Archive for February, 2009
Does Netflix need a desktop client?
February 19th, 2009 •
Tags: AIR, Netflix, Queued
ReadWriteWeb has unearthed an interesting AIR app. Queued is a multi-platform application that manages your Netflix queue. I have played with the app a bit to do some queue changes. It’s actually a great app. The interface is undeniably beautiful. In addition to providing queue management functionality, the app also has a few tricks up its sleeve that allow you to find new movies with lists of the top rentals, new movies, and your recommendations. It provides all the pertinent information needed to select new movies for queueing and to decide how to arrange your existing queue.
I’m really liking the app thus far, but I do question the utility of it. The one feature I gain over managing my queue at the site is offline access. I can make changes to my queue, and they are updated to the site the next time I have an active connection. Frankly, I don’t often find myself using the computer without Internet access, but there is something to be said for the convenience of a quick, desktop app to accomplish a task that would otherwise be done in a somewhat slower web app that I will first have to actually load in my web browser. I’m going to give it a few weeks and see how (and if) this app makes sense for me. I suggest you try it too!
Time’s Top 25 Blogs 2009
February 19th, 2009 •
Tags: blogs, Time, weblogs
If you’re struggling to find feeds to add to your Google Reader, first add mine. 
Then go to Time and check out their 25 best blogs. You probably won’t like all of them. Most of them are pretty specific to a particular niche, but I’m sure you’ll find something to subscribe to. My favorites from the list are Lifehacker, BoingBoing, Metafilter, Mashable, and Zen Habits.
The Facebook TOS controversy
February 19th, 2009 •
Tags: Facebook, Mark Zuckerman
Facebook recently updated their terms of service to include language which made users of the service a little uncomfortable. The new terms gave Facebook “perpetual worldwide license” to any content shared on the service. There was an outcry from the community regarding the open-endedness of these new terms of service. I can attest that, upon sharing content on any social network, my intent is not to relinquish ownership of that content but to expose it to a different audience. Most users agreed with me leaving Facebook with a multitude of disenchanted users.
As such, Facebook had to respond. Founder Mark Zuckerberg issued a statement about the new terms. This statement basically said they would never actually use all the rights granted to them by the new TOS. Their intent was only to be able to continue displaying content that had been sent to friends even after a user leaves Facebook so as not to upset the continuity of the friend’s experience. In fact, Facebook claims the terms do not allow them to use your content in any way they wish. I’m certainly no lawyer, but I have trouble seeing the limits of a “perpetual worldwide license.” I can understand the desire to allow friends to continue accessing content even if the contributor has left the community. It would be jarring if messages and shared items were to disappear as friends leave. However, I think Facebook’s approach is a bit of overkill. It seems to me they could have reserved their rights to continue displaying user content in the way that user intended even after departing by merely adding that these were in fact the rights they had to the content rather than the blanket statement that actually ended up in the terms.
Luckily, your voices did not go unheard. Facebook launched a poll to gauge user response to the new terms. Fifty-six percent of users preferred the old TOS, and alas it was restored. The new terms would have granted Facebook too much in the way of rights to user content. However, the deft response to users’ concerns is encouraging for a company so large. Certainly, Facebook could have maintained the new TOS and probably suffered very little as a result. Online communities have come to realize that their most vocal users are the hardest to please but are also their greatest assets. They are often the first and loudest to complain, but they are also the most frequent contributors to the ongoing conversation amongst users that is the sole reason these services can exist. I, for one, applaud Facebook for listening to user concerns and responding. As a content creator myself, I understand that if I give up rights to my content online, I have nothing.
Pure developer showing off trailer of their next game
February 18th, 2009 •
Tags: Blackrock Studios, Burnout, games, Gaming, Pure
This screenshot is of Pure not the new title unfortunately.
Blackrock the developer of Pure, an excellent ATV racing game, has a new title in the works. Joystiq has posted a trailer of their latest work—a Burnout-esque action racing game. Having played Pure myself (and loving it no less), I’m pretty psyched to see what’s next up for this developer. Now that I’ve discovered it is an action racing game and being a huge Burnout fan… I really need a cold shower.
How to resize your Boot Camp partition without reinstalling Windows
February 18th, 2009 • 10 comments
Tags: Boot Camp, Carbon Copy Cloner, mac, repartition, WinClone, Windows
If you’re a hardcore gamer, using Boot Camp to run Windows on your Mac is a fact of life. If you enjoy the MacOS, you’ll probably find yourself devoting as little of your hard disk as possible to your Windows partition. As you accumulate more games, you’re bound to hit capacity on your Windows partition. Your next step is to restore your disk to a single partition, recreate your Windows partition, and reinstall both Windows and all your games. That is certainly no fun… especially if your games have to be redownloaded from Steam or a similar service.
This method will allow you to resize your partition, and, with just a little extra work, restore everything back to it’s former state after having created your new and larger Windows partition. You’ll need some software and (possibly) some hardware to get started. Download and install both WinClone and Carbon Copy Cloner. Both of these applications are free. Have a Windows XP CD at hand (just in case). You may also need an external hard drive for one of two reasons: First, you will need enough free space to store an image of your entire Windows partition. If you have that much space on your drive already, you won’t need the external drive for that purpose. Second, you may need to repartition your entire hard drive and restore even your Mac partition from an external drive in case the MacOS is unable to recreate your Windows partition after merging the old partition back into your Mac partition (This happened to me just the last time I resized so it is not infrequent.). If you end up needing a drive for this reason and don’t have one, you may have to do without a Windows partition until you can procure a drive. If you’re OK with this, feel free to start the process without an external hard drive (assuming you have adequate free space to image the Windows partition). If you run into both issues, you may need two drives to get you through. If you’re looking to buy a drive, I like the Western Digital Passports as a nice portable external drive (500GB, 320GB, 250GB, 160GB).
Once you have the software installed and the necessary hardware at hand, you’re ready to begin.
Fire up WinClone and point it toward your existing Windows partition. You can tell you have the correct partition by the “Total size” field in the program.
Image the partition to a location on your Mac partition (if you have the space) or on your external drive. This will take a little while.
Once you have the image, go into your Boot Camp Assistant in /Applications/Utilities/’
Click “Continue” from the first screen. Next, select “Create or remove a Windows partition” and click “Continue” again. Now, it will tell you that your drive will be restored to a single Mac-formatted partition. Don’t get scared because we have an image of everything in the Windows partition that will be deleted. You won’t lose data (or savegames 
.
Once the restore is complete, relaunch the Boot Camp Assistant. This time you want to create a Windows partiton. Size it however you like. Start the creation process. This is where the steps will fork a bit. If it is able to create the partition, you’re in luck because you’re almost done. Just relaunch WinClone, click the “Restore” tab, click “Select image,” and find the Windows image you created earlier. Once the restore is complete, boot into Windows. It will run ScanDisk. This is normal so don’t panic. Once this is complete, you should be booted into Windows with everything you had previously… except with the addition of an extra chunk of hard disk capacity!
If Boot Camp Assistant fails to recreate the Windows partition, you’re in for a few more hours of work. First, connect your external drive. If you had to put the image of your Windows partition on an external drive, you will need a separate one for this backup.
We need to make sure it is formatted properly to be bootable on your Mac. Run Disk Utility from /Applications/Utilities/. Select your external drive (the drive not the partition) from the left-hand pane. Select the “Partition” tab on the right. Under “Volume Scheme:” select “1 Partition.” Click the “Options” button at the bottom.
If your drive is a PC-formatted drive, the “Master Boot Record” option will probably be selected. Select “GUID Partition Table” instead. This is the magic setting that makes a drive bootable on an Intel Mac. This is very important later on as this drive will not only be your backup of your entire Mac drive but the OS you will boot to in order to format and restore to your internal drive. Click the “OK” button.
Now click the “Apply” button to start the format process. Once this is complete, start up Carbon Copy Cloner.
Select your Mac partition as the source disk. The destination will be your external hard drive. Click the “Clone” button to start the process. Depending on how much data you have, this may take a while. You should probably fire up the Xbox 360 or maybe a movie or something. Maybe you could go out to eat!
