For quite some time now friends have been asking me whether my novel (working title: “Project: Rosetta”) is dead. They haven’t used quite those exact words but that’s what their questions amounted to in my head.

Project:Rosetta is not dead

Now I could say that I was incredibly busy working on the tagstore project in summer, preparations for university in fall and working hard for university and the Game Jam project and therefor had no time to work on my novel. However I am not a fan of lying, especially when talking about a project that is so dear to me as Rosetta is. The simple truth is that I’ve been preoccupied with reading RSS feeds, playing games and listening to podcasts. To cut a long story short I’ve been a lazy, unproductive bum and in hindsight that makes me sad.

That’s not to say that there hasn’t been any progress at Rosetta. I’ve constantly been evaluating new ideas, modifying existing concepts that I liked in other creative works and working on a rough draft for the main story arc. I’ve also put quite some thoughts into romance - for the parts in the book, not my own.

But there’s also another little project of mine whose fate is tightly interwoven with Rosetta’s. I am building a platform for my beta readers. It will not have its focus on community or anything similar however. Its sole aim will be to automate the process of generating exactly the kind of website and reading environment for my readers that I need without the need for a database.
Maybe I should elaborate a bit on my reason for doing so.
I am comfortable, but not entirely satisfied using WordPress for my blog. At the time of this writing I’m also using a WordPress based site for the Beta reader area of Rosetta. That has a big issue: in order to update a post one has to use the web interface or access the database directly. The web interface is horrible and has me doing updates and corrections manually, which sucks. On the other hand I don’t feel comfortable enough working directly in the database. Updating any part of Rosetta this way is by far more tedious than it should be.

The Tech

The way I aim to do those task in the future is handling my markdown files locally in a git repository and having a hook do everything for me in the background automatically. That means, amongst other things, converting everything to HTML, creating the index, writing the changelog, updating the news section and uploading only changed and new files. If I am overly motivated I might even write a caching feature so that the whole thing doesn’t go haywire if I commit something while being offline.

What I have so far is snippets that I am puzzling together because I am developing the features one by one.

• FTP upload works
• Markdown to HTML conversion via Pandoc works, but does not yet have my own CSS file
• Getting the server username and password from the OS X Keychain works
• Reading the server name (and additional future configuration options) from an XML file works

This is as far as I got during two long nights trying stuff and reading quite some Python documentation.

I hope that this post explains why updates to the prose part of Rosetta have been so slow and demonstrates that I have no intention of abandoning this project.

Game Jam Graz’s organizer, Jörg Müller, on the results of the first Game Jam (German link)

I will be doing this Evade & Counter a bit differently than usual since I’m not willing to translate the entirety of Jörg’s post for you. I’ll be summing up a few key sections and comment on those. You should look at the linked article nevertheless since it has some screenshots of our work.

The teams from the idea finding phase more or less stayed the same for the final teams, since you’re obviously more motivated to contribute to a project for whose idea you’re at least partially responsible.

Not so sure. Certainly you having contributed to a project’s initial vision gives you some sense of motivation but I’m tempted to say many of the Game Jam’s participants just chose the project they found to have the best possible chance for them to contribute in their specific field of work. I’m willing to bet that’s the reason our team (‘Escape’) attracted so many sound designers.

Escape

I’ve already talked about most of our struggles at length. There’s a lot we could’ve done better and some lessons were learned. I’ll probably post my own piece with a little conclusion in some time.

Lecture Hall Games

Lecture Hall Games felt like the most feature complete project to me during the presentation. They had their work in a state which was stable enough to allow a hands-on demo. Other Game Jam participants with Android phones were able to join the multiplayer demo during the final event.
Their code is already on github and they’ve shown they are fast coders and made the right choice in technology for their project.

Pandemic Solars

I like the idea of having to prevent a solar system from the corruption that overpopulation may bring and their space simulation feeling. The graphics for their planets showed good level of detail and even though none of their devs had worked with the Unity engine before they showed considerable progress in those three days.

Pushback

On the technical side I kind of envy them for their usage of Python. Using Python and the Panda3D engine from the start may have made things go a lot easier for my team too. Unfortunately I failed to ask whether any of them had already had experience with said engine before. No offense here, but this kind of casual, competitive game bores me.

Organizational efforts

Have a short list of the entire staff:

• 14 developers
• 8 sound designers & musicians
• 6 graphic artists
• 2 writers
• 2 people on the documentary team (filming, interviewing)

Next time we’d like to use the third floor of the building instead of the second one, since no one used the computers provided by the university.

Yes, I totally agree. First, there are sofas. Nothing beats sofas. In addition to that there are no computers provided by the university at the third floor, which further lowers the possibility of other students invading our territory during the event. Furthermore everyone either brought their laptops or desktop machines. I’d say this had to be expected since it’s hard to get used to a different desktop environment, setup or even operating system and still work under time pressure. Most people brought the setup they were already familiar with and worked productively. Those that didn’t because they had no chance of getting familiar beforehand suffered - like our devs. Other devs were more flexible and showed talent in compensating the unfamiliarity.

