A few days ago Facebook announced their new Open Graph Protocol.

It’s basically a way for people to interact with pages on the internet (in theory pages representing real world items, but it will be hard to moderate) in basically the same way as they do with existing Facebook pages. For a page to be eligible all you need to do is add a few meta tags to it specifying its  name and type (film, book, actor, product, game etc.). To actually do anything useful, you then add a Facebook “like” button. Once some people have liked it, it appears in their Facebook news feed like any other item (with the data you added in the meta tags).

One of the optional meta tags you can add specifies user IDs of Facebook users who can administrate the page. If you do, you can get access to the same sort of admin page you get with any traditional Facebook page. Conveniently I just developed a use for this sort of thing so I added support to my blog. A few edits to the theme and cunning use of Wordpress’s custom fields and now any page or post on my site can support Open Graph.

Currently the only support is on the Gravitas page.

Gravitas is a game I released, made using XNA.

Challenge the AI and up to three of your friends in a game of galactic artillery. Whom will gravity defeat?

Available on Xbox Live Indie Games for $1!

There is now an official site for Gravitas.

A new cross platform version made in Unity is now in development.

There is a mission in Star Trek Online that is causing no end of problems. It caused problems in the beta and people assumed it was bugged. It was the same in headstart, and it is the same now. Everyone assumed it was just broken. But apparently someone submitted it as a bug and got a reply saying it was working as intended. It’s just confusing :P

This mission is called “Salvaged Relationships in the Neutral Zone”. It’s in the Ker’rat system in the Eta Eridani Sector block. It has two parts, the first part is to scan 8 Borg encryption nodes. This part is easy and fine. The next part is to destroy 4 Repair Hulks. This is where it gets confusing. There are many Borg vessels around as well as several Repair Hubs. The problem is Repair Hubs are not Repair Hulks. Destroying 4 Repair Hubs leads to the mission being failed (at least for Federation players).

Apparently (although I haven’t seen it myself yet) destroying enough Borg Cubes leads to the Repair Hulks warping in. So hopefully someone will search for this mission, find this page and learn how to do the mission. You see, the mission is a large arena style mission with up to twenty players, and if just one of them goes off destroying the Hubs, the mission fails. So I’ll just post in big letters here:

Repair Hulks are not the same as Repair Hubs. Don’t destroy Repair Hubs (at least if you’re Federation)!

PS - Since I’ve never seen the mission complete this is all just a theory at the moment. Except that destroying the Hubs ends definitely the mission without success…

Some screen shots I took during the end of beta event for Star Trek Online.

For the past week or so I’ve been playing the open beta of Star Trek Online. And I have to say, after some initial concerns my overall opinion is very positive.

There has been quite a lot of negativity about the game on the forums, and on the whole I agree with most of it. But the things that are good about far outweigh the bad in my opinion. The most overwhelming positive note for me is the space combat engine is probably the best I’ve seen in a Star Trek game. The only other one I can think of that is close is the one from Starfleet Command, but that loses points for having far too many non-canon elements (missiles?).

The ground control side is the biggest “bad” part of the game. The controls are non-intuitive, everything’s a little chaotic in combat, and the non-combat missions are pretty dull. I call it “bad” in quotes however since despite the flaws, once you’re on a mission with four other (real) people fighting an army of Klingons it’s still tremendously fun.

Another big plus for the game is the backstory. For those you don’t know, the game is set inr 2409. That’s a 30 years after Deep Space 9, 25 years after Nemesis and nearly 15 years after “normal universe” elements of the 2009 Star Trek movie (and it is set in the “normal universe” - the one that has a Vulcan, but no Romulus). The creators realised that conflict is a big part of games, and when it comes to games even Star Trek strays from it’s utopian diplomacy-and-mutual-respect-and-understanding-is-the-key-to-everything ideals and so the story has been cleverly written to allow a lot of conflict. For example, at launch the game is mainly the Federation vs. the Klingons. I strongly suggest anyone interested in Star Trek to read the backstory whether you intend to play it or not.

So overall, if you’re interested in gaming and Star Trek, give it a go. There are beta keys available from various places, or you could pre-order it and get one. Or just wait for the release date on February 2nd.

Some enterprising folks have release a modified version of the Google Maps app for android with navigation enabled that can be install on any Android 1.6 (or higher) device. Best of all is that it doesn’t require any hacking or even root access. It’s simply a matter of downloading the app and installing it.

Full tutorial on Electric Pig.

Our recently released iPhone game, Heli Rescue, is now available for Android handsets! It’s almost identical to the iPhone version. There are fewer sounds and no clouds, but the highscores work (and are shared across both versions). Also, Android 1.6 or better isrequired since we make use the native OpenGL ES bindings. To quote the Android Market:

If you’ve been looking for a ‘Flight Control’ style game then this is it! Join the elite team of Search & Rescue helicopter commanders and save lives. Take control of up to 4 helicopters and direct them to people in need of rescue by drawing a path with your finger. You’ll need to manage the flight paths and fuel load.

Some time ago (at least a year or so) Sky launched Sky Player. Similar to iPlayer, it allows Sky subscribers to watch Sky content online. As of October 27th Sky Player will be available to UK Xbox 360 owners.

This seems only slightly useful at best. If you already have a Sky subscription (and an Xbox Live Gold account) then Sky Player will be free. With it you’ll be able to view some of what is available on your Sky subscription with live as Video-on-Demand. Except for the possibility of getting Sky in another room, I don’t really see the point.

If you don’t have a Sky subscription, things seem a little more worthwhile. Until you see the price*. The cheapest is £15 a month for a basic entertainment package. Adding Movies and Sports will set up back £41 a month. At those prices you might as well get a normal Sky subscription. The only other difference is at least you only have a month-to-month contract.

There are some screenshots from Colin Jenson.

*The pricing hasn’t been confirmed. The prices I’ve quoted is for the web based service. I can’t imagine the Xbox price being much different but I’d guess Microsoft might negotiate something a little less…

I received a Google Wave invite this morning. I’ll post more after I’ve had a play.

This also means I have invites available…

The update to Heli Rescue is now available on the app store. There was a problem with the 1.1 release that was released recently so it was withdrawn. That has now been fixed (and in opposition to some people’s complaints about Apple and the App Store, they approved the bug fix version in under two days).

Here’s a video of it (without the new maps unfortunately):