Pretty cool link this morning. Daniel Gump has developed and released custom Javascript libraries that allow designers to make meaningful web games for the Nintendo Wii. What do I mean by meaningful? Well Wii web games I’ve played in the past have basically recognized the Wiimote as a mouse, so gameplay was limited to point and click ventures that in no way took advantage of the array of sensorspacked into the Wiimote.

Enter Mr. Gump.

Daniel’s SDK parses and returns data for all of the Wiimote functionality (X, Y, Z [distance], roll). In addition to the Wiimote library, libraries for drawing, online communication between players, 3D math, and a FPS-optimized 3D math.

I have no idea when I’m going to have time to play with these, but I’m beginning to wish that I was back in the Experimental Game Lab and able to see what other people do with these.

As I’m finally getting down to reviewing the Google’s mobile Android SDK, I’m wondering if this is the nail in the coffin for OpenMoko (it isn’t a very big coffin and would only need 1 nail).

My thinking is this: I’ve been working on a appropriative /pervasive game toolkit, and have been holding off on moving into the dev stage until I had a chance to get my hands on the consumer version of the Neo1973 to what I could really do with it. The fact that the device has been continuously delayed has not helped OpenMoko in this case.

You might ask why would I even bother with OpenMoko in the first place. Well the pervasive game toolkit requires a fairly high level of API access to a device’s hardware functionality. While I realized that any OpenMoko version of the toolkit would only be demoware, I was prepared to use it until the mobile community came to their senses.

Now it appears that Google may have lead them there. I’m putting a lot of stock into the optional low-level hardware APIs that have yet to be released but based on what I am reading now, it looks Android will allow me to have my demoware and deploy it too.

…I still might get a Neo1973 when it is finally available, but I certainly won’t be developing for it.

Did Android cause anyone else to close the book on OpenMoko or am I the only one who ever bothered to open the book?

This is everywhere this morning. If you aren’t familiar with The Last Star Fighter, shame on you. Much like Enemy Mine, it is one of those early 80’s Sci-Fi flicks that just nailed their concept while not attempting to be Star Wars. Anyway, the guys over at RogueSynapse have developed a homebrew version of the game featured in the movie complete with cabinet.

This leads me to wonder…what other non-existent games (from movies, etc.) do we wish existed. None are coming to mind right now, unless I can get the Wargames version of Tic Tac Toe, but I’d love to get a running list going.