shatter
Latest
The Pax Era aims to be the Keurig of vaporizers
Out of all the ways to ingest THC, oil concentrates are far and away the messiest, stickiest and most irritating method. Unlike shatter, crumble or even wax, all of which maintain their shape and texture to some degree, oils have a knack for getting everywhere. It's especially tricky when you're trying to dribble minuscule amounts of oil into teensy Smurf-size cartridges used by mixed-media vapes (I'm looking at you, DaVinci Ascent). The new Era pen vape from Pax, however, solves that issue by taking a page out of the Keurig playbook and operating on a pod-based system.
What Instagram did for brunch, MassRoots hopes to do for weed
Cannabis or "weed" is, in practical terms, going mainstream. It's no longer exclusively sold from basements and back alleys; in 23 states and Washington D.C., it's sold from licensed and bonded shops. The cannabis movement has done a lot of growing up over the past couple of years as its public acceptance has skyrocketed across the US. Cannabis itself has gone from a black market "gateway" drug that funded the atrocities of Mexican cartels to a potential super-medicine drawing the attention of Wall Street's most powerful investors and all seemingly overnight.
New film makes shatterproof phone screens a practical possibility
Sure, the screen on your smartphone is likely scratch-resistant, but it still won't survive a drop to the sidewalk. However, that could all change if University of Akron scientists get their shatterproof touchscreen film into shipping hardware. They've developed transparent electrodes that, when layered on polymer surfaces, are just as transparent as current technology (indium tin oxide) but much more durable. You can bend them over 1,000 times without breaking, and they also hold up against peeling.
Patch 5.1: Razorgore, other old world bosses made easier
Blackwing Lair has long been my one of my favorite raids of all time. Not only did it have some fun, interesting, and even emotional boss fights back in its day, the weapon and tier gear graphics are still some of the best to this day. Unfortunately, going back in there for transmogrification gear has been a bit of a pain. This is because Razorgore, the first boss, must be done by at least two players: One to mind control him, one to kill the adds. Patch 5.1 ends that. Not only can Razorgore be soloed (in theory), but a couple of other older dungeon bosses have been tweaked just a little.
Arcane Brilliance: Tips for leveling your mage from 85 to 90
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, we take a break from pet battling to actually level our mages. Seriously. Put down that Armadillo Pup for a second and let's get to level 90. I'm talking to myself as much as you. I want you to know that. I imagine I'm not the only slow-poke out there who's taking their sweet time getting to level 90. My playtime since the expansion hit has been almost non-existent until recently, and in fact I only just dinged max level this week. Still, even though time-constraints kept me from playing as much as I wanted to, it still felt like I was getting to 90 slower than I should have been. What can I say? I like to read the quest text, watch the cutscenes, listen to all the dialogue, explore the countryside. Oh, and I may have indulged in the occasional pet battle. We all have our vices. Though in this case, I'd hazard to say we all have the same vice. But I did eventually get there, late or not. And for those of you who are still enjoying the journey rather than the destination, I've compiled a few of the thoughts and observations I had along the way into this week's column. For those of you for whom this advice comes too late, I'll start hitting the post-90 content next week. Pinkie swear.
Humble Indie Bundle 6 ends, earns over $2 million
316,258 individuals signed on for the latest Humble Indie Bundle, which is arguably the best Humble Indie Bundle yet. Humble Indie Bundle 6, which halted sales earlier this evening, managed to earn a total of $2,048,330.42 during the collection's sale.Humble Indie Bundle 6 initially launched with the starting lineup of Rochard, Shatter, S.P.A.Z., Torchlight, Vessel and Dustforce. A week later, the bundle expanded to include Bit.Trip Runner, Wizorb, Jamestown and Gratuitous Space Battles for purchases equal or greater to the average sale price of the set. See? Best bundle yet!
Humble Indie Bundle 6 devs ask you to ask them anything on Reddit
A few of the developers with games in the rather fantastic Humble Indie Bundle 6 are hosting an AMA on Reddit right now.In attendance is Runic Games co-founder Max Schaefer, representing Torchlight (and Torchlight 2, it seems); programmer Matt Bush and composer Terrence Lee of Dustforce's Hitbox Team; Jan Achrenius and Sampsa Lehtonen of Recoil and Rochard; Mario Wynands of Shatter's Sidhe, co-founders of MinMax Games Andrew Hume and Richard with Space Pirates and Zombies; and John Krajewski of Strange Loop Games representing Vessel.Already the developers are discussing the likelihood of their Linux games on Steam, the benefits of being in the Humble Indie Bundle, and answering programming and gameplay questions galore. If you want to know what engines these guys use, how they handle physics or what those space pirates are doing hanging out with zombies in the first place, head on over to Reddit.
Humble Indie Bundle 6 shatters spatial reasoning with torches, vessels, brooms
Humble Indie Bundle part six is live, and it's a good'un. The current bundle includes Rochard, Shatter, S.P.A.Z., Torchlight and Vessel for any price you pick. Paying more than the average (currently around $5) unlocks Dustforce as well. The bundle includes soundtracks for each game, excluding Vessel. Normally priced, all these games would cost $86, Humble Indie Bundle reminds us.As always, purchasers can decide how much of their payment goes to charity, the developers or Humble Indie Bundle itself. Humble Indie Bundle 6 will be live for 14 more days; check it out here.
Steam deals: Shatter on sale today; Deus Ex and Sam & Max this weekend
Steam is making it easier on the wallet this weekend with some sales on Shatter and the Deus Ex and Sam & Max series. Serieses.For today only, developer Sidhe's retro-inspired brick-breaker, Shatter, is 75 percent off, bringing it down to $2.49. That's less than the cost of a Monster energy drink and, really, everyone agrees you need to stop drinking those things anyway.Over the weekend, every game in the Deus Ex series, including Eidos Montreal's prequel, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, is 75 percent off – that's $14.99 for the whole bunch, including some item packs and "The Missing Link" DLC for Human Revolution. You can also buy each game piecemeal.If you like your protagonists a little less gritty, Telltale's Sam & Max games are also on sale for 66 percent off this weekend – $14.99 for seasons one and two, and The Devil's Playhouse.
Arcane Brilliance: 5 abilities that keep me playing my mage
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. Christian Belt is the normal archmage, but rumor has it that he's currently trapped in one of many hell dimensions. The Simbul has gone to investigate, leaving Senior Understudy and Last Surviving Student Josh Myers to cover this week's article. I am a gigantic nerd. I love math, and science, and testing. So when a new beta comes out and there's testing and theorycrafting and video game science to do, that's my focus. I go, "Hey, look at this shiny new spell, and what are the rotational ramifications of its existence?" And then I forget that I have work in the morning and am up till four in the morning running around Jade Forest trying to get the perfect screenshot of Nether Tempest. I'm on vacation visiting my parents in Michigan this week, and I promised myself that part of that vacation would be to eschew plying beta for the week, since we've been pretty inseparable for the past month. Also, I'm using my significant other's laptop, and I'm not sure even my rep level would support downloading another massive file onto it. As a result, I've been playing a lot on live, and I've taken some time to remember why it is that I love playing the mage class. There are a lot of reasons (none of them are the fire spec in PVE at the moment, but that's another post entirely), but the main one is the repertoire. Mages have a ton of abilities, and a lot of them are chock-full of flavor and awesomeness. I had to narrow this list down to my five absolute favorites, but everything from Mirror Image to Invisibility to Cone of Cold are eligible contestants too. The abilities I chose are my favorites, ones that fit the classic mage archetype while having mechanics that make sense in WoW. Also, they're shiny.
