Colorization

subaku is a simple puzzle game by Eric Koziol for iOS. We've been working together for the past couple of weeks on a cool new update which adds — you guessed right — music! While the game didn't have any music in it, I didn't necessarily see that as lacking: Eric designed subaku so that the only thing you need to hear is the notes you tap on while playing the game. You get numbers on the screen, from 1 to 7, and each note descends or ascends in response to what you tap.

I approached Eric suggesting that we work together to add meaningful music to the game; he thought the notion was good and we went from there. The goal was to create music that adds to the experience, even though the lack of music was by design. We juggled with a few ideas before arriving at the one we settled on: sound that evolves with time.

The game has two modes: Puzzle and Endless. In Puzzle Mode, you solve puzzles and slowly move your way up to more complicated ones. In this mode, you'll always spend your time thinking, so you're only going to hear one music track. It won't change, and it's there to simply amplify the ambiance of the experience. So far, nothing too out of the ordinary.

Enter Endless Mode.

The goal in this mode is contrary to the aforementioned one: instead of trying to make all the numbers vanish (emptying the board and therefore winning the puzzle) your goal here is to sustain the numbers and try to let the board stay alive for as long as you can. And here you'll notice our trick. The music will evolve as you spend more time on the board and will gradually become faster. Think Super Mario World: when you ride Yoshi, the music instantly changes to reflect the mood (and intensity) of the situation. Hop off, and the music is back to normal. No fading in or out; it's a seamless transition and sounds good to the ear. What we implemented here is similar, and adds a lot to the experience.

Eirik Suhrke, by Jeriaska

We worked with Eirik Suhrke to carry out the music direction we wanted for the game. You may know Suhrke from games like Spelunky, Super Crate Box, and recently Ridiculous Fishing. In working with Suhrke on the various Koopa Soundworks projects, I was impressed by his ability to come up with new tunes on demand: I'd tell him the mood — as vague as that may sound to you right now — and he'd carry out the request splendidly. With subaku it wasn't any different, and Suhrke's flair is apparent despite the mellow nature of the music. The end result is certainly pleasing. Tell us what you think.

I'll shamelessly ask you to buy the game in support of Eric Koziol and his fine art. Power to the indies.

(Game designers: in case you're wondering, I'm available to hire for your game as a Music Assistant. I come with a bundle of talented musicians. Get in touch.)

Bandcamp | Loudr | iTunes

World 1-2, Koopa Soundworks’ first music album, is finally out! Get your copy from your preferred shop using the links above and spread the love!

The album hits a variety of music genres, from chiptunes to a fully-fledged orchestra, and hosts a blend of talented musicians — both rising independents and legendary stars — including Manami Matsumae (of Mega Man), Keiji Yamagishi (of Ninja Gaiden), Akira Yamaoka (of Silent Hill), Austin Wintory (of Journey), Eirik Suhrke (of Spelunky), Stemage and Danimal Cannon (of Metroid Metal) and many more!

Memories of T by Keiji Yamagishi

Get your copy now and be sure to let us know what you think. We’re @KoopaSW on Twitter.

I had a pleasant time with Andrew Webster from The Verge talking about World 1-2 and Koopa Soundworks.

A few friends wondered about this:

Taher says he has so much material, in fact, that he'll be putting out a second compilation later this summer.

As Andrew reports in the article, World 1-2 started as a small EP. However, the transition to a 20-track album didn't happen immediately — I wanted to make a huge album with up to 40 tracks first. I kept adding more material and hiring additional artists until I realized it was a terrible idea. Who wants to listen to a 40-track album? Most people simply lack such capacity; we — at least I — don't have the patience to stomach that much content. It took a lot of time for M83's “Hurry Up” to click with me, and that's a 22-track album. So I made a relatively smaller album in comparison, which is what we have now in the form of World 1-2, and I plan to make the followup (tentatively titled Encore) even smaller. I actually have more shelved tracks even when excluding Encore.

It's important we remind ourselves to never make anything just for the sake of making it. "40-track album for $10!" sounds marketable and catchy, but is it really engrossing? In most cases, no, and I have a hard time believing anyone would be able to make it so. Even if all the tracks are enjoyable, it simply won't sink in. It'll be that huge album I'll revisit thoroughly one day instead of that cool album I had fun listening to.

One lesson I learned from the making of World 1-2 is to always, always, always be receptive to change.

The next album, Encore, is shaping up quite nicely. I'm still refining hard edges here and there, but what we have so far is satisfying. Yes, it has a Mega Man remix — and from a (newly formed) jazz band, helmed by Andi Bissig! But let's not get ahead of ourselves: World 1-2 is coming in less than a week, and I'm looking forward to that! May is going to be an exciting month.

Permalink

"I'm just a video game music fanboy from Kuwait," Mohammed Taher tells The Verge. "This wasn't planned." But despite the humble attitude, Taher has managed to create something special in the form of World 1-2, an upcoming album featuring some of the biggest names in video game music. There's everyone from the Grammy-nominated Austin Wintory, composer of Journey, to Manami Matsumae, who scored the very first Mega Man back in 1987. It's a diverse lineup, spanning multiple styles and eras, but with one unifying theme: video games. "A lot of people think video games are just chiptunes," Taher explains, and World 1-2 is a way of showing just how much more the medium has to offer.

---

"A lot of people think video games are just chiptunes."

It all started with a podcast. When Taher was thinking about making a new intro song for his Arabic-language gaming podcast, he thought it might be fun to reach out to Souleye, the composer behind indie hit VVVVVV, about crafting a new song. To Taher's surprise, he agreed, and the new music was a hit. "The response was great," says Taher. It also got him thinking about working with even more musicians. He originally hatched a scheme to release a small EP on his gaming site, world1-2.net. Eventually he convinced both Eirik Suhrke (the composer behind games like Spelunky, Ridiculous Fishing, and Hotline Miami) and Saudi Arabia-based electronic musician Agent Whiskers to put together a four-song EP. From there it kept growing: soon members of the metal band Metroid Metal agreed to contribute tracks, and from there, Taher says, "It just started rolling."

But the biggest breakthrough came later, when Taher decided to reach out via Twitter — and an interpreter — to renowned video game musician Akira Yamaoka, best known for his work on the Silent Hill series of horror games. And again, to his surprise, Yamaoka agreed. This helped give the project some extra credibility, and gave Taher even more motivation and confidence to continue to reach out to prominent musicians.

Keiji Yamagishi was at the top of the list. Best known in North America and Europe for his soundtracks to classic games like Tecmo Bowl and Ninja Gaiden, Yamagishi is also well known in the Middle East and Japan for Captain Tsubasa Vol. II: Super Striker, a Famicom game based on a soccer-themed anime series. "I think I like it as much as some people like Mega Man music," Taher says of the game's soundtrack.

Unfortunately, Yamagishi hadn't worked on any game-related music since 2003's Onimusha Tactics, and Taher had been searching for details on what the musician was up to since 2008 with little success. Then, last year, through the help of a friend, Taher managed to track down Yamagishi's newly created Facebook account. Social networking once again proved useful, as Taher befriended the composer and began exchanging messages. Yamagishi not only agreed to create a new track for World 1-2, but he's also working with Taher on a brand new chiptune album, his first solo release. "I think my passion towards music has come back to me," Yamagishi says. "I'm happy to have realized that the work I did when I was young was not all for naught."

"I think my passion towards music has come back to me"

But despite this success in reaching out to artists, Taher's inexperience with the music industry did lead to a few issues. For instance, while Journey's Wintory was willing to work with him, he also required a contract before things started. "I didn't know what to do," Taher says, "because I had never written a contract before." He originally thought the roadblock would force him to leave Wintory out of the project, but a week later Yamaoka's assistant sent him a message saying that the musician had already started working on his song, and now wanted to go over the contract details. With two big-name artists on the line, Taher eventually managed to draft up a suitable contract and both musicians are now featured on the album.

The result of all of this hard work is a 20-track-long album that covers a huge range of video game music — there's everything from the hyper chiptune song "Tokyo Skies" by Super Hexagon composer Chipzel to Wintory's sweeping and emotional "Circles." It's a wide swath of what video game music has to offer, from remixes to original songs. Taher says he has so much material, in fact, that he'll be putting out a second compilation later this summer.

With multiple albums in the works, he's accidentally created a record label of sorts, appropriately dubbed "Koopa Soundworks." World 1-2 will be launching on May 2nd, though you can pre-order now and check out five tracks early. And even though the project has grown into something rather large, Taher says he has no plans to quit his day job, and only wants the project to become self-sustaining — for the past eight months he has ignored his savings account to put money into the project, paying musicians and engineers. He has no illusions about becoming some sort of video game music mogul. "I'm just a regular guy who enjoys music."

BBC News:

Fair-trade officials in Taiwan are looking into reports that Samsung paid people to criticise rival HTC online. Samsung is alleged to have hired students to post negative comments about phones made by Taiwan’s HTC.

Samsung, based in South Korea, said the “unfortunate incident” had gone against the company’s “fundamental principles”.

Shocker.

 ★ 

Although I've spent the last eight months making World 1-2, that doesn't mean I wasn't listening to new music. In fact, I spent most of my time listening to non-personal stuff. My taste in music, just like in video games, is all over the place: I enjoy mainstream pop, UK pop, experimental rock, chiptunes, jazz, instrumentals ...you get it.

I've been buying a lot of albums as of late and I started to lose track of the music that's flowing into my iTunes Library. So I made a smart playlist with the following settings: show me all of the music I purchased during the last 3 months, and don't update the playlist. This means that once the playlist fetches the appropriate albums, it's not going to be "live", meaning it's not going to be automatically updated each time I add a new album. This actually makes it easier for me so I don't lose albums older than 3 months as the days go by. Once I consume all of the new music, I then tick the "live" box and make it update itself again. (It's called a smart playlist for a reason.)

I'm still going through these albums, but I thought I'd write about some of the ones I'm really digging.

Noisechan & Nugget: Adventure in Chiptunes

A groovy compilation album by Jake 'virt' Kaufman featuring some of my chiptune heroes, including hally, Rekcahdam, Fear of Dark, and others. It's pretty damn good — I like every single track on it. Bonus: pay-what-you-want, with the proceeds going to Child's Play. (Bandcamp)

Rejection by Norrin Radd

---

Eternal Life Vol. 1 & 2  by   I Come to Shanghai

Right now, this is my jam. These two are quickly climbing my list of favorite albums in recent years. I can't quite put my finger on what makes me enjoy them so dearly, but maybe that's part of the appeal; I haven't listened to something like this before. The mix of short and long tracks works really well, and reminds me a lot of The Beatles' Abbey Road. Everything flows naturally until it stops — no filler. Quoting them, this is a record designed to be heard 100 times without becoming boring. I Come To Shanghai is a duo, and you're probably familiar with Robert Ashley from the gaming podcast A Life Well Wasted. (Bandcamp)

Love Shark by I Come to Shanghai

---

The Legend of Zelda  by   Cory Johnson

This is becoming my favorite Zelda remix album. I got to know Cory through his contribution to Stemage's track for World 1-2, and boy — what a talent! The compositions have traces of Metroid Metal, which suits me well. (Bandcamp)

Hyrule Field by Cory Johnson

---

Hurry Up, We're Dreaming.  by   M83

Midnight City. Go now. Listen to it. I'll wait. I just can't get enough of it. So good. So, so good. (iTunes)

---

Exile  by   Hurts

I've been a fan of this duo since their debut, Happiness, and I like the different vibe that Exile is trying to bring. I thought the sound was less catchy and more experimental than their first album (in a good way), and I've always enjoyed their lyrics despite some genericness. (Hurts Store)

---

The 20/20 Experience  by   Justin Timberlake

I didn't expect this to be a hard album to get into, but it is, and I think I figured out why: 7 minutes is too long for a track, which is the average in the record. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, quite the contrary, but the long markup makes it hard to grasp the album on a whim. I'm actually glad to see a mainstream musician try something different like this; whereas most new albums feel like they're meticulously crafted to appeal to the trend, this one strays a bit from the norm. Oh, and Let The Groove Get In is fun. (iTunes)

This post will be updated as I listen to more albums.

“Let me tell you a story. The day after Columbine, I was interviewed for the Tom Brokaw news program. The reporter had been assigned a theory and was seeking soundbites to support it. “Wouldn’t you say,” she asked, ‘that killings like this are influenced by violent movies?” No, I said, I wouldn’t say that. “But what about ‘The Basketball Diaries’?” she asked. “Doesn’t that have a scene of a boy walking into a school with a machinegun?”

The obscure 1995 Leonardo DiCaprio movie did indeed have a brief fantasy scene of that nature, I said, but the movie failed at the box office and it’s unlikely the Columbine killers saw it.

The reporter looked disappointed, so I offered her my theory. “Events like this,” I said, “if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; these two kids were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. The message is clear to other disturbed kids: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous. The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. Kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn’t have messed with me. I’ll go out in a blaze of glory.”

In short, I said, events like Columbine are influenced far less by violent movies than by CNN, “The NBC Nightly News” and other news media, who glorify the killers in the guise of “explaining” them.

The reporter thanked me and turned off the camera. Of course the interview was never used. They found plenty of talking heads to condemn violent movies, and everybody was happy.”

-

A Roger Ebert quote that sticks out in my mind

From his review of Gus Van Sant’s Elephant

(via yeezytaughtme)

Man that movie is so sad.

(via softcastle-mccormick)

World 1-2, a new album produced by Mohammed Taher for the record label GameChops, is a collection of new material by relatively new voices like Super Hexagon composer Chipzel, and established artists like Mega Man's Manami Matsumae (who Taher's Koopa Soundworks connected to Yacht Club Games for Shovel Knight). Other artists on the eclectic mix include Danimal Cannon, Austin Wintory, Tecmo's Keiji Yamagishi, halc, and Akira Yamaoka.

The album will be released on May 2 for $10. Five sample tracks can be streamed here, in case the collected talent on the album isn't convincing enough.

'World 1-2' album brings chiptune artists and legendary composers together originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 16 Apr 2013 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

 

World 1-2 is a music album 8 months in the making, with over 80 minutes of music and a roster of 21 composers — and  is finally available to pre-order! You’ll receive 5 tracks upon pre-ordering, and Bandcamp will e-mail you your copy once the album is out on May 2nd. Get yours now & spread the word!

When Apple decided to make its own web browser back in 2001, it chose KHTML/KJS from the KDE project as the basis of its rendering engine. Apple didn’t merely “adopt” this technology; it took the source code and ran with it, hiring a bunch of smart, experienced developers and giving them the time and resources they needed to massively improve KHTML/KJS over the course of several years. Thus, WebKit was born.

In the world of open source software, this is the only legitimate way to assert “ownership” of a project: become the driving force behind the development process by contributing the most—and the best—changes. As WebKit raced ahead, Apple had little motivation to help keep KHTML in sync. The two projects had different goals and very different constraints. KDE eventually incorporated WebKit. Though KHTML development continues, WebKit has clearly left it behind.

When Google introduced its own web browser in 2008, it chose WebKit as the basis for its rendering engine. Rather than forking off its own engine based on WebKit, Google chose to participate in the existing WebKit community. At the time, Apple was clearly the big dog in the WebKit world. But just look at what happened after Google joined the party. (Data from Bitergia.)

Given these graphs, and knowing the history between Apple and Google over the past decade, one of two things seemed inevitable: either Google was going to become the new de facto “owner” of WebKit development, or it was going to create its own fork of WebKit. It turned out to be the latter. Thus, Blink was born.

Google has already proven that it has the talent, experience, and resources to develop a world-class web browser. It made its own JavaScript engine, its own multi-process architecture for stability and code isolation, and has added a huge number of improvements to WebKit itself. Now it’s taken the reins of the rendering engine too.

Where does this leave Apple? All the code in question is open-source, so Apple is free to pull improvements from Blink into WebKit. Of course, Google has little motivation to help with this effort. Furthermore, Blink is a clearly declared fork that’s likely to rapidly diverge from its WebKit origins. From Google’s press release about Blink: “[W]e anticipate that we’ll be able to remove 7 build systems and delete more than 7,000 files—comprising more than 4.5 million lines—right off the bat.” (There’s some streamlining in the works on the other side of the fence too.)

Does Apple—and the rest of the WebKit community—have the skill and capacity to continue to drive WebKit forward at a pace that matches Google’s grand plans for Blink? The easy answer is, “Of course it does! Apple created the WebKit project, and it got along fine before Google started contributing.” But I look at those graphs and wonder.

The recent history of WebKit also gives me pause. Google did not want to contribute its multi-process architecture back to the WebKit project, so Apple created its own solution: the somewhat confusingly named WebKit2. While Google chose to put the process management into the browser application, Apple baked multi-process support into the WebKit engine itself. This means that any application that uses WebKit2 gets the benefits of multi-process isolation without having to do anything special.

This all sounds great on paper, but in (several years of) practice, Google’s Chrome has proven to be far more stable and resilient in the face of misbehaving web pages than Apple’s WebKit2-based Safari. I run both browsers all day, and a week rarely goes by where I don’t find myself facing the dreaded “Webpages are not responding” dialog in Safari that invites me to reload every single open tab to resume normal operation.

Princes of Android

Having the development talent to take control of foundational technologies is yet another aspect of corporate self reliance. Samsung’s smartphone business currently relies on a platform developed by another company. Leveraging the work of others can save time and money, but Samsung would undoubtedly be a lot more comfortable if it had more control over the foundation of one of its most profitable product lines.

The trouble is, I don’t think Samsung has the expertise to go it alone with a hypothetical Android fork. Developing a modern OS and its associated toolchain, documentation, developer support system, app store, and so on is a huge task. Only a handful of companies in history have done it successfully on a large scale—and Samsung’s not one of them. Sure, it’s possible to staff-up and build that expertise, but it’s not easy and it requires years of commitment. I’d bet against Samsung pulling it off.

Facebook Home can also be viewed through the lens of developer-based self reliance. Facebook clearly wants to make sure it’s an important part of the future of mobile computing, but that’s not easy to do when you’re “just a website.” Home lets Facebook put itself front and center on existing Android-based smartphones.

It seems unwise for Facebook to build its mobile strategy on the back of a platform controlled by its mortal enemy, Google. But perhaps Home is just the first step of a long-term plan that will eventually lead to a Facebook fork of Android. If so, the question inevitably follows: can Facebook really take ownership of its own platform without help from Google?

Facebook has proven that it can expand its skill set. Over the past few years, it’s been hiring talented designers and acquiring companies with proven design chops. Facebook Home is the first result of those efforts, and by all accounts, the user interface exhibits a level of polish more commonly associated with Apple than Facebook.

Still, a lock screen replacement is a far cry from a full OS. Maybe Facebook just plans to ride the bear, relying on Google to do the grunt work of maintaining and advancing the platform for as long as it can, while Facebook slowly takes over an increasing amount of the user experience.

Some people wonder how Google can possibly have any power in the Android ecosystem if the source code is free. Facebook Home has been cited as an example of Google’s ineffectualness. Look at how one of Google’s fiercest enemies has played it for a fool, they say. Google did all the hard work, then Facebook came in at the last minute and co-opted it all for its own purposes.

But look again at the graphs above. Now imagine similar graphs for the Android source code. Any company with Android-based products that wants to be truly free from Google’s control has to be prepared—and able—to match Google’s output. Operating systems don’t write themselves; platforms don’t maintain themselves; developers need tools and support; technology marches on. It’s not enough just to just fix bugs and support new hardware. To succeed with an Android fork, a company has to drive development in the same way that Apple did when it spawned WebKit from KHTML, just as Google is doing as it forks Blink from WebKit.

This is not a real-time strategy game. Companies like Samsung and Facebook can’t just mine for more resources and build new developer barracks. Building up expertise in a new domain takes years of concerted effort—and a little bit of luck on the hiring front doesn’t hurt, either.

Facebook may already be a few years into that process. Its recent acquisition of the mysterious, possibly-OS-related startup osmeta provides another data point. Samsung, meanwhile, has just joined an exploratory project to develop a new web rendering engine.

Google certainly has its own share of problems, but what may save it in the end is its proven ability to tackle ambitious software projects and succeed. The challenge set before Facebook, Samsung, and other pretenders to the Android throne is clear. And as a wise man once said, you come at the king, you best not miss.

Michael Lopp reviews some headphones.

 ★ 

It sure took a while for Mohammad to finish this text adventure, but it is finally out!

Check it out in “Our games” page!

You’re lost in a dark and strange place that defies logic, what makes it worse is that you’re followed and preyed upon by unknown forces. Find your way through the catacombs of this horror text adventure as you struggle to survive with your life and your sanity intact.

David Pogue:

And there’s a more troubling question: Why?

The Facebook apps for both iPhone and Android are outstanding. They’re full-featured, beautifully designed, extremely popular. What does Home add, really? Yes, the ability to see incoming posts on your Home screen; you save one tap. But is it worth losing widgets, wallpaper, app folders and the Android status bar in the process?

Then there’s the weird new phone that comes with Home preinstalled — the HTC First. What’s the deal with this phone? It’s plastic, dull, uninteresting. It’s so generic, it should come in a plain white box that says PHONE on it.

From a practical standpoint, it seems very weird to me not to be able to check your battery life from the home screen.

See also: Om Malik’s review.

 ★ 

Worth reblogging for the Super Mario World one alone. So good.

(via it8bit/Víctor Somoza Benítez || deviantART)

The track that is set to bring Florrie back to us is ready for your free download.

Click here for it. 

 

Filed under: Beats, Brit Brit Brit Tagged: Florrie, new, single

The licensing rights for spy shooter franchise No One Lives Forever still have not been located, residing neither with publisher Activision nor developer Monolith Productions, according to Activision community manager Dan Amrich.

Responding to a reader question in a video posted to the One of Swords YouTube channel, Amrich said the individual he spoke to at Activision "does not believe" the company owns the rights to No One Lives Forever. Monolith also told Amrich that they do not know if they own the rights.

Amrich noted that the IP could be owned by a third party waiting "for the right time" to republish or remake the games.

"At this time I do not believe Activision has the rights to No One Lives Forever, so if there were to be a...

Elite Beat Agents developer Inis will release a new tower defense game for mobile devices called Eden to Green,Venture Beat reports.

Speaking with the publication, chief creative officer Keiichi Yano said that unlike other tower defense games, players will not just protect their territory, but expand it. The goal is for players to cover the game's world with green.

"You want to spread the green — not just to restore the beauty — but that's what gives you the energy to plant more and better plants," Yano said. "And with a turn-based system we can give the casual player a chance to think about their move and what they want to do and how they want to plan it."

A global launch date has not yet been announced, though Eden to Green is...

Continue reading…

BioShock Infinite developer Irrational Games released a group of alternate covers for the game today, giving players the opportunity to replace the Booker DeWitt box art and its Songbird reverse cover with artwork of their choosing.

Irrational ran a poll in December in which fans voted on six alternate covers, with the winner set to be included in all copies of the game on the flip side of the default artwork. A red-orange cover featuring the Songbird, a mechanical creature that pursues the protagonists, won the poll with 38 percent of the vote, but Irrational said at the time that it would eventually release all the possible choices and a few others.

Eight different alternate covers are now available on the BioShock Infinite website,...

Continue reading…

Smart thread on Branch. Two nuggets from yours truly:

• What I’ve heard: iOS 7 is running behind, and engineers have been pulled from OS X 10.9 to work on it. (Let me know if you’ve heard this song before.)

• Regarding Jony Ive and iOS: Word on the street is that iOS engineers with carry privileges all have some sort of polarizing filter on their iPhone displays, such that it greatly decreases viewing angles, thus making it difficult for observers to see the apparently rather significant system-wide UI overhaul.

And regarding that system-wide UI overhaul, I hear the same thing as Rene Ritchie: “Ive’s work is apparently making many people really happy, but will also apparently make rich-texture-loving designers sad.”

 ★ 

تقديم: يوسف النفجان | عبدالعزيز الحديثي | عبدالعزيز الزامل

نبدأ الحلقة بالحديث عن تعاون ملحنة ميجامان مع مشروع كيكستارتر واعد بمساعدة محمد الطاهر، ثم ننتقل للحديث عن أهم أخبار الأسابيع الماضية، منها تفاصيل إعلان ميتل جير سوليد 5، الجدل الدائر حول احتمال إجبار مستخدمي الإكسبوكس القادم على الاتصال المستمر بالإنترنت، وطريقة الإعلان عن باتلفيلد 4. بعد ذلك ننتقل للحديث عن أهم الألعاب التي نلعبها الآن، وعلى رأسها BioShock Infinite، وأيضاً Luigi’s Mansion المحمولة الجديدة، و Tomb Raider، والعديد من الألعاب الأخرى (منها “أفضل لعبة جوال في التاريخ”)، وأهم إصدارات الأسبوع، والمزيد!

• للاشتراك في Gaming FTW عن طريق آيتونز وغيره من البرامج التي تدعم خلاصات RSS، اضغط هنا

 

• 00:01:32 – الأخبار

• 00:43:58 – إصدارات الألعاب القابلة للتحميل

• 00:50:42 – الألعاب التي نلعبها الآن

 

• تفاصيل تعاون محمد الطاهر مع ملحنة ميجامان ومطوري لعبة Shovel Knight

 

“What I believe is that all clear-minded people should remain two things throughout their lifetimes: curious and teachable.”

 ★ 

Declan McCullagh and Jennifer Van Grove, reporting for CNet:

Encryption used in Apple’s iMessage chat service has stymied attempts by federal drug enforcement agents to eavesdrop on suspects’ conversations, an internal government document reveals.

An internal Drug Enforcement Administration document seen by CNET discusses a February 2013 criminal investigation and warns that because of the use of encryption, “it is impossible to intercept iMessages between two Apple devices” even with a court order approved by a federal judge.

A win on the privacy front.

 ★ 

Roger Ebert, back in 2010:

My rules for Twittering are few: I tweet in basic English. I avoid abbreviations and ChatSpell. I go for complete sentences. I try to make my links worth a click. I am not above snark, no matter what I may have written in the past. I tweet my interests, including science and politics, as well as the movies. I try to keep links to stuff on my own site down to around 5 or 10%. I try to think twice before posting.

 ★ 

Seth Godin:

But when we’re discussing our goals, our passion and the way we interact with the culture, it seems to me that what works is significantly more important than what’s new. Racing to build your organization around the latest social network tool or graphics-rendering technology permits you to spend a lot of time learning the new system and skiing in the fresh powder of the unproven, but it might just distract you from the difficult work of telling the truth, looking people in the eye and making a difference.

The same is true of design trends. Many — not all, maybe not even most, but many — of the complaints I see about iOS, for example, boil down to it being familiar. It no longer scratches our itch for new. Apple needs to scratch that itch for us eventually or someone else will, but it’s essential that they find something new and better, not merely new and different.

 ★ 

Shovel Knight لعبة بطابع كلاسيكي متوفرة على Kickstarter وشبيهة بميجا مان وDucktales (والقليل من كاسلفينيا). فريق Yacht Club Games، مطور اللعبة، مكوّن من أعضاء سابقين لفريق WayForward المعروفين بألعاب كثيرة أبرزها Contra 4 و Shantae و A Boy and His Blob.

أقوم مع فريقي Koopa Soundworks بالتنسيق ما بين المطور والملحنة العريقة Manami Matsumae لتلحين جزء من اللعبة. عملنا هو الإشراف على التواصل ما بين الفريق — ترجمة مستنداتهم وأفكارهم وتسليمها يدوياً – والملحنة. هذا خبر يسعدني كثيراً، ليس لأن مانامي ملحنة مفضلة لدي وحسب، بل لأنه عملها الأول على لعبة فيديو خارج اليابان.

(انتهى زملائي في FTWeekly من تسجيل حلقة بودكاست جديدة وتحدثوا فيها عن التعاون كذلك. يؤسفني عدم وجودي لتسجيل الحلقة!)

∞

Project X Zone, a role-playing strategy crossover game featuring characters from Namco Bandai, Sega and Capcom, will launch for Nintendo 3DS June 25, Namco announced.

The game will feature more than 50 different characters from franchises such as Street Fighter, Devil May Cry, .hack and more. In Project X Zone, a rift in time and space opens after an artifact called the Portalstone is stolen, allowing different universes to mix. Players will choose two characters to team up and explore affected worlds.

Project X Zone launched in Japan Oct. 11, 2012.The game was announced for North American, European and Australian release in January. Project X Zone is currently available for pre-order for $39.99 through Amazon and GameStop.

Continue reading…

The Nintendo 3DS remake of Wii side-scrolling platformer Donkey Kong Country Returns will bring with it all-new content, including local wireless co-op play and an easier difficulty mode, according to a product description on Nintendo's UK website.

Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D will feature "brand new content created just for Nintendo 3DS," Nintendo says, including a "new surprise" for those who best the game's most difficult levels. For players who find the game too challenging, Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D will offer an easier mode that grants DK and Diddy three hit points each, instead of the standard two.

Nintendo announced the stereoscopic 3D makeover of Retro Studios' Donkey Kong Country Returns in February. The 3DS port is in...

Continue reading…

Should I use a QR Code?

Exciting news! You probably heard about it on the team’s Kickstarter page already. But if not, go there and check it out. Manami Matsumae, composer of Mega Man, is a signed Koopa Soundworks composer and is working on several projects with us. So, we hooked her up with a game! Shovel Knight is her first non-Japanese game to work on.

Although Koopa Soundworks is a music label that focuses on producing music albums, we are also trying to bridge the apparent gap between Japanese composers and non-Japanese teams — especially independent ones, those with no language skills or a clear path to work with them.

Shovel Knight will be composed by Jake ‘virt’ Kaufman, while Manami is contributing two tracks to the game. Shovel Knight, as the team said before, is going to have authentic 8-bit chiptunes. But that’s not all: they’re going to extend the 8-bit sound to using the VRC6 abilities; that’s 3 extra sound channels in addition to what you usually hear on a NES game. “The [VRC6] chip contained support for 3 extra sound channels (two square waves and one sawtooth wave). It was used in Akumajou Densetsu (the Japanese version of Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse), while the western version used the MMC5 from Nintendo.”

The team has yet to decide which tracks should Manami compose, but here’s a hypothetical rundown of the process:

• The team will design an area. Enemies, level design, colors, stage gimmicks, and everything in between.
• The team provides us, Koopa Soundworks, with all the necessary documents to give to Manami. This includes screens, notes, composition notes (“we want it mellow”; “we want it fast-paced”), and so on.
• We put everything in a nice, printed document (translated to Japanese) and give it by hand to Manami. Crazy, huh? We will sit down with her and even give extended direct instructions.
• Manami does her magic, and everyone lives happily ever after.

So, that’s really exciting! We got Manami to finally work with a Western developer, and hopefully this opens up a lot of doors to everyone: us, developers, and composers. There’s no secret mission here: We simply want to resurrect our favorite living legends — be it on music albums or video games.

Things you could (and should!) do:

1. Spread the word! Share this post with your friends and pets.
2. Back Shovel Knight on Kickstarter. It’s a lovely game.
3. Follow us on Twitter. We never spam.

Now, let’s get shovelin’!

This, from the company that shitcanned Google Reader because they wanted to “focus”.

 ★