Nuno Silva

Selectors in Mooltools

For reference, in Mootools there are 3 types of selectors:

• $$ - selects all the elements in the page.
  Example: $$(’a') - selects all the anchors in the page
• $ES - Does the same thing as $$ but an optional parameter can be passed to refine the selection.
  Example:
  $ES(’a') - Same thing as $$(’a');
  $ES(’a',’something’) - selects all the anchors inside the element with the id ’something’ ($(’something’))
• $E - same thing as $ES but it only returns the first element found. Example: $(’a',’something’) - returns the first anchor inside the element with the id ’something’ ($(’something’))

Prince of Persia

One of the games that marked two game eras was Prince of Persia. Everyone remembers that fantastic platform game that we used to play in our 486. it was wonderful!

Fortunately, Ubi had the nice idea to make a remake of the game. This remake became a trilogy:

• Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
• Prince of Persia: The Warrior Within
• Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones

I’m currently playing the 2º game (Warrior Within) and one thing i have to say: it’s brilliant. The fights, the moves, the ambiance, all it’s magnificent.

And one thing i recommend: Play all the 3 games in their order because they form a story.

Because of the great success of the 3 games of Prince, Ubi decided to create a fourth installment of the game. Probably it will be released for PS3 and PC (just like the 3 games above).

This new installment doesn’t have a name (yet), but it has some shots and concept art. For the fans, here their are:

You can find more informations about the new game at it’s official website.

Asirra

The best way to describe Asirra is to tell that it is a capcha with images. Well, it’s not really a captcha, but it serves the same propose: Challenge the user to prove that he is human.

Asirra uses images of cats and dogs has a challenge. The user only has to select the images that correspond to the cats and it’s done. The images come from a partnership between Microsoft research and Petfinder.com.

It’s interesting because, beside the obvious functionality (protect websites from spam), it also helps Pet Finder organization to find new owners for abandoned pets (notice, in the image below, the adopt me link).

You can see the official page of Asirra at http://research.microsoft.com/asirra/

The most versatile word in the english language

Star Wars: Clone Wars

As a fan of Star Wars it gives me great pleasure to present another star wars movie:

Well, it’s not a movie like the others. At least not with real people. It a animated movie, computer made, with a style similar to the TMNT movie.

The story takes place between episode 2 and 3. You cannot figure much from the trailer, but at least you can see that Skywalker has a Padawan, there is a new Sith, a girl, and the plot is related with the kidnap of Jabba the Hut’s Son.

Here is the trailer: Yahoo

Release date is set to August 15, 2008.

Ajax Requests and Mootools

A simple ajax request using Mootools:

new Ajax('Ajax.aspx', {
	method: 'get',
	update: $('updateElement')
}).request();

All worked fine in Firefox and Opera. But in IE didn’t. The request simply wasn’t being made. Why?

Well, it seems that IE makes cache of the request. To avoid this feature, you only need to change the code above into the following:

var ajax = new Ajax('Ajax.aspx', {
	method: 'get',
	update: $('updateElement')
});

if (window.ie) {
	ajax.setHeader('If-Modified-Since', 'Sat, 1 Jan 2000 00:00:00 GMT');
}
ajax.request();

“The If-Modified-Since request-header field is used with the GET method to make it conditional: if the requested resource has not been modified since the time specified in this field, a copy of the resource will not be returned from the server; instead, a 304 (not modified) response will be returned without any Entity-Body.”
source: http://www.freesoft.org/CIE/RFC/1945/58.htm

Because the content has been modified since the date passed, the request will be made to the server in order to get a fresh copy of the page.

Other solution could be adding a time stamp to the request, example:add a query string attribute with the current date.

Iron Man

Yesterday i saw (finally) the movie Iron Man. I was afraid because some book/comic books adaptations usually ruin all the story (like Hulk and Eragon for instance).

Well, let’s just say that the movie was a very good surprise. A very good story, told without any rush. With a lot of action and GREAT special effects! Now i know why this movie is have such a success all over the world.

I’m anxious for Iron Man 2. Maybe they’ll put the War Machine (Iron Man’s partner) and Mandarim (has the villain). These were things that the fans would really enjoy.

This is definitely a must have movie (maybe this will be my first blue ray movie) .

“Fiero”

It’s a Emotion that identifies a triumph over an adversary, the euphoria when you (or other that you like) overcome a very difficult challenge. Example: When your team scores a goal.

50 games in one Semester?

Yeah, it’s true. The creators of “Tower of Goo” created more than 50 games in one semester. An there were only 3 rules:

1. Each game must be made in less than seven days
2. Each game must be made by exactly one person
3. Each game must be based around a common theme i.e. “gravity”, “vegetation”, “swarms”, etc.

This is what I call Extreme Game Design (and programming)!

Here is the article that explains this experiment: www.gamasutra.com

You can also see the website of this experiment at www.experimentalgameplay.com

Civilization IV

A 4 days LanParty in my home and the main game played was CIV IV. First, for the ones of you that don’t know, CIV is a strategy game with a lot (but i mean a LOT) of similarities with board games.

Is a turned based game where you objective (in the mode i played) was total annihilation of the enemies. In this type of game, you can win by war or by diplomacy.

It has thousands of little details (like the several options in diplomacy or the huge technology tree) that can make the game loved by ones, hated by others.

The game presented some problems, especially in the latter parts of the game when you know where your enemies are and the battles already started. Maybe because my computer is a little old (PIV 2,8 with 1GB of RAM, a GeForce 440go with 64mb of ram) but the turn usually took 30 secs or more to pass. This, of course, is not normal. The problem could be from my graphics Card, by we are talking about the turn pass, a time where no graphics are needed, only calculations are made.

I found this site where the guys at firaxis give the player some solutions to the problem. Let’s say i did them all and the problem with the lazy turns continued.

Finally i found a guy that made a performance analysis to the game. Main conclusion: Civilization IV needs a lot of processor! You can find the analysis here.

Apart of the performance issues, CIV is a good game for the fanatics of board games. Has a lot of features, options and strategy. The learning curve is medium (1, 2 hours tops). Is a good game to play in a weekend with your friends (if you have a decent computer of course :)).