First off, since I’ve not blogged for a while about anything Game Dev related, I thought I’d mention why.

Myself and Tom Bampton have been working on a fun side project since late last year which we’re wanting to keep under wraps a little longer, however, there’s a ton of material to blog about once we’re far enough along to make it worth discussing. Also I’ve been working on Shelled 2 which I can’t really say anything about other than it’s coming along very nicely

GP2X Competitor

Anyhow, a few things have recently caught my eye that I felt were blog worthy. The first is a semi rumor, possibly vaporwear but interesting enough to hope it isn’t. There’s a pretty lengthy thread going on over at the GP32x.com forums regarding a new handheld device under development. The reason I’m saying this might be vaporwear is it’s not clear WHO that company is, only that several prominent gp2x community members who were very active in the development of software for and/or the distribution of the actual gp2x hardware, appear to have a reasonable amount of input into the new device.

I’ve not really talked about the GP2X much since buying one way back, but it’s a great little device and quite fun to program, well worth the price compared to any other handheld currently on the market.

That’s not to say it’s perfect. It’s not. For example the joystick is a little awkward to use and the lack of d-pad support makes some games awkward to play. The volume control is software based and inconsistent, even on the lowest setting it’s way too loud for my tastes when using headphones, the setting one step lower is mute.

Still, when you consider this device is first and foremost a media player, which it does very well I might add, it’s not a bad piece of hardware and the community has worked wonders turning it into a reasonable gaming handheld.

It would however, have been nice to have better hardware support aimed at gaming and this is where the new device sounds to be a step up, with 3d acceleration, higher res screen, touch screen, more memory and wifi. All of which will increase the possible capabilities well beyond that of the GP2X which already has great emulator support and homebrew capabilities.

That said, I already have a GP2X that I’m more than happy with, the new device could just be a joke (or never make it into production) and there’s another gadget that has caught my attention more that the possible GP2X successor has.

OpenMoko

I’m not really into mobile phones, the last phone I bought was a nokia 3210 although I’ve since upgraded via a hand-me-down from my brother to a newer nokia. Even so, I very rarely use it. That may be set to change with the pending release of the Phase 2 device from the OpenMoko project.

Currently you can buy the Neo1973 (GTA01 rev.) phone which has been designed specifically for the OpenMoko project. Now the idea of fully Open Source mobile phone is very very interesting, however it’s the phase 2 hardware (GTA02 rev.) that interests me even more.

Adds to the Phase 1 phone:
* 2D/3D-Graphics-Accelerator
* 2 Accelerometers (model and number is uncertain)
* Faster CPU - S3C2442/400
* WiFi: Atheros AR6K (see also [4])

The possibilities for development on this from low level hardware hacking and coding through to end applications and games is mouth watering, at least for a programming/hardware geek

The fact that the current version on sale has the disclaimer:

What you CAN NOT expect yet
* reliable means of making phone calls, esp. not from the UI
* reliable means of sending/receiving SMS, esp. not from the UI

and the list goes on… would make most people think twice about buying a “phone” that can’t really be used to make calls yet. But I’m sure any geeks reading this will find that only adds to the attraction.

The Phase2 hardware with it’s higher res screen would make a great replacement for my current phone and Palm Tungsten C, which I use for reading ebooks and appointments. Given that it’s totally open source you can bet someone will develop most of the common apps and any that are missing will make for a good project to work on. Roll on October….

Not only are Baen Books selling DRM FREE EBooks, but they’ve gone a step further by providing the first and sometimes second book in several series for free. Not a bad idea considering if you like the first book in a series it’s likely you’ll want to read and thus purchase the rest of the books in the series.

Here’s what they have to say about this:-

Baen Books is now making available — for free — a number of its titles in electronic format. We’re calling it the Baen Free Library. Anyone who wishes can read these titles online — no conditions, no strings attached. (Later we may ask for an extremely simple, name & email only, registration. ) Or, if you prefer, you can download the books in one of several formats. Again, with no conditions or strings attached. (URLs to sites which offer the readers for these format are also listed. )

Why are we doing this? Well, for two reasons.

The first is what you might call a “matter of principle.” This all started as a byproduct of an online “virtual brawl” I got into with a number of people, some of them professional SF authors, over the issue of online piracy of copyrighted works and what to do about it.

There was a school of thought, which seemed to be picking up steam, that the way to handle the problem was….

You can find out why on the Baen Library Intro Page as well as the complete Baen Catalog

Another interesting part of the Baen site is the “Webscription eBooks”, which for $15 gains you access to 4 books. What’s novel about this is that you get access to the 4 books 3 months prior to their official publication, not the full book mind, just the first 1/3, then a month later you get the 2nd 1/3 and finally 1 month before official publication you can download the full book. All for a single payment of $15. Of course you can continue to pay $15 per month and every month gain access to 4 new books.

The idea of getting early access to only part of the book isn’t really something of interest to me, however if you’re a big fan of some of the authors that use Baen publishing, then the prospect of getting your hands on part of the book 3 months in advance as well as the complete book 1 month in advance of its official print publication may be quite appealing.

Still, the reason I decided to do what amounts to a sales pitch for Baen Publishing, is that they’re doing something I’ve wanted to see for a long time. DRM less publishing.

Considering when you buy a book in print you get to read that book and won’t find that you’ve lost access to it one day because you’ve upgraded your coffee table or had to change the model of your reading glasses.

Yet with EBooks, we’re expected to accept that if the maker of the software used to read the encrypted, DRM ridden books, stops been made or isn’t available for a future PDA we may buy or perhaps new OS (vista?), we would lose access to all our library of books.

With DRM less EBooks, this isn’t an issue. Buy once, archive it in a few format such as mobipocket reader, txt and html and you’re pretty much safe to assume it’s going to work or at least be importable into a wide range of ebook readers in the future. Even if it means converting the EBook into a proprietary format to get it onto your PDA of choice. The fact that you have a clean archived version of the book (html/txt etc) means you can continue to convert the book and never lose access to it. No need to worry about replacing broken PDA’s with new models, or perhaps if Sonys EBook hardware ever takes off, moving your library over to a new device.

Not only is the lack of DRM a big big plus, but the prices on the print and ebooks are reasonable too.

I’m sure it’s going to take time before EBooks take off en-mass, assuming they ever do. But I personally will never purchase an EBook that contains DRM, so I can honestly say I hope Baen books are around for a long while, I imagine I’ll be visiting their site a lot more in the coming years.

If only other ebook publishers would follow suit, it wouldn’t kill them to drop the DRM and it’d be nice to see EBooks cost less than their printed counterparts (I doubt the cost savings are been passed on to the authors! Maybe I’m just jaded)

Baen Publishing is doing DRM less ebooks, music.podshow.com is doing DRM less indie music and Stardock are making copy protection free games (well they use serials, but it’s at least a non-Draconian form of protection) All three are placing their trust in the consumer rather than assuming everyone is a criminal and really deserve as much success as they can get.

Another Christmas has come and gone, with the new year just around the corner. This year, like last year, has flown by, 11 months since we came back from our Holiday in Florida yet it doesn’t feel that long ago.

Christmas was good fun as always I bought my brother and his girlfriend Guitar Hero II, turns out my parents also bought me it for Christmas too, so Christmas day was filled with Rock’n'Roll co-op guitar playing It also meant I didn’t need to hope they’d forget to take their guitar with them when they went home

Its one very addictive game, I’m surprised I hadn’t heard about it until it was mentioned on IRC a few weeks ago. I can’t think of anyone in the family that has played it and not had good things to say about it or gone out and bought it.

If the 360 does get Guitar Hero in 2007 as I’ve heard, then I may finally get a 360, at least if you can download additional songs over and above those that ship with it via Live.

The only disappointment this Christmas has been the lack of any Snow, not counting the giant inflatable snow globe in our back garden. I’m sure we’ll see some in the coming month(s), but it’s still not the same as having a white Christmas. Maybe Christmas 2007, although I’m not holding out much hope.

Here’s to a good new year

For anyone that hasn’t already seen it, I’ve posted a Shelled! postmortem over on the GarageGames Site. You can also download the PDF version.

You may have noticed the books on the right hand side of this blog. I thought it was about time I started listing which books I’ve read, I’m reading or I’m planning to read. Hopefully I’ll give a short review of each once I’m done. For those in the UK I’ve added a link to the Amazon page for each book too, yes I’m after the affiliate commission but I’ll only recommend books I’ve read and found useful. Besides which, it would seem most people that read this blog are not UK based anyway.

Hope you all have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

PS: Guitar Hero ROCKS! Go buy it

Shelled! is finally out the door and it’s FREE! For those that don’t know what I’m talking about, head over to www.shelledgame.com to read about the game and download it.

I played for a few hours the other night, with 5 other people, great fun. Very easy for the odd grudge match to develop when you get shelled by another player The poor AI always take a pounding in round 1 while everyone tries to stock up on cash for those nukes and high fives.

Out of all the shell types, there are only two I find I don’t use at the moment. Every other shell has its uses depending upon the terrain. Slider shells are useful on very hilly terrain, high fives are great for a quick fly by shelling, the machine gun works great as a defensive shell when your jets have overheated and you have a tank inbound. The use for the leveler isn’t obvious at first, but it can give a slight advantage on a few levels, I’ll leave you to figure our which and how but a hint is the rocket comes into its own on the same level.

You could play Shelled! using nothing other than the default shell and do fairly well, but if you happen to play another human player that has discovered fly by high five shellings, you’ll be in for a hard time making first place!

The game has a few nice tactics, which may at first not be apparent, after a while though I’m sure most people will work them out. Remember the machine gun is your friend, turtles with rocket jets are meant to fly and although the nuke is costly, nothing says good night better than a direct hit with one

I’ve had a great time developing Shelled! and wanted to say what a pleasure its been to work with Joshua, Andreas and everyone else on the Shelled team.

Happy Shelling

I have become quite attached to the Douglas Adams inspired sub domain, but, it isn’t all that easy to remember for new visitors let alone telling it to someone over the phone and having the simpler “42.figmentgames.com” just doesn’t have the same geeky appeal

I’m moving the blog to the easier to remember “blog” sub domain, “http://blog.figmentgames.com”. The old “00101010″ sub domain will remain active for the foreseeable future with a 301 redirect in place, so existing links and subscriptions should remain valid.

That said, if you do subscribe to this blog, I’d recommend you update your feed url from “http://00101010.figmentgames.com/feed/” to “http://blog.figmentgames.com/feed/” along with any back links you may have in place.

Having just watched the final episode of season 7 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I’m not sure what to think. On the whole, I felt it lacked something, although I’m having trouble putting my finger on it.

Perhaps it was the “UberVamps” appearing to be a lot less “uber” in this episode than before. I could accept the slayers been able to easily kill the “UberVamps” having fought them in the past and learnt their weaknesses, but the non-slayers been able to do so much damage didn’t feel right. Perhaps if some form of additional help had been granted by Willow for the non-slayer crew it would have made more sense.

I’m sure this was probably a case of Josh Whedon having to choose between making an epic finale to the Buffy series with lots of action and vamps been killed left, right and centre, or having longer fights with just a few “UberVamps”. It’s pretty obvious which was more fitting for a final episode

Maybe it was Buffy going from stabbed and dying to full of fight in short order?

Perhaps I’m just been too hard on the final episode and suffering from that “The End” feeling that tends to accompany the close of any good series or movie trilogy. It certainly had that epic feel to it which did justice to an overall great series and allowed each of the main characters a chance to play a sizeable part in the final outcome especially Willow, Spike, Buffy and the slayers.

Looking back over all seven Seasons, Season 5 stands out for two reasons. Firstly, it seemed to be a pivot point in the style of Buffy episodes. Although having occasional moments of that classic quirky humour so prevalent in seasons 1 to 4, overall, it had a much darker feel to the episodes which only continued to increase throughout seasons 6 and 7.

I’m not really sure if I liked the darker feel of the last three Seasons, although it did work wonders for season 5. Which, having now finally viewed all 7 seasons, brings me to the second reason Season 5 stands out. I’d have to say without doubt it stood head and shoulders above the rest. Aside from the gradual build up each episode brought, the 100th episode and Season 5 finale “The Gift” made for a awesome and moving end to a great season. I was literally stunned after watching that episode to the point of sitting through the end credits.

After that though, the dark edge to the episodes went a little overboard in my opinion. I liked Buffy for its quirky humour the core characters were notorious for in Seasons 1 to 4. Although the humour still crept in now and then in 6 & 7, it was either not quite as often or otherwise drowned out by the darker feel.

Still, I’m glad Seasons 6 and 7 were made, otherwise we’d never have had a chance to watch the (imho) best ever individual TV episode “Once more with feeling”. I’ll admit, it wouldn’t have been quite the same without all the ground work of Season 5, but, out of every TV series I’ve seen to date, it’s my favourite, which is saying a lot considering how many good episodes Babylon 5 had.

Overall a very enjoyable series to watch, still not enough to beat my opinion of Babylon 5 though, but never the less a noble attempt

If you haven’t seen Babylon 5 or Buffy yet, what are you waiting for. You can now get Babylon 5 : The Complete Universe on DVD, all 5 seasons in one box set. You can also get Buffy The Vampire Slayer - Series 1 - 7 on DVD as well.

That time of the year is slowly drawing closer, the time that sees people hunker down inside their homes laptops, typewritters or even that archaic instrument of old know as the pen and spew forth 50,000 words of elegant prose[1]. For those that havn’t already googled this posts topic, it’s the Nanowrimo Novel in a month 2006 event.

Nanowrimo has been running since 1999, although I’ll admit I only heard of it 2-3 years ago and despite thinking it would be neat to take part, I’ve never done so. As I’ve blogged about in the past, a large proportion of people want to write a novel “some day”, very few actually attempt to do so and even fewer actually finish it let alone produce a sellable novel. I’m certainly in the would like to but know I’ll probably never actually get around to it camp.

