Interesting to Note…

…that 68% of my posts in July have been directly related to the iPhone 3G launch, the iPhone/iPod Touch 2.0 firmware, or the app store, or technology in general (minus some of the creative ones).  This is strange from a guy who normally blogs about whatever philosophy he’s currently interested in.  It goes to show that my mindset has been technology driven for the last month or so, and probably even dates back to my acquiring my computer.  Although in the last five or six days my computer usage has dropped significantly, it’s still a major blog topic.  I guess I just find it fun to write about, I suppose.

If I’m writing for fun, it doesn’t make sense to write about things that don’t make me happy.  Technology makes me happy, and the apps are an adventure for me, a challenge to find ones that are new, exciting, and functional.  I really do have a good time blogging about technology, but it feels strange to be doing it on the same blog that is normally treated as a personal release.

I’ve kicked around the idea of starting a second blog, this time one solely focused on technology, and I guess although it grabbed a back burner during last week, it might be time for that to come into play.  That way, I can maintain this blog as a solid place for me to hash out thoughts, display my creative work, ask questions, find answers, and ask questions again.

All, right, I think I’ve convinced myself.  Welcome to the dawn of a new blog from Josh Williams.  This should be the home of most of my future technological reviews and ramblings.  I’m sure I’ll link to it all the time.

Neutron Dawn

Cube Runner

Kerby turned me on to a new iPod Touch app, my first game: Cube Runner (iTunes Link).

The graphics are not amazing: mostly just red, yellow, and orange coloured cubes littered across a grey and blue landscape.  (Somewhere in the middle of the easy level pack you get a glowing green set of cubes for a while, before it reverts back).  Your objective is simple: avoid the cubes.  Even a glancing collision will destroy your “ship”.

It’s unclear whether there’s  a real ‘end’ to the game, and I’m suspicious that once you’ve played through the various levels (denoted by sandbox-gameplay-style cube fields separated by shorter static pipelines) it will simply cycle you through again.

Your score is determined by how many seconds you’ve been flying without crashing.  Currently as you can see, my high score is 390: it looks as if they get into the tens of thousands.

For gameplay of increased difficulty, the user may select the “medium” or “hard” level packs.  This, as far as I can tell, increases the speed at which your ship flies and possibly the number and density of cubes.  Flying faster is harder, but definitely more exciting.

Gameplay to start with, though, is really what makes this game so much fun.  Simply grasp the iPod or iPhone (I recommend landscape style, found by pressing the i in the lower right hand corner of the menu screen, familiar to OS X widget users).  This makes it easier to grasp the device like a steering wheel.  The brilliant aspect of having an iPod Touch or iPhone in terms of games is that it has a built in accelerometer: so instead of pushing buttons on the screen, you manipulate it in a real 3-D environment, which translates into the game’s 3-D world.  Thus, as you tilt the device to the left, the ship angles to the left, while maintaining forward momentum (I’d hoped that by tilting the device forward I could cause the ship to fly faster, and vice versa for braking, but no such luck).  This is what makes the game amazingly addicting though, being able to fly a ship like you’re actually flying a ship-sort of the way joysticks made flight simulators that much cooler.

The difference between this and some of the more pricier games (note: Cube Runner is as of right now, completely free) such as Super Monkey Ball and Cro-Mag Rally Racing is mostly the graphics and goal of the game.  However, the overall feel is the same, I think, in the controls and the usage of the real treat: the accelerometer.  I highly recommend Cube Runner for iPod Touch and iPhone users working on the cheap.

Also on my iPod in the way of games you can find Tap Tap Revenge, sort of like Guitar Hero or Rock Band for the iPhone/iPod Touch platform.  Mostly you just tap out the beat on the screen when the spheres line up at the edge of the screen (see screenshot below), and music plays in the background.  It’s not a bad pass time, though, which is really the only reason I game on my iPod.

There was no small amount of iPod gaming Saturday Night while my two iPhone Buddies, Kerby and Ed, and I were in line for the Dark Knight in IMAX.  Tap Tap Revenge is nice for that because it has a two player mode (shown below), but is much more useful in two player mode on the iPhone, because of the speaker.  Otherwise you’re just tapping spheres on a screen.

Tap Tap Revenge isn’t terribly amazing, but that’s not to say poorly done.  The idea is there, and the porting of music into gaming has been successful in the past, but it’s strange on a handheld device, especially since there’s no feedback or anything.  It is, however, rich in graphics and laid out effectively.  It’s also cheap (read: free), and can be found here at its iTunes Link.