Here's a video of it in action on the iCade: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsEFTglyzIY

You can buy it now on the App Store!

I've come to realise that my life is no longer normal. While I could probably manage a real job (i.e. 9-5 in an office), I don't think it's very good for my health, nor is it fair to the employer as the amount of time I'd need to take off would affect my work. I'm hoping this is only a temporary setback and that down the line I'll start to feel much better. I had recently started getting some regular exercise and was starting to feel much better, I was even getting over the cold that I'd had for around 2 months (one of the many drawbacks of having a compromised immune system), but yesterday I managed to pick up some random bug and now I'm back to square one.

So, as you can see, it'd be very easy to give up right about now - I mean why bother when you can so easily be set back by some random encounter with a virus or bacteria? Giving up means they win! (I've no idea who they are in this context, but you get what I mean). It just makes me more determined to make Claymore Games a success and success can come in many forms. Because there's only a few of us involved in Claymore Games the level of success you need is much lower than a company like EA.

Claymore Games has actually been going for a long time, but thanks to many interruptions (like real jobs) and obstacles (my health issues) it's never really taken off properly. However, we had a relative success with Super Solitaire on Java phones last year and that spurred me on and makes me want to try even harder! We'll get there eventually, it's just going to take some time.

One of his tips stuck out for me, "Be realistic about what you can achieve each day".

I'm quite lucky in that I have a mild version of Crohn's, which has so far not resulted in any surgery. The worst I've had to suffer is regular endoscopy and colonoscopy treatments. However, that doesn't mean I lead a normal life either.

If you're realistic about what you can get done in any particular day then you're not going to let anyone down, especially the most important person, yourself. After all, you're the one who has to put up with the illness and adding stress into the mix isn't going to do you any good. You then have the added bonus of those days where you feel better than usual and you get more done than you had hoped!

Having a bad case of OCPD doesn't usually help, but I find it can in this case. Being able to break down your daily tasks into manageable chunks makes it all easier to get through. For example, tidying a room can be broken down into tasks such as tidy the bookcase, tidy the desk, etc.

Ultimately it's your health that comes first, so don't feel bad if you have to let people down, they'll understand. Also, taking a day off to recuperate can do wonders for your energy levels!

I only missed one of the showings, the final one on the Friday night. This one was a documentary about a sub-genre of horror movies from the 70s and 80s and not something I'm interested in, so it was duly skipped. The rest of the films were all superb, with the worst one still worth watching if you happen to find you have nothing better to be doing (last year didn't have such a good line up and there were many I'd say to avoid at all costs!).

So, here are my mini-reviews (in order of worst to best)...

Territories - This film was written to highlight the current atmosphere of fear in America. It's about two ex-military types who take it upon themselves to patrol the smaller roads that cross the American/Canadian border. They stop a group of friends and because one of them is a "forgeigner", despite being an American citizen, they find ridiculous reasons to withold them and take them to their own home prison camp and start torturing them. This is where those snotty students come into it. Apparently one of them couldn't see the point of the film, because apparently the worst thing they've had to deal with is real milk in their latte, rather than soya milk (I have no idea if that's true or not, but I got that impression from them). The point of the film was to see it from the prisoner's point of view (i.e. the constant fear of being American, but not white and the way they are treated because of "terrorism"). While not being a terrible film, it wasn't particularly very good either. Worth a watch if you can be bothered, but you're not missing much if you don't.

Mother's Day - This one is about a group of guys who bugger up a robbery and have to run back to the mother's house, only their mother lost the house several months ago. The new occupants get quite a surprise when they turn up with one of them wounded. This is one of these horrors which is rooted firmly in real life. There's no fantasy, no zombies, ghosts, etc., but just people being tortured in ever increasing ways. The film was enjoyable and has a small twist to it, but overall it's just your fairly average kill fest.

Little Deaths - A trio of short films make up Little Deaths, each involving people dying, with some sex and nudity thrown in - what more could you want?!  The first short was about a husband and wife team that take in homeless girls off the street with the promise of a meal only to be abused and later thrown back onto the street. Except this time they chose the wrong girl! This one was the worst of the three, but still amusing. The second was the most bizarre. Some Nazis discovered they could create a drug out of people who have a mutation in one of their organs (hint: this one's called Mutant Tool) and revolves around one girl who eventually takes the place of the current mutant. Worth watching just for the pure nutty factor. The last short was probably the best. A young guy is being abused by his girlfriend, in more ways than one. He's generally being treated like shit by her, but he puts up with it because of his weird fetish, which she indulges in. Eventually he's had enough though and takes revenge on the girl. You're left to decide what actually happens to her as you don't actually see it. Overall the three shorts were very low budget and it shows in some areas, but definitely worth seeing.

The Shrine - This one is about a group of journalists who travel to a small town in Poland to investigate the disappearance of several backpackers. After a very slow and poor start to the film it picks up about halfway through. Most of the film's dialogue is in Polish without any subtitles, which I'm assuming was deliberate as it adds to the confusion that's prevelant throughout the film and unless you understand Polish you're going to have to rely on the context to work out what's happening. The end of the film turns everything upside down and makes you realise you were actually wrong about all your assumptions, which sort of makes up for the really bad start and is also why it jumps ahead of Little Deaths a bit in the 'worth watching' stakes.

Hobo with a Shotgun - I overheard someone call this a ronseal movie (i.e. it does what it says on the tin) and that's exactly what it does, it's a film about a Hobo with a Shotgun. He arrives in a small town (filmed in Cananda, in Nova Scotia, although I'm not sure if it's actually supposed to be set there) and sees the rampant crime going on and decides to pick up a shotgun and sort things out. The beginning of this one, like The Shrine, is pretty bad. I didn't think I was going to like it after the first half hour. But then the sheer absurdity of the concept kicked in and was thoroughly enjoyable. This is one of those films that you have to watch the right way - don't expect any super duper special effects, or even a story that makes sense. Just enjoy the overall silliness of it!

I Saw The Devil - I think this is the first Korean horror film I've seen and I was very impressed! A serial killer chooses the wrong victim and kills the fiancé of a government special agent. The agent then decides to take justice into his own hands and follows the killer around, torturing him in ever increasingly evil ways. This is one violent and gory film and strangely enough is actually quite funny. It's surprisingly well done and well mixed. The humour doesn't detract from the violence and helps split up the movie a bit, as the only real complaint about this one is that it was a bit too long. I don't want to spoil anything by going into detail of the numerous ways in which he's tortured, you'll just have to go see it yourself!

Rubber - Rubber was by far the best out of the lot. A film about a sentient tyre with psychokinetic powers that starts terrorising a small, American town. A lot of the films this year had twists to them, but Rubber has the best one. It basically breaks the fourth wall to inject some humour into the film. Unfortunately I can't say too much about it without spoiling the surprise (even although you are introduced to it right away). The sentient tyre only really plays a small role in the film, with most of the story coming from the events surrounding it. Go watch this film!

I know that while making games I use maths a lot. Distance between points, simple arithmetic, circle equations, interpolation, etc. Maybe the people who think they're terrible at it just don't realise how much they actually use it? Maybe, for example, knowing to check the distance between two points to check collision (in a simple circle based collision), instead of googling to see how other people do it doesn't really make much difference other than saving you a few minutes? Maybe you don't actually have to know how it works to use it, as long as it works? Maybe I should stop asking so many questions?

So, either maths does make you a better programmer and people just don't realise how much they use it, or it just makes you a faster programmer because you can debug problems faster if you understand the maths better?

Having a logical mindset probably has more impact on how you program rather than what methods you use to achieve a result. Even if you use a convoluted method to achieve what could be done with a simple equation doesn't necessarily make you a bad programmer, it might even make you a more creative one!

A recent example in my own code was when I was attempting to write a String wrapper to wrap text to fit inside a certain number of pixels. I was trying to find the objective-c equivalent of a StringBuffer in Java. I found a few examples on how to do it it C++ without having to create new Strings for each word added to the line. I couldn't figure out how to get it to compile because the compiler was complaining about not being able to find the header files (I think it was something to do with compiling as objective-c++ instead of objective-c). I opted for a less optmised version, that worked just as well, but will likely use up more memory. Fortunately that's not a huge problem in iOS as it has proper memory management, but I will have to go back to it later and fix it.

My point isn't that I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to objective-c, but more that just because I do something a different way doesn't automatically make me a bad programmer (well, maybe in this case it does, but I'm hoping you see my point!). Having the logical thinking skills to figure a way around a problem are a much greater resource than advanced maths skills - you can always learn maths, it's harder to teach logical thinking!

First of all, seeing as it’s a minor quibble, but one I feel like there is a solution to – the lack of the option to customise controls in a game. For things like the DS, Wii and iPhone, where customising most of controls would serve no purpose other than to annoy both the developers and the players, I can understand it. But for games on the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC there really are no reasons not to allow it, other than laziness! If I want jump to be the A button instead of the B button why can’t I change it? Being a programmer for many years I understand that it can add a small layer of complexity, but it’s not one that’s unmanageable. As I was writing this though, a thought occurred to me; perhaps it’s the Q&A department that bemoans features such as this?

Anyway, on to the real point of this post – control schemes as a barrier to entry for the more complex games (such as FPS and action/adventure games). Now, I’m aware that not all games on these platforms use all of the buttons on a controller (or keyboard and mouse), but when you hand a new gamer an XBox 360 controller I can only imagine that it’s quite overwhelming. As Dave Thomson, owner of Ludometrics, also mentioned, it can put off not only new gamers, but also not-so-new gamers too. It basically boils down to there being a lot of assumptions about who is playing the game.

Let’s take a look at the evolution of the controller (at least what I grew up with)...

As you can see in this handy image from Sleepy Gamer, the controller, with the exception of the Atari 5600 there, has gradually added buttons over the years. (I’m going to refer to things like the Start and Select buttons as supporting buttons as they’re not really used in gameplay).

Atari 2600 – One joystick and one button

NES – One D-Pad and 4 buttons (2 of which are supporting buttons)

Mega Drive (not shown) – One D-Pad and 4 Buttons (1 supporting button)

Mega Drive – One D-Pad and 8 buttons (2 supporting buttons)

SNES - One D-Pad and 6 buttons (2 supporting buttons)

... and so on ...

I think you get the picture. As I grew up as a gamer, buttons were added gradually and it was years between each increase, which gave me, and other gamers like me, time to adjust to all the extra information we needed to take in, as well as the extra dexterity required to manage more than a few fingers at a time.

Let’s take a look at modern console controllers...

XBox 360 – One D-Pad, two analogue sticks, 11 Buttons (3 supporting)

PS3 – One D-Pad, two analogue sticks, 11 Buttons (3 supporting)

Wii Remote – One D-Pad and 8 buttons (2 supporting, including the power button)

Wii Nunchuck – One Analogue Stick and one Button

DS / DSi – One D-Pad, one touchscreen and 9 buttons (3 supporting)

That’s a whole lot of buttons to learn to use! Most new gamers tend to stick to things like the Wii and the DS as the games there are very intuitive. Even although their controllers have a large number of buttons, some of them are hardly used and that’s because they have either a touchscreen or their controls are an extension of movements we’ve been making since we were born. I actually had to go and count the buttons on my (original, Japanese!) DS and nearly missed the two bumper buttons because I can’t remember the last time I used them. Imagine going from an intuitive touch based system (which doesn’t require much teaching to use), to a game like Battlefield: Bad Company 2 that uses ALL of the controls on the pad in some way, without a tutorial to help you. Sure there’s an instruction manual, but there’s no practice mode, you’re just thrown right in to it. To me, that would be very off-putting and it has been on several occasions.

Part of the beauty of older games (the 80s and 90s) was their difficulty, but the difficulty was not in controlling them. Sure you kept dying every 2 seconds, but it didn’t feel like it was the game’s fault, it felt like your fault for not being good enough! When you are constantly dying because the controls are either too difficult to use, whether that’s because they’re just badly implemented (I’m looking at you, Uncharted!) or there’s just too many to get your head around, it puts you off playing that game and if that’s your only, or first, experience in XBox or Playstation gaming, then you’re not going to come back for more.

