Savage Moon Goes Billion!
Fans of our games email us – and I always read and respond, even if they don’t like them. Sometimes they email us ideas, hints and tips – which we always consider. Sometimes we get praise from them and this is always the best bit. it makes all the hours of work – including the late nights you’ve done to get the same out – worth it. Good reviews are great, but nothing is a satisfying as a fan, who’s shelled out their hard earned cash on your game, telling you that it’s been worth it. Sometimes, they write with even better news – I quote (with permission):
I had started a vengeance mode on iMoon Jikininki and by the time I was on wave 300 I knew I might have a shot on getting myself of the scoreboard. The unfortunate thing is I also have a life, so my poor playstation has to go on pause while I go about doing other things …. Now, I am on wave 800+, 14+ hours, and still going very strong. Apparently my playstation is getting tired and is begging me to let have a break. My husband is ALSO begging me to give it a break since he cannot play pinball or use the Blue-ray since I will not allow him to come close to the console. … On wave somewhere between 700-750, I had the fortunate (or misfortune) opportunity to hit the 1 Billion mark in my score, but as soon as that happened, the numbers have disappeared to be replaced with two plus signs (++)… Please refer to attached photo –
Savage Moon Lapped!
Yes indeed – she (and another guy who emailed us) has lapped the game! Woo! When we designed the score system I was not sure how much further what we had built would be pushed by gamers – and they’ve exceeded any expectations. I’m soooo proud!
Google Opens 2nd Front on Apple
So Apple does the iPhone and defines the parameters of the smart-phone arena. Google goes to war with Android – parking it’s tanks on Apple’s lawn. The difference being that Google’s operating system will be open whereas as Apple’s is closed; should be interesting, and I predict a win for Google. (Google also parks a few other tanks on Microsoft’s lawn too!)
Then Apple flanks almost everyone in the technology sector by releasing a huge iPhone – the iPad. Not to be out-done, Google declares war in this arena too;
The man who used to run Sony’s gaming division in Europe has tipped the rumoured ‘Google Pad’ as a key games platform in the years ahead.
In a talk opening the Edinburgh Interactive festival yesterday Deering explained how the ‘traditional’ games industry needs to move to online business models and mobile platforms to survive current ‘treacherous’ market conditions.
Deering said online connectivity had disrupted the games industry. “The internet makes life dynamic, exciting and personalised, with rich media on multiple screens – and where trailing a game is almost always free.
So this should be interesting too… let (tech) battle commence!
Come the Neuromancer
I’ve got tickets to hear seminal sci-fi writer, William Gibson speak in Bristol – and I’m excited! For those not in the know, he is one of the most important living sci-fi writers – scratch that – most important writers living today, IMHO. His 1984 novel, Neuromancer is a stunning book that defines not only a genre of writing (cyberpunk) but also much of the language and culture of the early Internet – which is still with us today as it has grown. I read it years ago – then re-read it more recently (post the first dot-com boom) and was shocked at the prescience of how he tackles the messy interface of humanity and technology. The novel was also the subject of a well received game back in ’88. Watch the trailer for the new Deus Ex game and the ghosts of Neuromancer are all over it.
Early cover of Neuromancer
Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts… A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding…
The Petition at the Threshold
Update! I treated myself to a donation to the good people of the HP Podcraft and they covered this story as a thanks. Here’s Part 1 and Part 2.
–
I noticed that the good people at Chaosium have released an add-on pack for the Arkham Horror board-game; The Luker at the Threshold. The novel this is based on was the first bit of Mythos fiction that I’d ever read, so it occupies a special place for me. I’m a big fan of the book:
The Lurker at the Threshold cover
However little did I know when I read it that it was not a proper Lovecraft work – on the cover of the book I got from Bovey Tracy library it had Lovecraft’s name as prominent and another Mythos writer and associate August Derleth. There is a controversy over the placement of Lovecraft’s name as co-author:
After Lovecraft’s death, August Derleth took fragments of Lovecraft’s writings (from his Commonplace Book, for example), and incorporated them into stories entirely of Derleth’s own design. According to S.T. Joshi’s Bibliography, Derleth’s The Lurker at the Threshold is 50,000 words long, and only incorporates 1,200 words by Lovecraft—that’s about 2.4%. None of these “posthumous collaborations” should be considered to have been authored by Lovecraft. In spite of this, these stories have been published as being authored by Lovecraft and Derleth, or, worse yet, solely by Lovecraft. Both the Carroll & Graf paperbacks, The Lurker at the Threshold and The Watchers Out of Time include only Lovecraft’s name on their covers, although they are almost wholly Derleth’s work.
And there is even a petition urging a publisher to correct the naming in their publications (with nearly 3000 signatories).