The participants were eager to have the next Game Jam. It should already be a ‘real’ Game Jam with both a given topic and the competitive aspect. There should already be the option to sign up as teams.

Amazingly, that’s not the impression I got from the feedback at the presentation on Saturday. I think there are still people who are not sure what they are going to do if the registration is team based because that implies that you should already have found a team for the event beforehand. I’m also not sure that turning everything into a competition yields more promising results than our current model - but on the other hand I was also skeptic of that.
Nevertheless many people will be pushing themselves harder if there’s a competitive aspect. This time everyone got at least nearly enough sleep. No sleeping bags or hammocks at the event. I doubt that will stay the same if there’s heavy competition between the teams.

The next Game Jam will be October 2013 or later due to personal reasons.

We’ll see. I would be massively disappointed if there was no such event during the next term at university. Currently I’m asking around and looking for help, maybe even some ideas for workshops and lectures we may offer as well as trying to come up with possible dates for a Game Jam. I don’t like the thought that the whole idea is on hiatus because our current organizer is not available.

It will probably be a lot of work but I’m willing to look into that in order to try and enable a biyearly schedule for our Game Jam.

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RE: Jörg Müller (Game Jam Graz) on the Game Jam results is part 2 of Game Jam Graz:

1. Game Jam Graz - Day 2
2. RE: Jörg Müller (Game Jam Graz) on the Game Jam results

These monthly summary posts will now be collapsed on the home page. You will still get the full post in your feed reader. I think it’s better not to water down the quality of the front page with lists of mediocre importance.

Summary: 3 games, 12 podcasts, 1 presentation, 1 novel, 3 different mangas

Games

• The World Ends With You Solo Remix, iPad (iTunes Link)
  Is great and ridiculously expensive given that it’s not a universal binary. I have played the original version on the Nintendo DS without shelling out 45 Euro however, so I didn’t feel bad buying this game. In my opinion it’s one of those games that were able to highlight the NDS’s features and give an interesting new twist to the mobile RPG genre. The stylus-based combat was amazing on the NDS and still is on the iPad. I don’t intend to buy the iPhone version too.
• Letterpress, iOS universal
  Letterpress is the perfect time waster if you happen to like word-based puzzle games against other people. It is entirely based on iOS’s Game Center and doesn’t cost a thing. You should shell out the measly 0.80€ for the in-app purchase to unlock the word list and more simultaneous matches.
• Wizardlings, iOS universal (iTunes Link)
  Is awful. Don’t make me go there. I don’t know what the devs thought when ‘making a casual rpg’. RPGs are not about tedious clicking on each and every field of the map. RPGs are about character development (which there isn’t), about a danger from which something has to be prevented (somewhat there, only in the background though) and about the fun and interaction with NPCs and/or the environment during the game (which I couldn’t find in the whole first chapter). Also it’s ridiculously easy to mix up the two ingame currencies and the cash shop. They should not be in the same visual style. I’m all for consistency. But on a platform which let’s you go haywire for 15 minutes by default after entering your password (even for a free app) you shouldn’t do that. It reeks of disrespect for your users.

Podcasts

• The Secret Archives of The Vatican 92 - Sacred City
• The Secret Archives of The Vatican 96 - Egyptic
• The Secret Archives of The Vatican 97 - Sacred Dragon
• The Talk Show With John Gruber 18 - Instawhatsit (iTunes Link)
  I’m still not really into Gruber’s shows but I wasn’t able to let the show starring Marco Arment go by.
• Hypercritical 89 - Lazy Sunday
• Hypercritical 91 - Adolescence
• Build & Analyze 98 - It’s Part of Me Now
• Build & Analyze 99 - The Podcast
• Build & Analyze 100 - The Hostage Star
• Alternativlos 26 - Investigativer Journalismus (German)
• Alternativlos 27 - Kriegsroboter und Killerdrohnen (German)
• Coffee with an Author - Jennifer Estep. (iTunes Link)
  I’ve read several books by Jennifer Estep and was interested in her personality. Unfortunately this episode was just a filler due to the author not being able to make the date.

Presentations

• Apple Special Event, October 2012
  Live-Stream. My interest in Apple and admittedly, considerable boredom on that particular evening led me to watch the live stream of this presentation. I’m curious to see how the 13 inch Macbook Pro Retina handles itself when tackling compilation, games and video heavy applications. I am thinking about switching my 13 inch Macbook Air against a 13 inch Pro if it’s generally well liked by reviewers. However, I’m a bit sceptic about both the low resolution (even though it’s retina density, you won’t make up screenspace by doubling the pixels…) and the integrated GPU. It seems like the 15 inch Pro would suit my needs a lot better but it’s also heavier than my current machine - which is a major downside for me as I easily get backpain.
  Also iTunes 11 has been postponed until the end of this month, but that’s okay if the rewrite is good. Take all the time you need, Apple. Just release a version which is as polished as possible.

Novels

• Whispers at Moonrise - C.C. Hunter
  What’s there to say? The last but one part from the Shadow Falls series. It’s amusing, it’s fascinating, it’s entertaining. Read it if you’re into Urban Fantasy and are not scared off by not being the target audience if you’re male.

