Anarchy Arcade (3D Web, Multiplayer, and Legalities)

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smsithlord
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Anarchy Arcade (3D Web, Multiplayer, and Legalities)

Post by smsithlord »

First, some quick news...
Last week's Anarchy Arcade 24 hour streaming marathon went off without a hitch. Twenty-eight games were given away in total, and we all had a lot of fun playing games, listening to music, and watching videos. Next Wednesday it's all going down again on twitch.tv/AnarchyArcade. There's a whole new batch of games ready to be given out, and lots of fun to be had. So take a look at at the Twitch stream next Wednesday if you want to see Anarchy Arcade in action!

Also, there are only 9 days left in the Anarchy Arcade Kickstarter campaign! If you haven't already, check out some of the many update articles I have been posting there. Now is the time to pledge and leave a lasting impression on the Anarchy Arcade community!

Now, continuing on to the meat of this article, here are details into some of what Anarchy Arcade does behind the scenes to create 3D worlds from 2D websites & host them multiplayer, and the legal considerations that have gone into its design. You can listen to the audio, or read the transcript. The transcript also has some random screenshots of more exotic locations that have arcades built in them. They show a lot of community add-on content that Anarchy Arcade is compatible with.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fW_43yCo7PA

3D Web, Multiplayer, and Copyrights
Generating a coherent 3D environment from a 2D web page is a complex task. Certain realities must be addressed before a good set of solutions can be implemented.

In this article I will address four of these issues specifically and the techniques that Anarchy Arcade uses to resolve them. These techniques involve various types of parsing to "understand" 2D web pages and generate coherent & functional 3D environments from them.

Further considerations must be made when using these 3D environments in single & multiplayer mode. Anarchy Arcade provides four different types of gameplay modes including private singleplayer arcades, personally hosted multiplayer arcades, community-hosted multiplayer arcades, and web-hosted arcades.

Technical restrictions are not the only type of considerations that need to be made when using these types of 3D environments in a multiplayer setting. Legal restrictions, such as copyrights, must also be a primary consideration. Anarchy Arcade addresses these issues at the very core of its design.

Anarchy Arcade generates these coherent & functional 3D multiplayer environments in the simplest and most adaptive ways possible.

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Challenges of generating a 3D environment from a 2D web page
Traditional web pages are not designed to be displayed in a 3D world. In order to transform a 2D web page into a coherent 3D environment, Anarchy Arcade must be able to "understand" what is on the web page and extract specific information from it. This is called code parsing. For example, when a 2D web browser parsers the HTML code

Code: Select all

<img src="mycar.jpg" />
on a web page, it knows that an image called "mycar.jpg" is supposed to be displayed there. This works great for 2D web browsers because traditional HTML code is designed to generate 2D web pages. However, Anarchy Arcade needs to generate 3D environments from traditional 2D web pages.

For example, consider making a 3D environment based on deviantArt.com. Let's think about the image search results page specifically. Wouldn't it be cool if you could just tell Anarchy Arcade a search term, and it automatically generates a functional 3D art gallery for you and your friends to walk around in? It is completely possible as long as Anarchy Arcade is able to parse the deviantArt search results page and "understand" what is on it. There are three different parsing techniques that Anarchy Arcade uses to achieve this. However, certain limitations must be considered for each technique.

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Auto-parsing
The simplest solution would be to automatically grab every image used on the web page and put each one up on the wall of your virtual 3D art gallery. And then you could grab every link used on the page, and turn them into special doorways that take you to the 3D representations of other web pages. This is a very basic example of auto-parsing. It is most effective when the logic is kept general, used carefully, and only as a last resort.

The problem with auto-parsing is that 2D web pages are not designed for the 3D world. Doing something like grabbing every image used on the web page means you'll also grab things like menu icons and avatar pictures. It wouldn't make any sense to use these types of images in your 3D art gallery because you are only interested in the actual search result images. So in order to create a coherent 3D environment, Anarchy Arcade must be able to distinguish between the important images from all the other images that don't matter.