However for me, the issue is still that it’s a great read. I’ve re-read it a few times over the years and it’s one of those books I’ll never part from. It’s the content here that is king for me and it’s a good read I’d recommend – whoever really wrote it.
Technologies Inspired by Nature: Ambient Power
I read this is Wired, but can’t find a link to it but check this out:
Super-micro power generation
Micro-power generation is generating power on a smaller, house-hold level. This is micro-micro-micro-power generation. Above is a small power-station that is millimeters accross and can supply power to small wifi sensors. Why is this nature-inspired? Nature abhors a vacuum and where there is waste, you’ll find another of natures creations taking advantage of it. In this case human activity wastes huge amounts of heat – and there tiny little power-stations soak up waste heat and turn it into power – on a micro-scale.
Cool! Call of Cthulhu Explained in Just 120 Seconds
Yes indeed! For the uninitiated, you can forgo the usual blood rites and human sacrifice thanks to the power of new-fangled technologieeees of evil; such as youtube:
Here’s another one in my ongoing series…we’re on self repairing again – plus being mobile and able to act independently:
What can computers learn from biology?
We should look at the history of the two fields and how surprising it is that they should come together. Computing was really born of physics and of this “clean-room” mentality – and a lot of computing is still like that. When one tries to control every bit of accuracy and tries to ensure that nothing could possibly go wrong – well, this is very different from the messiness of nature.
But as computers become more mobile and autonomous – either they can gain their own power from the environment or they have a long battery or are wireless – their problems become quite different. Instead of problems being algorithmic, which means they can be expressed as a recipe – you do one step and then the next and you finally arrive at an answer – now their problem can be: how do I survive? If the problem is how do I survive, then all of the survival mechanisms that organic nature uses become relevant.
Anonymous Posts and Trolls
I wrote a while ago about the experiment that Blizzard was undertaking into forcing users to use set non-anonymous addresses on the forums. I though it was going to be interesting to see what happened to such a rich online forum when anonymous posting had gone – more activity? less activity? more trolls? less trolls? Sadly we’re not going to know, as they pulled the plan:
Blizzard did not make many friends with its recent decision to force users to post with their real names in its official forums. The response was immediate and deafening, with pages and pages of users complaining bitterly about the new rule. One Blizzard employee posted his own name to prove the system’s safety only to have his personal information, including address and phone number, posted on the forum. The company listened to the feedback, and is now reversing course.
“We’ve been constantly monitoring the feedback you’ve given us, as well as internally discussing your concerns about the use of real names on our forums,” Mike Morhaime, the CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment, wrote. “As a result of those discussions, we’ve decided at this time that real names will not be required for posting on official Blizzard forums.”
However, the anonymity debate itself is still going strong…
A law suit filed last week in New York has threatened to hold some of the internet’s more unpleasant denizens to account: a rare example of old media rules starting to be applied online.
The heroine of the tale is Carla Franklin, a former model and graduate of Columbia Business School. She is taking Google to court over anonymous comments that called her a “whore” on the firm’s YouTube website. She is seeking a court order to force Google to identify the person behind the insult. According to her lawyer, Franklin already suspects a certain individual of posting the comments, but needs concrete confirmation before she can go after them in a court of law. She is claiming the insult, which was posted several times by the same YouTube user, was “… made with the intention to harm Ms Franklin’s reputation and interfere with her relationships, employment and livelihood”.
R-Type on iPhone: Result!
So the arcade classic – and one of my favourite games of all time – R-Type is now out on iPhone. I’ve got a copy and I was worried that they port the game over without considering the nature of the platform they are designing for – happily they have done a great job and the controls are excellent.
There is an option to have auto-fire on, which for a shooting game, saves lots of bashing the touchscreen. This does not diminish the functionality of the power-boost shot, so essential to gameplay in this title. What’s more they give you a choice in the controls from classic to tilt’n’touch. It’s all really well done and totally considers the platform they are porting the game too.
Take note Golden Axe iPhone developers! This is how to do it right. Recomended for instabuy.
iPhone screenshot of R-Type
Starring at the iTunes Store – An Update
Thanks for the feedback on the my article about the ups and down of your app on the seas of iTunes. The very iKnowlegable Spaff pointed out to me that the new version of the operating system for iPhone/iPod – iOS 4 has removed the functionality that forced a review on deletion of an app – this is good as it removes the bias for reviews on the negative and makes it a level playing zone for reviews.
In addition I was told about an even more addictive way to see how your app is progressing – positionapp – this little gem tells you any territory around the world where your app is charting above 300 – plus the changes in position and the last few days of position. Eeek – now I’m staring at this app and not the iTunes store directly.
A Great Becoming... 