In less than an year, I’ve bought my 3rd, **3rd!, **smart phone.

This time was a personal mistake: I lost my last phone inside the public bike’s baggage compartment. I was sooo pissed. The son of a bi*** that took the bike later removed the GSM chip and then I was unable to track it back. Even an application installed remotely was not able to reveal the position of the phone in order to let me to retrieve it.

It took me so much effort to get it back that I finally decided: I’m going to buy another phone. I had to decide if it would be a smart phone or a simple one. But frankly, this is the kind of thing that you do not see any use if you never used, but after having one you know the use. You get addicted to this phones.

So next stop was choosing one. After some thought, I decided to buy the very hipped Samsung Galaxy S3.

Samsung Galaxy S3

The white version is simply gorgeous. Very good looking phone. The ICS (Ice Cream Sandwhich) was already installed with a very nice selection of preinstalled apps.

Nothing like the old Motorola from T-Mobile and those crap German stuff. Samsung gave it a real love and personality. While the S Voice, the voice command app, is not very good, the calendar one is very beautiful and handy. I like it a lot. The Samsung app store does not add any value from the Google Play, but it does not hurt either.

I’ve never had an Apple’s iPhone, but comparing to my friends that have one, I absolutely prefer the Samsung Android. First is the hardware: S3 have an amazing camera and camera memory (it can take several several several photos in sequence), it’s faster, with NFC (but here in Brazil is not used at all) and expandable storage through memory cards. On the software side, S3 uses the latest Android, ICS, and have the whole flexibility of Google environment. Also, as already said, the Samsung software is fairly good

I was really upset about losing my last phone. Who wouldn’t? But I’m definitively happier with the new one

Note 2012 11 19: Last night Jelly Bean update has been delivered! The butter initiative to make the UI more responsible seems to work (however it is not revolutionary faster, no). All the eyes go to Google Now: the new search app is now very, very voice driven. It gives nice answers several daily questions with a nice card concept.

My new game, Picubic, is now released under the Alpha flag.

Mechanics

Picubic is puzzle game inspired on the Japanese Picross, or Nonogram.

The objective of Picross is to discover what image is hidden, using the hints. That’s why the name is a mix of picture and crosswords. But there is a fundamental difference between Picross and Picubic: Picubic is a 3D puzzle! It uses the same general logic, but with a great twist. The final pictures are, in fact, 3D objects: TV, Sofa, sportsman, truck, trees…

There are hints for each of the axis (X, Y and Z), which might create interesting challenges.

Graphics

Because the game is essentially an abstract game, it was a challenge to decide a theme for the game. The first and obvious choice was a black/white theme. But I was not happy about it. I wanted to give it a personality, a distinctive face.

After some attempts, I decided for a general look and feel of wood. It is something not usual for games, so it would be somewhat unique. It’s beautiful.

The graphics were created using 3 sources: myself, free stuff from internet and outsourcing. I’m not an artist, so the current version have a lot of temporary material. Later I will replace it for the definitive versions.

Development and Road map

It’s an one-man game for now. I personally did the whole programming. Done entirely as C# code using Unity3D and Monodevelop. I’m really happy about the IDE.

There will be an editor for players create their own puzzles, send to friends (an Facebook and Google+ integration planned). The editor is the same used by myself. It’s not in the current alpha because of some bugs.

The final version is planned to be by October. Each 15 days I plan to release a new version. The lite version will have about 10 puzzles, besides the tutorial.

Where to Find it?

The game will be launched for Android and iOS phones/tablets, Windows/Linux/Mac as well web version, playable in any modern browser. The Alpha and beta versions will be probably only deployed as the web version.

See picubic.com for furthers news.

The gaming industry is a very risky business, just like any other entertainment industry. Generally, players have to bet on a very narrow set of products, which demand high volumes of investments. If we think it through from a project manager perspective, we have a very, very, very risky business to invest in. These companies invest mountains of money in very few products that narrow correlations between quality/sales.

Big investments

The latest graphics, motion capture, and Hollywood actors for voice-overs all cost money. Trucks of money. Like films, AAA titles consume millions of dollars to be built.

Small portfolios

Because the volume of money required to create a game is very bulk, the companies that want to create a portfolio (publishers) have to choose the projects with care and criteria. Even that, they can only concurrently create a very narrow range of games. Essentially they have to bet on very few horses to generate a very large amount of money to finance another cycle. The problem relies on the worst scenario: the current bet does not pay out. The whole company puts itself in a very dangerous financial position.

Game is Art

But the final analysis must consider games as art products. You cannot follow a formula to make people fall in love with your product.

Now always they pay off. The recent cases of THQ and 38 Studios illustrate this.

