All entries from 2010
11 Jul 2010
Discoveries from a morning's browsing: A tour of Origins Game Fair 2010 in five parts. First part below, other parts here: 2, 3, 4, 5.
I used to wonder what this and Gen Con would be like to visit when I'd see photos in Dragon magazine as a kid. Much as you'd expect, there are some impressive displays mixed in with a bunch of tat. Still seems like it brings in a fair few exhibitors these days, but it's looking a bit light on attendees.
Related to that was this "one cool thing I saw at Origins" video, with multiple people mentioning Legerdemain. Which is a Java-based, rogue-like game, only lighter on the randomness and heavier on the story. Still has permanent death, ascii art and all that stuff you might expect, although I understand a graphical tile-set is in the works.
Incidentally, the principal developer Nathan Jerpe also wrote this piece on the limitations of the room as a metaphor in interactive fiction, which I found kind of interesting a while back.
1 Jul 2010
-
Fault Line.
Mind-boggling, space-folding, puzzle platformer flash game.
30 Jun 2010
23 Jun 2010
-
Simple IF Interfaces.
Experimental mock-ups of touch screen interfaces for interactive fiction. Interesting ideas, sort of half-way between traditional IF and later point-and-click graphical adventures.
4 Jun 2010
“@Natbat And congratulations to you. Hope he appreciates the toes!”— @twitter
“2 tweets about pedicures in the space of 10 minutes and one's from my wife. What's the world coming to @yorkshirefork & @Natbat?”— @twitter
2 Jun 2010
28 May 2010
-
Nick Edward's Blog.
Great young illustrator with some distinctly nerdy subject matter (LARPing!). I see a bit of Spumco and Dave Cooper influence in there.
27 May 2010
-
Dark Dungeons.
New retro-clone modelled on the early 90s D&D Rules Cyclopedia, which was after my time, but is well regarded by those in the know. Looks nice, I like the use of illustration.
23 May 2010
-
Matt Haughey at Gel 2010.
A fun, short presentation on his experiences with MetaFilter. Part advice on nurturing an online community, part anecdotes.
22 May 2010
“If I hear or read the name "Vic Gundotra" one more time...”— @twitter
21 May 2010
19 May 2010
“There needs to be a Red Dead Redemption embargo on twitter until everyone's copy has arrived. taps watch & drums fingers”— @twitter
18 May 2010
“Walked past Andrew Marr on his way into Leeds station on my way home.”— @twitter
16 May 2010
-
Early 1900s in Colour.
The first proper post in this site's archives is on Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii's colour photographs of the early 1900s. This Albert Kahn collection is a nice companion to that.
14 May 2010
7 May 2010
1 May 2010
-
Embed.ly - API.
"One API to rule them all". Retrieve embed and thumbnail info for URLs from a variety of sources. Handy anywhere that URLs are shared.
29 Apr 2010
-
Two-Handed Great Sword Demonstration.
Amazingly ridiculous wish-fulfillment video for fantasy nerds everywhere. Ever wonder what a huge-ass sword is actually capable of? Watch and learn.
25 Apr 2010
In the pub on friday the subject of geek pilgrimages cropped up. Trips to MIT, One Infinite Loop, the Googleplex, that sort of thing. I've yet to partake myself, but I can definitely see the appeal.
In a similar vein, I mentioned Code Rush, only to be met by blank looks all round.
A documentary from the close of the nineties, about crunch time at Netscape in the run-up to the release of Mozilla. If you haven't seen it and those words evoke anything for you, then you should. Jamie Zawinski, Brendan Eich, history, pathos, what more do you need?
(Credit due to Andy Baio who was fairly instrumental a year or two ago in re-kindling interest in the film and inspiring the film-makers to re-release it under a Creative Commons license.)
24 Apr 2010
So you're an internerd who spends far too much time thinking about games, right?
In that case, I'm sure you have some favourite websites that regurgitate press releases and opine at great length and so on, but don't your eyes get tired reading all those cramped-up little letters? Seems to me that the audio-visual side of things is sometimes under-explored. There's some great episodic stuff out there that you might be missing out on.
For example, are you following any of the following?:
Audio
- Idle Thumbs - Industry types meet to talk games. Infectious giggling, stream of consciousness riffing, and passionate discourse ensues.
