Crunched Bytes: June 2013

And as always, here is the compilation of June reading. Not many given the exams and move to Zurich for internship!
 

How Pixar made Monsters University, its latest technological marvel

http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/24/the-making-of-pixars-latest-technological-marvel-monsters-university/

Well, for a animation fan like me… its always fascinating to read more about what goes behind the scenes and this article is just the kind of dose I like to have, full of details both from technical and creative point of views. #ILovePixarMovies

Practical examples for marrying theme and meaning

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/193342/Practical_examples_for_marrying_theme_and_meaning.php
This reprint of an old article is still every bit valid. Taking examples from real life means its not simply a message / advice in the darkness but ensures concrete understanding.

Google Zombie: The Glass Wearers of Tomorrow

The best metaphor for Google Glass? Not jerks or junkies, but the living dead.

http://www.bogost.com/writing/google_zombie_the_glass_wearer.shtml
I'm not a big fan of this upcoming tech from Google and to a large extent I'm really turned off with the prospect of always connected/always-online mode we now constantly live in. Despite being a computer science student, I still am very happy not to have a data-connection on my mobile and enjoy that disconnected moment of peace to catch up some reading or just to look around the world while I travel.
And the article says everything else that I missed out in the paragraph above ;)

The Guide to Implementing 2d Platformers

www.gamedev.net/page/resources/_/technical/game-programming/the-guide-to-implementing-2d-platformers-r2936
A very detailed and informative article on the old and friendly 2-d platformers we all loved and played at some point in time.

The tendencies of the mobile art on the example of top-grossing games

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/OlgaCherkashina/20130624/194889/The_tendencies_of_the_mobile_art_on_the_example_of_topgrossing_games.php
Read this to see how the interface, artwork and gameplay fares in taking the mobile games to top grossers. Also, see for the important differences when designing your game for the asian markets.

Bogost: Let's make 'earnest' games, not 'serious games'

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/194490/Bogost_Lets_make_earnest_games_not_serious_games.php
With all the hoopla around making serious games, Bogost takes a dig at the reality and the whole propaganda about them. And seriously, what is required is an "earnest" effort for 'ernest' games.
"The dirty truth about most of these serious games, the one that nobody wants to talk about in public, is they're not really that concerned about being games," Bogost adds. "This is mostly because games are hip, they make appealing peaks in your grant application, they offer new terrain, undiscovered country, they give us new reasons to pursue existing programs in order to keep them running."

Making games as a hobby with Locomalito

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/195022/Making_games_as_a_hobby_with_Locomalito.php
An interview with Locomalito about his work and creating arcade like free-to-play games as a hobby. Nice read!

Crunched Bytes: May 2013

Alright, so here is a compilation of interesting articles read for the month of May

Starting this month's reading is with the big question - "Why are you making games?" followed by a look at the problem affecting the Game Reviews and much more!

Why Are You Making Games?

http://gamasutra.com/blogs/BenServiss/20130425/191183/Why_Are_You_Making_Games.php
A very thought provoking article forcing the reader (read game developers) to re-evaluate why they are actually making games?? What's the motivation?

“Surely there is some reason you are going through all the trouble of trying to design great games.” –Jesse Schell, The Art of Game Design

So have you figured out your reason yet?? May be this article is just meant for you!

The Problem with Game Reviews (And Why Games Are Like Restaurants)

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/BenServiss/20130502/191616/The_Problem_with_Game_Reviews_And_Why_Games_Are_Like_Restaurants.php
Author Ben Serviss indicates how we have simply copied the rating systems from a linear comparable domain of movies and mapped it to use for rating the interactive and immersive experience of games, and why such a system is incomplete and broken.

Cognitive Overhead, Or Why Your Product Isn’t As Simple As You Think

http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/20/cognitive-overhead/
Does any of these sounds familiar -

• Make your product simpler, 
• Minimize the number of steps, 
• minimize time required, 
• minimize the features, etc. etc.

David Lieb, co-founder and CEO of Bump has something different to say... Making simple is all about reducing the cognitive overhead and this may even mean adding an additional step i.e. make users do more rather less!!!

Google Introduces Portable Native Client, Makes It Easier For Developers To Add C And C++ Code To Their Web Apps

http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/17/google-introduces-portable-native-client-makes-it-easier-for-developers-to-add-c-and-c-code-to-their-web-apps
After Mozilla's asm.js now we have PNaCl… its soon going to be c/c++ on web as well… way to go!

Ten classic games you can actually beat, but probably won’t

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/04/ten-classic-games-that-are-surprisingly-technically-beatable/
A fun read on games that you weren't supposed to win and what happens if you win

Anatomy of a hack: How crackers ransack passwords like “qeadzcwrsfxv1331”

http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/05/how-crackers-make-minced-meat-out-of-your-passwords/
With hackers decoding upto 90% of leaked passwords (in the form of md5 hashes) within
a day… are your passwords really secure?

Why you should move that button 3px to the left

https://medium.com/adventures-in-consumer-technology/c012e5ad32f7
How to bring together design and engineering. As an engineer, its a nice read into a designer's mind.

Designing Game Logos

http://gamasutra.com/blogs/SimonDean/20130425/191184/Designing_Game_Logos.php
A quick writeup based on the experience of designing their game logo. Few good tips to keep in mind though

Euler vs Verlet

http://kahrstrom.com/gamephysics/2011/08/03/euler-vs-verlet/
A small primer to help you decide how to integrate the laws of motion in your game/simulation. If you have ever wondered how to model the movement (velocity, distance, etc.) of your scene objects and wrote a code to model the Laws of motion, this article will help you name the method you used or better, provide you with a better alternative.

Google: Annoying and not so annoying recent changes

The new "Social" search!

Google has long become a synonym for search... "Google it!" is something we often say and do a number of times every day/hour. And I've been doing the same for last 8 years and was able to find useful result with ease. But recently something went wrong, terribly wrong... there was no relevant result on Google even while looking to as much as "Page 3"... I'm convinced that in normal use, no one ever has to go beyond "Page 1" and I believe what I was searching was a normal query (tried all sorts of permutations and combinations of keywords and their synonyms). A normal question on php related stuff... but all I got was frustation with results displaying how to do those things in Android or Javascript or dont know what. The question then arise is why it was showing such results?

Well, the answer to that is trivial. Because, for last couple of months I have been doing search for results related to Android and Javascript while I was working on couple of projects. And now even when I'm searching with keyword "php"... results shows up Android and Javascript fixes... all thanks to tracking my search history and intelligent guessing made on my queries.

Secondly, if you are frequently selecting a couple of sites from search results the next time you search, these sites get higher preference even though they may not have relevant information for the search you made. What was the problem with the plain old search that provided the results irrespective of my interaction but depending upon the content? Why so much emphasis on making everything social? And if the same site (for example Stack Overflow) has more than one relevant result, why not show them at the first place rather than a small hyperlink saying "Get more discussion results"?

And call it a coincidence, I just happened to find this article (Introducing the New Bing: Spend Less Time Searching, More Time Doing) via codeproject newsletter which made me seriously think considering a change to Bing! (at least they are keeping social separate from normal search).

Location specific customization... grrr....

Another annoying thing happening lately is Google tracking my location and changing my default from Google.com to Google.ch even after I made Google.com as default search engine in Chrome (yes, a Google product). Even my Blog preview is in German (I suppose) though my blog interface where I'm composing this is in English. Com'on Google, if I'm in Switzerland does not mean I can read German or French. So why change to something else from what I had been using for so-so long? Why?

The missing simplicity of old Google interfaces!

Change some Settings:

A couple of days back, the time-zone settings for my GMail changed by itself and then I had to "Google It" to find how to restore it. The simple interface of Google that made me like it so much (over Yahoo & Hotmail) is getting cluttered day-by-day. For simple setting like timezone for my email, I had to do about 10 clicks on 4 or 5 different screens (for the actual process, ignoring the wrong ones I made).

New GMail Interface:

Anyone with comments on new GMail interface? Sorry to say, the old one was much better without requiring me to scroll separately in each sub frames or do a tradeoff between seeing more options for mail (labels) or making my chat list longer.

New Blogger Interface:

I tried the new blogger interface and within minutes was back to the older version... and praying that it stays longer and am not forced to change to new one!

But not all is BAD... There are a couple of welcome changes/ updates

Google Play!

Finally, better late than never! Now its much easier to browse and choose apps for effortless installation not only for my Android, but more importantly for my father's android sitting miles away from him  (all I need is to log-in through his account). Just loved it! Not to say, a fairly neat and intuitive interface as well.
Do I expect Chrome store to merge with this, well it sounds like a possibility to me!

Google +

Well I would simply say Google has got this one way better compared to the new timeline interface on Facebook (where again I'm sticking with the old profile page and hoping they dont force me to change anytime soon, scare about people getting access to all the old posts with one click unless I spend some hours choosing what to keep public and what private and hate those ugly name labels on friends' display pics).
Sadly, Google+ is not catching up... people not willing to migrate from Facebook or are simply too tired to make yet another social network profile or have made it (like myself) but do not actively maintain it like the old Orkut profile.