Amaze at the row of minis! Tremble at the sight of aging Perfomas! Gasp at the abuse of Apple Remote Desktop!
Take a tour of Microsoft's Mac test lab.
It's pretty neat to see that places like this exist. A co-worker and I were just talking that if were to go form a startup, it might be to simply do Quality Assurance work for other companies. While less sexy than development, companies always underfund their testing and always like to have outside parties report the bad news. Course, I can't imagine what a sweet test lab like that might cost...
Update: Funny, I just saw this on TUAW and they choose the same pic. Everyone loves a massive row of Mac Minis.
hehehe ... same with gizmodo
tagged: microsoft, apple
Friday, April 21, 2006
Tour Microsoft's Mac Lab
Is That A Real Memory Stick In Your Pocket?
Or are you just faking? Newlaunches reports that there is a glut of fake memory sticks hitting the shores. Apparently the format lends itself well to counterfeiting and can extremely hard for even Sony reps to detect. Glad everything I use is good old fasioned industry standard.
tagged: game, gaming
The Value Of A Two Dollar Download
Both Unfettered Blather and Dubious Quality take on Bethesda's current trend of charging for the download of relatively minute and meaningless Oblivion mods. I recommend heading over and reading both posts before going on.
The division between "mods", which would refer to small to medium sized tweaks in gameplay created by users ... which has given rise to such important concepts as Capture The Flag in FPS but also includes new skins or models, or "bonus material" ... which is usually content developed professionally by the original team and given to the community for free, or "MODS" ... the inane capitalization of which indicates that it's a game created using an existing engine by users but strives to be worthy of professional respect regardless and now we have this ... what should I call them? Bonus mods?
I'm just trying to put this in a historical point of view. If Id had offered a Doom Marine model for Quake, but charged a couple clams for the privilege of getting it ... would I have laughed? I mean, I've seen skins for Unreal Tournament 2004 done by actual professionals ... people who did outsource work for published titles ... and they were free. Free content, especially for PC gamers, has done nothing but increased in quality dramatically. So why would I pay a couple bucks for a horse?
The concept of charging a user base two dollars for a relatively meaningless download assumes there is a large bevy of users that find two dollars equally meaningless. It's possible that exists, but I'm from the arcade generation. Two dollars equals gameplay. Two dollars was a couple of hours of mindless entertainment at the mall. It was not a damn saddle.
Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo will all be toying with a downloadable microtransaction based marketplace. However, just because you can easily charge players low, low prices for any item in the catalog doesn't mean you should. Glutting the market with cheap downloads of low quality will create a backstop for the players to discover worthwhile ones. Once enough people are annoyed with your two dollar "nifty shield" or "shiny sword", nobody will be wanting to buy your "noble quest" for ten.
Mods, even highly successful ones like Counter-Strike, have always had one basic addition to the bottom line: a value add to lift up the entire franchise. It doesn't matter if it's a mod, bonus pack or a MOD. A little free milk can sometimes sell an entire cow.
If you can't give me the same amount of gameplay out of my two dollars that I got from my old arcade at the mall, don't even waste your time and money advertising it to me. I won't be buying.
tagged: game, gaming
Google Calendar For Online Matches (?)
I'm playing around with Google Calendar to see if it's a reasonable way of using groupware to organize online matches. I'm very iffy about it right now. Google has really done an amazing job with the Web 2.0 style of UI, no doubt. The wildcard is using links so that people can easily view the calendar, add challenges and view times.
You can try subscribing to my game calendar, but you'll probably need a google calendar account in the process. Sadly it doesn't work in Mac Safari right now (which is always a bit of a bone of contention with me and google, and well a lot of the Web 2.0 crowd ... if you can't make it easily cross-browser/platform, you're heading backwards).
Anyway, I've got that calendar setup for anyone to edit. We'll see how it goes.
tagged: game, gaming
Thursday, April 20, 2006
Free 360, If You Go To Singapore
Found kinda surreptitiously through from this blog post, whereismy360.com.sg is a challenge from Microsoft to find hidden 360s by identifying their location from a webcam feed. Kinda like how the America military determined Bin Laden was, in fact, out of his cave.
Since 360s are still cheaper than a flight to Singapore (barely), I'll probably just wait till Best Buy gets another in stock.
tagged: 360, gaming
Nothing Is Private, Nothing is Sacred
So I just got marketing call.
On my cell phone.
Now, I don't give my cell number out to most people, let alone business people because my life has been inundated with spam. My home line still gets plagued with marketing calls, despite Congress' best efforts. My GMail account gets spam in it's inbox, despite Google's vaunted bayesian filters. I actually use several accounts so that I can delete one when it gets too saturated.
My cell phone was the one piece of calm I had. When it rings, I almost always answer - because I'm sure it's someone who is actually looking for me as a person.
This week, I gave my cell phone number to a LendingTree.com representative and a Baird & Warner realtor because I wanted to be able to keep in quick communication with them. Since the home line is basically an answering machine now, I thought that house hunted warranted something faster.
This week, I got my first telemarketing call on that cell number. Coincidence? I have to doubt. I will be calling them today and insisting they come clean on their privacy policies. Both companies may just lost a customer.
I really hope whatever kickback the get for giving up a client's information is worth what they'd lose over a commision or loan.
I have to doubt it.
Bastards.
tagged: privacy
Help Save Palladium Books
Kevin Siembieda:
At a time when Palladium Books’ future has never looked more promising, we have been dealt a crippling blow.
