chronnus's blog

Small projects are always a breath of fresh air, specially when in the midst of a major, time consuming (and sometimes often frustrating) project. I had the opportunity to tackle 3 of them over the last few weeks, and it was great to be able to flex some neurons on sites that take a few days to about 2 weeks to complete.

I’ve been tagging away all the cool stuff I find through Delicious for as long as I can recall (Their Firefox extension makes it ridiculously easy and addictive!). Wordle takes all my tags and pretties ‘em up. Yumm, I want a shirt with this.

Never knew about the precursor to videogames til now. Game|Life’s latest video features the Musee Mecanique, a place with a large collection of mechanically operated games and thingamabobs:

The first screenshots of the new Prince of Persia has just been released, and they look absolutely fantastic. 5 years ago these screens would have passed for concept art. I’m a fan of cel-shaded / stylized games (I played through half of Eternal Sonata despite the boring as hell combat, oh and that reminds me, No More Heroes and Okami are still waiting to be finished), and this illustrative style takes it to a whole new level.

I’m not too sure with seemingly angst-ridden emo prince though. I hated the second PoP (Warrior Within?) game. Here’s hoping for a protagonist that’s at least half as likeable as the one in Sands of Time. More shots at Shacknews.

Fine Upgrades is a product catalog site for the company, showcasing the distributor’s products, and linking the visitors to any retail outlet that they can purchase the items from. The site is straightforward, with the usual pages, story nodes made into news items, and a few content types to deal with the products, reviews, and dealers.

Acmeweb Solutions’ Galan did the site’s excellent design, while I integrated the layout with Drupal and did all the customization needed.

Finally added in 3 of my completed projects to my portfolio. All 3 are based on Drupal (5.x) and I should be writing about each of them very soon. I will probably start with Ryan's Fine Upgrades this week, with the rest to follow.

Where'd my 4 months go? Ugh, really not good at blogging. I've been real busy for the year, and once I get this entry out the door I hope to get in here a little more (hahahah, yeah, right). I should also be writing about a few of my Drupal related projects, it's weird, last year I ached for some Drupal action, then when 2008 starts I get 3 projects all at once. Being busy is never really an excuse though, so to make up for lost time, here's a trailer for ONECHANBARA. WTH is ONECHANBARA?

Bikini. Samurai. Girls. Versus. Zombies. Nuff said!

Nuff said indeed.

It's a shame Viva Pinata didn't do so well commercially, it was a solid game with fantastic visuals that made the title one of the more memorable launch games for the 360. It sat awkwardly between casual and hardcore gaming, but that's a topic for another day. Anyways I loved how the game stood out with its vibrant environment and saccharine filled inhabitants.

Gamasutra's got an article detailing the initial design of the title and how it morphed from a mobile game (!) to what it is now. There's even a photo of a real Rashberry Pinata that Rare made, sweet! (Alright, enough stupid puns)

Check it here.

Finally, an accurate guide on understanding nerd behavior, it's creepy how a lot of what the article says describes me. Here's a snip :

Your nerd loves toys and puzzles. The joy your nerd finds in his project is one of problem solving and discovery. As each part of the project is completed, your nerd receives an adrenaline rush that we’re going to call The High. Every profession has this — the moment when you’ve moved significantly closer to done. In many jobs, it’s easy to discern when progress is being made: “Look, now we have a door”. But in nerds’ bit-based work, progress is measured mentally and invisibly in code, algorithms, efficiency, and small mental victories that don’t exist in a world of atoms.

And there's plenty more here.

Despite being flooded with Triple A games that should last me until the end of the gaming drought that follows the holiday season, I'm still inexplicably craving for some Rock Band to come my way. Region-lock loving EA has seen fit to keep the US version of the game out of the Asian (and European, Australian, etc) market, and with no set release date for the NTSC-J version I'm left to silently cursing them while scouring the interwebs every hour or so for information (some rumors point to a March 2008 Singapore launch, ugh...). Baah, I'm pretty sure that when I do get the game, there'll be something else I'll be wanting profusely, gamer habits never die. :(