Portent

There’s a new version of firefox version 3.5 which you can download here. It’s got a lot of new features, faster JavaScript and porn viewing mode (i.e. not tracked) just like in Google’s Chrome browser. It feel’s a bit snappier as well. You can see all the new features on this page. It’s certainly a major rival to Internet Explorer 8.

The picture shown is the live update which shows where people are downloading it and how many per second. BTW. If you download this version of firefox or have the previous one, type in about:robots into the address bar to see this Easter Egg.

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Though the title is from Star Wars, the game design is the old Defender game where aliens are capturing humans and taking them into space.

This would be well done in Flash but for JavaScript it’s excellent with what looks like 50 or 60 moving objects on screen (explosions bullets etc) and a parallax scrolling mountains. I’d also suggest you try it in the chrome browser because that has a very fast JavaScript engine. i have only one minor criticism and that is you can easily miss the ship at the start (it’s in the bottom left corner- blends in well with the mountains!). If you really need it, read the game overview on his blog.

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I’ve never been fond of Flash but there’s no denying that it lets designers do some amazing effects. Where theres a lot of Flash code to load, the better designers usually provide a pre-loader; an animation usually showing a %loaded.

That’s all this site does though they do let you filter by year and provide information about the site that each pre-loader was used in. There are some brilliant animations there…

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Black and white photos of nukes, nuclear bunker command consoles and aircraft! Scary and sort of awe inspiring.

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From a high of 3-4 posts per day and now less than one a month! For shame! I have spent a lot of my spare time in the last 18 months in my new job and developing Get Set 2 Move, but we’re in the last stages of that so I’ll have a bit more time here in future!

I also write About C, C+ and C#, so if you are into those programming languages take a look

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Mafia Respect & Retaliation is quite stylish looking and has a completely graphical interface. It also has a shooting range, where you tilt the iPhone to aim, and I suspect a little more depth than the other games. I found the shooting range a little tricky but with practise…

I’ve had a message pop up offering me a fight on occasions at which I am usually totally floor wiped and robbed of some cash.

This is a free game or you can pay up to £30 (in the app store) by buying respect in the game. You can also top this up- $99 gets you 2,500. Who says you can’t buy respect! It is though quite a stylish interface in red, black or white. I think there’s a bug buying stuff- it seems that the 1 quantity is disabled and you have to select 2 then do it a second time and change it back to 1. Not a big bug.

I do like this interface with a scrolling right hand list. Another suggestion though, some of the buttons respond when you press them by changing colours but the Job buttons don’t which makes it tricky to know if you have pressed. That would certainly enhance it. Player interactivity doesn’t appear to be as intense as iMob Online but otherwise this is a 7/10.

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PS. In case you’re wondering, I have no financial gain from any review or links to the App store. The adverts money pays a bit but that’s it…

Popularity: 2% [?]

iMafia was my least favourite game for just one reason. Every time you did anything, you’d see a Connecting to Server for 4-15 seconds on 3G, a bit shorter on WiFi. It’s very distracting and put me right off this, which is a shame as otherwise it looks quite reasonable.

This game follows the standard model of game play but makes it more interesting my having all of the actions done through clicking on a building. There are 9 buildings spread over the two screens (The picture btw is my combination of the two screens, normally you only see the left half or the right half. ). Clicking on for example the Police station gives you a list of targets to hit, and the reward offered. Loyalty/Respect points are called Honor points in iMafia. You get some to start with and can have more than 1 gang member; I’ve got 2 now. There’s also a set of 10 tutorials to speed you into the game.

If they could fix the Connecting to Server Message then this would be as good as the others and it is a free app, but for now I give it just 4/10.

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I was a bit busy in January so playing catch up now with this mega review of 4 iPhone Mafia games. Back to normal websites soon after this!

PS. Links to iPhone Apps go direct to the app in the App store so no point clicking them unless you have iTunes on your PC.

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This is the only paid one in the four reviewed: Mafia Live which costs £1.79, or about $2.99 (I guess). I have to say it is my favourite of the four but it has a basic flaw in the game design. It relates to recruiting members.

To get more mobsters into your gang, you have to get friends or acquaintances that you know to join.  Not exactly viral marketing but that sort of thing and it involves them basically being slightly spammed by you.

Not everyone has lots of friends who want to join up so if you haven’t then you are doomed to fight alone in your one man gang. This affects your combat strength as only one your best rated vehicles can be used – if you’ve bought say a town car and a BMW M3, it’s the M3. A gang with 2 members uses both cars.  It also stops you doing bank jobs etc. I can only steal or trash cars, shop lift or at best rough up rivals.  Bigger gangs can do bigger jobs which net them more money and experience.

I spotted this flaw early on so gave up trying to win fights. I armed myself with the minimum needed to conduct beat-up rivals missions, let everyone beat me up and concentrated on building up my property portfolio. After 4 days I have acquired 5 Hot Dog stands and 2 Gas Stations and quickly expanded up t0 ten jewelry stores. The bigger weapons and vehicles will milk you dry in support costs so I figure expand first and then arm myself to the hilt.

I’ve also been attacking against stronger gangs to lose and to lower my health. Below about 20 (of 100) no one can attack you. It’s an essential part of money management and you lose health when attacked or attacking. You heal a point every 290 seconds.

Every 50 minutes (real time) all my properties give me cash. If I’m attacked with money on me I lose some of it (about 10% per attack!) so I have to pay it into the bank for safety 1losing 10% in fees. In iMob the banks charge you 15%! I lost $125K while asleep last night. So every 48 minutes I log into the game, beat up as many rivals as I have energy points and pay all of the resulting cash into the bank. When its enough, I withdraw it and expand my property empire.

This isn’t the best looking which is probably iMob Online. Mafia Live uses a web page for its controls (Don’t believe me? Keep your finger pressed on a link like Banker and you’ll see the URL popup). To give it its due, you don’t see the network connection animation when it connects and it’s pretty quick, even on 3G.

I’m now at Level 29 with each level taking more and more points to get up. This comes from the experience gained in missions. Levelling up gives you 5 Zen Points to spend on improving your attack/defence, energy or stamina. It also brings newer weapons and vehicles every 5 levels. Most of mine has gone into energy which recharges at the rate of 10 points every 50 minutes.

Overall I’ll keep playing this for a few days more but its not the most interactive game. I also discovered a way to make a lot of money from one player which nobody else has done on me! If you attack someone and beat them you get money. If they have a lot of money you get a fair whack- my biggest is 55K. So long as you have the stamina and health and they have the health, (both healths must be 20 or higher) you can go to the My Hood tab, view the fight log, click on the link showing the player you last beat up and then fight them again and again and if your health goes to low you just pay to have it restored. You can’t attack anything except other gangs.

Be great if you could trash cars or blow up their buildings and increasing gang size without spamming your friends…  Rating 7/10.

Popularity: 2% [?]

I like Mafia games, I’m working on one for the iPhone and there are now at least four Mafia games, 1 paid and 3 free. So this is a group review of all four of them with lots of screen shots.

As a game designer I find that all of these games are somewhat derivative and a bit one dimensional. They are similar to many the web based mafia/gangster type games. But these are Al Capone type gangster games, not the modern “Rapper/Hos/Pimps” genre. The four reviewed are

1. Mafia LIVE
2. iMafia,
3. Mafia Respect and Retaliation (Henceforth known as Mafia R & R) and
4. iMob Online.

I didn’t review Mafia Boss which seems a different type of game. Of these four, Mafia R & R is also available in various paid versions with the amount of respect points (called Loyalty in Mafia Live, Honor in Mafia R & R) varying according to how much you paid. These points get you extra men or money so you can start with a big advantage. The 1250 point version costs £29.99 about $45!

Essentially these are all spreadsheets. You have some cash and use it to buy weapons and/or property. Weapons and manpower let you undertake more interesting and gainful missions that brings in more cash and experience that is used to level up. Property gives you income and several of the games use the binary model of having to buy land and then develop it by building Hot Dog stands, Jewelry shops, malls etc. You also have a stamina that is decreased by undertaking missions and increases with time.

I’ve split this review into four posts and will put them up over a day or two.

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This is the end scene from one of Jacquie Lawsons’s classy animated e-cards. Normally if I receive an email saying “You have received a message from a friend” it’s spam, but here knowing both who sent it and that the link clearly points to this website is reassuring.

I rarely mention commercial sites but a subscription of £6.25 ($12.00) is not exorbiitent and the card’s animations are very well done, synched to music. You can view them yourself before joining and each is a work of art. As e-cards go these are high quality. (Note, I have no connection finacial or otherwise and receive no reward for recommendation- I’ve received two and I really like them!). And Hey they’re a British website…

this is their card of the month link:

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Popularity: 7% [?]

This remarkable video shows a 3Dprojector in action, it looks like windows etc are opening in a window or bouncing off the car (pictured). Quite amazing.

Even something like the fish swimming along the pavement; that would freak me out if I looked down and saw that. Very clever stuff!

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Popularity: 7% [?]

If you remember MyMiniCity, a site where each visitor generates a newcomer, well you can see from the photo that things aren’t going well there.

These stats speak for themself- 47% unemployment!

So anyway, if you click on the top picture and visit the employment site it’ll get the jobs up at portent999. Click the stats box and it’ll increase the population. Or you could just visit MyMinicity.com and have your own city.

This is just for fun btw, it doesn’t earn me any more, fame or glory!

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The Lilly Library at Indiana University (Bloomington) is taking an existing collection of 30,000 puzzles and 4,000 books donated by collector Jerry Slocum (not the basketball coach!) and putting the collection online for scholars and the general public.

As well as the collection, Jerry Slocum devised his own classification of puzzles based on the scheme devised by Professor Angelo Louis Hoffmann over a century ago, and is a published author of 12 books as well as appearing on various US Tv shows.

You can search or browse the collection and view the photos plus details. Some puzzles are recently manufactured whuile others are centuries old. For example Kagen Schaefer U.S.A. wooden duodecahedron box which won both top awards at the IPP Nob Yoshigahara Design Competition is only five years old. If you’re into puzzles you may know of this but its fascinating reading.

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There’s a sort of car construction limbo dance to see who can build the world’s least tall street legal car. Briton Perry Watkins is now the current holder (it’s an unofficial title but I might be wrong) with an amazingly 19″ tall car – the Flatmobile.

The picture is a grab of a Youtube video, one of many showing Perry driving the car or setting on fire (accidentally) the afterburner that is fitted at the back. It’s modelled and styled on the BatMobile and in a former life was a 1963 Hillman Imp. Adding the afterburner gave an extra 150 lbs of thrust (noisy!) and by Perry’s reckoning, another 50 mph. However with a road clearance of 1″, it does not do speed bumps or dead animals very well.

It’s an amazing piece of kit and the videos show it off very well, including the one where the afterburner caught fire. My guess is a leak- afterburners spray fuel directly into the output stage of a jet turbine, lots of thrust and noise but not good for the fuel consumption!

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Popularity: 7% [?]