2012: Despite it all, look what we achieved

January 1st, 2013, 21:50 Posted By: wraggster

It has been a brutal year for nearly everyone working in the video games business.
Be you a publisher struggling to keep out of the red, a developer facing project cancellations or a retailer trying to sell games in a dramatically contracting market, it’s been one of the toughest.
But that’s why we should be proud. The boom days of 2008 may seem like a distant memory, but despite the many obstacles and challenges our industry has made 2012 a vintage. I reckon we can safely call 2012 the best year for gamers that there ever has been.
Well done us! What, you don’t agree? Well check out this list of WIN and see what you think then.
But where to begin? I’ll start with FIFA 13. Not everyone’s cup of tea, I know, but for my money it’s not just easily the best football game ever made, but arguably one of THE greatest games ever made. I could play it forever.
But there are plenty of other Game of the Year contenders, too. Latecomer Far Cry 3 is rightfully being praised from every corner of the games industry, offering as it does the best sandbox FPS experience ever crafted. Expect some to plump for the magnificent Dishonored too, which amazingly redefines the stealth experience and wraps it up in a thoroughly original and utterly compelling world.
And what about XCOM: Enemy Unknown, the game that took many of us by surprise? What a cracking title that was. On the sci-fi tip, a hearty round of applause for Mass Effect 3, please, which is probably the best RPG I’ve ever played outside of Skyrim and Panzer Dragoon Saga. A fitting end to a magnificent saga.
And we’ve barely begun, either. Diablo III, Borderlands 2, LEGO Batman 2, Halo 4, Saints Row: The Third, Forza Horizon, Max Payne 3, Sleeping Dogs, F1 2012 – all fantastic releases.
Then there are some personal additions. EA did a good job rebooting the SSX brand and, despite what you may say, I really like Syndicate’s washed white view of the future. There’s the though provoking Spec Ops: The Line, the sleeper hit Dragon’s Dogma and – yes, I’m going to say it –Hitman: Absolution, which I thought was fecking wonderful.
Despite being thoroughly underwhelmed by War for Cybertron, the Transformers fan in me was completely won over by Fall of Cybertron’s Epic single player campaign (“Metroplex heeds the call of the last Prime”!). I also enjoyed The Amazing Spider-Man, whilst the shmup devotee in me thought Akai Katana was simply glorious. And rock hard. Hell, even PES 2013 was really good this year. And I still want to play Asura’s Wrath.
If there’s one thing that struck me when compiling this list it was the number of digital releases that have impacted on me in 2012.
I’m yet to play through some of the chapters in The Walking Dead, but what I’ve played so far suggests it’s a very special game. I’ve put a load of time into FTL: Faster Than Light (without ever getting to the end, even on easy, I might add) while Hotline Miami is the sort of experience that stays with you for hours after you’ve finished playing.
Trials Evolution, Spelunky, Fez, Mark of the Ninja and Papo & Yo are all must-plays, as isSlender: Eight Pages if you think you’re ’ard enough. I Am Alive was another under-recognised outing, I’d argue, while DayZ was rightfully recognised by the press.
Add to these lot the commercial powerhouse that is Minecraft on Xbox 360. Oh, and I keep forgetting to play Dear Esther.
There’s a Game of the Year contender in this digital list, too – Journey. What an incredible title. Ambitious, beautiful, evocative and moving, it’s everything that a bite-sized download title should be and much more than most triple-A games achieve. The Unfinished Swan was another big favourite.
Even the iPhone has some seriously brilliant releases throughout the year. Super Hexagon (which is equally as amazing on PC, it should be said) is, in my opinion, the best small game ever made. And forget the haters – Curiosity: What’s Inside the Cube is one of the most incredible gaming projects ever embarked upon. Fluid Football is also thoroughly deserving of its success.
It was a good year for shmups, too, with Cave releasing the incredible Bug Princess 2 (known to fans of the genre as Mushihimesama Futuari) and former Windows Phone exclusive DoDonPachi Maximum.
Angry Birds Star Wars and Rayman Jungle Run both proved that big IP can thrive on a smartphone when done correctly, while Punch Quest, Plague Inc, Letterpress and Super Crate Box proved that tiny devs with new IP can fare just as well.
Look at that list. What other creative industry can lay claim to so much quality output? And if the industry can do all of this while in the grips of a ferocious downturn, imagine what it can do when things improve.
Merry Christmas!

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/2012-...hieved/0108549

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THQ and the death of gaming’s middle tier

December 28th, 2012, 23:26 Posted By: wraggster

THQ left it late. Days before Christmas it announced it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the last resort of an ailing US company, in order to ditch its $100 million debt and sell its assets to the highest bidder. It was a fitting end to a year in which it became clear that, at retail at least, anything less than unqualified success can spell disaster.

http://www.edge-online.com/news/stor...s-middle-tier/

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Raspberry Pi vs. Cheap Android Dongle: Embarrassment of (Cheap) Riches

December 28th, 2012, 00:07 Posted By: wraggster

The price of Android Mini PCs have recently dropped to the point they are starting to make the Raspberry Pi look overpriced. This article compares the Raspberry Pi model B against the similarly priced MK802 II single core Android mini PC. IMO it can be argued that the mini PC wins that fight. It's worth noting that several new quad-core Chinese ARM SoCs have been recently released to the world, and it can be expected to see Android mini PCs start using them in the very near future. This should translate into even lower prices for the now 'obsolete' generations of single and dual core Andoid mini PCs out there."The target markets and base OS vary, but there's enough overlap for this comparison to make some sense — both have ARM chips, both can (to varying degrees) run either Android or a more conventional Linux distro, and both can fit in a small pocket.

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/1...f-cheap-riches

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Raspberry Pi used as a Squeezebox server

December 26th, 2012, 22:31 Posted By: wraggster


[Jacken] loves his lossless audio and because of that he’s long been a fan of Squeezebox. It makes streaming the high-bitrate files possible. But after Logitech acquired the company he feels they’ve made some choices which has driven the platform into the ground. But there is hope. He figured out how to use a Raspberry Pi as a Squeezebox server so that he can keep on using his client devices and posted details about the RPi’s performance while serving high-quality audio.
First the bad news: the RPi board doesn’t have the horsepower necessary to downsample on the fly. He even tried overclocking but that didn’t really help. The good news is that this issue only affects older Squeezebox clients (he had the issue with V3) and only when playing tracks that are much higher quality than a CD (24-bit at 88.2Khz). He has no problem streaming those files to devices that can play them, and can even stream multiple files at once without any issues.
You can install the Sqeezebox server on your own Raspberry Pi by following this guide.

http://hackaday.com/2012/12/26/raspb...ezebox-server/

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NRA exec points finger at video games for 'selling violence'

December 26th, 2012, 22:27 Posted By: wraggster

The National Rifle Association has looked to pile some of the blame for the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting on violent video games.
NRA head Wayne LaPierre decried violence in video games, and other media, during a press briefing last week regarding the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut.
"There exists in this country, sadly, a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells and sows violence against its own people," LaPierre said. "Through vicious violent video games, with names like Bulletstorm, Grand Theft Auto, Mortal Kombat and Splatterhouse.
"And here's one: It's called Kindergarten Killers. It's been online for 10 years. How come my research staff can find it, and all yours couldn't, or didn't want anyone to know you've found it?
"Isn't fantasizing about killing people to get your kicks really the filthiest form of pornography?"
In response to LaPierre's statements, California Senator Leland Yee has called the NRA's reaction "pathetic and completely unacceptable."
Yee cites a law against violent games that went to the supreme court in 2011 - a law the NRA never supported in the slightest. The politician made it clear he felt the organization was too busy looking for a scapegoat, instead of involving itself in helping solve the real issues at hand.
"I find it mind-boggling that the NRA suddenly cares about the harmful effects of ultra-violent video games," Yee said in a statement. "When our law was before the Supreme Court — while several states, medical organizations and child advocates submitted briefs in support of California's efforts — the NRA was completely silent."

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/nra-e...olence/0108718

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Emukey EK1 runs mouse, keyboard macros purely from hardware

December 26th, 2012, 02:02 Posted By: wraggster

Software testers don't have it easy these days. While it's been possible for ages to record keyboard and mouse commands asmacros, quality assurance teams sometimes can't have any tracking software running -- a real pain when trying to recreate a bug in an online RPG or other input-heavy apps. Emukey's proposed EK1 box could save testers from manual troubleshooting by running those macros from hardware. By taking scripts pushed out from a host Windows PC, the EK1 can run pre-recorded keyboard and mouse instructions on a slave PC without any software interference. The script-based approach makes it easy to reproduce a glitch on other machines by sharing files, and the use of PS/2 peripherals (with USB adapters if needed) prevents lag from skewing the results.

http://www.engadget.com/2012/12/24/i...from-hardware/

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Mobile won't kill console. F2P won't kill full priced

December 26th, 2012, 01:54 Posted By: wraggster

There is no "perfect answer" to doing business with video games. Let's call a halt to the pointless "zero-sum" debates that blighted 2012
A day in which you learn nothing is a day wasted; by which standard, a year in which we learned nothing would be a pointless waste of time indeed. It's worth, as 2012 draws to a close (all that's left now is the few days of indulgence before the year, in harmony with our waistbands, croaks its last), thinking about what we've learned. What did 2012 teach us that we did not before? Never mind, for a moment, the money we earned or lost, the games we played or made; did we grow? Did we advance? Did we learn?
"Free to play is clearly going to be with us for the long haul; hopefully 2013 might be the year when the industry stops having ill-tempered hissy fits about this fact"

From a business standpoint, certainly, we learned a great deal. 2012 cemented the place of mobile in the gaming ecosystem, forcing all but the most ardent refuseniks (so Nintendo and... er... that's about it) to recognise mobile as an important part of their business - and even those who were slow to react to the rise of mobile gaming seem determined not to be left behind as tablets gain steam, with 2012 having shown us pretty clearly that the iPad and its myriad imitators are on track to become the primary data device of many consumers in the coming years.
We also learned some things - although not enough, I reckon - about where price points are heading. Freed of the artificial barriers to entry which define console platforms and physical retail, the App Store and Google Play have shown us where prices for digital content will inevitably trend towards - zero. In 2012, more entertaining, successful games than ever before launched at the princely price point of absolutely nothing. Plenty of others didn't debut at far above 99p, and several of my favourite games of the year would have given me change from a £10 note. Free to play, with all that it entails, remains in its infancy, but is clearly going to be with us for the long haul; hopefully 2013 might be the year when the industry stops having ill-tempered hissy fits about this fact, and starts engaging with making F2P work better rather than loudly and pointlessly damning or exalting it at every turn.
That, perhaps, is a reasonable lead-in to something that I don't think we learned this year, as an industry - we didn't learn to stop being afraid of zero-sum games that don't really exist. Discussions about mobile gaming, even among supposed professionals and experts, often descend into abject ridiculousness due to an insistence that mobile games will come to replace all other kinds of games, or that they are doomed to be a cynical, low-quality niche - neither of which position stands up to the slightest moment of intellectual scrutiny. The same applies to the vitriolic arguments about free-to-play which have washed over and back across 2012 like a stinking, polluted tide - when one side insists that everything will eventually be F2P, and the other insists that F2P is intrinsically evil and wrong, you're no longer dealing with professional debate, but with dumb fanaticism.
"The idea that one form of entertainment, one form of business model or even one form of distribution will emerge to Rule Them All, is simply an idiot's fantasy"

I'm not saying, by the way, that we should all be cautious fence-sitters - there's no virtue to sitting on the fence simply because it's comfortable. Strong beliefs are good, but meaningless unless tempered by reason and fact. The fact is that cinema did not kill theatre, television did not kill cinema, video games have yet to viciously murder books, home recording did not kill music and video did not kill the radio star. Media and entertainment industries are ecosystems that accommodate an extraordinary range of different kinds of product and different business models - and that is not ever going to change. The idea that one form of entertainment, one form of business model or even one form of distribution will emerge to Rule Them All, is simply an idiot's fantasy.
I say that with absolute confidence, not just because it is supported by countless years of history and the sheer wealth of culture and entertainment they have bequeathed to us, but because I recognise where the belief springs from. It's the unique curse and blessing of the games industry that it teems with “left-brained” people - logical, analytical, mathematical, and quite different from the “right-brained” people who often dominate other creative industries. Video games were born with both feet firmly in the sphere of technology, only gradually moving to straddle the worlds of both technology and art - a marriage which is superbly creative but often fraught, as evidenced by the hissing recoil of many gamers and industry types alike when presented with the (stonkingly obvious) fact that games are an artform.
Left-brain people (yes, modern psychology dismisses this terminology, but it's so much more polite than grouping you all as “geeks” and “arty types”, isn't it?) love perfect answers. They like problems which have a correct solution, and see the world in those terms. In many industries, they're perfect business leaders - there absolutely is a single most efficient way to extract oil or metal from the ground, to build an aircraft, to lay out a road or rail network. In entertainment, though, the idea of a “perfect” solution runs into a huge set of problems which utterly stump the left-brained - sentiment. Emotion. Irrationality. Sheer outright bloody-mindedness.
The fact is - nobody needs entertainment. Not really. If video games, films, books, music, plays, TV shows, paintings and sculptures all disappeared tomorrow, we'd be a much diminished species, but nobody would die. People need shelter, food, clothing, transport, protection, fuel - but entertainment is “discretionary”. It says so right there in your accounts. It's spending at your discretion - and what that means is that it's spending guided not by optimisation, but by sentiment.
Is free-to-play the most efficient way for money and experiences to change hands between developer and player? Is mobile or tablet gaming the most cost-effective route for consumers to engage with video games? Yeah, maybe - but what so few of us seem to really grasp is that this doesn't actually matter. Is MP3 music the perfect balance of quality, convenience and file size? Probably - but vinyl shops thrive and specialist services offering “lossless” quality music files are on the rise. Is Kindle the best way to consume books? Yes, undoubtedly - but I don't think of myself “consuming” books. Some books I just read; some I own; some I treasure. Sentiment; emotion; irrationality. I went to a shop and bought a leather-backed volume of a book I already own in paperback and Kindle alike. I'll probably never read it. I love it. Am I an idiot, failing to see that this is not the optimal consumption path and bound to realise the error of my ways eventually? No, because this is my discretion; this is how I choose to enjoy and to spend on my pastime.
"We sell experiences and emotions, and people will choose to consume those in the way that makes them feel best, not the way that is most coldly, mathematically efficient"

That's why the zero-sum game will never come to pass - not as the strident debaters of 2012 believed. A very large number of consumers will still want things like dedicated gaming hardware, expensive full-price releases and physical products, not because this makes “sense” in an economic or logical way, but because they love those things and because, beyond straightforward questions of affordability, “economic sense” isn't a welcome guest in deliberations about your hobbies and your passions.

The industry evolves and changes - never as rapidly as it did in 2012, though 2013 will probably make our heads spin just as fast - but little is truly lost. We don't sell petrol, or sliced bread, or concrete, or train tickets. We sell experiences and emotions, and people will choose to consume those in the way that makes them feel best, not the way that is most coldly, mathematically efficient. Nobody fears that releasing Shakespeare adaptations on DVD will shut down theatres, or that allowing buskers onto the streets will eventually lead to concert halls being demolished. It's time that we, too, learned that the expansion of the games business leads to more opportunities and more diversity, not to an existential threat to things we love - or worse, a chance to gloat over the imagined demise of things we hate. If you've got one new years resolution to make for 2013, make it this one - no more zero-sum arguments. Mobile won't kill console. F2P won't kill full-price. Cloud won't kill local. The forest grows ever bigger; the old tree doesn't block the sunlight from the new trees, the new trees do not strangle the roots of the old.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...ll-full-priced

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UK retailers sell 2.2m boxed games in last big sales week before Christmas

December 26th, 2012, 01:46 Posted By: wraggster

UK boxed games retailers sold 2.23m video games last week.
In total, the likes of GAME, Amazon and Tesco made £56.7m from the sale of software. A rise of 13 per cent week-on-week.
The numbers are disappointing for those buyers and store managers expecting a late festive rush. For the comparable seven day period last year, games retailers sold 3.5m games.
It means that the video game software market is heading for a 29 per cent decline for 2012, a huge drop that will likely have a significant impact on the High Street.
However, £56.7m in a week is still a significant figure and signifies that despite the decline, there is still a lot of money to be made from traditional retail.
Furthermore, such a severe decline is unlikely to be repeated next year. With a busy Q1 release schedule, the anticipated arrivals of GTA V and Battlefield 4 (alongside the traditional Call of Dutys and FIFAs) plus the prospect of next generation hardware, analysts and MCV expect next year to be a return to growth for the UK High Street.
Data is courtesy of UKIE/GfK Chart-Track.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/uk-re...istmas/0108706

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Black Ops II is the UK's Christmas No.1 game

December 26th, 2012, 01:43 Posted By: wraggster

Call of Duty Black Ops II is the UK’s video games Christmas No.1, giving Activision a run of six consecutive weeks at the top.
Sales of the game were fractionally up by one per cent in the busy pre-Christmas trading week (ending Dec 22^nd for this listing).
It’s the first game of 2012 to have had such a solid run at the top spot. The No.1 slot has otherwise changed regularly over the year, with almost 30 different No.1s.
Black Ops II’s success also means that EA or Activision have, for the last decade, claimed every Xmas No.1 (except for Bethesda’s Skyrim last year).
Elsewhere the other big gains in this Christmas chart come courtesy of retailer promotions for recent big budget titles, an indicative sign of the hard battle retailers have faced in coercing punters to buy boxed video games in 2012.
Ubisoft’s Far Cry 3 made it to No.2, held off by Call of Duty. The game saw considerable sales uplift of 86 per cent, as GAME cut the price of the title to £22. It ends a good Q4 in the charts for Ubisoft, which also has Just Dance 4 (No.4) and Assassins’s Creed III (No.7) in the top ten this week.
Hitman: Absolution’s retail deals kept it high in the chart at No.3. In previous weeks the price had been cut by half of the Square Enix game, and sales were up one per cent with those offers still in effect,
Although sales were up 15 per cent week on week, EA’s FIFA 13 has to settle for No.4. Another EA game, Need For Speed Most Wanted, also climbed up two space to No.6 in the top ten, with sales up 27 per cent thanks to retail price deals also.
THE TOP 20 IN FULL:
1 - CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS II - ACTIVISION BLIZZARD
2 - FAR CRY 3 - UBISOFT
3 - HITMAN ABSOLUTION - SQUARE ENIX EUROPE
4 - FIFA 13 - ELECTRONIC ARTS
5 - JUST DANCE 4 - UBISOFT
6 - NEED FOR SPEED MOST WANTED - ELECTRONIC ARTS
7 - ASSASSIN'S CREED III - UBISOFT
8 - HALO 4 - MICROSOFT
9 - LEGO THE LORD OF THE RINGS - WARNER BROS. INTERACTIVE
10 - WWE '13 - THQ
11 - THE ELDER SCROLLS V: SKYRIM - BETHESDA SOFTWORKS
12 - SKYLANDERS GIANTS - ACTIVISION BLIZZARD
13 - FOOTBALL MANAGER 2013 - SEGA
14 - MEDAL OF HONOR: WARFIGHTER - ELECTRONIC ARTS
15 - SONIC & ALL STARS RACING TRANSFORMED - SEGA
16 - FORZA MOTORSPORT 4 - MICROSOFT
17 - MOSHI MONSTERS: MOSHLINGS THEME PARK - MIND CANDY
18 - LEGO BATMAN 2: DC SUPER HEROES - WARNER BROS. INTERACTIVE
19 - NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. 2 - NINTENDO
20 - DISNEY EPIC MICKEY 2: THE POWER OF TWO - DISNEY INTERACTIVE STUDIOS

