Nuno Silva

Warcraft Retrospective - Part 2

Game Trailers has just released the second part of documentary called Warcraft Retrospective. This second part, called “A Call to Arms”.

In this documentary, they describe Warcraft 3 and it’s expansion, the Frozen throne. they also give a little introduction about the subject of part 3: World of Warcraft (as expected).

It’s amazing to see how all the lore was built. For me that only played half of Warcraft 3 and played World of Warcraft for about 6 months, it’s incredible to see how they transported all the lore of Warcraft 3 and built the amazing universe of World of Warcraft.

(Video below)

Battles in Orion’s Belt

In Orion’s Belt, a massive multiplayer game that i’m helping developing (blog), the battles are made in a board similar to the one used in chess.

Until now, i could only explain the idea. If you wanted to see how the battle works, you had to play the game. Because that is something that very few people are welling to do, we created a way to embed the battle in order to insert it in any place we like.

So, i introduce you a battle of the game Orion’s Belt. This is a battle between me an Tiago that we had finished yesterday. You can use the control above the battle field to move the units and see our moves.

It’s work in progress, but at least you can get a first look into the battles of Orion’s Belt

(Embedded battle after the break)

Fallout Retrospective

Writing the previous post i found out another game retrospective. It’s wasn’t a blockbuster, but it was one of the RPGs that i most enjoyed playing because of the number of turnouts an features that the game had. The game is Fallout and here is his history (Video after the break):

Warcraft Retrospective

Warcraft is, with a doubt, one of the first Real Time Strategy (RTS) of the new generation.

It have so success since it was released in January 15 1994, that 3 versions were and several expansions were release and created a Lore that brought to live the biggest Massive Multiplayer Online game ever created: World of Warcraft.

Because of the success of the Warcraft universe, Game Trailers decided to made a documentary called Warcraft Retrospective. The first part, called Drums of War can be seen below.

Double Click in a Html Select (List Item)

Double click is a feature that can useful when you build a Site. Almost every element can have a double click event. It’s usage is very simple:

<div ondblclick=’alert(”Hello”)’>Hello</div>

Test DoubleClick Here

Elements like element of a list item (select) should also have support for double click. But some browsers don’t support it (Like Internet Explorer). So the strategy is always had the event to the parent and, in that event, react according to the element clicked:

<select id='listItem' multiple="true">
	<option value="hello">Hello</option>
	<option value="hello2">Hello2</option>
</select>

Javascript Code using Mootools

$("listItem").addEvent('dblclick',function(evt){
	var v = this.selectedIndex;
	alert(v.value);
});

Dawn of War II

I Love dawn of war. Was one of the last RTS where i spend some good hours in. Unfortunately there was only the space Marines campaign in the original version fact that disappointed me. Meanwhile several expansions were released but i never played any of them. But for the looks, they are very good (maybe it can be a good game to spend the weekend playing).

Dawn of War 2 is expected to be released in the Spring 2009. For the looks of the In Game Video, DOW2 will be very very good.

• Strategy has been improved .
• several RPG features have been inserted - you can catch items, improve your commanders, ask for reinforcements, you can cover your units in buidings and behind walls.
• powers can be used by the commanders - a very impressive orbital bombardment.

Check the official site at http://www.dawnofwar2.com/. There you have screenshots, videos and the Eldar trailer (cinematic, yes, but very good).

Certainly a game to test. In Game Video after the break.

Dragon Ball

Last week the teaser trailer of the movie Dragon Ball has leaked (his official release should be 13 October).

I’m very afraid of this movie. I’m a huge dragon ball fan and i’m afraid that the guys at fox don’t respect the soul of the animated series.

10 April 2009 we are all here to see if the movie will be what the fans are expecting or not. Meanwhile, here is the leaked teaser trailer.

The Couple: Content and Marketing

“content is king but marketing is queen and the queen runs the household”.

Today a friend passed me the above quote and i found it excellent.

We can think that we have the best content in the world, but if no one knows about it, that content will not have the expected success. Exactly what exists in certain houses were the man thinks that he is the one in charge but actually is the woman that rules.

Firefox Commands

Like Google Chrome (see Google Chrome Commands), Firefox always have had about commands.

about: - Firefox version information.

about:blank - shows an empty page.

about:buildconfig - show Firefox build information (compiler and parameters used).

about:cache - Cache information of your Firefox. if you use about:cache?device=memory you’ll get detailed information about cache memory. if you use about:cache?device=disk you’ll see detailed information about cache in you hard drive.

about:config - A list of properties to tune your firefox. In once talked about this command in Firefox 3 is not caching content.

about:credits - A list of contributors that help made Firefox.

about:mozilla - just some text taken form the “The Book of Mozilla“:

“Mammon slept. And the beast reborn spread over the earth and its numbers grew legion. And they proclaimed the times and sacrificed crops unto the fire, with the cunning of foxes. And they built a new world in their own image as promised by the sacred words, and spoke of the beast with their children. Mammon awoke, and lo! it was naught but a follower.

from The Book of Mozilla, 11:9″

about:plugins - a list of all plugins currently installed.

about:robots - shows a humorous page with robots (Thanks omi for the contribution).

Google Chrome Commands

Google Chrome, like FireFox, has special commands, the about: commands, to show relevant information about the browser.

Here are some of them:

about:cache - Every single url that you visited.

about:dns - A list of used DNSs and response times.

about:histograms - Some text histograms with performance measures.

about:internets - Shows the tube screensaver of windows in the tab. The title shows: “Don’t Clog the Tubes!”.

about:network - shows url information about the current request(s) you are making.

about:memory shows how much memory google chrome and each tab that is open is using. If you have other browsers open it also shows their memory consumption.

about:plugins - a list of all plugins currently installed.

about:stats - a list of statists of the browser. Just a bunch of counter and timers. In the top you can read: “Shhh! This page is secret!”. Google guys have a sense of humour.

about:version - current version information featuring a big google logo (like we didn’t knew that chrome belonged to google).

And finally the “piece of resistence” and my personal favorite,

about:crash - crashes the current tab and shows the sad smile: