WHAT is PLANET REARTH DOING?! and another thing?. notice that thias is heppenign just DAYS after obama past his socialist democracy-killer bill. what a "CO-INCIDENCE" i think we all kno what he is p,laning

in this thread u can talk about the rescent rise in earthquacks and how we can combet this communist scheme!!

We’re changing how the inventory is in Zinger!. Its going to be more Worms-esk, which means you can have more than 4 items and you’ll never have to destroy anything. If you pick up an item you already have, it will stack.

Also, you’re going to start with items now. Just some of the basic ones though. You’ll still have to find all the good stuff in crates, but at least you’ll have weapons to use at the beginning of the match.

Oh and by the way, Chad modeled and scripted this sign for mappers to use. The text and text color is totally customizable by the mapper. They can pick three lines of text and each line can have its own color:

P.S. No, that’s not a typo. THERE HAS BEEN AN EARTHQUACK!

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!

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.

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.

What now? What does this mean? Where do we go from here?

Well, we’re looking forward to some feedback from Garry and Craig. We also have some touch ups we’d like to do. Once we’ve polished up the gamemode we send it to Garry and it will be included in Garry’s Mod!

We also get to add achievements to the gamemode and even push updates out once a month. Which is totally amazing. The prize money is totally great and all, but that comes and goes. The fact we’ve got a small piece of work in a retail game is definitely the most rewarding part.

Everyone keeps asking me what we’re doing with the money. Well, the majority is getting split up between Chad and I, and some will go to our sound guy and level designer. They both contributed great work so we’re looking forward to  showing them our appreciation.

Once again, I know this is literally last weeks news but I’ve been busy with a lot of shit lately… like moving… which I have yet to blog about. I’ll do that tomorrow, ok?

(Oh yea by the way, we moved. More on that later)

Story related:

System: Welcome
System: Connecting to server. Please wait…
System: Connection with server established.
System: Technical Support Topic: DSL High Speed Internet
System: ANGELA has joined this session!
System: Connected with ANGELA
ANGELA: Thank you for contacting AT&T Internet Support, my name is Angela (pr2704). I see that I am chatting with Brandon. Am I correct?
You: yes
ANGELA: I see that you provided 909******* as the number associated with your DSL/Dial account. Am I correct?
You: correct
ANGELA: Thank you for confirming the details. How can I make you a very satisfied customer today?
You: i recently upgraded the speed of our dsl, just curious when it would take effect
You: i dont know why when we moved our dsl speed dropped so much
ANGELA: I apologize for the inconvenience you have been experiencing and we will work together to resolve this issue.
*** long pause ***
ANGELA: I can see that the order status is complete.
ANGELA: Have you done speed test?
You: DownStream Connection Speed 3008 kbps
You: UpStream Connection Speed 512 kbps
You: thats my router status
You: which is like half the speed it was prior to our move
ANGELA: Okay
You: http://www.dslreports.com/im/89306600/1835.png
ANGELA: What was your previous speed?
You: we were on the 6mbit package
You: upload was around 768 or whatever
ANGELA: Sure
ANGELA: lets try to test the speed again by the link I am providing
ANGELA: http://speedtest.net
ANGELA: Please inform me about the results
You: http://www.speedtest.net/result/826790558.png
You: i tried rebooting my router just before i contacted you
ANGELA: What is the upload and download speeds?
You: did you not get my link?
You: here: http://www.speedtest.net/result/826790558.png
You: 2.48 down and 0.43 up
ANGELA: Okey.
ANGELA: Let perform some steps to increase the speed.
ANGELA: May I know which browser are you using?
You: currently chrome, but I have firefox and IE
ANGELA: Have you cleared cache and cookies of browser?
You: what would that accomplish?
You: Im trying to speed up my connection
You: not clear my browsing history
ANGELA: Some time it happens because of some temperory files stored in browser.
You: wow
*** this is when I disconnected ***

(9:11:12 AM) Chad: oops
(9:16:13 AM) Brandon: where did it go
(9:16:19 AM) Chad: 1 sec
(9:16:31 AM) Brandon: ok lemme go grab a snack
(9:16:34 AM) Chad: kk
(7:24:59 PM) Brandon: I has fried rice
(7:25:14 PM) Brandon: also
(7:25:14 PM) Chad: I had chinese food about an hour ago.
(7:25:16 PM) Chad: i’m hungry again
(7:25:17 PM) Chad: damn you
(7:25:19 PM) Brandon: your livestream is offline
(7:25:25 PM) Brandon: I just went to get a snack
(7:25:28 PM) Brandon: where did it go?

If you don’t get the joke, keep looking.

Anyone who’s on the internet knows what email spam is and its become such a large scale issue that we start to become numb to it. Sorta like a dog that loses a leg. Yes the problem is there, but he starts ignoring it so much that he eventually forgets about it and just goes about his daily life. BUT HE’S STILL MISSING A LEG!

We all deal with it: we check our email box and sort through all the random bullshit. We don’t even think about it anymore. Just read, delete, read, remove, skip, delete, remove, OH LOOK AN EMAIL FROM MY FRIEND! Especially if you have a smart phone that gives you email notifications. Its like it never shuts up.

Many of us have public email accounts, such as Gmail or AOL or Yahoo or whatever. Yes they have “spam filters” but they don’t quite make the cut. They do a decent job, but our inboxes are still cluttered with worthless junk.

I finally had enough.

Just over a year ago I started fighting back and it’s paid off. It took a long time before I started seeing any decent results, a few months actually, but over time it began to get more and more apparent that what I had been doing really worked.

What did I do? It was simple: I started opting out of the emails. Believe it or not, 50% of the spam email you get is from legitimate sites that you signed up for and checked the silly little box that said “send me emails about site updates” or something along those lines. You’ll have to handle them on a one-by-one basis. Just login to the site, go to your options or contact preferences and opt out of the newsletter emails or whatever else they want to send you.

Another large portion of your emails come from mailing lists that you can unsubscribe from. Just scourer the email (usually at the very top or very bottom) and find the “click here to unsubscribe”. Its normally really small and often colored in a manner that hides it, but its there. Sometimes you have to click it and follow a set of instructions to complete the process but trust me, its worth it. PROTIP: some of these will require you to unsubscribe a few times before they get the point, but it will eventually work.

After you’ve taken care of those two categories, the remainder will be emails you’ll have to really work at. Some of them you can Google and research and find the sender, or you can try replying to the email its sent from. I really can’t give any advice on that except to just keep trying.

After time you’ll really start to see a big difference. In fact, the remainder of the shit that gets sent to me ends up getting caught by Gmail’s spam filter. I can stand here today tell you in all honesty: I have no spam email in my inbox

Just take the time to unsubscribe and opt out of emails, watch out for the checkboxes when you sign up for sites, and most importantly… DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT