Eli Hodapp

My 1000 Word Post on the iPad.

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 12:12:00 -0600

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Yeah, I don’t know, the iPad seems like it’s pretty cool!

Hi, How Are You

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 04:17:12 -0500

It’s usually not hard to pick the games we write about on Touch Arcade. All it basically comes down to is finding games we like, either from the App Store or from the many prerelease games that get emailed to us. I’d really love to tell a story of some insane selection process, but there really isn’t one. The good games almost always clearly stand out from the pack, and it often doesn’t take much more than a few minutes of playing a game to determine that it’s cool enough to be worth spending more time on.

When Hi, How Are You hit the App Store, I grabbed it because the art style instantly caught my eye. It’s no secret that I am unnaturally drawn to strange games, especially after basically starting the Enviro-Bear 2010 revolution on Touch Arcade. Completely unaware of Daniel Johnston at the time, I played through the first few levels of the game trying to figure out if this was some clever parody of something else, or some other joke that was just going completely over my head— Especially with the opening of the game featuring very strong satanic overtones in a really strange almost comical art style.

Not really sure what to think of the game, I moved on to the other news of the day including the fantastic Baseball Superstars 2010, an Alive 4 Ever update, and Texas Tea, a game by a developer I met at GDC. By the time the terrible Family Guy game came out the next day, Hi, How Are You was already getting lost in the game clutter on my iPhone.

And there it sat for the next week or so, until I reached the point where the games I was installing were getting pushed off the last page of my iPhone, requiring a full device purge of things I’d either written about or played and didn’t like. (I’d love to say I’m more organized than this, but I’m really not.) When I made it to the screen with Hi, How Are You on it, the split second delete or keep decision eventually turned in to me powering through the rest of the game in one sitting.

Still not really sure what to think of the game, I decided to do some research on its development to turn up some kind of clue to explain what exactly it was that I just played through. A quick Google search later and I found myself falling head first down a Daniel Johnston rabbit hole that I wasn’t even aware existed.

Photo by Ray Pena

Now 48 years old, Daniel Johnston (above, center) has lived an absolutely amazing life documented in the movie The Devil and Daniel Johnston (available on iTunes and Netflix) which I somehow just had to watch after reading his Wikipedia article, even though it was about 3:00 AM by the time I made this discovery.

As I watched in amazement, it quickly became apparent that Hi, How Are You was Daniel Johnston’s life of art and music concentrated in to an iPhone game. An even stranger discovery out of all this was finding that Johnston doesn’t even have a cell phone, much less an iPhone. In fact, he doesn’t even have a phone. If you want to get in touch with him, you call his parents who live nearby.

The theme of the Hi, How Are You game, along with most of the music (which I also bought an embarrassing amount of during this whole Daniel Johnston discovery period) he created in his life was wrought with the obvious evidence of his intense bipolar disorder along with other serious issues in his life.

I wasn’t alone in being completely blown away by the works of Daniel Johnston. An immense number of bands and artists were influenced by Johnston, including Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons and Nirvana front man Kurt Cobain.

Photo by Kevin Mazur

What is beyond eerie is I remember this photo of Kurt Cobain and Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers from all of the various memorials following Cobain’s death. His T-Shirt had absolutely no meaning to me, and I doubt I even noticed it at the time. But there is the Hi, How Are You frog, as clear as day.

Throughout everything I read about Johnston, all he ever wanted was to share and have others experience the music and art that he created. He started his career (if you’d even call it that) passing out cassette tapes he recorded to anyone willing to listen to them. The amazing part? Throughout most of his life he didn’t have access to equipment to duplicate these tapes, so each tape was recorded live and few were ever the same.

In a way, Hi, How Are You felt like one of these cassette tapes being passed off to me.

I try not to spend too much time thinking about it because it gets a little weird, but the things that the various iPhone sites pick up on can make the difference between a game gaining a foot hold in the wild west that is the App Store and becoming an iPhone development success story or falling in to obscurity amongst the tens of thousands of other games on the platform.

While I’m just picking out games that I think are cool, on the other end of the App Store is a developer sitting there with their fingers crossed hoping someone notices their game, that it gets featured, or something else to validate the immense time (and often monitory) investment in the project.

Hi, How Are You is the first iPhone game I found myself writing about not only because I thought it was fun, but because I wanted to do my small part in helping to fulfill Daniel’s dreams of sharing his art and music— A strange feeling to have over an iPhone game, as so many of them only serve as enjoyable distractions while waiting in line somewhere.

If you own an iPhone, give Hi, How Are You a shot and If you have time, watch The Devil and Daniel Johnston. While I can’t say for certain that they will have the same effect on you, I don’t like thinking that if it wasn’t for randomly stumbling across this video game I would have never discovered Daniel Johnston.

It really makes me wonder what else I’m missing.

In the paper (again) today.

Thu, 28 May 2009 11:26:00 -0500

The Naperville Sun ran an article today based on their Twitter feedback earlier in the week from the following tweet:

I responded and got published in the newspaper:

On Twitter, Eli Hodapp (@hodapp) wrote: “I am texting or using Twitter while driving, walking and doing most other things. A phone with QWERTY makes it very easy.”

When I asked if he ever had a close call, he responded, “No, I exceed the brain power requirements to do two things at once. ;) I can type without looking, that helps too.”

Complete Article: “Pull over before you read this”

The article mentions an impending text messaging while driving ban that already passed the state Senate and is on the way to the House which I wasn’t aware of. Can you really blame me though? Illinois politics is nothing but theatrics and corruption. Always has been, always will be. While waiting for a phone call this afternoon I fired off an email to the Naperville Sun about all this.

Don’t you think this “texting ban” is a little ridiculous and just creating legislation for the sake of creating legislation? I admit it’s been quite a while since I took Driver’s Ed so my recollection of the rules of the road might be a little foggy, but isn’t it already illegal to drive while distracted? Why do we need to define what distractions are banned?

So they pass a law to ban texting while driving, what about passing a law against sending morse code from your HAM radio? How about a law against playing Tetris a your Gameboy while driving? These should be common sense things you’re not supposed to do if they’re distracting you to the point that you’re not operating your vehicle in a safe manner. If Illinois legislators feel it’s prudent to waste their time creating common sense laws, I anxiously await much needed legislation requiring consumers to give milk that is approaching its expiration date a sniff test before pouring it on their cereal.

How many Illinois residents are out of a job, are without healthcare, or are in numerous other perilous situations because of the state of the economy? This is honestly the best way our elected representatives have found to spend their time? Creating common sense nanny laws?

I guess I can’t say I’m surprised.

