Ugh.

Interaction with the environment is much easier in the Mac version, since you can just click on an object. Unfortunately I didn't see a way to move my character around using the keyboard, which meant I had to keep click on where I wanted him to go...a little annoying, but that meant it was much harder to get your character stuck in some space. Be prepared to click a lot, though, pathfinding AI is horrible. For example, my character couldn't figure out how to move around a box that was on the floor.

Also unfortunately, I don't see a way to fight enemies without clicking first on the attack to be used and then clicking on the enemy. I think the fluid nature of combat on the 360 was one of the things that made it so enjoyable.

Oh well, I might still buy it...

Tags: mac, penny-arcade

Dearest Gabe & Tycho, I know you're never going to read this, and it is that knowledge which lets me write what I'm about to write. Having a little spare time today, I downloaded the trial version of this game via XBox Live Arcade. I had seen some of the gameplay videos, and was thoroughly looking forward to trying it out for myself.

Would that I could undo the following hour and the resultant disillusionment.

I'm a big fan of Penny Arcade and also a fan of video games. Given the involvement of Gabe & Tycho on the art and writing, I looked forward to both of these aspects, and was not disappointed. However, I personally found the gameplay insufferable. The mechanics of the world are enjoyable, with a fluid (albeit slightly hectic for me) combat system, and much of the polished jokes and effects that do a great job of setting the mood. I only played for about 45 minutes, but I'm assuming that encounters become either more random or more avoidable. What made gameplay unenjoyable for me was what I can only describe as a lack of polish. I had the exact same object interaction problems in this game as I do in Lost Odyssey. It's practically impossible for me to be in just the right spot on the map and facing just the right angle to get to talk to that person or inspect that trash can. Within the first 20 minutes of gameplay, I ended getting stuck behind a row of bushes, and only managed to get my character out after about 5 minutes of joystick wiggling - an extremely frustrating experience. If you don't want users to deal with this, either don't let us explore all 4 corners of your artwork, or just let us walk through the freakin' bushes, guys! I've played MMO's with fewer character sticking issues!

Well this might prove a valuable lesson to someone somewhere: No matter how good you think you've developed your game (or application), your users will figure out a way to break it or make it do something unintended. What's important is not just fixing these problems, but figuring out how to gracefully handle these situations as they arise out in the field. Preferably you're smart and add routines to predict when your game is in a bad state and take care of it dynamically, so that you don't have to keep releasing patch upon patch for games when you'd rather be working on the next one.

Well anyway, I'll try out the Mac version, and I'll post if I experience anything significantly different. I wonder what Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw would have to say about this particular title...

Tags: xbox

So hopefully this post gets picked up by some search engines, as it might be able to help some other unfortunate soul in some small way.

You want to let your .NET application access a web service, right? Well that means either importing directly into Visual Studio via the "Add Web Reference" feature or, if like me you're using the .NET Compact Framework, you'll have to run wsdl.exe. Of all of the other websites I found no one said that it should be in C:\Program Files\Windows SDKs\v.xxx\bin\wsdl.exe. You'll run this application with the URL/path to your WSDL as an argument.

It turns out that this application is very picky about the WSDL file that it will accept. I had used an online WSDL validator which said that my file was just peachy. wsdl.exe was returning a horrible and unhelpful error about how the portType in the namespace was missing. The problem was that my binding's type was missing the namespace.

So I had to change this:



To this:



Now I understand this whole process of WSDL parsing is difficult, but even after this step I had to manually edit the generated code to remove all of the junk it adds about asynchronous calls that the .NET Compact Framework doesn't support. It would be nice if wsdl.exe had added a command line option for the feature, which I would guess a fair number of mobile developers would be able to take advantage of.

But seriously, couldn't wsdl.exe have just figured out that that was what I meant, when an online validator and PHP's SOAP extension were both capable of easily understanding my intentions?

I've been thinking about this for a while and I've come to realize that on the road I tend to be a lot "nicer" to some cars than others. Here's a small list:

Cars I tend to be especially nice to:

• Volkswagens, particularly VW Jettas. Is it because I find them especially feminine?
• Most Nissans and Infinitis, except for Idan Beck (sorry). They're like my car's cousins.
• Those really, really old cars, where you feel like giving the driver a break

Cars I tend to be much, much less nice to:

• Toyota Priuses (Priusi?). I know it's not true but I still feel like every Prius driver has this sense of entitlement.
• BMW and Lexus cars, depending on the model. I really don't know why.
• People who seem like they might be interested in changing lanes, but haven't signaled. As far as I'm concerned they are going to stay in their traffic lane. Signal, people! It makes it clear to everyone else what your intentions are.

Okay, my rant's done.

I just finished assembling my first Freeduino board, based on the Arduino platform, but a little cheaper and with some slightly more convenient components. I think this might be the first time that I have soldered something together or apart without burning myself in some way. I guess that means that I'm getting better at this. I'm excited by all of the nefarious possibilities that an easy-to-use microcontroller like this one puts in my hands. Let's see what happens.