No one escapes the TUAW visitation. Our methods are fear, surprise, and a fanatical devotion to the Apple! Under the best of circumstances, management can use our Reaper-like presence to convince everyone they need to get the hell out of Manhattan. In the case of Freeverse Software, the Exodus moment arrived. The entire crew has packed up their East Side offices and headed over to Brooklyn's fashionable DUMBO district.
We wish the Freeverse crew well in the new office -- with luck, those line extensions (like Airburst and Marathon:Durandal for XBox 360), iPhone games, new apps built on legendary engines, and killer vector graphics tools will keep on pumping out of the shop once the river has been crossed. We are particularly eager for an iPhone version of Jared.
A couple of months back, president Ian Lynch Smith and marketing director Brian Akaka were kind enough to show us around the old shop and let us take a few pictures for posterity before the move (gallery below). If you have questions about any of the mystery objects in the pictures, let us know and Brian can clear up any confusion. As for other independent Mac software developers? If you're in NYC, Denver, Philadephia, Chicago, Atlanta, LA, Knoxville or the UK, let us know when we can visit. We promise not to poke you with a soft cushion.
Freeverse wrote today to tip us off about this webpage that describes their new Flick games for iPhone; the games are going to be written using the iPhone SDK as soon as soon can be.
These games will use the iPhone's accelerometer to create Wii-like interaction for baseball, motosports, bowling and so forth. The page shows a number of mockups of the games in progress, and Freeverse's PR folk assure us the games are going to be released as soon as possible. There's more details of the games in action over at Freeverse's site.
Freeverse Software, makers of great Mac games like Wingnuts and the Burning Monkey series, have announced that Kill Monty is available at a 45% discount this weekend only, bringing the final price down to $10.95US. Kill Monty is fun, addictive and ten bucks for the rest of the day! You can't go wrong. Note that this goes beyond their one-day-only leap day sale.
That's great, but Mac gaming is still in a sorry state. From EA's backpedaling to the puzzled looks from Windows users ("You don't have [insert title here] yet?"), Mac users are out in the cold, despite an apparent demand in Mac games -- the demo version of Tomb Raider Anniversary has been downloaded over 100,000 times according to publishers Feral Interactive. I play Warcraft and Peggle, and I'm anxiously awaiting Spore. Other than that I use my PSP. I'm happy enough with my small library of games, but I believe I'm in the minority.
Freeverse has sent along the heads up on a sale they're having today only. To celebrate "Leap Day" (yes, we're only having this twenty-four hour period today because it's a Leap Year), they're selling everything they got for an extra 20% off whenever you use the code "leapyear" during checkout.
What could you buy? Well, you could grab their 3D Desktop Defense-like game Horde of Orcs for a mere $20, pick up Neon Tango (a flashy Asteroids-like shooter) for the same price, or grab Wingnuts 2, which isn't too bad a bit of pick-up-and-play shooting fun, for $24. You could also grab any of the apps they sell for the sale price, too: they've got Comic Life Deluxe for $24 and the award-winning Lineform for $64 after the discount.
Yeah, 20% ain't too huge, but hey it's only Leap Day, and if you've been waiting to grab some of this Freeverse 'ware this makes today the perfect time to do it.
MacNewsWorld has a pretty good in-depth overview up about Mac gaming: where it's at and where it's headed. The basic story is that the three things that have historically held Mac gaming back behind PCs (the technology differences, the OS, and the smaller installed base) are slowly disappearing. With Apple's switch from PowerPC to Intel, the introduction of Boot Camp and increasingly easy development in OS X, and the growing popularity of the platform, gaming is actually bigger on the Mac than it's ever been.
But there is still a huge obstacle, and that is DirectX. Though there are ways around it (Freeverse actually mentions the Unity engine in the article), many developers are stuck developing in DirectX, and that leaves the Mac platform out of the loop. And there really isn't anything comparable to it in OS X, either. Graphics hardware remains a problem, but that just harkens back to the biggest problem of getting games on the Mac: support from Apple. Some developers say that there aren't games on the Mac because Steve doesn't want them there, and until Apple shows evidence to the contrary, PC will always be the gamers' platform of choice.
Freeverse has release a new arcade shooter for the Mac called Neon Tango, and upon first glance, it looks a lot like Geometry Wars (which I've played many, many times late into the night on my Xbox 360). But then again, Geometry Wars looks like Asteroids, which looks like Space War, and so on, all the way back, so the only thing that really matters here is how it plays; fun's fun. Freeverse brags that Neon Tango has "state of the art OpenGL graphics," a techno soundtrack put together by someone named "Digital Droo," and lots and lots of various shapes throughout 50 stages for you to shoot with your little ship avatar.
If you're a fan of the Big Bang suite of board games, you'll be happy to learn that Freeverse has released a fully Universal version of the seven-game package, with performance improvements, sleeker graphics and greater stability. The new version now offers tighter iChat integration so you can better taunt your opponents invite friends to play against you.
The updated package weighs in at a hefty 400MB once installed and offers the same games you've come to love: 4-in-a-Row, Backgammon, Checkers, Chess, Mancala, Reversi and Tic-Tac-Toe. The package costs $25 (free for current owners) and you won't feel like a Blue Moon if you buy it. It offers lots of re-play as these games are classics; my kids love them.
Chalk this one up to bad press release timing: we neglected to note the release of a major update to Freeverse's Lineform vector art application, announced on January 14 (otherwise known as Steve's Eve). The new version includes full Leopard support and adds hooks for drawing tablet pressure sensitivity, plus many smaller feature and performance updates.
Lineform 1.5 is $79.95 either direct from Freeverse or in convenient boxed form via Apple or Amazon. The 8.1 MB demo is downloadable as well. If you're a forlorn Freehand veteran or facing off sticker shock for Illustrator, take a look.
Freeverse dropped me a note to let me know that their new tower defense game released yesterday. It's called Horde of Orcs, and I have to say, it looks fun. If you've ever played Desktop Tower Defense, you know what the deal is here, except that this time around, everything's in shiny, colorful 3D, with a nice dose of humor added in.
The demo is available for download over on their website (along with a freaky live action trailer that means someone had to get dressed up in green paint and go Orc-crazy). Just the other day, I said I hadn't had a Mac-only gaming experience worth recommending this year, but maybe I spoke too soon. Horde of Orcs might be just the thing to finish off 2007 right.
It's Halloween again and nothing says frightful quite like a bodyless animated head singing dreadfully on your desktop. Yes, Freeverse's digital Jared makes the perfect workspace companion for a spooky day like today. Let him serenade you...and frighten away all your annoying visitors.
Keep some ibuprofen on-hand--and check out Jared's Wikipedia page.
The good folks at Freeverse dropped us a line informing of an update to their webcam app, Periscope. We first looked at this app awhile ago, and the UI has been completely overhauled (for the better in my opinion). If you aren't familiar with this app it is a simple idea: harness the power of your Mac's webcam (either an iSight or an external cam) to do more than just Photobooth.
Periscope lets you set your Mac to take a picture when it hears a noise, when it detects motion in user-defined zones, at a specific time, or when you push a button. The resultant pictures can be automatically uploaded to Flickr or .Mac, they can be saved into a movie to make a simple time lapse, emailed, or FTPed to a location of your choice. But wait, there's more! The images can also be timestamped, overlayed, or have text labels applied to them automatically.
What would you expect to pay for such a powerful application? If you said $39.95 you'd be right (and get out of my head!). There is a fully functional demo that lets you use Periscope for 50 hours, so you really don't have a reason not to try this sweet little app out, now do you?
Heroes V for $35! Euchre (my favorite card game ever) for $14! Wingnuts 2 for $21! And the apps aren't to be scoffed at either-- they've got the great Comic Life, Lineform, and Sound Studio 3 all on sale as well.
Woot for Freeverse, and woot for selling great games and apps for cheaper than usual. Now that you guys are flush with money, how about convincing Microsoft to let you put that Euchre game on my 360, too?
A slew of new apps have been released as of late (no doubt due to the Apple Design Awards deadline) and Freeverse didn't want to be left out of the party. Periscope is a webcam utility that adds a bunch of cool features to your Mac's webcam (builtin or otherwise). You can set it to take a pic based on motion, noise, a timer, Applescript, or by pressing the Apple Remote. Once you have a pic, or a series of pics, you can upload them to Flickr, an FTP site, or export them (you can even create a time lapse movie).
We talked with Freeverse at Macworld about a variety of products including their audio recording and editing program Sound Studio; now version 3.5 has dropped. Highlights of the new version include Apple Lossless and Ogg support, ID3 metadata editing and various other improvements. I hadn't noticed before, but Freeverse eats its own dog food, and has used Sound Studio "for years to create all the dialog and sound effects in our games."
Sound Studio is $79.95 and a demo is available for download.
Applications that offer 'full screen' modes are all the rage now a days. The idea is that if you run one application in full screen mode you won't be distracted by all those other things that fight for your attention on your Mac.
The good people at Freeverse are savvy to this, but they figured why bother creating individual applications with a full screen mode when you can create an app that'll let any app have a full screen mode of sorts. Thus Think was born.
Think has a very cool Illumination Panel that allows you to pick from any of your currently running applications. As soon as you pick an app, Think throws up a backdrop (the color is up to you, though it defaults to black) that covers up the rest of your desktop (on your main monitor as well as any secondary monitors you might have) though the Dock remains visible. Think goes one step further and displays the icon of the currently focused app in its Dock icon, just in case you forget.
It is obvious that Freeverse spent some time thinking about this application. Now, what would you expect to pay for such an application? If you said nothing, not only are you cheap but you're also correct! That's right, Freeverse is giving this gem away (Mac OS X 10.4.3 or later is required).
No one escapes the TUAW visitation. Our methods are fear, surprise, and a fanatical devotion to the Apple! Under the best of circumstances, management can use our Reaper-like presence to convince everyone they need to get the hell out of Manhattan. In the case of Freeverse Software, the Exodus moment arrived. The entire crew has packed up their East Side offices and headed over to Brooklyn's fashionable DUMBO district.
Freeverse wrote today to tip us off about 
Freeverse Software, makers of great Mac games like Wingnuts and the Burning Monkey series, have announced that 
Freeverse has sent along the heads up on a sale they're having today only. To celebrate "Leap Day" (yes, we're only having this twenty-four hour period today because 
MacNewsWorld has a pretty good in-depth overview up 
Chalk this one up to bad press release timing: we neglected to note the release of a major update to Freeverse's 
It's Halloween again and nothing says frightful quite like a bodyless animated head singing dreadfully on your desktop. Yes, Freeverse's 
Freeverse, winner of 
We 
Applications that offer 'full screen' modes are all the rage now a days. The idea is that if you run one application in full screen mode you won't be distracted by all those other things that fight for your attention on your Mac.