Nanny laws are the best. Thankfully Illinois is a virtual utopia and there’s quite literally nothing else for our state legislators to do aside from things like this.

…Oh wait.

How do I make my video vertical like Zen Bound!?

Mon, 18 May 2009 18:20:00 -0500

I’ve already gone over the importance of producing a high quality trailer for your iPhone game in my previous post, iPhone Developer PSA. If you’re new here, I’d check that out first just so I can completely hammer in to your brain how important things like this are if you want to have any success at all in advertising your iPhone game.

Anyway, on with the show.

A problem I recently ran in to when shooting a video of an iPhone game with my camcorder is figuring out the best way to capture games that are played in portrait mode. Landscape games are easy to shoot and look fantastic on YouTube in both standard and high definition, however, once you flip your iPhone 90 degrees you’re faced with black bars of doom that do nothing but waste valuable screen real estate that can be used for other, more interesting content. The first example I saw of this was on the Zen Bound site, although I’m sure there are many more instances where people have employed this technique that I’m unaware of.

Notice how they’re able to have the video in the left column without a single pixel of wasted space? Looks pretty awesome, doesn’t it? I looked around on Google for any tutorial on how do do this without much luck. Most results either were poorly worded Yahoo Answers questions, or involved Windows Movie Maker on some level and of course none mentioned how to embed the video. So, I give you, an abbreviated guide on how to make a vertical embedded movie look as nice as the Zen Bound site.

Step 1: Shoot the Video

This obviously goes without saying, but it never hurts to state the obvious I suppose. Shoot your video of whatever you’re capturing with your camera sideways, shocking I know. If you’re using a screen capture program, make sure you’re using a decent vertical aspect ratio.

Notice how I am holding my camera SIDEWAYS!

Step 2: Import and Edit Video

Use whatever program you usually work with for importing and editing your video. Keep in mind that at this point everything will be rotated to the side so feel free to tilt your head if you need to. I used iMovie, but either iterations of Final Cut obviously will work just as well.

Whatever you do make sure the awesome music you include with your video isn’t something licensed since YouTube is policed like crazy for musical copyrights.

Step 3: Export Video

At this point, we just want to get the video out of the application used to edit it. We will be compressing the video later, so save it as whatever format you feel comfortable working with. To do this in iMovie ‘09, go to the “Share” menu, then select “Export using Quicktime…”

I saved the movie as an uncompressed .avi, which will create an absolutely massive file at full quality without any compression. If you don’t have tons of free drive space or don’t mind waiting for things to encode choose something else.

I went in to the settings and turned everything up all the way, but you can save it however you want to.

Step 4: Open Video in Quicktime

Find the video, open it, and make sure it all looks OK. When you open it, it will still obviously be sideways. To rotate the video, go to the “Window” menu, then select “Show Movie Properties” or hit Fruit+J.

The properties window will appear, click the row in the table for “Video Track” and there will be a row of buttons towards the bottom to flip and rotate the video. Click clockwise or counterclockwise depending on which way you were holding your camera.

The video should instantly rotate and you can close this window.

You should be looking at something like this now.

Step 5: Export and Compress Video

In Quicktime, go to the “File” menu then select “Export” or use the key combo which is Fruit+E.

Now, I am exporting my video as MPEG-4 because I like the H.264 codec. Click “Options…” to get to the export settings.

Again, all of the video codecs and compression settings can be changed to whatever you want, the important part is to set the “Image Size” to “Custom” and specify your width and height. My video was 1080i, so I’m swapping the width and height here to be 1080 by 1920. Once you’ve figured out what you want your bitrate to be and how you want to compress your sound, hit OK and wait for it to do its thing.

Step 6: Upload to YouTube

Upload your video to YouTube like you normally would, grab a sandwich while you wait for it to process, make sure it all looks OK.

Step 7: Embed Video

Alright, so we’ve got our video uploaded to YouTube with massive black bars on each side of it. Thankfully, the YouTube player is smart enough to disregard these black bars when you’re embedding it. Grab your embed code off YouTube and manually edit the width and height to match the aspect ratio of your video. For this video, I’m using 485x885. If you get small black bars just decrease the dimension that the bars are appearing on until they go away completely!

And there you have it, a video hosted on YouTube rotated 90 degrees! If you want to get fancy, you can be like the NimbleBit guys and frame your embedded video in an iPhone.

Great Expectations

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 01:34:00 -0500

Something that I’ve been noticing more and more as I get deeper in to the iPhone “scene” is the increasingly unrealistic expectations in what some gamers come to demand for their money when buying something from the App Store. I realize this could entirely just be the extremely vocal minority, but a shocking number of people all seem to be looking for the same thing: A phenomenal gaming experience at a rock bottom price supported via free updates for the foreseeable future. If this really is what the market as a whole is looking for, I really don’t know how the current state of the App Store economy is sustainable.

Just for fun, let’s throw out some numbers. Say your average game development company is employing a team of three people for an iPhone game, one artist, and two programmers. These three guys all are making a $40,000 a year salary which is hilariously low especially if this imaginary game company is in any major metropolitan area. Costs for raw salary alone for this team to work on a game amounts to $10,000 a month. This isn’t taking in to account any benefits they have, the cost of the computers and software they’re using, the electricity to power them, rent for the office they’re working out of, taxes or anything else you have to pay for to run a business.

Your average iPhone game seems to be in development for 2-3 months, so for bare payroll alone we’re looking at $25,000 invested for our hypothetical game. It has almost become expected for a game to launch at a “promotional” price, and it seems the gaming community as a whole demands this price be as close to 99¢ as possible. At that price point, after Apple’s take, they need to sell just under 36,000 copies to break even for salary alone.

What am I getting at here with all this scary financial talk? Well, earlier today a review for Pixel Mine’s Underworlds was published on Touch Arcade. I really enjoyed the game, I’m even casually working on my second play through in my spare time currently which is really pretty rare for me. I’m proud of my review in that I felt that I provided a detailed analysis of the game while mentioning some of the flaws and providing a conclusion that even though the game wasn’t perfect, it still was a really fun hack and slash RPG.

It didn’t take long for this comment to come rolling in-

“The art and sound design of Underworlds is top notch”

Compared to what? 1993 Lands of Lore on the PC? This game looks extremely cheap and hammered together quick and dirty. A commenter already mentioned the lack of story.

What does it take here to get a good review? Eye-Candy only?

The iPhone has shown that it is capable of showing a lot more than shabby conversions. I for one would love to see this idiocy end and game companies start to finally put real polished games on this platform. What does it take? I mean seriously. The iphone is becoming a 99 Cent platform with anything that looks remotely better being called “polished”.

Yeah right polished. With a 16 year old dirty rag.

I’m probably taking this way too seriously, and should probably just write the comment off as flame bait. Regardless, he does raise an interesting point. Have our expectations been compromised because of the sheer amount of shovelware on the platform? With gamers clamoring for more and more titles at rock bottom prices, I really can’t blame developers for churning out endless 99¢ apps. And really, grading on a curve in a sea of games which range from terrible to mediocre, games like Underworlds do stand out as something I would call “fantastic” in comparison.

But how does Underworlds rate against DS, PSP, or other “real” handheld console games? Pretty poorly, but the same can be said for nearly any iPhone game I can think of. I really don’t think it’s a fair comparison at all to make. DS games are generally bankrolled by publishers who throw out buckets full of money to finance a decently sized development team working on a reasonable schedule for the project. When they’re finished, their product sells for at minimum $29.99, but often anywhere between that and $39.99. Given an average price of $35, selling the same amount of units that the previously mentioned imaginary iPhone game company has to sell to break even, the competing DS game grosses $1,260,000.

Obviously with physical media distribution, Nintendo licensing fees, the publisher’s cut, and everything else what the developer actually sees is a fraction of that amount but even so, given the massive disparity in the realistic financials between a DS and iPhone game… How can an iPhone developer ever afford to provide a DS-like experience unless gamers as a whole begin to accept that better games won’t come out of a market where developers need to price cheaper than any other platform in history to remain competitive?

They really can’t.

iPhone Developer PSA

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 02:05:00 -0500

Not too long ago Ian Marsh made an interesting post on the NimbleBit blog about always being prepared to be contacted by Apple marketing. Ian chooses to take a proactive approach towards the prospect of being featured by Apple and offers fellow developers a list of things required of them should they be lucky enough to get chosen. After thinking about this for a few days I figured I’d offer developers a list of things they should have ready to provide the iPhone blogs since it’s a lot easier to get on Touch Arcade than it is to be one in one of the three rotating banners on the top of the App Store.

The absolute best thing you can do is create your own video for your game. Outside of the emulator in the SDK, there is quite literally no good way to get video of an iPhone game. Arn makes all the Touch Arcade videos using his top-end HD camera, and even the best ones still look terrible in comparison to the worst emulator screen capture videos. Don’t believe me? Compare the following videos-

The difference is absolutely night and day. The official video is surrounded by the company logo with a background motif that matches the NimbleBit web site. It shows off the title screen, a couple short burger orders, and the creation of a sky burger. The second video includes 30 seconds of narration and blog plugs while you stare at the game’s menu among other things.

Instead of talking over videos on Touch Arcade we use an audio line in to capture high quality game audio, but the fact remains, when we make videos we’re only taking a minute or two of early gameplay. If your game starts out slow but ramps up to being totally awesome, chances are that isn’t going to get caught on our videos. (Largely because we just don’t have time to shoot 2 hours of gameplay video and crop the cool parts together.) Furthermore, all iPhone videos are usually done in the dark to eliminate screen glare, so all that space NimbleBit is using to make you stare at their logo is completely wasted. The vibrant colors are also lost as the cameras the videos are shot with desperately try to figure out how to color balance a bright LCD in a dark room.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a well produced video is worth a million. There’s a great post on how to create dramatic iPhone videos on the atebits blog which I highly recommend all iPhone developers read and follow. Using SimFinger, Snapz Pro X, and the video editing application of your choice, you could end up with something like this-

I realize Birdhouse isn’t a game, but the point remains, the video is phenomenal. I think the app itself is stupid since I don’t take Twitter anywhere near seriously enough to need to save tweet drafts for later, but I bought it anyway. Such is the power of good advertising. Would Birdhouse be making its way around the Twittersphere if the only promotional materials they had consisted of some dude taking video with a digital camera with the lights off in his bathroom? (It’s a rhetorical question, the answer is of course not.)

When I play games I’m writing reviews for, I’m taking screenshots constantly. I’ll usually end up with a hundred or more screenshots and from there we’ll use maybe a half dozen if that. With the lag between taking screenshots on the iPhone, I often either miss really cool parts or don’t get them as well as I could have. Replaying to grab screenshots usually is fairly futile since I generally always am running in to the same issues of having screenshots which range from decent to mediocre compared to what’s actually happening in game.

Just like a video, if you can supply some totally awesome screenshots of your game filled with action, you need to snag them. Even after spending hours on a game, I’m still nowhere near as familiar with it as the people who created the game. What I think makes for a cool screenshot could be insignificant compared to some massive boss encounter which might be really hard for someone who is actually playing the game to accurately capture. If you’re recording a video of your game in an emulator, you can go frame by frame and grab the ultimate screenshots. I don’t have that luxury!

As a developer, you have an immense amount of control in what gets published. If you provide us a wicked video and some ridiculously cool screenshots, of course we’ll throw them up. If you’re not providing these materials to review and news sites, I must ask the question- Why trust someone else to capture videos and screenshots hoping they make your game look good when you have the power yourself to make sure the visual accompaniment to whatever press coverage you can generate looks great?

Don’t be scared of sending out review copies. There’s a lot of downtime in between when your game is submitted to the App Store and when it gets approved. Ideally, you want review sites to have your game in their hands and being played and written about so when it drops on the App Store they can publish the review at the same time. There’s no better time to generate lots of buzz about your game than the day it hits the App Store. Not sending out review copies of the version which was submitted to Apple is really a wasted opportunity because good reviews won’t pop up until a few days later.

Everything I write about I play through thoroughly. I might spend a couple days playing, then a couple days writing and revising before I put my review up to be published. That is nothing but wasted time and lost publicity when this all could have been done before your game went live.

My dream email from a developer on a game they’re releasing would include a link to a well produced video captured from the emulator, a zip file full of amazing screenshots, a brief description on what the game is about, a good explanation of what makes it stand out in the crowd to be worth my time to look at, and finally a link to download the pre-release copy. This makes my job easy, it makes your game look good since you largely control what media gets posted with my review. (Since presumably the video and screenshots you sent are so good we don’t need to bother to take any.)

There’s a symbiotic relationship to be had between developers and the authors of iPhone sites. By providing these things you’re making it easier to write about your game, and by producing an amazing press kit you’re guaranteed to generate more interest than simply sending out a form letter with promo codes.

If you don’t have my UDID, and you’ve decided to heed my advice, drop me an email.

Sync in Progress...

