• "An 11 minute documentary exploring the merits and impact of pixel art, animation and chiptune music." Nice interviews, careful, and thoughtful.
  • "Our original inclination was to put game content under "~/Library/Application Support/Steam", along with the other support files Steam uses. The problem is that uninstalling an application is meant to be as simple as dragging it from the Applications folder into the Trash. However, uninstalling Steam this way will leave all of your game content on the drive, which could easily be quite a few gigabytes of wasted space. Our solution was to put the content in a very visible and often used location so users could easily find and delete the game data if they didn't want it anymore. That's right, we chose the Documents folder specifically because it was visible and often used — the very reasons users don't want it there." Well done, Valve, for explaining this in the short term, and providing a solution in the long term. (And: their thinking wasn't so woolly, really).
  • "The route of the [Metropolitan] line between Paddington and Bayswater (opened in 1868) necessitated the demolition of 23 and 24 Leinster Gardens, situated on a long, upmarket terrace of five story houses, and it was decided to build a 5ft-thick facade which matched the houses either side of the break."
  • Back in 2006, early on a Saturday morning, artist Julien Berthier installed a new door in the city of Paris—but it was a fake door, leading nowhere, on an otherwise empty wall in the 3rd arrondissement… Unbelievably, Berthier adds, "Almost 4 years later, the address still exists. Regularly graffitied it is even cleaned by the city service.”

Dot Game Heroes

15 September 2009

From Software’s forthcoming 3D Dot Game Heroes. Isn’t that just beautiful?