Google Fiber

http://fiber.google.com

Google's plan here is brilliant, ambitious, and simple.

Google understands that they can never win against Apple or Microsoft in either hardware or end-user software, so they're playing to their own great strength: online services.

Google really wants to move everyday computing entirely online, where they have the clear upper-hand. But modern broadband simply isn't fast enough to pull that off, and current ISPs have little incentive to make their current services any faster.

So Google has decided to attack the very heart of their problem, and become an ISP itself, providing internet 100x faster at essentially the same price. They're almost certainly taking a huge financial loss with this endeavor, but to them it's an investment. Google might very well become the dominant ISP in the USA, but they probably don't care as long as they spur other ISPs to upgrade their own services.

If Google can make gigabit internet ubiquitous, then they will make the home-and-office hardware and software industries, which are largely dominated by Apple and Microsoft, mostly irrelevant. Our desktops, laptops, and eventually even smartphones will become simple dumb terminals through which we access a plethora of online services, of which the dominant provider will be Google. (And possibly also Facebook.)

I find the prospect of this happening very exciting, and it would probably be the most important development in personal computing since the personal computer. I do however worry that Google, a company which I currently love, could become a big monopoly and use their power to stifle competition. That would be bad for everyone.

StarWright - Attacking

For a very long time it has been possible to command a ship to move to a particular destination by right-clicking into empty space, but there has been no way to command a ship to approach and attack another ship. That has now changed!

This screenshot probably requires a bit of explanation:

• In their simplest form, attack commands are very simple to use and work almost exactly like move commands. Simply left-click on one of your own ships, and then right-click on an enemy ship to command your own ship to fly to the enemy ship and attack it. The computer will automatically determine the ideal distance from the enemy ship as well as the ideal flank to attack from (that is, whether to fire from the bow, stern, port, or starboard sides of your ship). A red circle will display the distance from the enemy ship, and a red ghost of your ship will show you exactly where your ship will station itself relative to the enemy ship.
• As an advanced "power player" feature, it is also possible to right-click on an enemy ship and then, without releasing the right mouse button, drag away from the enemy ship. Doing so allows you to adjust both the attack distance and the direction to attack from. Thin red lines show which weapons can hit the enemy ship. The screenshot above shows an in-progress right-click-and-drag away from an enemy ship.

It is currently not possible to manually adjust which flank your ship will fire from. This feature is hopefully coming soon.

StarWright - Modeless Sandbox

This is just a quick update to show off a refinement I made to the sandbox user interface.

If you remember from my previous blog post about the sandbox, I lamented the separation between the two separate Build and Play modes -- one mode for modifying ships, the other for playing the game. As simple and as easy as it was to toggle between the two modes, it was still annoying to have to toggle between them, and the separation discouraged making very quick design iterations.

My refinement is to eliminate those two distinct modes and instead display the toolboxes for ship parts and asteroids on the screen at all times by default. (They can be hidden by clicking the X and re-shown from the Panels menu.) Ordinarily, if you have no part or asteroid selected, then you can select and command ships like normal. If you want to modify a ship, simply select your desired part on the left and add it to your ship. Likewise if you want to have fun with an asteroid, select it from the toolbox on the right. Once you're done either building ships or placing asteroids, simply right-click to get rid of whatever you had selected and you'll be able to command your ships again, just like normal.

The elimination of the two distinct modes is definitely less annoying and more intuitive too. The few people who I've had playtest the game seem to agree. My only real lament now is that the presence of both toolboxes on the left and right can crowd the screen. It's not too bad on large monitors, and you can hide either or both of them if you want, so it's not a big deal, but I still wish the user interface was less crowded.

I also recently made another important refinement to the sandbox, which is the elimination of "ship grids". Previously, in order to build a new ship, you first had to place an empty "grid" into space, and only then could you put parts and rooms on the grid. In this latest version I streamline the process by allowing you to place a part directly into empty space, without requiring a grid first. To further extend your new ship, simply select a new part and when the mouse cursor is near the ship, the selected part will snap into position.

WAY wins "Game of the Year" at Games For Change!

WAY has just won the award for "Game of the Year" at the Games For Change festival! We also won for "Most Innovative Game" and were nominated for "Best Gameplay". I'm incredibly proud of my whole team.

Source: http://www.gamesforchange.org/press_releases/games-for-change-awards-culminate-9th-annual-games-for-change-festival-in-nyc/

StarWright - Crew

Starships now have crew on board. As in the most recent version of the original prototype, the crew on a ship are fully automated. Crew currently only have one job, which is to staff the ship's weapons and control room. In the future they will also have other tasks to perform, such as delivering ammunition and making repairs.

In order for a ship to have crew, you need to provide living quarters for them. In the current version of the game, there are two such rooms: A small "bunk" which provides space for 2 crew, and a larger "quarters" which provides space for 6 crew.

StarWright - Fun with Asteroids

I'm in the middle of adding a crew simulation to the game, but I took a break to add asteroids to the existing game. Asteroids aren't very useful except for target practice.

When in Play mode, the toolbox on the left, which ordinarily shows the ship parts available, now shows a few different sizes of asteroids that can be placed into the sandbox. Each asteroid has a randomly-generated shape.

WAY is a double-nominee at Games For Change!

My game WAY is a double-nominee at the Games For Change festival. We're up for "Most Innovative Game" and "Best Gameplay". Oh, and apparently all nominees are also up for "Game of the Year".

I'm crossing my fingers! Future Walt is amazed that crossing his fingers actually worked and plans to do more finger-crossing in the future's future.

Source: http://www.gamesforchange.org/2012/05/2012-games-for-change-awards-nominees-announced/