38 studios, the makers of the excelent Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, recently bankrupted. The company took around 100 million from the government to create an AAA title, but the game, while selling well, didn’t sell the amount needed to stay afloat.

THQ invested in a few AAA titles that demanded loads of money. When the failure rate rises a bit, the whole operation starts to be financially compromised.

Homefront, unfortunately, will be remembered as the milestone for THQ’s potential fall. Unfortunately, because it was a critically acclaimed game (at least it receive good greats), due to external reasons it didn’t sell well to the point that compromised the THQ cash flow. Homefront was being considered the cash cow internally, the new IP that would generate loads of money, and safety. But the forecasts were nothing but dust.

It answers the question several gamers make: why do game makers keep building sequels? Now you know…

Passwords are the new era plague. They are everywhere. Every system relies on passwords. People, unfortunately, are not designed to memorize all of them. The most common solution? Use one password for everything. If you ask one to create a password, one will use the very same password.

Passwords have some intrinsic problems:

• difficult to create
• difficult to remember
• spread across several systems

Jeff Atwood wrote about the advantages of passphrases over passwords, but I’m still not convinced that it correctly addresses the problem. Using more robust brute force techniques, it will be, in fact, easier to break it, even if has several digits.

But when the person uses the same password over and over, there are some extra problems:

• cross site vulnerability when one is hacked

Some use password wallets; programs that stores all your passwords in one place. However, you are putting all the eggs in a single basket. If this program gets hacked, all your passwords are exposed. Also, you have to keep a record of all sites you use, which facilitates even more the job a malicious hacker.

PasswordMaker

Suddenly I found about PasswordMaker on the FLOSS Weekly 84 on Twit, which opened my mind for a nice solution. The idea is to create a password generator using a central password combined with a unique id for each site, which can be its actual address! So, your job relies only on remembering one single password, and it will recalculate the actual password each time. One password to rule them all.

It solves some problems.

complex password generation

It can automatically generate very, very, very strong passwords using a several possible characters. the default 8 digits and 99 characters possible, generate 1 password in 9 227 446 944 279 201, much better than 110 075 314 176 passwords possible using a simple lowercase letters only. I personally use very long passwords. Configuring it to create a 20 digits password, it will be one in 8 179 069 375 972 310 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000! much safer!

cross site safety

If Facebook is hacked, your Gmail account wont be compromised. If Flickr is invaded, your bank account will still be intact. Because each site uses a different password, you will be protected on all the others. And believe me, it’s site invasion and password leakage very common.

multiple profiles

Some sites have different password policies. Some require using letters and numers, some forbids special characters. Some require at least 8 digits, others restrict to 20. Using thie tool, you can change easily the different profiles and generate, each time, a password for each situation.

browser extensions

In their site, there are several plugins for all major browsers. They facilitates a lot the tool usage. I personally created a Chrome extension that uses the same algorithm. I hope people like it.

no central repository

Nothing is stored in the computer nor the internet. You don’t have to keep track which sites you have accounts. It still require non-software measures to make it work. You have to change your password in a regular basis (yearly maybe), among other atitutes. It is not a silver bullet solution, but it addresses several problems.

The traditional Elder Scrolls game is now back with Skyrim. This takes place in northern lands. Snows in a lot of places. But the fire of the dragons might warm the players.

tES 5 is the Bethesda masterpiece. Every single aspect was updated and enhanced. Combat is more fun. The story infinitely much better than Oblivion, while still feels very cliché. It’s an improvement. However, it is still very, very awkward and worse, totally dull sometimes. It is for me the biggest weakness in the Bethesda Softworks team.

The game so big that you can spend days, weeks and even months without exploring the whole map. It adds a lot of value to the final offer. However, I bet that less than 25% of all players will see the end of this game. It’s so huge than at some point you will be tempted to restart and make different choices. Graphically, it is amazing. With all settings at the max, you will definitively be impressed. I was more shocked when Oblivion was released; it was more ground breaking. But Skyrim is beautiful and you will face some situations in which you will catch yourself with your jaw opened.

The same can be said about he bugs. The programming could not foresee he amount of situations that players put the character into. The result is an YouTube full of funny videos. But it is another Elder Scrools tradition: crazy and sometimes irritating buggy situations. It’s almost a positive feature.

Most of the mini-games are now fun. But I still feel that the most of the decisions that we make in the game, in terms of the storytelling aspect, are quite inconsequential. In the gameplay, however, is creates amazing branches based on what gamestyle you prefer.

It is a masterpiece. A bit of the same, if you already played tES game before, but is still amazing. And it have dragons!

Gamespot:

• Better Than the Sum of Its Parts
• Get More Than Your Money’s Worth
• Great Sequel, Great Story
• Outstanding Visual Design
• Sucks You In+ Variety