Rose & Marinaldo

domingo, 23 de fevereiro de 2020

Game Boy Colorization Examples

In a previous blog entry discussed the various tools developers had when they sought to colorize Game Boy games. http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2015/01/getting-out-digital-crayons-color-and.html The two main hardware methods were the Super Game Boy and the Game Boy Color. In a followup to that blog entry, this blog entry let's talk about and show examples of how each method was used.

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quinta-feira, 20 de fevereiro de 2020

Gobliins 2 - Magic Mushrooms

By Ilmari

Last time, I had just arrived at the castle, where the titular Prince Buffoon was held as a prisoner by demons. My first task was to get rid of a guard in front of the entrance. Luckily a nearby tower held important provisions.

Bombs!

My my, he's gone to pieces

Unfortunately, another guard was waiting in the dark doorway, so I still couldn't enter. The manual had mentioned that the best way to infiltrate the castle was a sea passage under it, so perhaps I had tried a wrong approach.

Wise man Soka was meditating on castle grounds. I couldn't yet talk to him, but needed a carpet to fly where Soka was levitating. There was one carpet on the screen, and I just had to use a few bombs to make it fly to where my goblins were. Now I could fly and learn what Soka had to say - I had to find some sand of time and throw it to trenches.

Fingus, that's a serious case of #nymphtoo!

Winkle, are you sure you want to use that word?

I had two other screens to choose from. First, I came to a room, where resided Kael, a walking apple-tree, whom the demon king had cursed to be always thirsty. I gave him some water from my bottle and asked his advice.

Kael told me that I should try to enter the home of Vivalzart, music-mad heron who looked for mushrooms to help his insomnia - you can see his house at the upper left corner of the screen. Kael added that the small nymph could help me to find the proper mushroom. My task was thus clear.

I started by reviving the nymph with some water, and she flew to a branch of one of the trees. I could follow her, by taking a ride with a bee, which was hiding in a hole under one of the rocks.

To bee or not to bee

What to do with the nymph then? Well, Kael and the bee were both helpful with this. Kael would lift me to one of his branches, where I could pick a flower. The bee, on the other hand, could make some honey from that flower. I just had to take care Winkle wouldn't touch the honey, because he would eat it all, and let Fingus deliver this gift to the nymph, who would then point me to the correct mushroom to give to Vivalzart.

I wonder whether that vulture is Vivalzart's son or pet

Once inside Vivalzart's home, he urged me to put the mushroom in his musical dream machine and taste the product. Problem was that the machine was blocked by a clothes pin, which was so high I couldn't reach it. I started solving this problem with the most reliable method in this game - poke everything and see what happens. Here's a can of worms - let's take one. Here's a piranha - don't put your finger into its bowl. Here's a button and when I push it, this platform rises for a while - so, let's try to put another goblin on the platform and…

...he almost grabs a piece of meat from the vulture. Almost

This sequence was a bit frustrating, since there's so little time to try anything, when a goblin is hanging from the piece of meat. Eventually, I lucked out and the vulture was distracted enough by a worm, so that I managed to grab the meat. Who might want some meat? Perhaps the piranha who just tried to bite my finger off? Indeed it wanted, leaving me with a bone to pick.

What to do with the bone then? Well, in another round of trying everything I gave the bone to Vivalzart who opened a trashcan and dropped the bone in there. Believe it or not, one of the goblins could take advantage of this and the opening lid of the trashcan would catapult him onto the shelf. There, I could remove the clothes pin and also take a bottle of elixir. Now I could turn the machine on again and drink the droplets it produced.

Taking a little trip

Vivalzart's mushroom potion had taken me into a musical mushroom land. It wasn't at first clear what I was trying to do here, but the goblins were asking the band members to play some tunes, so apparently that was my task.

Even more so than before, the screen was filled with all sorts of weird shenanigans. Put-goblin's-hand-in-a-hole-and-see-it-coming-out-somewhere-else was by now a familiar sight, and this time it rewarded me with a drumstick, which together with a stocking cap produced a net. There was also a spring, where one goblin jumping created for a few seconds a bicycle pump, which the other goblin had to grab through the same hole. When both of the goblins jumped on the same spring, it opened another hole, which a goblin could use to get on top of the smiling mushroom.