So, in conclusion and in response to Mr Baglow’s original question, “If you had a highly-skilled pro research team you could call upon what questions would YOU be asking consumers/industry”?

Complex controls in the majority of big titles rely on years of assumptions and training in how to play a game and can be a very large barrier to entry for some gamers, so what exactly can we do about it? I don’t think including tutorial modes in these games is good enough, but what else is there, do we need to rethink some things? Or is it the case that we don’t want these new gamers to join our club and we’re happy to let them stick to their DS/Wii/iPhone/Mobile platforms? I am aware, of course, that not all gamers want to play these games, but shouldn’t we help them if they want to?

So, to start this new trend I thought I talk about my desire to get back into Games Workshop games. I've been following them on Twitter for a while now (since they re-released Space Hulk and my wonderful girlfriend managed to get me a copy for my birthday!). I saw that they were redoing Warhammer, as well as redoing my favourite race - The Skaven!

After seeing all the amazing new models and the new rules I thought it was time to dive in and I ordered the collector's edition and a unit of Clanrats. The Clanrats serve two purposes - a start to my Skaven army and a testing ground for my painting skills. The new Space Hulk models were just too nice and I didn't want to end up ruining them!

My main reasons for stopping in the past were cost and never finishing anything. Cost is still an issue, but not so much now that I have a decent job(s!). The never finishing anything has always been a sticking point. This time I've decided to stick to not buying anything else until what I have is painted and sticking to a points limit for my army. We'll see how long that lasts.

I also have an ambitious idea for a gaming table, but that's much further down the line. I intend to post about my progress here, so if you're interested then stay tuned!

I found a tutorial (http://archive.devnewz.com/2002/0909.html) fo developing custom PHP modules, which I used as a basis. They use VC++ 6.0, where I only had Microsoft Visual C++ Express 2008 available, so as you can imagine there were some differences in the way things worked. So, here are the steps for compiling a PHP module to a DLL...

Step 1
Download the source code for the version of PHP you will be compiling against.
Extract the source to an easy to find folder on your HDD.
For me this is F:\bin\php-5.2.6
You will also need the main .lib file from the windows installation of the PHP version of choice - copy this to the same folder as your PHP source.

Step 2
Open VC++ Express
File > New > Project > "Win32 Project"
Choose your project details
Select "Next" on the Wizard
Select DLL Project and Empty Project
Finish

Step 3
Build > Configuration Manager
Create two new Configurations, Release_PHP and Debug_PHP.
Make sure to copy the settings from their relative default configurations.

Step 4
Download your extension's source and extract it to your new project's directory
Expand the project's details and go to Source Files (.cpp or .c).
Right-click > Add > Exisiting Item
Repeat for the Header Files (.h)

Step 5
Set up the Release_PHP configuration.
Project > Preferences
Configuration Properties > C/C++ > Preprocessor
Add the following Preprocessor Definitions: ZEND_DEBUG=0, COMPILE_DL_YOUR_EXTENSION_NAME, ZTS=1, ZEND_WIN32, PHP_WIN32
Where YOUR_EXTENSION_NAME is the name of your extension.

Step 6
Configuration Properties > C/C++ > General
Add the following include directories from the PHP source (these can be relative to the project directory)
F:\bin\php-5.2.6, F:\bin\php-5.2.6\main, F:\bin\php-5.2.6\Zend, F:\bin\php-5.2.6\TSRM, F:\bin\php-5.2.6\bindlib_w32

Step 7
Linker > General
Change the Output File name to include a php_ prefix: $(OutDir)\php_$(ProjectName).dll
Linker > Input
Add php5ts.lib to Additional Dependancies

Step 8
Configuration Properties > C/C++ > Command Line
Add /TC

If you're lucky your module will now compile - if you're like me however and trying to compile an existing module you might have to spend several hours tweaking the source!

This PHP bug was relevant to me as I had some problems getting it to compile from scratch: http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=39130

This blog will mostly contain interesting articles, tips or stories about things that I encounter while doing my job as a programmer. There will of course be non-programming realted posts too.

If you want to know more about who I am or what I do, then check out the about page, or visit Claymore Games, or have a nosey at my C.V.