Writing a novel is hard, it can take years of effort (in some cases almost a lifetime), so why is there this insane idea that people can write a novel in a month? One word, “quality”, or more to the point lack thereof. This is one situation where it’s all about quantity rather than quality. The point of nanowrimo is to write “something”, 50,000 words of “something” to be precise, not something good, great or world changing, just plain old something.

I’m still not 100% sure, but this year I’m very tempted to actually give Nanowrimo a go. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve no delusions of grandeur. I’d be very suprised if I managed to make it to 10,000 words within the 30 days of November and that’s simply 10,000 words, not 10,000 elegant words that will leave you waiting for the missing 40k. Think of it more like 10,000 words that will never see the light of day, but, they’ll be my words, my characters, my world (perhaps with a healthy dose of other peoples ideas It’s a way of getting that novel you’ve always wanted to write, written, but with no commitment that it actually has to be any good

So assuming I do decide to go ahead with this, here’s hoping I reach my target even if it isn’t the official nanowrimo 50k target. Oh, and don’t worry, I won’t be publishing my efforts on this blog nor anywhere else in public for that matter, I’m not expecting the results to be all that pretty.

[1] in most cases 50,000 words of elegant tripe. Tripe created with great care, sweat and effort but tripe none the less. Remember quantity not quality

Game Tunnel posted a preview of Shelled! back in July, they’ve just followed up by posting an Interview with Joshua Dallman of Red Thumb Games.

Looking at the images in the interview I’d forgotten just how much this game has changed over the last year from the original Sci-Fi theme previewed at IGC to the current cartoon style. I can’t wait to play the final version, which considering I’ve been testing (usually ending up playing rather than testing ) the dev versions pretty much daily for over a year speaks for itself.

Anyhow, go read the interview already

Many, many years back when I still in primary school I remember taking Piano lessons once a week. I enjoyed the first few but soon lost interest and shortly afterwards packed it in.

Some years later I wish I’d stuck with the lessons. I bet this is a sentiment shared by hundreds of people that had the opportunity to take Piano lessons when they were younger and never stuck with it, only to regret it later in life. Over the years, every now and then, I’ve messed around trying to play the odd tune I liked the sound of but nothing more.

Three week ago I got my hands on The Piano Handbook and decided to pick up learning to play again. The book itself is very easy to read and includes a fairly interesting history of the Piano in the first chapter, although not a topic I’d normally be inclined to read about, it was quite interesting.

The remainder of the chapters are where the fun begins. So far I’ve finished working through the first unit although my timing isn’t all that great not to mention coordination. Several of the tunes are straightfoward (as you’d expect for the first unit) the pieces I’m currently struggling with however are those that involve dotted notes which make the normal 2/2, 3/4 or 4/4 time counting a little trickier. Still I’m sure its just a matter of time and practice, I remember counting rhythm wasn’t my strong point during lessons anyway.

So 3 weeks later, I thought it was time I recorded myself playing. The last piece of Unit 1 is the Morning Hymn which is a 3/4 time with dotted notes My timing isn’t consistent and it took several (ok more than several) attempts to get a recording without pausing, still I don’t think I did too bad.

Practice makes perfect, but I think once I’ve reached a reasonable level with the unit 1 pieces I’ll move onto unit 2 and re-visit unit one less. Most of the more interesting pieces (which typically are for the most part also the more complex pieces) are deeper into the book, still it’s something to work towards

I think my biggest problem at the moment is my weaker left hand, mainly the little finger and ring finger. Playing notes with them isn’t a problem the first time, but playing subsequent notes is, such as alternating between the two fingers. Hopefully this will improve as the fingers are used more and more for note playing.

Anyhow, heres the recording, Morning Hymn ~680k ogg format

Played using a midi keyboard hooked through an M-Audio 2496 sound card (with under 6ms latency ) with Ableton Live 5.2 software (the demo shipped free with the sound card but a recent FREE upgrade offer for m-audio owners means I now have the full 5.2 software!) then output to my iRiver which did the actual recording straight to wav format (converted to ogg with Audacity).

The M-Audio is a really great card considering it only costs around £50, the sound quality is awesome with no audible noise (unlike my previous sound blaster and on-board sound), plus in addition to the Stereo RCA input/outputs it has midi in/out and Optical outputs. At some point I’ll probably get an optical cable since the iRiver ihp140 has optical input and output as well (eat that iPod )

The Piano Handbook by Carl Humphries is available from Amazon.co.uk

PS I know keyboard != Piano, but it’s all I have, we sold the real Piano many years ago.