Gravitas in final playtesting
Filed under: Computers, Entertainment, Games, Programming, Technology, Video Games
I’ve submitted Gravitas for what will hopefully be a final playtest.
Here are some screenshots:
DUST 514 will be a Playstation 3 exclusive
Filed under: Computers, EVE Online, Entertainment, Games, MPOGs, Technology, Video Games
CCP have just announced DUST514 will be exclusive to the Playstation 3. Which is a shame (check out the EVE Online forums for some stronger opinions). Unfortunately it makes sense for a few reasons (well making it exclusive to one console makes sense – whether the 360 or the PS3 was the better choice is more debatable).
Developing for a single console is quicker and easier – especially important for a game that will probably have more updates than the average game.
There are suggestions that one or both of Sony and Microsoft aren’t happy about cross-platform multiplayer games.
Since the idea of the game (a console FPS interacting with a PC MMO) is quite revolutionary they could get a lot of support (both financially and in terms of marketing and other benefits) from the console manufacturer, but only if it’s exclusive.
That being said, it may not be the end for the Xbox 360 and DUST. Sony have suffered recently and definitely have lower consumer confidence (will players have to give Sony any personal information to play DUST?) and this decision will have been made long before Sony’s hacking problems. If sales are lower than CCP hope they may rethink the plan. And remember, “exclusive” in the games industry can be a vague and rarely lasts for ever.
The game is scheduled for a Spring release so at least 360-only owners have a while to decided if they want to get a PS3 just for this game…
EVE Online adding real money item store
Filed under: EVE Online, Entertainment, Games, MPOGs, Video Games
CCP recently announced that their long awaited “walking-in-stations” feature will now include an item store selling character customization options exclusively for real money (actually for Aurum another in game currency only available for real money).
Some people have lamented the idea of EVE finally entering this area and selling items for real money. After all today you can buy a monocle, tomorrow a ship. This is a slippery slope that will lead to death of EVE Online as we know it. Except, of course, it won’t. Since PLEXs were introduced anything in game has essentially been purchasable for real money. Take the price in ISK, devide that by approximately 350 million and multiply by half the price of a 60 day gamecard. These items are slightly different since they aren’t available in game without using real money at some point (but it is possible to trade them between players so you don’t personally have to spend real money).
One final note: the same customization opens are likely to be available to DUST 514 players once it’s released.
Clarifying my position on ASP.net
Filed under: Computers, Programming, Ruby on Rails, Technology, Web Programming
One of my most read (and most commented on) posts was the one claiming “ASP.NET sucks”, which only goes to show being a little offensive goes dissapointingly far on the internet. Since it has now been five years since I posted that, I thought a quick follow-up was in order.
I stand by most of what I said my initial post, but with a little specificity. It’s not ASP.net that’s the problem but Webforms. Unfortunately at the time Webforms was all you ever saw. There are alternatives around today (and may have been back then but none were especially high profile and none were by Microsoft).
These days of course Webforms are very much out of fashion. Following on from the success of Rails (and then many) Microsoft realised that Webforms weren’t an idea that could keep up with modern web development. A quick glance at the ASP.net home page today shows four out of five articles talking solely about ASP.net MVC and one article talking about both MVC and Webforms (of course that will vary by day I but I doubt the result will be very different).
So taking into account a minor title change (ASP.net Webforms suck!) I’d say my original point stands…
Department of Temporal Investigations: Watching the Clock
I recently started buying and reading a lot of Kindle Star Trek novels (on my Nexus One incidentally – I don’t have a Kindle). Although a part of me is mildy worried and annoyed at the closed DRM’d nature of Kindle eBooks (and often the price) the ease and convenience has won out.
Star Trek novels have a improved a lot since I read them previously many years ago. Not necessarily the stories themselves but that there seems to a serious concerted effort to maintain continuity between, but without requiring too much knowledge of other books to read any given book (although there are more series now which obviously do require you to read them all for it to make sense).
With that in mind, before reading DTI: Watching the Clock you should definitely read the Destiny series and possibly the Typhon Pact series and the Titan series. Everything you need to know about them is explained in the book but it does spoil them a little if you do intend to read them at some point.
Department of Temporal Investigations: Watching the Clock
Time travel in Star Trek has always been a slightly problematic topic. Featured as the primary plot device in many episodes (and several movies), it was always handled differently and never followed any discernible rules. This book tries to straighten this all out (or as Douglas Adams once said make it, at least, firmly crooked) and on the whole, succeeds.
The book feels like a collection of short stories about time travel, tied together with an over-reaching story arc (complete with seemingly insignificant events in one “story” that become important later). Many of them are about how the DTI dealt with the aftermath of different time travel events in the show. In fact practically every Star Trek episode that dealt with time travel is mentioned (except for new Star Trek movie) and explained to some extent. A couple of the big ones (specifically Star Trek: First Contact, the Temporal Cold War and the whole of Voyager) are more central to the story.
Aside from the technical aspects of time travel, the book also devotes time to expanding the main characters, Dulmur* and Lucsly, who were introduced to us in the Deep Space 9 episode, “Trials and Tribulations”. As the blurb says: “There’s likely no more of a thankless job in the Federation than temporal investigation”. Considering how interesting the time travel elements are, I expected to find these parts more boring than I did. In fact after seeing how they deal with some of the Starfleet officers (and more specifically how the Starfleet officers deal with them) I thought about Sisko’s reaction to them and found him downright annoying.
So the bottom line is, the only reason I can think for a Star Trek fan not to read this would be that you want to read some of prerequisite books first (Destiny, Typhon Pact, Titan).
*Dulmur or Dulmer? I always thought Dulmer since their names were supposed to be anagrams of Mulder and Scully. The author however uses Dulmur consistently and there is a point in the story where the spelling confusion is referenced explicitly.
| Amazon UK | Amazon US |
|---|---|
DTI: Watching the Clock |
DTI: Watching the Clock |
Destiny #1: Gods of Night |
Destiny #1: Gods of Night |
Typhon Pact #1: Zero Sum Game |
Typhon Pact #1: Zero Sum Game |
Google Docs Motion
Google continue to improve upon Google docs today with the release of Google Docs motion which will “introduce a new way to collaborate – using your body”. Anything else I saw will be underwhelming compared to the article form Google, especially some of the pictures of some of the more advanced gestures it supports…
XBMC Partnering with Sony, going closed source
I figured any effort to get back to regular posting would only be helped by starting on today of all days…
XBMC have announced a new partership with Sony. It will include the assimilation of the XBMC team into Sony’s Home Theatre and Console division and the closing of the XBMC source.
Presumably a PS3 port will be forthcoming…
Site5 are pretty cool
Since the switch to Amazon EC2 I cancelled hosting with my previous provider Site5. Now due to unfortunate timing I cancelled a day after being invoiced for (and paying) a months hosting. But in an unexpected move, in the email confirming my cancellation I also got a full refund for my last payment.
So if anyone needs web hosting, consider Site5.
Moved to Amazon EC2
Filed under: Computers, PHP, Programming, Technology, Web Programming
I’ve just moved the blog over to Amazon EC2 and so far everything seems to be going well.
I’d been considering the move for a while and a new feature (well I’m not sure how new it is but I only just noticed it) is a new smaller instance type. The virtual servers Amazon offer used to come in three sizes, small medium and large starting at $0.10*. Pretty quickly they added some bigger sizes (going all the way up to $2.00 per hour for quadruple extra large) as well as some more specialized types like GPU clusters. But it still meant the minimum price per month for a server always on was about $74/month which is expensive for simple web hosting.
Now however, their new micro instances are available at a pretty cool $0.02/hour (about $15 a month). For the performance you’re likely to get it’s still probably not the most cost effective solution for plain web hosting, but for having complete access to a server with high availability (and the extra features hosting on Amazon’s infrastructure provides like being able to clone a whole server with one click) it’s pretty good.
One final note is to remember that these numbers are not the final costs you’ll have to pay. You still pay for storage and data transfer which in my case look like they’ll be about an extra 10% extra.
* Since then the price of the small instance has come down to $0.085/hour or about $63/month.
Gravitas in Silverlight
Filed under: Computers, Entertainment, Games, Programming, Technology, Video Games, Web Programming
A version of Gravitas available to play right in your browser using Silverlight is now available.