I didn’t even know Castlevania was going to be rebooted, but when I thought ‘reboot’ I was thinking storyline only and was expecting more of this:

Or perhaps even this (ala MegaMan 9):

But I sure as hell wasn’t expecting these !

Yep the above pics are the latest released for the upcoming Xbox360 and Ps3 versions of the Castlevania game before its E3 comeback (it was unveiled in last years E3 – view pics/videos below) and to say they look rather tasty would be an understatement.

The game was originally announced in 2008 as just Lords of Shadows by relatively unknown Spanish game developer , MercurySteam (Clive Barkers Jericho, American McGee‘s Scrapland) here’s the teaser that was shown:

Fast forward to E3 in 2009, the game received half a ton of fanboi squeals (if sound could ever be measured by weight) when it was presented as one of the many titles that Konami Legend, Hideo Kojima, was involved in.

Image via CrunchBase

Konami has a long standing record of making and/or publishing games that have great visuals, no matter what the system, from NES to Ps3 they’ve always raised the bar when it came to “this is what we call average graphics”. However we all know Good graphics doth not a playable game make! (or something equally broken English like!)

In their defense, Konami like most savvy game publishers seems set on grabbing their gamers by their wallets and if their upcoming Hi-Def, 2D, and rumored 6 (yes, Six) player rendition of the series (Castlevania: Harmony of Despair) is anything to go by – then might we venture mentioning a multiplayer mode too? (cue this)

I can’t speak for others but I definitely like typecasting games and movies before their release (and if they prove me wrong – Great!)  So here’s what I’m billing this as – God of War with werewolves, vampires, skeletons and a whip.

While I’m glad that Rygar (PS2 version) set the stage for 3D action platform games it’s all getting a bit overcrowded, this still isn’t a bad thing…yet.

Also games like these tend to have high production values and Castlevania: Lords of Shadow looks to continue that tradition by having our whip wielding hero Gabriel (because the name Simon isn’t cliché cool enough) voiced and modeled

(a bit) by actor, Robert Carlyle of Trainspotting, The World is Not Enough, and The Full Monty fame. The line up also includes Gabriel’s dead/undead/waiting in limbo’s queue wife Marie voiced by Natascha McElhone (that anarchist chick from Ronin),  and the geek celebrated titan Sir Patrick Stewart as Gabriel Belmont’s mentor, Zobek.

The soundtrack will be composed with a 120 peice orchestra and since the game was originally meant to be a remake of the original Castlevania game (but careened wildly into something else) some previous Castlevania musical themes will be used throughout as  homage. Wonder if 120 pieces of instruments can beat this:

From the video above (and moreso according to wikipedia) the game will be less linear than its predecessors and, for once, a game like this will NOT sport the now annoying Quicktime events mechanism . Either way here’s to hoping Konami releases an immersive experience that’s as memorable as its predecessors and the story that originally inspired them.

For some inexplicable soon after the announcement of Valve Software giving away their game Portal away for FREE via the Steam network (May 12th 2010). The totally unrelated (well apart from the rabid Valve/Portal/Gaming fans) Esper.net IRC server went down.

At the time of writing I’m the ONLY person on all of the major channels (well, the English speaking ones that ARENT about #furries or #gender). Whether there’s a link between this and the the near simultaneous release by Valve and DosBox 0.74 (a 0.01 increment that has taken almost a year to achieve, with good reason too) has yet to be seen.

EDIT: Turns out that a particular server from the esper.net European server pool has de-linked itself from the Esper.net family of chat servers, however Esper.net themselves haven’t really removed it from their server list. The, now, redundant server is excelsior.esper.net. To connect to esper.net without getting linked to that connection try connecting to the North American servers at irc.na.esper.net

Having announced their intention to change their look sometime in January. The user edited Encyclopedic juggernaut have decided to give all its users a sneak peak of the new look.

Sporting a new skin called ‘vector’ Wikipedia’s aim is to make everything more user friendly (Surprise!)

Apart from the new look other areas of improvement include: a more natural navigation system (from the looks of it, Tabs) so that you know whether you’re viewing the topics main page , its discussion page (which I’ve rare..actually, NEVER ever done) and will further clarify if you’re editing a page or not.

They claim the search feature has taken on a new level of badass too letting you get to results even more quickly. A large part of the advertised changes are more geared towards Wiki editors than just the readers. Things like: changing the editors toolbar to make formatting pages easier and more natural, a table wizard for all those table related shenanigans which may have been hard to pull off before the change (Maybe, I dunno really) and a link wizard to help with inserting all those reference links (both within Wikipedia and external links, so that trapping you within a Wiki-Loop is even MORE easier)

What I’m really liking about this change is the fact that Wikimedia Foundation (the people who maintain and run Wikipedia) have done their best to make their changes known to as many of their users as possible. How? by spurting it right at the top of whatever page you’re browsing

However the coolness doesn’t stop there, the change came about based mainly on user feedback (I’m sure all major companies now base changes on that.) However, whilst Google has mentioned testing “with a small sample of our user population” and “with our 20,000 employees who sent feedback” as the basis of their (icky) site design changes, Wikipedia has straight up mentioned involving over 500,000 users as part of the beta testing phase (of which 80% decided to keep the new look)

What Really impressed me though, was the fact that you can actually TURN OFF THE NEW LOOK! HEAR THAT GOOGLE?!

To quote the Wikimedians:

How do I turn off the new features?

If you’d like to turn off the new features, please follow these steps:

Log into your account

Click on the "New!" link in the upper right portion of the page (next to your username)

Go to the "Take Me Back" section of the "New!" page and click on the link to turn off the new features

 

You may always turn the new features back on by visiting the "New!" page again.

I, for one, am keeping the new look (which was a pleasant surprise since I was expecting to reject this like I did Google’s new look.)

The new look and changes were actually implemented on the WikiMedia commons section in April, the Real impact though will be implemented on May 13th 2010 (5.00AM UTC) when Wikipedia’s English section gets “Vectored”.

To get a more on-hands view of what the site will look like and feel like check out the prototype site at http://prototype.wikimedia.org/ where still unreleased features (slated for version 2 of the new site) are being tested out by employees and users alike.

Image via Wikipedia

a Few posts ago I whinged (yes that’s whined with a ‘g’) about the new look that google search page was sporting (over here: Google makes even more changes to its search display.) As expected, Google hadn’t given a Clear way to go back to old view (emphasis on Clear…we’ll get to that in a bit.)

Thus, necessity brings about the rest of the worlds endeavors to get rid of GoogleBing 2.0 and go back to the old view we’re used to (because we’re old fuddy duddies and other archaic terms I can’t remember at the moment.)  Here there are in no particular order:

For FireFox users The wonderful girls and boys at www.seotoolset.com (no, I don’t know who they are either) have released a nifty add-on called (unsurprisingly) Hide Google Options that does away with the left margin hogging demon, but it’s nifty because you actually get a toggle button to turn the bar on/off (Google PLEASE UNDERSTAND THIS!)

It also turns out that the same people made the GoogleChrome extension but is on a different site (gee, I wonder why…) anyway go ahead and get Hide Google Options for GoogleChrome.

Likewise some blessed soul who detests making a totally browser cordoning solution has made a UserScript called Google Fix for Greasemonkey that not only gets rid of the sidebar but even the extra search bar at the bottom.

Theres also an alternative userscript called: OldGoogle but at the time of writing, it still has a few bugs (ironically more so in Firefox) the dev is working on it though – so keep it mind!

To sidetrack a little the above makes that ‘browser cordoning’ line kind of moot, since Greasemonkey means its really optimized for FireFox only – but in reality that most probably means “will work on almost any browser EXCEPT Internet Explorer” (e.g. even Opera has the ability to run Greasemonkey stuff, it’s just that 100% compatibility is never promised)   

On the Internet Explorer and Opera front though a certain company  decided they didn’t want to be outdone by the kind hearted coders at large…and so Google Themselves join the fray and give us this: http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=all

Yes sir, that weird ass URL is the most simplest cure of all, just open up your internet options page, set the default homepage to that and Old Google is Gold! As for why didn’t Google make this apparent to the public at large? Remember how I mentioned Google not being Clear? Well now you know.

FYI I got these from this Google support forum link and I’m simply loving solution #6 on that list!

Honestly, I’m not a huge fan of Halo its not bad per se but not mind blowing either (keep in mind these guys DID their share of blowing minds way before Halo – back then however it was Marathon and yes it was Mac only but it got ported to the PC…somehow.)

However this is one of the few rare cases where I’m more of a fan of the game companies antics than their games itself! Ever since they put up the ‘funny Halo 3 moments’ thing (you can find a collection of the best of them at this link: UnReality Mags 35 hilarious halo3 screenshots) I got hooked on whatever else these guys found fun/amusing, so this time its a collection of what they feel are the best ‘moving pictures’ from their latest game so far:

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Just saw this on youtube and HAD to share it, Has to be one of the most funniest CollegeHumor videos I’ve seen in a long time!

After pissing quite a few people off (and since this is Google, by “quite a few” I mean millions) by introducing their “fade the top menu in using slow ass JavaScript only if you move the mouse” option; Google have gone and done it AGAIN by (now) changing the search results page by tweaking the logo a bit (it’s brighter and more colour rich …like a Ball Pool, yes it’s That annoying) but then they go totally ‘AI corporate’ and take a chunk of the left hand screen to give us a ‘recommendation’ column of sorts.

Take a look below:

The left menu changes according to your search terms, so if you looked for SD cards or Cheap Chinese gamepads you’ll get shopping links in place of the image and video links above.

Now in the grand scheme of things this aren’t really dastardly evil doings, but really how about an option to disable such features too? Like I mentioned before when Google makes a change – its effecting billions of people (yes, seriously, it’s billions.)

Currently The ‘top menu fade in’ thing can currently be only disabled using a combination of user made JavaScript or by going directly to the iGoogle page (you find ways to implement both here: Stop Google fade, Voodish Articles)

For me the pet peeve is that column is taking away a significant portion of my screen and is further compressing the text into an even smaller space giving me a more cluttered look (keep in mind I run this site on my PygRyg which is a PII and the current screen resolution of 1024×768 on a 15” monitor isn’t really geared for the mega resolutions of today).

I’m hoping that they’ll add the ability to switch back to the old view, after all at the time of writing its only been an hour since the new search results look was in effect. In any case, Please Google, be a sport and give me an easily accessible option to disable this. There’s a reason why I still use you guys and not Bing.com and aside from the technical search engine ‘magic’ that powers each respective engine, the aesthetics factor (or actually the lack thereof) was pretty much the deal sealer for me!  So again…please? (!__!)

The title pretty much says it all, but between this and the upcoming Street fighter legacy fan movie made by Joey Ansah (the actual bad guy who has to be smashed by a friggin phonebook (or at least an unabridged version of the Lord of the Rings) so he can be stopped  by Jason Bourne in the Bourne Ultimatum) I can only hope that Capcom and, more importantly, Hollywood get the message and (ideally) hire both parties to give us a much needed StreetFighter movie that’ll make up for the previous jokes that were passed off as movies. Hopefully if this happens perhaps this time around we’ll laugh only if that was the movies intent!

Here’s StreetFighter: Beginnings End:

Here’s the 1st trailer to Joey Ansah’s effort (there are 2 trailers at the time of writing):

and SUPER YONKU BONUS TAIME! I give you the legendary chase and fight scene from Bourne Ultimatum (note the usage of a how a boring book can be used for something as un-boring as smashing ninja like assassins )

I, support any tech product that’s meant to help you humans in your petty rat race(s) and usually Apple seemed to have always taken and met the challenge – of making products that integrates the need of the modern adult of today combined with an interface built for a 5 year old.

It’s that last bit that other manufacturers have always fell short of (keep in mind that even the original Windows was a copy of the ancient Apple Lisa OS). It’s also the one place where Apple have shined almost consistently, until now.

During the latter years apple really haven’t pioneered technology as much as they have slick yet stupidly usable user interfaces, and innovative marketing. So I took the iPads launch with the same grain of salt that I had when they had released their iPod,  which which was “its been done before, lets see which of Apples strongpoint gets the upper hand – their ‘innovation’ or their marketing.”

In the iPods case it was the former, the interface was understood in about 5 min (10 min if you’re Really slow) and you were good to go, problems with iTunes would appear soon after…but that’s outside of the actual iPod so I won’t go there. 

So far I can’t say the same for the iPad. First the all touch screen interface has been done before by technology giants HP, and I’ve actually used it back in 2004! As condescending as the following may seem, it actually is VERY true:

but that wasn’t what deflated my positive vibe. i actually thought that less stuff might be better (I’ve learnt that it usually is). What really bummed me out is the amount of issues that are cropping up in shovelfuls. Just after 40 min. of usage I’ve noticed,

The following Bad Stuff:

1. A lot of the design sites I visit appear VERY crap, many don’t even work because they’re Flash based (e.g. BBC.com didn’t work, but at least they have a lo-fi version, others I visited didn’t). To those new to Apples latest tech marvel, the iPad has absolutely no Flash support (something about Apple not wanting to give into Adobes monopoly of that technology…which is why they’d decided to make their own version and monopolize that.)
   (edit: I’ve found that the crafty boys & girls at adobe have pulled a fast one on Apple, it seems you actually CAN run Flash on the iPad!)
   
2. It seems that web designer will have to start making separate iPad ready templates because of the above mentioned issue, never a good sign when you have additional work to do – especially for a device thats supposed to make things easier.
3. For some reason i seem to be facing some issue with USB charging… I hope its just an isolated case. (edit: turns out it isn’t isolated, others are having this problem too)
   
4. iPhone apps work on it…barely, but they work. The up-scaling from iPhone to iPad though definitely shows and for the most part it looks like flung monkey poo. 
5. So far its a great way to read & absorb content, but not so much for Making stuff so I still cant code, make music, edit videos, do some serious work in Photoshop (of which you’ll see the results within this very article, just you wait!) etc. In the iPad’s defense I’m sure it wasn’t designed for any of those. Also typing may be a non-issue for the serious iNerd but it was for me, and I’m pretty nerdy…except in a more general sense (I’ve yet to be product placed).
6. I cannot stress this enough – a VGA adapters only purpose is to Connect a device so that it may be viewed on A bigger screen. Enter the iPad VGA adapter which somehow has taken DRM to a stupid new level, the adapter only works on Select iPad applications (e.g keynote, photos, videos) …and guess what, NetFlix isn’t one of them. For crying out loud, I thought Apple learnt from the past!
7. Another pet peeve, but it irks me to no end…This is my first Apple product, I did NOT want to sync up, or for that matter,  install iTunes. Guess what’s the first thing the iPad asks? Getting this wrong is not an option.

I’ll be the first to admit that Apple Inc. does not read my stuff (or cares) but,

Here are my suggestions:

1. Without iTunes the tablet doesn’t even turn on, please STOP garbage like this! Why the hell would I want to connect my ‘Stand alone Portable digital world’ which still has an umbilical cord connected to a Desktop Computer?
2. Please remove the stupid VGA adapter software lock/DRM.
3. I tried to clean a hair from my iPad. Turned out it was the shooting star on the background picture, best you find something that doesn’t make a new user test out how scratchproof the screen is.   
4. I consider this is a personal gripe, but how about a matte finish? The Glossy look is taken to an extreme and seeing my face while watching a movie is kind of weird.
5. How about a little love for us typists? Is it too expensive for you guys to put a pop out leg on the back like all full sized keyboard have as standard? And no, I would NOT like to makes a separate purchase of either the keyboard dock nor the Multi-Dock. Yes this WAS being typed on an iPad, but it got old really quick, my hands went frozen and I looked like that typist android robot thing from Ghost in the Shell, also I sure as hell am not shelling out more money for a separate keyboard dock)
6. While you’re at it how about "reinventing" that paper holder contraption? (it used to be on some REALLY old keyboards…have no clue why it died off)
7. Kindle for the iPad is great, learn your lesson and next time bundle something like it in your next (near imminent) release, please. Ditto with stocks, weather, voice memos, clock, calculator, and compass apps. Yes, we can get some of them for free from the apps store. The others either cost, or just aren’t there. These were standard on the iPhone 3GS…what the hell happened?
8. Please take a page out of the gaming industry and make some killer apps to bundle along with your product. If you’re going to argue that its not the same thing , then I’ll counter it with: Yes I know it’s supposed to be an all purpose computer without a keyboard and that out of the box, we can use it for: Web browsing, e-mail, photos, playing music, movies, games, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations & e-books. I also know that this can be done with devices I already have (laptop/PSP/iPhone/<insert own handheld device>).
   Good launch software can make a world of difference, in fact bad software (read: games)  is what raced the Sega Saturn to a speedy death (and it took our beloved Segata Sanshiro with it :’( ). Whilst I agree that your product isn’t dependant on games alone apps like Scrabble, Wolf Ram Alphas periodic table, or the DJ simulation app are a nice aside but they’re no where near “OMG my world has changed!!11!!1one” levels. Before you say it The “New 3D TTR!” (Tap Tap Radiation) doesn’t count.
9. Will someone please make a Tumblr and/or a better TweetDeck app already! 
    

What about the Good? So far it looks like a ‘spit on apple’ campaign. Worry not smelly Mac owner, because

The iPad definitely has its plus points: 

• It’s the best sofa device ever, and while it’ll take some getting used to, I can actually imagine a time when I can sit around with my family and show them pictures and videos of me vacationing in…Sri Lanka (for example). Try passing around your current photo album and force it to play some video, protip: it can’t. The all touch interface makes it accessible to everyone from baby Joey to Grandma, for them it makes THAT much more sense than a laptop.
• Its the only device of its shape and size that can do the mass basics (mentioned above) without the need to be plugged in.
• The accelerometer & the multi-touch stuff are BLAZING fast…hell you want a killer app idea? Make it so that you can replace your steering wheel with the iPad! (onscreen grocery list optional)  How hard could it be? 
  
  

 See? Told you there’d be Photoshop!

• There is bound to be crap-tons of 3rd party apps since they’re relatively easy to code (and for its case, that means developers can spend more time on stuff like creativity)
• If the iPad is anything like the iPhone/iPod Touch then for most developers there’s easy money to be made (which is great for iDevs but it makes the above creativity point moot since creativity doesn’t always mean really useful – and with the current spate of iPhone/iPod Touch apps  it’s more Quantity than quality/shovel-ware etc.) 
• The iPads popularity will most probably force web developers to rethink their ways and adapt the HTML5 standard, which is miles better than the current web standard.

So where do I stand on this?

In the 6 hours or so its taken me to write this article (due to relentless flitting between the iPad and word processor) I’ve come to realize that the iPad isn’t the radical change people were making it out to be, but its far from underwhelming too. In its current form, the iPad is exactly what the gurus have been talking about, those who support it say it’s awesome for Mom/Grandpa/anyone who can’t be assed to learn the boring side tech in-depth, these gurus are right.

Also those gurus who say the iPad is nothing more than this:

 
…are, for now, pretty much right too.

As for me, the current Cons far outweigh the Pros and it’s not because of any one point (although that USB charging thing comes pretty close) but due to all those issues combined as a whole. So, I’ll have to bite the bullet, open up my list of cliché article endings and say “For now, iPass!” 

