nocturnsoft.com /dev/blog

bring back google’s cache links

nsiomos — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 22:57:19 +0000

Google’s search layout did undergo slight changes lately: Every search result now offers a website preview. Along with that change however, the useful links to the sites’ cached versions now seemed to have disappeared too. Although the links to Google’s cache didn’t really disappear, they are no longer easily accessible, as they were moved to that new website preview. But, as usual, there’s an easy trick to get back to the old behavior.

used software versions:

Google chrome: 18.0
Firefox: 11.0

Viewing a website via Google’s cache, i.e. viewing the site the way it was last time Google spidered it, has several advantages, especially when searching for specific text-based information:

Keyword highlighting: The search keywords are automatically highlighted by Google, thereby allowing you to tell incredibly fast whether a website contains useful information for you or not.
Faster page load: While loading the original page oftentimes means waiting for connections to dozens of ad banner servers and the rendering of Flash and Javascript ads, Google’s cache links present a HTML-only version of the target website. And that version is usually loading much faster.
Snapshot view: You can still access the website’s version containing the information you are looking for, even if in the meantime the site has undergone substantial changes or isn’t accessible at all.

Google’s cache links aren’t gone. They are now accessible after clicking on a search result’s website preview arrow. This however means one additional click and waiting for the preview to load — and this for every search result you want to visit. Unfortunately, Google doesn’t offer any configuation option for getting back to the old design, where a link to Google’s cache is displayed next to every search result. So, for Google cache users, the latest design change wasn’t all that beneficial.

The trick that allows for getting back to the old design with easily accessibe cache links is telling you browser to keep Javascript execution disabled while googling:

In Google Chrome: Open the settings tab by clicking on the wrench icon, then select Under the Hood. From then on go to Privacy > Content settings... > JavaScript > Manage exceptions.... There you need to add the Content pattern [*.]google.TLD (replace TLD with your local TLD, i.e. [*.]google.us, [*.]google.de etc.) and set the Behavior to Block.
In Firefox: Firefox can’t set Javascript exceptions on a per-site-basis, so we’ll need an addon here. A popular Firefox addon for Javascript blocking is NoScript, but this one blocks Javascript for all websites and allows only whitelists, which is too restrictive for our use-case. The pendant for disabling Javascript on just some specific domains, i.e. blacklisting, is YesScript, which can be downloaded here. Once YesScript is installed, open the Add-ons manager via Extras > Addons, find the YesScript entry there and press its Options button. In the upcoming blacklist dialog add google.TLD (replace TLD with your local TLD, i.e. google.us, google.de etc.).

Finally, googling cached results gets convenient again (example image was taken using Google chrome):

action block buster launch – press release

nsiomos — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 21:45:27 +0000

Action Block Buster - our new take on Breakout - is now officially available on the App Store. Alongside with the product launch, the following press release, which does a pretty decent job at describing the game’s features, has been distributed to the press networks. The press release also features our teaser video, so be sure to check it out!

Summary:

nocturnsoft.com today introduces Action Block Buster 1.0 for iOS, their version of the popular games Breakout and Arkanoid, played with a paddle/panel and ball. The goal of the game is to maneuver the panel to aim the ball and destroy all of the blocks on each level before time runs out. Taking the action of classic console and arcade games to a new level, Action Block Buster features a panel surface that can move 360 degrees around the screen, power-ups, bonuses, and innovative playing fields.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlDiKdX5tVw

Body:

Karlsruhe, Germany - nocturnsoft.com today is pleased to introduce Action Block Buster 1.0 for iOS, their version of the popular games Breakout and Arkanoid, played with a paddle/panel and ball. The goal of the game is to maneuver the panel to aim the ball and destroy all of the blocks on each level before the time runs out. Taking the action of classic console and arcade games to a new level, Action Block Buster features a panel surface that can move 360 degrees around the screen, power-ups, bonuses, and innovative playing fields. Players get two balls and 180 seconds to complete each level and advance to the next. Loaded with power-ups, bonuses, and varied play fields, Action Block Buster revolutionizes the brick breaking genre.

Players must employ ball control and strategy to complete the timed levels and advance in Action Block Buster. Players earn points and stars, enabling them to advance levels and gain achievements. Unlike other brick breaking games, where players navigate the panel from left to right, Action Block Buster players can move the panel a full 360 degrees around the play area, opening up the field and requiring players to not only keep the ball from escaping from the bottom of the screen, but also through exit points on the side of the play field.