The first solution that comes into my mind is only grabbing the larger images from the search results page. That way, smaller menu icon images would be ignored. However, assuming that only large images are important is something that might not be true on other web sites. This leads us to site-specific custom-parsing.

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Custom-parsing (client-side)
The technique of custom-parsing uses logic that is specific to a particular website in order to "understand" what is on it. For the deviantArt example, this makes it possible to extract only the meaningful images from the search results page and use them to generate a coherent 3D environment from them. It also makes it possible to do things like grab HD versions of the images instead of the low-resolution ones, and grab the artist's name for each image, and generate a link to each artist's deviantArt profile so you could leave comments or discover more of their work. Custom parsing is extremely powerful and can be used to transform almost any 2D web page into a coherent & functional 3D environment.

The issue with custom-parsing is that it requires website-specific logic. Anarchy Arcade needs to be told how to "understand" each specific website for you to use custom-parsing on it. There's a lot of websites, and there's no way that I could write custom-parsers for all of them.

To resolve this issue, Anarchy Arcade implements custom-parsers as user-addon scripts. These scripts are written in standard JavaScript, a coding language that web developers are already familiar with. It provides the community with the tools needed to add custom-parsers for their own favorite sites. This powerful type of support can be used to generate coherent & functional 3D versions of any 2D web page without any special considerations on the web-server's end.

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Custom-parsing (server-side)
However, if you run your own website and want to have more control over the type of 3D experience that your visitors have when using Anarchy Arcade, you can generate a special script file in a language that Anarchy Arcade already understands and host it on your web-server. It's up to you how specific you want to get when defining your 3D version of your website. You could simply put a list of items and allow Anarchy Arcade to decide how to arrange them, or you could design every last detail of the 3D world your visitors will be exploring. Custom maps, addon props, everything you can imagine. All served from your website to give you complete control and provide your visitors with a unique & coherent 3D environment for them to enjoy.

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Bringing it all together
It is important to understand that a 3D representation of a 2D web page might not need to take up the entire 3D environment that it's in. A web page might only require a single room for its 3D representation. Or even just one corner of a room. The 3D environments of Anarchy Arcade often have multiple websites housed in them at the same time. In Anarchy Arcade, a 3D representation of a website is called a Hub. They vary in size and design, and are generated using a careful combination of the three parsing techniques described above. In doing this, Anarchy Arcade has addressed the four major issues with generating a 3D environment from a 2D web page.

Issue 1: Traditional websites are not designed to be 3D environments.
Solution: Parse the 2D web pages & extract the important information needed to generate coherent & functional 3D environments.

Issue 2: Auto-parsing can only do so much.
Solution: Make careful use of auto-parsing so as not to create incoherent results, keep the logic general, and only use it as a last resort.

Issue 3: Custom-parsing is effective, but must be designed specifically for each different website.
Solution: Implement custom-parsers as addon-scripts so that support for new sites can be added in the future.

Issue 4: It is impossible for me to create a custom-parser for every website in existence.
Solution: Provide the community with the tools needed for them to write their own custom-parsers for their own favorite websites as user add-on scripts.

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Using these environments in single & multiplayer mode
Anarchy Arcade has four different types of gameplay modes, each with the same style of user experience for a friendly and consistent feel whether you're playing single or multiplayer.

Anarchy Arcade is all about you and what you like to do on your computer, so singleplayer mode is where users are expected to start off. From there you start to build your Anarchy Arcade media collection and venture out into multiplayer in hopes of earning big rewards and advancing your Anarchy Arcade career.

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Singleplayer Arcades
These are private personal environments that are used as personal 3D desktops or media arcades. Just like all other gameplay modes, you can spawn absolutely anything you want in your singleplayer arcade. This includes games, movies, YouTube videos, shortcuts to programs you have installed on your PC, family pictures from your My Pictures folder; absolutely anything. You can either keep them private for personal use only, or, if you want, you could host your personal 3D desktop in multiplayer mode and invite your friends over to explore all of your stuff right along side of you.

