planet rome.ro

10 most significant games

2008-08-27T19:10:00.000-07:00

It's time again for another Top 10 list and the fine folks at CrispyGamer have provided just that. There's not much for me to say other than CHECK OUT THIS LINK

stormwind: misaligned for four years

2008-08-27T12:23:00.001-07:00

World of Warcraft is coming up on its 4th anniversary in November and one of the biggest texture alignment issues I've experienced in any game has still gone unfixed.

This is the entrance to Stormwind. These wooden beams appear in other areas of the game -properly aligned. How can a texture misalignment of this magnitude go unaddressed for so long? The lighting bug in the entrance of the Booty Bay Inn was fixed months ago (finally) but this huge mistake is still around.

WHY?

iPhone app issues

2008-08-27T12:04:00.000-07:00

So right now the biggest issue with the latest iPhone firmware release is the splitting of iTunes accounts. You can read more about this issue on the net but basically people are getting the Black Screen of Death when installing iPhone Apps or they are not able to run their App Store apps anymore due to the account splitting.

I had the issue with my Apps not running anymore a few days ago. To fix it, I connected my iPhone to iTunes through my computer, uninstalled all the Apps through iTunes, then reinstalled them all through iTunes. It took a while but it worked.

I've had my iPhone crash during App installs and have gotten the Black Screen of Death three times now. Here are a few hints for avoiding the BSoD until a firmware update fixes this:

(1) Do not install more than one App update at a time
(2) When installing an App, do not use the iPhone until it's finished installing

I've since followed these steps and have not gotten the BSoD anymore. One nice side effect from installing one App at a time is that the new App fills the hole in the icon grid left by the previously updated App. When you Install All, the iPhone will put all the new icons at the end of your icon pages, leaving behind gaping icon holes.

ghost recon

2008-08-09T20:53:00.000-07:00

As you may well know, the country of Georgia and Russia are totally going at it right now. The body count is rising and it's a political mess. I'm not writing this post to talk politics. No, I'm going to talk about one of my favorite games of All-Time - Ghost Recon.

The original PC version of Ghost Recon was released in November 2001. The entire campaign took place in Russia with some locations being in Tblisi and Ossetia - the sites of today's turmoil. That's what sparked my interest in jumping back into the game again. And I'm so glad I did - it's truly one of the greatest games made. I can play it for hours and hours; it never gets boring. In fact, it's massively suspenseful.

Ghost Recon was the very first (and one of the very few) games where enemies in camouflage are 100% effective. You can be lying in prone position on the ground as a sniper in your ghillie suit, scoping out the area, and not spot the enemy crawling slowly toward you in full camo - it's that amazing.

It has every multiplayer option you could hope for....and I always hope for Co-Op. It has excellent support for Co-Op as well as a bunch of other modes. My favorite way to play is to just jump into a Quick Mission on Castle MP06 (daytime), make Team A be only myself as a sniper with an SP25 + Grenades and Team B be a Demolitions expert with an MM1 and a Tank Killer rocketlauncher. I like trying to take the entire place out by myself. If I get killed then I'm auto-switched to the Demo member and I just go nuts bombing the whole place until I'm taken down (it's inevitable). I start with a Team B member because I like hearing the confirmation of every kill.

After saving Moscow from the Russian rebels, the game ends. But that's not all. Red Storm released two additional add-ons: Desert Siege (2002) and Island Thunder (2002). DS took place in Africa and IT took place in Cuba. Both are just spectacular experiences. The storylines are serious and the environments and missions are sublime. In all games, the enemy AI is what totally shines - they are TOUGH. You'll know what I mean if you try to play a map by yourself with no backup. Crazy suspense and totally FUN.

You can buy all of this in one big Ghost Recon Gold box for about $20. It's so worth it. The graphics look dated by today's standards but it's the gameplay that will live forever. It's DirectX so it works great on everything. I play it on Vista with no issues. Performance is top-of-the-line as the game is 7 years old. Go pick it up - you'll love it.

wolf3d = 16

2008-05-05T23:43:00.000-07:00

So here I sit, typing this update on my MacBook, an amazing Apple product, writing about a game I worked on 16 years ago which just happened to be a mere 3 years after I stopped writing for my first Apple love, the Apple II platform. It's been a long time between heavy use of Apple products but now is the time for me to fully switch back into Apple mode. I'm already addicted to my iPhone, Apple TV and MacBook. Next up: iMac and Mac Pro and I'm off and away - goodbye Microsoft.

I just figured I'd announce my switch on Wolfy's birthday. The relevance? Wolfenstein 3D was a game lovingly crafted by 4 guys, 3 of which were longtime Apple II fanatics and coders; a game that was based on one of our all-time favorite Apple II games, Castle Wolfenstein. So you see, it all comes back around to Apple one way or another.

(To see something Wolfy made with Legos, check this out)

Update: I just saw that SxePhil on YouTube said happy birthday to Wolf3D!

the amazing ironman

2008-05-02T10:29:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we bought a time slot at the nearby San Mateo AMC for the entire company to watch Ironman at 4pm. Everyone showed up which is usually a good sign. I loved all the previews (The Love Guru, You Don't Mess WIth The Zohan, The Hulk) and then the movie began.

It was 2 hours of amazing action, dialogue, acting and technological goodness. Robert Downey Jr. has completely vindicated himself with this movie IMO. And Jeff Bridges was, as always, bigger than life and extremely smooth even as an evil corporate Dude. The cars were awesome, the computers futuristic, the tech unbearably cool and the acting superb.

And even better, at the end of it, it's just the beginning for Ironman - the sequel will see Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury recruiting Ironman into S.H.I.E.L.D. As far as I'm concerned this is the highest quality comic brand that's seen the big screen. When I was a kid I was a Spiderman and Ironman devotee so this movie made me really happy.

Go see it!

actionscript 3 class definition and importing sickness

2008-02-28T16:18:00.000-08:00

Sorry, but this post is about some programming garbage.

Okay, so i decided to write a little ActionScript 3 code since it's all object-oriented and somehow "real" compared to the previous joke versions. I was trying to create a small class that did some simple stuff and get it working in the Flash environment. After reading several examples straight from Adobe and some forums I wrote what looked like a simple, pristine piece of code that should have worked.

The error I got when I tried running the code was this:

1180: Call to a possibly undefined method xxxx

This basically means that Flash couldn't find the class that I created. But I didn't get any errors from the "import" statement that references the .AS file that has the class in it (inside a package{}).

If I changed the filename I'm trying to import I get an error. Ok, so it knows the file is there but it cannot find the class inside the file for some reason.

I searched all over the net for an hour trying to find the answer to this problem. NOWHERE DID I FIND THE SOLUTION THAT I AM ABOUT TO GIVE YOU. The solution to the problem is something that, evidently, Flash programmers JUST KNOW from experience but the solution isn't written anywhere that I could find on the internet and my Flash coders don't know how they know the technicality I'm about to explain.

So it comes down to this: the way you write the name of your class MUST be the EXACT way you name the .AS file it's in.

For example: if I create a class named BugJar like so:

package
{
  public class BugJar
  {
    //...code...
  }
}

then I **MUST** save it in a file named BugJar.as!!!!

Inside my framecode I would have:

import BugJar;

...and it would work.

This is just completely disgusting to me as a programmer. Linking the name of a class to the filename of the file it's in is just wrong.

What's worse is that Flash doesn't even give you the proper error for this:

filename: bugjar.as

package
{
  public class BugJar
  {
    //...code...
  }
}

framecode:

import bugjar;
var jar:BugJar = new BugJar();

The above example WILL NOT WORK and Flash doesn't give you an error message that helps you understand or fix this problem that shouldn't exist in the first place.

blue oyster cult loves star blazer?

2008-02-25T12:03:00.000-08:00

So I was watching some of my favorite Blue Oyster Cult vids on YouTube and when I started up "Take Me Away" I was amazed to see someone playing Tony Suzuki's Star Blazer on a green-screen Apple ][! WTF??? CRAZY.

I never saw this vid on MTV back in the day so this was new to me. If you want to check out more BOC vids check out "I Love The Night".

you got mcroll'd!

2008-02-10T19:11:00.000-08:00

This video is so jacked up and disturbing it made me cry I was laughing so hard!

mew

2008-02-07T13:25:00.000-08:00

A recent favorite group that I discovered (through my wife) is Mew, a very complex pop Danish band. Check out their website and you'll immediately notice by the insane navbar at the top, and the audio, that this group is really different.

Their 3rd album, Frengers (2003), was their first big hit album (check out the songs: 156, Am I Wry and Snow Brigade on YouTube) and their latest, "Mew. and the Glass-Handed Kites" is amazing. Check out the video of their single from this album, Special.

an end....and a new beginning

2008-01-22T18:31:00.000-08:00

I decided to delete the hoopla regarding Mike Wilson because, really, there was no need to dwell on anything other than the important part—that Mike is helping some great games get out there. No matter the past, the bottom line is I sincerely wish Mike real success on this opportunity and know that he’s capable of it.

For my part, I’m looking forward to playing the games that his developer network is creating at this moment. I’m familiar with some of the guys running studios he's publishing and I can say without exaggeration that they are extremely skilled individuals. I, and all of us in the industry, should hope the best for them. Indies rule!

korgoth! i can't even breathe watching these

2008-01-21T01:07:00.001-08:00

cloverfield. omfg.

2008-01-20T01:53:00.000-08:00

Just saw the movie and I can't even describe how awesome..... just..... wow. Totally blown away. I'm a major fan of monster movies and this was totally unexpected.

I knew it was shaky cam and all so be prepared for that if you go see it. You get used to it pretty quickly. I love the fact that all the actors are total unknowns and the entire movie is told from one character's point of view. You have no idea why the monster is there, where it came from or anything else - the characters don't dwell on watching TV and the military has no answers either.

So it's the most realistic portrayal of what it would probably be like if a creature was rampaging through New York. We were totally blown away by it and need to go watch it again.

major apple love

2008-01-18T02:10:00.000-08:00

These days it's hard not to notice just how awesome Apple has become. Sure, you pay a premium price but you enjoy the best of the best with an aesthetic quality unmatched by even their most sincere imitators.

I've been an Apple guy since 1979 and devoted 10 years of my life to the 6502 nestled deep within the Apple II series. I admired the Mac but wasn't a Mac nut until the latest OS release, Leopard. And now the Mac just simply rocks.

It started with the iPhone I got back in June. Coolest device I've ever owned and it's still the best. Frequent firmware upgrades make me really happy. Because of the phone I went out and got a MacBook laptop with Leopard installed so I could see if Mac OS X with all of NeXTSTEP's awesomeness inside it was really all I was hoping it would be. And wow, was I blown away.

Until you've used a computer where the OS was written FOR the specific hardware you just don't know what you're missing. The world of the PC is based on the reality that everyone's computer is different and requires special drivers to make it work right - but only with that one device. The Mac is different - it's designed to work together as a whole and you can really tell the difference. Even the pixelicious scrolling in Safari is enough to show you how smoooooth the experience is.

So, in love with the MacBook, I went out and got an Apple TV since I had tired of the buggy-ass D-Link streaming video box I have (and the garbage one before it). And again I was totally amazed at how awesome and easy this device turned out. I'm a total iTunes devotee so the Apple TV just worked exactly as I had hoped. Better in fact.

And now MacWorld 2008 has shown promise that Apple's long awaited rise to prominence has begun. I'm excited about the future of Apple again.

Duke Nukem Forever Screenshot!!!

2007-12-18T18:04:00.000-08:00

We all knew the day would come - the eventual release of Duke Nukem Forever. Well, the release date has not been set but to placate those anticipating a Christmas launch (ain't happening) the team at 3DRealms has finally released a DNF screenshot of The Duke hisself!

And tomorrow at noon, Texas time, they will be releasing the first teaser trailer for the game!!!

I, for one, cannot wait for the Duke to rise again. It's been a looooong time but it's better to be late and super great than punctual and barely functional.

UPDATE: The teaser is out and I love it! (right-click, save as) The Duke is back and I'm going to like it no matter what.