For legal reasons, I cannot go into details about exactly what happened. Suffice it to say that betrayal of trust, theft, and embezzlement has inflicted what we estimate to be $850,000 to 1.3 million dollars in damages to Palladium.
It is a blow from which Palladium cannot recover. At least, not without YOUR help.
-- Please Help Save Palladium from Going Under (digg it)For legal reasons, I cannot go into details about exactly what happened. Suffice it to say that betrayal of trust, theft, and embezzlement has inflicted what we estimate to be $850,000 to 1.3 million dollars in damages to Palladium.
It is a blow from which Palladium cannot recover. At least, not without YOUR help.
Palladium is an old school paper and pen publisher of such RPG greats as Robotech, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Rifts. Outside of TSR, I'd say only Steve Jackson's crew occupied as much of my time, and that's probably a pretty tight contest between all three. The Brother and I had a two man Robotech campaign which lasted quite a long time and we managed to get our tabletop crowd into Rifts for a short while as well. The games were technically and artistically well done.
They aren't looking for simple handouts. Instead, Kevin is asking people to consider the purchase of his limited edition Megaverse Heroes print, a "a special, pencil drawing with key characters from our entire game line to be made into a simple, black and white, toned piece of artwork, 11 x 14 inches, printed on a good quality paper." The cost is $50.
Palladium had just taken a step to CRPGs with an N-Gage Rifts title, which honestly looked promising were it not on a doomed platform. That alone is a reason I'd like to see them get a second chance.
tagged: palladium, gaming
Katamari Creator Disses On Revolution
'I'm not really interested in it. I don't think a controller should have that much influence on the enjoyment of games.' He continued: 'I see what [Nintendo is] trying to do, but they're putting such emphasis on the controller; 'Woah, this controller lets you do this!' and I'm thinking - are you messing with us?'
-- Katamari Creator Critical of RevolutionI'm kinda sorry to see someone like Keita take such a stance, but it really explains why they thought Katamari might really well on the PSP. Me and My Katamari has been reviewed well, for sure, but I can't even imagine taking away the dual analog and maybe could see the DS's touchpad as a worthy alternative ... but not just the buttons. Rolling the katamari with my thumbs is what I love about the game, I find it extremely relaxing.
Course, I said a lot of mean things about the DS when it first came out myself, and I ended up playing Metroid Hunters for like three hours last night.
tagged: nintendo, gaming
Visual Studio Express
Microsoft is releasing their free Visual Studio Express suite on a permanent basis. No license, no restrictions. Many readers of Cathode Tan know I'm not the biggest Visual Studio fan in the world, but one of my biggest complaints is the cost. Not that I see workplaces kicking the professional version anytime soon, but this is great news for amatuer and hobbyists who don't want to spend and arm and leg for what is widely the de facto compiler for Windows.
I'm hoping that GarageGames has a project for Torque Game Builder to work under VSE C++. I'll do some investigation later today to find out. If so, TGB would be a fairly low cost method of deploying 2D games across multiple platforms.
tagged: microsoft, gaming
GTA Teaches 8 Year Old To Steal Van
Well, probaby not quite like that ... but we know how this kind of thing goes ... kid plays game, kid steals car, people blame game. Although to be quite honest, the original Modesto article doesn't really point any fingers but rather mentions GTA in a fittingly humorous tone.
Still ... an eight year old playing an M game? Chuckle, chuckle?
tagged: game, gaming
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
NIWIFI Codes
Star Wars Game Hidden in Open Office
Via Lifehacker:
Create a new sheet in Open Office.org Calc (spreadsheet)
Enter this formula in a cell:
=game()
and press Enter
The cell will display “say what?”
Enter this formula:
=GAME(“StarWars”)
A new window will open with a Star Wars game.
Like you needed another reason to ditch Microsoft Word.
tagged: office, gaming
Torque Game Builder
In getting my attention back to some of my 2D projects, I went to go download the latest version of Torque 2D, only to find it out of beta and renamed "Torque Game Builder". I guess they thought the T2D label was too limiting or something. This is a good excuse to toss out my previous code for the 2D shooter and iTunes enabled arcade I was working on and start over again. It's become more likely that the Mac Mini might get a place next to the television soon, so I may work on a coop shooter before anything else. I'll let everyone know how the new release fairs, but I was generally happy with the beta so I'm expecting decently smooth sailing.
tagged: game, gaming
Randolph Carter, Where Art Thou?
I haven't neglected working on the interactive fiction The Case Of Randolph Carter, it's just that some of the changes that came up with the grue demo caused some decent sized ripples. Namely not advancing the page upon a "missed" interaction (assuming it to be a wait). This throws off the original cadence which would even assume at times that the player would mostly be waiting and also decreases the overall number of actions a player might get per page (because now each one is a "hit"). So I've had to rework the code a little and rewrite a few of the pages. Most of that is behind me now, though, and I'm working more on tightening up the actual prose and game aspects again.
tagged: interactive fiction, gaming
Infinium Might Sell Something
Vaporware experts Infinium supposedly has plans to manufacture their Phantom Lapboard for a possible October release. The Lapboard is a "combination keyboard and mouse" which is supposed to be a comfy way of controlling your PC. However, since these are the guys behind the truly phantom Phantom ... I'm not holding my breath.
tagged: game, gaming
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