A built-in physics engine calculates all Action Block Buster movements and collisions. When the ball hits the blocks, they do not just disappear, but instead a force is applied to them, repelling them and creating the opportunity for the ball to hit other blocks. Unique power-ups such as the Speed Ball power-up utilize this feature in gameplay by increasing the force upon a collision with a faster ball. The twin lasers of the Laser Panel power-up hit the blocks with a force resulting in consecutive hits of many nearby blocks, creating a powerful effect that can decimate whole areas.

The game offers 45 levels of increasing difficulty. Levels are organized in three Worlds containing 15 levels each. Each world brings its own appearance, theme, music, and animated backgrounds as well as unique game play twists. The Nebula World’s outer space theme gives the player the feeling of traveling through a star field enclosed in a nebulae. Featuring space themed music and graphics, players must harness the power of gravity-influenced wormholes to reach otherwise closed off areas, and control its influence on changes to the path of the ball. The fast paced, rock music, Fire World takes place in a fiery, smoke-filled magma corridor. With many destructible rocks that catch fire when they are hit by a ball or another block, players must harness the power of flames to destroy blocks while taking care to not create dangerous holes in the side of the playing field. Skilled players reach the final, Rainbow World, the final and most difficult of the levels. This level’s often-changing colorful background features rainbow-colored trails in the play area. Players in this World must navigate around malicious Malus Orbs, penalty producing power-downs that give players a smaller panel, slower ball, or less time to complete the level, etc. There are also Star Roads, or paths, which guide the ball to hidden and otherwise unreachable areas.

Action Block Buster contains 16 unlockable achievements, from easy - completing a level in under 25 seconds, to difficult - finishing all 15 levels of an entire world without losing your life. With a multitude of power-ups and hidden “Easter Eggs,” or game cheats, Action Block Buster also rewards players for skilled game play. For example, when a player hits many blocks without the ball touching the panel, or when he or she hits and destroys a number of blocks consecutively with a single hit, the player is rewarded with power-ups and extra balls.

Action Block Buster has high-resolution, Retina display, 3D graphics with lighting, particle effects, and beautifully animated backgrounds. Action Block Buster is also backwardly compatible with older devices, such as the 2nd generation iPhone, automatically adjusting graphic effects to maintain optimal game play.

All leaderboards and achievements are automatically sent to Apple’s Game Center service, allowing gamers to compete with players all over the world. Also, devices without Game Center support still benefit from global leaderboards, as the game uses its own remote score service to post scores to leaderboards in 13 different categories including Highest Score, Most Destroyed Blocks, Most Collected Power-ups, Most Consecutive Block Hits, Fastest Level Finish, and more. Players may also easily post achievements from the game to Facebook and Twitter.

Feature Highlights:

Fast and fun game with 360 degree playing field
45 challenging levels
Access leaderboards through Apple’s Game Center and more
High resolution, innovative 3D graphics
Power-ups, Rewards, Achievements, and Hidden Cheats for dynamic game play

“Action Block Buster transforms classic arcade brick breaking games into a 360 degree gaming adventure,” stated nocturnsoft.com’s Nico Siomos. “If you like Breakout and Arkanoid, you’ll love Action Block Buster!”

Device Requirements:

iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch
Requires iOS 3.0 or later (iOS 5 tested)
Universal app optimized for display on all iOS devices
63.1 MB

action block buster goes app store

nsiomos — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 01:12:21 +0000

Today, after a development timespan of nearly a year, our iphone game “Action Block Buster” was uploaded to the App Store and is now awaiting Apple’s review. If everything goes well during the review process, we expect the game to be available on the App Store in about one or two weeks from now.

The game will be made available on the App Store immediately after passing Apple’s review process — so stay tuned and watch out for the upcoming release news on this very blog!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlDiKdX5tVw

command & conquer on your browser!

nsiomos — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 23:31:57 +0000

An interesting new project aims to bring the good old Command & Conquer onto our browsers using latest HTML5 technology. While the project itself is still in the early stages of development, it already offers one playable singe-player mission, so it is definitely worth a look!

Those who are old enough surely remember the days where mighty Obelisks of Light burned away unlucky GDI infantry guys. Aditya Ravi Shankar now actively works on porting this experience (i.e. the very first and imho also very best Command & Conquer) onto today’s browsers — in order to provide a proof-of-concept for developing RTS games with Javascript and HTML5. While there’s still much work to be done until the game can be considered “fully ported”, Aditya’s website already allows for playing one single-player mission as GDI where you can build up a tank army to crush your NOD opponent.

Now click on the image below and start harvesting some tiberium!

I suggest using Google Chrome for trying this out, as Firefox and Internet Explorer got stuck on the loading screen.

action block buster promo screens

nsiomos — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 14:12:22 +0000

Another screenshot update of our upcoming Arkanoid/Breakout-type game Action Block Buster: As the game is now feature-complete for the initial launch, focus now gradually shifts towards advertising. Therefore, I’m proudly presenting the screenshots that were chosen to represent the game on our website and on the App Store!

The screenshots for the App Store: 5 images showcasing the core innovation aspects of the game:

the panel can be moved all around the screen. The 360°-touch-motion feature allows for moving the panel all around the game area very intuitively by just touching the screen. No further buttons/controls are involved.
the game went straight for 3D graphics, lighting and particle effects. Furthermore, iPhone 4 and newer devices will benefit from its retina HD resolution, while the quality settings on older devices will automatically be adjusted to meet performance requirements.
different worlds with different twists and dangers – as an example, the nebula world’s wormholes are featured here, while another screen also showcases the rainbow world’s star road.
extensive physics engine usage allows for beautiful (and according to game-mechanics also very efficient and rewarding) cascading block collision effects, which also greatly help in creating the game’s typical action-packed gameplay feeling.
finally, a powerful blast from the laser powerup impressively emphasizes the action that is to be delivered by Action Block Buster!

The screenshots for the game’s website: Featuring a total of 12 screenshots allows for showing off even more game features. Amongst them are

global high-scores and achievements: No need to register anywhere in order to start competing with players all over the world!
game center support: The game is a well-behaving iOS-citizen and thus fully supports Apple’s Game Center with its 13 leaderboards and 16 achievements!
in-game help: Every new game element will be introduced and explained just in time – no need for any RTFM!
social networks support: Proudly posting your achievements to the social networks can’t get any easier: Just log in to facebook or twitter from within the game’s options screen – that’s it! Don’t want to use that feature any more? Just press the “logout” button – again, that’s it!
hidden cheats: Several cheat code hints can be found in hidden areas within the game. While some cheats are obviously targetted at advancing the player (like the 99-extra-balls cheat), others allow for beating a single level with an impressive powerup-overdose – as shown here…

The screenshots that didn’t make it: Many screens were taken, and only a few could be the chosen ones. But it was a tight competition, as you can see:

The pictures shown here are also featured on the game’s dedicated screenshot page: Action Block Buster screenshot pack I.

action block buster pre-release screens

nsiomos — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 15:38:16 +0000

Merry Christmas and a happy new year folks! The release of Action Block Buster, our block-breaker-type iPhone game, is within reach. And as it’s been a while since the last screenshot update, it’s about time to present some fresh bleeding-edge screens – which showcase the game as it is about to be released!

Here we go! A plethora of up-to-date screens covering many different aspects of the game, be it the three unique worlds with their distinct twists, the user interface, powerups in action or the hidden cheats — this screenshot compilation provides something of everything:

Action Block Buster is a fun Breakout-style game for the iPhone. Colorful high-resolution 3D graphics, physics-based collisions and unique features like the 360° panel touch-motion make this game stand out from the crowd. Expect * three worlds to explore, each one with its own twists * high-resolution (retina) 3D graphics * intuitive 360° touch-motion * physics-computed collision chains * global highscores and achievements * in-game help - no RTFM needed * game center support * graceful quality adjustment on older devices" class="thickbox" rel="set_16" >

The pictures shown here are also featured on the game’s dedicated screenshot page: Action Block Buster screenshot pack II.

create your own game sounds in zero time!

nsiomos — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 01:48:11 +0000

Yes, even media creation can sometimes be as easy as clicking on a button. What am I talking about? Bfxr!

The Bfxr website is a gem when it comes to creating one’s own sound effects. Just click on one of the available category buttons at the upper left corner and the website creates a sound effect for you. Now click repeatedly for several variations of that sound till you’re satisfied with the results. At last, press the Export Wav button and the auto-generated sound effect is available for download. That’s it!

While Bfxr won’t be the solution for all your sound effect needs, you’ll get surprisingly good results for game-relevant categories (powerpus, collectibles, explosions, weapons…) really fast. The site’s auto-generation of sounds is especially suited for those who find it difficult to describe a sound effect technically, but instead know which is the right sound once they hear it. But the site is not limited to rapid sound creation: The technically adept sound designer may also use the various offered waveforms, envelopes and filters for synthesizing, mixing and fine-tuning custom sounds.

As a side-note: Several sound effects of our breakout-style iPhone game Action Block Buster were created using Bfxr!

bevelling with blender 2.5

nsiomos — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 04:06:46 +0000

The first thing one probably notices when comparing Blender 2.5 to previous versions is the majorly improved user interface. Unfortunately, after working a bit with it, one also notices that not all features have been ported over to the new version yet. At the time of writing, one of the missing features is bevelling. But at least there’s a workaround…

Used software versions

Blender: 2.59

The Specials menu (accessible by pressing w) in Blender 2.5 is missing its Bevel entry, and assigning bevel weights to edges is also not possible. As matters stand now, your only option for bevelling an edge is to use the non-destructive bevel modifier, which, in the absence of bevel weights, will always act on all edges of your mesh. So, let’s do something about it:

Download the edge_tools.py script: Josh Wedlake has written a Blender addon script which adds the Bevel option to the Specials menu and several other options for setting bevel weights to the edge tools – which is exactly what we need!

Access the script either from Josh’s blog post or get directly to its source code location here.
Copy the script’s source code to your clipboard by clicking on the copy to clipboard icon located in the upper right corner.

Using the page’s copy to clipboard function is recommended to ensure that the code is copied as-is, as the script is written in python, and python is picky about tabs and spaces.
Create a file named edge_tools.py in Blender’s addons folder (on Windows, it is located under C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.59\scripts\addons) and paste the script’s code from the clipboard there.

Enable the addon: At last, we need to tell Blender explicitly that we’d like to use the new addon.

Within Blender, open the User Preferences view.
In the User Preferences view select the Add-Ons tab and afterwards the Mesh category to list all mesh related addons.
Look out for the entry called Mesh: Edge_Tools, which represents our edge_tools script, and click on its checkbox to enable it.

That’s it. The Specials menu now offers Bevel, and the edge tools menu is given the following additional options: Set Bevel Weight, Average Bevel Weights and Average Edge Creases. Happy modelling!

action block buster gui screenshots

nsiomos — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 22:08:10 +0000

Previous posts focussed on screenshots of game levels and in-game action in general. To round out the image of our Breakout-style iPhone game, we hereby release screenshots that will give more emphasis on the game’s user interface: The title screen, level selection, various help hanels and much more…

Here they are: The Action Block Buster user interface screenshots showing up the

Title
Options
Level Selection
Leaderboards
Achievements

scenes in action as well as various panels that display gameplay hints (and sometimes just display some funny nonsense — like on the Game Over screens ;D).

get rid of file size limits in wordpress

nsiomos — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 22:24:52 +0000

A quick howto for getting past the 2 MB limit and uploading big files into the WordPress media library.

In its default configuration, the WordPress media library may present you the hint that your maximal upload size is just 2 MB (seen when clicking on Media > Add New within the dashboard). Although the message assumes the file size limit is a WordPress config parameter, in fact it is not. The limitation is posed by PHP, and thus, we need to tell PHP to relax its upload restrictions in one of the following ways:

Edit the PHP configuration: Either adjust the upload_max_filesize and post_max_size values in the server’s php.ini (usually located within the /etc/php or /etc/php5 directory) directly, or, if you are using PHP 5.3.0 or higher, place a file named .user.ini with following content into your WordPress blog’s root directoy:
```
; Limits upload file size to 100 MB
upload_max_filesize = 100M
post_max_size = 100M
```
You will need to restart your web server for these changes to take effect. In case you are using Apache as your web server, a graceful reload (avoids interruption of currently processing requests) suffices:
```
#> /etc/init.d/apache2 reload
```
When editing the server’s php.ini file, you’ll be changing the behavior of all PHP applications, and not just for your WordPress blog. Depending on your situation, this may or may not be what you want.
Use htaccess overrides: When PHP is configured as an Apache module, you may place a file named .htacess with following content into your WordPress blog’s root directoy:
```
# Limits upload file size to 100 MB
php_value upload_max_filesize 100M
php_value post_max_size 100M
```
Restarting Apache is not necessary here. Just hit the browser’s reload button on the WordPress media library page to see the new values in effect.

Either way, as a result, the WordPress media library should be able to accept much larger files now: