after a bit of a break from the 24/7 coding lifestyle, i spent this weekend catching up on the plethora of bugs and improvements in the upppy todo list. the most obvious improvement will be the addition of channels, allowing separation of content in to a number of separate boards. i have also added combination channels, allowing for viewing more than one channel at a time. you will find the default worksafe option should make upppy a lot more viewable in those.. places where tentacles aren’t approved of (although this may include your living room, for many of you..).

also done a bit of work on the colour schemes available. they are now totally dynamic and can be added with just 6 hex codes and no direct css editing . spent a lot of time tidying up code as well – it really is amazing how much more motivation you build up to work on a well-coded piece, as opposed to some hacked together poop.

so you can’t take screenshots in TA hey? well there’s always a camera! this is one of my bertha/vulcan defense lines from one of the more laid-back games we played. speaking of which, supreme commander is coming out in just a couple of weeks. i actually took the time to play the beta tonight, and have to say i came away from it with mixed feelings. although i didn’t get too far into a game… i’ll summarise the things i found to be lacking, in hope that someone will tell me this is just beta code and will be improved for the final :/

• the interface is waaay too bulky – it takes up over half of my screen vertically, leaving a very thin and fat view window that results in very difficult control of units.
• scrolling is laggy… i hit an arrow key and nothing happens for a good 400ms. is this my system? am i missing something o.O
• the game looks.. crap. ok – i need to upgrade. but it looks about 5x more crap than TA, which is quite disappointing really.

i guess thats all, considering i didn’t actually get to far into the game.. i’m not sure if i will be up for pumping thousands of dollars into my pc just to get this game to a palyable level. time will tell, of course.

After many weeks of coming close to getting peoples together to play some new wii titles, but no real success, i was very doubtful that we would experience the awesomeness i anticipated 4 player wii sports to be.  Surprisingly, enough people were free new years eve that we managed to do just this!

It is kind of a pity that the wii does not support over 4 players simultaneously – we had wiimotes falling from the sky.  We went through the rounds of wii tennis, bowling, and a bit of wiiplay thrown in for some variety (albeit only supporting two players).  It is a pity that rayman has to be completed single player in order to unlock multiplayer, or that could have been added to the list of playable games.

By far though, the gamecube games were what provided the most enjoyment.  Mario Kart Double Dash, Mario Party 4(?) and Super Smash Brothers were played for many hours.  These three games are really great with four players (although mario party got a bit tiresome by the 10th turn).  I think this is definitely one of the less mentioned selling points of the Wii – there are a lot of very playable gamecube games out there, which adds value to a system with a very short list of currently available native titles.

This was also my first chance to see Gears of War.  Very impressive graphics and gameplay – almost makes me want a 360.  DOAX2 was also… impressive in the graphics department .  HMM.

View all photos here

almost as if its beckoning for me to play more >.>