When you as a gamer hear the term “action adventure platforming-shooter” used, what exactly comes to mind? If the series known as Ratchet & Clank developed by Insomniac Games is not among the top of your list, an update to your gaming catalogue is certainly in need!

The newest addition to the Ratchet & Clank series titled Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time, exclusive to the Playstation 3, is a refreshing breath into a tried-and-true and already immensely successful series.

Staying true to its roots, Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time includes lots of action, plenty of adventure, an abundance of exciting platforming puzzles, and of course to top it all off – an assortment of things to shoot, as well as enemies to shoot at. With a top of the line story to compliment all of these wonderful things here, this title is a real gem folks.

After a few tip offs by some fellow Asterz users, as well as some extensive bug testing done by me, I've come across several bugs present in the recently released Version 1 of Asterz. So naturally, after squashing these bugs, and even adding a new useful feature, Asterz Version 1.1 is now out for you guys to download.

Asterz is an almost professional-like PSP homebrew developed by yours truly. It is a space shooter, with gameplay influenced by the hit arcade classic "Asteroids" originally made by Atari. It makes use of the official PSPGU making for a unique homebrew experience. What that means is that this game is entirely 3d, and even makes use of GU lighting - something that is virtually unseen in PSP homebrews.

Version 1.1 sports several bug fixes, as well as a brand new high score saver. Your Arcade Mode high scores will now be saved! Yay! Check out the changelog for all of the details.

• Fixed a game compromising bug
• Fixed Arcade Mode. Enemies would stop coming after you reached a score of 10000
• Fixed Level 10 from continuing on even if your ship died, thus allowing you to beat the game even if you were dead
• Increased difficulty of Arcade Mode slightly
• Added a high score saver for Arcade Mode
• Changed eboot icon

Download: [ Asterz Version 1.1 ]
Discuss & More Screenshots: [ Here ]

You wanted it? You got it!

As the article's title suggests, the first official version of Asterz, a PSP homebrew game, is being formally released with exclusive rights given to your favourite gaming website MforMature.net!

The support given to me by MforMature has far exceeded anything I could have ever imagined. Without the continued input and support given to me by the dedicated forum members here, this release would probably have never been completed. With that being said, I would like to formally thank each and every member of this forum for giving me reason enough to continue on with this project and to see it through. Now lets get onto the good stuff, shall we?

If you've been following my thread located in the forums, some of you may have some insight as to where Asterz has headed in regards to features and goodies. On the flip side, for those who haven't been following, don't worry about it, you'll find out all of the details in here.

First, a little background info and a brief game explanation:
Asterz is a shoot-em-up space game partly inspired by the classic hit game "Asteroids", originally released in 1979 by Atari. As you begin to start playing Asterz you'll find that this game primarily involves:

#1 – Dodge the incoming asteroids and enemy ships.
#2 – Destroy the incoming asteroids and enemy ships.
#3 – Pick up the dropped powerups to increase your ammo or give your ship a temporary shield.
and #4 - Don't die!

I hope that this formula makes for some fast paced addictive and fun gameplay.

And second, lets talk about the main features included:
There are three modes included in this release, the first being Story Mode, the second being Arcade Mode, and the last being Online Play. The Story Mode allows you to progress through 10 unique levels, with each having their own strategies involved in actually completing the level. Arcade Mode allows you to play endlessly and try to rack up as many points as possible. Online Play is a 4 player deathmatch style of gameplay which, you guessed it, is online.

I'm not really sure what originally prompted me to begin working on a space shooter. It was partly because I wanted to test my abilities as far as 3D effects and lighting were concerned by utilizing the official PSPGU. The most obvious thing that you'll notice is that this game is done completely in a 3D world, but the gameplay is being played on a 2D plane. This is something that I would say brings a unique element to the game as very little homebrews currently utilize any sort of 3D rendering.

Here's a list of noteworthy features about the release:
- Utilizes the PSPGU to make use of 3D rendering & lighting
- Ability to choose between several different ships, each with their own attributes
- Includes three modes of gameplay (Story, Arcade, and Online)
- Four different types of weapons to use (Gun, Missile, Nuke, and Laser)
- There's a shield powerup which is helpful by making you temporarily invincible
- Different types of enemy objects to dodge & kill
- Asteroids vary in size, speed, and health

If you have any questions, concerns, or inquiries, please drop by the forums and let me know! I hope you guys enjoy the game, thanks for pushing me further and making it happen.

Download: [ Asterz V1 ]
Discussion: [ Here ]

One of the world's leading providers of telecommunications equipment has just recently announced a plan aimed at combating this economic pandemic that's currently sweeping our world. In a swift act of cost reductions, Ericsson plans to reduce the number of consultants and other temporary staff by 5,000. This action was brought on by a hard hit to the company as a result of a fourth quarter net income freefall of 31%. Cutting jobs seems to be turning into a trend now, isn't it?

Despite this seemingly harsh figure for a fourth quarter net income, Ericsson did surprisingly well for 2008 as a whole - with sales growing a comfortable 11% compared to '07, and operating margins steadily improving. Afterall, Carl-Henric Svanberg, President and CEO of Ericsson, said with confidence that "We have had a solid performance in 2008," so don't expect Ericsson to be too adversely affected by its fourth quarter performance.

The biggest hit coming to Ericsson for '08 is its Sony Ericsson cellphone brand. But rest assured, "Sony Ericsson is affected by the economic downturn and the declining demand in the consumer market and has taken necessary actions." says Svanberg. Lets all hope that Sony Ericsson can pull through these hard times ahead unscathed.

Ericsson Announces Plans to Cut 5,000 Jobs [cellular-news]

The ever so popular intraFont created by developer Benhur has just recently been updated. It has made the graceful leap from version 0.23 to version 0.24 and sports several different noteworthy changes.

For those of you unaware of what intraFont actually is, well it's essentially a font library that loads and renders the official Sony .pgf font file format. This makes it easy for developers, like myself, to use the official .pgf font in our created homebrews. It requires no additional libs to be installed, and provides a very simple and easy to use list of functions to get it working.

A much more in-depth explanation can be found in the readme,

intraFont - A bitmap font library for PSP using the PSP's internal font (firmware pgf files). The library loads a pgf font from firmware and generates a 4-bit paletted bitmap font texture on the fly when drawing text. It caches previously drawn characters and is accurate to 1/4 pixel.

As of version 0.22 intraFont supports regular, italic and/or bold Latin, Japanese, Korean and symbol fonts: flash0:/font/ltn0.pgf, ltn1.pgf, ..., ltn15.pgf, jpn0.pgf, kr0.pgf and arib.pgf.

So I'm sure by now you all must be wondering, "Cool, well what's the changelog all about from version 0.23 to version 0.24 then??"

Well here it is,

- added column printing with automatic linebreaks - no need to worry about overwriting parts of the screen or printing outside the screen anymore (use intraFontPrintColumn())

- added full justification (flush left&right) for column printing (flag INTRAFONT_ALIGN_FULL)

- various optimizations related to UCS2 conversion (thanks to StrmnNrmn)

- added functions to print/measure the first n chars of a string (intraFontPrintEx() and other ...Ex() functions; thanks to StrmnNrmn)

- bug fixed where intraFontMeasureText() could return a wrong value because multi-byte strings (S-JIS and UTF-8) and codepages were not yet properly handled

I personally use intraFont in pretty much all of my homebrews, so it's definitely worth checking out if you're looking for an easy-to-use font library. There's two samples located in the zip file which will hopefully help you in understanding how to use it.

Happy coding M for Mature!

Download: [ intraFont v0.24 ]

Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP) related Releases by BenHur [Benhur]