Now that we have your entire drive backed up, we need to boot to the backup so we can reformat the original drive. Leave your external drive connected. Restart your Mac and hold down the “Option” key after you hear the chime. You should see your external drive among the other connected bootable drives. Click on the external drive.
The OS should boot and look just like it would if you had booted from the internal drive. Fire up Disk Utility again (/Applications/Utilities/). This time, select your internal drive from the left-hand pane. Click the “Erase” tab. Make sure the format is “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” and click the “Erase…” button. Click “Erase” in the dialog box to confim. This shouldn’t take long. Once the drive is erased, start Carbon Copy Cloner again.
This time around, the source disk is your external drive; the target is your internal drive. Click clone. This will take about as long as the initial clone.
Once the clone is completed, restart the Mac. Hold “Option” after the chime and boot to the internal drive. Now, boot to your internal drive. Start the Boot Camp Assistant (/Applications/Utilities/) and create a Windows partition. If you want your XP partition formatted NTFS, you’ll need to insert your XP disc and allow the computer to start the installer. You need only let the Windows installer format your partition. There’s no need to proceed with the install. If you just want to use the FAT32 file system created by default by Boot Camp, you can skip this step.
Boot back into MacOS. The rest of the steps are the same as the steps following a successful re-creation of the Windows partition. I will copy and paste them below for your convenience. Relaunch WinClone, click the “Restore” tab, click “Select image,” and find the Windows image you created earlier. Once the restore is complete, boot into Windows. It will run ScanDisk. This is normal so don’t panic. Once this is complete, you should be booted into Windows with everything you had previously… except with the addition of an extra chunk of hard disk capacity!
If you had to take this fork, it was a long road, but you’re here at the end. Congratulations! Now, get to installing some more games (or productivity apps if you must).
I realize there are programs to do this automatically for you, but those cost money. If you’ve just laid down $50 on that hot new game, you probably don’t have much more cash to buy a program to do something you may only ever do once or twice. This method, although convoluted, will get you there mostly for free. Do you have an easier method (or can you refine mine to make it better)? Let’s hear about it in the comments.
Flash confirmed for the Palm Pre
February 17th, 2009 •
Tags: Adobe Flash, flash, iPhone, Palm Pre, pre, smartphone
Gizmodo reports that Flash support is definitely happening on the Pre giving it one more mark in the “win” column over the iPhone. Palm is mounting quite an attack and seems to be specifically targetting complaints of iPhone users which sounds to me like a good way to differentiate your product from a very similar one in the same space. If they would just open up the platform for native apps, I would be on board.
Console-quality iPhone games
February 17th, 2009 • 1 comment
Tags: ExZeus, Gaming, I Love Katamari, iPhone games, mobile gaming, Payback, Rolando, SimCity
Apple’s launch of the app store last year was an amazing success with games making up a large part of the catalog. However, with rumors of iPhone Flash getting hot and heavy, the need for 100 native Sudoku apps, 20 solitaire apps, and probably 1,000 variations of sliding block puzzles will diminish quickly. My suggestion is to insure that the $10 game you buy today is not going to be trumped in three months by a free Flash game three months down the line. In light of that, here are some iPhone games that really make the phone feel like a full-fledged gaming console rather than just a place I can go to pay for games that are free online.
Payback ($6.99)- Payback is a very true-to-the-original GTA clone. I’m sure many of you are only familiar with the GTA series since the third game in the series was released for PS2. This is a little different. This game is very similar to the first two GTA titles for PC (also for PSOne, I believe). The perspective is top-down. You go to phone booths, pickup missions, and complete them for points. Once you reach the point goal, you can move on to the next area. I have a couple of minor complaints. The light poles in the game do not come down even if you hit them with a tank… literally. Not only that, but they stop your vehicle immediately and completely upon impact. The cops in the game are very nonchalant. You can often steal another car in front of them, run over someone, or run into their cop car with your vehicle without raising their suspicions that you might be up to no good. In spite of this minor gripe, this game is definitely a steal. There is spoken dialog and a cool radio just like modern GTA games!
