Archive for the ‘GeekLife’ Category

E3 Battlefield 3 and Frostbite 2 Trailer

The E3 is held at the Los Angeles Convention Center (LACC) in Los Angeles since monday 6. June 2011 and the Battlefield 3 Team released some tasty trailers on their game and the Frostbite 2 engine.

You can check out a live coverage from their booth through the official battlefield website: http://www.battlefield.com/battlefield3. Continue reading

Sanity Saver #1: Secure Empty Trash on MacOSX

Since Leopard, emptying the trash was taking HOURS to complete because of the system’s default to actually overwrite all bits of a deleted file. Even though this might be secure to a certain degree, it is still BS for everyday use, because first of all not all data is that sensitive, second it drains battery and third it decreases your harddrive’s life expectancy and most importantly: it just takes too long. I finally found the option to turn this thing off:

  1. Go to Finder preferences
  2. Go to Advanced
  3. Untick “Empty Trash securely”

I know its not a big thing,but… before you apple fanboys are sending me your facepalms: I am not a regular user (just using a macbook pro on the road) and things like this can really drive me crazy and i do not know intuitively where to look for them on mac. So i was very happy to find this little Sanity Saver. Still wondering why i can’t just select between “Empty Trash” and “Empty Trash Securely” in the moment he is anyway popping up a confirmation dialog…

Howto make webpages readable again

Most websites today are full of ads, links, pictures and stuff that distract you from their actual content you would like to read. That’s why I try to keep this blog as clean and minimalistic as possible. And that’s why there is a browser plugin called “Readability”.

http://vimeo.com/3445774

Check out: lab.arc90.com/​experiments/​readability

Game Review: Venetica

Scarlett has some nice combo combat moves - some of them are realized in bullet time.

I would like to present to you a nice find of the german game kitchen. The first time I discovered some information about it was quite a while ago in a game developers magazine called Making Games. They presented Deck13 from Frankfurt/Main who was working at that point on an action role playing game called ‘Venetica’ and has received already a few national developer prices for its series of ‘Ankh‘. What immediately caught my eye was the level of detail they put into the animation, facial expression and clothing of the female protagonist character ‘Scarlett’. I knew at that point that i had to play this game, but by its release on 4. September 2009 it went somehow forgotten to me again.

When I actually got my hands on it one year after (it was winter by that time), I really felt like diving into a fantastic story that reveals the potential to take me away from the gray, cold days. Now that i finished it a few weeks a go, here is what i liked and disliked about the game… Continue reading

Battlefield 3 – Fault Line 12 Minutes Gameplay Trailer Released

DICE/EA has kept us waiting for long enough now and according to their tweets the development of Battlefield 3 is making great progress. Now they have released the full 12 minutes trailer of which we have already seen most parts in their previous releases – but now in a consecutive story line with a few scenes that have not been shown before…

The most impressive would be the earthquake in the end followed by some more sneak preview scenes that make your jaw drop. I feel totally immersed into the atmosphere – especially I love those majestic sound effects!

Cant wait to see some multiplayer now… this truly seems to get epic!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kw9z6RWkCng

From Dust

It just so happens once in a while that i just accidentally come across a new game that is going to be released soon, of which i have never heart before but which seems to have a lot of potential to catch my attention in the long run. One of those games is “From Dust” which is the working title of a new Ubisoft game by Eric Chahi. It is a god game, where you (the god) are in control of some natural elements (in this case sand, lava, water and vegetation) to form the world for the human inhabitants by preventing disasters, creating living space or causing havoc (probably like many god games where Populous was the first i remember playing). Why am i mentioning this game after we have played so many other similar games already until exhaustion? Well, it is definitely the art style of this one that fascinated me. There is not much info on the gameplay as of now, but i can see a lot of potential there. Basically i just wanted to let you know that i will keep my eye on this game. Release date is somewhere around summer 2011. I just hope that it will not fail to fulfill my expectations as Black & White did some time ago. Even though i am not much into this kind of games anymore, i can imagine that it would be relaxing to play one of those endless single player modes all by myself for a change (there is no multiplayer announced). I am impatiently now waiting for more details on the gameplay itself and see what it turns into…

I found this video of an early game engine demo:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfKQCAxizrA

Another teaser with similar clips from the demo plus some pictures can be found on the official homepage.

There is also an interview with its creator Eric about the ideas behind the game on youtube:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JV4xE4tFolo

Exoskeleton for your Gaming Needs

I couldnt help but smiling throughout the whole reading of this product’s description: Razer announces a sci-fi glove thingy ‘Razer Talon’ where you put your fingers into some sensors and by your ten finger’s movement it is supposed to increase your APM (Actions Per Minute) up to some mad 3.000! That would be about 10x more than pro gamers and around 30x more than average gamers. Although APM is especially important in games like starcraft (which i am not so interested in currently), i find this product really cool. There is even an option to set the glove to “massage” mode where the input becomes an output, relaxing your worn off hands in between matches! Just fantastic idea!! But then again, it is 1st April today…

[via Razer]

If you are not familiar with APM then you should check out this south korean master in starcraft telling you what it is:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbpCLqryN-Q

WordPress: how to hide/remove pingbacks and trackbacks from recent comments

Its pretty simple to remove pingbacks and trackbacks from your sidebar actually, but the required change is overwritten by any wordpress update since it is done directly inside the wordpress files:

  1. Open the file wp-includes/default-widgets.php
  2. Find line with $comments= get_comments( array( 'number'=> $number, 'status'=> 'approve') );
  3. Change line to $comments= get_comments( array( 'number'=> $number, 'status'=> 'approve', 'type'=> 'comment') );

Your pingbacks and trackbacks should be hidden from the default recent comments widget.

Edit: I tried stromkopf’s suggestion to use a plugin and it works perfectly. To get it, go to http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/get-recent-comments

Battlefield 3 – Fault Line Episode 3

And now we are allowed to take a glimpse at the third part of the cleverly released chunks of awe from DICE…

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbW98JYSjos

The previously released parts:
Episode 1
Episode 2

Battlefield 3 – Fault Line Episode 2

I do not want to loose to many words about it. After the teaser and the first part of this episode, DICE/EA has now released the sequel of their trailers of Battlefield 3. And it looks awesome and sounds just amazing. Watch:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hqg66mx8YbE

In case you missed it, here is Episode 1.

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