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Demiforce Releases "Trism", New Game for iPhone, iPod Touch

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Sat Mar 01, 2008 02:02 PM
from the simple-distractions-sometimes-the-best dept.
Handhelds Puzzle Games (Games) Hardware
Game Set Watch is showcasing an interesting homebrew game called Trism from semi-pro developer Demiforce. The new game is designed to take advantage of the accelerometer in the iPhone and iPod Touch. While making use of this feature isn't new, this game certainly is pretty high on the simplicity and neat-factor scales. In addition to details about the game the site is also featuring a short interview with the developer.
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  • Ho hum (Score:3, Funny)

    by carcosa30 (235579) on Saturday March 01 2008, @02:08PM (#22610942)
    Imagine that, a casual puzzle game! We don't have nearly enough of these, please write more. What a great use of new technology.

    • Re:Ho hum (Score:5, Insightful)

      by chunk08 (1229574) on Saturday March 01 2008, @02:31PM (#22611082) Journal
      Actually, if I had the cash for an iPhone, I would love to play that game. People think puzzle games are simplistic, until they actually start playing them. Puzzles develop your brain (which is the ultimate goal of many geeks, I would imagine.) I love any game where you have to think. Monopoly, Tetris, frvade (www.frvade.com), baseball (yes, the real sport). No, there actually aren't that many original games. Just a whole bunch of clones. This actually looks innovative.
      • Innovative it may be, but the problem space in puzzle games is tiny. When I see the extents of a problem space in a game like that, I'm no longer interested in playing. Multiplayer games are the only ones I'm typically interested in these days, any other kind just seems boring and incredibly lonely.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Brama (80257)
      Remember, its game play has been patented too by the author, as he mentions @2:25 in the interview.

      So much for innovation. Let's show the prior art (tilt sensor games, anyone?)
  • He says it requires a jailbroken iPhone or iPod Touch and that he wants to sell it via iTunes. Do you think Apple will let folks sell things on iTunes with those kinds of system requirements?

    • Re:I wonder (Score:4, Insightful)

      by rdradar (1110795) on Saturday March 01 2008, @02:28PM (#22611062)
      It oblivously doesnt need to be jailbroken when sold via itunes.

    • Re:I wonder (Score:4, Informative)

      by 0100010001010011 (652467) on Saturday March 01 2008, @02:29PM (#22611074)
      ...However, as soon as the official iPhone SDK comes out next month, I plan on porting it over to that framework. I would love to get this thing on iTunes as early as possible...

      He's going to wait until the SDK becomes available and then sell it via iTunes, which is how most people are thinking Apple is going to 'release' 3rd party apps.
      • Will he like the pay that he will get from it?

        apple may sell it a $7.99 but only give him $1-$2 and keep the rest. They may also may try to force you pay for any app. So people may still have to hack there phones to get the free apps.
    • He says the Demo is available for download now - it only has one type of game play, and will only work for 3 levels (75 matches) - and requires an unlocked iPhone (obviously, since the SDK isn't out yet).

      • Actually, the site sent me to a "sign up to be emailed when there's a demo" link so there's nothing to actually download right now.

  • iPhone could be a great innovative game platform (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RalphBNumbers (655475) on Saturday March 01 2008, @02:25PM (#22611046)
    With a nice big multi-touch screen, 3d accelerometers, proximity sensors, cameras, mics, positioning via wifi/cellular beacons, etc... all in a nice compact form factor, the iPhone and iPod Touch have the hardware to try a lot of really innovative and interesting things in terms of user interface and gaming. I've been looking forward to playing with that stuff since day it was announced last year.

    I just hope the SDK Apple is introducing next thursday is reasonably complete and uncrippled.