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Personally Hosted Multiplayer Arcades
Using your personal computer no longer has to be a personal experience. In fact, depending on how awesome you are, it can be very enjoyable for your friends to come over and hang out in your personal 3D desktop. They can listen to your music with you, watch your favorite YouTube videos, check out your favorite games & movies, and watch you walk around all day from program to program as you launch the various things you use your computer for on a daily basis.

Visiting your friend's personal 3D desktop is a lot like stepping inside of their head and experiencing what they like to do on their PC. And it's not a passive experience either. If your friend allows it, you can create your own little corner in his virtual world that has all your favorite stuff in it too. If you have a lot of friends and you're always hanging out with each other, larger community-hosted multiplayer arcades might be more your style.

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Community Hosted Multiplayer Arcades
These are dedicated servers aimed at providing an enjoyable experience to an entire community of players rather than just a handful of friends. Anybody can setup a dedicated server for their community and customize the experience that it provides. Since these types of arcades are geared towards larger groups, they contain media items and shortcuts that have a broad appeal to their community rather than files that are spawned from somebody's personal documents folder. However, just like all other gameplay modes, you can fully customize your community server how ever you wish.

You can set it up to always have the latest news, videos, and images related to your community, or allow your community members to each customize their own portion of the community server. As the server admin, you are in complete control of the experience your community members will have in your arcade.

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Web Hosted Arcades
If you have your own website and want to deliver a customized experience to your Anarchy Arcade visitors, you can generate and host a special script file on your server that does exactly that.

Web hosted arcades are very much like community hosted arcades, except that they do not require any actual game server. Web hosted arcades can be accessed by Anarchy Arcade users simply by typing your website's address and pressing enter.

Users can either browse the 3D version of your site in singleplayer mode, or host their own multiplayer arcades where they can invite their friends to join them.

Just like all other gameplay modes, you can customize your web hosted arcade how ever you like. You can even setup your web server to dynamically update your arcade so it always has the most recent posts and information.

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Consistent Multiplayer Experience
When you are in a multiplayer arcade, you want your friends to see everything the exact same way that you do. You want them to see the same pictures on the walls, the same games in the cabinets, and the same movies on the screens. And you want them to be able to play any game and watch every movie that's in there, exactly as if they were at your IRL house playing on your computer with you. This type of truly consistent multiplayer experience would only be possible through the use of two very important features: screen-sharing and peer-to-per file sharing.

Unfortunately, implementing either of these two features would require Anarchy Arcade to impose extensive restrictions and user moderation over the community to prevent copyright violations from running rampant.

I do not wish to impose restrictions or extensive user moderation over the Anarchy Arcade community, so Anarchy Arcade does not have either of these important features in its design.

There is nothing illegal about either of these very powerful technologies, but it is simply a design decision to leave them out to insure that users have absolute freedom over what they do in Anarchy Arcade.

Anarchy Arcade is NOT screen-sharing or peer-to-peer file sharing software. Instead, it has been designed to give the illusion of these two very important mutliplayer features, without opening itself up to exploits that they are normally accompanied by. It is designed from the ground-up for you to use & share your copyrighted material in a legal way. This is best illustrated with a few specific examples.

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YouTube Restrictions
Let's say that you're hosting your personal arcade in multiplayer mode and invite a friend over to check out your stuff. So you're showing your friend around and click on a YouTube video that you have placed on the wall. You expect that you'll both be able to watch the video together in the virtual world, right on the wall, at the same time, just like you were standing together in real life. And in Anarchy Arcade, that is exactly what's going to happen most of the time.

However, some videos that are legal for you to watch in your region of the world are illegal for people to watch in other regions. You may have experienced this yourself when browsing YouTube.com in your web browser, clicking on a video, only to see the words "This video is not available in your country."

