Mobile Puzzles!

I'm getting ready to get outta dodge here, but I did want to put up my first stab at a mobile Code Zone puzzle page. I figure that some of my games would work quite nicely on all these new small browser handheld OLPC whatevers, so I'm working on a smaller and lower-bandwidth version of the site.

Here's the first draft. The URL will eventually be mobile.thecodezone.com, but I'm still working with my server-monkeys on setting that up.

http://www.thecodezone.com/mobile.thecodezone.com/choosedevice.php

Basically it's the same puzzles, only they're scaled to fit the screen you choose. The width and height are passed via URL and are passed from page to page, so scaling the games to fit your device should be an easy matter.

They're the same Flash games as before. They're just in a much lower-bandwidth page that scales the applets to the resolution you pass.

Also note that not all the games will work with all the systems I posted. Voracity is still playable on PocketPC Internet Explorer, but Zombie Kitten Attack is just microscopic.

I'm also hoping that this'll work better with those new ultra-cheapo anemic PC's like the OLPC and EEE. Pruning down the screen and the bandwidth should make the gaming experience much nicer for them.


Anyways, gimme some feedback.

Heading back to Austin and I digress

Off to sunny (and it actually looks like it might be sunny) Austin tomorrow so I can cover the Independent Game Conference for gamedev.

I honestly have no idea what to expect from this conference. I presume it's going to be a fairly small affair, but it does look like they have quite a few sponsors and a couple of good speakers.

In the past I've tried to be one of those good reporters who takes all his conference notes in longhand so as not to pester everyone around him, but laptops have become so ubiquitous nowadays that I'll probably just drag along the laptop and take notes during the seminars.


Oh and don't let me forget to install Bulldozer and Duck Tiles on my laptop. Looks like they're having a "show off your kewl game, kiddies" event, so I might have a chance to show off my little games to a. . .[guffaw]. . .potential publisher. . .BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Eh, who am I kidding? Apart from consoles and DVD-size games that are (currently) impractical to download, shelf-publishing for software is dying, doubly so for casual games. A year ago I would've said that shelf-publishing for casual games would stay alive just to service people who can't grok the pay-n-download model. And by that I mean "old people who want to play Deluxo-Bejeweled will likely buy it on a CD at a discount retailer rather than pay for a download", but I routinely sell downloadable Bulldozer and Duck Tiles games to people over 60 years old, including one fan who's 88 years old. So I don't even believe that shelf-publishing for casual games can serve that market anymore.


I'll make this simpler. Remember in the early heyday of the internet (circa 1995-1997) when bookstore shelves were littered with phonebook-sized books containing lists of great internet sites for you to visit?

Know where those books are now?

They're in the same place that boxed casual game titles will be in ten years.


. . .but I digress. Anyway, check out the seminar list on the site and lemme know if there's something you think I should cover.

Gift Cards!

Yep, just in time for the holidays, the hardworking hobbits down at The Code Zone game-mines deep in the heart of Texas have put together a fine fine gift for gift-giving times.

Yep, it's The Code Zone Gift Cards. Each card is good for one fully-registered download of the recipient's choice (Bulldozer, Duck Tiles, or the Puzzle Pack).

They make great gifts (hence the usage of the word "gift" in the product's name) and they'll keep your puzzle-loving friends busy for quite some time.

Learn more about 'em here.

And, since this is the season for giving and suchlike, we're slapping on a discount of ten percent if you use the coupon code "tenoff" in the "coupon code" field on the buy page.

Ooooh, black friday announcement!

I have a big sales-related announcement coming. And, being wise to the ways of sales, I'm gonna save it for Black Friday (which is this Friday for you non-US types).

Until then, just be aware that it'll be cool, it'll be cheap, and it'll be perfect for the folks on your shopping list.


Until then about all I can say is that it will not involve sending ponies through the mail. I looked into it, and it costs a lot of money and stresses out the ponies.

Danged Paypal

Well I just got the upgrade to MS Money 2008. It's exactly the same as MS Money 2005, which is exactly the same as MS Money 2004, etc. The only real reason to update is because the price includes two years of internet-based bank-account downloads.

I have pretty-much every account of ours hooked up to it, and almost everything updates automatically when I press the "Using the internets, update every danged account I own" button. A couple of accounts don't subscribe to whatever internet-bank-funnel that MS uses, but those all have "Download Quicken/Money Data" buttons on their web pages, so I just update those manually once a month. It's a simple process. Log into the account's web page, press the "download" button, and then press the "hey, account [whatever] just sent me some data. You want I should update that account?" button in Money, and get on with my life.

