Category: Software and Computers

 

When does the new iMAC come out? Or the iMac Pro? If you’re thinking about buying an Apple computer there’s a website that predicts the next product update release. It’s located at http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/

Continue reading “Apple iMac Computers” →

Find out how to type just ONE LETTER and get your favorite YouTube videos embedded into your WordPress blog. And no, you don’t even have to turn off the rich text editing feature (who wants to do that anyway?).
Continue reading “How to Embed YouTube.com Videos in WordPress” →

Here’s info on a free .txt to .rtf software conversion program.

Continue reading “Software to Convert Rtf to Txt Format” →

[22:15:20] soccerstar2222: arhhhh have u guys ever heard of a guy named cybermonsters
[22:15:35] soccerstar2222: he killed 2 of my kings in my new set of villages

www.KingdomAges.com

I’ve been checking out different free strategy and rpg games online after toying with the idea of investing in a dev team for a game. KingdomAges is one of the games I checked out.

If you’re into games, you know the big trick is to keep long term players satisfied while still attracting new players. KingdomAges does not appear to do a very good job of this.

Several problems I identified are:

• Soldiers deprecated – There are four military types: Infantry, Cavalry, Archers and Cataupults. The infantry are no match for cavalry so no one buys them.
• Slow Army Movement – Military pieces must each be moved separately, there is no group move function. It literally can take an hour just to instruct an army to move across the map (then many, many hours for the army to move – that part is fine). But who wants to spend so much time buried in the mouse?
• Awkward coordinate entry – To move a military piece you have to highlight it individually, then click “move”, then click coordinates in TWO steps. It’s mind-numbingly boring.
• Moderators attack players – This is unbelievable to me. I had a moderator attack me just a couple weeks into the game and gloat over wiping out an entire village. It’s a setup of megalomaniacs wanting to keep control over their private game. In that respect, it will never branch out to being a long term public game. Moderators should moderate – not use their backend moderator advantages for game play.
• Lack of depth – Once you start taking over towns, there is no more depth to the game play. There is little nuance to attacks with massive armies and becomes primarily a number game. Those that want to spent their time round the clock on the game can rack up units.
• Server Crashes – over two week of game play the server crashed three times.

This game would be more fun with a piece of paper and a calculator.*NOTE – Their server keeps crashing and it takes weeks to get into this game, it’s a very slow pace. In two weeks I saw the servers crash three times.*

“It’s an MMORPG you R-TARD!”

*Note* After writing this I found a great resource for beginners to read about the basic resources and skills needed to create an original MMORPG. It may be more than you expected. You can find the article here:

http://www.devmaster.net/articles/building-mmorpg/

How to create an MMORPG (Massive multi-player online role playing game). I don’t know, but the idea interests me. The underground geek culture has slowly hit the mainstream. Pro gamers and hacks aren’t the only ones playing now, or the only ones interested in creating games.

In the audio world I love how I can sit on a program like ProTools and tweek things in detail for hours on end. The Torque Game Builder gives that same kind of flexibility for graphics and interactive coding. I’ve read that successful games have started with very small development teams (as small as TWO!). I can also imagine that everyone and their brother is checking this stuff out to make their own new original RPG or interactive game.

GarageGames.com has the Torque Game Builder code available at a very reasonable price, especially for indie game developers. Content packs are also available to use as-is or as templates for creating new art, lighting, landscapes, animations and objects for your new game.

Would appreciate anyone who’s interested in this to drop a note here and give your insight. Thanks!

Press Release on Torque

Own the engine that started the revolution. The ground-breaking engine behind Tribes continues to evolve and remains unparalleled. And we supply the Source Code to prove it. Torque was built by pros and is used by pros. Vivendi, NC Soft, and even NASA have developed projects using TGE. Use the same technology as the big boys for just $150.TGE is a complete proven package for a wide range of applications, with flexible and controllable in-engine animation, world, terrain, and GUI solutions, as well as award-winning TorqueNet networking. CodeOnce in TorqueScript or C++, then run your game on PC, OSX, XBox360 or bring your game into other Torque products, such as TGEA. This is not an SDK.

Screenshot from Torque Tutorial