Region restrictions are just one of the types of legal & copyright restrictions that YouTube.com automatically implements to prevent copyright violation from running rampant.

Anarchy Arcade has been designed NOT to break YouTube's copyright restrictions. This compatibility is implemented at a basic level and extends to other sites & services such as Netflix, Hulu, Vemo, and more.

For this reason, it is possible that your friend will not be able to watch that particular YouTube video with you in Anarchy Arcade, and instead would see YouTube's standard message "This video is not available in your country." In order to legally watch that video together with your friend, you'll have to be standing together in the same room in-real-life Sorry.

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Multiplayer & Games
Let's say that your friend loved that YouTube video, but then sees your Goat Simulator cabinet over in the corner, runs up to it, and clicks Play. You expect that he'll be able to jump right into Goat Simulator and start wreaking havoc in all things edible. And once again, in Anarchy Arcade that is exactly what's going to happen if your friend has access to that game. It doesn't even matter if you own it on Steam while they bought it from a DRM-free bundle; the same cabinet can launch the game for either of you.

However, there's always the chance that your friend doesn't have access to that specific game; especially if your media collection is much larger than theirs. Anarchy Arcade has something to help them out with that too.

When you try to launch a game that you don't yet have access to, Anarchy Arcade automatically generates a list of links to your own favorite places to get your games from. It will take you directly to your favorite site's search results page for the game you're looking for. With Anarchy Arcade, you don't have to start using some strange site that you've never even heard of before. It is built to be useful, not to sell you crap that you don't want to buy from stores you don't want to shop at. Anarchy Arcade assists you as you continue to use the sites you know and trust.

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Multiplayer & Local Movie Files
In Anarchy Arcade you are able to play movies from your own PC on the in-game virtual screens. However, special multiplayer considerations must be made because Anarchy Arcade is not screen-sharng or peer-to-peer file sharing software. It seems like it would be nearly impossible to accomplish any sort of consistent multiplayer experience without these two important technologies, but Anarchy Arcade does provide a general solution to the issue.

First, it is important to remember that the items spawned in Anarchy Arcade are cross-compatible even if you and your friends got the media from different sources. This means that a local movie file, for you, might be a Netflix movie when your friend watches it. In this case, you and your friend might end up watching slightly different versions of the same movie, but the illusion still holds true and gives the feeling of truely consistent multiplayer without the use of screen-sharing or peer-to-peer file sharing. This same type of support also works for the scenario of you and your friend both playing your own local copies of a movie file.

And remember that Anarchy Arcade can help you get movies that you don't yet have access to from your own favorite sites and services, just like it does with games.

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Over-The-Shoulder Spectating
Users have repeatedly requested to be able to stand behind one of their friend in the virtual arcade and watch their friend play the game LIVE, as it happens, directly on the in-game cabinet. This is exactly the type of thing that screen-sharing software is perfect for, so it was a challenge to figure out an alternative solution that Anarchy Arcade would be able to implement.

It finally dawned on me that game-streaming services, such as Twitch.tv, already have their own copyright mechanisms in-place and it would be possible to implement general support for these types of sites & services without having to impose my own restrictions upon Anarchy Arcade users. The next day, over-the-shoulder spectating was implemented into Anarchy Arcade.

Remember that Anarchy Arcade itself is not screen-sharing software; however, it IS able to watch video streams. So as long as your friend knows how to broadcast to a Twitch channel, you'll be able to stand behind him and watch him play LIVE right over his shoulder. And this functionality is implemented in such a general way that it doesn't have to be Twitch, it could be any other service such as Hitbox or YouTube.

From Complex Technology to Simplified User Experience
Anarchy Arcade uses a very careful mixture of all these powerful techniques behind the scenes in order to provide a simple & consistent user experience. How do you launch something in Anarchy Arcade? You walk up to it and click PLAY. Regardless of what it is, where it's at, what mode you're in, or whether or not you have access to it. You just walk up to something you want to play, and click PLAY.

