The sequel to Days of Sail: Wind over Waters is the game we have been working on. The title (although still debatable) is Days of Sail 2: Venture. It will borrow simulation elements from Days of Sail: Wind over Waters but there will be a huge advancement on the gameplay this time. It won’t just be Simulation - it will also be a Tycoon type of game!

The title will involve time management, selling/buying goods and sailing. Several games are known which attempt to simulate the effects of some of these parameters. However, prior to this game, a game which provides a realistic simulation of all of these conditions and which realistically balances skill and chance has not been developed. A tropical environment is provided in which these conditions are related and interactive in a way that is entertaining and visually pleasant.

This time around, we have picked Unity3D for our development platform. Unity3D is a great platform for developing 3d games and its multi-platform support is definitely a big plus.

We have a new 3D guy, Nick, in our team. Nick has been around in the 3D business for quite some time but he never got to work on a game before. Judging from the screenshots, you will see that it’s a shame that he didn’t!

Click on pictures for a larger view.

We will come back with more details and pictures.

Watch this topic in the Unity forums

We thought it’d be appropriate to change the look of the site first. It’s been, oh, almost 4 years since the first post and, since we have taken an exciting new turn in our productions and our collaborations (as you will soon see), why not change our looks too?

Stay tuned, very soon our new game is… setting sail for the first time and this website will host its first public appearance.

Screenshots, videos and a demo are on the way.

What is also interesting is that the “wellness gaming” industry is on the verge of a serious boom. Projected revenue by 2015 is $2 billion.

Here are some excerpts from an article written by Larry Kemp, at The Real Story:

More and more people are having senior moments. As the population slowly ages, there becomes room for these games that focus on brain stimulation. A lot of women don’t play games because they don’t want to waste their time. However, 85% of wellness gamers are women. These games resolve their guilt towards gaming. It becomes more than just a game, it becomes a lifestyle brand.

So what’s the future like? You can bet on more money being poured into wellness and fitness gaming. Keep your eyes peeled for these games to become a lot more mainstream, and appealing to big audiences.

The new version of Crossword Fun is here, fresh and hot, and promises a lot of fun, especially to movie buffs!

Following the popularity of the application, both on the hosted website and on Facebook, we have added an interesting new feature to its functionality: the inclusion of photos. What this practically means is that word definitions are now paired with a relative headshot picture that helps the crossword participant to recognize the person that the definition refers to.

To put this to work, a new category came to play: Movie Actors. Using the popular imdb.com as a source, the application selects trivia information and a photograph of an actor from a selection of over 1,500 actors and actresses and constructs the crossword definition, expecting from the player to identify the person and fill the puzzle with his/her surname. The outcome is very exciting as you can see from the screenshot below:

As always, crossword sources are automatically selected from online crawlers and the puzzler that is generated in every visit is never the same with the one before. Every refresh to the page will take you to a new puzzle to solve, so don’t hesitate, go and test your Movie Trivia knowledge and put your name up there in the Hall of Fame.

As for ourselves, we’re really excited with this new feature and are already planning some new categories to put into use. The possibilities are endless, so stay tuned!

A new crossword puzzle is automatically generated every time you refresh the page.

When the introduction is over, you are requested to enter a name.

• If you have played the game at least once, the name you have used is already in there for you, so it is recommended that you keep your used name so that the Hall of Fame statistics will remain consistent.
• If you are a first-time player, you should enter a name before proceeding. Make it big and as unique as possible so that it will be distinct on the Hall of Fame. If you have cookies disabled, the system will not remember the name for you, so try to remember the name you used when prompted again in a future attempt.

Click on “OK, Move on“.

In the Options page, you should select the puzzle Category that you wish to auto-generate a crossword for (default is: Word Definitions) and then you may (or may not) toggle some options on/off. These are:

• Skill level: Novice (upon finishing typing a word entirely, the word is highlited in red - false input - or black - correct input).
• Skill level: Expert (No highliting of words or letters while typing.User has no indication whatsoever of the corectness of the word typed).
• Complexity: Lite (Lite complexity means that at most 20 words are included in the generated crossword).
• Complexity: Complex (a complex crossword contains at most 30 words to be discovered).

After making the desired choices, click on “To the Game!“.

Depending on the size of the Database selected, it might take some seconds to generate a new crossword. This delay occurs only the first time you play the game as it is necessary to download the necessary files.

To enter a word, simply click on any letter of the word and type in the characters for that word. As soon as an empty cell is clicked, the entire word and its definition are also highlighted. If the cell belongs both to a horizontal and a vertical word, the first click highlights the horizontal and the second click highlights the vertical word.

You can also click on a definition (on the right) and the corresponding word will be highlighted on the puzzle.

If a word you type comes up in red, it is not the correct word at that position. If it comes up in black, it is the correct word (this is the default behaviour, you can disable this check in the Options panel).

Letters can be deleted by using the backspace or delete keys.

When all characters have been filled in and are correct, the puzzle is complete, and the timer will stop, showing you the amount of time it took to complete the puzzle.

You can solve the entire crossword at any time by clicking on the “Solve” button at the bottom.

You can exit the current crossword at any time by clicking on the “Quit” button at the bottom.

NOTE: Hall of Fame ranking is primarily based in the Percent Completed value (the higher, the better) and secondary in Score value (the less, the better). This means, for example, that if you quit the current crossword before finding all words, you will be listed in the Hall of Fame (if at least one word is found) but your ranking will be low since the “Percent Completed” column will be less than 100%.

I must say that Facebook developers’ experience with the API is as frustrating as Facebook end-users’ experience is (I never liked Facebook as a user, I find it unfriendly to say the least). But even as a developer who wishes to roll out an application to Facebook, you get more of the same sh*t; there is a complete lack of any formal documentation and hardly any testing to the new features that come out. Developers are easily lost and, what should be an easy task, becomes a daunting task! Many things seem to be broken since deployment.

Anyway, after a lot of effort I managed to port the Flash application to Facebook (just a Facebook iframe which hosts the Crossword SWF file) but it still requires some more visitors before being accepted. So, I’d appreciate your click on my link (requires login in to your Facebook account) over here:

http://apps.facebook.com/crossword-fun/

All participations are highly appreciated. Cheers.

Crossword Fun status update:

• we’ve given a new look & feel to the puzzle game’s website,
• a major bug that messed up the correspondence between words and their definitions is now fixed,
• the website now has a Hall of Fame.

More specifically, you can now visit the Hall of Fame page, select the Crossword Category that interests you and see the best all-time scores, the users that achieved them and the time taken.

Four things to note regarding the Hall of Fame:

• Hall of Fame ranking is primarily based in?Percent Completed value (the higher, the better) and secondary in?Score value (the less, the better). This means, for example, that if you quit the current crossword before finding all words, you will be listed in the Hall of Fame (if at least one word is found) but your ranking will be low since the Percent Completed column will be less than 100%.
• The Score value is calculated with the following formula: (time in milliseconds / words solved), and, obviously, the smaller number the better!
• All players that have?Percent Completed larger than zero (i.e. found at least one word) will be recorded in the Hall of Fame and,
• of course, clicking on the “Solve” button does not mean that you will be listed in th Hall of Fame!

We encourage you to try our new puzzler, your participation will encourage us to add more features and more clues to it. Your comments are also welcomed.

Hopefully, the next step is the Facebook part.

We have been busy. We are taking a brake from 3D game development and have been working on a crossword generator project (made in flash & actionscript) that will generate a new Crossword puzzle with every refresh of the page. We have named this new game “Crossword-Fun” and it is still in early beta.

We kindly invite you to test the application and report bugs or just let us know what you think. The application can be found at the following link:

http://www.immersionfx.com/crossword-fun/crossword.html

The idea is of “Crossword-Fun” is simple: based on online Clue Databases (like dictionary.com) an algorithm selects a random set of words and their corresponding definitions and creates a new crossword on the fly. The user that attempts to solve the crossword will use an intuitive way to match words to the given definitions. Upon successful completion of the crossword, the user’s time will be recorded to the Hall of Fame.

This online crossword creator game can be a great tool for students and/or educators. There are two main clue databases already included in the first build, namely “Word definitions” (basically a thesaurus of words) and “Medical Terms” (an ideal option for medicine students or wannabes). We plan to include a lot more in the future, so stay tuned!

A porting of this application on Facebook and addition of multiplayer features are our next plans.

PS. As a side note, 3D game development is far from neglected - on the contrary, it is still our top priority. As a matter of fact, we are in the process of designing our next game which, at least technically, will be a… far cry from our previous titles! Stay tuned!

CanonCreta | 2009
www.canoncreta.gr - Canon Authorized Dealer in Crete, Greece.

Orasis Wedding Photography | 2008
www.orasisphotography.gr - Portfolio of exceptional wedding photographer Harris Koutsopanagiotopoulos.

DIGIMA | 2007
www.digima.gr - DIGIMA is a team with experience in computer design. DIGIMA’s goal is the continuous upgrade of quality which in combination with realism and high fidelity sets new standards in architectural photorealism and digital presentation.

PhotoActive | 2006
www.photoactive.gr - Portfolio of professional photographer Panos Kounoupas.

AthenaCollection | 2004
www.athenacollection.com - A unique collection of jewellery and accessories of exceptional quality and beauty by designer Athena Avouri.

Italian Scholl of Athens | 2003
www.italikisxoli.edu.gr - The only Italian school in Greece owned by the Italian Government.