No more goblins jumping on a spring

The smiling mushroom was just a few steps away from the guitarist, but the way was blocked by a blue hose, which sprouted water on a goblin if he took a step too close the musician. Luckily, I had just the thing to stop the flow of the water - the clothes pin. Once I got to talk with the guitarist, he was happy to play me one of his tunes. This produced a bunch of notes I could interact with for a couple of seconds, and using my net, I could capture them.

I was clearly meant to get notes from the saxophonist and drummer also. Saxophonist did not reply anything when I tried to ask him to play. Instead, Fingus could use the bicycle pump to blow some notes out of his saxophone.

The drummer was too high to talk to. Luckily, when Winkle used the pump on the saxophonist, the man blew out a mosquito. By putting the mosquito through the many-timed used hole, I could get it near the drummer, who started to flail his drum stick, trying to hit the mosquito and at the same time producing notes. I now owned a whole melody.

Basketball + player = ?

After this short side trip I returned to the regular world. My next destination was this village of tree houses. The player did not want to speak with me, and the ball was just a tad too far away. Throwing my trusty stone on the ball moved it to a more accessible place, but then a small kid appeared and took the ball inside to one of the houses. The kid moved to a new house, when I tried to capture him, but eventually I could corner him by moving in from two fronts.

When I gave the ball to the player, he threw it in a basket and the ball returned to me. Maybe I had to do something with the ball, while it was flying into the basket? I put one of the goblins under the basket, and just as the ball was entering the basket, the goblin jumped and the ball bounced to one of the houses, and its resident, the mayor of the village, came out.

Mayor advised me to knock on the door on the upper right corner, which housed the village clock maker, Tom. We asked Tom for an hourglass, but he first asked us to replace the tock of village clock with a melody. I just happened to have one, so I quickly got myself an hourglass. The hourglass contained the sands of time I needed for getting within the castle walls.

I see the line in the sand

Next step of the quest

After walking on a bridge of sand and sneaking in through a window, I met a blacksmith, who told me I should get an imprint of a lock on a chest with carved fish, so that he could make a key for the chest. This seems a good place to stop.

Inventory: Elixir

Session time: 5 hours

Total time: 9 hours

DreamHack 2019!!!

DreamHack is the world's largest computer and gaming lifestyle festival. Many game-related companies, professional esports players and fans gather together every year. There are a few esports world's championships or tournaments going on such as SMITE, Rocket League, Counter-Strike, etc. People from all over the world attended the event to play, to meet game developers, pro-gamers, streamers, and other content creators. Our CGDD program always sends faculty and students to run a booth. We demonstrated student game projects, got feedback from professionals and casual players, participated in live interviews. We also gave out marketing materials to promote our program as well as the CCSE. It was an exciting event and everybody was having fun!

Gobliins 2 - Floating Castle

By Ilmari

I am probably overthinking it, but I have a hard time understanding the geography of the game. The world outside the castle shows no sign of a sea nearby. Still, under the castle is what the manual calls a sea passage. In fact, it is so big a passage that it holds a sunken boat and a mermaid population. Maybe the castle and the lands surrounding it float on top of the ocean?

Or perhaps someone just built this here?

Puzzlewise the boat used a mechanic familiar from earlier parts of the game: if a goblin stood on an oyster when it opened (I'll not go into details, but this involved lot of a seemingly unrelated actions and an eel scaring a fish into the vicinity of the oyster), the goblin would fly into the bow of the ship it couldn't reach otherwise.

Like this

On the bow, there was a platform, and when the figurehead of the boat was manipulated, the goblin on the platform would fly toward a dark corner described by the game as ???. Here another part of the boat was helpful. I could light the lantern on the aft of the ship to attract a fish with a lamp, which I could then use to light up the dark corner, revealing a treasure chest. Unfortunately, neither of the goblins had the strength to open it. Time to move to a new screen.

The merfolk

The most important part of this screen were the stairs at the middle that led to a passage going to the castle throne room. The problem was that a) the passage was barred and b) an octopus wouldn't let me move past it. Time to check other parts of the screen.

Using my trusty stool, I could mount the seahorse, who would take me to the platform at the upper left corner of the screen. Here, a goblin could speak with the mermaid queen, whose eyes were taken by the demon king Amoniak who had conquered the castle. At the uppermost ledge, there was a bottle I couldn't reach.

Because of a tentacle monster

I could also try to enter a cavern, only to be driven away by the owner of the cavern - a small octopus. The octopus was followed by a…

...glove?

I could catch the glove with a seashell. Within the glove I found a starfish. It took me a while to figure it out, but I eventually learned it was strong enough to help me with treasure chest at the previous screen. My reward was a sword, which I could use to pry a diamond from a skull attached to boat.

The glove itself proved also to be useful, since I could use it to cover the tentacled monster. Thus, I finally had an access to the bottle, which contained a pearl and a parchment from the Prince Buffoon, asking someone to save him from the clutches of Amoniak. The emerald, together with the diamond, were meant as new eyes for the queen, who thanked me by removing the bars from the passage. Octopus, on the other hand, wanted to see the parchment to be convinced of my good intentions.

The ocean section has felt a bit of a detour in the overall course of the game. It seems like the producers wanted to include a marine themed portion into a game, no matter what. I am hoping the game speeds up a bit, now that I am stepping into the throne room.

Inventory: stool, elixir, glove

Session time: 1 h 30 min
Total time: 16 h 30 min

Teaser: Battle For The Light Rock Valley

The Origawn Freestate and Dominion of Faraway armies clash at the Light Rock River.

A full report will follow on Sunday morning.

quarta-feira, 19 de fevereiro de 2020

Republican And Royalist

Yesterday I took advantage of the annual 'January Thaw ' to cast up enough figures to bring my two Revolutionary French units up to twelve figures each as well as a start on my first Emigre unit.

Naturally, doing a test of the Emigre conversion using a PA Prussian grenadier and one of my own 1812 heads took precedence over finishing a unit!

quinta-feira, 13 de fevereiro de 2020

Brave Browser voted the best privacy-focused product of 2019

Out of all the privacy-focused products and apps available on the market, Brave has been voted the best. Other winners of Product Hunt's Golden Kitty awards showed that there was a huge interest in privacy-enhancing products and apps such as chats, maps, and other collaboration tools.

An extremely productive year for Brave

Last year has been a pivotal one for the crypto industry, but few companies managed to see the kind of success Brave did. Almost every day of the year has been packed witch action, as the company managed to officially launch its browser, get its Basic Attention Token out, and onboard hundreds of thousands of verified publishers on its rewards platform.

Luckily, the effort Brave has been putting into its product hasn't gone unnoticed.

The company's revolutionary browser has been voted the best privacy-focused product of 2019, for which it received a Golden Kitty award. The awards, hosted by Product Hunt, were given to the most popular products across 23 different product categories.

Ryan Hoover, the founder of Product Hunt said:

"Our annual Golden Kitty awards celebrate all the great products that makers have launched throughout the year"

Brave's win is important for the company—with this year seeing the most user votes ever, it's a clear indicator of the browser's rapidly rising popularity.

Privacy and blockchain are the strongest forces in tech right now

If reaching 10 million monthly active users in December was Brave's crown achievement, then the Product Hunt award was the cherry on top.

The recognition Brave got from Product Hunt users shows that a market for privacy-focused apps is thriving. All of the apps and products that got a Golden Kitty award from Product Hunt users focused heavily on data protection. Everything from automatic investment apps and remote collaboration tools to smart home products emphasized their privacy.

AI and machine learning rose as another note-worthy trend, but blockchain seemed to be the most dominating force in app development. Blockchain-based messaging apps and maps were hugely popular with Product Hunt users, who seem to value innovation and security.

For those users, Brave is a perfect platform. The company's research and development team has recently debuted its privacy-preserving distributed VPN, which could potentially bring even more security to the user than its already existing Tor extension.

Brave's effort to revolutionize the advertising industry has also been recognized by some of the biggest names in publishing—major publications such as The Washington Post, The Guardian, NDTV, NPR, and Qz have all joined the platform. Some of the highest-ranking websites in the world, including Wikipedia, WikiHow, Vimeo, Internet Archive, and DuckDuckGo, are also among Brave's 390,000 verified publishers.