Jul 26th 2010

What would it be like if you could take your character from Modern Warfare 2 and play him in Uncharted 2? Or what would it be if you could trade weapons from MW2 to Uncharted 2? Now that would be very interesting experience, taking a character or weapon that has taken you hours to get and.. continue the game play somewhere else. Well here is how I think that would work.

First, in order for this to work game developers and publishers would have to write some hooks into their game in order to share elements. Of course not all elements would be shareable, these would be defined by the game developers. With these programmable hooks in place game developers can assign parameters for the shareable element (Weapon X - color: editable, power: editable range 1-10 etc.).

Now that the game elements have been defined and parameters allocated, access to the shareable menu is available. By going to a menu option inside of, let’s say MW2 called share game. The user would be presented with a screen with the various elements from MW2 that would be shareable. Users would have to be logged in at this point. Select the element you want to share, this in affect checks out this element to your ps3, wii or xbox profile. Export done.

Next from your console (and your web browser, for those gamers on the go) goto let’s say Uncharted 2. Once the game has started go to the menu option that says... share game. At this screen instead of sharing (exporting your game) you’ll want to chose import (add element). At this point the game will check your ps3, wii or xbox profile account to see if you have exported any elements and retrieve those elements. Once complete, users will see a list of characters, weapons and other elements. Once one of these elements are selected a more detailed view can be seen, in which users can change the pre defined parameters and settings i.e. change a weapon’s blast radius or change a character hair color, etc.

The possibilities are quite endless in terms of both game play and customization. Along with user satisfaction from the replay-ability of a game, users can generate and create content that could be sold and a pretty penny made from mico-transactions.

Jul 7th 2010

I'm looking forward to my vacation coming up this week. I can't wait to go on some rides and eat some park food :)

Feb 24th 2010

While you might think that there is a trick or some awesome tip that will get you the hoards of followers or web visitors like Pete Cashmore’s http://mashable.com (@mashable) or have dedicated fans like Shaun Inman, http://shauninman.com (@shauninman) or have people hang on your every word like Paul Scrivens http://www.drawar.com (@drawar). The reality is that these guys, worked hard and that is definitely an under statement. Building traffic and becoming the next big name online, is no easy task. And frankly speaking there is no science behind it. It is really all about;

  1. Trust (http://mashable.com/2010/02/24/social-media-trust/)
  2. Work
  3. Patience
  4. Patience
  5. ... did I mention Patience

That’s it, you have to work hard to build the best site you can. Putting the focus on your content and work hard to interactive with your users/readers, submitting it to sites that relate to your site’s topic or content. Email people you are fans of online, share your articles with them, ask questions.

After all this hard work though is, patience. It is the the ultimate ingredient to this mix of blood, sweat and tears. You have to religiously do these things everyday, in order to earn the trust from user/readers. It takes time.

Although there are some people that gain web fame quickly, it’s usually short lived. And if your looking for that key to success then, just upload a video of a cat juggling some mice, that’ll get you fame, but not forge a legacy in the temperamental world of the web.

Feb 23rd 2010

My first interview for work, on the national broadcast show, GIS Spotlight. Thanks to Drupal.

The site http://gis.ky was built over a period of 2-3 months, using Drupal. You can see a screengrab of it here. There are many services I have planned that will be coming online soon. It's very exciting the possibilities that Drupal has allowed me to bring in into reality.

I know the video doesn't go into the working of the site, in terms of Drupal and the modules used, but I might do a video or screencast on it. As soon as I get a break from doing the current web project.

The GIS website has;

So yes it's been alot of work, tweaking and making sure everything , just worked.

Jan 23rd 2010

While I was trying to post the article, Adobe Air App: Drupal Jobs I discovered that setting up the Adobe Air installer badge was not that obvious to do in Drupal and that although it might seem to be quite simple, it proved to be quite hard to find any direct and detail guides to solve the problem. So here and now I present to you a guide of how to create a Adobe Air installation badge on your Drupal site.

One of the first things to do is to read these two articles, Getting started with the custom install badge and Using Badger for Adobe AIR applications.

  1. First create a folder on your remote web server in the root directory of your website, example: APPS
  2. Now create a folder inside APPS for your application, example: EXAMPLE-AIR-APP
  3. Now open Badger (created by Grant Skinner) and create the Adobe Air install badge.
  4. In Badger press SELECT .AIR FILE, this will automatically fill-in a majority of the fields for you.
  5. In Badger make sure to change the APPLICATION URL to reflect where the .air app will be located on your remote web sever, example: http://www.mydomain.com/apps/example-air-app/example-air-app.air.
  6. Also do the same for the IMAGE of the installer badge, example: http://www.mydomain.com/apps/example-air-app/example-air-app-badge-image..., the image should be the same size as the settings under BADGE SETTINGS in Badger.
  7. Once these key fields are set, you can then press EXPORT BADGE, this will then export the necessary files into a folder of your choice, on your local machine.
  8. Go to the folder where you have exported the Air installer badge, transfer all the files excluding the INDEX.HTML file to your remote folder on your server, http://www.mydomain.com/apps/example-air-app/
  9. Open INDEX.HTML and copy,
  10. <script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.mydomain.com/apps/example-air-app/swfobject.js"></script>
    

    and copy

    <div id="flashcontent" style="width:215px; height:180px;">
    		<strong>Please upgrade your Flash Player</strong>
    		This is the content that would be shown if the user does not have Flash Player 6.0.65 or higher installed.
    	</div>
    
    	<script type="text/javascript">
    		// <![CDATA[
    		// version 9.0.115 or greater is required for launching AIR apps.
    		
    			var so = new SWFObject("http://www.mydomain.com/apps/example-air-app/AIRInstallBadge.swf", "", "215", "180", "9.0.115", "#000000");
    
    		so.addVariable("airversion", "1.5.2");
    
    		so.addVariable("appname", "APP-NAME");
    
    		so.addVariable("appurl", "http://www.mydomain.com/apps/example-air-app/DrupalJobs.air");
    
    		so.addVariable("image", "http://www.mydomain.com/apps/example-air-app/drupal-jobs-badge.jpg");
    
    		so.addVariable("appid", "APP-NAME");
    
    		so.addVariable("appversion", "v1");
    
    		so.addVariable("hidehelp", "true");
    
    		so.addVariable("str_error", "Error1");
    
    		so.write("flashcontent");
    		
    		// ]]>
    	</script>
    

    and paste into a new document pasting them in the order in which they were copied, one after the other.

  11. Before the next step make sure, in Drupal that your input filters are setup correctly, we will be using the HTML input filter.
  12. Now open a node (or create a new node), and in the Body of the node, paste in the previously created new document of the copied snippets from the INDEX.HTML file.
  13. Once this is done, you can save the node, and you should see the Adobe Air installer badge.