ExZeus ($5.99)- This game comes straight from Japanese arcades. The PS2 version was released only in Europe. The Dreamcast also saw a version at some point in time (probably on a continent on which I do not reside). This is a shoot ‘em up that puts the camera behind a giant mech which you move on the x and y axes using tilt control. Attacks are executed using a number of tapping gestures on the right side of the screen. Tapping the left side of the screen locks enemies for a homing-rocket attacks. It’s great fun and and very polished especially well under the $10 price point.
I Love Katamari ($7.99)- The Katamari series has held a special place in my heart since the original Katamari Damacy for PS2. This particular version was destroyed by critics upon release because of some major slowdown issues, but those were fixed shortly after with the first update. For anyone unfamiliar with the series, you play as the Prince who is sent to earth by his father, the King of the Cosmos, to roll around a giant sticky ball called a katamari and pick up objects. These objects range from paperclips and matchboxes to tables, people, and much larger objects still. While the katamari is small, it can only pick up small objects, but, as it gains mass, it can pick up much larger objects. There are a number of modes including the story mode in which the King asks you to roll up a specific object in each level and a mode which has you trying to stop rolling when your katamari reaches a given size. It is wacky, but it is simple addictive fun.
Rolando ($5.99)- Here we have a super-cute and complete platformer that uses the accelerometer to great effect. The graphics could probably be duplicated in Flash, but the tilt control upon which the game is built is uniquely its own. It also contains a level of polish that few Flash games ever achieve. Roll your Rolandos through each stage solving puzzles and overcoming obstacles to reach the exit. Some stages also have elements that you interact with directly by touch. Each Rolando has a unique personality which makes the game more endearing than most you will play on this platform. Start with the lite version and see if you like it.
SimCity ($7.99)- This is SimCity 3000 adapted for the iPhone. It is an excellent and complete version of the game. Amazing to me is that the game was not watered down for the mobile platform. This isn’t SimCity “Lite.” You’re out there zoning, placing roads and water lines, and talking with advisors just like its desktop counterpart. Maybe this experience could be reproduced in Flash, but it never has to my knowledge.
This list is not meant to be comprehensive. Nor am I trying to suggest that you should not buy simpler games on the platform; they certainly fill a need as well. However, as a hardcore gamer, there is a thirst in me that no quantity of puzzle and card games can ever quench. Lucky for me (and those like me), the iPhone offers a powerful gaming platform that developers (like those of the aforementioned titles) have really begun to exploit to the fullest. These are some of the finest examples of exactly what the iPhone is capable of in the mobile gaming space.
The Space Game: a deep Flash RTS
February 17th, 2009 •
Tags: Flash games, games, Gaming, RTS, strategy, The Space Game
The Space Game is a deep and satisfying RTS developed on Adobe’s Flash platform. It has a bit of a tower defense flavor with the resource collection of an RTS. You start with a solar station which provides you with energy to use for building resource collecting structures. Then, you must build lasers to protect your resource collection structures from pirates trying to destroy them. The graphics are simple but functional. It has an excellent and quick intro tutorial. This seems like a Flash game that could really become quite a time-sink.
iPhone review: Heavy Mach.
February 16th, 2009 •
Tags: action games, arcade games, heavy mach, iPhone games, iphone gaming
I picked Heavy Mach. up after seeing the review over at TouchArcade. It illustrates one of the most fantastic aspects of the iPhone gaming marketplace in the app store: a small-time developer can make a game that, while it is obviously a high-quality game, is very simple relative to the console games of today, put a $3-$7 price on it, sell a ton of copies, and make a healthy profit to maintain a viable business. As a consumer, I don’t really have to do a lot of deliberating to decide if I should spend $3 on a game. I check the reviews on iTunes. If they are largely positive, I may look at a couple of the negative reviews first to see if the reviewer is coherent, second to see if they have a complaint I could see myself sharing. If not, I’m probably hitting the “Buy” button.
This is one such case: a game that launched to a number of good reviews including the aforementioned TouchArcade review. It looked cool enough—even slightly reminiscent of Metal Slug. If you like action arcade games, you should own this game especially considering the bargain price.
There are a number of good things to say about the game, but I will start with a few minor complaints. I believe the game could use a little more guidance. It actually took a while before I realized I was controlling the movement of the tank. The game seems to calibrate the acceleromter control such that holding the phone level moves the tank forward to the right. I thought the game was just setup so that the tank proceeded through the level automatically. It wasn’t until I reached a boss that I could not defeat in the time it would have taken me to proceed past him that I realized I could tilt to move backward or maintain my position. It also took a while to figure out how to jump. I knew I could jump after watching a video of the game in action, but it took a bit of fiddling to realize I needed to tap the lever. It also isn’t immediately obvious that the position of your tap on the screen controls the trajectory of your shot since most players will naturally tap in the direction of enemies anyway. Also, I recently discovered I have a double-jump. I discovered this after upgrading my movement so I’m not sure if this was a feature added in the upgrade or if I had just missed it before.
My only other substantive complaint is that it is a bit difficult to change weapons in the heat of battle. As it stands, the player taps on the weapon icon on the HUD to scroll through the available weapons. You can gain access to quite a few weapons at a time which makes it a bit tedious to scroll all the way through the options while also dodging fire from three or four on-screen enemies.
Others have mentioned that the in-game “Menu” button does not work which I’m sure will be fixed soon. It doesn’t really have a profound effect on the game although it would be nice to have a way to pause the action which I’m sure this button would provide.
There are far more good things to say about this game. As I mentioned, the game seems to calibrate so that holding the phone level advances your tank. You will find yourself moving forward more often than not so it is helpful to be able to hold the phone in the neutral position to accomplish this. Even the acceleromter controls are very tight. This comes from the fact that there are only three states: moving left, moving right, and not moving. It’s very easy to move around. The rest of the controls are simple. I found myself sometimes having trouble finding the jump lever while also watching the action on the screen, but this was rare.
There are two basic mechanics in the game: shooting enemies and dodging enemy fire. Shooting is simple to execute by tapping in the direction you wish to fire. Dodging is very challenging because there are often multiple enemies firing shots that take different trajectories. Although this can get a little hairy at times, it never feels cheap. You can almost always escape death by manuvering with skill. Some enemies also drop crates that contain weapons, powerups, or health pickups to get you through the tough parts.
The sound effects in the game are satisfying. Explosions, bullets, and missles all feel “large” as they should. The game doesn’t have music which makes it a bit of a bummer that it stops the music from the iPod app when you launch the game.
This is currently one of my favorite action games on the platform alongside Chopper, 2079, and Blue Attack. If you’re looking for a quick and satisfying action experience on the go, I can’t imagine Heavy Mach. would disappoint you. New levels are promised in a free update to this game that already oozes value from every orifice. Tomorrow morning, ditch Starbucks for the local convenient store coffee and spend the savings on this!
Gaming’s underground: an indie games primer
February 16th, 2009 •
Tags: games, Gaming, independent games, indie games, Xbox 360, Xbox Community Games
Like most commercial artforms, video games have a vibrant community that exists outside the commercial realm. People are making games that are less influenced by the marketability of the graphics, the concept, and the gameplay conventions—and in many cases they are not influenced at all by these factors. This gives developers and artists a blank canvas to create games that you could never find on the shelf at GameStop.
For years, indie gaming has been primarily a PC affair. Console development has had too many barriers for small-time developers to be able to even consider as a viable platform. Of course, there have always been the stories of the game developed by the guy in his mom’s basement that was discovered by someone and turned into a full-fledged console release, but that is the exception not the rule. In the past year, this has started to change slowly. Microsoft has released its development kit and launched Community Games on Xbox Live which is a platform for indie developers to release and sell their creations. The iPhone has also offered a successful and accessible platform for indie developers. Most indie games are still on the PC, but the industry has seen the value in indie games and is making inroads to having them on a multitude of platforms.
GemCraft is a deep tower defense game built in Flash and playable in the browser
Possibly the most popular platform of all for indie gaming is the web thanks to the Flash browser plugin. There are hundreds of sites that focus solely on providing a Flash gaming playground with titles spanning every genre you can imagine. Because of the ubiquity of Flash, these games are accessible to almost anyone with a computer of any kind. They reach levels of sophistication that are very close to that of applications native to a particular hardware platform and offer something for casual and hardcore gamers alike.
Within indie games are represented a number of popular genres of old that no longer receive exposure in the mainstream. There are still die-hard fans of the point-and-click adventure genre and the shoot ‘em up genre, but there aren’t enough of them to justify big-budget boxed releases outside the oddball title once every year or two. The indie scene has stepped in to support fans of these genres, and developers release a steady stream of these titles all the time.
Counterstrike started life as a Half-life mod
Indie games also invent new genres that often make their way into the mainstream. Popular PC shooter Counterstrike began its life as a freely-distributed game mod for the original Half-life. A loose genre that has gained popularity as of late is the “arthouse game.” This genre label doesn’t really describe a particular set of gameplay conventions as many do but instead refers to an underlying philosophy present throughout games in the genre to a greater or lesser extent. This genre bending and stretching often even stretches the definition of a “game” to encompass interactive works of art (drawing the ire of some).
Speaking of game mods, they too are a major part of the indie gaming community. Modern PC games often ship with sets of tools that allow players to more easily modify and extend the experience of the original release. Even before these toolsets were common, users were still known to hack together modifications of popular games. These mods can be as simple as a new map or weapon or as complex as a completely new game with entirely different sounds, weapons, characters, and levels. Modders have even developed completely different genres of games on top of existing ones.
By nature of their being not as commercially viable as big titles on the console, they are also less visible. So, where would you go if you wanted to find some cool indie games? Try these sites:
Bytejacker- Bytejacker is a twice weekly video podcast that focuses on downloadable games in general. Of course, the WiiWare and Xbox Live Arcade titles profiled are still big—too big in most cases to be classified as “indie,” but the show also covers indie PC games and iPhone games. It is currently one of my favorite podcasts and is certainly a fantastic source for indie goodness.
Indiegames.com Blog- This blog covers the hottest releases in the PC indie scene. You’ll often get video footage along with the descriptions to further entice you.
The Independent Gaming Source- Indie PC games are also the focus of this long-running blog. Subscribe to this feed and you will surely find a plethora of awesome games you would otherwise have overlooked.
Game Tunnel- Accessibility to developers is a double edged sword. In the indie scene, you will find some gems packed full of originality. You’re also going to find a lot of crap. If reviews of PC indie games are what you’re after, this is your place.
Slide To Play- My current favorite iPhone games review site. Sure, the iPhone is starting to get noticed by major developers, but it is still a largely independent playground.
Kongregate- This is the killer platform for Flash games. Kongregate hosts a ton of games and has site-wide acheivements ala Xbox 360. Completing an achievement in a game that supports them (many do) will add to your site-wide score. You can also complete certain acheivements to earn cards for use in Kongregate’s Flash-based collectible card game. The site also enables you to chat with other players while playing. I’m raddevon on the site so, if you join, look me up!
Newgrounds- You might call Newgrounds the birthplace of Castle Crashers since the game’s creators not only got their start posting games on the site; Tom Fulp himself actually started the site! The site is the original home of Alien Hominid which eventually became a modestly successful console game on multiple platforms including the latest version on XBLA. The success of that game paved the way for the insanely fun XBLA title Castle Crashers. The site hosts all types of Flash content, but a major chunk of its content is in the games section.
Mod DB- If you own any of the popular PC games released in the past 10 years, there are probably at least one or two mods you could download and install for free to give you a fresh gaming experience. Mod DB currently indexes almost 5,000 PC game mods which can be searched and sorted by the game they modify, the release status, the genre, the theme, and whether they are single or multi-player.
If you find yourself bored with a seemingly endless cavalcade of cookie-cutter AAA titles, dig a little deeper into the indie games scene. You’ll find greater variety and incredible innovation in almost every aspect of the games from story to visuals to gameplay. There are also indie developers working hard to refine more mainstream gaming tropes to levels not pursued in the mainstream. The indie scene can truly provide something for every gamer.