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24 Nov 06:24

Mads Perch Photography

by Baptiste
numunedir

Amazing, isn't it?

Avec notamment sa dernière série réalisée pour le nightclub de Londres « Fabric », le photographe Mads Perch nous montre toute l’étendue de son talent. Des clichés d’explosions en noir et blanc du plus bel effet suivis que quelques images tirées d’autres séries, à découvrir dans la suite de l’article.

Mads Perch Photography3 Mads Perch Photography2 Mads Perch Photography4 Mads Perch Photography1 Mads Perch Photography6 Mads Perch Photography5
05 Nov 11:59

Dustforce sales figures

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The final figure for our income after exactly one year of sales is $489,404 USD (from a total of $668,490 in revenue). Of course, there are also costs to running the business: legal and accounting fees, software licenses, server costs, and some travelling expenses have added up over the past year to take a good $36k or so out of our total income. When you take that into account, along with personal income taxes, we are left with around $295k. In the end, this means that for every $10 copy of Dustforce sold, $4.41 of it ended up in our pockets. We then split this between the four of us.

Dustforce is just over a year old now. How well has it fared in the past year, and what does that mean for Hitbox Team? In this article, we discuss in great detail the financial performance of Dustforce, in the context of our own goals for the game. Come and learn about some of the financial issues of a tiny development team, such as how we funded Dustforce, and how much it costs to make a game.
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05 Nov 10:49

Designing game narrative

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That scene is packed with action. It’s just as exciting as any action movie or game cinematic, and it’s just one of many equally amazing scenes that I’ve seen happen in the game. Despite that, none of it is scripted; it’s not even directly intended by the designer. It simply emerges from the interactions of the mechanics.

How do you tell a great story with a game? The answer lies not just in the plot and dialogue, but in the very structure of the game design itself. In this article, we talk about why storytelling needs to revolve around the interactive nature of the medium. Come and learn how to identify great game narrative, and to understand the importance of interactive — rather than cinematic — storytelling.
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30 Oct 08:28

Caret: It’s Like Sublime Text for Chromebooks

by Matthew Guay
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Interesting.

If you’re a programmer, or if you spend a significant amount of your day working with plain text for any reason, you’ll surely have at least heard of Sublime Text. The one paid text editor that’s won over both Emacs and VI fans, Sublime Text is the gold standard in text editors. And, it’s cross platform, so you can run in on your Mac, Windows, or Linux PC.

There’s only one place it won’t run — Chrome OS. And, of course, it won’t run on any Mac or PC if you don’t have a copy — plus, keeping your settings synced can be a pain at best. That’s why Caret is so exciting. It’s a full-featured code editor in an offline Chrome web app that can run anywhere Chrome runs, for free, and it’ll keep your settings synced along with the rest of your Chrome data.

It's almost Sublime Text, inside Chrome.

Download Caret from the Chrome Web store and fire it up, and your first thought will likely be that you’ve just somehow tricked Chrome into downloading a native app. You’re not too far from the truth — Caret is still a web app, but it runs fully offline, and opens and saves normal text and code files to your computer the same way any other native app would. All the while, though, it’s using Mozilla’s javascript-powered Ace code editor to highlight your code in almost any language you want, from HTML, Javascript, and PHP to even Markdown and TeX.

Caret builds on the Ace foundation to bring a number of Sublime Text-like features, including the famed multiple cursors that makes it easy to edit similar parts of your file at once. Just hold CMD while clicking the locations you want to edit, and you’ll see a cursor at each spot ready for you to edit multiple lines at once. You’ll also find a tabbed interface that’ll let you have all your documents open at once, and a very basic command palate that lets you access options like Find/Replace, Go To (for switching files or jumping to a certain line), and more without leaving your keyboard — though it doesn’t have nearly as many options as Sublime Text.

Screen Shot 2013-10-11 at 9.50.45 PM

 

In another nod to Sublime Text, you’ll find your user settings are saved in a .json file where you can edit your default theme, font, and more just like in Sublime Text (though make sure to only use a monospaced font — other fonts do not work correctly right now). Those settings will be synced with your Chrome account data, along with your bookmarks and more, so Caret will work the very same everywhere.

Overall, the code and text editing workflow in Caret feels just like you’d expect in a native app. It basically just works, and you’ll never be thinking about how it’s a web app or native app. The only odd parts are that the keyboard shortcuts, by default, use the ctrl key instead of CMD, which is correct on a PC or Chromebook but non-native on a Mac. You can edit those, too, from the settings if you’d like, though, so that’s not a big deal. Otherwise, every other text editing keyboard shortcut in your OS should work just as you’d expect in Caret. There’s no code completion, per se, but it will close brackets and code elements for you by default, which is at least a little bit helpful.

Caret might not replace Sublime Text, but it’s sure a great free option on any platform, and easily the best code editor on the Chromebook. But even on a Mac or PC, it’s a pretty nice code editor that’ll only cost you a few seconds to download it. And it’s so much like a native app, it’s easily a great showcase of how Chrome’s offline web apps can be a platform in themselves — one that’s a trojan horse of sorts on Windows and the Mac.


    






30 Oct 08:25

Everything You Need to Get a Ghost Blog Running Today

by Matthew Guay
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I'll be watching Ghost development.

There’s plenty of ways to blog today, but one has caught the imagination of bloggers and developers more than any this year: Ghost. And today, it’s finally ready for everyone to try out.

We tried out Ghost when it was first released to Kickstarter backers a few weeks back, and found it to be a brilliantly simple way to blog in Markdown — that is, once you get it installed. That last point is far simpler today, thanks to the efforts of Ghost’s partners including our whole Envato team.

Here’s the tools you need to get a new Ghost-powered blog today:

Wait: what is Ghost?

Ghost’s simple, Markdown-powered blogging you can start using today.

Late last year, developer John O’Nolan got frustrated with WordPress and decided it wasn’t the simple blogging platform he’d wanted. So, he set out to build a new blogging platform that was designed around the tools writers need.

That effort resulted in Ghost, the brand-new open-source blog platform you can now try out on your own. Built on Node.js and SQLite, Ghost doesn’t require Apache and MySQL like WordPress, but it is more involved to install and can’t run on standard shared hosting. That doesn’t mean it has to be difficult to use, though, since Ghost will have a hosted version that’s as easy to use as WordPress.com.

John O’Nolan wrote about why he wanted Ghost and his plans for the platform on Envato’s Tuts+ Hub today, so you should go check that article out for a quick into into Ghost and what’s coming next. And, you should check out our Ghost Review to see what it offers today, since the version you’ll be trying out is essentially the same as the one we reviewed. Then, it’s time to get your blog running.

Getting Ghost Running

It’s far easier to get Ghost installed today than it was when we first reviewed it, thanks to the Tuts+ team and a number of hosting providers. If you already have you own VPS or want to just install it on your computer to try it out, go check out the Tuts+ guide to installing Ghost:

If you don’t already have a VPS, though, or don’t want to go to the trouble of installing it by hand, there’s a number of hosting services that have auto Ghost installers ready for you to get a site up in seconds. Over at the Ghost Team’s Blog, you’ll find a list of the services with Ghost installers ready to use, including Digital Ocean, Rackspace, and more. If you use one of those services, it’ll only take seconds to get a new Ghost blog up and running.

And if you’re ready to hack and tweak Ghost on your own, be sure to check the Ghost GitHub repository.

Making Ghost Your Own

Some of the Ghost themes available right now

Some of the Ghost themes available right now

A basic, clean blog is nice, but you’ll likely want your Ghost blog to be a bit more personalized than it’ll be right out of the box. And you’re in luck. Ghost already has a theme marketplace with a number of themes you can buy or download for free today. Then, the Tuts+ team has an introduction to designing Ghost themes ready for you to check out, if you’re feeling inspired to craft a new theme from scratch.

For the designers and developers among us, there’s something even better. ThemeForest has launched a Most Wanted contest for Ghost themes, with $5,000 to giveaway to the first 20 Ghost themes submitted. Head over to that link to check out the contest, and if you make a new Ghost theme, be sure to submit yours too!

The Future

The yet-to-be-seen Ghost Dashboard

The yet-to-be-seen Ghost Dashboard

Ghost isn’t finished just yet. Right now, it’s really just a basic way to make blog with Markdown. But it’s going to be a lot more going forward, with its beautiful dashboard and more. Plus, there’s going to be a hosted version of Ghost that’ll be even easier to use than the pre-made server images today, so if all of this looks like too much trouble, just wait — there’s a lot more coming.

But what’s there today is pretty exciting, and we’ll be looking forward to seeing what people do with Ghost right now. If you’ve switched your blog to Ghost, be sure to share the link to it in the comments below, as we’d love to see it!


    






30 Oct 08:24

Cumulus.fm – A Unified Home For Your Streamed Music

by Mark Myerson
numunedir

Seems interesting, waiting for the invite.

Consider broadband’s contribution to music. Without it, we’d all be stuck in our pre-Napster bubbles, unable to hear any harmonies on demand other than those we owned; no wonder music TV shows did so well back then. Without broadband, “iTunes” would just be a weird way of describing your CD collection. And without broadband, we’d still be sharing our playlists on tape. Nowadays, we can access virtually any piece of music ever recorded, and instantaneously share our latest audio discoveries with our friends. Thank you, broadband.

However, despite being spoilt for listening choice, we now have 2013 problems to deal with. Streamed music is a highly fragmented marketplace, and if you are trying to build a cloud-based library, it is unlikely that every track you’ll ever want will be on Spotify, or Rdio, alone. As a result, playing your internet-derived library may require a haphazard tour around the likes of YouTube and SoundCloud, just to get the sounds you’re after. That’s just silly.

The makers of the beta, music curation platform, Cumulus.fm, want to make the musical site-hopping game a thing of the past. But is a slick, cross-service, music library really achievable?

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Track Collecting

Given that Cumulus.fm is an intermediary hub for the collection of streamed music, it can be judged somewhat in the same light as services such as Instapaper, albeit with a different form of media. Any service like this should make it as easy as possible to clip new discoveries, and in most respects, Cumulus.fm fits this bill.

The strikingly bold Add button, at the top of your dashboard, is the most basic way of expanding your library, essentially allowing the manual entry of new musical additions. In the case of individual tracks, you can input the name of the artist, and the track title, along with either a link to the track, or an embed code. You can also mark the incoming track as a favourite, and attach a note to it; the latter option is ideal for adding the kind of extra information associated with live performances.

Manual addition is straightforward, but laborious.

Manual addition is straightforward, but laborious.

If you’re a fan of a particular artist, you can also add them — as an entity separate from an individual track — to your collection. Cumulus.fm will then suck in videos from an official YouTube account, or tracks from a Spotify profile, for example.

If these manual methods of entry seem a little too arduous, there are a couple of alternatives.

Cumulus.fm provides a bookmarklet and a Chrome extension, both of which are capable of grabbing most of the required track data from any music-related URL. The extension further expedites the capture process by automatically inserting a Cumulus.fm button on supported music websites, which makes the extraction of songs from a busy SoundCloud page, in particular, considerably easier.

The Cumulus.fm Chrome extension button — displayed here on YouTube.

The Cumulus.fm Chrome extension button — displayed here on YouTube.

However, by far the easiest way to get music into your library is via the inbuilt search engine. This is capable of scanning for artists and (optionally) tracks on YouTube, Rdio, SoundCloud, Spotify, Hype Machine and Ex.fm with impressive speed. The tracks included in the search results can be added to your collection, or played in-situ, and the accuracy of the results is impressive.

The search engine in Cumulus.fm is fast and comprehensive.

The search engine in Cumulus.fm is fast and accurate.

In total, the methods of music grabbing here are pretty good. The bookmarklet and the Chrome extension both operate competently, but they sometimes differentiate inaccurately between the name of the track and the artist. Nothing terrible, just a bit of room for improvement, which is the whole point of a beta. The search, on the other hand, is seriously slick — it is by far the smoothest way of finding a track, and scooping it up into your collection.

Feeds

As a supplement to your personally curated list of music, Cumulus.fm offers feeds of the most popular tracks on Beatport, Hype Machine and Pitchfork. You can play these tracks directly from within Cumulus.fm, and add them to your collection with one click.

Library Organization

Looking at Cumulus.fm’s role as a library service, you might expect it to be strong in the organizational department. Surprisingly, and disappointingly, it isn’t.

Incoming tracks are displayed in a never-ending list, sorted by the date and time they were added — not an unreasonable default. But the trouble is, there are no other sorting options, not alphabetical, not by artist, nor by album (not least because albums are not yet supported).

Apart from favouriting, date and time is the only way your tracks are going to be organized.

Apart from favouriting, date and time is the only way your tracks are going to be organized.

This problem is mildly alleviated by the artist list, which strips out individual tracks for a slightly clearer view of your collection. Tracks you mark as favourites are also displayed in their own, separate list. It adds up to a system that is far from ideal, though.

For Rdio users, at least, there is an alternative. With syncing set up, your Cumulus.fm-captured music is automatically, simultaneously sent to your Rdio account. Unfortunately, this defeats the object of having a central music hub.

If you’re happy to use the well-equipped search to find the next song to be played, then none of the above is a huge problem. However, I hope better sorting is included in future updates because, for many users, the current organizational toolkit is badly deficient.

Playing

For those who manage to navigate to their desired song, a pleasant surprise lies in store — namely, the way tunes are played.

As you browse your library, or the results of a search, your chosen tracks are presented in an iframe-style pop-up at the bottom of the browser window. Obviously, the exact content of the player will vary, depending on which site you’re listening to, but SoundCloud tracks are presented in the official widget, and YouTube-hosted videos are shown in their original aspect ratio, albeit at a much smaller size.

The player displays everything from SoundCloud widgets to YouTube videos.

The player displays everything from SoundCloud widgets to YouTube videos.

It isn’t the prettiest presentation imaginable, but the speed at which tracks are loaded is remarkable, and it makes the Cumulus.fm listening experience pleasantly fluid. Furthermore, seamless playback is offered as an experimental option, and experimental or not, it works… pretty seamlessly.

Conclusion

The concept of a unified library of streamable music is simply brilliant; it’s the kind of idea you want to be the first to arrive at. And as a user, you really shouldn’t need another music library ever again…in theory.

In real-world, practical terms, Cumulus.fm doesn’t quite match this Utopian vision (yet, at least). It certainly isn’t the most polished platform you’ll encounter, and its lack of organizational features is a serious problem.

It must be remembered, though, that Cumulus.fm is still very much a beta product, and there are plenty of positives already in its favour – it makes the collection of music pretty easy, it has a brilliant all-in-one search engine, and it plays remotely hosted music with ease. With this in mind, I can say that Cumulus.fm is most definitely in the box marked “promising”, and it is only a few feature additions away from being a truly worthwhile home of online music.