Assurance Malaise » 2007 » March

Banner Draft

yibble — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 18:21:17 +0000

In a spare few minutes, I’ve just been faffing around with a possible forum banner. Not very special as yet, could do with drop shadows on the toons, and possibly some form of focal blur. Also, the slogan is a bit hard to make out.

Play.com and Pre-Orders [sic]

yibble — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 10:10:45 +0000

I just posted this on the Splashdamage forums. I thought I’d quote it here as well.

Hi all,

Yes, I think it warranted a new thread ;) Having reserved a copy of ETQW with Play.com a few days ago. I’d still not received a registration code. So I gave Play.com a call (spoke to Steve) and he was a bit confused, as they’re unaware of it. We walked through the registration site, he contacted his Buyers, and they said they had no codes, and they’d probably release them when the game was out… That kind of contradicts the whole point.

I then called Activision, and spoke to Kevin Fryers. He agreed, that Play.com obviously have it a bit wrong, and that United Kingdom should not be missing out on any registration which is currently happening. The registration site is due to go live at the start of April, and codes should be distributed at that time. He’s also going to call Play.com, and re-communicate the plan.

So if you’ve reserved a copy from Play.com. It may just be a case of waiting for a week before jumping up and down :)

Thanks.

ETQW Pre-Order [sic] Special

yibble — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 14:46:34 +0000

It seems that the ability to reserve a copy of ETQWs is now available, with some special bonuses. You can reserve your Gametag, you get an exclusive poster, and two larger than life collector cards. There’s also going to be a Collectors’ Edition, which will include (amongst other stuff) a bonus DVD probably featuring a Making Of type film.

Current UK folks honouring the reserve specials are Game, and Play. More details from the official link.

Quake2 Skins Re-Surface

yibble — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 22:46:16 +0000

Since this web-site, and my personal blog have mentioned ‘Terminal Gibbage’, it’s been affecting the google rankings of various sites. One which has surfaced is Wintermute’s age old Quake2 Clan Skin.

Alas, Wintermute is not responding on the e-mail address, but here’s his TeeGee Quake2 skin in its historic glory.

Twitter…

yibble — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 00:09:57 +0000

I’ve been tinkering with Twitter, which is a bit like a manual desktop presence interface. Well, manual to start with, but easily automated from various applications, and — of course — with the Web 2.0 social element. I.E. Seeing what your friends are twittering on about. I’ve added some blog tools here which will allow some further intergration into Twitter. I’ve also hacked a plugin for XChat, which allows gamers to automatically update Twitter when they connect to game servers. You can see my post about it, here.

XChat, Xqf, and Twitter

yibble — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 00:08:22 +0000

I have a script for XChat, which connects XQF (a frontend for QStat… a Linux version of QuakeSpy/GameSpy). The script notifies folks in specific IRC channels when I’m playing a game, server details, and when I return again. I’ve extended the script to also submit Tweets to Twitter when I join games, and when I return… Quite cool.

Simply drop the script into your .xchat2 directory, and edit it to configure. Download hyar!

Site Issues Resolved

yibble — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 22:26:18 +0000

After much poking around, I’ve been able to resolve the minor site issues that we were seeing. The category archives are now working correctly. The MySQL error was being caused by the Event Calendar plugin, which has now been upgraded to a Wordpress 2.1.x compatible version.

I’ve also taken the time to widgetise some of the theme elements, and customise the theme a little bit further. Enjoy!

39 Sleeps till Quake Wars…

yibble — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 16:38:58 +0000

… Probably.

Gamplay.co.uk (who I’ve reserved a copy with) are quoting that Quake Wars will be released (or at least is due to be released) in thirty-nine days. If all goes well, we could be looking at some serious fragging action in April/May!

Todd Hollenshead on Piracy

yibble — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 09:59:50 +0000

Todd Hollenshead from id Software has been doing the rounds with various press outlets, discussing how piracy is affecting the PC gaming industry. The BBC recently picked up this one.

Todd discusses ETQW and one of the forms of protection they’ve used to limit Beta copies. They’ve issued dongles with the Betas :) However, they appear to have a rogue Beta tester who is leaking screenshots. Whilst probably not actual piracy, and looks just like a NDA violation.

I don’t agree that piracy causes a decline in sales that forces developers to migrate to sole development on console platforms. Pirated copies do not equate to lost sales. Sole development on consoles will also mean game developers can no longer use PC owners as a Beta base, ‘cos let’s face it, they do. I do think that online activation (As in Half-Life2), and CD Keys are going to become the norm, even for consoles!

Splash Damage Dev-Diary Roundup

yibble — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 09:30:32 +0000

Splashdamage have posted a developer diary roundup of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, including The Making of ETQW, ETQWs Backstory, and hyar, hyar, and hyar.

Original story from Splashdamage.com.