Monthly Archive for July, 2010

Android is better than ever

Published on July 31, 2010 in General Stuff. View Comments

So like, nearly 2 years ago I order my first Android phone. I’m pretty proud to say that I was one of the first people to use an Android phone. I’ve been there through all the ups and downs; enjoyed the fruits of its labor and suffered through its woes.

I remember when I first got the phone, people were all like “what phone is that?” and I would respond “its the G1, its a Google phone powered by Android”. At this point they would lose interest. No one knew what Android was or why I cared to mention it when they asked me what my phone was. The G1 was the first of its kind and I’m so glad I took the risk with it.

I recently read that there are something like 160,000 Android devices being activated per day. That’s insane! Not only that, but some of the newer ones are selling out! People are waiting in line for these phones. NICE!

Apple makes a great device, there is no doubt about that. But the stranglehold they’ve had on the system has been choking the consumer. And sadly for them, they aren’t making the biggest and baddest device anymore. The problem with Apple is they want to tell you, well force you, where you get your services and applications. That’s like buying a TV and having the manufacturer tell you you can only use a certain cable provider and you can only hook up DVD players or surround sound systems they personally approve. What the fuck? What if I want satellite? What if the DVD players you approve don’t do what I want? Its retarded.

But I digress…

Today I see people all around me with Android phones: coworkers, friends, family, random people at my sons T-ball game. I smile a little when I’m browsing Twitter or Facebook and see someone updated their status with “Twitter for Android” or “Facebook for Android”. I actually see more of those than I see iPhone updates now.

Recently I’ve been completely maximizing my Android experience. My phone is so much more than a phone. I use it to sync a shopping list with my wife, its a SNES emulator, its my GPS, social networking device, e-mail client, RSS reader and so much more that I can’t even begin to list. And it doesn’t stop there. I know that if I need it to perform a certain function, I can find an app for it. Or make an app for it. Do whatever the fuck I want with it. Its Android, its open source. I have the freedom I want!

So this one goes out to the Android team over at Google…

 

Thank You!

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Zinger! changes

Published on July 30, 2010 in Programming. View Comments

So we’re making a bunch of changes to Zinger!. I don’t want to go into all the details, but lets just say “trust us”. We’re breaking our work down into 2 major parts: playability and replayability… in that order:

Playability

Playability is simple… make the game easy and fun to play. Zinger! is already fun and easy to play FOR US. But when you add in total noobs you get a clusterfuck of “WTF IS GOING ON?!”. Understandable. We’d been playing Zinger!, or at least the concept of it, for a really long time and through many iterations. We need to remember there are people who’ve never played it before now playing it. Especially when it gets distributed on Steam (omg omg omg omg).

Along those same lines… we’re going to rethink or simplify some of the stuff we were doing before, or even remove it completely. Like the spectator mode and course randomizing. A perfect example of a bad choice is when we limited what you could spectate just to force you to watch what was going on in the current hole. It made spectator mode so obtrusive and restricted it felt like you were looking at the game through a tube. Fuck it, free roam!

Some of the other issues will require more drastic changes. There are certain elements that feel pointless and even a waste of time. We have plans to change that. Like what’s the point in shooting a guy into the water or out of the map if he just respawns right back where is was? We’re going to try to work in a damage system sorta like Super Smash Brothers. You can’t be damaged to death, but the more you get hurt the more it accumulates and affects you. (which means we’ll have to add healing related items into the game)

The other thing we’re worried about is a theme. The only reason we care about that is because of the lack of “flow” in the game. Sometimes Zinger! feels like its fractured a bit. Like you’re playing several mini games at the same time. Is it team deathmatch? Is it golf? Is it an adventure game? What is it? So to bring it all together and to help it make more sense we’re going to add a general theme to the game. That’s where the most dramatic changes will be. You’ll see the content getting tweaked and changed to help match. Don’t worry, we’re keeping the same artistic style… we just need to update the assets to match. Our goal is to have a bunch of reusable assets for mappers to use to keep a consistent feel. It sounds like a lot of work, and it might be, but it will be worth it. Chad and I are both super excited about it.

Replayability

The replayability is going to come after all that. First we make a fun and simple and easy to understand game… then we focus on keeping players interested in it over time. Stuff like unlockables and micro-achievements (no not the Steam achievements, just ones you earn in a hole or on a course).

We tried randomizing the course and rings and shit like that, but the problem is it leads to more problems than its worth… and really it doesn’t make the game feel any more fresh or new. In retrospect, does rearranging a couple of rings make anyone go “OH MAN! THIS IS GONNA BE FUN!” all over again? Nope. Fuck it.

We needed more interesting ideas: things like changing a simple mechanic on a hole. What if we randomly selected one hole to add huge amounts of recoil to every item? Or everyone has unlimited Bazookas but no crates dropped? Or everyone was invisible to the other team? Of course those are just random ideas off the top of my head, we’ll see where we go with that.

Reply here and let us know what you think.

P.S. If you wanna peek in on what we’re doing, you can always check our Twitter feed for SVN updates.

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I’m a tool

Published on July 30, 2010 in General Stuff. View Comments

So the other day I bought StarCraft II because I used to play StarCraft all the time back in high school and I was curious how they would relaunch the franchise. Plus I saw all the leaked cut scenes on YouTube and it looked pretty amazing.

So to purchase the digital copy I had to login to Battle.net, which I couldn’t remember my old account from way back in the day (like when I tried WoW). Whatever, so I create a new account.

Then when I login, it gives me an option to merge my Battle.net account with my WoW account, so I manage to figure that one out as well. Bam! Cool its merged—who cares my account is frozen because I haven’t paid for it in years.

So I get SC2 downloaded, purchased and installed. Then later on I get an email saying how the WoW character faction transfer I requested is underway. WTF? It didn’t ask me to login or anything, but it did say if I didn’t request this I should check my account. Oddly enough it was sent to a an email I don’t even use anymore (it just forwards to my Gmail account), and I mean I haven’t used this in years. Like 5+ years, which ironically is about how long ago I tried WoW.

I ignored it.

But then it kept bothering me so I re-read the email and tried to understand what the fuck was going on. So at the very bottom of the email is a link that brings you to the control panel (or so I thought). It seemed legit enough because it used the old email account, which I assumed is the one I used when I signed up for WoW.

Needless to say I fell for my first and only phishing attempt. They were pretty slick about it. They didn’t say “LOGIN HERE NOW GO GO GO”. They just casually said to check my account if I didn’t request, and then left a tiny link at the very bottom of the email.

I fucking panicked. I went through and changed every fucking account password I have. Which is a metric fuck-ton. The funny part is, I’m always telling people “if you ever get an email asking you to login somewhere, manually type it in your browser… don’t click links”.

I guess I should listen to myself more often.

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