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 00:31:00 -0500

There has been a serious lack of activity around here for the past month, mostly because I’ve been using Twitter a lot more which made re-posting stupid links and images here seem fairly redundant but also because I’ve spent the last month writing for Touch Arcade. (Actually, longer than that. I’m just going off when my first review was published.)

Getting involved in the iPhone gaming scene and the tight knit circle of App Store developers has been a pretty interesting experience. There is a remarkable amount of people out there who have pulled amazingly innovative and highly refined gaming experiences out of thin air who have seen massive financial success from coding apps in their underwear. Unfortunately, for every iShoot selling hundreds of thousands of copies and every NimbleBit home office to real office story there are thousands of developers who miss the boat for one reason or another.

I think the biggest mistake far too many of these “developers” seem to make is the gross misunderstanding in thinking the combination of a $99 SDK and an Objective-C book from Amazon is all that’s required for a golden ticket aboard the iPhone millionaires cruise liner. Sure, that’s all you need to get started, but what they don’t sell on Amazon is innovative ideas and the talent required to turn those ideas in to games people will pay money for. It’s downright tragic the sheer number of people who just don’t understand this.

Sure, you might get lucky and be the next iFart, but the success of flash in the pan crapware isn’t something that can be planned or predicted. Most importantly, these overnight sensations don’t create sustainable income to fund future projects.

Another thing that I don’t think a lot of people seem to get is that it isn’t review or news sites that make your App Store offerings successful. Sure, I can write up a glowing review on Touch Arcade, but even with our massive readership it’s still small potatoes compared to the number of people who own iPhones and iPod Touches. How do you captivate that audience?

By producing a good product.

Truly great games create word of mouth that spreads like wildfire, your game starts climbing in the App Store sales rankings, and before you know it you’re being featured by Apple. According to quite a few developers I’ve talked to, once you gain some street cred by releasing one great game, it just gets easier.

So, aside from dealing with people who don’t understand this, working with Arn and Blake on Touch Arcade has been tons of fun. It takes up much more of my free time than I originally anticipated, but I really have a hard time complaining about doing something I love.

We’re talking about doing some new stuff on the site which I probably shouldn’t divulge here… But needless to say, it will be awesome, and I really look forward to being a part of it.

Rollin' on d20's.

Sat, 04 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0500

I love how accessible Dungeons & Dragons is. I’ve been playing a 3.5 edition game every Friday from 10 PM to 2 AM at Comic Connections in downtown Oswego. 3.5 is much more complicated than 4th edition but even so, it’s such a welcome change from my days of PC and console gaming.

Don’t get me wrong, I had a blast hosting LANgasm with all my friends back when LAN parties were still relevant. At our prime we were hosting monthly 40-80 man events at the Hampton Inn in Aurora, IL. I met some amazing people who are still close friends of mine to this day, but LAN parties had such a high cost of entry that it was hard to bring anyone who wasn’t already an avid PC gamer in to the LAN party scene.

You needed a PC capable of running whatever games were popular at the time. Most PC games also had CD key schemes which required everyone to have their own copy to play multiplayer so you’re easily looking at thousands of dollars that each person had to invest to come and play.

Broadband internet market penetration, people getting bored of Counter-Strike, and the crew of guys I ran LANgasm with all entering different stages of their lives killed off our LAN party. Some of us moved on to console gaming, since the XBOX 360 offered such a complete online experience… But even then, you’re looking at hundreds of dollars for the system, and at games coming in at $50-60 a pop. It’s neither cheap nor easy to get new people involved.

What do you need to play Dungeons & Dragons? Some people to play with, as well as the ability to read/write and perform basic calculations-That’s it. I obviously can’t speak for all groups, but everyone I know at the comic shop in Oswego as well as the group I play 4th Edition with are extremely friendly to anyone with even a remote interest in the game.

You can borrow books and dice from anyone at the table, character sheet PDFs are free online, and you really don’t even know how to play to have a great time. Everyone likes new players, and until you get a handle on the rules there is nothing wrong with telling the DM what you want to do and ask what you need to roll to do it.

I really can’t believe how much fun I’ve had playing Dungeons & Dragons lately. It’s awesome to have a hobby that you can get new people involved in when all that is required of them is the desire to learn the game and the availability to meet with the rest of the people who play.

If you’re in the Oswego/Naperville IL area and are even remotely interested in playing… Let me know!

Topple 2 - Triangles make for cruel mistresses.

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 11:02:00 -0500

Say hello to my first review published on Touch Arcade.

Edge 1.1

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:49:00 -0500

Prior to the 1.1 update released a few weeks ago, Edge was little more than a pretty good game with the potential to be something great. The touch controls were messy and lacked precision, the tilt controls were worse, and the game was hard to rationalize buying at $5.99 with so many other great games at lower price points. The price drop to $4.99 with the addition of a new onscreen D-pad control method, 17 new levels, new music tracks, and an online leader board has earned Edge a much-deserved spot on my iPhone’s home screen.

Upon loading the game, it asks you if you would like to enable sounds (a feature I really like in iPhone games) and the menu system complete with synthesized voice effects are reminiscent of classic 80’s Sci-Fi movie computer systems. The beauty of Edge starts with its simplicity. Mobigames has proven that you don’t need high-polygon models, high-resolution textures, or other exhaustive art resources to create a stylish game. Edge uses a simple color palette of white, black, and numerous grays for the game world, and a cycle of bright colors for the cube you control as well as the items you can pick up.

The basis of the game is simple, you navigate your cube to the rainbow colored square at the end of the level, repeat. On the way you can pick up small cubes, or “prisms” as the game calls them to increase your score. Tiny raised gray platforms serve as switches which make platforms move, changes the configuration of existing platforms, or otherwise modifies the game world.

Advanced levels have platforms that fall after you move over them, squares which launch you in a different direction, and other complicated obstacles. Nothing ever seems to be difficult enough to be frustrating to the player, and without any substantial penalties for falling off the game world you always feel like you’re making progress as you experiment with different ways to get around an obstacle. Some areas even have question mark squares which create a transparent cube showing a path you could take as you move over them.

Edge strikes an almost perfect balance between providing both a difficulty curve and do-over system that casual-gamers shouldn’t find themselves frustrated with, while creating a competitive online leader board where hard-core gamers can compete against other players’ times. My biggest complaint right now is viewing these leader boards can’t be done in game, as both registering to submit your scores as well as viewing other players’ scores are done via the Mobigame web site.

The new on-screen D-pad provides flawless control, the music which accompanies the game is great, and overall Edge creates a remarkable presentation of simplicity combined with great gameplay. The recent updates and associated price drop makes Edge a very hard game to pass up.