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/black...r-xmas/0108705

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Raspberry Pi laptop is just a little too big for a pocket

December 26th, 2012, 01:38 Posted By: wraggster


Over on the Parts People blog, [Nathan] created his own Raspberry Pi laptop. It’s got all the bells and whistles, including a keyboard, trackpad, battery, and even a 3D printed case.
Of course [Nathan]‘s laptop contains a Raspi, but the other included parts are where this palmtop computer is turned into something useful. For powering the Pi and 3.5″ composite LCD, [Nathan] took apart the battery pack from an old Dell laptop. By throwing out the bits of plastic surrounding these rechargeable cells and reusing the battery connector, [Nathan] was able to power the Pi, and all the peripherals for 10 hours.
Also included in [Nathan]‘s Raspi palmtop is a 64 GB SSD connected to the powered USB hub. This, along with the 4 GB boot SD card, provides more than enough storage for listening to a music library, or even watching a few TV shows on the 3.5″ screen,
http://hackaday.com/2012/12/21/raspb...-for-a-pocket/

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FireHero: Raspberry Pi Controlled Pyrotechnics

December 26th, 2012, 01:36 Posted By: wraggster



To put on a live pyrotechnic show at a music festival, [Chris] built the FireHero 3. The result is remotely controlled flames shooting up to 100 feet in the air.
The system is controlled by a Raspberry Pi and an Arduino. A server runs on the Pi and allows a remote computer to control the system. The Pi sends commands over serial to the Arduino, which switches solid state relays that actuate the valves.
There’s also some built in safety features: the system won’t boot unless you have the right key and RFID tag, and there are pressure transducers and temperature sensors to ensure the system is operating safely. A CO2 actuated valve can quickly stop fuel flow in an emergency.
Vaporized propane creates the fireballs. The vapor is created by heating the supply tank in a hot water bath. An accumulation tank stores the vapor and custom built manifolds distribute it to the various flame cannons. At each cannon, a silicon nitride hot surface igniter (HSI) is used to ignite the flames once the valve is opened.
After the break, watch a video the the FireHero making some flames.

http://hackaday.com/2012/12/22/fireh...-pyrotechnics/

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Mobile Raspberry Pi Computer: Build Your Own Pi-to-Go

December 25th, 2012, 22:43 Posted By: wraggster

Everyone has seen Raspberry Pi Computer, the credit card sized mini PC circuit board that costs only $35. Now there is a new Mobile Raspberry Pi called Pi-to-Go, with a mini LCD, 10-hour battery, and 64GB SSD, all packed together in a 3D printed case. See if you are up to the task to build your own

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/1...r-own-pi-to-go

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US bill proposes investigation of violent games

December 25th, 2012, 22:24 Posted By: wraggster

National Academy of Sciences would be tasked to study effects of violence in games and other media

A West Virginia Senator has introduced a bill to Congress that would task the National Academy of Sciences with studying the effects of violent games on children.
The bill comes in the aftermath of the mass shooting that lead to the death of 20 children and six adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.

The events have left the country wondering what might have been done to prevent the deaths, and what can be done to stop it from happening again.
Senator Jay Rockafeller believes he may have part of the answer, and has introduced the bill in an attempt to get concrete data showing the link between games and violence.
"As Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, I have introduced legislation to direct the National Academy of Sciences to investigate the impact of violent video games and other content on children’s well-being," reads a statement on the Senator's website.

http://www.develop-online.net/news/4...-violent-games

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Ubisoft plotting THQ bid

December 25th, 2012, 22:21 Posted By: wraggster

Ubisoft is one of the front-runners in the bid to buy THQ's assets, MCV reports.
MCV has been told that the French firm is keen to take over the publisher's brands and studios once THQ works through its current financial problems.

On Wednesday night THQ filed for bankruptcy as it handed over its tangible assets - including its studios and US operation - to an investment firm hoping to sell the business on.
No studios or offices are closing, but THQ is now very publicly on the market.
This 'stalking horse bid' process with an investor effectively writes off the company's debts but keeps its business as a going concern to make it ideal for acquisition.
http://www.develop-online.net/news/4...otting-THQ-bid

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2012: Happy Christmas Day!

