'New Reality' Development

This was definitely a core game from my childhood. I wanted the game the moment it came out – but had to wait for my birthday, just two months down the line .That was one very slow 2 months, especially when the game’s box was left on a table in the lounge all that time.

Well, fast forward to 2011, and it appeared on a far more convenient platform, with better graphics, and of course the nice 3D. The painfully slow text from the N64 version has been given a speed boost too, so one huge annoyance is gone. In all, bloody excellent!

Oh, and Master Quest is there too. Unfortunately they mirrored it, which makes the game feel…different in a bad way. It doesn’t make the game harder at all, or give it a fresh breath of life, but makes it very inconvenient. Not a good move.

The flow of the game for me (after re-playing it time and time again) was that you get a series of very good dungeons and temples, then by the time the Fire Temple is finished, the mood just sinks. The next step is the god-awful Water Temple, after the torture-inducing Ice Cavern.

So, the Water Temple?

Don’t get me wrong, I love the decor of the Water Temple above all the others. It also has some of the nicest, mood-setting music of any of the temples. The problem though, is the water itself, and the extremely tedious layout. Backtracking through a number of corridors to find keys to open another corridor, all the while hoping you have the right water level set. If not, you must go over old ground to raise and lower water levels until you get it right.

On top of that, was the iron boots. Thankfully, the annoying steps of pausing, going to equipment, and selecting the iron boots just to have to repeat that step seconds later is gone. Instead you tap the touch screen.

Eventually, you get to the room with the platforms and the waterfall opposite, and you know you are out of the frying pan. Luckily, you are not thrown into the fire, because the remainder of the temple is what I wish the entire temple was – sure there are the water tricks (it wouldn’t be a Water Temple without it) but in a sane manner.

Now, consider that this temple is regarded as the most “difficult” (tedious?) of all temples in Zelda. Also consider that the Master Quest is supposed to be a harder version of the game. You’d think that would make the Master Quest Water Temple the most bitch-hardest temple, testing the very existence of your patience and bringing on a sigh of incredible relief once the boss drips down into a splash of thin air?

No. The hardest part of the Water Temple has been reduced to less than half its former self. You find princess Ruto, swim up, lower the water level, raise it again in the middle tower, shoot a picture with the hookshot to get the longshot (back in the “Ruto” corridor I believe), raise the water level all the way, then enter the middle tower, use the Song of Time at the very top, and use Din’s fire to light the torches dug into the corners. Essentially, your goal is to collect the map, compass and longshot far earlier than usual, and get through the gate hidden at the very bottom of the central tower, to get the first door key. From there, it’s straight to the waterfall room.

Strangely, even though on the map, a lot of the old corridors are inaccessible. Entering the boss corridor, boss key in hand, I felt I had accidentally glitched something. Even the slope to the boss room with the sliding spikes have been made easier – hook shot the graphic above the boss door, and two hookshot pillars appear.

Ok, great! Not only are the dungeons a lot more fun in Master Quest (they seem to have trimmed any annoying bits out of the standard versions), but the most complained about temple has been shortened. Very well done.

The boss, and back story

The entire Zora population (except for a shop keeper and the king) were frozen under a thick sheet of ice by the monster that lurks in the Water Temple. The ice will never melt until the monster is killed. Lake Hylia will remain the drained, sorry example of it’s former self. Looking into it deeper, the Zora’s are responsible for maintaining the purity of the water for the entire population of Hyrule, so it’s a pretty big deal. Ok, maybe this monster is some kind of Kraken? Some ultra large octopus? An electric Eel shooting bolts of supercharged electricity across the water? Some of the many other thousands of sea creatures that fascinate people because of their sheer evil looks? Nintendo clearly had a LOT of inspiration possible here. An almost unexplored world’s worth of bat-shit insane looking creatures enough to bring nightmares to adults.

Instead we get a blob. One that spins in a circle conjuring up tentacles of water whose sole purpose is to suck in your direction in the hopes of picking you up and throwing you at a wall. All the while, this epic battle consists of repeatedly firing the long shot in the hopes of catching the blob, and hitting it once (or twice if you are lucky) before it goes back into its pool. All the while, you stand there, occasionally moving a bit further away because one of the tentacles has edged closer.

Hardly the Fire Temple’s “turn Hyrule into a scorching wasteland” dragon, or the Shadow Temple’s giant…bongo playing ghost who actually wrecks havoc on Kakariko village, threatening the future of the world unless someone deals with the “shadows of the graveyard”.

