Bytten

...a hamburger is complemented with fries, fish wrapped in newspaper is served with chips, chocolates with a valentine and, everyone stands facing the door on an elevator. So too in the Indie gaming community. One often finds that we have often accepted our expectations as to what constitutes a proper Indie game. Surf the web, find a game, get interested, become infatuated. Money exchanges banks followed by a download and you have a new game. Cool. Let's see here, Ah, game controls! Supports keyboard, mouse, and... .

It's not every day that one comes across something new on the Indie scene, thus when one does encounter something singularly unique it stands-up and shouts "look at me!" Now I'm not talking about the game in question being unique, but rather the technology the game supports. Recently, I had just this opportunity to consider the technology supported by an Indie game, and in considering the technology I found myself wanting to explore it a bit further. With this in mind, it is likely safe for everyone to assume that I most likely live in a cave isolated from the rest of the world, but please, bear with me here. I was recently trolling the web, checking for updates to games and the like and noticed that StarWraith games added support for Track IR for two of it's games.

Laugh all you like. While aware of the technology, I admittedly was unaware of the brand-name. Nevertheless, I'm sure that I'm not alone in amazement that an Indie game was offering support for this game interface. With this in mind, I went to TrackIR's site in order to learn about the device as any gamer might do and here is what I found. As you move your head in small increments your view in the game moves in concert with the moving of your head. As you may imagine, the possibilities are endless for first-person games. And while NaturalPoint's technology does cost a bit more, said cost is not prohibitive for those gamers looking for increased immersion in their gaming world.

When I came across an Indie that added support for this immersion expansion, I felt driven to contact the developer about this technology when so few (if any) compliment their game with this tech. The name is likely to catch your attention, for Shawn Bower of StarWraith 3D Games is well known in the Indie community as a developer as well as in the Dark Basic community for his command of the code. Shawn has a number of space-based sci-fi games to his credit (and a large fan-base as well) including his most recent games Evochron Alliance and Arvoch Conflict wherein he added support for TrackIR technology.