December 25th, 2012, 19:15 Posted By: Shrygue



Hello to all. I wish to bid on behalf of DCEmu UK a merry Christmas to everyone - users and visitors alike - a merry Christmas and Boxing Day. Unwrap those presents, pull some crackers, enjoy the dinner with the showcase turkey and pudding afterwards. Oh and of course wash it all down with a glass of wine or few (or a few beers perhaps) but don't go overboard! Nobody wants the one day in the year ruined because of a few too many, lol!

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BeetBox drops a beat with a side of Raspberry Pi, and other plant puns

December 21st, 2012, 00:51 Posted By: wraggster

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Custom MOTD for the Raspberry Pi

December 21st, 2012, 00:27 Posted By: wraggster


With so many uses for a Raspberry Pi in a headless configuration – especially with the impending release of the Raspi Model A – we’re surprised it has taken so long for someone to send in a way to create a custom message of the day that is displayed whenever you SSH into everyone’s favorite Linux board.
A MOTD is used by servers to display messages to new users, or simply system information for server admins. It’s a simple text file stored in /etc/motd, but with some proper beardly Unix wizardry it’s possible to display uptime, free memory, and even the weather wherever the Raspi is located.
[yanewby] over on the Raspberry Pi forums created a nice little MOTD that grabs weather data from the Internet and displays it alongside an ASCII rendering of the Raspberry Pi logo. Of course like everything in Unix, this MOTD can be modified to do just about anything, from checking your Twitter to sending a text message to your phone.
http://hackaday.com/2012/12/20/custo...-raspberry-pi/

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Rubin: THQ sale a new start for our company

December 21st, 2012, 00:07 Posted By: wraggster

Publisher reiterates there will be no redundancies and development on games will continue

The $60m sale of THQ to investor Clearlake is a new start for the company, the publisher’s president has said.
Speaking on the news last night that THQ had filed for bankruptcy and would be sold off, Jason Rubin said the investment being made would give the publisher the money it needs to keep development of its titles ongoing.

THQ has specifically filed through a Chapter 11 proceeding of the bankruptcy code, which Rubin said will mean the company can carry on without redundancies or project cancellations.
He compared the bankruptcy filing to other companies such as Skyfall and The Hobbit studio film MGM, Marvel Studios and General Motors, which also went through a Chapter 11 restructuring.
The publisher’s president also confirmed that the sale to Clearlake would include its four studios Relic, THQ Montreal, Vigil and Volition, THQ intellectual property, contracts and support staff.

http://www.develop-online.net/news/4...-start-for-THQ

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School Shooting Prompts Legislation To Study Violent Video Games

December 19th, 2012, 23:37 Posted By: wraggster

Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) has introduced a bill directing the National Academy of Sciences to lead an investigation to determine what impact violent video games have on children. Senator Rockefeller commented, 'Recent court decisions demonstrate that some people still do not get it. They believe that violent video games are no more dangerous to young minds than classic literature or Saturday morning cartoons. Parents, pediatricians, and psychologists know better. These court decisions show we need to do more and explore ways Congress can lay additional groundwork on this issue. This report will be a critical resource in this process.'"This legislation was prompted by reports that Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza was a gamer. A draft of the bill is available online.

http://games.slashdot.org/story/12/1...nt-video-games

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Why we kill: what is it that makes us find videogame violence so entertaining?

December 19th, 2012, 00:50 Posted By: wraggster

After wrapping your fingers around his throat, you smash his face into a burning hot-plate and hold it firmly against the bright red steel while his skin chars and blisters. His screams hint that he’s about to give in and rat on his friends. In Splinter Cell: Conviction, torture is a gameplay mechanic. Put a new disc in. Now you’re Ezio Auditore Da Firenze jamming knives into the throats of your family’s enemies – a particularly terrifying and gruesome way to be murdered, if it’s possible to rank such things.

http://www.edge-online.com/features/why-we-kill/

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