fundamentals
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Raph Koster imparts MetaPlace game design wisdom
Areae's official MetaPlace blog is a bastion of quasi-regular updates amidst a whole field of general silence. You usually have to go to the source for any kind of information, but the source made some visits to the MetaPlace website; Raph Koster published two whole posts there over the past few days, and while he didn't go into a lot of detail about MetaPlace itself, he had a lot to say about the basics of game design.Since MetaPlace's premise involves users creating their own games or other interactive environments, Koster thought it would be prudent to lay out the core principles of game design. The first post was about the "atoms" that make up a game -- essentially mini-games that come together to make a greater mechanic. Koster used Tetris to illustrate concepts. The second part was about the mathematical skeletons of gameplay mechanics, and offered up some techniques for brainstorming ideas.He didn't spend any time at all discussing the less mathematically-oriented attractions in games, like social interactions, narrative structure and writing, visual artistry, emotional engagement , or immersion. It might be accurate to describe those things as the meat on the mathematical skeleton, but maybe they're coming up in a future post. These were just "fundamentals" posts, after all!
iPhone 101: Updating your "Sent from my iPhone" email signature
Is that "Sent from my iPhone" message starting to get on your nerves? By default, every email sent from your iPhone gets appended by a signature specified in Settings > Mail > Signature. To clear out this signature entirely, delete all the text from the Signature text field. Your emails will lose that "Sent from my iPhone" tag. Of course, if signatures don't particularly bother you, you might want to add a more personalized quote or even some contact information (although preferably not using unnecessary ASCII art). Or, you can put on your antipersonnel hat and start messing with people's minds, e.g. "Sent from my Blueberry." How do you intend to sign your emails?
