Twitter Hints & Tips

Well the twittering has begun. Just waiting for RealmEnder now 🙂 I thought I’d post a few hints and tips that I got from having Dean get me up to date on all things Twitter related. You may have sussed some of these things out already but some of them aren’t so obvious. Due to the restrictive nature of 140 character long Tweets there’s been lots of little codes developed as shorthand, the most important of which are…

@replies = an @ symbol before a username at the START of a tweet indicates you are replying to this user ie “@roscopct I know what you mean by that!!”

@mentions = an @ symbol before a username in the MIDDLE or at the END of a tweet is called a mention and is the standard way to refer to someone in a tweet ie. “Welcome to Twitter @RealmEnder”. You can then see all the mentions of you anytime you want.

#tags = Hash tags are a way to tag the content of a tweet so that other people looking for related tweets will find it. You usually add #tags to the end of a tweet but they can go anywhere ie. “New stuff to download for free in #Home today! Go get ’em!! #PS3 #playstationhome”

RT = Re-Tweeting and is indicated by adding “RT” to the end of the tweet and usually @mention the original poster. You use it when you’ve found a tweet somewhere else and you want us to see it. Copy and paste the tweet and add “RT” and @username to the end ie “IGN interviews CliffyB today http://ign.com/cliffyb_intv RT @igncom”. You can apparently use “via” instead of “RT” ie “(via @igncom)” can be added to the end but that may look nicer but it uses up more characters?

So that’s the basics, here’s a FAQ that contains all this and more…
Twitter FAQ

The only other thing I’d recommend is setting up your cell phone so that you can easily tweet while you’re out and about from a standard cell phone using standard txting. It works really well. You can by default send a tweet from your phone and if you want to you can set certain people up to broadcast their tweets to your phone. I’ve used it several times and it’s dead easy and quite fun. It’s a good way to send one text/tweet to everyone and get their replies as well. Receiving updates to your phone is free and sending them just deducts 1 txt from your number of free texts per month or costs your normal text charge if you’re on pre paid. The good thing is that you just get charged for one text at your end but everyone can receive it!! CHEAP!!

One last thing is customising your Twitter home page. You can add an image to your background and change the colour scheme. You can use either one big image (that will take ages to load and be a total pain) or a small image that tiles. I chose the MC Escher image above as it obviously tiles well and the birds make it tweet related as an added bonus 🙂

Start your twatter-bleeping!

Ross mentioned the other day that it would be cool to have a blog to update everyone about your gaming progress, major achievements and just general kickarsery and antics in video gaming! Just somewhere to post those achievements that certainly don’t require a full on blog post or even an email but somewhere where you can say a little more than what you can fit on your gamercard. My first thought was Twitter. Nick mentioned it the other day and Dean’s an addict of it and I’ve often wondered if there was any actual use for it myself and this may just be one such use. Also, as we found out recently, Microsoft are integrating Twitter into the New New Xbox experience before the end of the year. I don’t think PS3 users will be getting this kind of integration any time soon (sure you can just use the PS3’s browser but you have to quit what you’re doing first) but the iPod Touch is an excellent twatter-bleeping device so Ross and I will be covered 🙂 So maybe now is the time to jump on the bandwagon?

By the way the twatter-bleeping thing features on this ad 🙂

and another hilarious ad…

R.I.P. Halo movie – Bring on District 9!!

The Halo movie died after months of work (about 6 months) were poured into it. According to Peter J it was all political arguments between the studios and Microsoft that killed it off. But in the immediate wake of the Halo movies death a new project was born. District 9 opens next month.

UPDATE: Here’s the trailer…

and an interview with Peter J

When Gears of War meets FF

What happens when you mix Gears of War and Final Fantasy into one game. Maybe you get Tecmo’s upcoming PS3 exclusive shooter QUANTUM?

Take a little Final Fantasy

and add in some 3rd person Gears style action and you get Quantum.

I hadn’t heard of this game before and haven’t looked into it much but it comes from the guys responsible for some Ninja action, a little beach volley ball and the odd horse racing game. These are all very successful series but they don’t seem to have much of a shooter background so whether this will play as well as Gears remains to be seen but it’s an interesting visual mix that’s for sure. It’s adds a bit of colour to the usually bland shooter formula.

Many Natal features to be available on PS3

I wrote recently about how the differing ways of implementing motion controls on the different console gaming platforms might cause headaches for cross platform development, in particular driving a wedge between the PS3 and 360, which up until now have largely received the same set of games across both platforms essentially bringing the total tap-able HD console market up to Wii sized proportions. At a time when the Wii was showing that HD wasn’t necessary to be successful in this generation of consoles the HD market needed to become a lot more, not less, cohesive. But according to recent reports, cross platform development between Xbox and PS3 in a post Natal world might not be so difficult after all. I guess it was obvious really as they both employ cameras at the centre of their tech but it’s not like Sony went to any lengths to make this clear at E3. Perhaps they just didn’t think that this camera based stuff was ever going to take off in any big way. Here’s an overview of their motion control. What isn’t mentioned there is that Sony’s solution is more Wii like in that you hold two controllers that have buttons and rumble/force feedback available. This was touched on at E3, however what wasn’t really looked at at all at E3 (“at” overkill!) is the fact that because it uses the PS3 eye camera they can do most of the body / face tracking and face / voice recognition stuff also. Here’s a super short article talking about it albeit pretty briefly. Another recent report of  a Sony patent shows that they are looking at scanning in everyday objects to use them to control in game equivalents. Once you have scanned in the object (presumably form multiple angles) it can then track that object and use it to control in game actions, something that Microsoft says they can do also.

So although I am still pretty sure the Xbox tech is probably more capable (it has it’s own dedicated processor and depth sensor that the PS3 eye doesn’t have) it should at least mean that devs can bring a game from one HD platform to the other with it’s camera based features mostly intact. It might also mean that devs will concentrate on just those features shared between the two platforms, ignoring any platform specific features or capabilities leaving only first party titles to fully take advantage of everything that each platform is capable of.

One thing that remains to be fully detailed though is how much processor overhead all these features incur. Natal after all has it’s own processor so there’s nothing additional taxing the Xbox itself when implementing these features. In this sense they come for “free”. The PS3 on the other hand would need to use some of it’s internal processing power to handle things. But what hasn’t been made clear is whether or not Natal will actually come for “free”, as in will it be bundled in with every Xbox at no extra cost or is it something that will be an optional extra expense? Sony also haven’t said if they’re going to do anything to ensure the PS3 Eye gets into more hands or not but at least that’s a known quantity/expense and is already available, what isn’t known is how much the “wands” will cost? In fact almost nothing is known about these. They’re in the prototype stage, the ones at E3 don’t represent what the final ones will look like, cost hasn’t been discussed and there’s been no disclosure of things like the button layout, rumble, internal sensors etc. All we know is that it has buttons/triggers, rumble and some sort of internal sensor (most likely a gyro). Details are few and far between.

All in all I think Microsoft came out with a more focused, branded project and left Sony scrambling to sweep together all the different technologies that they have had available for sometime now but haven’t fully utilised or supported. It looks like they have most of the necessary tech lying around to come up with something roughly equivalent to Natal but are they able to bring it all together in time? After all Microsoft have shown an actual product and let people play actual games with it whereas Sony has only had tech demos and patents to show. Even though they’ve been doing camera based stuff since the PS2 days and even have a camera available for the PSP so far they haven’t given the PS3 Eye much lovin’ but it looks like a lot may suddenly be hinging off it!?

UPDATE: Sony’s balls light up different colours 🙂 and it’s apparently really really accurate. At the E3 conference they said it tracked “with sub millimetre precision”. They also reiterate that the controller has buttons. Well I hope it has a LOT of buttons because then you could use it for REAL games. In fact it would be cool if each wand had four buttons on the “face” and two triggers opposite them making it much like holding a dual shock in two parts. Anything less and I fear it will be doomed to mini game hell.

UPDATE: Urm, maybe like this?!

Ok, this is one of those crappy looking patent application drawings that always make things look a little retarded but this image is from an actual patent lodged by Sony?! Interestingly it includes Ultra Sonic?! Which I assume works with the PS3 Eyes built-in four-capsule microphone array for another level of tracking.

Shatter!

There’s a new game coming to the PSN from a New Zealand developer that keeps getting mentioned all over the interwebs. The latest to do so is 1 Up’s Listen Up! Podcast.

It’s Arkanoid / Breakout but with enough additions and tweaks to make it feel fresh. Visually it’s given the Super Stardust / Galaxy wars treatment and they’ve added in a kick arse soundtrack by a Wellington DJ. The word on the street is that it’s pretty awesome!

Asteroids movie in the works?!?

Yeap, there’s a movie based on the old 2D wire frame shooter Asteroids in the works and the first details of a script for it have emerged…

Ship Capt: Shit there’s asteroids everywhere [to gunner] Shoot them!!
[Pew Pew Boom Pew Pew Boom]
Gunner: Oh noes they all broke into three little asteroids!?! Now what can we do??!
Ship Capt: [to gunner] Shoot everyone of dem mutha-fukas!
[Pew Pew Pew Boom Boom Boom Pew Pew Pew Boom Boom Boom]
Gunner: Whew that was close but oh noes there’s a flying saucer flying erratically across space?! What can we do??! We’re on a collision course!?!
Ship Capt: [to gunner] Shoot the muther farka!!…
Gunner: Die bitch DIIIEEEEE!!!
[Pew Pew Pew]
[BOOOOM!]
Gunner: YEAH!! I got you muther fukka!! I totally Pwn’d you!! Game over man!! Game OVER!!

Not so sure that this will be entertaining for an entire two hours? Fun for a few minutes maybe?! At least the CG department will have it easy. They could output all the special effects shots using a render farm made entirely of 1970s digital watches! They would have processing cycles to burn! Although the special effects guy has got it hard compared to the sound effects guy!! Bleep Bloop, Bleep Bloop. Pew Pew! Booom! Pew Pew! Booom! Booooom! I mean an old 8 track recorder would be overkill!!

More info here…

Gaikai – the new OnLive before OnLive’s even out

As soon as OnLive was announced another OnLive style service was announced by Dave Perry. He has gone to great lengths to explain how his service is sooo different to OnLive. How is it different you may ask? It runs in a BROWSER. Wow. Um. Neato. He does say that you don’t require any plugins, no installs or any extra hardware and I guess this does mean that I could use this service on my PS3, Wii, laptop, iPod Touch or anything that has a web browser? So really, if it can truly stream in ANY browser it removes pretty much any hint of a barrier to entry. I’m still pretty sceptical about streaming games. I mean come ON, I couldn’t even stream this little video properly?! More info here…

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about "Gaikai – the new OnLive before OnLive…", posted with vodpod

The planets are aligning…

Sony works in mysterious ways but I do believe they have a plan and they won’t let anyone bully them into changing that plan* even when the lack of a price drop has brought them under fire from every conceivable angle. They have been saying for a long time now that there will be NO PRICE DROP stating various reasons such as, if you drop the price people expect that and then nobody buys your console until the price drops. This is true but there’s nothing you can do about that. A certain number of people aren’t price sensitive and will buy on day one or soon thereafter but most people are prepared to wait and if you DON’T drop the price they may give up waiting and go elsewhere.

Anyway, they have now come out and said that a price drop will happen once the “factors are aligned” and as far as the rumour trolls can tell the planets in the Sony  Solar System are starting to align. There’s the rumour of the Slim PS3 and the more recent rumour that it has gone into production. There’s the game bundles with current 80GB PS3 said to be clearing out current stock. There’s rumours that the price drop is happening in August which seems to align with these other rumours. Then there’s the  fact that Sony have the E3 game of the show, Uncharted 2, coming later this year and they’ll want to build some momentum in the run up to that date.

More here at Kotaku… Click through to Engadget to see the image of the new PS3 Slim packaging…

They say where there’s smoke there’s fire and now we have our smoke, lots of it. Of course it could all be smoke and mirrors too!? Stay tuned.

*He seriously said that? In a public forum? Usually this sort of stuff goes on behind closed doors. I’m sure he just said so that when the inevitable price drop happens he can go “See, they did cos I told them so!”.

Hold onto your jaws, they hurt when they drop :-D

Is it just me or does this look impossibly, incredibly stunning?! The screen shown here is apparently from the PSP version of Gran Turismo?! THE PSP VERSION!? Fot the WUK?! That’s a typo right? Either that or they aren’t in game shots but they are being widely reported as such?! More images here…