Spore, Darkly So

I bought the Galactic Edition day one. I had waited three years for the Spore to be released. My friend doesn’t live in the same house that I first watched the hour-long promo in. The wait was totally going to be worth it. It was Sim Everything: the game that would let you create a virtual life form and take it from cell to more advanced than us. It was also one of the most ambitious games ever to say the least; easily in the top 3. Unfortunately for us all, it was a colossal let-down. The graphics were cartoonified (yes, that is now a word), the animations were clunky, and the game was too divided for its own good. The adage “more than the sum of its parts” doesn’t apply here; the game was its many parts. I was disappointed (and out $80) when I picked it up, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying it for several weeks, and every few months. I just picked it up again very recently, and I absolutely love the game now. I had jumped on the Spore hate train like everyone else, and that blinded me to what was actually a good game if you can see it for what it is.

Spore is good. It’s just not the Spore that Will Wright set out to make, and certainly not the one he promised us in 2005. It’s a great first try, much like The Sims was nowhere near as good as The Sims 2. Ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you about Darkspore.

Dusty Tumbleweeds

Looks as if I’ve neglected this place for a while. Now that I’m out of school and am in a habit of updating internet things constantly, I’ll give this thing another shot.

Netbook

Recently my laptop has been even more cumbersome than usual, (17″ of girth isn’t exactly convenient to lug around school all day for several days a week) so I have decided to get a netbook. Pretty much all of my apps that I develop from now on will be either designed for or at least be friendly for netbooks.

Two Truths and an App

Recently, one of the podcasts I listen to had a “Two Truths and a Lie” contest. The first person in the forums to guess what all four lies are (one guess per member) wins something. A game, I think. Anyways, a lot of people are guessing in the forums to no avail. Thankfully, there’s enough data to where I was/am able to write a program that will deduce possibly correct outcomes based on hints and incorrect guesses that have been made. There were 81 total possibilities to start with (4^3), and now my program has worked out a final seven. With any luck, there will be still further clues to where I can narrow it down to one or two before someone else guesses correctly! I’ll post the source code and an explanation of how the concept works when the contest has run it’s course!

PhleGM

PhleGM is the working title for a set of GM tools, which will prominently feature a robust die rolling system. I myself am a huge fan of tabletop roleplaying games, and I was dismayed to see how expensive these specialty dice are. Dice that roll random words or symbols rather than numbers come at a HUGE premium for how little they actually differ from normal numerically pipped dice. So, I am taking it upon myself to create a suite of tools for fellow GMs and players alike. As of now, I plan to have it accept .die files, which will contain all the information the program needs related to the die, such as what goes on each face, any image data to display, and metadata like author.

Die rolling is the primary focus for now, but in the future I’d like to see such things as quick rules lookup and character sheet creation for common RPG systems (D&D, GURPS, etc) as well as voice control. Any suggestions you have can be emailed to me or posted in the comments.

Back!

After a very long haitus (due in part to minimal traffic to the site), I have returned! I’m going to be dropping focus from video game news and focusing again on hosting my projects. Expect all articles related to gaming news to disappear shortly.

Updates of Note

TaCOS has shifted to software-only. The TaCOS and Car OS projects will combine, and the TaCOS personality will now run my car audio functions via netbook interface. I’ll post more details on this soon.

I’m going to try my hand at Song Fu, and see how that goes. Song Fu is a song production contest similar in nature to Iron Chef, for those of you who don’t know.

I have a few new software items that I’m working on sporadically. These include a dictionary generator, dice roller (Helpful for GMs and DMs), and a networked tile-based RPG.

I may be starting an actual website soon, in addition to this project blog. Stay tuned for more details!

You don’t have an inbox…yet.

Update: It’s fine now, just temporary downtime.

Just now, my Hotmail inbox went out. Out, as in gone. It’s not there. My account exists, but my inbox has been totally obliterated. I first found out about this from my friend, and it turns out that not only his inbox, but two friends and one family member have also lost theirs. It’s either a very specific error targeting my family and friends, (some of whom are on opposite ends of the country) or it’s a really large hack/system malfunction. Is this happening to anyone? As far as I can tell, I’m the first one to post about this. I’m glad I switched to Gmail, but there was roughly 5 years worth of email on my Hotmail account.

TaCOS on Twitter!

TaCOS is now on Twitter! TaCOS_TI is what you need to add. It can’t follow anyone yet, but I’ll be sure to add in that functionality once it’s autonomous. Thanks to Twitterizer for the incredibly easy-to-use Twitter .Net library!

TaCOS Alpha

Okay, here it is: the first public demo of the TaCOS face software! When I’m totally done with the entire project, I’ll post a tutorial on how I made this face program. Right now, it’s just a cool front for text to speech, but it should give you an idea of how the finished product will look. As usual, it should be in the Box.net widget on the side of the site. Note: You need the .Net Framework 2.0 (maaaaaybe 3.0) for this to run. If you have Vista installed, you’re good. If not, it’s a free download. Sorry Mac users, Windows-only.

After the jump, see the Mock II image for TaCOS, with a slightly better but still pretty lame doctored-up image to try and show how the actual toaster should look.

iPhone 3.0 Firmware Announced

iPod Touch owners, avert your gaze and cover your ears: you will have to pay yet again for the newest firmware. From the looks of it, though, you’re going to have to if you want to keep using the App Store; there are enough new features to constitute non-compatibility with the 2.x firmware you currently have.

Here are a few of the more notable features that you’ll have to empty your wallet and sacrifice a small animal for: