post-to-identi.ca « Kissaki Blog

June 24, 2011

TF2: Meet the Medic and from now on Free2Play

Filed under: English,Games,post-to-identi.ca,Webkultur — Tags: distribution, free-to-play, free2play, Games, gaming, medic, meet-the, promotion, publishing, steam, team fortress 2, tf2, valve — Kissaki @ 10:48

In times of bullshit-bingoing big publishers Valve comes again to save the day.

Today, the Meet The Medic video has been released. The Meet The … videos are a series of rendered movies introducing the characters of Team Fortress 2. They have always been of high quality and humour. And this one disappoints neither.

Along with the, from the community long awaited, video release comes a big update with a lot of new items and features. Again, this is not something new to Valve. They have been updating Team Fortress 2 ever since release, with medium, big and very big updates.

But what I was actually trying to get to, and why it is such a good move: Team Fortress 2 will be Free To Play from now on! (more…)

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June 15, 2011

Bad move – Crysis 2 removed from Steam Store

Filed under: English,Games,post-to-identi.ca — Tags: crysis 2, distribution, EA, electronic arts, origin, publishing, steam, store — Kissaki @ 20:02

Update: It seems Crysis 2 was not removed by EA but by Valve from the Steam Store because a new contract (probably with Origin) was against the (new) terms of Steam. That also explains why Crysis 2 is still available on other platforms. I think it could be because maybe EA wanted to make DLCs Origin exclusive while Steam terms say DLCs always have to be added to Steam (as well). Hopefully Steam does not demand exclusivity. Waiting for info by Valve …

A few years ago, owning a game was simple. You bought it, you had it. Nowadays you rent a service, temporarily available, trusting or trying to trust on the good-will of the big (non-trustworthy) companies alone (at least if you are indeed buying those games – there are good alternatives). You can’t even be sure any more that a game that yesterday was available at your store of choice is still available there today.

EA decided to remove their games, Crysis 2, from Steam, the leading digital distributor. Boy, what a bad decision. (more…)

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June 13, 2011

EA as bad as ever – no BF3 after all?

Filed under: English,Games,post-to-identi.ca — Tags: battlefield, battlefield 3, bf3, EA, fail, policy, publisher — Kissaki @ 13:46

Update: It was now announced the DLC will be unlocked for everyone later on, within this year. Good work community! Now, that doesn’t help against the no-LAN and further to come DLCs, but this big issue is solved now. Now, actually reading through the entire blog post, one DLC will be unlocked later on. Another one pre-orderers recieve will be released later on, and you will then have to buy it. Maps in DLCs … Boy, what a bad idea. Splitting your community. We will see.

I just found out – damn you EA – that BF3 will have a DLC at launch, where your retail game will already miss maps, weapons and “perks”. You want to play Multiplayer? Good luck, you’re already at a disadvantage. Another go at distributing a game with the fuck-you-customer policy. (more…)

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June 7, 2011

Nginx configuration with includes

Filed under: Administration,English,post-to-identi.ca,Webmaster — Tags: Administration, configuration, how-to, howto, nginx, Setup — Kissaki @ 17:05

If you’re setting up a server with both HTTP and HTTPS access you will have to define 2 server directives in your nginx configuration. Then you will define pretty much the same in both, and just add the SSL options like cert and port in your HTTPS-server. However, there is a better way. In this blog post I will explain how to efficiently use include statements in your nginx configuration to use a better configuration file structure.

A second feasible way of using includes it for redirects. Did you change (some) of your URI-structure? Did you move a file resulting in a new URI? Put them in a separate file and include it in your hosts configuration file to keep it clean. (more…)

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June 1, 2011

Terraria – Awesomeness

Filed under: English,Games,post-to-identi.ca — Tags: game, impression, minecraft, review, terraria, videogame — Kissaki @ 11:04

You do not know how great Terraria is just like I did not know until I played it (and informed myself more).

Terraria is a 2d, side-scrolling, sprite-graphics-stylized action roleplaying game. You are in a world with materials and minerals which you can digg and build through, like Minecraft. But it has a lot more: various useful items and environments in your world. And there’s still much to come. (more…)

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May 31, 2011

Prince of Persia (2009) – great design, bad port

Filed under: English,Games,post-to-identi.ca — Tags: game, port, prince of persia, ubisoft, videogame — Kissaki @ 21:42

Recently Steam had an Ubisoft discount week. Even with Ubisoft is one of the publishers I rather not support, I had to buy the pack of 5 Prince of Persia games for 13 €. Just one has stupid copy-protection, which I will thus not install.

I played Prince of Persia (2009) a bit, and it is really well made – for consoles. Don’t get me wrong. I was astonished of the design quality and the polish of everything other than everything having to do with PC. Yes, they polished the game but forgot that they were also releasing for PC. As one can expect from Ubisoft. Really sad they dropped that huge potential and a great game to being a bad port. (more…)

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May 23, 2011

Softwaredevelopers – Are you a Gardener or an Engineer?

Filed under: development,English,post-to-identi.ca — Tags: client, development, development process, engineering, gardening, Software — Kissaki @ 12:14

There are 2 types of projects. And I think, unless the project itself makes it clear what kind of development model it is to be, the client should be presented both options with their Pros and Cons. Are you engineering a software, or are you planting, nurturing and growing it for full blossom? (more…)

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May 21, 2011

You’re tying your shoes wrong!

Filed under: English,Extern,General,post-to-identi.ca — Tags: shoes, tying — Kissaki @ 14:04

The small things in life …

Did you know you are (very probably) tying your shoes wrong? At least I did …
Probably because that is the more natural, and more efficient way to tie your shoes, but not the better and more efficient way to have your shoes tied. Watch this:

How to tie your shoes correctly (YouTube, TEDTalk)

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May 19, 2011

How to disable P3P in Joomla

Filed under: Administration,English,post-to-identi.ca,Webmaster — Tags: fail, joomla, p3p, policy — Kissaki @ 01:51

P3P is a protocol to publish your intent of your websites privacy policy. Now, letting the websites themselves provide the information and users trusting, or not trusting, into that brings the entire thing ad-absurdum. If you set the tool up to not accept cookies from a “bad”-policied website and it just does not provide P3P, or the wrong or incomplete P3P tags your tool will not help anything.

Anyway, Joomla implemented it and by default provides contradicting P3P tags (which may even be dangerous and put you at risk, as you publish wrong (summary) policy information – people, and lawyers, may actually take you by your word/P3P tags) [as discussed here]. (more…)

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