iPod touch as a gaming machine

I read this article earlier today, and I’ve heard the same thing said before, so I thought I’d comment on it, and see what your thoughts are as well.

Apple really seems to be throwing down at both Nintendo and Sony with regards to the iPod touch as a gaming platform. Why? And why not iPhone?

I believe they aren’t so much marketing iPhone as a gaming platform because of battery life. If you’re intended (as per the marketing) to play a bunch of games on your iPhone, you probably won’t have much juice left for calls. So right now it’s only iPod touch marketed for games.

Is this a possibility? I’m not very confident the iPod will ever entirely dethrone the DS — there are about 85 million DS consoles around the world right now. That’s a huge hurdle, and while the iPod touch will likely be incredibly successful, it’s hard to judge who buys it with games in mind and who doesn’t.

The other hurdle for iPod touch are the controls. There are no physical buttons which can be used for game controls on the device. Instead you have the touchscreen and the accelerometer. Using the device’s [arguably] flagship game as an example, Super Monkey Ball, it uses touch for menus, and the accelerometer for controlling your character. And it’s really, really difficult. Most other games which use the “tilt-to-move” paradigm are also pretty difficult to control. I think these issues will eventually be resolved as time goes by. Developers will learn the system better and develop more controllable games. But currently controls are a little difficult.

The absence of buttons is seen as a deficiency for a gaming device (as in “it sucks because you don’t have buttons and you can’t do X without buttons”), but I think it’s more of a paradigm thing, again. Given time, developers will come up with novel ways of controlling the games. This is a strength of iPod touch in the gaming sense. No, it’s not going to be the same as A, B, and a D-pad, but that’s getting pretty stale anyway. The device also has WiFi, a microphone, and is location aware. Those are three more new inputs to play around with. So I think it’s only a matter of time before we start seeing more novel games appear which will start to threaten Sony and Nintendo.

But here’s where Apple really has the advantage: the App Store. I honestly can’t believe neither Nintendo nor (especially) Sony hasn’t done something like this already. The App Store is where you get your iPod touch apps (or Games in this case). Apps typically cost between $0-$10 as opposed to $30 on the other consoles. But more importantly, there are no cartridges or discs to worry about. If you lose your game, you just download it again. One game can go on all of your iPods. They are backed up in iTunes. You can download them wherever you have internet access. Are you getting this Sony? Nintendo? This is where Apple has the potential to dominate.

It will be interesting to see where this goes in the coming years. As an aside, I fully believe Apple will eventually move all of their iPods to the iPhone OS (with touchscreen, accelerometer, etc). When they do this (nano touch, anyone?), they will really shine.

I Usually Stay Outta This…

…but words escape me.

Meant for twitter

Steve probably isn’t going to vote because: John McCain is a loser and Barack Obama is stealing his “thin is in” look.

Great debates! Tabs

I’d like to talk about a growing trend which has been displeasing me lately: Tabs. They’re everywhere! Well, maybe not everywhere. Really the kinds of tabs I want to talk about are the ones made common by web browsers like Firefox or Safari, etc. but which are also showing up in apps like Photoshop and other non-browser apps.

Now, I’m not talking so much about say, a Settings window for an app, where different settings are on different tabs, grouped by relevance. Grouping functions of an application together on a tab is not what my gripe is about. That seems fairly appropriate to me. My gripe is with grouping documents into tabs.

So let’s move on with the classic example: the modern web-browser. You can click a link and have it open (optionally) in a new tab (there are other ways of creating tabs but I’m sure we all know them, and it’s really unimportant here). This typically reveals a tab bar, with small rectangles titled for each tab you have open, also bearing a small icon for dismissing the tab. Most modern tab bar implementations allow you to re-order the tabs and also expand them into full windows (otherwise the tab acts as a child to its window). When a tab is selected in the window, it is the sole document the user may view in that window. This is the basic idea of tabs which I’m sure we’re all familiar with.

Here’s my problem with tabs: Let’s say I’ve got Safari open, one window containing 5 tabs. I want to switch from my email tab to my news tab. I’ll just use alt/cmd-tab to switch to new. Ironically, this functionality is busted because I’m using tabs. Also, things like Exposé on the Mac (and I’m sure Compiz on Linux) are broken when it comes to tabs because, they deal with windows and not tabs.

Let’s take a breather here. Yep, most every tab implementation I’ve seen has a keyboard shortcut for switching between tabs. Sadly, these are all different shortcuts most of the time. And even if they are the same in different apps, it’s still not the cmd/alt-tab we’re so accustomed to. And hey, Firefox is pretty extensible, so maybe there is a hack to get it to co-operate with alt-tab, but that only solves the problem for Firefox, not all tab apps.

If you don’t use a keyboard, you’ve now got to hit those ridiculously small rectangles in the tab bar. Let me explain ridiculously small, I’m comparing the target size of the tabs to the target size of entire windows (which, as you may remember, is what we had before tabs). So I’m saying, if I have three windows onscreen at once (tiled in some manner, not full screen), each one of those windows is orders of magnitude easier to hit (and therefor switch to) with a mouse than is a tab.

I don’t think tabs are all bad. I think the real problem lies in the paradigm associated with them. The general paradigm seems to be something like “My browser is fullscreen and I have 3 tabs open, one for every task I’m currently focusing on”. However, if you work more like “I have 3 windows open, one for each task with tabs briefly opened in each window when it is appropriate” then it’s much easier (as I’ve explained) to switch between them. I’m not saying “do away with tabs altogether”, but I am saying tabs should should only be used temporarily, and only when relevant to that window’s task.