My own observations and thoughts from the teaser:

(1) Love the Terminator hammering going on while the scenes fly by. Ominously badass.

(2) The redone Duke theme song sounds a little overworked for me. Heavier power chords like the original would sound harder if run through a Pantera-style GSP (Dimebag's sound ruled).

(3) Totally love the American flag at the end - Duke is All-American FTW!

(4) I love the quote at the end, "I'm looking for some alien toilet to park my bricks, who's first?" The reason is because it portends more sophisticated one-liners than you'd expect. I loved D3D's lines immensely but seeing a slight evolution in style was very nice.

(5) The tech is great, the graphics (textures, anims, etc.) are great. If the gameplay holds true to the original in that there's intense FPS fighting and tons of interactivity with the environment then I'm predicting huge success. One huge reason Half-Life 2 did so well was that they stuck with their incredible formula from HL1 and it continues to work.

My thought is that the very interactive nature of D3D's environment was one of the defining elements of Duke's IP and that continuing to include that kind of interactivity with the environment will further cement Duke's IP and heighten the probability of DNF's success. That and the over-the-top Duke attitude and humor make for one of the most engaging character-driven FPS's to come along in.....oh, about 12 years (come February 2008).

Happy 17th Birthday Keen!

2007-12-14T11:28:00.000-08:00

As if DOOM wasn't old enough to make me feel my age now it's Commander Keen's birthday and I'm REALLY feelin' it. Today I'll just do a combo birthday announcement for the 1st and 2nd Keen trilogies (1-3 and 4-6) since Keen 4-6 was released on December 15th, 1991 and will be 16 years old. They're like big, old babies! LOL.

If you'd like to remember Keen or if you've never heard of it, check out some of these sites:

Keen History

Official Keen Site

Another Official Keen Site

Commander Keen fan site

Wikipedia entry

Back when Keen was released it was a sensation because no one had played a smooth Mario-style game on a PC before. I have a big box full of the letters from parents who wrote in ordering the game along with lots of praise - at that point we felt we were on the right track. And it all started with this little fella!

Happy 14th Birthday DOOM!

2007-12-10T11:11:00.001-08:00

It's that time of year again; time to raise a toast to the venerable DOOM. Blue's News has a nice comment about DOOM. Also, check out DoomWorld for the official site celebration.

I don't really have anything new to say except that working on DOOM was still one of the true highlights of my gaming career. Until you actually work on something as tremendous and magical as DOOM you have no idea what that feeling is like. We totally knew we were making something really special and beyond our previous games which in themselves were groundbreaking as well (Commander Keen; Wolfenstein 3D). I was fortunate enough to experience all that with my friends at id and it was truly awesome.

Yay! Another passionate WoW Addict!

2007-12-10T11:06:00.000-08:00

This is hilarious - I love seeing someone else as passionate about WoW as I am. Except that I'm Alliance, Corpsegrinder, and the Horde SUUUUUUCCCCCKKKKKSSSSSS!!!!!!!

2girls1cup dot com

2007-12-04T20:35:00.000-08:00

So there's this totally disgusting video called "2girls1cup" out there that of course is probably the sickest thing you'll ever see (WARNING). But what I really find hilarious are the reaction videos that people are posting on YouTube showing their first (and only) time watching the video - sooooooo funny!

Watch the reactions

The funniest reaction of them all? KERMIT'S!

China and South Korea

2007-11-17T20:52:00.001-08:00

I took 10 Slipgaters and myself to China and South Korea for a fun business trip so we could all experience the culture of gaming over there and meet with the most important MMO companies in Asia.

It was a ton of fun. We attended GSTAR 2007 in South Korea which is a mini-E3 stocked with booth babes like the E3 of yore. I took a bunch of pics that I'll get online and tagged soon.

I don't eat seafood at all but I didn't have any problems eating in Asia as there's plenty of pork, beef and chicken and lots of great stuff. Half the time we ate we were cooking the food ourselves at the table. And the main drink over there is beer it seems, so we obliged.

The trip was hugely beneficial for us and we plan on getting back out there next year. Until then we continue to plug away at our MMORPG!

Back In The USA

2007-10-22T18:21:00.000-07:00

Rhaluka finally made it back to the USA from her long 5 month stay in Romania, thank you Homeland Security. Government immigration paperwork is such a nightmare. Anyway, she's back and settling in again after almost half a year away. We decided to start leveling some Draenai toons on Dragonmaw (WoW, of course!) and we're in the mid-teens now.

What else has been going on? A ton, especially at work. We're over 60 people now and working away on our MMORPG. It's a lot of fun but also an insanely interconnected web of dependencies and just a huge project size, the biggest I've done thus far. We're still in stealth mode for quite a while yet so I can't say more yet but we're all very excited by our progress!

My iPhone continues to be the paragon of electronic goodness. It just rules, completely. I love watching TV shows and movies on it, taking photos, listening to music, getting email, sending SMSs, etc, etc. It's AWESOME! Rhaluka loves hers as well.

I'm slowly working on Quinn Fox's official site as well. I gotta get his music up there.

Other interesting things going on: a Daikatana recreation in the Half-Life 2 Source engine; I might be the star of a reality show (these things never work out though :); I'll be in China for a week in November; Dangerous Dave on cell might be published soon.

R.I.P. John J. Anderson

2007-10-17T18:57:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite writers and game authors from the 80's was John J. Anderson. I first got acquainted with John from his excellent game Sea Dragon (published by Scott Adam's company Adventure International) and then Eliminator.

I used to read his columns in Creative Computing magazine and he was a very bright guy, crossing over between the Apple II and Atari 800 with ease. He was one of the few authors back in the day to write code for both platforms because it required quite a bit of knowledge to do both well. Not only did you have to be completely fluent with 6502 assembler but you also had to know the entire memory map of the system and all the important switches and places in RAM and ROM. John was a master of 8-bit systems alongside Jim Nitchals and David Lubar.

John Anderson died on October 17, 1989, seventeen years ago. R.I.P. John.

George Lynch is a Core Badass

2007-07-30T21:20:00.001-07:00

I was watching some videos on YouTube of some great guitarists and afterward I called up some George Lynch video. Uh, yeah, he just kicks total ass. I got Rhaluka a cool Mr. Scary t-shirt and here's a pic of her wearing it in Romania.

Talking about cool music, I just discovered some really great groups last week that I'm currently O.D.ing on. If you like metal you should really check this stuff out if you haven't heard it yet. They're all available on iTunes to listen to.

Porcupine Tree - "Shallow" (Deadwing), "Way Out Of Here" (Fear of a Blank Planet)

Primal Fear - "Chainbreaker" (Primal Fear), "Revolution" (Black Sun), "Tears of Rage" (Primal Fear). You will totally think you're listening to Judas Priest!

Dream Evil - "Chasing the Dragon" (Dragon Slayer)

Nocturnal Rites - "The Iron Force" (The Sacred Talisman)

Kamelot - "Solitaire/Rule the World" (Ghost Opera). Metal meets Classical the way it should be!

Firewind - "Falling to Pieces" (Allegiance)

And here are some not so new metal groups that are still rocking:

Blind Guardian - "Otherland" (A Twist in the Myth)

Saxon - "Beyond the Grave" (Lionheart)

One big reason why I love all these songs is because they remind me of classic metal but are completely new and updated. Also, wow, the cover art for these albums is just awesome. And if you're wondering how I found all this stuff, you can thank Pandora - an eerily kickass internet radio site that actually learns what you like and soon enough pretty much plays all the stuff you like even though you've never heard it before. Try it out.

Now just watch George Lynch shred Mr. Scary!

iPhone iNsanity!

2007-07-07T19:00:00.000-07:00

Yep, it had to happen. I was going to hold off and get the iPhone (aka JesusPhone) a while after its debut. You know, let some software updates happen and get the bugs out.

No way in hell. I'm a caffeine-saturated technogeek after all.