    Nintendo's Wii and DS have proved that unconventional control systems and innovative casual games can provide a lot of fun, and make a lot of money. By taking the next step down that road, Apple has the opportunity to finally make it big in gaming (after neglecting, and being neglected by, that market for years and years). It would be a real shame if they dropped the ball.
    • I don't know, it sounds like Apple is going to be nazis about distribution of third party apps...sure there will be ways around it, but I'm looking forward to the freedom of Android. Also, there will be some touchscreen/accelerometer Android devices I'm sure...
    • Are you sure about the SDK release? I was under the impression that they were just going to talk about it a bit and give a new release date.
    • Except that the display is on the controller. All the swinging around, tilting, turning, etc. will be moving the display with it. I remember Kirby Tilt 'n; Tumble [wikipedia.org] for the Game Boy Color and it was annoying to play due to constantly tilting the system different angles.
    • If you listen to the presentation, he is saying he has applied for a patent on the techniques used. Not sure if that means both the touchscreen and the accelerometers or just the accelerometers though.

      If you want to get a game out as well, better be quick - there are only a few sensors left that are still unencumbered by patents...
    • Check out iPhysics for truly innovative iPhone/iPod Touch games. More so that this Trism nonsense I'd say!

      http://iphysics.r4m0n.net/index.php?title=Main_Page [r4m0n.net]

      Also, do a search on YouTube for iPhysics to see videos of it in action. Some of the videos are showing the 'sandbox' which is just to try out the physics engine without gameplay - so don't just watch them and say 'huh? whats the point?' Look for ones with a red square and a blue circle. These are game levels, and the point here is to move the bl

  • Waitasec.. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Creepy Crawler (680178) on Saturday March 01 2008, @02:27PM (#22611056)
    Is this the same guy/group that did the NES translations of Mother and FF2 and 3?

    If it is.. Damn ;) It'll be quality.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by radimvice (762083)
      yup, he sure is the same demi...i remember he developed a pretty cool homebrew Game Boy Color puzzle game back in the day, glad to see he's still at it.
      • Demi! It's been so long since I thought about the old romhacking days that I didn't make the link. Great to see that he's still active in this kind of thing.
    • Yeah, and he doesn't care about their IP rights, but he was first in line to snatch up a patent on this crap.
        • The Mother translation in question was released as a ROM, not an IPS, and was a translation made by Nintendo themselves - it was a dump of the complete translated game they ended up deciding not to release. It is true that he wasn't respecting their IP rights, though in this case Nintendo was likely not losing much money since they ended up scrapping the English version.

  • The game is NOT released yet (Score:5, Informative)

    by mcg1969 (237263) on Saturday March 01 2008, @02:42PM (#22611120)
    All that has been released is a video demo-ing the game. If you go to the Demiforce [demiforce.com] web site you will see that the game itself has not yet been released.
  • .. what they're going to call the Japanese port?

  • Patented game design? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by radimvice (762083) on Saturday March 01 2008, @02:45PM (#22611136) Homepage
    The video mentions that he has 'applied for a patent on the gameplay'. Is this a necessary step these days for independent/homebrew developers, so that their new ideas aren't simply snatched up by the big guys for their own benefit? Or is this move something that should be discouraged in the indie scene?
    • It's something that should be discouraged throughout the entire software industry.
    • This guy did homebrew translations of several japanese-only nes games--I hope he gets sued for that as some sort of poetic justice for patenting this new game concept.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by xenocide2 (231786)
        As an afficianando of both the scene and free software, I have to say it's conflicting. On the one hand, many people, Demi included, have taken wonderful games like Picross and made something similar [parodius.com]. On the other hand, I recall hearing that shopping Drymouth around to publishers eventually wound up getting him screwed as someone basically took the work for free, so I can see why he'd take a new approach this time around. (I could be remembering a different guy's troubles, but the scene was small enough tha
    • Remember those movies shot in Austin by Richard Linklater called "Waking Life" and "A Scanner Darkly?" They used a proprietary software tool called "RotoShop" which was developed in Austin by a guy named Bob Sabastien [wikipedia.org]. He patented the technique.

      Had he not patented it, the technique would have been easily mimicked by Adobe and sold as a Premiere plugin. Then the technique would show up all over the place and get over-exposed. Bob's patent ensures that it will appear only in limited use (Charles Schwab comme
      • Please describe the innovation that you speak of. On the surface of this it looks no better than any other bogus software patent. If I am wrong then please educate me. What is so innovative about it, to the point where it is a patentable invention?
          • I never said he didn't deserve to get paid for it. I said that it's just as bad as ANY OTHER SOFTWARE PATENT. There is nothing novel and innovative about it; it's an incremental growth of games like Bejeweled using the unique features of the iPhone as a control axis. It shouldn't even be mentioned in the same breath as the word 'patent'.
      • Then the technique would show up all over the place and get over-exposed.

        And then it'd be dropped for the next shiny thing. Or it would prove itself something more than a novelty and get applied in ever more creative ways. Either way, as the ./ tag likes to put it, nothing of value would be lost. In fact, there's a good chance a lot would be gained. And I'm sure the developer would still be profiting by it.

        The lack of a patent on putting ink to paper has not seemed to have limited its significance or th
    • One of his earlier games, for the gameboy color, was pretty much snatched up from him by the distributor. After receiving 0% of the sales, I imagine he's a little paranoid this time around.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by mdwh2 (535323)
      Is this a necessary step these days for independent/homebrew developers, so that their new ideas aren't simply snatched up by the big guys for their own benefit? Or is this move something that should be discouraged in the indie scene?

      Discouraged - if nothing else, such a move also stops other independent developers being able to write code that might infringe on the patent.

      And anyone who's done any game development should know that ideas are cheap. It reminds me of when people post on forums like Gamedev sa

      • Those little plastic games that came free in CrackerJacks boxes where you try to get all the balls to sit in holes at the same time, or get all the rings on the central peg - both one-handed games controlled by physically shaking/moving the game.

        Then there's smaller knock-offs of labyrinth [officeplayground.com].

  • news that matters? (Score:3, Funny)

    by nguy (1207026) on Saturday March 01 2008, @04:11PM (#22611580)
    And this matters? What's next? Steve Jobs farted, news at 11?
  • I called it Tri, and instead of being a vertical column thing, it went down into a V. I guess I shoulda released it commercially, but I didn't feel like porting it from DOS to Windows when they phased out DOS emulation in Windows. Yet another one of my great ideas is successful.
    • If anyone has DOS or an emulator, you can download my demo at: http://www.geocities.com/james_sager2/work/tri.zip [geocities.com]

      Anyway I looked more closely. And even though his triangles look like my triangles, his solution for the puzzle is solid blocks, when mine were:

      V.V
      .V.

      Or vice versa. I really should port the game to flash and put it on Kongregate or something. I guess being lazy, everyone of your ideas will be used up eventually.
  • "Demiforce" - what a rip-off :(

    • Slashvertisement (Score:5, Insightful)

      by LingNoi (1066278) on Saturday March 01 2008, @02:48PM (#22611150)
      Ridiculous this made the front page, the games section I could understand but main page? W...T...F...
      • If this was a free/OSS game for Android, then 99.9% of the people on /. would be drooling. Don't hate it just because it is part of Apple and their cripleware.
        It's nerd worthy, if for no other reason than it will be sucking thousands/millions of man-hours of productivity out of techies in the near future. It is also looking to be the first independent game to make mega-dollars through the iPhone's SDK.

        He is a regular joe, not some corporate goon. It has been 25+ years since you could spend a week power-

      • W...T...F...
        Let me enlighten this fine Sunday morning... It's something we in the biz call an SND -- the S is for "slow" and the D is for "day"...

        Can you guess what an SND is?

        Hint: the N is for "news"
    • slashvertisement

      Agreed. I'm sure it's a great game, but I don't recall game announcements ever making Slashdot front page, except for perhaps major titles. I mean, I could understand if Duke Nukem Forever had been released...

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