One day till Diablo III. Retail Version vs Digital Download

Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at May 14th, 2012

Don’t be surprised if a lot of people call in sick tomorrow. Starting 3AM, Tuesday, May 15 the servers for Diablo III are going live. Fans have been waiting a decade for the triumvirate to be completed. I still remember my days in college, cutting a few classes just to join in on the LAN sessions at the gaming cafe beside school.

For the record I didn’t buy the collector’s edition as I’ve learned the hard way that these things take up a lot of space (case in point: Warhammer Online Collector’s Ed) and despite the fact that the box comes with cool add ons to your character, the real-money auction house system will definitely spark a number of doodads that will make the Collector’s Ed exclusives cry manly tears.

On the D3 Facebook group, Joseph Datu has unboxed his PHP 11,000 Collectors Edition with the Diablo Skull + 4GB USB Soulstone. It’s huge!

D3 Collector’s Ed photo by Joseph Datu. Congratulations! If I had more space in my place, I’d definitely get this.

Instead of the retail box — Collector’s Edition counted, I really just wanted to download the game way ahead of time so it would be a breeze installing. No box. No lines. I still own the game. Not sure if this is symptoms of getting old, but at this point in my life, 10 years after Diablo II, I prefer foregoing the formalities and getting it on. Save paper.

So that’s it. Looks like a long evening. 3AM guys. See ya in New Tristam.

An Interview with Erick Garayblas, Creator of Streetfood Tycoon

Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at May 7th, 2012

It was really great catching up with Erick Garayblas (@egarayblas) last week over coffee. We talked about the success of Streetfood Tycoon and how his life as a mobile game developer has evolved with the rise of the Apple App Store. We talked about a ton of things so here’s a more organized version of the interview.

** Ed’s note: Not mentioned in the written interview is how Erick was able to have his ‘kwek-kweks’ in many baskets. He noted how he’s shifted from an ad-driven business model (free to play but ad supported) which earned him a ton of money a month into in-app purchases which, although earns less, is more stable as the latter relies on Google’s Adsense platform which can be subject to a lot of technicalities.

1. How did Streetfood Tycoon come to be? What’s your thought process in designing a game?

Streetfood Tycoon came from my penchant for playing simulation and business-related games. I’m a huge fan of Lemonade Tycoon and Sim Tower. I “borrowed” a few mechanics from these two games and presented them in my own unique way w/in the game. I normally don’t follow a “thought process”, I just browse through my list of ideas (which come from dreams, reading books/comics, playing “other” games and talking to friends), try to mix them up, create a prototype and see how it goes from there. A lot of prototypes get shelved while the good ones become full blown games.
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Zombie Friendster is back to play your games

Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at April 30th, 2012

So Friendster is back from the dead and they’re here to make you play online games.

Truth is, this is old news as the pioneering social network announced their shift from social networking into social gaming as late as last year. It’s only this 2012 that they’re making a huge marketing push bringing things like the “biggest gaming event” to SM North EDSA. I have some friends from the Level-Up eGames merger who will emotionally contest this claim.
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HOLIDAY GADGET SWARM WEEK III: Samsung is giving away a SHARK SERIES SF410 gaming notebook

Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at December 5th, 2010

When I asked Samsung if they wanted to sponsor my anniversary, they did so without hesitation. I’d like to thank Juno and Odette for sending us a brand new SHARK SERIES notebook, the SF410. Guys, this portable is kick ass. It runs on an Intel Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM and a GeForce 310M card. This isn’t just for work — IT’S A DECENT GAMING LAPTOP!

With curves.

Samsung is throwing in so many goodies into their line of portables. If you’re considering a new Windows 7 portable rig, their shark line is a must see because they’re very generous with the specs and have distinguished themselves with the curved shark fin design on the left and right sides of the notebooks.

The SF410 retails for PHP 51,900.00.

Guys do me a favor and ENTER THIS CONTEST ALREADY so that I won’t be tempted to keep it for myself.

Contest Time!!

1. By now you already know the drill. You can submit entries from now till 11:59 PM of December 11. I usually announce the winner by the evening of the next day, the 12th.

2. Since Samsung has been around since the time we were kids (and even before!), I’m reminded of a fun game we used to play. Remember how we’d turn names of countries into acronyms and use it to spell out words? For example, take the country of ITALY:

I
Trust
And
Love
You

Now it’s your turn. Let’s see how much fun we can have with Samsung! Remember, I’ll be asking help from someone from their team (with me having the final say) so please, nothing vulgar. Have fun! Be creative! Make us laugh!

S
A
M
S
U
N
G

3. Entries can be in English / Filipino / Taglish. Just like before, you can submit as many entries as you want in the comments but make sure you leave a valid email address.

Left 4 Dead and Team Fortress 2 LAN Party

Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at June 7th, 2009

Ah the good ol’ days. All computers were running the Steam client and the choice picks for the day were Left 4 Dead and Team Fortress 2. Back 5 years ago it made more sense to build your own PC, which I did with much enthusiasm. Oh the times! With less time on hand to tweak stuff, it makes more sense to buy branded desktops as they cost the same, most times cheaper than building your own rig and the specs are pretty wicked. I mean look, back 6 years ago, people would have to spend an arm and a leg for a 7 channel HD audio card. Today, it comes bundled with the motherboard! Choose original!

Rico’s Gaming Rig:
Intel E7300 Motherboard
2GB DDR2 RAM 800MHz
GeForce 9500 GT

My ACER System:
2GB DDR2 RAM
GeForce 8500 GT 512MB

Our wicked gaming server:
Intel Core i7 2.66 GHz
3GB DDR3 RAM
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB

Added the MacBook running Windows 7 for effect.

Ton just got his new system yesterday and he’s running the following specs:

Intel Core 2 Duo
4GB DDR2
GeForce 120GT 512MB *
320GB HD
*interesting renaming scheme as the 120GT is also a GeForce 9500 GT

Can’t wait for Diablo III LAN parties!

Our portable LAN party solution

Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at December 31st, 2008

The holidays are usually devoted to a lot of gaming, especially when my friends from high school fly home from the States. This is a set up of 5 portables running on a home WiFi network – two of which are Macs. The objective was to run through Diablo II: Lord of Destruction from the start and get as far as we could.

The most interesting part was installing Diablo II on two OS X machines and networking them with three other Windoze portables without having to run Parallels or BootCamp. I’ve talked about CrossOver for Mac OS X before and this is what we used to do a native install of Diablo. Original Blizzard installers are usually compatible with both Mac and PC but it was way too geeky to resist doing a native Windows run of Diablo on OS X.

So yeah, if you’re wondering how far into the game we got … age (and carpal tunnel) dictated the best of us and we got as far as Act I, defeating Andariel.

Please don’t judge. We’re just regular geeks.