The Friday it was released I didn't even think I'd get one but a co-worker came back from the Apple store with two 8gb units (one for eBay, LOL) and after I saw JUST THE BLACK BAG I went on a 30-second acid trip, hopped in my wheeled conveyance and drove directly to the same store and waited in line that wrapped around the block. I HAD TO HAVE IT. Only 15 minutes later I walked out with two of the World's Most Awesome piece of electronics.

I have a Blackberry Pearl (1gb microSD memory) and was completely nuts over that phone especially since it's connected to our Exchange server and syncs up all my contacts and calendar wirelessly in realtime. If I email someone from the Pearl, that email appears on my work PC in Outlook's Sent Items folder. If someone sends me a meeting invite, it appears on my Pearl immediately so I don't even need to be around my work system to get that data. I never have to plug the USB cable into the Pearl to sync up, only for power. It was the perfect phone and wonderfully small. Problems? No processor power for games, web pages are a hassle to navigate, no wifi and is usually slow switching programs. Forget watching videos. And playing mp3's is through a badly designed app.

So enter the iPhone. I'm a definite Exchange lover at this point and really want to get syncing of my calendar and contacts straightened out if I can. The big win is that I have my iPhone pulling my Exchange email down so I get internal work emails no matter where I am (every 15 minutes it pulls). So I'm 1/3 of the way to almost Blackberry functionality in that department.

In every other imaginable department the iPhone blows the Pearl down pretty hard. It's as if the iPhone pulled down the Pearl's pants and clamped a massive lobster claw down there for a few minutes and things turned purple and fell off and rolled out the pants leg. I have never spent as much time with my Pearl as I do my iPhone - it's so much a computer without having to sit in front of one. There are lots of in-depth reviews out there and I know what all the shortcomings are in this device but it's a v1.0 PHONE coming from a company that has never made a phone in its entire 30 year existence. But they really hit it out of the park with this one and I'm really excited to see what comes with the software updates via iTunes.

The battery life is really very impressive. I can watch hours of movies, YouTube videos, music, internet browsing, etc. and the battery is as eerily longlasting as a GameBoy SP. The phone itself is really durable, especially the glass screen which is usually the first thing to get jacked up on a phone (my iPod screen got jacked by a key the first day):

But really, the biggest innovation of this phone is the UI. At its core, the iPhone is the Macintosh OS X operating system and the UI sensibility is total Mac - very smooth and fluid. The things I thought were great on the PocketPC back in 2001 are smashed into the next dimension with the iPhone. The race is on to copy the iPhone now but I'm very doubtful that anyone can pull it off. Look out there and find any iPod knockoffs that are even close to Apple's design aesthetic - nothing. The Zune is a pale shadow of the iPod; an ass-brown wannabe. If you've seen any videos of the new Microsoft Touch phone you'll see they were trying to copy the iPhone interface but as a seperate "layer" - what a complete joke. A waste of engineering time and money.

Come to JesusPhone. You know you want to. It's insanely great.

The Fracas Reveal

2007-06-26T19:46:00.000-07:00

Some of you may have noticed one of the random messages along the top has been "Stuart Smith, where are you?" I am, of course, referring to the author of the great Adventure Construction Set and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves from Quality Software.

One of my small hobbies is locating lost greats from the dawn of the game industry with most of my focus on the Apple II authors. Stuart Smith is one of those lost authors I have yet to find.

One of the earliest and probably first-published titles Stuart worked on was Fracas, a lo-res turn-based RPG that could eat up a LOT of hours. I recently ran the game again and remembered that it was written in Applesoft Basic, a language that I'm very familar with.

While scrolling through the game listing (this is a game from 1980, mind you) I immediately noticed the line:

5 DEF FN RN(I) = INT( RND(1)* I )

and I thought "oh yeah, I never did figure out what the hell that DEF FN keyword was used for." Then I resolved to learn what it actually did so I looked up an Applesoft reference manual and found out.

Wow. I cannot believe I never learned the value of DEF FN and the countless times I could have used it in my games! It's really simple: you are defining a function that you can call without a GOSUB and it can take a parameter. Basically an inline function.....in Applesoft Basic!

Amazing. And to think that I learned this from a game written at the dawn of the PC gaming age.