E3 is coming, I suggest to follow it from Anyuzer‘s website. He promised to update while he goes around.
And he’s already started here.
Monthly Archives: May 2004
DooM 3 confirmed for a summer release
The “business” section of Yahoo confirms a summer release for the game:
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040511/sftu128_1.html
It seems that Valve is also striving for a contemporary release. I wonder how will go the fight between the two games at the E3.
Guessing World of Warcraft release date
In the “money” section of the CNN website has appeared an article with a possible release date of World of Warcraft for November, then December for Korea and January for the Europe.
Is that reliable? It depends, to announce those dates is Phil O’Neil, president of Vivendi, also publisher of Blizzard’s products. If the game is launching for November it means that they still have a lot of time to work on it, that means that the release date is simply a rough guess since nearly everything could change.
It’s interesting the fact that even the publisher is giving out a wide margin. In general the deadlines of publishers are always missed, just think to Half-Life 2, also to be published from Vivendi. But World of Warcraft is a special case, the game is at a good point and a release that distant sounds strange, in particular because the beta is without NDA and will soon turn completely open.
Blizzard is really going to offer and support that for so many months? I’ll quote Anyuzer‘s article:
That said, while it looks like World of Warcraft is going to win this race, there in my opinion is another facet to take into consideration when thinking about World of Warcraft. Assuming that people are looking for a game to play, not a buggy product to beta, this could cause some potential problems. Classically in EverQuest and the subsequent expansions it does not take more than six months for players to burn through all of the content. The only real exception to this that I can remember was Velious, where a few of the major enemies had ‘just’ been beaten by the major guilds before Luclin hit stores. Point is, if World of Warcraft allows this much time for testing, will there be any content for players to actually have fun with by the time the game hits shelves? And will this damage possible player retention?
My personal opinion is that the game will hit the shelves exactly for the end of October, the most “interesting” date to push out a game and maximize the sales, then November for Korea and December for Europe, along with the Christmas.
BrokenToys updates with a new layout
Scott Jennings updated his blog with a new, sleeker layout. I wonder with which criterions he chooses them.
The site is interesting because of a nostalgic value. Scott Jennings was also known as “Lum the Mad”, the owner of the most interesting (and most elitist) site with rants and analysis focused on the MMOG world. He’s the “father” of the most interesting community you can find about this whole genre (and more). Now splitted between Corpnews, F13 and a few other, smaller places.
Even his last entry on the journal has a nostaligic sense, I wonder if he misses the old times.
He also added F13 to the “rant list”. Interesting.
More work
I’ve put a few more hours into templates and html code. I obtained a nice result to see once again that IE was showing that completely different from Firebird, so I had to “rollback”.
The search page and function is also updated with many options. If you use it from the “home” you’ll search by default in all the pages, instead if you are in one of them you’ll search by default only that page (makes sense?).
Now I really would like to know how to reduce the space between empty lines in the posts. And I just had an idea, so I’m going back to try it…
…And it seems to be related. I converted the automated paragraphs with the “br” tag and as you can see the space is reduced in this entry. Both on IE and Firebird. Now I need to find a better solution.
I’m insane
If you notice the time of these posts you can imagine my life. Those aren’t wrong, it’s the time I have here.
I think I’ll go to bed in a few minutes.
Too much work
I kept working all the night with templates. Oh my god, I cannot stop. HELP ME!
The site “should” be ok now. I think I’m satisfied by the new templates I managed to create (and rip around). I really hated all this. Once I thought I was done, with the site looking ok in Firebird, I loaded it in IE to find all the various part messed.
More than once I got stuck with a single tag messing the site in Firefox or IE. And I had to find various compromises. It’s simply impossible to have the site behaving the same in both browsers.
Now it looks good to me. It’s readable, behaves correctly and is low resolution friendly.
MovableType gives me dependence.
P.S.
Obviously only the homepages on each site work. I still have to mess with the various templates for comments, archives and all the rest. I was happy enough to discover how to make unique links that don’t look like 000000023.html or a nearly infinite string. With various plugins (and tutorials I found around) I produced a nifty result. By default the permalink is generated from the keywords I use in an entry. If I don’t define keywords the permalink is generated directly from the title of the entry. Nifty.
And thanks to whoever helped me in my long researches all over the internet.
The structure of the site
Just to explain, the site is built on four MovableType pages, plus the forum. These four pages (will) have unique content. The home page is just a collection of what appears on every sub-site.
My aim is to have also a general search function that works on every sub-site, but each time I have an idea I need to fight with the engine of these pages.
So, in the homepage you’ll see everything, but there are no archives, comments or permalinks. What you see there is just a “mirror”. I could post uniques entries even in the “home” but that’s not how the site is built. So, basically, the pages are four:
The Cesspit: This page is the actual news site I had in mind. I’ll post there what I think is worth of attention and I’ll probably comment as well. I don’t like news sites that strive to be equidistant. If I have an opinion I’ll probably throw it there with not many scruples. I should update it frequently (probably not).
F00lies: This page is about things I write. Completely crazy. I should place there things I write exclusively here and about topics that may vary. No limits are intended.
Ravings: This page will be a collection of what I find interesting and that I need to “archive”. It will be mostly a cut and paste of mine and others posts on the various communities. It’s my tinker room.
Blog: And this one is about the actual blog. For example right now I’m writing there. I’ll write here whatever doesn’t fit in the other three pages, like updates on this site, my complaints about random stuff and all the rest.
Working
I’m finally at a good point. I worked full time for the past two days, fighting with MovableType engine and various plugins, trying to build things exactly as I was planning. I have still a lot of work to do but at least I can throw the whole thing online and expect it to work. From now I’ll have just to adjust things and mess a bit with the homepage. Then I’ll have to go back to the forum and readjust things there too.
It has been fun. I simply couldn’t stop to work at this and now I’m starting to be quite happy about the result. In general at this stage I simply stop everything and forget about the whole project.
Because I’m crazy and I spend time doing things I’ll never use.
I need some perseverance.
P.S.
The “manifesto” is still accessible form the homepage, on the left.