Category Archives: Uncategorized

May 31 2008
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Cosmic Osmo's Hex Isle


Cosmic Osmo's Hex Isle

I just received Cosmic Osmo’s Hex Isle, the latest game from Myst creator Cyan Worlds. It has a very different feel than the Myst games, a lot more dialogue and bright colors and a lot less exploration and puzzle-solving. The game is very pretty, using the newest version of Cyan’s Plasma engine, and (unsurprisingly, due to a faster dual-core processor and four times the memory) runs better on my Mac than on my PC.

The gameplay is much more similar to a ‘casual’ game than a normal video game, in that the story is extremely simple, and the game mechanic is very straightforward. Touch all 6 blue ‘hexes’ (hexagonal tiles) to complete the level. Of course, it gets more complicated as the levels go on, with moving hexes, hexes that disappear after you step on them, etc.

The game is very fun, and for a game of its caliber, it’s very pretty. Unfortunately, the only website it’s available from is Fanista, which I think is possibly the worst online retailer I have ever had the misfortune to be forced to use. Maybe you can find it on eBay?

Having played Cosmic Osmo’s Hex Isle, the only remaining Cyan game I have not played yet is the original Cosmic Osmo, which will be on Gametap next month. Can’t wait!



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May 26 2008
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On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode 1 (Demo)


I downloaded and played through the demo of Penny Arcade‘s new game, On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode 1. It’s pretty fun, and easy to get into. It has the comedy of a Penny Arcade comic, and the look of one, too. The graphics are not impressive, but they work. They’re very similar to the Sam and Max games, if anyone has played them.

The gameplay is very easy to understand. The exploring portion is point-and-click, while the battle screens work by selecting your attack and then the enemy to attack. Sounds simple, but it’s real-time. You have to manage up to 4 characters at once (maybe more?), while the enemy is also attacking you. It can get pretty hectic, but it wasn’t bad.

I would recommend downloading the demo to anybody, and buying the game if you like it, since it’s only $20 and available for Mac, Windows, and Linux, as well as on the Xbox Live Marketplace.

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May 26 2008
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Ubuntu 8.04 and the Realtek 8185 (Update)

Ok, my last post actually was not completely flawless, that method has been giving me some issues, so I found these instructions instead:

  1. Open Terminal
  2. sudo apt-get install ndisgtk
  3. Download the Windows drivers (I’ve only tested it with the XP drivers)
  4. Open System>Administration>Windows Wireless Drivers
  5. Select the .inf file from the unzipped folder you downloaded in step 3

That method worked perfectly for me, and has lasted through numerous reboots, unlike the previous way. I’ve only tested it with a WPA Personal network, no idea if it works with WEP or WPA2. If it doesn’t work, try rebooting…And you might want to install wpa_supplicant if you’re going to use WPA, but I’m not sure if that’s necessary.

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Apr 26 2008
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Fan Ages and Drizzle

Fan ages – that is, custom-made, unofficial ages for Uru – have certainly progressed a long way. From my first age, Galamay:

To the Fan City of Ahra Pahts:

And now, Eh’ko and the Book of D’eux:

The two ages seen here, Eh’ko and The Remote Age Viewer, look absolutely stunning. They really are Cyan-quality work, and incredibly impressive.

Also, the Drizzle Project is a pretty impressive feat of fan work. Some hackers have managed to decrypt the MO:UL age files, and re-encrypt them using the old Uru encryption methods, meaning that we can put the ages that were once exclusively for MO:UL into URU:CC. I tried it out myself, and after one failure the first time, I got it working completely the second time around. It’s very fun to link to the ages and mess around with the settings just by tapping keys on the keyboard (such as swap the winter Delin for the summer one by pressing Q or W, or make animals appear in Negilahn), plus it includes the flymode patch, which means you can use flymode in these ages and see everything from any angle. It’s very fun, and I’d recommend it to anyone with Uru:CC and the MO:UL files.

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Apr 25 2008
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Echochrome Demo

I just downloaded the demo of Echochrome on the new Playstation Store. It’s pretty awesome, and I’ll probably buy the full version when it comes out. It’s very cool, using cool perspective tricks to solve puzzles. There are 5 laws of perspective (these can all be seen at the beginning of the trailer, below):

  • Perspective Traveling – If two paths appear connected, they are.
  • Perspective Landing – If one path appears to be above another, it is.
  • Perspective Existence – When a gap is blocked from view, making two paths appear to be connected, they are.
  • Perspective Absence – When a hole is blocked from view, it does not exist.
  • Perspective Jumping – If you jump, you will land on whatever appears to be beneath you.

    • Using those 5 laws, you rotate the camera angle to guide the avatar from ‘echo’ to ‘echo’. These ‘echos’ serve as checkpoints, in case you fall through a hole or jump into nothing. It’s pretty easy to get the hang of, but I find that the camera doesn’t rotate fast enough, and the motion sensor mode is too jumpy to be useful. Hopefully that will be fixed up by the final release, but I really like the demo. Check out the trailer below:

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    Mar 30 2008
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    Shockwave Player Universal Binary

    Adobe has finally released a universal binary of Shockwave Player. This means it is now fully compatible with Intel Macs (which have been out now for two years), and you no longer have to run browsers in Rosetta Mode to use Shockwave. The only question that remains is what took Adobe so long?! Waiting this long to release Shockwave just isn’t cool. There are a lot of applications and games on the internet that use Shockwave, such as the amazing Junkbot, so it really isn’t fair for Adobe to wait to release it.

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    Mar 06 2008
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    iPhone SDK Released

    Apple announced and released a Software Development Kit for people who want to make their own programs for the iPhone and iPod Touch. This is great, because before this, to put unofficial applications on the iPhone you had to pretty majorly hack the thing to get access to it. Very annoying, and this should make the situation a lot better.

    The SDK itself is free, but to sell/distribute the programs you make, you have to pay a $99 setup fee. After that, you can either sell your apps (with %70 of the sale price going to you, nice royalties) or freely distribute them from the iTunes App Store.

    All of this stuff won’t actually be on the iPod Touch and iPhone until June, when iPhone Software 2.0 is released, but for now anyone is able to download the SDK and start making their own apps.

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    Feb 04 2008
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    Uru Live to Discontinue in 60 Days

    Cyan Worlds and Gametap have just announced that they are not going to be producing a second season, and that Uru Live will be removed from the Gametap servers in 60 days. I’m going to cancel my subscription in 60 days in protest.

    Hi Everybody,

    I have some news that some of you have probably not been looking forward to. GameTap has decided to discontinue the operation of Myst Online: Uru Live.

    The decision was a very difficult one and was made for business reasons rather than due to any issues regarding the design and vision of the amazing world that Cyan Worlds and Rand Miller have brought to us. Despite the great Myst Online experience coming to a close, Cyan is still a very valued partner of GameTap, we are on excellent terms, and we look forward to continuing our relationship in the future.

    Many of you have made good friends while playing Myst Online, so here is the bittersweet part. Although Myst Online: Uru Live will be completely shut down in the near future, the game servers will remain live for the next 60 days. During that time, both newcomers and existing players can continue to experience the amazing world of Myst Online, explore the game’s many Ages, and interact with other players in the game and on the MystOnline.com website and forums. After 60 days, the title will be removed from the GameTap service, though MystOnline.com will remain live and active for fans to continue to share their passion for this important game franchise.

    I know this is not the news fans of Myst Online wanted to hear. I want to thank all of you who have been extremely supportive of the game and made this grand experiment in an alternative MMO format so much fun. All of us at GameTap also want to thank you again for your tireless enthusiasm for the title.

    There has been a clamor for information about the status of season 2 for some time, and the reason we haven’t announced anything sooner is because we have literally been examining a wide variety of possibilities for maintaining the game, but in the end, we had to bring the exploration of the great cave to a close.

    So thanks again for supporting us as we launched this truly unique game. GameTap is still committed to exploring new genres of gameplay and encouraging bold visions. If you haven’t already tried Season 2 of Sam & Max, give it a try, it is as anarchic as one could hope. And I can tell you from first hand experience that the upcoming Grimm is novel and exciting experiment as well.

    Ricardo Sanchez
    VP of Content and Creative Director for GameTap

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    Dec 19 2007
    Uncategorized

    Keyboard Issues – Fixed

    Apple released a patch yesterday entitled “Macbook Macbook Pro Software Update 1.1”, which fixes the unresponsive keyboard issues I and other people have been having, where the keyboard will simply stop responding for a minute or so. Anyone with a Macbook or Macbook Pro should probably launch Software Update and grab the patch, as well as that security update that went out a few days ago, if you haven’t gotten it already.

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    Nov 20 2007
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    How to Unify Firefox (The Simple Way)

    Firefox 3 beta 1 was released today, and it’s pretty cool. Support for animated pngs, smooth scrolling, lots of stuff. It uses native aqua form widgets (as in, check boxes and buttons and such are aqua now), and best of all, has a unified theme. It’s not built-in, though. Here’s how to install it:

    • Download this file (this is the theme)
    • Go to Tools > Add-ons
    • Go to Themes
    • Drag the file you downloaded from your desktop to the Add-on window
    • OK anything that pops up, restart Firefox
    • Go back to the theme selection window, and select ‘use this theme’ for Proto. Restart again

    And now you should have sweet, sweet, unified Firefox-y goodness:
    woot

    Oh, also: most of your plugins will probably be broken, so I strongly recommend getting the Nightly Tester Tools Plugin, which (once installed) allows you to make almost all of your disabled plugins compatible with Firefox 3.

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