Everyone talks about Kickstarter, but did you know that its only open to US citizens? Fortuently there are other alternatives,
There are others out there too.
With fund locations like this, who needs Dragon’s Den?
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There’s no question that’s there’s a mobile movement going on. Smartphones are everywhere and their usage is on the up.
As reported in Techcrunch, Facebook have over 845 million users every month, and more than half use mobile (Read article).
But it’s not just Facebook, mobile is increasing in popularity amongst other businesses. Starbucks recently announced that it will allow its customers to pay for drinks via their mobile transaction app service.
Of course, it’s not strictly limited to “apps”, smartphone ready websites (or mobile-ready websites) are also on the move.
In Singapore, mobile app replaces loyalty cards via QR codes (article).
Of course, its not just business. Smartphone apps are being used in the medical industry, food industry; in short — mobile is not only here to stay, it will increase its foothold in our daily life.
At a recent event held by Google in New York on 10th February 2011, Google reported a 400% increase in the number of searches being carried out on mobile devices, compared to the same time last year. This means that 20%, or roughly 1 in 5 Google searches, is now being carried out on a mobile device or smart phone and, Gartner predicts that by 2014, more people will access the internet from their mobile devices than from their PC desktops.
For more mobile trends, read Top 10 Mobile Internet Trends (via Slideshare.net)
I’m producing my first iOS game using cocos2d. I’ll be showing screenshot previews of it at the upcoming Mobile Mingle event.
In addition, I’m producing an official silentflute iPhone app, and am producing several other smaller iOS apps too!
I’ll post regular updates when the app is ready for publishing.
I’ve just developed a HTML5 responsive design theme of my almost 5 year old design, it’s still in beta, however this signals the slightly cleaned up theme a new direction for both myself and this website.
Tony Jaa, who hit to fame in 2008’s ground-breaking, world-wide hit “Ong Bak” created a rejuvenation into action cinema and put the laser focus of the world’s attention on Thai action cinema.
Following Ong Bak Jaa came out with 2005’s “Warrior King“, incorrectly labelled as Ong Bak 2, this movie carried on the formula of strong-style martial arts combined with fast-paced frenetic action.
After 13 odd years being stuck in development hell, the final release of Duke Nukem Forever made me giddy with nostalgic memories of my early youth playing Duke Nukem 2 and Duke Nukem 3D and so bought this game wondering if it would live up to the hype, and also wondering how much of that 13-year development cycle would be put into the game.
After about 3-4 hours of playing Duke Nukem Forever I couldn’t believe just how bad it was. I was pretty flabbergasted and couldn’t understand what went wrong.
DNF by all accounts represents everything that is wrong with modern first person shooters. It forces you down one path, and only one path. There are lots of scripted events, there are contrived puzzles tacked on for no reason, and it seems to rely heavily on pop-culture references to the point where it literally screams at you to “look at this! aren’t we cool, hip and trendy!”
I must have counted at least half a dozen pop culture references, everything from Lost to Duke Nukem 3D’s sister project, Lo Wang. Even references to old Duke Nukem games are in there.
In the original DN3D you had to collect health, bonuses, power-ups, however in DNF you have an ego health system which regenerates after a few seconds if you get hit.
Another thing in the game I hated was the really long loading times. Even if you die, you have to wait anywhere between 30 seconds to a minute.
I spent a lot of time playing the single player game as I wanted to know how it compared to the old DN3D. Oh boy was I in for a surprise.
The first few missions has you being handheld, forced down a linear path. At first I thought it was designed to be like this so that it can tell a story and then I’m sure it’ll give me the actual game after this.
Except, it doesn’t. Instead you get one linear path/map after another. A majority of the levels make you go over a certain ledge or platform, after which you cannot go back. Its basically a lazy way for programmers to release memory and keep the footprint of the game small.
Eventually you’ll fight tougher aliens, bosses and drive different kinds of vehicles; one thing you will notice is that the guns are pretty much the same as in DN3D, which I would expect; but I would also expect some other weapons — I mean you did have 13 years to build this game!
Strangely I feel that the 13+ year old Duke Nukem 3D is actually more 3D than DNF, the reason: you could move in 3 dimensions, you had multiple paths, there was much more interesting levels.
I guess it all comes down to expectations. I was expecting DNF to be a throw back to DN3D, showing the Halos and Call of Duty games that you can create a fun game that employs all the mechanics which made the FPS genre famous in the first place.
I would avoid this game, or at least rent it before buying it.
Rockstar’s latest offering, “LA Noire” is an amazing visually appealing game set in 40s Los Angeles and no doubt you’re already aware of the amount of R&D they put into face mapping, rendering and graphics.