Freeware games (while sorely underappreciated) are pretty common now and picking a favorite has become more of a ‘personal preference’ thing since the internet is flooded with them. Usually its the gameplay or visual aspect that wins one over and makes them decide ‘Yeah I’ll  play this one!’ (Keep in mind, I’m talking of the hundreds or perhaps thousands of game clones that are out there – and this is making the naive assumption that a choice is being made between games which have solid gameplay which, honestly, is very rare).

How about a game though that uses text for graphics and looks like it jumped out of the DOS era? A game that, regardless of how it looks, recently forced the game developers website to crash 15 min. after a new version was announced?  Slaves to Armok: God of Blood Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress is one such game.

As the title suggests the game is the 2nd part to a hack & slash  RPG that originally was in 3D. We don’t know who the hell suggested the concept to ditch all the graphics for…absolutely NO graphics, Here’s a screenshot to give you an idea:

This:

Somehow became this:

Which has been upgraded to this:

No don’t adjust your monitors colors, and please don’t email me about me having uploaded a damaged picture. That is the actual ‘graphics’ of the game (and if I’m not mistaken on the second picture, the right half is supposed to be a tavern or castle/fortress or something while the yellow patch represents sandy terrain…I think) However I don’t blame Bay 12 games (the developers) for choosing this method, which I’ll elaborate on later, first more about the game

The game is a cross between a Roguelike and a City building game and where Dwarf Fortress (as it’s more famously known as) truly shines is in its attention to detail. Believe me, this really isn’t for the faint of…well anything really, for example if you take an enemy hit its not ‘just a hit’ the game will actually calculate down to which part of the body was hit and even if any internal organs were harmed (even separate fingers are taken into consideration!)

That’s not even scratching the surface, check out what wikipedia has to say:

Item base material, quality of workmanship, dye and decorations are all registered and taken into account. According to their experiences (having a friend die, being served low quality food, being disturbed by noise while sleeping, etc.) dwarves can become happy or sad, even angry and finally driven insane; they build social relationships, marry a sufficiently compatible dwarf and have children, or organize parties. Each dwarf also has its own unique personality, likes, and dislikes that will affect how the dwarf reacts to specific situations. An example of this is that a dwarf who likes the material gold will get a happy thought from seeing or owning a golden item, or a dwarf who is quick to anger will be more likely to tantrum and get into fist fights. In addition, dwarves can obtain personality traits through experiences such as seeing a great deal of death, which will decrease the unhappiness received from the death of friends. Gravity is simulated; and an elaborate fluid mechanics system is responsible for river and magma flows, and allows phenomena such as pressure geysers and flooding to happen in-game.

Now, couple THAT with the fact that Tarn "ToadyOne" Adams (the creator of the game) is hell-bent on keeping the game updated with new content, plus he actually listens and implements user suggestions ranging from items to story content and you have something that’s bound to garner rabid attention. Not bad for a game that harkens back to its 1970’s roots!

Be warned though, while the game is one of the best Community building simulations ever, it comes with a steep learning curve and reading the Dwarf Fortress wiki (http://df.magmawiki.com/) plus the forums will go a long way in getting you started (unless you actually WANT to spend hours in frustration, in which case disregard the pro-tip).

Also, just because the game has simple graphics doesn’t mean its a pushover – I’ve seen many people actually disable options like Temperature and/or Weather to get the game running smoothly. Yes, you actually may need to upgrade your PC to play an ASCII game!

Nevertheless, the game is fairly small to download plus its freeware so there’s no harm in trying it out and since (at the time of writing) the primary download website at http://www.bay12games.com/ is still down I’ve decided to link to the various download mirrors from where you can get the game. Let me know how you like it!

Download mirrors

• http://df.nucleardog.com/df_31_01.zip
• http://citadel-station.com/df/df_31_01.zip
• http://pallkars.net/~toad/df_31_01.zip
• http://nobbz.de/download/df_31_01.zip
• http://brage.info/~svein/df_31_01.zip.torrent (Torrent file – needs a bittorrent client like utorrent)