The original Lost creators are adapting Stephen King’s Dark Tower series for film. The first half of the series is brilliant, but the last half was a bit disappointing. I really wish King would have gone a different direction with the series, keeping it in the fantasy world where it began, but I think it’ll make a great film. Hopefully, it won’t be a 7-film series, though. A trilogy would be perfect and would allow a lot of the fluff to be left out.
Gina over at Lifehacker pointed me to a site that shows you how to use Google Mail as a great organization tool. I’m already fairly organized already and don’t have much of a need for a lot of the GTD tools out there. That is mainly because I tend to focus on one task at a time rather than multitasking.
One of the best tips shows how to use IMified to send you reminders, etc, over IM. You can even set it up to post to your weblog. So I did. This post is proof. I just sent an IM to IMified and they did the rest. Nice, huh?
According to LockerGnome, EA is releasing Wing Commander Arena for the XBox Live Arcade this summer. It looks like it could be fun. It’ll basically be an arcade-style, multiplayer shoot-em-up. It should be a fun distraction, at least.
Glancing at my site’s traffic, I noticed that someone hit my site from a Google search on “flash mud client.” Basically, someone was looking to see if there was a way to connect to a MUD using a Flash application. By itself, it seems pretty innocuous, right? I mention MUDs fairly often and I asked about a Flash MUD client in a recent post. No biggie, that’s just how Google works. The interesting part about it is that the UserAgent (the browser used to view the page) is listed as “Opera/9.00 (Nintendo Wii; U; ; 1309-9; en)”. That’s right, someone is using the Opera web browser built into the Nintendo Wii to look for a Flash MUD client.
So, what does that mean? Well, since the Opera browser on the Wii can play Flash games, it means that the Wii could possibly have access to multiplayer RPGs in the form of MUDs. Since there’s no keyboard, I don’t know how feasible a text-based environment would be, but it’s interesting nonetheless.
It also begs the question, “Why doesn’t the XBox 360 have a built-in web browser?” It’s not like Microsoft would have to license one from somebody, they already own IE. They’ve even changed the interface before for the Windows CE…er…Pocket PC…er…Windows Mobile platforms, so why couldn’t they make a nice 10-foot UI? Heck, why don’t they even make a 10-foot UI for their Windows Media Center? That thing is MEANT to be hooked to a TV.
Anyway, I thought it was interesting that someone was looking to play a game that is normally relegated to the desktop on a device that is intended for the living room. It just goes to show you that media is converging and beginning to penetrate everyday life. That said, why hasn’t there been a good couch-based PC input device? You can’t type very well with a remote control, it’s too difficult to use a wireless mouse/keyboard combination, Gyration’s offerings have fallen short, and other offerings are very pricey and have their own quirks.
Adventure games, especially the LucasArts classics, have a special place in my heart. They were some of the best games available on the Commodore, which was where my love of gaming began. I found the Independent Gaming blog via Digg this morning and they have several adventure games that look like a lot of fun.
The ones that caught my eye were: Reactor 09, Knightsquire, Indiana Jones and the Fountain of Youth, and Kaptain Brawe. They remind me of my LucasArts favorites: Zak McKraken and the Alien Mindbenders, Maniac Mansion, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, and Full Throttle. I never really got into the Monkey Island games, but I loved almost all of Sierra’s offerings: Quest For Glory, King’s Quest, and Police Quest. I might have to see if there’s a SCUMM VM for my GameBoy Micro so that I can play some of them sometime.
http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/45843
I’ll be watching Big Huge Games for their upcoming console RPG. Ken Rolston, the lead designer for Bethesda on Morrowind and Oblivion was planning to retire, but instead was convinced to work for Big Huge Games. It’ll be interesting to see what they come up with. Will it be an Oblivion-killer? That will be hard to beat, for sure.
Unfortunately, I haven’t played Oblivion in over a month! I took a break for some fragging in Gears of War, then moved straight into R6V. Once in a while, it’s good to just get visceral without having to worry about losing equipment, screwing up a questline, or hurting your reputation with a certain faction. As the munchkin gets older and I adjust to my new schedule, I’m sure I’ll find some time to get back to Tamriel. Maybe I’ll actually start the main questline, too.
Check out Arcade Reality for the Palm Treo camera phone. This is a brilliant use for the (IMHO) useless camera attached to cellphones.
It looks like it simply superimposes enemies in a 3D space on top of the image that your camera sees. By comparing each frame from the camera to the last frame, they are able to sense movement and adjust the 3D space accordingly. Talk about augmented reality!
I can think of a couple of ways to improve on this idea (of course). First, make it available for all phones. My T-Mobile SDA NEEDS this! Second, add GPS and social networking. Imagine playing while walking around town. A small map shows where enemies are in relation to your current position. As you hunt the enemies, other players are hunting them as well and you could bump into them on your travels. Add online updates that allow boss enemies to appear at certain locations where 2 or more players could team up to defeat it. Companies (such as Starbucks) could sponsor each boss, bringing more players into their store for the chance to play together. It would be like mixing Geocaching with LARPing, MMORPGs, and LAN Parties.
On the MUD-Dev mailing list, a fella was asking about Ajax(ish) code for something MUD-like. I kicked this idea around with a co-worker when discussing a current project of his. He mentioned that Microsoft had a control (or something) that would listen for events from the server and update the page. The responses to the post to MUD-Dev mentioned Comet, which looks to do the same thing.
After more thought on this subject, there are tons of neat features that could be added to the standard text-based MUDs. Specifically, images. One of my favorite text-based adventures was the interactive fiction The Guild of Thieves by Magnetic Scrolls. My friends and I would spend all night seeing what freedom we had (cross-dressing, using the toilet, etc). One cool feature was the images that would be displayed in certain areas. I always thought that this would be a great feature for a MUD. Upon entering the pub, for example, an image of the interior would be displayed.
Without the ability to “push” information to the client/browser, could a MUD be possible? I haven’t done the research on Ajax, but would it be possible to “tick” the MUD every 5 seconds and just refresh the page every 5 seconds? The worst latency would be 4 seconds, right? What about a Flash MUD client? Would that be possible? Would it be playable through a firewall? I’m sure Raph and the gang at Areae might be asking/answering the same questions.
Thanks to all that is good in the world, our baby is not as hard to handle as we thought she would be. Days and nights are filled with bottle-feeding and diaper-changing, but things are starting to balance out. We are still a bit sleep deprived, but are getting used to it. It’s definitely worth it.
That said, we have little time to do much. I’m behind on reading my RSS feeds, I haven’t made too many posts, and I haven’t touched a game. We have seen a few TV shows, but those are easily digestible, especially since most are recorded on the Replay or on my PC. We just caught up on Heroes thanks to the NBC website (which, while it doesn’t have a true full-screen option, works very well and the short commercials and no “Click Here To Continue” link makes it much better than ABC).
I’m looking forward to a little time with Oblivion, R6:Vegas, and Lumines:Live when I get a chance. I’m sure my XBox’s weblog has disowned me. I’d also like to take advantage of my LotR:Online Beta invite. KillTenRats has been posting a few details since the NDA was lifted and it looks very interesting. As I said before, some of the features have me very interested.
I’m very interested in the Logitech diNovo Edge keyboard, too. The price is a bit of a downer, but the laptop-style keys and built-in touchpad make it the perfect keyboard for my HTPC setup. This keyboard would be the best for the price, of course, but it looks like it might only be for PS3.
Steve Jobs wrote an open letter about alternatives to DRM’d music. In it, he basically says that we can keep going the way it has been, Apple could license its formats to everybody, or everybody could just remove the DRM from their music. He says that Apple would go with whatever the “Big Four” music companies agreed on.
I say that a new, universal format should be created with new features. It should be expandable to allow for future enhancements (new tags, etc). It should allow for multi-channel surround sound. It should be DRM-free or at least easily transferable between a single user’s devices (music player, laptop, desktop, etc). It should allow conversion from the current music formats (AAC, WMA, MP3) with no loss of quality. Size should be comparable to current formats. Digital distributors and device manufacturers should use this new format to set themselves apart from others by including more content in the files. Each song from the distributor should include album artwork, single artwork, synchronized lyrics, beats-per-minute, writer/composer, artist, release date, and a universal genre classification (rock, pop, rap, but not pop/rock).
Devices should take advantage of this new content. The Nike + iPod device, for example, could randomly select music whose BPM was close to your average steps-per-minute to keep you in a rhythm. Player devices could have a karaoke mode that displayed the lyrics to the song as they are sung and be able to mute the lyrics for true karaoke (a true multi-track digital format would be nice, also allowing you to adjust the levels of each track and remember settings for each song). It would also be possible to synchronize artwork, allowing artists to display a synchronized slideshow through each song.
So, Steve Jobs. If you’re serious about unifying the music industry under one digital flag, how about innovating a little bit more with the actual music? As shown with the iPod, if you build it, they will come. Develop your own DRM-less format with content and features that prove it’s worth an upgrade. If Microsoft can develop software that forces the industry to follow suit, why can’t Apple?
