D API, which | ||