The mini boss though, is a work of art if you look close enough. You walk across a vast open area with a small island in the middle. If you notice close enough, you have a reflection in the water. Once you pass the central island though, your reflection disappears. You turn around, puzzled that the door is sealed, to find your reflection waiting to battle you – one which is almost impervious to harm if you use the exact weapons which it mimics (the Master Sword). Absolutely brilliant.

Christmas has come and gone. Thankfully with it was far less greetings cards than before. Instead, places like Facebook, Twitter, or heck – good old fashioned email seem to be taking over. Some places even offer a service to craft your own cards online and have them posted, but that is besides the point. This rant isn’t even based on the usual “greetings cards are simply a money-making scheme for Hallmark”, etc.

The message behind greetings cards is that they are supposed to be a welcome gesture of thought – a demonstration that the sender has thought of your current situation. Instead, they seem to be used as weapons of guilt against each other. Two common examples:

- Person A: “Person B didn’t send my a card this year, how dare he. No way am I giving him a card.”

- Person A: “I sent a card to person B, but he didn’t write one back for my birthday. He can forget it in future.”

The above two scenarios are often bolstered by a rant to someone else in the group of people who know each other, as if there is some blatant point-scoring attempt. Suddenly, because person B didn’t write a card to person A, the entire group has to sit through a rant of how disgusting person B is. Some of them also “join forces” and refuse to send person B a card. Suddenly, cards are not a gesture of good will, but a weapon of bad feeling. One which, pathetically, causes some people to go on and on about it for weeks.

Let’s look at things in perspective. A card is a thick piece of paper, with some seasonal image or humour, with a pre-written message inside. The person buying the card just writes who it is to, and who it is from. They pop it in an envelope and off it goes. The other person recieves the card, takes a 10 second glance and decides that that person is getting a card in return, and pops it on the mantle piece. Both people are essentially trading small change, and often do not even speak to each other. If they do meet for the occasion, then the entire point of the card seems wasted when they can simply wish a happy birthday in person – after all, isn’t the social interaction, and the time taken to visit the person more important than “simply popping a card in the post?”

One of the rants is that “all person B has to do is buy a bloody card and write his name!”. Again, what is so special about that? 

Now for the most disgusting situation. I saw a friend spend ages drawing her own, personally crafted card. She spent HOURS on it. Those of us with sense would realise immediately, that she was giving some serious thought to the person to dedicate so much time into it. The person who received it said “heh, she was too cheap to buy a card”. So, a £1.45 card is somehow worth more than a few hours of someones time? Also consider the fact that she was behind on her assignments – easily, even one hour of her time was an absolute premium. That situation left the most disgusting taste in my mouth.

Now take Christmas. Some people still go through the lengthy task of filling out 50 or so cards to people they know. The usual “to {someone}, from {me}. A few hours used on a cheap 100 pack of cards. Again, where is the special moment in that? Especially when it is backed up with “I still have to write out those damn cards. Suddenly it’s a chore – one people seem to do only to conform with tradition. One which is thankfully on its way out.

I am lucky enough to be in a circle of friends who also wouldn’t, for the life of them, consider buying a card. People who, if they receive one, would leave it laying around somewhere until the event was over, and then throw it away. I don’t care if I get “only” three cards for my birthday, because the only thing I remember about it is the gathering of people who turned up. The cards however, go back to be recycled.

The other day, I actually got rid of a stack of old cards from my 17th birthday. The sarcastic reaction of someone nearby was “oh, you’re sentimental’. This was from someone who I have never ever witnessed, look back through old cards – instead just keeping them there as if there is some air of guilt if they dare to get rid of them. Personally I don’t look back and care who gave me a card.

So, to summarise, don’t waste your time, at least at my expense. You will NOT receive a card from me, because my ONLY memory of them, thanks in part to decades of point scoring between other people, is that they are just a social “one-upmanship” tool. I refuse to have any part in them whatsoever. Of course, your milage may vary, but no thanks. Do something more worthwhile with the potentially £3 you could have spent, and instead, try phoning the person, and not just fob them off with a quick “from me” on thick paper.

Microsoft very recently released an early developer preview of Windows 8 – along with typical selling points such as “full screen apps”, and the unfortunate ability to only see one application at a time. Yes, unfortunate.

What seems to have happened, is that Apple loved iOS and it’s successful interface so much, that they incorporated SOME parts of this in to OS X Lion – what you get, is the familiar OS X desktop, but with the addition of Launchpad, and “full screen” should you so wish to use those features. The key point here is that, those extras are not forced on to you. Microsoft on the other hand, got excited about this, and decided that their Windows Phone interface would be the first user interface you see when using Windows 8, with “Desktop mode” as a slab within the Metro interface. Immediately the familiar availability of a workable, comfortable desktop environment is utterly replaced with one designed for a touch-tablet device.

Unless Microsoft are insane, then there will be an option to completely avoid “Metro”, and go straight to “Desktop” mode. Otherwise they have just given every company out there a perfect excuse to consider less restrictive alternatives when it comes to upgrading.

Using the best tool for the job

A touch interface works great on a typical tablet device. The limited inputs and interactivity is replaced by very straight forward navigation and intuitive swipes and touches to get to what you need. The lack of a physical keyboard means that accessing an app is likely easier for someone than bringing up a virtual keyboard and searching for the app name. This is where the impressive and successful points to iOS and Windows Phone’s interface come in, and the reason these devices are so usable is because the OS is designed FOR these devices. If either company were to try and use the desktop paradigms on such a device, it would be usability hell.

So why do these companies seem to think people want to navigate their desktop PC in the same restricted fashion? A single “Full screen” app on a desktop PC is great if you are watching TV or a movie. But what about the umpteen hundred other tasks a desktop is suitable for?

The killer feature of a desktop, compared to a tablet, other than its more immediately available familiar computer-human interface is that it can multi-task just great. It is what most people have spent their hard-earned money on upgrades for – that extra oomph of performance when running multiple, increasingly demanding applications on increasingly demanding Operating Systems. It seems one giant step backwards trying to enthusiastically sell features such as “full screen applications” on a form-factor so large, that you have to wonder who their target audience is. Certainly, it not anyone who uses their computer for more than opening their web browser (which actually, is likely a very large user base).

My arms, they ache.

Yes, desktop monitors are appearing in droves hosting touch-screen functionality. I am willing to bet that if you know anyone with one of these monitors, they spend more than 95% of the time interacting with their PC the good old fashioned way – their monitor still sat there, gleamingly clean from not having to be poked, swiped, and tickled by hours of interaction with the person sitting in front of it. Now, sitting at your desk – imagine your monitor is touch-ready, and that you are navigating a huge version of your smart phone’s interface. You might slide the monitor close to you so it is easier to reach. You might tilt it a bit, or a lot. But no matter what you do, your arms are going to get damn tired quick from navigating the far larger screen, especially if it is moreso vertical.

Also try using your tablet device whilst it is held up vertical. It’s not pleasant, especially resting on a desk. Now, sure, you can pick up the tablet and hold it in a more comfortable way, but not so much with a 22″ monitor connected to a desktop PC under the desk. If you have one of those monitors with a built-in PC, then you have the extra weight.

Now imagine a great example of a “Full-screen app” – a TV. Since when do you rush over to your TV to physically interact with it’s controls, rather than sat on the sofa using a remote? Again, touch screen interface irrelevant.

Conclusion

It is still early days. I am not going to get overly critical of an OS preview so early in the day. The point I am making is about the touch interface, not whether Windows 8 gets a classic desktop mode by default, or as an option. I sure hope it does, but again, it is early days.

As is stands, someone is going to think of a very cool use for a touch screen and Metro. Perhaps a kiosk, or wall-mounted information screen. But for those of us that like to use a desktop to do actual work, then Windows 8 looks to be a usability hell, at least in my opinion.

It does raise the question – forced into a situation where the user has to learn a new desktop paradigm – will they? Or will they just see alternatives such as OS X a better upgrade option.

If you want a pseudo-demo of Metro, but don’t want to actually try Windows 8, or a Windows Phone device, then the closest is Windows Media Centre. That sounds daft, I know. But open that, and navigate around the settings, then find and launch a video from somewhere on your computer using only Windows Media Center. Did you like it? Did it feel like it was made for a desktop interface? No? You won’t like Metro then.

I don’t often review things – but this game got my attention so much I thought it was worth mentioning in better detail. Even then I haven’t explored every last detail of the game, but there’s enough to give someone the bigger picture.

Normally I would be quick to point out that “x copied y”, or at least heavily drew from y’s ideas. You can clearly see that Gameloft – the creators or Starfront, were at least heavily inspired by Starcraft. When I saw the name of the game, and the screenshots, I thought it was a rip-off of Starcraft. But then the game stuck to my mind – is it worth the £5? Are they going to get the controls right for a touch device?

The answer to both of those is a clear YES. When you play it too, it doesn’t feel too much like Starcraft either, despite the glaring similarities. Both have three major races – humans – the all-rounders, a very alien-looking bug-type race – the “build fast, hit fast” approach, and the highly advanced, powerful race – in this case a robotic race.

Campaign? Check!

Starfront comes with a rather varied campaign mode. Missions take you to various scenarios, and require more than just “destroy the enemy base”. You certainly do a bit of base building, and tech-tree climbing, but some missions – particularly mission 8, require some quirky tactics, or ways of progressing. Mission 11 resembles a tower-defence style map, where you build as many turrets as you can to stop waves of enemies getting through a canyon. Mission 10 sees you defending a huge insect as it walks across the map getting tired and stopping for breaks whilst enemies try to attack it. another mission sees you in a central base, holding off waves of enemies with your desperate few units until an evac fleet arrives.

Annoyingly though, what seems to happen with strategy games which in any way involve humans, is that the human side ends up spending half the time battling other human factions. Starcraft was rank with it. Starfront has some of it. Either way it is getting tiring. Hope would have it that, if we become advanced enough to explode the galaxy in such a free-form way, that we would not do it just to set up a rogue faction hell bent on dominating other humans. Either way, for goodness sake, stop telling the same cliche story because it has been done to death, and it’s not going to teach us any more morales on that.

One mission in the game dwarfs the others in terms of difficulty – the apparently dreaded mission 8, which is the final human mission. If you don’t do the ‘easy completion’ tactic, then you will retry again and again, in frustration to the sheer number of problems this mission faces. Either your computer ally won’t actually build anything, or the enemy will change attack strategy, or your computer ally will take over your expansion resources and not actually use them, or the enemy will devastate you will seemingly unlimited cloaked units and conveniently placed air units. As a hint, you can complete this mission with a large pack of ground-firing helicopters, circling the outskirts of the map until you can fly south, from the top centre…

Multiplayer & skirmish

Multiplayer seems to suffer from the problem of players rushing other players, ending the match before anyone can actually get into it. If you are expecting to play against a human player who also wishes to spent at least 15 minutes sending vast armies and tactical knowledge against you, think again. People seem to prefer rushing in with the first unit that happens to walk out their barracks, and giving you grief before you have time to sigh.

Skirmish however, is ridiculously easy. The AI more or less sits there waiting to get annihilated. On anything other than the toughest difficulty, they will send a worker or two towards your base. On the hardest mode, you get a few basic attack units, and a cluster of them sitting in their own base. If there is one area that drastically needs improvement, it is the skirmish AI. Surely someone at Gameloft is adventurous enough to sit and tinker with the AI enough so that it can do more than represent a very rushed feature of the game? Here’s hoping.

Conclusion

In all, it is nice to play a game on the iPad that is more than just the same level again and again (Zombie gunship), or a puzzle game with little story that gets boring quickly (Angry birds, Cut the Rope, loads of others…). The iPad doesn’t seem to enjoy much in the way of in-depth games, or ones that attempt to be more, but suffer some serious gameplay mechanic bugs (Red Alert).

Gameloft, although they are obviously HUGELY inspired by the more serious games out there, at least they are taking the iPad serious enough to give their versions of big-hit games a serious try. People are moaning that they are curiously similar to certain games in a very obvious way, but at least it means the iPad is getting some approach to decent games which the bigger game studios don’t seem interested in exploring. I am watching Gameloft from now on, because their energy for games development is impressive, and the titles they are releasing are very adventurous in a space where others seem reluctant to fully explore.

As for Starfront? I cannot say I have returned to an iPad game after a few days playing, other than Fieldrunners. At long last, a game I can really get in to.

Earlier in the year I decided to splash out the rather ambitious price for a Macbook Pro. Apple had only just released the new model, so it seemed a good time to get it, without a few months later experiencing the gutted feeling of a new, much better model being released for the same price (which happened with the Mac Mini).

It does give me a horrible sense of guilt for having so many computers, most of which are sat there with no purpose any more. When I think how much money went into those, it’s never a good feeling. I guess I can redeem that by donating all the machines to people in the family, though it seems the desire for desktop machines is waring thin.

So, why a Macbook Pro? Here comes my obligatory list-style summary:

• It can run anything. Yes, anything. If I want to play games (which is rare these days), then I will install Windows 7 and dual boot. This point alone makes the previous gaming laptop redundant. If I need to test something in IE6, then I put Windows XP into a virtual machine, likewise with any Linux distributions.
• My workstation is anywhere I need it to be. It is a light machine for carrying around – MUCH lighter, and much more slim than the gaming laptop. Digging it out in Starbucks, or a library is a breeze, likewise with getting it there.
• Previously I would carry a monitor, a keyboard, and the Mac Mini between the house in London, and the house in Cardiff (I don’t own those houses). Obviously, the portability of a notebook makes that effortless.
• It runs Ubuntu server edition in a virtual machine, which any machine on the network can access as if it were it’s own standalone machine. No fussing around with MAMP, WAMP, and whatnot (I shut down the virtual machine when connecting to public networks however, but so far any development work done whilst using a public wifi has been iOS development).
• I don’t have to switch between machines anymore, especially when I can switch between operating systems on the same machine. It does still sound like ‘effort’, but the amount of physical space on my desk, and under it, is drastically reduced, let alone not having 8 different plugs routing through extension cables.
• If I need to demo something to a client at a meeting, then there is never a case where “ah, I can’t view that file with x or y” – as with before, if I need a certain OS, it will be somewhere on the Macbook Pro.
• I still have dual monitors when at home. The legacy of the desktop machine is that there are two monitors which would typically be redundant. One is hooked to the Mac Mini, which is in turn a TV set top box, the other is the companion monitor to the Macbook.
• I don’t use it yet, but because of iTunes’ impressive sharing abilities, if I want to watch a recorded TV program in a different room to the Mac Mini, I only need to sit in front of the Macbook, and stream the recording over.

[Updated 15th August - green items are those which no longer occur, or a setting changed, blue means "I can live with it".]

OS X Lion is an impressive deal – a “full” operating system update for £20, on all Apple computers you own, is a welcome approach considering the expensive upgrade offerings by Microsoft, and even Apple in the past. The process was simple, did not involve physical media, and thankfully did not require the use of a recent backup. In all, it was cheap, painless, and about time someone turned such an upgrade into something even average users can do without phoning their “IT friend” for help.

I am not going to sit here reviewing it in depth though – you can find endless blogs of reviews, some in a lot more depth and quality of writing than I can hope to do. Instead I am going to list the current teething problems, at least on my machine.

Importantly though, these are early days. Every OS upgrade gets their fair share of problems, however big or small. No one is perfect, especially when deadlines are in place, so take these with a pinch of salt. This list might be of interest to anyone who is thinking of upgrading, and even then, these issues might be related to a certain device, or model of the device. I will also edit this list and add more teething bugs/gripes as time goes on (and cross out any which have been solved).

Also of note is that this isn’t a case where I may have different brands of hardware that are perhaps less supported than others, which is an excuse Microsoft, and Linux can usually get away with – Apple pick their hardware, and develop the OS for that hardware only. I haven’t modified the hardware of this Macbook at all.

The device is, an early 2011 Macbook pro 17″. Also these are problems that seem to happen on Lion, and not on Snow Leopard.

Bugs

• Using an external monitor, the Macbook often confuses which is the primary monitor on wake up. It sorts itself out very quickly, but any windows end up resized to that of the smaller resolution external monitor.
• Performance on the external monitor seems to slow down after hours of use – solved by sleeping and waking the Macbook. Oddly the same applications when moved to the Macbook’s monitor seem to run fine in this case.
• Finder also seems to slow down after use, when using a samba share for hours. This is causing Komodo Edit to have to wait even up to a minute before I can even more a cursor around the text file. Again, seems to be solved by sleeping/waking the Macbook.
• Apple Magic Mouse sometimes ‘sticks’ – the cursor moves smoothly, but it seems to (rarely) forget that I released click, or am not touching the surface of the mouse. Yes, I have been VERY careful. It isn’t so much an unintended scroll, but I have had applications shrink to a tiny square just by moving the mouse upwards.

• Design – minimise, maximise, and close appear smaller, yet seemingly for no real purpose other than to be smaller. It has not freed up room for any other functionality.
• Design – grey? For a company that releases displays capable of incredible colour ranges, Lion seems to have been dulled down. I do miss the older themes.
• Usability gripe – double-finger swiping left does not cause the browser to go back a page, but instead goes to the virtual desktop to the left, or the dashboard if on the first virtual desktop. In fairness, this is likely a setting somewhere, or hopefully will be, meaning this gripe is just laziness on my part. personally I am undecided whether I prefer the virtual desktop switching in this way, or whether I would rather keep the browser back and forth swipe.