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Apple Games' latest feature article takes to the stars for an examination of Galactic Adventures, the first expansion for the evolution focused god sim, Spore. Designed to expand the original game's universe, Spore Galactic Adventures delivers new adventures to players who can now become their own space captain, beam down to strange new planets, and create customized adventures. Apple's article includes and overview of the expansion's features and a guide for using mission creation tools.

A mission features a storyline with up to eight acts, each containing three goals — the tone can be serious, silly, or somewhere in between, and the goals can involve anything from simple tasks to major battles. You could even create a mission that’s an arcade game, complete with a maze, objects to collect, and enemies to avoid. And if you see an adventure in the SPOREpedia that you think could use a few tweaks, feel free to make some changes and share your version with the SPORE community.

Each mission also stars a space captain, who can be a unique creation or a character drawn from the SPOREpedia. The captain beams down to a planet, with or without a crew in tow, and earns SPORE Points for completing the adventure, bringing him closer to a new rank. Each rank attained unlocks new accessories and weapons, such as the powerful Energy Blade or the ever-useful Jetpack. As in the main game’s space stage, your captain follows a specific path, such as trader or warrior, with appropriate accessories and weapons unlocked along the way.

At the end of an adventure, you can compare your captain’s performance against other players on the leader board, where the top three earn gold, silver, and bronze medals. (If someone bests your score, you’ll lose your medal.) Galactic Adventures also ships with over 50 new achievements to accomplish, so get ready to explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilization, and boldly go where no captain has gone before.

Apple Games: Spore Galactic Adventures

Electronic Arts

Spore Galactic Adventures

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Macgamestore.com has announced the release of CLUE Accusations and Alibis for the Mac through its web site and digital download service, Mac Games Arcade. The game was created and published by Real Arcade.

Macgamestore.com also announced a special promotion in celebration of the release of CLUE Accusations and Alibis. Until July 3rd, customers who order CLUE Accusations and Alibis can get the original CLUE Classic game, valued at $19.95, for free when they order CLUE Accusations and Alibis.

Use your powers of perception and ace detective skills to solve a riveting mystery in this original new hidden object game inspired by everyone's favorite board game. When the host of an elegant dinner at a stylish Hollywood mansion is found murdered, a celebratory evening turns into an intriguing whodunit. Now it's up to you to crack the case before the other guests do. Search each room for cleverly hidden clues, interrogate the suspects, and examine each weapon.

Features:
* A whole new way to play CLUE
* Brilliant blend of hidden object gameplay and classic CLUE fun your
* Your favorite CLUE characters: Prof. Plum, Miss Scarlett, Col. Mustard and more
* Over 400 unique cases to crack - nearly endless replayability
* Gorgeous 3D graphics that bring the CLUE mansion to vivid life

System Requirements:
CLUE Accusations and Alibis requires Mac OS X 10.5 or higher

Buy Clue Accusations And Alibis

Mac Games Arcade

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In recent posts on the official Diablo III forums, community manager Bashiok discussed how long blood will remain on screen, the implementation of floating health bars over monsters, and how tomes of knowledge will be used in the game. Diablo III is Blizzard Entertainment's long awaited return to the popular action RPG franchise.

On keeping blood on the floor:
Even decals, which are textures, impact performance. So there has to be some limit on how many of them are allowed to linger and for how long. We have to try to strike a balance somewhere. Also, a ground literally covered with corpses or blood becomes less and less interesting, more and more confusing, and can actually create some frustration.

Regarding visible markers, we put a lot of effort into building rooms and areas to ensure that the randomly generated dungeons are indeed random, but also not confusing and maze-like. We don't want everything to look the same. So in that respect a visual marker of a blood spot or corpse really shouldn't be necessary.
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Ok, you guys pushed and pushed, and now I have to talk about things I don't understand! HAPPY!?

Julian Love, our lead tech artist and forum lurker extraordinaire offers some additional insight into these things we call graphics:

Every independent thing that we show in the game has to be put into a special package that we call a "draw call," which is then delivered to the 3D card to be rendered on screen. It’s not too different from preparing xmas gifts in that everything you want your relatives to receive must be packaged up in some way and then driven across the country in order to arrive there on time. Your CPU does this packaging and delivery and it takes a lot of bandwidth, so it ends up being one of the most crucial expenses to manage. Now, the truly horrible thing is that from a draw call cost perspective, each individual splattering of blood on the floor is every bit as expensive as a character or a dead body: they both cost one draw call. Beyond that, the differences tend to be somewhat trivial.

So, that's a lot of words just to say that blood splats can be every bit as expensive as, and in some ways, more expensive than dead bodies. It's counter intuitive, but this is the way it actually works.

Thanks JLove.

GameBanshee: Bashiok Diablo III Comments

Blizzard Entertainment

Diablo III

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Gamasutra and IGN have posted new interviews with representatives from id Software, Bethesda Softworks, and Zenimax media. John Carmack, Pete Hines, and Robert Altman discussed the merger and what it will mean for id's employees, the company's future games, and consumers.

From Gamasutra:

Renowned id developer John Carmack told Gamasutra that Fallout 3's blockbuster status solidified while acquisition talks were underway.

"We looked at this and thought, if they can take this old niche IP like Fallout and turn it into this huge, successful phenomenon, then I think they are incredibly capable of taking Doom 4 and changing the world with it."

JC: We're going to take every opportunity to share our knowledge, hard-won wisdom of recent product cycles, anything we can share technology-wise, Bethesda is welcome to cherry pick. We already have slated our plans years ahead, so there aren't going to be any massive changes. We're not going to splice id Tech5 into anything Bethesda is doing. But anything they want to cherry pick, they're more than welcome to.

JC: There are also things that we want to learn from Bethesda -- the things they're doing with downloadable content, marketing, we want that to be applied on our behalf for our products. We don't want to say, "Leave us alone, we want to be exactly as we were before." We're going to do all the things we have been doing, but there are opportunities for us to improve as a result of this.

IGN: There's no overlap in terms of the genres each company has focused on. Is this going to affect the day-to-day operations of either studio? Do you feel the need to address any gaps or differences in terms of the culture of the two studios?
John Carmack: Actually, the cultures are remarkably compatible but the development teams are separated by half a continent and they're staying that way. There's no relocation of any assets. They will definitely continue to evolve in their own way. But because we're sister companies now and we benefit from the success of each other, we have every incentive in the world to do anything that we can to help out the other teams, whether it's design reviews or technology sharing or just helpful comments about experiences we've had in different areas. All of that is certainly going to go on. But the teams are not going to dramatically change one way or the other as a result of this.

IGN: Some gamers are intrigued and other are disturbed by the possibility of cross-pollenization of franchises. What are the chances we'll see a Doom RPG or a Fallout FPS? Anything like that in the works?
John Carmack: Not in terms of major titles. I would expect that, now that it's legal for us to do so, there will be little homages that are tossed back and forth between the franchise -- just things to make people smile. Game development is a multi-year timeline now and this acquisition does not change any of those multi-year plans already in motion.

IGN: When can gamers expect to hear the first details of titles released under this new structure and when might we see the games published?
John Carmack: Again, nothing really changes in the way things are going. Rage is our next major title coming out. We have a Wolfenstein title still being published by Activision, due out very soon and Rage published by EA partners due out next year. Doom 4 would be the first ZeniMax-only distribution title and that's still a ways off.

In the near term, nothing really changes here. This is something that impacts how things look three or four years down the road. id will be a different place at that point than it would have been if we had stayed independent.

Gamasutra: How Fallout 3 Helped Seal The Deal

IGN: id Buyout Full Story

id Software

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