- A Life Well Wasted - Polished mix of documentary, interviews & soundscapes in the manner of This American Life.
Video
There's a few more that I tried but couldn't stick with. Zero Punctuation was OK at first, but the style got old pretty quickly. There's the various offerings from the Penny Arcade media empire, but their latest PATV stuff seems a little bit self-aggrandizing in places. And there's Tom Vasel's Dice Tower. That guy's just too prolific to keep up with, although I liked the Top 100 run-downs with his daughters.
So that's my contributions. Know of any others I should be paying attention to?
20 Apr 2010
-
Fugue Icons.
A huge quality icon set along the lines of the famfamfam silk icons. Choose either creative commons attribution license or $60 royalty-free license.
17 Apr 2010
-
HTML5 presentation.
Excellent review of all the new toys in the HTML5 toy-box, including related CSS and JS features, in interactive slideshow form.
11 Apr 2010
So my lovable lady vife has started an emblogulation over at theyorkshirefork.co.uk. It's food-focussed, since that's the great love of her life (sniffle), but it's also entertaining enough that it'll hold your interest even if, like me, you're not a foodie by nature.
She's been posting up a storm on a roughly daily basis so there's plenty to see already. And I know I'm biased and all, but I reckon you'd be doing yourself a disservice if you didn't read a post or two and see how you like it.
-
John Romero Q&A.
The legendary / infamous John Romero answering a big grab-bag of questions from fans. Fun for "Masters of Doom" fans like me.
7 Apr 2010
-
Penny Arcade - OD&D.
Mike Krahulik's posts on his D&D sessions are consistently great. I love how he keeps things playful and fresh with fourth-wall breaking nods and winks, and per-session house ruling.
23 Mar 2010
-
There's a C in my JavaScript.
"A short guide to writing JavaScript bindings to C or C++ libraries using the V8 engine". Primarily for use with node.js, includes a UUID generator as an example, which I've needed in the past.
20 Mar 2010
(I haven't actually got a copy yet, but if I pretend I have my blog gives me a nice cover picture to sit alongside this, so shhh!)
After a delay of quite a few months this book is apparently just back from the printers. But on a production with this many contributors, the odd hiccup is to be expected.
As with the previous one, it's a book of short essays on the favourite board, card & hobby games of a bevvy of games designers & games industry luminaries. This time the focus is on family games, as opposed to the RPG, wargame and CCG slant of the previous volume.
And as with Hobby Games: The 100 Best, once the list of essays was revealed I thought it would be interesting to be able to see the games being written about. So here's my companion piece to the book.
18 Mar 2010
How queer!
Was just browsing through this site's archives and found this link to a prescient Kuro5hin article from May 2001:
The Apple iPad
- Tablet: 11.5" x 9" x 0.7"
- 12" 1024x768 LCD touch- and stylus-sensitive screen
- No keyboard or mouse (optional attachment via USB)
- USB port
- Dual speakers and headphone jack
- Internal HD
- 5-hour battery life and charging cradle
- Airport wireless connectivity
- 2-3 lbs
- $999
Which is particularly peculiar because the iPod wasn't even released until 5 months later.
17 Mar 2010
-
I Hit It With My Axe.
First episode of a new web series from the "Playing D&D With Pornstars" guy (and gals). It's a bit rough around the edges but has potential. Rare that you get to see people just hanging out, playing a game, as opposed to awkwardly acting it out for the cameras.
16 Mar 2010
-
Teal and Orange - Hollywood, Please Stop the Madness.
I'm starting to notice this even affecting non-film media, like print and video game art direction. Teal isn't a particularly pleasant colour! Another post-processing sin: terrible black-matching in CGI-composite shots.
23 Feb 2010
21 Jan 2010
19 Jan 2010
-
WTF - Haml.
Oh, the pains of being a n00b. I think we can all relate to this account of a never-ending yak-shaving adventure. Be sure and click through to the original thread.
16 Jan 2010
3 Jan 2010
-
Linux assemblers: A comparison of GAS and NASM.
A nice, clear overview of the differences between the two main forms of x86 assembly language: the older AT&T syntax (used as the default by Gas, the GNU Assembler) and the newer Intel syntax (used by NASM, the Netwide Assembler).