Mangas

This month was a heavy on mangas since I’ve decided to try and read some old favorites of mine. Shaman King is finished, Naruto is unfortunately ongoing and another favorite of mine, Hunter X Hunter is on hiatus. I’ve also looked into Air Gear which seemed quite nice.

• Shaman King 7-12
• Shaman King 14-20
• Shaman King 21-33 (fin)
• Air Gear 1-2
• Naruto 1-19
• Naruto 20-22

Right now it’s evening of the second day of our 2012 Game Jam at the TU Graz.

status

I’m trying to wrap my head around what’s still possible for our team in the remaining time and what’s entirely unrealistic.
Early on during the competition our team chose Manuel as team leader; a decision that I fully support, though I wish we would’ve settled on the used technology earlier in order to have everything running on each developer’s machine on day 1 or in the morning of day 2 at last.

That issue could’ve been prevented by having the registration be team based, but I’m not sure that the event as a whole had worked with that condition. I’m not confident that we have a community large enough to support that kind of team based competitions with pre-formed teams. Considering that there are multiple people who came here from Vienna in order to participate I’m rather inclined to assume that the reach of our event is large enough to draw multiple teams which know that their teamwork is great.

vision

The game that my team is trying to create is part puzzle focused exploring and part survival horror based escape from a building. The protagonist is to find an object of great emotional value in a decrepit hospital. The player explores said hospital from a first person viewpoint and has to solve multiple riddles before finding the object. Afterwards the dare turns into a dangerous escape from the haunted hospital.

We plan to achieve this vision by using our skilled team members in the best way possible. Due to the horror-based nature of our setting we immediately drew the attention of three sound designers after the initial presentation as well as one graphic artist, three programmers and a writer. As we decided on project participation based on interest Escape - our working title - was the project I settled on. I have to admit that it was my second choice, but nevertheless participated with eager interest.

progress

During the first day the programmers decided on which engine to use (OGRE), me and Lisa, my writer colleague developed the back story, setting, gameplay mechanics and level design. The sound designers jumped at the list of required effects which just kept expanding throughout the day. The same can be said for the list of required graphics and models. I have to admit it’s rather cool to wish for something and have it done professionally. Although it was never officially stated or anything like that I felt like the lead designer while Manuel was our tech lead. Status updates and miniature meetings were held to determine progress and technical possibilities.

setbacks

The decision for OGRE lasted one and a half day during which our tech team tried to get the engine to run on two different flavors of linux and one Windows install. That… didn’t go so well.

• On our Arch install the main engine was installed okay.
• On the Ubuntu install the system was outdated which required manual installation and didn’t work afterwards. We assume that this was due to graphics drivers, but obviously lacked motivation and time to properly look into that.
• While the Windows laptop after spending several hours in vain trying to fix the source to make it compile at all, struggling with CMake and finally OGRE crashing after milliseconds, the Windows part was scrapped after breaking the mindset of two developers.

In an effort to have everything ready, Manuel spent the first evening fixing everything at least for his system in order to also have a working physics engine (namely Ogrebullet), which wasn’t easy either due to a package build from the AUR which didn’t compile. (He may or may not submit a patch for that after the Game Jam.)

And after many, many hours of trying to repair everything that was shipped broken or couldn’t be configured easily the realization was inevitable. If we were to continue using OGRE we wouldn’t have a playable prototype in time for the deadline. A fallback option was quickly decided to be the Blender builtin game engine which would be relatively easy to handle while not being all that performance optimized that a real engine might be.

lookout

At the moment we’re as far as having a pretty complete plan for day 3. We’re going to have two teams working on our two levels (or rather, both sections of our single level), meaning we assign a writer, a scripter and a environment artist to each team in order to assemble our game world.

I’m of the impression that it’s quite possible to even have the full level playable (I’m not talking about bug free here) tomorrow late afternoon for the deadline. Given that both our scripters are already familiar with Python which is used for scripting in Blender progress is realistic. Both my female colleague and me will be coordinating the efforts to make the levels feel and behave right.

The disadvantage of using this method is lacking extensibility since the whole level will be assembled by hand and the whole scripting is specific to the current situation and not used from references.

conclusion

• I am amazed by the awesome work that our sound team has delivered yet. The quality of sounds as well as loops and melodies is amazing and almost nothing required changes. Those were made only to keep everything perfectly in sync with the atmosphere we are trying to create.
• Huge thanks and a shoutout to Phil, our sole graphic artist as well as modeler and environment artist, who put in an amazing amount of work in order for us to have both architectural models of the levels ready for work tomorrow.
• I am proud of the story, the concept, the gameplay mechanics and the level layout that Lisa and I came up with.
• And I am totally looking forward what our scripters will come up with tomorrow in order to make the prototype resemble our design and our ideas as closely as possible in order to maximize the output within this short time period.

After working on this draft while trying to help our team out wherever possible and helpful (except actual scripting) and suggesting solutions it’s now soon midnight. I’m looking forward to tommorow’s final sprint in our little event. I am aware that it’s not a competition but it will be amazing to have something to demonstrate. The downside is that it’s going to be extremely detrimental to the mood of the whole team if we end up having nothing to show.

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Game Jam Graz - Day 2 is part 1 of Game Jam Graz:

1. Game Jam Graz - Day 2
2. RE: Jörg Müller (Game Jam Graz) on the Game Jam results

You may have noticed a certain lack of posts during September. I was kind of occupied, spreading my attention between a little preparation for the next term at university, a lot of media consumption and working on the statistics part of the tagstore project.

Being part of the tagstore team for a short time was a completely new experience for me. Not only was I to work with real software, someone placed trust in me to finish something important on time. My contribution would make a difference. Also it was my first ‘real’ coding job.

Disclaimer: I was paid in ECTS, not in cold cash.
I was interested and although I started work quite late (since I basically had most of the summer holidays as a timeframe) everything worked out fine from my perspective. Yes, I admit that we’ve had some repercussions during the preparation phase for the field test of our software, but we should be able to make the most of the data we collected.

My contribution consisted of a rework and expansion of the Python script we use to parse tags and items from the logfiles written by tagstore. I specifically had to calculate some data and create boxplots for the results.
Furthermore I helped testing the environments using three VMs containing installations of Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. I had quite some fun with those. I’m joking, I had absolutely no fun handling the installs since my installation DVDs/ISOs were extremely outdated. Updating them took a little more than a day due to various complications (read: me being sloppy and not considering the Winfuture Update Packages (German site)).

I want to take a few moments to point out how much I hate the Windows Update approach in which updates are almost never bundled (“combo update”) and depend on each other. A lot. The result of this is that you will:

1. Click ‘check for updates’
2. Wait for them to be downloaded
3. Install
4. Reboot
5. Repeat

In my case - although I have myself to blame for only having outdated install media - the XP machine took 9 of those cycles and only started them after manually installing Service Pack 1-3, otherwise it wouldn’t even automatically download them. The 7 machine took 8 cycles. Considering how angry I was when setting up the Vista machine it’s probably for the best that I can’t remember how many cycles of that dreaded process that took.
I have hopes that Microsoft will be able to work on that using the Windows Store built into Windows 8.

In case you want to see the results of my work check out the github repository.

Games

• Guild Wars 2
  I played a whole lot more Guild Wars 2 than before since I was procrastinating a little harder.

Podcasts

Hypercritical

• Hypercritical 83 - Dishonorable
• Hypercritical 84 - Spared No Expense
• Hypercritical 85 - Just Check The Checkbox!
• Hypercritical 86 - Naked Robotic Core
• Hypercritical 87 - Smarter and Harder

Build & Analyze

• Build & Analyze 76 - Trust Me, I Know C
• Build & Analyze 84 - California Knife in Your Back
• Build & Analyze 93 - One Donkey Walking In A Circle
• Build & Analyze 94 - Everything Would Cut You
• Build & Analyze 95 - This Unicorn Doesn’t Support NFC
• Build & Analyze 96 - Sandwich With A Slot

The Incomparable

• The Incomparable 86 - Like “Catcher in the Rye,” Except Crappier
  They love the Night Circus. I love the Night Circus. Everyone loves the Night Circus.
• The Incomparable 108 - Journey: Then We Touched, Then We Sang
  Had to listen in on this one. I adore Journey. I mean, I bought the game even though I don’t have a Playstation 3 myself only to be able to play the game which I’ve tested during GamesCom 2011.

The Secret Archives of the Vatican Podcast

• Secret Archives of the Vatican 91 - Where Next
• Secret Archives of the Vatican 95 - Music for Travelers

Roundup

• The Talk Show With John Gruber 13 (iTunes Link) - Unusually Open
  I listened to this mainly due to Michael Lopp (@rands) being the guest.
• Alternativlos 25 - Cyberwar (mit Gast: FX)
  This German show is done by the wildly known Fefe and during the Cyberwar episode all three speakers had a lot of fun discussing this rather bleak topic. I laughed hard several times and couldn’t have known that it was this amusing. I will definitely check out other episodes of Alternativlos in the future.
• IRQ Conflict 43 - I Walk Through Life With A Hashtag

Let’s Plays

• Assassin’s Creed Revelations - The Lost Archives
  As expected the DLC was mostly boring, consisting only of those damned puzzle sections and a whole lot of disturbed, mind-bending un-fantasies. Also as far as I know it has a 10€ price tag and lasts about 2-3 hours which is kind of ridiculous, given that the gameplay sucks.
• Alan Wake’s American Nightmare
  I wasn’t sure what to expect from the more pulp action oriented not-sequel to Alan Wake since it seemed to have little in common with the original in terms of atmosphere. Watching the LP was fun, though not as much as a true sequel would’ve been. This is more of a ‘what happens in between’ thing than a continuation of Alan Wake’s story.
  That being said I think that time loops make for cheap recycling of assets - a fact that the devs have worked around by making variations and giving the option to skip certain things by being able to know what will be important. Also, mind the radio shows. There’s one episode that’s quite scary which gave me slight chills all the while making me grin in that certain silly way. Too bad I can’t remember whether I found Barry to be as annoying in the original game.
• Radiant Historia
  I had played this game before, it has some great ideas but the amount of required backtracking and replaying of things due to its time traveling and time altering concepts gets bothersome quickly. I was grateful to see a well done let’s play on this and enjoyed it a lot - since I quit playing about a third into the story. Besides that I used this as a test for mobile Safari’s offline reading list feature in order to read on the train. It worked superbly well.