Well, I thought to myself "Why not manage my Paypal accounts too?" After all, they look and act like internet savings accounts. So I dug through Paypal and found out that, yes, it has a "download account history" button and one of the formats supported is QIF (Quicken Information File), which Money groks.

So I press the "download" button. After about five minutes of grinding away on Paypal's side, Money pops up a "Hey, I just got some data but I don't know what account it's from", which I expected. I told Money that it's a new account and entered a couple of details about the account. After a couple minutes of grinding away on Money's side, it was done.

Except the balance was way too high. Figuring that there were duplicate transactions or something, I checked out the account. Everything looked fine. No duplicates. Also no bank-transfers. So every time I transferred money out of Paypal, it didn't show up.

My first thought was "stupid danged MS Money" and I googled for a solution. From a Quicken forum I discovered that Paypal doesn't export any bank-transfers in QIF format, and my solution is to either export as a spreadsheet and convert it or just enter all the transfers manually.

And apparently Paypal's aware of this, but they consider QIF to be an obsolete format and won't be fixing the bug.

Danged Paypal.

Wheee, sales

Steps to starting a weirdass morning. . .


1. Guy from local chamber of commerce invites himself to our house to introduce himself and to have coffee so he can learn all about what we do.

2. Guy applies Dale-Carnegie techniques to ingratiate himself to us, including "I am fiercely interested in you" head-nod when either of us speaks. I am apparently immune.

3. Guy, working under the assumption that all self-employed people want to retire, ridicules people who don't have retirement on their minds. Shelly and I both declare that we have no intention to retire. He, being sly and wily and smarter than us, quietly reverses himself without our notice, making it clear that retirement's not the goal, no no. The goal is to have the eff-you money to do what one wants.

4. Guy continues to make it clear that he's just here to learn about what we do. Not being Dale-Carnegie-trained, I stop making eye contact.

5. Guy gives us a "fun game" to play. His idea of a fun game amounts to us writing down what we'd really like to do with our lives. Guy apparently thinks that prying into other peoples' business is a "fun game".

6. I finally state that I'm uninterested in any such "fun game" and furthermore it appears that he's trying to sell us something even though we already have what he's selling (i.e. a financial planner). I point out that the last time somebody in a suit tried to be my good pal without making his intentions clear, I ended up in an Amway seminar.

7. He makes it clear that he's not selling anything and anyway he's got plenty of clients who have other financial planners and that's okay because he's better than them. Presumably he now hopes we will hire him as a second financial planner and will soon fire our existing planner. Yeah, I'm all about spending twice as much money to hear two guys bitch about how the other guy doesn't know what he's talking about.

8. I politely tell him that I'm tuning out now, leaving him with Shelly. Good riddance because She was the one who wouldn't say no to his self-invite anyway.

9. While I'm tuned out, he tells Shelly that he's not interested in hiring us, despite his earlier claim that he's just learning about what we do and he's not trying to sell us anything. I'm rather glad I didn't hear that, because being polite doesn't come as naturally with me as it does with Shelly.


Please don't try to sell me anything. Ever. If I want something, I'll come to you.

Site updates!

Okay, it looks like things are pretty stable now. The server move is complete and everything seems to be working. That being said, here are two site updates.

1. New Daily Puzzle! If you haven't noticed, a new game is up. It's an old classic called Brain Bones. It's an addictive game with an interesting mechanic. I know it can be frustrating because your score goes gigantically negative at the beginning, but the object is to make up that negative score!

2. Twitter updates! If you have a Twitter account, you can now have your Twitter-feed automatically updated with your latest rankings. To enable this feature, head over to the account manager page, choose the "Edit Existing Account" tab, and update your account with your Twitter information.


Hope you enjoy the new stuff, and we'll have another big holiday-themed update next week!

Pardon the dust, big changes being made

Just letting you know that this weekend (Nov 3), thecodezone is making some of the most extensive changes it's made in its short history.

We're moving everything to some new hosting, we've completely replaced the underlying network code, and we've made small changes and improvements to every page on the site.

That being said, it'll take a bit for things to settle down. The games will probably be down for all of Saturday. I'm hoping that by Sunday everything will be playable again.

And after that, I promise to have a couple of things to make the trouble worthwhile.

So bear with me.