Simon Says “Broken Sword”

Today Simon came to see me and told me to write a blog post about Revolution Software and their new project. Revolution has a long and distinguished history, some of which involves Hull, although they are now based just down the road in York. One of my many claims to fame is that a future member of the Revolution staff was with me in my brand new Vauxhall Astra when I crashed it. Things could have been really bad for that company (and me I suppose) if I’d managed to get six inches further out of the junction before that van hit us…..

Anyoo, motor mishaps aside, Revolution has produced some excellent “point and click” adventures in its time, including such seminal titles as “Lure of the Temptress”, “Beneath a Steel Sky” and of course the “Broken Sword” series. The rise of tablet devices has given their products a new lease of life, with a whole generation of new gamers who have the perfect platform for exploring their beautifully drawn environments and taut plotlines.

Revolution are presently seeking funding for their game and you can get a piece of the action by backing their Kickstarter project to raise the cash to produce the game. For a game of this quality the target funding seems quite modest, and they are well on the way to raising it. Simon says that if you don’t get involved he will be very disappointed and wear a frown for the rest of the week.

The Imagine Cup Refreshed

Everything gets refreshed from time to time. Superman, Spiderman (twice) etc etc. And now the Imagine Cup. It has been going for ten years and has been incredibly successful, in fact last year’s finals were the best I’ve ever seen. Of course Microsoft could have kept everything the same and planned on the competition staying at the top. But that is not how things work. The best time to refresh is when you are on the crest of the wave, because that is how you go on to even better things.

And so that’s what Microsoft has done. All the elements that make the competition great are still there. You can still get involved to make the world a better place by engaging with the World Citizenship competition. But there are also some new options. The Innovation award lets you take that little idea you had and make it into something amazing. The Games competition lets you show off your ideas for new types of gameplay. And the prizes are even bigger, with $50,000 up for the winning teams in each competition.

I’ve seen first hand the effect of the Imagine Cup on the students that take part. It has changed their lives. Get in on the ground floor at http://www.imaginecup.com/

Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3

Number one daughter reckons that Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 on the PS Vita is good fun. And it is. I bought a copy second hand (or “pre-owned”, which sounds much better) and the first thing it said when I started it was that because the game had been used before I would not be able to get any achievements on my Playstation Network account. Now, since the only reason I do anything is to get achievements (no – really) this was rather irritating.

It was almost as if they wanted to penalise those folks who didn’t pay full price for a new version, in the same way that second hand cars don’t have as many gears as those brought brand new. No, wait, that’s wrong….

Anyhoo, if you find yourself in the same position it seems that there is a way that you can sort this out. Put the cartridge into your Vita and wait for the UMVC3 icon to appear. Then hold your finger on the icon until all the icons start to wobble and have those three dots above them. This is the Vita way of letting you move games and applications around the screens. If you touch the three dots above the UMVC3 icon you will see the menu above. Just select Delete and confirm it to remove the information about this game from your system. Then pop the game cartridge out and back in again for a clean install. Note that this removes all your progress in the game, and so it works best if it is the first thing that you do before you start playing it.

The game itself is hilarious. If you’ve ever wanted to fight as Phoenix Wright (actually he is a bit of a wimp – but his secretary packs quite a punch) then this is a great way to do it.

Now available in white

I found this Roundom Vase design on Thinginverse. It is a fairly good workout of the Ultimaker printer. Up until now I’ve been printing in pink, as it is the only colour plastic I had in stock. However, today when we got back from our trip away there was a parcel from Faberdashery with some different colours in it, including a reel of “Artic White”.

Changing printing colours is quite easy. You heat up the print head, pull the old coloured plastic out of the printer and then push in the new one that you want to use.  Then just extrude plastic until all the old colour has gone. push the old plastic out until the colour changes, and then print something in the new colour. Actually, the base of the white vase above has some pink streaks in it where a last blob of the old colour made its way out of the system, but for now I’m printing white, which is nice.

I’m pleased with the results, but the surface is not quite perfect, as you can see if you examine the above pictures carefully. For me the interesting thing is that the imperfections, which you would think would be down to things like random noise and vibration, are pretty much always in the same place on both vases. Very strange.

I’ve almost, but not quite, reached the point where I can fire up the machine with the expectation of getting a useable print out of it each time I use it. The most important thing is to make sure that the first layer sticks to the printing surface. To do this I use the “Rob Miles Patent Pending A4 paper trick”. This goes like this:

• Turn the printer on and heat up the print head. This is so that you don’t get bits of solidified plastic upsetting the position.
• Put a piece of A4 printer paper on the print surface.
• Send the printer to its home position where the Z value (up and down) is set to zero.
• Turn the printer off so that it doesn’t spend too much time with the print head heated up.
• The print head should now be really close to the print surface. Adjust the surface height until the paper will just slide between the head and the print surface. Move the print head to the four corners of the print surface and adjust the height at each of those.
• Remove the paper, turn the printer on, heat up the head again and start printing.

If you have the urge to tinker then a printer like this is a great outlet. I wouldn’t say it is totally reliable, but it is fun.

Hooked on Table Tennis

I used to be quite good at Table Tennis. Today I found that I’m not as good as I used to be. But it is still great fun. I’m going to take some bats and balls to work and see if I can track down a table. Anyone out there on the Hull campus fancy a game?