Ian Hoar – Passion for Technology – Geeking Out - Technology, Web, Toys, Games, Design, Entertainment, Gadgets, & Geeking Out

Call of Duty 4 – Modern Warfare

I finished Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare the other night. This game is the most intense shooter I’ve played to date. The realism and immersion are phenomenal, and the graphics are on par with games like Gears of War. It’s nice to finally see some games with GOW graphic quality. That game was a year ahead of its time, but it seems like the truly next gen games are coming out this year, with titles like COD 4, Assassins Creed, Mass Effect, and hopefully Grand Theft Auto IV early next year.

The only truly down side to COD4 is the length of the single player campaign. It’s short, and I do mean short. I finished it in about 3 days and probably put about 5 hours into it on the default difficulty setting. That said, this game is all about the multi-player, and the sheer number of levels, character leveling system, and game types will keep you coming back for more. COD4 has one of the most full featured multi-player games I have played out there at this time even though it lacks vehicles, something that isn’t necessarily a bad thing once you play it.

There is another down side which will effect only a small number of people, myself included. I have never in my life experience FPS motion sickness, but COD4 is the first game that does it to me. After about an hour of playing I start getting a dull headache and a sick feeling in my stomach. Maybe I have just been tired lately, but a quick search on the web shows that I am not alone, and a co-worker of mine has had the same symptoms. The game is extremely realistic and very fast paced. The game bob when running is a bit disorienting at times, which I think might be causing the problem. One solution mentioned which seems to be working for me is chewing gum. Anyway, don’t let a little bit of motion sickness hold you back, this game is incredible.

That said, run out and buy this game, pick up Assassins Creed while you’re at it too, you won’t be disappointed.

Blanket rules

Why is it that we, designers and developers alike have to constantly face blanket rules mandated by people with little to no technical knowledge? What I mean by blanket rules are rules that someone, probably near the top of an organization, has made with little knowledge or understanding of the stance they have taken. It’s usually on a technical issue, and it’s probably something someone has told them or something they heard on the news somewhere. It may even be something you told them!

Case in point, I create a lot of solicited e-newsletters where I work. Some of our designs get pretty crazy considering we are trying to make these things work in every mail client from Hotmail to Outlook. Designing for email is far harder than a standalone web page in my opinion.

Anyway, one of the companies we work for has now stipulated no background images in emails. Where did this come from and why? Well, probably because background images are stripped out of some new clients, but so are hundreds of other elements we use in email every day. The key with email is to layer everything you know, with the hopes that some of these layers will come through, and the rest will gracefully degrade.

Decisions like these should be made by the people creating these newsletters, people with the expertise to know what should and should not be used. We stress a lot of live type, so background images can be very useful since you can put live type on top of them. As a standby you can use a background colour if the image does not come through. With this method, we have created many possibilities of achieving the design and usability goals. Everyone should get the text message. Some people will get the image, and some people will get the background colour. By making a blanket statement like “No Background images ever!” you have just effectively eliminated a tool in the developer’s arsenal. We developers are constantly testing and watching email and web compatibility issues day by day, year by year. We make technical decisions based on the goals and targeted demographic. In a lot of cases a background image is a bad idea, but in a lot of cases it’s a great idea.

The point is, let Designers design, and let Developers develop. If you are hiring a good team they will probably know what’s best. There’s no need for non-technical minds to get involved in compatibility and delivery issues.

So how can YOU help change people’s minds? Just remember, it was probably something someone like you said that created the situation in the first place. Be careful what you say to people, a comment like XYZ won’t work in this situation could mean that further down the road you may see a mandate to never use XYZ, when really it was just in that situation that it should not have been used. Sometimes the situation will be out of your control, and you will just have to grit your teeth and design and code your way around silly rules.

Happy designing / coding.

Click Here!

This has to be the bane of my online experience. Okay, that’s probably a bit strong, and there are plenty of other web taboos, but this one is so easy to avoid. Don’t use click here. It means absolutely nothing.

Anyone surfing the web longer than a few days has the look of an html link ingrained into their head. Highlighted or highlighted and underlined text, this is common day web link and it comes with a little cursor pointer to boot. A lot of us scan type, as we do this links will usually be stronger than the surrounding text. When we see click here, there is no context associated with the link without reading the text describing what the link is.

Here is an example.

Your privacy is our priority. To view our privacy policy, click here. To unsubscribe at any time, click here.

Try scanning these links and you will get no context at all. This could be reworded.

Your privacy is our priority. View our privacy policy now. You can unsubscribe at any time.

The second line has much better scanability and just makes sense. Users do not need to be told where to click. As a designer I find myself constantly telling editors not to use click here. Not only does it look silly it’s also bad usability. Remember, links should be able to be read out of context and still make sense.

Outlook 2007 – When is 200 pixels not 200 pixels? Spacer gifs

A large portion of my day is spent designing and marking up solicited email newsletters. I am also a very strong advocate of W3C Web Standards. For anyone who has ever worked on email newsletter, they will know all too well that the above sentences do not mix well.

All web designer’s have faced the many hurdles of browser compatibility. Getting things to work on multiple browser versions and browser types can be a real pain, but this is child’s play compared to the ever changing world of html based email. I’m not going to talk about whether email should have ever been used as a medium to deliver rich content, there is plenty debate about that elsewhere. The fact of the matter is that html email is here, and it’s very popular.

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Electronic faucets, toilets and showers

I love technology and I love gadgets and games. It’s what this blog is all about, but what I can’t stand is useless technology. Just because we can do it, should we? This may seem like a frivolous rant, but it brings me to electronic faucets, toilets and showers. What’s the deal with these? Okay, I understand we need to save water, but these things just don’t work half the time.

At my work we have electric faucets in the washroom that have very little pressure and when they are working, they continually clunk on and off every few seconds. Sometimes you find yourself waving frantically in front of the little black insidious eye detector, begging it to give you just a few extra drops of water. Let’s not even talk about how these things fare in a power outage, something that is slowly becoming more common where I live.

When electric faucets do not work it’s not that bad, you can usually go to the next one and hope it automatically turns on for you, but what about toilets and urinals? Urinals are the absolute worst when they break down. There is usually no manual flush, which in itself is such a terrible idea. When one of these things break down no one notices for a few days until the awful smell of urine starts wafting throughout the washroom. Then the building management apologizes and tells you that it will be awhile before they are fixed because the little tiny part that is broken has to be imported from Germany! Toilets usually have a button to override the automatic flusher, a very wise idea, especially for those of us who need more than one flush per visit.

This brings us to the last of the automatic nonsense. Recently my buildings amenities were upgraded. The whole complex was closed down for a couple of months while they modernized everything. It turned out quite nice, and hopefully it will eventually raise the value of the condo. Anyway, I decided it was time to go for a swim. A mandatory shower is required before going into the pool.

I stepped into the shower and looked for the knobs to turn the water on. I see a cold and hot heat dial and turn it, but alas, nothing. Hmm. Why isn’t it working, I fiddle again and with a clunk, a single spray of cold water douses me. Ah, the little dreaded black eye is staring up at me… Damn you little black eyes, damn you all to hell I cry. Now the fun part is, how do I get the water to the temperature I like. Well with a little dance of waving my hand in front of the eye as I turn the cold and hot dial I slowly in spurts of spray get the temperature I like and then step under the shower head. Now I’m expecting the shower to stay one, but no, all I hear is the grinding clunk, clunk, clunk of the pipes shutting on and off as I move only slightly away from the ever present evil black eye. I start holding my hand behind myself and waving it back and forth in the hopes of getting a steady stream of water to no avail.

In theory, automatic faucets, toilets and showers sound like a good idea, but when they break there is often no alternative to getting them working again. The malfunctioning probably would be bearable from time to time if they actually worked flawlessly when you needed to use them, but often they don’t. Often they just squirt on and off in a pathetic attempt to do what they were designed to do. The one exception I have seen to this rule is hospitals; maybe they use better detectors in these places. If you are not willing to install top notch detectors, then why bother, it will just frustrate everyone.

Halo 3 Review

This is a busy time of the year for games, meaning there is a lot to choose from. So many great games released, and so little time. Anyway, I bought Halo 3 the day it came out. The hype worked, well actually a friend was picking it up so I figured why not. I should also mention that I’ve never really played Halo or Halo 2 other than maybe several minutes on someone else’s console. I have since finished the game and thought I would share my thoughts.

First, this game is a fantastic game, no doubt about it. I want to get that out of the way, because what I am going to say next is more in regards to how hyped it is. This game is an incredible hype machine. The advertising dollars gone into Halo 3 must dwarf other games. Everywhere you look its Halo this, and Halo that, even publications that don’t talk about games are talking about Halo 3. The real question is does the game stand up to the hype?

Okay, let’s be fair, how phenomenally amazing would a game have to be to possibly match the hype of this game. I mean the game would basically have to be the best shooter ever released. Is Halo 3 the best ever? Not a chance. Again, remember how I started this review, this is a fantastic game, no doubt about that. The fan base for Halo 3 is fanatic, and saying anything negative about it can bring down the wraith of the Halo Gods. Almost every review site has given stellar reviews of 9.5 to 9.8. I find these scores hard to believe since I’m sure there’s a lot of Microsoft ad revenue going into these sites, but maybe the hype has just got to everyone.

Let’s start off with the bad; the game is short, VERY short. I am one of those people that take forever to finish any game, and I finished this in a week. I’ve heard stories of people finishing it in a day. The second is the graphics. During the production of Halo 3, many people on gametrailers.com had mentioned how the graphics were not up to par with what they expected. Comments like, “This is still in beta” were cried out by the believers and all of the typical angry flaming that goes on in those forums. So what are the graphics like? Well, that’s the strange part, they vary greatly. A times they feel sub par, I would even go as far to say unpolished, and then at other times they will blow you away. It almost seems like the game was rushed to completion, or done at completely different times. I often wonder if all the negative comments on the graphics before it was released attributed to the ramp up of graphics as you approach the end of the game. I found with the exception of the last level that the graphics slowly got better and better as I progressed through the game. Even Master Chief himself goes from looking plastic like to full blown rough metal Gears of War like quality.

Halo 3 also doesn’t really break any new ground. In fact, my first thought when playing multiplayer was how retro it felt. This can of course be considered a good thing. The multi player is where this game really excels. It’s like a traditional multiplayer shooter packed with every great mod imaginable. There are just so many ways to play Halo 3 multiplayer.

One spot I personally think Halo 3 excels past everything else is the music. It is almost a tribal thumping throughout the game, and adds so much to the immersion quality. The sound effects are average, but the music more than makes up for this, and I think it is one of Halo’s strongest single player aspects. On the other hand some of the aliens have juvenile one liners in high squeaky voices like, “He was my best friend”. This is a bit of an immersion killer for me, especially when you are saving the world from Aliens. Why are they talking to me in English with baby voices?

Anyway, the bottom line is that this is a great game that is way over hyped. This is how business works, and I’m sure Halo 3 will be the biggest cash cow yet, and when you have rabid Halo fans standing outside the night before the release of a game that will have no shortage of copies, you know you have a hit financially, regardless of the quality.

Bottom line, halo is an 8.5 / 10 for me, which is nothing to sneeze at, but far from the 9.5’s of the game review sites.

Eternal Sonata Review

I have been playing through Eternal Sonata for the past few weeks and wanted to reserve judgment until I had a good chunk of the game completed. I had been watching this games development for several months before its release, and I bought it the week it came out. I really liked the demo, and the full version is even better. I will even go so far as to say this is one of my favorite Xbox 360 games.

This game is all about the art, music, and story. Although I have not finished it yet, I am totally immersed. Be warned though, this game may not be for all, there is a lot of level grinding, and combat can become repetitive at times, so can the sound effects. There are also some puzzle type dungeons that require a lot of backtracking which can become frustrating. That said, this game is amazing. I think game play is far more important than graphics, but this game has the best cell shaded animation I’ve ever seen in a game to date.

Eternal Sonata is one of the few Japanese RPGs available for the 360 along with Blue Dragon. While no veteran in this genre, the fighting battles in Eternal Sonata are unique. They blend a combination of turn based strategy with real time hack and slash. Basically you have your three characters. Each one has their turn in which you have a few seconds of tactical time to decide what you will do. Once you start your turn or tactical time runs out, the remainder of the turn is real time, usually about 3 to 5 seconds. You run toward your enemy, and start slashing as the timer bar counts down. You can also build up hits each time you attack. The longer you attack the more hits you build up which can then be used for a super powerful attack. This can be done by any character at any time throughout the battle. These are very useful against bosses.

In each battle field there are also light and dark places. These will affect the attacks of each character, allowing them to use their dark attack or light skill. This adds a lot of strategy to the game, as one character may be used to heal others while in light, and another one may have a very powerful magic in the dark. There is a surprising amount of depth to this real-time aspect of the game, but it can also grow frustrating as you waste turns and run out of time while changing items. Items are found throughout the game and can be used in battle. These are mostly modifiers, like light spells, darks spells, poisons, health etc.

Another interesting angle to this game is the score pieces. These are musical pieces you collect throughout the game. When you find other characters that have them you can play together. You will then be marked on how well the session went and possibly get an item. This is a small part of the game, but adds a little extra.

The whole game is based on music. Weapons look like instruments, names and places are musical terms, everything in the game is musical. Without giving too much away, the game is about Frédéric Chopin on his death bed having a dream. Whether it is a dream or not is part of the mystery. The story is actually quite deep, and cut scenes can last for 10 minutes at times, but they are never boring, in fact they are one of the reasons I find myself pushing ahead to see more of the story unfold. As you play you will unlock real Chopin pieces which will play while showing pictures and giving real history about Chopin. The Anime story so far seems to be loosely connected to the real history of Chopin. The songs that you unlock are performed by renowned pianist, Stanislav Bunin. These songs are the most powerful in the game, but even the game music is quite good.

Although the game does have its flaws, its presentation and music blow away any faults. This game is a must for any RPG fan, or Anime fan. The art direction is just stunning and awe inspiring. The detail is unmatched. Everything from tiny sparkling flowers to giant cliffs and trees is rendered in matriculate detail. I find myself stopping and looking around for minutes at a time. The characters are all beautifully rendered and very memorable. If you do buy this game, expect a wonderful journey into a fantasy world that will take you away from the real world for many, many hours.

Eternal Sonata

View my updated post and screenshots on Eternal Sonta

Illustrator crashes when saving anything!

Well, my copy of Illustrator running on Windows Vista would not save for the past few days. At first I assumed it was a corrupted or funky file problem specific to the one file and found a work around file for Photoshop. A few days later I needed to use Illustrator to copy a vector into Photopshop and convert to a smart object. Every time I cut and pasted Illustrator would hang and then eventually crash and nothing would be pasted into Photoshop. Okay, so I decide I’ll save the Illustrator file and then place it in Photoshop via File / Place. Still no joy, the second I went to save, it crashed. Just to make sure I wasn’t going crazy I created a blank canvas, typed something on it and go to save it, again Illustrator crashes with the message “Adobe Illustrator CS3 has stopped working”. Wonderful, so helpful, and the “Check online for a solution” wasn’t even working for me, but to this date even when it has worked in other programs it rarely provides a useful solution.

Time for some Google power. After doing a few searches I realize that this is not an isolated issue, and could be one of many problems. One post on a forum stands out though. Illustrator CS3, at least on Vista, requires that your Print Spooler be running. Well, this is another issue I have not solved yet. I have a randomly crashing Print Spooler. Anyway, I start up the print spooler and sure enough, Illustrator now saves. Why the print spooler is even needed I don’t know, but I think it would be helpful if when this happens illustrator could recognize it’s not running and say “Hey, your Print Spooler is not running, Illustrator requires it to be on, please start it up”, or something along those lines.

Here’s how you can check your print spooler.

Go to your start menu. In the search box type services. Your services dialog will open. Scroll down to Print Spooler. If it is running already then this might not be your problem, but try restarting it just in case. By the results of my Google search there are many other reasons why Illustrator might not be saving, but hopefully this helps some people out.

The Ender Quartet

I finished the final book in the Ender Quartet by Orson Scott Card over my vacation. I read the first three back to back and the final one a few weeks later. Wow is all I have to say, this is Science Fiction at its most epic. The books in order are Ender’s Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind. Ender’s game is the intro to Ender’s life, one of the main characters and lays the foundation for future novels as the following three propel the story way into the future. Ender’s Game won the Hugo and Nebula for best novel and Speaker for the Dead also won the Hugo and Nebula for Best novel, no small feat.

As usual, I don’t want to give away anything, and I would strongly recommend avoiding reviews if you have not read the series. Just knowing that there are four books is enough, knowing anymore would give away far too much. If you feel like a fantastic journey into a world of memorable characters and vivid adventures then pick up these books, or just start with Ender’s Game. The books are really about what it is to be human, both the good, the bad and the horrible. Card leverages a lot of the stories from real history. Full of hope and sadness, these are a must read for any Science Fiction fan, and if you are not a fan of Science Fiction, don’t let that hold you back either.

The World Without Us

I was out picking up some clothes last night when I saw a large billboard with an advertisement for The World Without US. The ad really struck a chord with me and I walked up the street to the bookstore and bought it. This was so unlike me and even though I work on communications and advertisement media all day, I usually feel that they have little effect on ones decision to buy, at least with people like me. I guess this one worked, and I know that we are all affected by advertisements, some more so than others, but for me I usually tune out ads and I read a lot so I miss the billboards and bus ads.

Anyway, the book sounds great, but since I have not read it yet I will reserve comment until later. I hope to read it over my vacation next week.