It often happens one of my tasks is researching a certain topic. Given my paradigm for browsing, I’ve got a window open with Wikipedia and one with Google Docs. As I read wikipedia, I’ll sometimes open a new tab to read on a related subject, close it, and then switch to my Google Docs window to write something about my topic. The different areas of focus stay separate and tabs are only used briefly, like an extra buffer or scratchpad for any given task.

I’m interested to hear your thoughts on this one, because I know tabbed applications like browsers are one place we all spend a lot of time.

The lines — read between them.

http://devver.net/blog/2008/08/looking-for-your-first-cs-job-be-sure-to-own-your-ideas/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYecfV3ubP8

I just blew my f***ing mind.

So I’m sitting in my bed, it’s nearly 2am, I’m playing Super Monkey Ball on an iPod touch, and I’m talking to Q online. My room is dim, lit only by a sole lamp on my nightstand. Something catches my eye — it’s a FUCKING BAT flying around my room. A bat! A BAT.

I jump out of my headphones, toss the laptop, and bolt the hell out of my room. There’s a fucking BAT in my room. Catch my breath…WHAT IN THE HELL?? I guess at some point during this commotion I screamed something about a bat being in my room, cause I could hear my roommates talking about it, worrying about a possible bat in their room.

How did a bat get in my room? How long had it been there? And what it God’s sweet name was I going to do about it? Ughhhh, there was a BAT IN MY ROOM. Closed my door, obviously, so it couldn’t fly around the rest of the house. Thank God I have a back door in my room which leads to outside. So I went outside, around back, into the dark, down my damp dark steps, and kicked open my door.. It started flying around again which quite frankly scared the bejesus out of me. And then he stopped. I thought maybe it had flown out, but it looked more like it had flown into my closet. Eventually I re-enter with a broom, still quite convinced there is a FUCKING BAT IN MY ROOM, and I pin the back door open.

Sure enough, out pops he, and begins to swoop around my room, over and over, door still ajar. He flies close to the door, but doubles back. He does this many, many more times. Just keeps flying around, trying to land. Eventually he briefly lands on my ceiling, but again starts flying more. Meanwhile here am I, crouched on my floor, holding a broom, and dodging a FUCKING BAT. And the only thing I can think of is Batman (which interestingly enough I had just been reading about moments prior), and how Bruce Wayne calmed himself with the thought the bat is more afraid of him than he is of it. So I kind of relaxed and let the bat fly around me a little bit.

Finally it flew out of my open door and into the night…

Sorry for the cussing, but it was by far the most intense thing that’s happened to me since… EVER.

Video Games Live: The concert that could, and still can. :-)

Next week in San Diego, I will be in attendance at a concert that I have once attended with Biohazard in Hollywood, known as Video Games Live. The beauty of the concert is that they spare no expense in bringing in game themes (old and new console and even computer!) and playing them in orchestrated awesomeness.

The last time I was there, I went to the pre-show festival and observed game tournaments for not yet released games were being held (Can’t remember which one for sure, I think it was guitar hero series, though.) and lots of merchandise was being sold. moving right along, autographs were signed (I had no idea who most of them were until I read their name badges and job description. Then it would hit me who they were and, boy, I was impressed.) and, After a long line, my book was ran out of autograph space, so… off to be seated! Highlights of the evening were B.T., An arcade tribute medley, and a Lucas Games medley of their classic DOS games, along with a lot of great console game music and the announcement of HALO 3.

At this upcoming concert, it will be held two days after the release of VGL’s first soundtrack cd, so that will likely be there (with the Myst and Tetris goodness included.) along with more pre-show awesomeness. I can hardly wait, and if you need me, I’ll be in the champaign seating drinking wine and will be on DS PictoChat.

To good times and drunken PictoChat. (Wave)

Shadow

SVN or git?

I’m starting a new project, and while it’s not very complex (ie I likely don’t need to use anything really special), I’d like to use a version control system. Right now, I know very little about how to use them. But I know at some point in my career (and likely soon!) I will need to know how to use such a tool to its fullest extent.

I’m going to go out of my way and assume most of you will say SVN because it’s what you know already, and that’s fine, too. Git is relatively knew and not fully understood, I think, but it’s becoming incredibly popular and I’ve heard great things about it.

So which is it?

Upgrading to 2.6 Friday

Hello all, the blog will be down for part of tomorrow (Friday, July 18th, 2008) for about a half an hour while I upgrade to the new version of wordpress. I’ll be opening registrations again after that.

I am… Revived…

Well, more like startled into the waking world by my stupid phone, but I’m not going there. Where I will go, however, is somewhere that is slightly old and new at the same time, and something that should have been thought of sooner.

I have to admit, the second link, while not perfect, is an awesome concept, especially when you think of MS, Sony, or Nintendo and their anti-user gaming policies (Heck, I didn’t even know I had to agree to an EULA, just to use a Nintendo Wii, internet or not!). Also, while not on the site as best as I can tell, Google searches reveal that Good Old Games is trying to negotiate the right to distribute Lucas Arts’ old games including the Monkey Island series, Grim Fandano, X-Wing, and TIE Fighter, just to name a few. (Are you reading this, Biohazard?)

The first link is my favorite game (Chrono Trigger) being brought back in all its glory, except now I can play it in the car (without a clunky SNES, miniature TV, inverter and related accessories.) and it is an awesome game in general. I’m quite excited that it is coming back, and have high hopes (even though those will probably die when it’s done) about this game.

Later!