Oregon Trail and the tragic tale of Peperony and Chease

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 11:52:00 -0500

Oregon Trail is without a doubt the computer game of elementary schools of the 1980’s. If you were around then, and your school district was well off enough to have a computer (or even a computer lab with multiple computers) you too probably learned at a ripe young age what dysentery is. Originally designed in 1971, adventuring west has seen several upgrades, sequels, and remakes over the years; the most recent of which is GameLoft’s spiritual successor for the iPhone. …But does GameLoft successfully ford the river and deliver a game that nostalgic fans will crave?

The original journey to the frontier produced by MECC featured the harsh realities of the trail, intense management of supplies, as well as disease and danger around every corner. GameLoft abandons most of the things which made the original Oregon Trail a fairly difficult game that few people ever saw the end of in exchange for cartoony mini games, sub-quests, and a simplified starting point which barely grazes the surface of MECC’s profession selection and equipment purchasing.

Professions are limited to three, banker, carpenter, and farmer. As a banker you start with extra money and no additional benefits, as a carpenter you’re better at maintaining your wagon, and as a farmer you use food slower. This choice has very little bearing on anything in the game, since money is easy to make with mini games and sub-quests, the wagon is easily repaired through a hammering nails mini game, and food isn’t at all hard to come by on the trail. Purchasing equipment at the start of the game has been replaced by selecting one of three wagons, each with different durability and food storage levels. Your only other choices to make are naming the members of your party and which of three available months you want to start in before heading out on the trail.

Long gone are the pixelated graphics of the Apple II, instead everything is rendered in beautiful cell shaded animation, and oddly enough your entire party chooses to run along side the wagon instead of hopping in. Periodically your kids will whine, which is pretty amusing, but as you can see from the above screenshot the only thing you have any control over is how fast your wagon goes. You can’t modify your rations, so old school Oregon Trail masochists who set out west with a family named after people they know might be disappointed that you can’t set your pace to grueling and rations to bare bones to quickly produce funny tombstones.

When you start your adventure, you’re greeted by the wagon train captain who serves as your guide offering suggestions and initially walking you through the mini games which you will need to play at various intervals to reach your goal. The hunting mini game allows you to walk around and tap rabbits, squirrels, and other critters to shoot, at which point they magically turn in to chicken drumsticks which you can pick up! In the fishing mini game you control your hook to grab fish and treasure while avoiding boots. The last of the food gathering games is berry picking, which is a pretty simple whack-a-mole type game where you pick the good berries and avoid the bad ones.

Along the trail there are various checkpoints such as camps, towns, and forts. While you’re at one, you’ll be able to buy supplies like additional food, whips (which have effects like keeping your oxen healthy but making them move slower), and other supplies which have both positive and negative effects. Making money in the game involves playing mini games like the telegraphs seen above, which is a simple Simon-like memory game. Another money-making game involves panning for gold, where you tilt the iPhone from side to side to reveal gold nuggets which you then touch to collect. Pretty basic, but I appreciate the variety.

Sub-quests are scatted throughout the trail, and usually involve delivering something somewhere, or doing something else that you would be doing anyway on the way to Oregon. Abe Lincoln is even featured as some kind of hot rod-ing trail racer. These quests usually don’t reward much money, but they provide some fun variety.

I really enjoy the cartoony approach they’ve taken with the game. Not to say I didn’t love the original MECC game, but watching your pixelated wagon was fairly monotonous. GameLoft has added all kinds of random occurrences from dead people laying in the road, to sleeping bears you have to decide to poke or go around, to dead buffalos you can scavenge for food. The list goes on and on, I’m really pretty surprised in the number of things which happen on the trail, I’m reluctant to list some of the better ones to not spoil the “did that seriously just happen” which new players will experience the first time. Needless to say, there were several moments where I was laughing out lout at the game.

Of course no Oregon Trail game would be complete without the decision of what to do at a river. You can ford the river, pay for help to cross the river, or caulk the wagon and float it which starts the mini game pictured above. Using the accelerometer to control, you float across the river avoiding rocks, tree branches, and other sunken wagons while you pick up drifting gold coins and cargo. While not at all historically accurate, it is pretty fun.

Really, my only complaint with this game is the difficulty level. Hard mode is locked until you beat the game once, and “Normal” is ridiculously easy. As a test I loaded up with the cheapest wagon, no more food than you get from the initial tutorial mini games, and just set my pace to the fastest to see how far I could go. I made it to central Idaho before the last member of my party died. Now, I know that GameLoft’s success comes from “casual” games which anyone can hop in to regardless of prior experience, but that’s bordering on ridiculous. The original MECC Oregon Trail was pretty brutal, but surely there’s a happy medium somewhere in between that and a non-existent difficulty level.

Your wagon train captain tells you everything you should do, suggests to go hunting when you get low on food, and really holds your hand through the whole game. If a party member gets sick or injured, Indians materialize to heal you for a small fee. Despite all this, the game really is very fun, well polished, and overall a much better total package than I was even expecting.

My greatest disappointment, which really has no bearing on anything, is there are no tombstone screens in the game. As someone who spent an embarrassing amount of time giggling at what I wanted on my tombstone in the 80’s, this is a pretty huge letdown.

All in all though, Oregon Trail is well worth the $5.99 that GameLoft charges for their games. It seems to take a couple hours to complete the journey, and both the sub-quests and random occurrences seem varied enough that multiple play-throughs are still entertaining. I wouldn’t really call Oregon Trail a must have game, but if you enjoyed the original and like silly mini games, you really can’t go wrong.

New D&D4E character back-story.

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 14:46:15 -0600

“Well, I’ve been in worse situations,” the halfling thought to himself, kicking his legs in the air and struggling to breathe as the grip of the dragonborn’s comparatively massive hand tightened around his neck.

“What are YOU doing in the back of my wagon?” he hissed with his eyes frantically searching his cargo for anything that might be missing. “If you laid a FINGER on anything…”

The tiny stowaway attempted to speak, but the only sounds which escaped his distorted mouth were gurgles. Grabbing a dagger from his belt, and swinging upwards the halfling sliced the wrist of his captor and landed on the ground with a massive thud (and corresponding jingle from his pockets). “Oh NOW you’ve done it!” the dragonborn exclaimed, unsheathing his sword and pinning the halfling between the tip of his blade and the wet ground. “I have half a mind to run you thr-“

“P-p-p-please, my lord,” the halfling interrupted. “I am but a fair pilgrim of Bahamut, traveling the countryside spreading honor and justice, liberating the oppressed, protecting the weak and innocent!” he continued, hoping to appeal to the spiritual weakness of the dragonborn. Summoning tears from his eyes he went on to say, “I sought passage to…” (The halfling desperately looks for signs, giving any indication where he is.) “…uh, Kinstan, because I heard there were… people in need of spiritual guidance and surely as a follower of Bahamut yourself you would agree that only those of us who are truly enlightened to his greatness and mercy are worthy of spreading his light of justice across this darkened land!”

Clearly confused, the dragonborn begins to recall his sword, only to notice the halfling’s bulging pockets. He taps his sword against one of the bulges, and hears the rustling of coins moving from the force of his blade; then repeats this same procedure on each of the nearly overflowing pockets. Now completely unconvinced of the story he’s been told, the dragonborn quickly reaches down and grabs the hafling by his right leg, and with each upside down shake more gold coins, small pieces of treasure, and other valuables fall to the ground.

“What does a monk of Bahamut need with such riches?” the dragonborn said with a laugh. “What say you that I free you of this worldly burden allowing you to truly spread the word of Bahamut?” he said smirking, moving the blade of his sword back towards the halfling’s neck.

“Please sir, I insist,” the halfling said, pushing the sword away from his neck and slowly shifting to the side. “You are right, treasures are of,” he gulped, obviously disturbed by what he was about to say, “…no use to me.” The dragonborn let his guard down for a split second as he began to reach down to scoop up the gold coins and at that moment the halfling sprung to his feet and ran as fast as he could behind a nearby building, spotting a foothold, and leaping to the roof. After jumping across the roofs of three consecutive buildings, he stopped for a split second to catch his breath, heard something crack beneath his feet, and before he knew it was out cold.

The halfling woke up a few hours later in an unfamiliar but remarkably cozy bed with a concerned old woman standing by his side. “Well hello!” she said, with a toothless grin.

The halfling abruptly sat up, looked around, and responded “err… Hi.”

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“I go by many, I suppose the one I prefer the most is ‘Green’,” he responded with a smile as he dragged his hand through his short bright green hair.

“Well, Green, what brings you to falling through my roof?”

Green sighed, appearing extremely distraught, and replied- “Brigands, ma’am. They took all my gold, threatened to kill me too! I don’t know what I did to ever deserve such a thing, just minding my business and all. Seems as if everyone wants something for nothing in this world.” He sighed and continued, “They took all I had they did. I was looking to start a life here, and now I have nothing!”

“Now now, dearie,” she said with a comforting smile, “We’ll get ya’ all fixed up. Don’t you worry about nothing. I’ve got some gold saved away for rainy days, and it sounds like you’ve been rained on quite enough. Surely I can spare a few coins to help you start your new life here in Kinstan.”

She turned and walked to the corner of her house, only to bend over and pry a board up from the floor with her fingers, reach down, and grab a small sack of gold. The friendly old woman took a pinch of coins from the bag, placed it back under the baseboards, and secured the piece of wood she removed.

The halfling, now completely aware of where the old crone kept her gold, leaned back in to the pillow as he smiled from ear to ear.

My character, if it wasn’t obvious by now is a halfling rogue! He grew up in an orphanage, which he escaped at a young age only to join the local thieves guild where he mastered surprise attacks with daggers, the art of stealing, and how to spin a good lie. Not content with pick pocketing a few coins here and there, Green took all he had and hid in the first unguarded wagon he could find from a trade caravan heading east hoping to eventually wind up in a grand capital city, instead of being booted out in Kinstan by the aforementioned angry dragonborn. Intrigued by local tales of dungeons, catacombs, and other areas bursting with treasure, (and also monsters, allegedly) Green is looking to join a band of adventurers in hopes of finding things which are shiny, valuable, or at least interesting enough that he might be able to trick someone in town in to buying them off of him at a high price.

Green is unaligned, vaguely follows the deity Sehanine as more of a traditional holdover from his experience in the thieves guild than any actual beliefs, and always looks out for himself- Unless of course, looking out for someone else could somehow lead to treasure.

He looks very strange for a halfling, with bright green hair, remarkably pale skin, and eyes which are sensitive to the sun- he almost always wears tinted glasses or goggles. He has several scars, not from battle, but as if he was branded as a warning to others. Only the most experienced travelers would recognize the meaning of these markings, to everyone else they would appear to just be the result of a less than successful encounter with a band of goblins.

Space Ninja - Just go buy it, don't even bother to read this.

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 21:19:00 -0600

I feel before I start this review I need to make something clear, since the App Store came online, I’ve always avoided accelerometer based games. Games which use the accelerometer as a primary method of control are kind of like Mike’s Hard Lemonade, Zima, and other Alcopops. You start off drinking them, as a naive youngster it becomes your drink of choice, (It’s not your fault, you just don’t really know any better.) and eventually end drinking too much then puking up a gallon of it. After that it just never has the same appeal ever again. This isn’t a slight against any developers who have built accelerometer games, I’ve just been tired of them.

Going back to the beginning of third party development on the iPhone, the original jailbreaks, and the very very early iPhone games reversed engineered without any SDK and very little knowledge of how the iPhone actually worked, developers went nuts with the accelerometer. Countless goofy labyrinth games reproduced like rabbits, one after another, out of nowhere. It was almost as if someone somewhere had some kind of iPhone mogwai, got it wet, and it spawned an army of terrible accelerometer based gremlins. Everywhere you looked there were accelerometer games, each worse than the next. It was like when the DS was first released, you couldn’t walk in to an EB Games without tripping over a half dozen titles that had you blow in to the microphone.

So surely, you can understand my aversion. I’ve rolled millions of marbles in to trillions of holes, I’ve bounced balls back and forth, moved paddles, steered cars, and done countless other unmentionables in “games” flopping my iPhone side to side- they were all different degrees of terrible. Don’t get me wrong, I realize the iPhone is limited in the control inputs it has, and I wrote off accelerometer based games early. I’m sure there are plenty more where Space Ninja came from that are all decent… but Space Ninja is the first accelerometer game I’ve played for the iPhone that not only left me speechless, but also wondering how so many developers got tilt based controls so wrong.

The beauty of Space Ninja is its simplicity. Above are the controls. That’s it. Not mentioned is the bullet time, which for once in the entire history of video games was actually done tastefully to add to gameplay- More on that later. The object of the game is not to shoot your way through everything in space, but instead to avoid everything that is firing at you. It’s really kind of an odd take at the whole top-down space ship flying around genre. (Is that even technically a genre? I mean, Space Ninja is definitely not a shooter… Oh well, it is a genre now.)

You feel like you should be shooting all the turrets shooting things at you. I think one of the things I like about Space Ninja so much is that you don’t shoot at things, you just get the hell out of wherever you’re escaping from or wherever you’re going to. The only thing you have to assist you in this goal is a small array of items which do things like push projectiles away from you and pause all the projectiles on the screen for a brief period. The items add a nice variety to the game, but aren’t really at all required until the harder levels.

The music is out of this world, totally energetic, and exactly what I’d expect for a game where you’re flying through space blowing the cra… err, not blowing the crap out of everything. The graphics seem to be inspired from Geometry Wars, which is one of my favorite games, so this does nothing but increase Space Ninja’s rating on the “Oh-god-this-game-is-great-o-meter” and it runs at a solid, remarkably high frame rate.

Remember the bullet time I mentioned earlier? Well, the only thing more over-done than iPhone accelerometer tech demo games is bullet time in every post-Matrix era video game. It almost seems like there’s some kind of unwritten rule somewhere that bullet time must be present in every game, no matter how unnecessary and tacked-on it feels. In Space Ninja, holding your finger down on the screen anywhere enables a bullet time-like slow motion effect where the screen zooms in slightly while increasing the mobility of your ship and decreasing the speed of surrounding projectiles. It’s remarkably well done, and serves as the perfect solution for the relative lack of precision and sensitivity inherent in any game which requires you to tilt your phone.

Now, with all this tilting this is where I’d usually say, “Yeah, but it’s annoying as hell to have to hold your phone flat and look at it from above.”

Space Ninja offers the witty come-back of, “Oh no you don’t! Hit the ‘calibrate accelerometer’ button in the menu and hold the phone however you feel like, including sideways and upside down.” Sega needs to hire the developers of Jormy Games and totally overpay them for this kind of common sense thinking. Maybe then buying Super Monkey Ball for the iPhone would be slightly less of a waste of money than just taking $8 and lighting it on fire.

Space Ninja also has a awards system that gives you different colored icons (Which I’m not sure if they actually do anything aside from provide completionist obsessive compulsive nerds something to get worked up over.) for different feats accomplished during a level, like not using slow-mo or not using any items- The thing is, you will want to go back and redo a level where you just barely had to use slow motion to escape and the levels are short enough that you won’t feel bad for doing so.

Aside from the main game mode, there’s a challenge mode with several fairly difficult challenges for you to undertake, as well as a ski mode, which is really just the main game mode on a white background where you go down instead of up.

On top of all these great single player modes, there’s also the ability to play with up to four players. Instead of using the accelerometer and tilting the phone, each player gets their own circle colored for their space ship in the corner of the screen which acts as a mini joystick. I don’t really see how four people could comfortably cram their heads around an iPhone, and I imagine the players who have their pseudo-joysticks on the top of the screen would be kind of disoriented… but any kind of multiplayer is a welcome addition in a game which could have easily stood alone as a great single player game.

If you can’t tell by now, I love this game. It performs great, it looks great, the music is awesome, the control is (and I can’t believe I’m saying this about an accelerometer game) nothing short of perfection, and when you combine these things it makes for a package that is so great it’s literally impossible to pass up at $0.99. It hasn’t crashed, stuttered, or done anything but perform flawlessly since I synced Space Ninja to my phone- A claim I can only make for a select few iPhone games. I don’t care if you’re on an all-ramen diet and you need to go couch diving for quarters to scrounge up a buck. Pick up Space Ninja and you won’t regret it.

A faithful tribute to Bic Runga's greatest hit, or $5 better spent at Subway?

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 09:20:00 -0600

Like most people that have an RSS reader full of iPhone gaming sites, I was pretty excited about Illusion Labs’ newest iPhone title- especially after watching the trailer a half dozen times enjoying the music, art style, and how well composed the trailer was. Surely the game is the same way?

Sway was the first iPhone game I’ve gotten launch day jitters from, and spent my work day yesterday constantly switching back and forth from what I was working on and refreshing the IllusionLabs page on the iTunes App Store waiting for it to appear. I was pretty amazed that an iPhone game of all things had me at the same level of obsessive compulsive non-stop refreshing as having a package on the way with an all-too-easily F5’d tracking information page. If you’ve ordered anything from the Internet, you know exactly the feeling I’m talking about.

So does Sway live up to the hype? The pre-launch hype always seems to be the Catch 22 of the video game marketing process. Too much hype and gamers set unrealistic expectations, too little and you end up with what I like to call “Ico Syndrome”- An absolutely remarkable game in every sense of the word that no one ever heard of.

The Sway art style of story telling through comic book cells, half-toned user interface elements, music that you can’t help bobbing your head to, and the adorable plot premise of “Wizards went to town with a BlendTec,” answering life’s greatest question of “Will the world blend?” makes for an excellent first-launch experience; which honestly, is a thing a lot of developers overlook. Your customers, or potential customers using lite versions are already forming opinions as they stare at your boring loading screen for 30 seconds!

The next screen you come to allows you to choose your (initially) single available character to play as, Lizzie, hanging on a rope exhibiting all the rag doll physics that take place in the game with a swipe of the thumb. The title screen also features a very well done tutorial to teach new players the control scheme of the game, a required element for a game with such unconventional controls.

Sway features your standard level select screen, tapping an island brings up the requirements for different types of bonus medals which can be earned as well as the number of stars you collected and your best time if you’ve previously finished a level. Another replay-value enhancing addition to the game is the friend saving system. Throughout levels which have the “Save Friend!” speech bubble coming from them there are keys you can pick up which are usually hidden off the easiest path of clearing the level, forcing you to take a more difficult route to get them all. Collecting all the keys unlocks additional playable characters with slightly different abilities such as longer arms or better grip. Between trying to beat the time requirements for all the gold medals, collecting all the stars, and unlocking all the characters, the amount of replay value stuffed in to Sway is substantial.

So what about the gameplay? As you can see from the various videos Illusion Labs has released, the idea behind the game is using your two thumbs to control the grip of your character as you swing through the level reaching various checkpoints and eventually the goal. Gaining momentum to swing upwards is accomplished by rubbing your thumb back and forth to make your character swing. While it is very fun when you’re lucky enough to preserve your swinging momentum from moving around to progress forward, I find myself all too often stuck in one place, desperately swirling my thumb around to built the momentum to catapult myself upwards.

The controls in Sway are a double edged sword in that it’s an innovative approach to touch screen gaming, with problems. The problem is once you get to the more difficult levels which involve more than simply alternating lifting your right and left thumb, you actually see less and less of the game. Twirling your thumbs around to gain sufficient momentum takes up most of the screen, and quickly becomes tiring. On top of this, there are several ways which you can die- Falling off the bottom of the screen, slamming in to spikes, and going off the top of the screen. The last point I feel is one of the game’s greatest flaws right now, as with the limited viewpoint of obstacles around you, building up a good spin to climb upwards can often result in death- Frustratingly sending you back to the start or your last checkpoint.

With no death penalties to speak of aside from the clock continuing to run as you’re sent back to the start (which has no bearing on anything aside from the superfluous medals you’re awarded at the end of the level) I eventually found myself frustrated with the game, and just spinning my character as quickly as I could and flinging him as far as I could towards the right… which is an amazingly viable way to beat most of the levels. The time lost dying and restarting is easily made up by skipping entire groups of obstacles, easily finding yourself in gold medal territory from just cheesing through levels.

So is Sway worth the five bucks? Personally, I love supporting independent developers, so I find it easier than most to write off App Store purchases- But, I can’t disregard the fact that there are a countless number of $0.99 to $2.99 games which are just as polished as Sway. While Sway may have massive amounts of replay value with their time based medals, star collection, and unlockable characters, it begs the question of how many players will even see the end of Sway and be clamoring for more to do than beating the initial onslaught of levels?

Another problem is the lack of any kind of resume function if you’re interrupted mid-level with a phone call. If you need to quit the game, you’re forced to just start the last level you were on over again from the level select screen… Something which really in my opinion is just unacceptable for any kind of iPhone game where interruptions are absolutely inevitable. Sway needs to take a hint from Rolando and implement the same save and quick load feature they use which is nothing short of mobile gaming perfection.

If I were rating Sway on Slide to Play’s ranking system, I’d really be torn between awarding it a 2 or a 3. On one hand, the game is cute, the art style is great, the music is fun, I love the plot premise of “wizards did it”, and I’m really a sucker for any kind of physics in a game. On the other, the controls are frustrating, unintentional deaths are all too common, and being unable to resume a game in progress after taking a phone call or going back to the home screen has left me scratching my head. On top of all this, $5 is a little steep compared to the competition.

Unless you really are captivated by the trailer, or just have too much credit sitting in your iTunes account that you want to get rid of, I’d either wait for an update to Sway to fix some of the annoyances or wait for it go to on sale.

Video

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:23:22 -0500

PotluckBot has become sentient.

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 11:55:00 -0500

I loaded all of Joe’s posts from the Naperville Potluck in to a training file for MegaHAL, a conversation simulator. I had to talk to it for 15 minutes or so before it started responding with coherent answers… but now it is pretty eerie. These are the actual question and answers, with the grammar and punctuation fixed since MegaHAL doesn’t like to capitalize and uses punctuation poorly (although its use of quotation marks are hilarious, I didn’t modify any of those).

Q: What should the Napergate Man do next?
A: Moderator Ted, Have you called and asked the NPD to file formal complaints against the customers who were trying to outblog other groups around town that are posting here? It shouldn’t take too too long to get the napergate man involved.

Q: Why do you care so much?
A: I am living here. I care. Back then, I wasn’t here, so I didn’t. The decent thing to do is work for property tax increases.

Q: So you’re saying you support increased property taxes?
A: Yes and I posted a reference to the city/county/state, etc. In the example above, assuming Napergate was a victim of circumstances, but I do know how to file the FOIA.

Q: Napergate FOIA? What ever happened with that?
A: You misunderstand. You are in cuffs, you are now deemed a suspect who is less dangerous. Officers understand Moderator has the results.

Q: Why would you be arrested for a Napergate FOIA request?
A: Then again, I may not.

Q: You can’t seem to make up your mind.
A: Make the police seem non existent and you will be mad because he failed to answer.

Q: Who failed to answer?
A: I readjusted my math to make sure they are about to do bad things.

Q: Who? The NPD?
A: The NPD was not ‘out to get the Napergate Man’ that evening.

Q: Well what should we do about Napergate?
A: I think you are about to do burnouts with so many in the community due to their lack of action or initiative.

Q: But the police don’t like it when you do burnouts.
A: Only if the people to post their own real estate tax bills and a picture ID.

PotluckBot is speaking in pretty good sentences now, time to feed him some recent questions from the Potluck-

Q: What do you think of the salaries paid to public servants in Naperville? What would you change, if you could?
A: Please, continue to cry us a river about how you think people just hate police officers.

Q: Should Naperville revisit the question of council districts, and, if so, what form should it take?
A: You’ve obviously mistaken me for someone who has a financial analysis that shows x subdivision generated y taxes.

Q: In what ways is the financial crisis affecting you?
A: You people are complaining hand over fist about it. I don’t care.

Q: How come Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential candidate, is faced with questions about whether she could juggle the demands of the position on top of raising five children? Would a male candidate in a similar situation face the same questions?
A: I call BS when I see it.

Q: Today’s question is: Should the city have apologized to Furstenau and ponied up the $130,000 a year ago?
A: He was treated in accordance with the normal paranoia / conspiracy mindset so at least prior to the presumed ‘fact’ that others rarely leave their cities to come here to shop here if they didn’t work weekends and were not in their infancy. What kills it is consistent with the front of the officer’s instructions and there are nothing like the ‘police state oppression’ posters here want us to believe. *That* is my tie in, that I frequent the same IP Address and voted for Dick Furstenau. That either makes you a liar or me not an establishment person. Which is it?

Q: So pretend you’re talking to the mayor and city council, and say what you’d like to see done to get Naperville back in the black.
A: I agree. Are you black?

Q: Did you receive one of the ads? What do you think? Do you go too far? Do you think they are fair? How well do you think the negative campaign strategy will work? Could it backfire, and end up doing more damage to McGuire than good? Which candidate do you support in the 96th District race, and why?
A: I admit, I did not like. The police are very approachable. What i have read on here have tried for months now people have been saturated w/ Napergate to the police statement and filed complaints about things i wish to point out because of previous activity by them elsewhere in the 3rd or 4th grade.

Q: Should the Warrenville Road, Butterfield Road and Williams Street bridges be replaced with higher structures? How could city and county authorities better communicate with residents during emergencies like this?
A: We can all figure out just what your ‘fair share’ of property taxes make to Napergate the point when they left the scene, then scan his establishments to only those customers legally old enough to actually do something like file a FOIA. Exercise your right. You can’t spend 15 minutes filing a FOIA request?

Q: Will you do it? Will you bother to call or write your legislative leaders and governor? Would it make any difference in the long run? Would you do it if you knew their e-mail addresses?
A: Make the police department respond.

There you have it, I have completed automated the Naperville Potluck comments. It’s kind of sad that basic AI can fit in with the people who post there.

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