Inside OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion GM: Game Center and Chess 3.0
Apple is expanding Game Center from an iOS play into the Mac arena with OS X Mountain Lion, enabling developers to add friend requests, recommendations and challenges as well as unlockable achievements and top score listings.
Apple introduced Game Center for iOS in 2010, hoping to capitalize on the growing selection of casual gaming titles that make up a huge part of App Store's catalog.
With social gaming features similar to those in Microsoft's XBox Live or Sony's PlayStation Network, Game Center allows developers to tap into a single system for reporting scores and achievements, and for sending invitations to friends or getting matched up with other players in multiuser games.
In Mountain Lion, Apple is bringing Game Center's features to the Mac desktop, and of course, to developers of the more involved and complex games available on a full sized computer.
Now under development, Game Center currently doesn't sport any titles in the Mac App Store. Apple has outfitted the bundled Chess with Game Center features, demonstrating how the new features can work within desktop games.
The Game Center app
As with IOS, Mac users will now soon have a central app that links to their networked friends, the games they play, pending requests, and the achievements they've unlocked in each title they play.
After signing in, users can pick a nickname that will be used in leader boards and to identify them in multiplayer games. Users can opt to have a public profile, where they are identified to other player by their real name. There's also an option to look up Game Center friends using your existing contacts.
Once logged in, users can view their gaming social network of friends or invite others into their Game Center network. Existing iOS Game Center players should find their existing pool of friends once the service goes online with the release of Mountain Lion.
Finding games
The third tab of Game Center lists the gaming titles (below) that user has been playing, presents recommendations, and links to the App Store. Note that games are listed as being "OS X Games," as Apple is advertising that Game Center on iOS and Mac will allow for cross platform gameplay, in addition to titles that are exclusive to either App Store.
Currently, the link to the Mac App Store presents an empty inventory of Game Center titles, simply because it hasn't officially launched yet.
On page 2 of 2: A preview in Chess 3.0
A preview in Chess 3.0
Apple's bundled Chess app, however, has been updated to support Game Center features. It also has some other minor updates, including a "gloss" background and subtle changes in its preferences. The computer AI, for example, now lets you choose specifically how many future moves (or how much time) the computer will ponder before making its move. Previously, Chess just presented a slider from "faster" to "stronger."
When you start an Game Center-enabled game, it logs into the network for you if you've already configured your account in Game Center. Otherwise, it will prompt you to sign in.
Signing into Game Center within Chess gives you access to two new features in the new 3.0 version, starting with Game Log, which in Chess shows the series of moves made. In the game below, an Achievement was also unlocked by putting the opponent's king in check.
Specific Game Center Achievements that have been unlocked can also be listed in the new Chess 3.0 (below), providing an additional way for players to meet secondary challenges as they play a game.
These Achievements are also tracked in Game Center itself, along with a list of players you have shared games with (below).
Cross platform Game Center play
Apple won't allow developers to list their own Game Center apps in the App Store until Mountain Lion ships, but it has already paved the way for developers to not only have Mac Game Center titles available at launch, but also to produce multiplayer titles that users on both iOS and OS X can play together.
Additionally, Apple has created a new Groups feature to allow users to share achievement and leaderboard score data between apps, enabling a developer to make a user's achievements visible across a connected franchise of related apps, or across the platform-specific versions of its game.
"With the Game Center app on your Mac [in OS X Mountain Lion], you can play anyone on a Mac, iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch," Apple notes, adding in a footnote that "Game Center is available on iPad, iPhone 3GS or later, iPod touch (3rd generation and later), and Mac computers with OS X Mountain Lion. Game Center works with games that have been developed to work with the Game Center service. Game Center may not be available in all countries or regions, and the available games may vary by country or region."
Apple introduced Game Center for iOS in 2010, hoping to capitalize on the growing selection of casual gaming titles that make up a huge part of App Store's catalog.
With social gaming features similar to those in Microsoft's XBox Live or Sony's PlayStation Network, Game Center allows developers to tap into a single system for reporting scores and achievements, and for sending invitations to friends or getting matched up with other players in multiuser games.
In Mountain Lion, Apple is bringing Game Center's features to the Mac desktop, and of course, to developers of the more involved and complex games available on a full sized computer.
Now under development, Game Center currently doesn't sport any titles in the Mac App Store. Apple has outfitted the bundled Chess with Game Center features, demonstrating how the new features can work within desktop games.
The Game Center app
As with IOS, Mac users will now soon have a central app that links to their networked friends, the games they play, pending requests, and the achievements they've unlocked in each title they play.
After signing in, users can pick a nickname that will be used in leader boards and to identify them in multiplayer games. Users can opt to have a public profile, where they are identified to other player by their real name. There's also an option to look up Game Center friends using your existing contacts.
Once logged in, users can view their gaming social network of friends or invite others into their Game Center network. Existing iOS Game Center players should find their existing pool of friends once the service goes online with the release of Mountain Lion.
Finding games
The third tab of Game Center lists the gaming titles (below) that user has been playing, presents recommendations, and links to the App Store. Note that games are listed as being "OS X Games," as Apple is advertising that Game Center on iOS and Mac will allow for cross platform gameplay, in addition to titles that are exclusive to either App Store.
Currently, the link to the Mac App Store presents an empty inventory of Game Center titles, simply because it hasn't officially launched yet.
On page 2 of 2: A preview in Chess 3.0
A preview in Chess 3.0
Apple's bundled Chess app, however, has been updated to support Game Center features. It also has some other minor updates, including a "gloss" background and subtle changes in its preferences. The computer AI, for example, now lets you choose specifically how many future moves (or how much time) the computer will ponder before making its move. Previously, Chess just presented a slider from "faster" to "stronger."
When you start an Game Center-enabled game, it logs into the network for you if you've already configured your account in Game Center. Otherwise, it will prompt you to sign in.
Signing into Game Center within Chess gives you access to two new features in the new 3.0 version, starting with Game Log, which in Chess shows the series of moves made. In the game below, an Achievement was also unlocked by putting the opponent's king in check.
Specific Game Center Achievements that have been unlocked can also be listed in the new Chess 3.0 (below), providing an additional way for players to meet secondary challenges as they play a game.
These Achievements are also tracked in Game Center itself, along with a list of players you have shared games with (below).
Cross platform Game Center play
Apple won't allow developers to list their own Game Center apps in the App Store until Mountain Lion ships, but it has already paved the way for developers to not only have Mac Game Center titles available at launch, but also to produce multiplayer titles that users on both iOS and OS X can play together.
Additionally, Apple has created a new Groups feature to allow users to share achievement and leaderboard score data between apps, enabling a developer to make a user's achievements visible across a connected franchise of related apps, or across the platform-specific versions of its game.
"With the Game Center app on your Mac [in OS X Mountain Lion], you can play anyone on a Mac, iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch," Apple notes, adding in a footnote that "Game Center is available on iPad, iPhone 3GS or later, iPod touch (3rd generation and later), and Mac computers with OS X Mountain Lion. Game Center works with games that have been developed to work with the Game Center service. Game Center may not be available in all countries or regions, and the available games may vary by country or region."
Comments
It's too bad the ugly UI design remains. Of all of apple's ugly skeumorphic designs, Game Centre is probably the worst.
Also as an aside, would it be too hard for Apple to spell CENTRE correctly for the rest of the world? Only the US mangles English so badly, everyone other English speaking nation just speaks and spells English.
1400 years of chess, and no one realised what it was lacking - achievements!
Apple is an American company. -- American English is to be expected.
AMERICA!!
I couldn't agree more as a Brit orginally, now American. To the narrow minded Brits that think this way I say this ... Think of American as (for most) the one foreign language that you can actually understand and be grateful the spelling is easier to fathom than French.
If I were still in the UK I'd be more worried about English remaining the main language spoken there than worrying about the on going linguistic developments of it in a country that split off hundreds of years ago. Meanwhile I'd suggest Punjabi and Sharia classes to hedge your bets.
I assume the Mac bridge playing community will be all over this. My wife is an avid bridge player in RL and tries on line. Most online bridge she has found is very PC oriented on clunky, horrible web interfaces. There used to be a great Gamesmith Mac online game called 3D Bridge Deluxe but they dropped the multi user server back end a couple of years ago. I hope they resurrect that with Game Center.
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now seriously :
Apple is an american company, yes it's true, but apple should accept to be a GLOBAL company : to translate in local language with all their quirks EACH core applications !
for example in french Os X, _everything_ is translated but "App Store" ... why why ??? "Game Center" in french.. WHY? ALL the text inside "App store" and "Game center" are translated but the title (?).
you could say : "because it would complicate stuff if each application had a different name for each country" but it's already the case for the OTHERS applications, for example :
"Activity Monitor" - > "Moniteur d'activité" (in french it's more romantic, no ?
"Preview" -> "Aperçu".
I can understand why "itunes" stays "itunes", it's a name, a brand. (iChanson ?
it seems for some new concepts, Apple want to force their american buzzword to the world.
in the end, I understand, respectfully, why "center" can be annoying, even for some english speakers whom you say "what the fuss , it's mostly the same".
in the main window, is written, in green-yellow text :
"Meilleurs jeux de Game Center"
Mon Dieu! Not more of this!
Alors! It's strange but I've never come across German speaker bitching on about English nor a Norwegian nor a Rumanian (or Romanian if you prefer) .... Well you get my point. No, it's always a French speaker! Well except for the ultimate irony of a Brit complaint America has no right to evolve its own language without Royal permission.
Can we get back on Topic?
Get over it. It'll change in a few years anyway like most styles. I quite like Game Center's design - I bet you wouldn't be complaining of someone else did it.
As for the English thing, well whatever. So Americans spell Centre the wrong way, so what, it's an American English OS and Game Center is a "brand". if they changed it based on where you lived it would cease to be a brand and just be a description. Might as well call it "achievement recording app"
What I do hate, however, is when companies list language as "English" and then "international English" as opposed to "English" and "American English" and, worse, use the US flag to signify English. Fortunately Apple hasn't done that...
What was the topic again? Oh yes, chess on game Center.
Originally Posted by igamogam
What I'd really like to know is how to delete this bloatware from my Macs and iOs devices (plus Dashboard and Launchpad). If I wanted pap like this I could buy a windows machine.
Bloatware:
Windows 8 Explorer adding a ribbon interface, when a handful of contextual buttons would have done the job
Adobe Photoshop functions for editing video (CS6) and 3D objects
The billion and a half functions in MS Word that no one uses
Not bloatware:
OS X Game Center API, which is never loaded into memory until called by a supporting game
Dashboard & Launchpad, never loaded into memory until invoked by keystroke or hot corner, both of which can be permanently disabled
Agreed. Game center is as ugly and seems suited for people who used to play cards and gamble decades ago. Notes needs an update as well, although I can tolerate that. Address book is a travesty - terrible interface. Other than that, OS X is pretty darn sweet.
Three cheers for Game Center on the Mac!
I don't even buy games that aren't Game Center enabled. I like being able to see how I'm doing against friends and I've also found the app is a fantastic way to find new games. When I see a friend has gotten a new game I usually check it out and more often than not, I wind up purchasing it.
Being able to have Game Center on the Mac and play cross platform is really going to be fantastic. It will probably make me more of a Mac gamer.
Woo hoo!
Enjoyed your post ...
(Re the off topic element: You might find this fascinating, I know I did. It explains a lot ...It was a Scot behind much of this! /ROFL) http://history1900s.about.com/od/1900s/qt/trspelling.htm
Get rid of the GREEN!
I wish they would replace chess with Bejeweled or Angry Birds, or just supplement Chess with one of those.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AppleInsider
Apple is expanding Game Center from an iOS play into the Mac arena ...
I have always wished I could remove Game Centre and all it's links and connections from all my iOS devices.
I hope it stays at least out of the way on all my Macs.
If Apple is going to change course by stuffing all this crap like Game Centre and Twitter and Facebook into their OS's, I think they should also change course on their traditional reluctance to give the user any control over what's installed and what they see.
I know Apple believes that they should not give the end user too many configuration options, (and rightly so), but we should be able to opt-out of all these "social additions" they've been making lately. If we can't, then it really isn't a proper operating system anymore it's more like a marketing tool.
Quote:
Originally Posted by digitalclips
Quote:
I couldn't agree more as a Brit orginally, now American. To the narrow minded Brits that think this way I say this ... Think of American as (for most) the one foreign language that you can actually understand and be grateful the spelling is easier to fathom than French.
If I were still in the UK I'd be more worried about English remaining the main language spoken there than worrying about the on going linguistic developments of it in a country that split off hundreds of years ago. Meanwhile I'd suggest Punjabi and Sharia classes to hedge your bets.
I'm betting after Mandarin becomes the dominant language -- people won't be so bent out of shape over Engrish.
Folks -- let's keep some perspective here. I can almost guarantee the entire "look and feel" of the Game Center is due to developers grabbing what is available to test the protocols. They put together an app, and developed the processes it was going to need like updates, achievements, chats and real-time data. A chess or card game is just something off the shelf. They might be implementing some of the types of things that Steam does.
But this isn't how it's going to look and the games are just proofs of concept -- this only looks like an Alpha attempt to debug the services.
Chill out!