rebuild
Latest
Cannibals and priest bikers in Sarah Northway's Rebuild: Gangs of Deadsville
Rebuild: Gangs of Deadsville isn't about the zombie apocalypse – it's about what happens after the zombie apocalypse. Society is in tatters, infrastructure is broken, politics are disbanded, religion is extreme, and, somehow, you are in charge. For now. You're the leader of a group of survivors attempting to rekindle normal life in a barricaded, devastated city. Humanity has split into 12 factions; they're not exactly warring with each other, but they don't all get along. There are hippie Luddites, priest bikers, anti-male feminists and a group of LAN partiers, to name a few. Every time you play, you get a random selection of a few factions, and in order to create a peaceful society, you must strike a balance among all of their opposing viewpoints. If you do a bad job, your factions can rise up and start a "true democracy," pushing you out of a decision-making position entirely. It is possible to build a city of peace, but it's difficult, creator Sarah Northway told Joystiq at GDC. "It depends on what the factions are," Northway said. "There is a cannibal faction, and if you ban cannibalism and say that's absolutely not going to happen, they'll get angry. And then there's other factions, that if you embrace cannibalism, they get angry .... They'll just come to you, month after month, and say, 'So, your'e still eating people, eh?'"
Infinity Blade 2 updated, Spider goes free for iPad, and a Super Strategy Sale
It's Friday, and if you're looking for something good on iOS to play this weekend, boy howdy, you are in luck. First up, Infinity Blade 2 has been updated recently, adding in a few new expansion packs to play with. And, perhaps more importantly, the game's been updated to work with the iPhone 5's wider screen, as well as to run beautifully on the iPad mini. Odds are that you already own this one, but if not, it's available for $2.99 on the App Store. Second, perhaps in celebration of the new iPad, the critically acclaimed Spider: Secret of Bryce Manor HD has gone completely free. This is a really great game that's a little older, but especially if you play it in full HD on the iPad, offers up a lot of really great exploration and casual puzzle gameplay. The non-HD, iPhone version is also free for a limited time, so grab both while you can. Finally, as if that wasn't enough already, there's also a "Super Strategy Sale" being put together for a few top turn-based strategy games. Rebuild, Call of Cthulu: The Wasted Land, Hunters: Episode One and Episode Two, and Tactical Soldier: Undead Rising are all on sale, most of them available for just 99 cents. There's no shortage of great games to play this weekend, so pick up that new iPad mini and start swiping and tapping.
Facebook speaks out on the big app rebuild
We posted about the Facebook app update the other day, and if you haven't updated your app yet, you really should. The app is a prime example of why native development is almost always better than trying to do things with cross-platform web connections, and why it's so important, even for an online service like Facebook, to make sure an app performs well on a given platform. If you're interested in reading more about the process, Facebook has posted a substantial article over on its own Facebook page, walking through why this change was made and exactly how it was done. It's very interesting to read behind the technical scenes of how this update was created. The app essentially works in the same way that the previous version does, but it was built from the ground up in iOS' native Objective-C. The changes were all core to the process of running the app rather than UI developments, and if you have any development experience, it's wild to see the giant Facebook deal with the same issues that other iOS developers face. Of course, the drawback for all of this is that while the original HTML 5 app was relatively easy to update, this new app requires a little more code tweaking to change even basic things in the app. Facebook has done its best to build things as modular as possible (the new app even uses some of the code from the standalone Facebook Messenger app), but going forward, a more solid foundation may mean we have to wait longer for changes.
Mail slowing you down? Rebuild its database
Apple's flagship email client had me banging my head against a wall again when I finally dug up this tip on rebuilding Mail.app's 'Envelope Index' SQLite database at Hawk Wings (If you're wondering what that file is all about, check out Hawk Wing's "What's in your Mail folder?" post). Forcing Mail.app to rebuild this file is as simple as quitting the app, browsing to your ~/Library/Mail/ folder and dragging out the file called 'Envelope Index' to your desktop (I'd recommend making a backup of your Mail support folder before attempting this. Don't say we didn't warn you). Start Mail.app back up and it will give you a message about re-importing or re-indexing all of your messages (sorry, I forgot to screencap the message), and depending on how many you have it could take a couple minutes. I have over 13,000 emails and it didn't take my G4 PowerBook long at all. My Envelope Index was over 300 MB before I started this, and after it was all said and done that file weighed in at less than 4 MB. Putting Mail.app on this kind of a weight loss program can seriously speed it up and generally improve its performance; no more clicking on a new message 10 minutes after Mail.app notified me about it only to be greeted by "this message has not been downloaded yet..." silliness.It is also worth mentioning that this tip is probably more of a troubleshooting technique than something you should work into your regular maintenance tasks. A commenter on this tip at Hawk Wings pointed out that this rebuilding operation nullifies a couple of mailbox settings. If you have set any specific IMAP mailboxes to be used for trash or junk, Mail.app will forget those settings after this rebuild. Still, I think the performance gain and all-around less-schizophrenic behavior of Mail.app was worth having to reset a couple of preferences.[UPDATE: Some commenters have pointed out that Mail also has a Rebuild option under the Mailbox menu (at least in Tiger). I tinkered with this on one of my 4 IMAP accounts and it seems to do the same trick with far less fuss. Thanks for the tip!]