The various parsing techniques are used behind the scenes to generate coherent & functional 3D environments from 2D web pages that the community loves, with full user-addon support so Anarchy Arcade can become even more useful and friendly as time goes on.

Anarchy Arcade avoids restrictions and extensive user moderation by avoiding the use of screen-sharing and peer-to-peer file sharing technologies. Instead, it gives the illusion of these very important features through various tricks and tecniques. It's all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense, but in the end gives the feel of a truly consistent multiplayer experience.

All of Anarchy Arcade's features carry over gracefully from singleplayer into various modes of multiplayer; always providing a consistent user experience.

Conclusion
These are only some of the many techniques, technologies, and design decisions that make it possible for Anarchy Arcade to provide all of the functionality that it does, without falling into the pitfalls that so many other programs have fallen into in the past. Many of these features are demonstrated in the playable prototype of Anarchy Arcade that you can try out for yourself, today! Anarchy Arcade has already been greenlit and will be released on Steam, but it can only be fully realized with the help of the community it is designed to support. So if Anarchy Arcade interests you, help it come onto Steam full-force, ASAP, jam-packed with these and tons of other great features that set it apart from all the competition!

Anarchy Arcade Website
http://www.anarchyarcade.com

Kickstarter Fundraising Project
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aar ... chy-arcade







Previous Updates:
New Video, 3D Web & Free Game Giveaway
The Wednesday of April 2nd I gave away a free game every hour for 24 hours during a live 24 hour Twitch.tv broadcast stream using Anarchy Arcade. It's happening next week as well. I also updated the Kickstarter video to show off some of the non-gaming related uses of Anarchy Arcade:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmbRXPa6E5k

Over-the-shoulder spectating, multiple video screens, and 26 new cabinets!
The week of 3/17/2014 saw a prototype update that had many exciting new features.

Unique Gameplay
This explains the gameplay elements of Anarchy Arcade and the in-game economy that fuels it.

Doing What the Competition Simply Doesn't
This update talks about how Anarchy Arcade is different than its big-money corporate brothers.

Emulator Support for All
This update talks about how Anarchy Arcade is able to support a virtually infinite assortment of emulators.

Official Website Revamped & Updated
This update talks about the revamped Anarchy Arcade website.

Prototype Updated - Oculus Rift Support & Multiplayer Bug Fixes
This article talks about the initial Oculus Rift support that is now implemented into Anarchy Arcade.

Kickstarter goes LIVE!
This is the original announcement of the Kickstarter going live on March 5th.

Prototype Update 2.2c - AnarCAST.tv
This update added new features to help you share your media and activities in your arcade with your friends, even if they don't have Anarchy Arcade or a PC at all.

Twitch, YouTube, and deviantART scrapers go LIVE!
This update added new JavaScript data scrapers, fixed some bugs, and tells you about the weekly gaming marathon.




Original Introduction
Hi everybody, this is my first post here. I just signed up today, but want to get some feedback from you guys on a project of mine. I'm not a bot, and I'll be sticking around to answer any questions you might have.

For the past few years I have been researching and developing a sort of media-rich 3D desktop. Basically it turns your computer into a 3D virtual world where you can customize your virtual homes and explore the virtual world that exists inside your computer.

Here's a general overview of what it has:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lzc4BBFOUfM

And here is a boring explanation of what it actually does:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1-k4hcrm4Q

It is built on the Source engine, so it automatically has pretty good Rift support.

The project has been Greenlit and will be hitting Steam with Early Access in September. In general, players seem to feel very strongly about the game 1 way or another and I expect it to do well once it is put on Steam because of all the gamers on there. It is versatile enough to be used as a 3D desktop, but is geared towards gamers (especially since it is going to be distributed via Steam.)

I'll be here to answer any questions you guys might have, but in the mean time here are some links to more info about my project:

Main Website: http://www.anarchyarcade.com/
Frequently Asked Questions: http://www.smarcade.net/Anarchy_Arcade_FAQ.pdf
Greenlight (no longer active): http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =180122020 (lots of feedback from players there)

I look forward to hearing your feedback.

If you want to try it out first hand, right now you can still grab the FREE prototype from the main website's Download section. All you need is Steam to play.
Last edited by smsithlord on Sat Apr 05, 2014 11:46 am, edited 11 times in total.
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GeraldT
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Re: Anarchy Arcade (Greenlit for Steam)

Post by GeraldT »

It looks pretty cool - but also looks like a lawsuit just waiting to happen.

Not sure what it is actually. Does it come with those themed Arcades? Or games?
Or does it enable me to put games from my Steam library into the VR world?

Does it play my movie collection from my HDD in a virtual cinema or does it stream netflix movies?

Are the posters jpgs I have in a folder somewhere or are they part of the package?
want to demo the Rift or check it out? click here
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Re: Anarchy Arcade (Greenlit for Steam)

Post by smsithlord »

Hi GeraldT,
It doesn't come with any media itself, but lets you spawn shortcuts to your own stuff or stuff from the internet.

It works with your Steam Library, but also non-Steam games & programs.

It can play your collection from your HDD, and it also works with Netflix, Hulu, and many other services either by default or via JavaScript plugins (depending on the service).

The posters and stuff can be any image file from your computer, or on the internet.

I know it seems like a lawsuit because I show my personal media in the screenshots, but no copyrighted material is included with the game besides the content that I created (such as maps & models). The players are completely free to put what ever they want in their personal arcades, which makes it sort of like a media-rich 3D desktop.
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Re: Anarchy Arcade (Greenlit for Steam)

Post by Okta »

It seems you have beaten a few people to the punch with this. It looks mega cool, very much like the personal chat rooms in Ready Player One.

The obvious question is if i walk up to an arcade cabinet and run mame, can I play the game on the arcade screen itself not windowed or full screen like the other apps you show. And if so can i use head tracking to move around the cabinet while i play? Will you integrate VR controller interfaces for cabinet control manipulation? Also, I didn't see any mention of multilayer in the video, how does that work, do we have avatar's? Will I be able to invite a friend in for a game of Gauntlet?

Is this killer VR app we are looking for......
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Re: Anarchy Arcade (Greenlit for Steam)

Post by smsithlord »

Hi Okta,
When it comes to rendering your other games and programs onto the in-game cabinet screens, there is a trade-off to consider. On one hand, you improve the immersiveness of Anarchy Arcade, but on the other hand, you lose some of the experience of the other game or program that you are playing. Especially if it is a VR-supported game or program itself.

Anarchy Arcade's goal is to allow your favorite games and programs to deliver the exact same experience to you that you know and love. So even though it would be very awesome to see, I believe that having your other games or programs render directly onto Anarchy Arcade's in-game virtual screens would end up damaging your entertainment experience more than improving it.

So no, when you launch your game it will run just like it normally does, whether that be fullscreen 4k HD with VR support, or in a tiny DOSBox window.

You will most likely be able to use head tracking to look around while you interact with cabinet screens. After I get my Oculus DK this Summer, I will be able to make sure that this gives the natural experience that I expect.

There is multiplayer in the prototype, and it will be greatly improved in the Steam version. When your buddy joins, he spawns right into your customized arcade and sees it just as you do. Anarchy Arcade is built on the Source engine, so if you've ever played GMod or TF2 then you'll have a good idea of what people will look like running around your arcade.

The shortcuts are smart enough to point to different file locations for each player. For example, that means that the same cabinet that launches your Steam version of Street Fighter IV could also launch the non-Steam version of it that your friend has.

One thing to grasp about Multiplayer is that Anarchy Arcade provides LEGAL media sharing. That means that your games and movies don't just get sent to your buddy for him to play for free; that would be illegal media sharing. Instead, Anarchy Arcade gives you and your buddy the freedom to buy or download the media from the places that you normally get your media from.

If you're buddy tries to launch a game that he doesn't have, Anarchy Arcade will show him links of where he can get it from. These links are dynamically generated using your and your friend's preferences. They can use absolutely any website you desire, or they could use the Steam store itself (if applicable). Generally they will take you to the Search Results page of your favorite site using the media's title as the search terms. It is all fully customizable with a wizard to help you setup your own favorite media websites, no matter how obscure they are.
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Re: Anarchy Arcade (Greenlit for Steam)

Post by Okta »

Thanks for the answers. I would still like to see an option to render some games to the arcade screens. While using a Rift, preferably the next gen with absolute position tracking, this would be a great experience. Not having this feature kind on nullifies the arcade all together in that regard.
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Re: Anarchy Arcade (Greenlit for Steam)

Post by smsithlord »

The feature may be added as an option later on, depending on how well the Kickstarter goes, but you should also consider that rendering 2 games at once like that will have a significant performance cost that would likely be noticeable on most systems. I don't think that affordable hardware is powerful enough to push that kind of feature just yet, but the framework for it to be added to Anarchy Arcade is definitely there.
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Re: Anarchy Arcade (Greenlit for Steam)

Post by GeraldT »

ahhh ... thanks for the clarification and I agree with Okta, this could totally be that personalized chat room from RPO.
What I do not get is where the cool arcade cabinets come from ... so I add a game from my library, I would like to have it as a cabinet. Is there some sort of editor that lets me import images to put on the different sides of the cabinet?
want to demo the Rift or check it out? click here
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Re: Anarchy Arcade (Greenlit for Steam)

Post by smsithlord »

The editor to customize which images are on your cabinet is actually accessed by walking up to the cabinet itself and interacting with its screen in the virtual world. You can use any image from your HDD or from the internet to decorate your cabinet.

It's great to be able to manually choose the images used to decorate the cabinet, but usually you won't want to spend so much time searching for images to use.

That's why most types of shortcuts (games, movies, and TV shows) automatically find images on the internet to decorate your cabinet with. It does this by using online media information databases to locate images for your shortcut based on its title. For example, TheMovieDb.org has movie posters, TheTvDB.com has DVD covers, and the Steam Store has box-art. There is also support for players to use ADDON media information websites, so the possibilities are endless.

Usually this is all done automatically without any interaction from you, but if AArcade can't figure out the title of your shortcut, you will have a chance to clarify which media item you are trying to find images for.

By the way, the video trailers that are streamed to the cabinets' screens are also automatically found for you in this manner.
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Re: Anarchy Arcade (Greenlit for Steam)

Post by GeraldT »

wow ... that is pretty cool! I hope you have success with that project - my guess is you will be blown away by your place once you get the Rift :)
want to demo the Rift or check it out? click here
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Re: Anarchy Arcade (Greenlit for Steam) UPDATED 2/24

Post by smsithlord »

I took 2 weeks off of developing the Steam version to get a testable version of a new social feature into the prototype.

Some people like to do broadcasts from inside of their virtual media arcades, so I put together something called http://www.anarcast.tv that will make it easy for you to share your media with everybody.

Basically, you can take any media item in your library and post it to your own personal anarcast.tv feed. People that are watching your feed will see the new item pop-up on their screen instantly. They can listen to the music, check out the full HD box art and screenshots, watch the trailers, and follow the links to buy/download the item; all from their PC, iPhone, iPad, Android device, gaming console, or anything else that has a web browser.

I will be tweaking this feature as I receive feedback from the player community. I expect it to catch on slowly, but be very enjoyable once people figure it out. If it goes over well in the prototype, an improved version of anarcast.tv will be featured in the Steam version as well.

I updated the original post of this thread with an overview of this new update. Enjoy!
smsithlord
One Eyed Hopeful
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Joined: Wed Jan 29, 2014 8:55 am

Re: Anarchy Arcade (Greenlit for Steam) UPDATED 2/28

Post by smsithlord »

This week I added 3 new data scrapers to make it easier for people to spawn stuff from popular websites. These scrapers are written in JavaScript and can be created by the community themselves and used as addons.