Videos

• How to Airbnb
• TED: Everything is a Remix
• Quiet - the power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking
• Apple Special Event, September 2012 (iTunes Link)
  I’ll not be buying an iPhone 5.
• Youtube
  Spent an evening watching those Mass Effect 3 story branches I’ll not see ingame. Like seeing Ashley surviving Mass Effect 1.

Novels

• The Office of Shadow by Matthew Sturges

Comics & Manga

• Shaman King 0, chapters 1-5
• Shaman King, chapters 1-53

Summary: 1 game, 18 podcasts, 3 let’s plays, 1 keynote, 1 novel

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Sidenotes

I came across an album by the London Philharmonic Orchestra performing pieces from video game history. It’s incredibly good. I’ve bought several tracks from it and I’m eagerly looking forward to the release of the second album on Nov 6th 2012.

Games

• Command & Conquer: Kane’s Wrath
• Mass Effect 3: Multiplayer
  This month I took part in Operation OLYMPUS. It might be the last ME3 operation I participate in due to my Xbox Live subscription running out and me losing interest in ME3’s Multiplayer which is the only thing I got the subscription for in the first place.
• Mass Effect 2
  My run of ME2 is finally done and I’ll keep posting to the mailbox as long as it takes to wrap up the game. I also plan to release this as a free e-book after the project is finished.
• Fallout 3
  I gave F3 another chance of entertaining me. While I did some exploring and saved hostages-soon-to-be-dinner-for-mutants it failed to provide more than an hour of fun again. Maybe I’ll come back another time but I’d say I probably won’t.
• Spellforce 1
  As Fallout failed to entertain me I turned to Spellforce 1 because I feel that this is one of the games where one is able to sink a great amount of time into without the feeling of wasting time but on the other hand it’s not giving you a feeling of progress if you stay on one map. Sadly I somehow did something bad in the preferences and now it won’t start.
• Dungeons of Dredmor
  While visiting a friend I came across DoD another time. I still consider the game a very good purchase given its low price and the time I’ve happily spent playing it so far. Recently I upgraded my game with the You Have To Name The Expansion Pack, the Realms of the Diggle Gods and the Conquest of the Wizardlands add-ons.
• Guild Wars 2
  After initially lending my GW2 account to a friend I played some time during the headstart period that pre-purchase customers were able to enjoy.

Podcasts

Since IRQ Conflict does not have separate pages for their episodes I’ll point you to their website where you’re able to subscribe via RSS or iTunes. Or Zune. Not that anyone knows what that actually is.

• IRQ Conflict 39 - 7% Of An Ice Cream Sandwich
• IRQ Conflict 40 - Moses Burger
• IRQ Conflict 41 - Someone Hire Justin

Once I was listening to Build & Analyze I was pointed towards Hypercritical, another heavily Apple focused podcast on the 5by5 network. I’ve immensely enjoyed reading John Siracusa’s review of OS X Mountain Lion last month and listening to Hypercritical is equally inspiring and in a way enlightening.

• Build & Analyze 89 - Giant Mushy Boat
• Build & Analyze 90 - This Person Isn’t Really Here
• Build & Analyze 91 - Quadrants
• Build & Analyze 92 - The Risk Of Broken Promises
• Hypercritical 78 - Sins of the Father
• Hypercritical 79 - Grandpa Uncle Joe (“Kindacritical #2”)
• Hypercritical 80 - Memory Palace
• Hypercritical 81 - Channels of Control
• Hypercritical 82 - The Opposite of Comprehensive

Other than that I sat down and listened to a special podcast: The Game Informer Skyrim special which must have been lingering in ~/Downloads forever.

• Game Informer Special: Skyrim (Feb 2011)
• The Talk Show with John Gruber 13 - Down to the Mac Nerd Guys (iTunes link)

Novels

I got the chance to work a bit on my backlog which includes several books that Amazon gave away during their 2012 Easter promotion as well as some other vampire-themed promotion. I wasn’t entirely happy with the free books all being German, but read them nevertheless. With free books it’s basically a hit-or-miss thing, I think. Given that the result was okay, but not great.

• Eva Almstädt: Grablichter, ein Pia-Korittki Fall
  A murder story in which fascinatingly nothing was thrilling. I’m not sure what the argument to read this is given that the most interesting part of those stories are either the ‘detecting’ or the ‘being close on their tracks’ parts. Neither of those managed to drive away the boredom of the rural location the novel took place in. - MISS
• Matthias P. Gibert: Zeitbombe - Lenz’ Achter Fall
  The second murder story. This one was clearly better, although that might be my bias towards urban settings for that kind of story. My favorite part is the dialog which is often written in a very sarcastic way - I truly enjoyed that even when the topics were serious. - HIT
• Klaus Erfmeyer: Todeserklärung
  This murder story was a bit different than expected since it was shown from a lawyer’s point of view instead of an investigator. I was amazed that even the personal touches in the story didn’t bore me. - HIT
• Charlotte Schaefer: Cedars Hollow
  Ugh… I should’ve looked at the cover more closely. The heart might’ve signaled what I didn’t realize when obtaining this book: It was a kitschy girl-meets-vampire romance; I had to force myself to keep on reading through the more boring sections and found myself rolling eyes on so many occasions that my optometrist might’ve worried. - MISS
  Also I’m not sure whether my mind was a little absent or if this book’s formatting is really messed up and not all paragraphs have a font of equal font size. Which. was. distracting. as. fuck.

When I was not particularly interested or engaged in the content of one of the novels I tended to scribble in the Kindle notes section. Most of those notes were predictions of how I thought the story might proceed according the the things I’ve read so far. I tried to figure out what was misdirection and what was indeed lampshading.

Videos

• Merlin Mann - Scared Shitless (Webstock 2011)
  A largely inspirational talk by Merlin Mann who also has a show on 5by5. He explains how it’s important to overcome one’s fear in all the daily situations.

Summary: 7 games, 4 novels, 1 presentation, 14 podcasts

Molleindustria about Gatekeeper and the rise of the Total Apple Consumer:

The user contacts me asking for an explanation I can’t quite provide. The same file (a downloadable version of Phone Story) works perfectly on my machine, also a Mac. It turns out the “file damaged” message is produced by Gatekeeper, an anti-malware feature of the new OSX Mountain Lion, which I haven’t bothered to install yet. Gatekeeper, by default, blocks every application that is not coming from the official Mac App store or from certified Apple developers.

Yes and no. I’ve had that message too but contrary to what the article makes you believe this is not the standard dialog you get when Gatekeeper finds something that doesn’t fit its current setting.
Also its overstating the ‘certified Apple developer’ thing as this is really as easy as getting a free Apple developer account as far as I know. Not quite, actually, you’re required to have a possibly expensive software certificate. I admit that’s quite a hurdle.

The risks of relying on one all-encompassing system (such as having your account hijacked) are negligible in comparison to a perfectly efficient, streamlined digital life.

This is a gross misrepresentation of what happened in Mat Honan’s case in which issues in customer service on both Amazon’s and Apple’s sides as well as e-mail accounts chained together led to this spectacular hacking story. To get a complete view you should really read Honan’s piece for Wired on that.

In the process of reshaping our relation with computing machines, Apple also had to exert control on computing language. For example: the concept of “synching devices” replaced the more intuitive and technically precise expression “copying files”. This brilliant semiotic move inscribes the notion of artificial scarcity into our daily interactions.
Synching obscures the very fact that you are copying files around. The idea that digital information can be freely duplicated and shared is dangerous – a gateway to piracy.

That is not the case. Apple is trying to simplify usage of computation devices so that things a great amount of people have trouble comprehending - for example the file system hierarchy and where stuff is supposed to go - don’t have to be shown to the user anymore in order for them to get their work done. It’s not obscuring things, it’s simplifying unneeded complexity for the consumer. It’s making sure your data is on each of your devices and you not having to worry where your stuff is and how to make sure you don’t have duplicates and which folder to put data in order for applications to recognize them.

Referring to applications as “apps” is not just a branding technique but a necessary linguistic reduction to conceptualize a lesser type of application. A little piece of software that sits in its little sandbox and doesn’t try to compete with the overarching platform.

I’d argue it’s more a part of the ‘one thing well’ mentality.

We will reject Apps for any content or behavior that we believe is over the line. What line, you ask? Well, as a Supreme Court Justice once said, “I’ll know it when I see it”. And we think that you will also know it when you cross it.

This is of course bullshit and it’s perfectly fine to be pointed out. Such overarchingly broad and unnecessarily subjective terms are ridiculous and one of the worst things about Apple’s policies.

Designating all the applications that are not Apple-approved as “damaged files” to be trashed is an even bolder linguistic intervention.

Again, this is simply not true. I’m not entirely sure when the pictured dialog pops up but have included the standard dialog for reference.

If you sell through the Mac App store, paying a yearly fee and 30% of the revenues for this privilege, you are on the list.

Or you simply registered your free developer ID. It’s that simple. Also you’re not completely blocked. Your application may still run as long as you simply tell the customer to right-click and select ‘open’. Before you turn on your flame-thrower be assured that this has to be done only once per app and only for files that have not been on this computer previously and are downloaded from the internet.

A complementary approach could involve educating users to recognize suspicious files – which unfortunately it’s at odds with Apple’s tendency to strategically obfuscate the internal structure of their systems.

I’d argue that even existing users often have trouble handling files and dangers. I know for a fact that there is an insane amount of people out there working with computers daily and having absolutely no clue about what dangers there are. Is it better to try to educate them about details they neither need for their jobs nor - in many cases - want to know or to try to implement system-enforced policies that prevent abuse? I admit I’m conflicted about that.

The message to developers is clear: if you make software for Mac you’d better look into this whole Mac Store thing, or you may suddenly be cut off.

I suggest you look into Marco Arment’s article about the current state of the App Store. It’s rather pessimistic and this man is an Apple advocate as much as a reasonable person can be.

But many computer users can’t even tell the difference between a browser and a search engine. They certainly aren’t going to mess with their System Preferences to make their computers “less safe”.

That’s correct. It’s your job as developer to code-sign your application. Alternatively you can still provide them with the information about right-clicking. But honestly, adapting to the platform you’re trying to be competetive on is probably a good idea.

The challenge was to make these machines available to everybody and promote a new kind of literacy.

I guess that’s not happening with the popularity of iPads, e-Readers and other things that enable people to read whereever they are. Point taken.

Twitter is ramping up its crusade against integration of its services for purposes not solely relying on displaying tweets, namely such ideas as using your Twitter account to find friends on other platforms.

The first service to have its access revoked was Instagram, although one could have argued that this decision was made to retaliate for Instagram’s acquisition by Facebook. It’s not that easy to put the revokation of Tumblr‘s API access for finding friends into perspective other than Twitter not being interested in having other companies drawing value from their service. Twitter is only interested in having users and services adding content to their platform.

However, I think that in combination with the recent success of App.net there’ll be a significant backlash from developers. Screwing the guys who build the tech to access and/or improve your content is not the best idea. They might simply focus on another service and that’s probably what’s going to happen as there’s already considerable traction amongst tech early adopters to the pay-for-social-network model that App.net wants to deliver.

The trend towards driving off developers is going on however, since especially the case of Tumblr strikes one as particularly unthankful of Twitter given that Tumblr was amongst the major partners to implement Twitter cards. Instapaper creator Marco Arment announced a probable removal of all Twitter features from Instapaper in case his API access is revoked (The usage of iOS’s systemwide Twitter integration is still in consideration).

If this will lead towards an ecosystem where the first party Twitter app and the website are the only way to get information from Twitter will be seen. As much as this prediction sounds like a dystopian future, it only takes one look at the 1.1 changes for the Twitter API to understand Twitter wants traditional third party clients to go away; the sooner the better. They even said so themselves, back in 2011.

Lost Horizon is an adventure game published by Deep Silver which I came across when looking for new information on the upcoming Secret Files 3. Since I loved both Secret Files: Tunguska and Secret Files: Puritas Cordis for their quirky humor which happened to fit my taste perfectly I was interested the moment I saw that Lost Horizon was going to be released on STEAM. I added it to my wish list and almost immediately forgot it. It wasn’t until I received the game as a gift that I started thinking about it again. In an attempt to summarize my extensive notes I present you: Lost Horizon.

The experiences I made

During the prologue the character I controlled teleported himself away to an unknown destination. This is as essential to the game as it gets as well as a first impression of what to expect from Lost Horizon. There will be mystery. Sometimes it will be hard work to keep up your suspension of disbelief. Also, I was wondering how I ended up playing a game that has Nazis in it, since I usually balk at each game containing WW II references.

In the beginning the game tries to guilt-trip you into saving lost soldiers. You have no idea why you should care about them until it says that you are also saving a friend of Fenton Paddock - the male lead. It seems like he is dragging around a great amount of baggage from ‘earlier times’; too bad this influences Fenton’s choices so little during the whole term of the game.

The manipulation of the Olympic Games later in the game is a great idea, because many people know about the Olympic Games held during that era in Berlin and due to a funny coincidence I happen to write this while the 2012 Olympic Games are in progress.

The scene in Berlin has great flow due to the lead first succeeding and then telling another character what happened and having the player figure out the details of what happened in the interim.

In the end it’s very obvious that the female lead is alive since:

• The fortune-teller in Marrakesh hints at this
• the Nazis had no leverage against Fenton who is the only one who can open the portal after having used the Eye of the Dragon. ³

Which is one of the reasons that the governor’s betrayal works. The other is that it will be seen as very romantic by a lot of players while the rest will either not care or receive condemning the world in favor of a single individual - his son - pathetic. I’ll leave my opinion on this to your speculation.

There’s one thing in particular that strikes me as completely horrible in terms of respect towards the player: While the player had to endure a complete dump of science earlier which was up to date in the time period the game played now he is told to just ignore all logical and illogical explanation. As an illusion of Richard, who is trapped in the past, appears in the present Fenton - as well as the player - is asked not to think about how this is possible, since ‘it’s a magical place’. Ah, okay, so you want to tell me that a wizard did it. Fine.

Overall the game shows a certain disrespect towards the player since Richard and Fenton have this lengthy conversation spanning several minutes in which the player is supposed to not do anything besides listening. After that Fenton feels the need for a monologue to sum up the things that we were just told in case the player tuned out during the conversation. Hint: He is not going to like the monologue either if he already drifted off during the conversation.

I have no idea what made the writers decide that Fenton has to get the girl in the end. They mostly quarrel and argue through most of the game and even though, yes, they experience a lot together and managed to achieve a lot, they are still not lovers. Not from any reasonable perspective. This feels like it’s totally tacked on to the main story and feels like an afterthought. It’s embarrassingly bad.

