Here is a cool resource for finding web services and apis to consume for free…
APIFinder is a list various application programming interfaces (APIs).
Thes site is a place to share ideas and advice on how to use APIs in your programming.
The site grows through community contribution and expert advice - so please submit your most excellent APIs, articles and projects today…
Link to www.apifinder.com - the essential directory for application programming interfaces
In this article detailing Rob Pardo’s Keynote at the Austin Game Conference, we get a pretty awesome look into the minds of Blizzard.
They run their company the way I’d like to do Development.
A couple of quotes will say it better than I can.
Easy to Learn, difficult to master is the first Law. Design in the depth first, the accessibility later. A lot of folks seem to approach this the other way — when we first develop our games, we first try to come up with the really cool things that add year sof replayability. Then we start talking about accessibility afterwards.
Concentrated coolness. What this means is, rather than make variety and lots of things to do, make fewer things really cool. The best example in woW is the class system. Lots of games have more classes, multiclassing, etc. We consciously avoided that in order to make each class as cool and different from the others as possible. This allowed us to have unique spells, abilities and mechanics. No red fireball, white fireball, blue fireball, etc. Even the two pet classes, hunters and warlocks, use their pets completely differently. We consciously avoided sharing mechanics across classes. We recently announced that the paladins and the shamans are switching sides. One of the primary reasons why we undid that rule was that we found ourselves merging them into each other for PvP balance. So we decided that it was less important for each side to have its own class than it was to have concentrated coolness for each class.
Don’t ship until it’s ready. This matters even more with MMOs. You might hear that it’s improved later, but no one actually goes back to try it. You will really cripple yourself, you put at risk the next five years of your product. So hopefully all you publishers will give the developers more time.
There’s a lot more of what Rob Pardo says in the article. It’s all gold. They are the most successful (in my mind) gaming company today. Their lessons in Development are global in scope. They don’t just apply to games.
So go have a read.
I’m not sure I’ve done this before, and if not, it’s to my shame.
Clarion Mag is an awesome resource for Clarion Developers. Most Clarion Developers already know it, I’m teaching something about sucking eggs. But I thought I’d give a shout out to Dave for the marvellous work he does .. and to go take a Gander Over Here at almost one thousand reasons why ClarionMag is such an amazing place.
Cheers to Dave for the time and effort you put in keeping the articles and information flowing in!
Microsoft has released a Beta of XNA (XNA Game Studio Express is the fully featured name).
I’m interested. And not just because I’d secretly (not so) like to become a fully functional Game Dev.
We’ve been investigating the Microsoft mapping Api (Virtual Earth) .. and by all accounts (see ClarionX, Edit :: Actually, check it out on the post below, John put it up here), it’s pretty awesome. And it’s free, well .. sort of.
Anyway, the long and short of my point is this .. I think, and I’ve said this before, that we are seeing signs of Microsoft, the big bad Kinglomerate of the Hill, shifting foundations. They are certainly embracing a form of Open Source, even if it’s branded with a big red/white hot poker.
Personally I’m itching to get a look at XNA, maybe at christmas time or something.
In other news, Next Generation has put together the Top 100 PC Games,
.. released since January 2000, based wholly on unit sales. Revenues, aggregate review scores, commentary, franchise information and more are included.
It’s an interesting list. Blizzard’s three entries (where’s Starcraft?) are all in the top ten. That’s pretty special I would think. Rumors of the Sims durmise have been greatly exaggerated. It’s still Grand Maestor over all.
For the moment, ‘Nuff Said.
MapPoint Virtual Earth SDK example: How cool is this???????
Here is the code:
<html>
<head>
<title></title>
<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=utf-8″>
<script src=”http://dev.virtualearth.net/mapcontrol/v3/mapcontrol.js”></script>
<script>
var map = null;
function GetMap()
{
map = new VEMap(’myMap’);
map.LoadMap();
}
function FindLoc()
{
map.FindLocation(document.getElementById(’txtWhere’).value);
}
</script>
</head>
<body onload=”GetMap();”>
<div id=’myMap’ style=”position:relative; width:400px; height:400px;”></div>
<INPUT id=”txtWhere” type=”text” name=”txtWhere”>
<INPUT id=”find” type=”button” value=”Find” name=”find” onclick=”FindLoc();”>
</body>
</html>
Gmail is one large beast. Like the rabbit warren, the further in you venture, the more there is to see.
At least, that’s been my experience.
Recently I decided to move all my email dealings to Gmail, prompted in no small part due to the meltdown of my laptop.
I can say that so far it has been a resounding success. Gmail makes a lot of tasks simpler, and adds something new (well a few things new) to the mix.
You can see the format of the page when you log in from the image above. Simple.
Basically, you’ve got your inbox. Any new emails are there (apart specifically filtered ones, which I’ll go into later).
Clicking on an email will bring it to the screen. You can read it (boring), OR .. you can do stuff to it. Waaay cooler.
(more…)
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