Archive for April, 2007
Taking on the role of a Guitar Hero
My friends and I have been very much enjoying Guitar Hero II on the Xbox 360 released earlier this month.
Despite reservations we’ve found ourselves jumping around performing a variety of silly stances, head bops and special moves whilst we attempt to strum ‘n chord in time to the tricky yet rewarding tracks available. Once we got a second guitar and hit the co-operative (one bass, one lead) and VS modes (turns each or both together) then out-performing the other player off-screen as well as on became an integral part of the game.
The line-up of songs is a little disappointing – when there is one “made famous” by a well known band then it tends to be one of their less famous song. I say “made famous” as the game clearly points it out they are, alas, cover versions bar a small handful.
Extra tracks are available on-line in packs of 3 for 500 MSP‘s each. These are again cover versions presumably due to the developer being unable to licence the original audio mix to the songs so that they can cut out the guitar and bass lines when you fail to hit the right combination of colourful buttons and strum in time.
One pleasant surprise is that the guitar is just a normal USB device and can be used under Windows once the Xinput common controller driver is installed or on the Mac using TattieBogle’s Xbox 360 OS X driver.
Why would you want to do that? To play the free cross-platform Guitar Hero clone Frets on Fire with all the fan-created songs of course!
Whilst there are plans for Guitar Hero: 80s Edition and Guitar Hero III the franchise is being handed over to Activision’s Neversoft team (Tony Hawks) as they bought the rights to the name when they snapped up Guitar Hero’s publisher Red Octane.
Original music-game-only developer Harmonix aren’t whining about it or heading to the courts, oh no. They are fighting back with Rock Band that throws drums and vocals on top of lead and bass guitars.
Fantastic!
[)amien
PS: Under no circumstances consider playing either game with a keyboard or a regular controller – the experience just isn’t the same.
Windows font evolution
Vista and Office 2007 are interesting as they provide major user interface work that also includes new sets of fonts. I thought it would be interesting to show the evolution of the various styles.
Serif
Times New Roman has been the default typeface in Microsoft Word since version 1 and was originally designed for printing newspapers on high speed printing machines whilst still retaining legibility.
Curiously enough whilst Office 2007 provides a couple of new serif typefaces the default has switched to the sans-serif font Calibri although a number of the the themes within Office 2007 utilise these typefaces.
Sans-serif
The infamous Helvetica clone Arial primarily used for on-screen document-type work and even used in some applications user-interfaces throughout the years gives way to two new lighter fonts that like most of the new ‘C’ named typefaces rely on ClearType to look legible at small sizes.
Calibri is now the default font of choice for Word documents and will therefore probably become a familiar typeface in a short space of time.
Monospace
Primarily used for programming and other environments that require it. At least all those programmers too lazy to try something else will enjoy Consolas as standard in Visual Studio 2007.
User interface
The Windows user-interface switches to a new font once again despite large chunks of the Windows UI never making it past Microsoft Sans Serif (the scalable version of MS Sans Serif pictured below).
[)amien
Programming fonts you might not have tried
If you’re tired of the ugly-as-sin Courier New and have tried the popular well-known scalable TrueType/OpenType mono-spaced/fixed-width replacements:
- Apple’s Monaco
- Bitstream’s Vera Sans Mono
- Microsoft’s Andale Mono
- Microsoft’s Consolas
- My own Envy Code R
And you’re still not feeling it then why not give these potentials a quick spin.
Anonymous
Anonymous is typographer Mark Simonson’s reworking of a bitmapped Mac font from the mid-90′s into scalable TrueType form.
Rather unusually some of the characters have serifs and others do not – most likely due to the space restrictions of the original bitmap font but carried through to the design.
The overall feel is one that is less cluttered than Courier whilst also hanging onto the past – strangely enough anything written in Anonymous immediately makes me think it could be SQL syntax.
Character similarity does exist a little between the 1 and the l and the backwards slash through the zero might not be your cup-of-tea but it’s certainly worth a look.
Available: free from Mark Simonson Studio.
Crystal
A geometric styled mono-spaced font with distinguishable 0 and O, 1 and l, 5 and S that looks best at 15pt and above so maybe one for the programmer who prefers large fonts.
Available: free from Urban Fonts.
Onuava
Another geometric design that works best at larger sizes. It has a slashed 0 and distinguishable glyphs.
Available: free from Urban Fonts.
Share Technical Monospaced
For those that like very square fonts this one could be a contender – providing the author can fix the problem where an f and an l placed together causes both to disappear – an unexpected empty ligature perhaps?
Available: free from Typo3.
Feel free to comment on any other great finds but please, no more references to bit mapped pixel fonts!
If you’re wondering what the state of Envy Code R is… I’m trying to solve the various issues with the heights at certain levels. I think the solution to the problems is delta-hinting but it is a bit of a black art and I don’t have the right tools for the job.
Envy Code R has been updated since this post.
[)amien
So you believe Apple is more expensive than Dell…
Apple are often accused of being more expensive and that Dell are much cheaper.
The reality is that Dell offers a wider range that includes real low-end products that are often constrained or using older technology. Apple, quite rightly in my opinion, doesn’t compete there.
Okay Apple have some other gaps in their line-up most notably the typical home power-user who doesn’t want a twin processor Mac Pro, needs more configuration options than the Mac Mini and already owns a display so doesn’t want an iMac. A box half the size of the Pro with a single dual/quad core CPU and no supplied peripherals would be perfect.
That aside I was checking out the prices for their new twin 3GHz quad Xeon boxes after some individuals baulked at the price. They obviously haven’t seen similar specifications from Dell…
| Apple MacPro | Dell Precision 690 | |
|---|---|---|
| Processor | 2xQuad Core Xeon 3GHz | 2xQuad Core Xeon 2.66GHz |
| Memory | 4x1GB DDR 667 | 4x1GB DDR 667 |
| Storage | 500GB 7200RPM SATA | 500GB 7200RPM SATA |
| Optical | 16x DVD-RW | 16x DVD-RW |
| Input | Wired keyboard/mouse | Wired keyboard/mouse |
| OS | Mac OS X 10.4 | Vista Ultimate 64-bit |
| Graphics | NVIDIA Quadro FX4500 512MB | NVIDIA Quadro FX4500 512MB |
| Price ex.VAT | £3,605.95 | £5,890.00 |
| Price inc.VAT | £4,436.99 | £6,920.75 |
| Graphics | NVIDIA GeForce 7300GT 256MB | NVIDIA Quadro FX550 128MB |
| Price ex.VAT | £2,712.34 | £4,595.00 |
| Price inc.VAT | £3,187.00 | £5,399.13 |
In this scenario the Dell is over 60% more expensive and comes with slower CPU’s.
So much for the “Apple Premium Tax”.
[)amien