I’m not going to retread on the multiple superlatives that other reviews have given this game; they are all correct; yes its got great visual appeal, the face mechanics are truly amazing, the True/Doubt/Lie system coupled with a strong detective game proves that you can make a “smart” video game which requires you to think.
My only concern is the lack of actual content in the game. With no multiplayer (a cops and robbers multiplayer game would have been cool) and very few side quests (there are about 20, not including the number of hidden collectables such as film reels and cars).
A lot of the game mechanics/engine reminds me of Red Demp Redemption, however in that game you could go into shops, you could try and collect bounties, there were other things to do other than the main game; this is where LA Noire kinda falls down.
Another issue is the incredibly long time it takes to drive from one point to another; yes you can opt to skip these driving by electing your AI colleague to drive for you; but the problem with this is you may miss on a side quest.
The ending of the game also does not fit into the main narrative of the game; the vast majority of the game is you doing good old fashioned police work, and then suddenly it becomes a run-gun and cover fight.
The kicker is that most of the shoot-outs are incredibly easy and most of the enemies do not pose any major threat.
If LA Noire had more side quests, and more features I think I would have enjoyed the game a lot more.
Overall score: 7/10.
Donald Trump’s current “will he, or won’t he” campaign for the upcoming 2010 United States Presidential election has many people wondering whether this time he will actually run for office.
Assuming he does run, you can bet money that he will use the “Obama, You’re fired!” line at the debates. There’s no doubt the placards will cover that line, and he’ll use that as his strap-line for his election campaign.
However, many political commentators and astute Reddit readers have pointed out that Trump has a habit of running “will he, or won’t he” campaigns in the recent past. Indeed, this will be his third such run.
For many though, this is just another Trump PR exercise, a rating’s push for his TV show, “The Apprentice” (United States version).
There is no doubt that Trump is an astute businessman with keen show-man like qualities that help promote the Trump brand. However, watching the various interviews of Trump on the Internet, I cannot help thinking that Trump is not politically astute enough to be President of the United States.
I am currently updating my website to a HTML5 theme whilst trying to keep those pages that rely on legacy XHTML/HTML4 working as-is. The HTML5 is the same as my current theme with a few differences, such as CSS3 rounded corners, a CSS3 gradient, etc.
My plan includes a wholesale re-write of my old portfolio, something I’ve kept offline and private because of various legacy issues (mostly Javascript related). Currently its in beta, and should be launched soon.
Please excuse any pages breaking/not looking correct; this is an issue I am aware of and am addressing as I convert legacy HTML code into HTML5.
Thanks.
Firstly, apologies for the lack of updates and posts. I’ve been using Twitter more for blogging, keeping up to date with things more than using this website as my personal blog.
In addition, as this site really hasn’t been updated since 2008, I keep meaning to do a total re-write of my blog using Django, HTML5 and CSS3 but I keep putting it off — mainly because WordPress is so ubiquitous and has so many ready-made plugins.
However, for the past few months I have steadily been moving into iOS development, picking up the different and numerous skills required, and I’m hoping that this month I will finally realize the goal of getting my first iPhone app in the app store.
My app is actually pretty simple, it’s a turn-based game. No social interaction, no Twitter, no Facebook and certainly no game center integration; as such, it’s not meant to be a commercial product and will be released for free.
I actually have a prototype of it, some of you have seen it; others haven’t. My final version will be a cut-down version keeping it as “basic” as possible.
In terms of frameworks, it’ll use Core Data, Quartz2D, and may leverage the famous cocos2d framework; but I haven’t decided on that because I want to use that in my next project.
In terms of Cocos2d it’s very hard to know where to start, there are lots of books, lots of tutorials, lots of courses/workshops; but I feel probably the best is the iphone games kit as its a full 1-month like tutorial that steps you through the entire process.
It is certainly something I will be looking as my next project.
Another area I’m interested in is sports management games. No, I’m not doing a football management game. There’s way too many of them, and besides there’s no way I could compete with Sigames’ budget; rather I’m thinking about a sports management game for alternative sports.
Anyway, I’m hoping over the next month to get my app done, on the app store and then I can start moving on to more difficult, commercial-ready apps and perhaps even take on small freelance projects.
Oh, for those interested in what’s going on with Tony Jaa and why I never update my blog on articles about Hong Kong/Eastern action cinema, I would advise visiting TwitchFilm.net; their articles are great, in-depth analysis.
I may do a follow-up article on Tony Jaa in the future, even though TwitchFilm pretty much covered it in their article, The rise and fall of Tony Jaa.