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This is ridiculous.
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Pup ponders the heat-death of the universe. Beautiful, and a lovely use of space, too.
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"CRM training encompasses a wide range of knowledge, skills and attitudes including communications, situational awareness, problem solving, decision making, and teamwork; together with all the attendant sub-disciplines which each of these areas entails. CRM can be defined as a management system which makes optimum use of all available resources – equipment, procedures and people – to promote safety and enhance the efficiency of flight operations."
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Scrapes lots of things, produces a useful page which actually manages to stay up. Also, it spells TRANSPORT CHAOS the only way it should be spelt: in capitals.
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Named for the year the BJP was founded; nicely written, and not just a fast-moving press release stream.
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All Kenta Cho's code on wonderfl.
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Kenta Cho's making stuff on wondfl, in ActionScript. This example is ASCII-based bulletty goodness.
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"So perverse as it might sound, I'm going to plead for less choice in video games. It's a paradox: by limiting the player's discretion, you can expand the narrative possibilities of the medium. Coercion can create a kind of emotional heft that you can't achieve within the confines of the empowerment-myth." All true, and FC2 is a fantastic example of this. But: this is just one way of making games. More of this, yes, but don't forget all the other approaches.
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"write Actionscript3 code in a textarea, and your code will be compiled server side. Your compiled Flash will be reloaded automatically in the right side of the page, so write code and see it real-time." And you can fork other people's code. It's like github and Heroku all at once, but for Flash.
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"We've seen this all before… [but] these Smule globes seem strangely different and much more interesting, largely I think because you hold the phone in your hand instead of the laptop or monitor on your desk. It's a more personal, touched engagement with the screen that makes visualizing an earth-spanning army of phone lighters and flute blowers more physically personal."
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"But succeed or fail, my awareness of game design is omnipresent, and I like it that way. It enriches my experience of playing. The in-world experience remains my first thought, but my second thought is nearly always focused on the system, especially when that system demonstrates originality or beautiful execution. I don't think I'm the only gamer who behaves this way." No, but it requires a certain degree of awareness of the medium to think about the second; the first is much more immediate, and the second is about an engagements with games, rather than a particular game.
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"If I only have so many hours in the day to devote to genuinely insightful things, Gladwell’s track record screams at me to ignore Outliers. At least for now. At least until I’m stuck on a cross-country flight, liquored up, and ready for a good fight." Jack Shedd is bored of anecdotes.
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"This is a lexicon of terms relating to John Horton Conway's Game of Life." Very comprehensive, with lots of examples.
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Ignoring the background music and a lot of Trajan, I really like this series of pictures from Brooks Reynolds; particularly, his use of lighting and depth of field. I'm a big fan of concept-series; they tend to be more than a sum of their parts.
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I don't care that it's not playing the game or anything, there is no way in the world that this is anything less than super-awesome.
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"I'm passionate about this because I'm building the camera I've always wanted to shoot with," he says. "When my grandkids and great-grandkids look back, they're going to say I was a camera builder. I did handgrips and then goggles and then sunglasses to prepare myself. But cameras are magic." Fantastic article about Jim Jannard and his Red digital movie-camera business.
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Brilliant, brilliant little advert.
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"VideoGamesHero brings you homebrew action at it's best – offering lasting fun and challenging action with over 65 Songs, 5 Game modes, Motion Card and Guitar Grip support, there is something for everyone!" Homebrew Harmonix-style rhythm action game for the ds. Awesome.
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"In this extensive interview, Yasuhara outlines his carefully constructed theories of fun and game design, including the differences between American and Japanese audiences, with illustrated documents." Lots of nice things in here, including a section on "tidying up".
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"APIdock is a web app that provides a rich and usable interface for searching, perusing and improving the documentation of projects that are included in the app." Handy.
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"I think the role of the architecture diagram, user flow, and wireframe belongs very much after the fact, after we’ve sketched and prototyped an experience. Those are tools to document what has been agreed through sketching and prototyping. They are not the best means for solving challenging design problems." That seems like a good way of putting it.
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"In this template you'll find shared layers (masters) for a title page, wireframe, wireframe/storyboard hybrid, simple storyboard, and storyboard with notes. Column guides and a regular grid make it easy to use and keep your layout tight." Nice .graffle templates for UX designers.
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Timelapse, merged photographs of videogames. Beautiful, especially Tempest.
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"Anecdotal feedback also confirmed that without exception, the PSP was regarded as the best sales presenter ever received. As a result, Foster’s is now reviewing further rollout of the tool." Fosters use a pre-loaded PSP as sales demonstration tool; it does very well.
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"Each world has a specific mechanic and overlapping rarely occurs between world mechanics. Instead, the player is given just enough objects on the screen to solve the puzzle with the limited tools available. By being able to concentrate on one mindset of solving the puzzle, eventually the solutions make themselves apparent." A nice Manveer Heir piece on why the puzzles themselves in Braid are good: because the game creates complexity out of limited tools, rather than throwing every mechanic in all the time.
Tony Hawk’s American Sk8land
16 January 2006
A new game review up over at Pixelsurgeon, this time of Tony Hawk’s American Sk8land on the Nintendo DS. Very impressed with this – an amazingly good online implementation, which, in terms of how it links up with the internet almost puts Mario Kart to shame; lovely cel-shaded visuals; none of the nonsense that the Underground games brought in. As the review says, it’s essentially Pro Skater 5.
Clever boys…
29 November 2005
Awesome trailer for XBox 360. Unfortunately, it was pulled by Microsoft’s lawyers, presumably because it glorifies violence. Well, if pointing your fingers at people and saying “bang” is violence, I guess it does. It’s a lovely demonstration of what silly multiplayer FPSes are like. Also, it references a great moment in Spaced, and has a lovely punchline. Watch it!
And when you’ve done that, watch this Consolevania style ad for the new Prince of Persia. Whatever the game is like, the ad is delightful, and one of the best games ads I’ve seen in a while. Capturing the feel of gaming without in-game footage – and that’s exactly what I like about it.
Fantasy Health Minister
08 October 2005
Now that it’s been properly launched, I can finally take the lid off something we worked on over the summer: Fantasy Health Minister.
As part of a sponsored project on health, we built this; an online strategy game revolving around health policy. It was fun to work on, and certainly a change from our usual work. A real team effort, too; I only really contributed the design/layout, some help with refining it, the odd bit of copy, and lots of digital inking (translation: trying to make Photoshop work like felt-tip pens). The lovely artwork is by the very talented David Simonds, our editorial cartoonist over at the Statesman.
Anyhow, just a heads up. Do check it out!