Posted in September 2009 …

Sep 29 2009
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Personal

The amazing power of discussion

Sometimes we need to put our ideas into words just to understand them ourselves. This is because the limitations in our language to describe ideas force us to make them more structured and less fuzzy around the edges.

We don’t always do this however, which is a bit sad since we only communicate a fraction of our ideas.

I think about this often when I’m talking with friends. Because it is only when I’m talking to another person that I really flesh out ideas enough to make them understandable and usable.

Last night I had a great conversation with an old friend and I am pleased to share with you a few of the ideas we discussed here. I’ll post them later tonight or tomorrow but I will say that we solved fear of death, the reason for religion and why the last Harry Potter book was a bit of a anti climax.

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Sep 28 2009
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Personal

Strange reading habits

It seems most of you are only here to find out who I am.

Fair enough. I’ll make a better presentation of myself soon.

Sep 24 2009
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Developers, Game development, Game industry

LOVE pre-play impressions

Sitting here watching the love tech alpha on my 37″ LCD screen.

It’s just a flythrough of the world that loops over and over again, showing of scenes form the game and the engines dynamic day and night cycle.

It’s really different from other games. It’s astonishing that it’s made by one person. Really impressive, check it out if you’re on a PC.

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Sep 24 2009
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Developers

LOVE MMO technical alpha available

Help Eskil get his bugs smoothed out and speed the release of LOVE.

Just download the tech-alpha demo here and start it up. It will send machine info to Eskil to improve compatibility and let him know how much server load he can expect for beta testing.

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Sep 21 2009
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Personal

The seamless music experience of Minigore

Minigore is a small promotional iPhone top down shooter created by developer Mountain Sheep. It was launched to get a publishing deal to an adventure game based on the characters, gameplay and art style that sets Minigore apart.

So far so good. That Minigore is one of the best looking and most polished feedback titles in the App store doesn’t make it any less good.

But what I really wanted to talk about is the seamless music experience. Minigore takes advantage of iPhone 3.0′s API for the iPod player. Which means it won’t stop your music when you launch Minigore. On the contrary.

The music plays through the loading screen as well as the menu and into the game itself. The game also understands that music is playing and doesn’t play its own soundtrack.

Compared to playing Minigore there can be no more persuasive argument for creating seamless experiences. Whether through sound, interface or social functions. Seamlessness really does add enormous amounts of emotional goodwill to your product.

Don’t believe me? Try it yourself, it’s 99 cents and worth every penny.

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Sep 14 2009
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Game industry

Monopoly city streets

The word wide Monopoly match is finally running smoothly without slowdowns or lag. The game is a fantastic experiment on the google maps platform. I’ve been wondering why it hasn’t  been used more for games up til now, let’s see if that changes.

There is only one problem with the game. Chance has such a small effect on actual play that the main strategy in Monopoly (buy everything as fast as possible) is not only dominant but effectively the only one. Still pretty fun though, buying your own neighbourhood.

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Sep 10 2009
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Developers, Game industry

LOVE mmo is complete

At least according to developer Eskil Steenberg’s blog. LOVE is a hugely interesting MMO since it’s mostly procedurally generated with the world being constantly constructed and destroyed by players. Also noted for being developed solely by Eskil (except for the music) it looks to be quite an achievement.

So far though the game is only feature complete, which since it’s procedurally generated also means content complete, it does not mean it’s ready for release though. Eskil is probably going to test the shit bejesus out of the product before launch or open beta. I for one will be glued to the site looking for a download button.

Sep 10 2009
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Personal

Apple’s September event

With Snow Leopard out and another event planned it was time for the annual iPod update.

This time Apple released faster versions of the iPod touch for improved game experiences. An iPod nano with a camera and a few new colors for iPod classic and shuffle.

But the real news is iTunes 9. iTunes has finally been updated with a few small but essential additions. iTunes has for the last 3 years or so lagged terribly behind the rest of Apple’s products both in interface and useability. So this was about time. But it wasn’t the complete overhaul we were hoping, not an iTunes cloud sadly.

iTunes 9 has limited content sharing over LAN for home users and a revised interface for the iTunes store. Which was badly needed. But besides that the changes are minimal and of little interest. Hopefully iTunes 9 was just in preparation of iTunes 10 which hopefully will be a drastic improvement.

Let the rumors commence.

Sep 10 2009
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Game industry, Personal

Playstation 3 drive error update

Got another PS3 on my warranty. Pretty decent by Sony I think, sadly it was broken as well.

Went back to the store and got another one, courtesy of the Sony retailer in Sweden, this time it worked. Then I realized my enormous mistake. A PS3 drive is encrypted to specific machines. That means you can’t swap drives to other PS3′s.. Now this I just don’t understand. There are no real security benefits with not being able to swap drives. If a hacker wants to pirate something they will, eventually, break the encryption. But besides that, why use a specific machine? Why shouldn’t I be able to move my drive to another PS3.

Maybe I want to upgrade to the newest revision of the PS3 hardware some time in the future? No? Alright Sony, if that’s the way you want it.

Since I’m now without save games and with no real must play titles out right now, I am seriously thinking about exchanging it for an Xbox 360 elite. At least there I know what kind of problems to expect…