Time for some more ranting; Call of Duty is one of the biggest first person shooter franchises on the planet; It gives Activision the rights to print money. Since the release of the first Modern Warfare, they have not released a Call of Duty title without it topping sale charts and going to the top of the most played online titles for months if not till the next title hits shelves! I have no problem with the games, they give what you want. Mindless violence, pretty graphics and a place to finally fulfil that need to kill… I mean play with your friends…
But with multiplayer competition, comes the need to review stats! Not just scores but accuracy, weapon load outs, team layouts, locations of death on a map to map bases, there are so many things you can look at to try and improve your skills/game. But that is a lot of data to calculate and display, which costs time and data storage. To make it easy Activision came up with the Elite site and Apps to allow you to view this information. It’s really simple to use, you just sign up, link your accounts and away you go. But they couldn’t stop at that, no. They decided they could make money from this so they held back content and made premium content that only the “Elite” can get. The price, $49.99 a year! Now, I have no problem with paying for something useful but for stuff that could be free, I have a problem.
When I look at stuff like this, I look at Bungie and Halo and their way of handling this kind of data. Everyone who has a Bungie account can view their stats for their Halo 2, Halo 3 and Halo Reach stats… For Free! Nothing is held back, everything is free. And what’s more, they are evolving it to integrate Halo Waypoint and 343 Industries is taking over the data for Halo 4! They are even bringing out a GPS app for your phone so you can use it as a mini-map for in game tracking. Nuts and all but still… IT’S FREE!! And what’s more, it works. I will say they have server problem on release of titles due to overload, but within days, it evens out and runs smoothly. It’s been three weeks and Call of Duty Elite could barely load the front page! And people are paying for it!!
Am I just the only one to think that making money is over taking the need to be useful and/or fun!
Funny, I was having an email conversation last week with an old “colleague” about some old projects we use to be a part of. Now, like allot of projects with lots of people in different countries, time zones and jobs, it failed and we moved on to other things. However, what we learn from these projects is always useful for the next one. But, keeping a backup of this files or memories is very important. Now I am a whore for knowledge and I hoard backups of any file I get my hands on. I keep every file that’s uploaded to my server and only delete files that have become truly useless (notes for instance).
But, it also made me think about all the old files, images or websites that are left around on the net, forgotten or abandoned, for a number of the reason. Either the uploader is no longer about or no longer has need for them. I cannot come to calculate how much wasted storage is used to keep theses file online. What’s even worse is the fact; I am a contributor of this junk too. I have committed Littering… online!!
I worked it out; I have:
Four MySpace Accounts
Three Freewebs Accounts
Eight Forum Ids
Three Instant Messenger
Two Free Forums
Uncountable number of Uploaded photos/images
All dead, inaccessible and unused; Undeletable and unable to be disabled due to the facts either the system cannot delete accounts or the email account they are attached to, is no longer in my control, there by stopping me from verifying the deletions. It just seems such a waste.
I can only hope that when we finally start to inhabit space, we don’t leave as much junk lying around as we do in virtual space.
Okay, so been playing Bulletstorm and I thought I’d better say somthing about it. So far Im coming to the end of Act 1 which can be run within an hour and half, max two hours. Off the bat, you know this is a P*** Take of Gears of War, in SPACE!
Theres no denying it, its from Epic! Its made in the Unreal Engine! It looks like Gears, but the characters are Pirates…IN SAPCE.
SPOILERS… sorry forgot to say that!
I wont get into the story/plot as its pointless for the game. Simply grab a gun and get some crazy kills for mad score. The point mechinic and scoring is a nice feature and can make for some interesting game-play. Instead of trying to kill quickly and efficiently, you instead spend time trying to come up with the most over-the-top, gore-tastic way to get that top score. And that is fun, don’t get me wrong but I’m a hour in and thats starting to get old for me already! Hopefully the drive to win will kick in soon! The controls also seem sugglish too, maybe its the way I’m playing or its to help with the aiming I don’t know but its really bugs me. It hampers my normal twitch instincts I have from too many hours in Halo!
I better talk about what’s got some press and the parents screaming murder! It does have allot of profanity and needless violence but come on, We need some pointless fun now and then! “But Joe, Killing people isn’t fun!” HEY, Random guy/gal who is telling me something stupid, theses are not people, they are packets of data. Data the shape of messed up freaks who need to be de-rezzed! As for the language, it is indeed over the top but I have always been of the mind that there’s no such thing as bad words, only bad intent! And I find no bad intent in the use in this game. So everyone should get off there high horse and just enjoy it for what it is, harmless and pointless!
Now of course, I’ve only played up to the end of Act 1 and there is “Hopefully” more to go. I better get back to “Punching more Dicks”!!
Let’s see how long it takes me to fall in to my own trap! Okay, so this week I have been working on a few sites designed for mobile devices when it finally hit me in the face, much my desk seconds later, what was the point! I understand if you have a site, you should be able to view it on any device possible but there so many limitations when it comes to mobile devices it seems hardly worth using the device to surf the web. But if you think about it, what sites need to have mobile versions? What is so important on your site that people MUST be able to view it when they are out and about? News and information I understand, so that’s news websites and Wikipedia that should have mobile versions. What else? Social media? Twitter and Facebook, CHECK! Anything else? Blogs, okay fair enough but what about personal site and portfolios? Not really. Game sites don’t work, which I will go into later.
Other then content, let’s have a rundown of some of the limitations. Resolution aka screen size is a huge problem. If you’re using an iPhone (which it’s a pretty good chance at the moment) your screen is 320pixels wide. That is not very big, what size font can you read on that! Also, this is not the smallest resolution you have to be content with. So you can make your site fit any size using percentage changes but it sure does crap your style with fonts and buttons. Now let’s talk about images. Not all mobile devices support the web standards when it comes image formats. Almost all of them support gif and jpeg’s but only a few supports PNG. Why is this? Almost every site has switched to PNG formats to increase quality without blowing the file size.
Ah there’s the next kick in the teeth when it comes to mobile site, file sizes. How much bandwidth does your site in fact cost to view it? ALL the networks limit the amount of data you can use when surfing the net on your device. This is why mobile sites came to be in the first place, people were blowing their monthly bandwidth in a matter of hours due to the fact websites have been getting bigger! More code to make those smooth transactions from pages, pop-ups to flag you of messages, images, video, sound… they all add up and mobile networks “Can’t” handle the loads. So they limit you. What is the expect size for a mobile site, listed by the W3 web standards site? 22kb!! 22KBs to build a whole site! Let’s take that in to consideration, the logo at the top of my site is 8kbs! That means that I could have three logos on the site and I’ve killed my allowance.
Speaking of standards… there are none! Every device can use its own standards. Hell, every browser on every device can have different standards. And then we get to the biggest problem when it comes to web video and that is; do you have Flash?! Yes, I know allot of sites have switched to HTML5 for their video needs but not everyone. And it’s typical that the ones we’d like to use haven’t or wont, for whatever reason they give. And this is why you won’t see videos on my mobile site as flash may or may not be supported!
So what’s my point in this long winded rant? Yes I have created mobile sites but this should not be seen as me supporting them. I just can’t understand why anyone would want to use them! If you want to visit a website, wait till you get home and use your PC! Or if you really must, find some open wifi and pull out a netbook or laptop! Or even an iPad… what? SHOCKED that I’d support iPads? Ha haven’t you realised I’m evil yet!
So I turned 23 a few days ago. Thank you for all the birthday wishes I got and for the thoughts you are having now. It was a quiet day here as hardly one could get here due to the one birthday present that kept a smirk on my face ALL DAY! And that was, the SNOW!!
It was great to have snow back here in good oldish Kent however it has highlighted a serious issue when it comes to snowmen!
That is true, I bring you a warning of Snowman Cruelty that seems to be on the rise this winter season. In two days, the poor snowman that sat in my front garden was attacked and his head removed! And worse, it was by adults and not by children. What is wrong with the world!!
Anyway, with my birthday passing, we continue our journey to Christmas!! See yea.
Okay, quick run down. Minecraft is a sandbox game that is in development; which has made a huge splash in the indi-game scene. The game is based on a randomly generated world of 14×14(x14) cubes which, funny as it sounds, you must ”Mine”. With theses blocks you can then “Craft”, see where they were going with the name now; a number of objects and create your own structures.
I had been hearing lots about the game for a long time now but have never really let it get all my attention as I had so much to do without another game stealing time from me. However, Tart sat me down last weekend to try it out. Like crack cocaine, I was hooked, line and sinker on my first go. Tart was “Nice” enough to buy me a copy for an early birthday present so I could play offline. That was Saturday the 13th Nov (wasn’t a Friday but unlucky enough), Since then I have not been able to stop thinking about Minecraft!
I can’t sleep! I’ve barely eaten! I spent three days drinking only water (Pepsi addiction thrown to the curb!!) I’ve not done anything but Mine and Craft!!
I need to seek help…..
But its almost over! I have almost finished what I started! And with that I can move on. Work maybe… Cataclysm you say!….
So I’m into the 4th week of a summer break that will not end! And by not ending I mean that I’m not going back to college in the fall. Having a holiday from nothing is weird but also nice, there’s no pressure to get anywhere or get stuff done but on the other hand there’s no reason to get anything done… oh my god, I have trapped my safe in a paradox of my own self laziness!
“I am lazy as I have nothing to do, I do nothing because I am lazy!!”
Oh dear god, time to get out of this funk!!
Back to thinking straight or I should say, trying to think straight. It’s been so hot, my brain has melted in to a patch on the floor under my desk chair… that was gross on so many levels and I apologise to everyone who read that and got a mental image… sorry! But it has been so hot that I haven’t been able to focus on anything. I can’t write, I can’t work on websites or videos, I don’t even want to watch movies or games! It’s time to move to Canada! Or I will just wait for winter as I have no way of getting and staying in Canada even thou I really want to… I really want to move to Canada!
Also due to the heat, a lot of my tech has panicked and died. My home server that had all my backs up and media, DEAD. My xbox360 in the “Man cave”, DEAD. My CPU and motherboard, melted into a heap of metal and silicone. And now my cheap HUGE ASS TV will not accept HDMI signals! I’m not tempting fate but this is not a good time for tech in my house.
Please let winter hurry and freeze us all to death! I will make snowmen!