The thoughts I had

The first conversation puzzle was pure guesswork based on no reason whatsoever. One could argue that being aggressive is rewarded, but I’m not sure about that. To make up for that the player’s choice in the next dialog doesn’t matter at all.

Sometimes, like on the airfield, it’s not properly established how big the scene really is. What pieces of the set one may run around in and what one is permitted to explore. The airfield stands out here because it’s not until I was specifically told to go the Fenton’s office that I realized the airfield scene being larger than what I had expected.

On some other occasions there are many clickable exits from scenes which are permanently blocked by the plot. E.g.: You are never going to see the train station in Marrakesh. This only serves to confuse the player. If it doesn’t add to the game in some meaningful way it shouldn’t be there. I’m willing to make exceptions to that rule for Easter Eggs.

There are two puzzles for which you may opt-in to the higher difficulty. I did that on both. One was a real challenge, the other one I solved in a few minutes by guesswork. I don’t think that’s supposed to work out like it did for me.

The things I saw

Judging by the mouse icon Lost Horizon and given that it’s from the same developers as Secret Files, it uses the same engine (or an upgraded version of that engine). The characters, however are not nice to look at, I’d even go as far as saying they were ugly even in their time. Oh, wait the game was released in 2010. In that case: the character models are horribly outdated and a pain to look at.

The FMVs are an especially bad case. Leaving them out would’ve improved the game by lengths. The worst example of this is the ‘dragon sequence’ at the end of the game: It’s not only sub-par compared to modern standards, it’s repeated three times after the initial view (though mirrored for two of them). It could have been more impressive if it was used one time and mirrored one time or preferably extended a few scenes and not reused at all. The cinematic experience would be greater and most importantly the player would not be exposed to what might be budget constraints or points of low priority in the development process.

On the positive side I adore the beautiful animations of the map when traveling between the game’s many locations all over the world.

The sounds I heard

I admit not paying much attention to the music. But I’m fairly sure the ‘sad theme’ is reused from the Secret Files franchise and I’m not okay with that considering Lost Horizon isn’t part of said franchise.

I think it’s a nice and very thoughtful touch that the engine sound is louder or quieter depending on the viewpoint from which the conversation on the plane is currently shown. I wish every game was as detail-oriented in its sound design.

The places I visited

• Hong Kong
• Khembalung valley, TIBET (a fictional place ²)
• Marrakesh, MOROCCO
• Berlin, GERMANY
• Castle of Wewelsburg, GERMANY
• a little village, INDIA
• Shambhala (a mythical kingdom in Buddhism)

The feelings I had

Fenton Paddock is an incompetent idiot.

He demonstrates several suicidal tendencies and is generally not really sensible. I have several examples of stupid behavior for your amusement:
After nearly being murdered by Triads he goes directly to his home instead of hiding. He needs a sheet of paper to remember his safe’s combination, ‘12345’ according to the item’s thumbnail. In Marrakesh he sells a valuable ring made with gold for an incredible small amount of money. While entering the enemies’ fortress he takes item the enemy wants with thim without any indication that it might be needed there. He claims to be a former scout in the army but doesn’t realize that using binoculars in enemy territory is dangerous due to the reflection of the lenses which might give away their location.

Besides, he insults a cat and that makes me dislike him. A lot.

As if to counter Fenton’s inadequacy the female lead is somehow either a sage or miraculously gifted when it comes to deciphering ancient texts. She is the only one able to read the secret code language she and her father came up with and instantly knows how to translate ancient stone tablets just using some notes her father had thrown together.

This game is about peaceful solutions. I am not.

I wasn’t very happy during the sequence in which you’re helping a little kid who is holding Fenton’s wallet hostage. In my head I threw the kid into the water ¹ and walked away with the wallet. Not one moment was I inclined to help someone extorting my cooperation.

So the Nazi who has been torturing an allied soldier is unconscious after being knocked down by the explosion. He’s still alive. Fortunately we have this saw blade to change that. Unfortunately, that’s not how Lost Horizon wants to handle this.

Two planks and white powder. What could that be? Drugs? Phosphorus?

Frustratingly it’s not possible to feed the goat to the man-eater, whoops, pardon the pun. Wrong man-eater, I meant the tiger in India. Neither is it possible to feed the goat to the shark. Nor the tiger to the shark. After being disappointed the first time I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up.

I also quite liked the train of thought where we waited for the Nazis to tap into the stream and kill each other due to its effects, but unfortunately that’s not an option for the game.

Every adventure needs MacGuyverism.

Lost Horizon features some of my favorite homemade weaponry, like DIY Rocket Launchers and DIY AntiAir Pumpkin Bombs; which are awesome. Also, we get duct tape, so you know from the start that everything is going to be alright. It’s common knowledge you can fix everything with duct tape.

There’s some research in this.

It’s fascinating how you come across certain historical persons again and again while playing video games. Assassin’s Creed and Lost Horizon feature Piri Reis. Assassin’s Creed and Secret Files 3 feature Leonardo da Vinci.

So it seems morphogenetic fields are not just pseudo-science. I’m afraid that didn’t stop me from tuning out during Fenton’s lengthy monologues when finding the Thule society’s notes on that subject.