Allowing the community the freedom to create and share their own data scrapers ensures that Anarchy Arcade will be able to adapt to the desires of the community while not having to explicitly include content from any 3rd party companies.

This week I also performed some primary testing to make sure the new WWE Network is able to display full videos from within your virtual arcades. Aside from some minor UI conflicts, it works great. Bugs will soon be sorted out.

The Twitch.tv and anarCAST broadcasting features have proven to be stable so I am now trying to increase user participation in the open prototype. This includes a 24 hour marathon every Wednesday where I use Anarchy Arcade and the anarCAST features to put on a live broadcast.

Lastly, I have been listening to the presentations given at Steam's DevDays (recently released onto YouTube) and will be incorporating many of the features of the Steamworks API that they address in them. Most notably User Generated Content and how it can improve the player's experience, something I experienced first hand while playing Counter-Strike: GO last Wednesday. I will be releasing more details about these features as I sort them out and get them organized.

The original post has been updated with the most recent information.
smsithlord
One Eyed Hopeful
Posts: 14
Joined: Wed Jan 29, 2014 8:55 am

Re: Anarchy Arcade (Greenlit for Steam) UPDATED 2/28

Post by smsithlord »

Hey everybody. Just a warning that Oculus support in Anarchy Arcade is a bit too bugy to be fun at the moment. Cymatic Bruce tried it out on a live stream (along with some other great VR experiences) and I was finally able to see the issues.

However, I ordered a dev kit last week and will be working out the VR issues in the prototype ASAP.
smsithlord
One Eyed Hopeful
Posts: 14
Joined: Wed Jan 29, 2014 8:55 am

Re: Anarchy Arcade (Kickstarting now!) VR Update

Post by smsithlord »

Update Version 2.2d:
- Fixed multiplayer chat
- Added an indicator to the Library Browser if an item already exists in your arcade
- VR: fixed black screens behind pop-up menus
- VR: removed the on-screen HUD
- VR: added blackout when watching videos fullscreen
- VR: fixed double mouse cursor
- VR: release Oculus head tracking when launching another VR game
- VR: disabled auto-screen-resolution adjustments (use the options menu to manually set your resolution)
- Consolidated all DLC updates including: deviantART, Netflix, Twitch, and YouTube scrapers

The original post has been updated with information about this client update.
smsithlord
One Eyed Hopeful
Posts: 14
Joined: Wed Jan 29, 2014 8:55 am

Re: Anarchy Arcade (UPDATE: New website & emulator support)

Post by smsithlord »

Anarchy Arcade has a brand new website with tons of information about how it works and what it does. I also wrote a short article here on the original post that explains how emulator support is handled.

The original post has been updated.
smsithlord
One Eyed Hopeful
Posts: 14
Joined: Wed Jan 29, 2014 8:55 am

Re: Anarchy Arcade (UPDATE: Over-the-shoulder spectating, pl

Post by smsithlord »

Last week I created a large set of cabinet and prop models plus got some very neat new features into the prototype. The original post has been updated.

Also surprised by Facebook's acquisition of Oculus. I am guessing Facebook plans to do something similar to what Anarchy Arcade is going to do with generating a VR version of your Facebook page. However, I'm not too worried about it because big companies seem to screw up the concept by restricting you to use only their services. Anarchy Arcade is all about freedom and not restricting you; it's so open-ended that it can be configured to do anything you want.
smsithlord
One Eyed Hopeful
Posts: 14
Joined: Wed Jan 29, 2014 8:55 am

Re: Anarchy Arcade (3D Web, Multiplayer, and Legalities)

Post by smsithlord »

I have updated with original post with an article I wrote that explains how Anarchy Arcade creates 3D environments from 2D web pages, how it uses them in multiplayer, and the legal considerations it has made when implementing all these features.

There is also a audio version of this article hosted on YouTube, which is also in the original post.
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