Arcane Brilliance: The state of the frost mage
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, though, we're all about frost mages. In case you aren't one, frost mages are the spec to be when fighting anything in Molten Core in 2005. Just kidding. I kid because I love, guys. If the joke hits a little too close to home, though, it's because there's a very real, very prevalent, very false perception out there. It goes something like this: Frost is for PVP. It isn't viable for raiding. This sentiment has been around at various levels of general acceptance since patch 1.1, and even in the most enlightened corners of Azeroth, you'll still find those willing to perpetuate it. But then again, you'll also find people still willing to perpetuate things like racism and gender bias, so I guess ignorance, like a weed or a cockroach or a warlock, is remarkably resilient. At any rate, in today's State of the Frost Mage address, you'll no doubt discover a recurring theme. That theme is this: Frost is absolutely, positively viable.
11 PSN games discounted by 50% tomorrow
Tomorrow's PSN update will be notable for what it adds to the PlayStation Store, though you may be a little fonder of what it's set to remove: fifty percent from the price of 11 games in an "11 for 2011" sale. Among the discounted games are Double's Fine enchanting Costume Quest for $7.49, hypnotic brick breaker Shatter for $3.99 (its excellent soundtrack is also discounted to $2.99), and Hoard for $7.49 -- a fitting saving for a dragon looking to amass a boast-worthy pile of presents and a roast-worthy mass of peasants. Sony has also included other well-received games like Swords and Soldiers, Tumble and Space Invaders Infinity Gene in the sale (valid in the US, Canada and Mexico through January 31). Have a peek at the full list after the break. Warning: Peggle is in there too.
Shatter dev Sidhe increasing focus on download space in 2011
Sidhe is best known recently for developing Shatter, a fast-paced brick-buster game that debuted on PlayStation Network in 2009. Praised for its crystalline presentation and entrancing soundtrack, Shatter updated the familiar mechanics of games like Arkanoid, and elevated the understated -- but certainly not small -- developer that's been at work in Wellington, New Zealand, since 1997. As a self-published downloadable game, Shatter appears to be an anomaly when placed next to another of Sidhe's recent projects: Blood Drive, published by Activision in 2010. The automotive action game, which saw players running down zombies for sport (it's as good a reason as any), failed to find an appreciative audience, despite having a mixture of popular go-to game elements. But how do the makers of one of 2009's most praised puzzle games deliver a 41 on Metacritic just one year later? Today, Sidhe is in the process of shaking off the remnants of that game, one of the many work for hire, licensed tasks it has undertaken for most of its life. Speed Racer, Jackass: The Game and Madagascar Kartz all came from the same workhorse. "What we are trying to do, given where retail in general is going, is continue to move towards being independent," said Mario Wynands, co-founder and managing director of Sidhe. "That is, run the studio on the basis of royalties and download revenue alone, as opposed to being somewhat reliant on third-party publishers. We are, I guess, reacting to the market, in line with the strategy we've had in place for a number of years now, which is ultimately weaning ourselves off work for hire." As a result, Sidhe has ramped down and elected not to renew or transition contracts with vendors following the completion of Blood Drive for Activision. Wynands also confirmed to Joystiq that several full-time staff members have been let go since then -- "probably five or six people." (This is after the studio hired more in March 2010, bringing the staff count close to 120.)
Shatter, Mushroom Wars highlight upcoming EU PlayStation Plus content
We hope PlayStation Plus subscribers living in Europe don't care too much about having their surprises spoiled: Sony has revealed all the EU PlayStation Plus bonuses for the next two months, featuring sweet lil' jams like Shatter and Mushroom Wars.
Arcane Brilliance: Frost mage Cataclysm talent analysis
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, we're discussing the ins and outs of the frost tree, the mage tree wherein you learn to conjure delightful snow cones from the air around you, and then how to hurl those icy treats into your opponent's face at 1,000 feet per second. It's like a winter miracle that kills you. Whenever I do these kinds of things, where we explore each of the three mage trees on consecutive weeks, it seems like the frost tree always goes last kind of by default. In the English-speaking world, we read left to right, we tend to organize things on a page in left-to-right fashion, and until Simon's Quest came along and screwed everything up as awesomely as possible, we played our video games from left to right. Frost's the tree on the right, so it always ends up last, while arcane somehow always gets to go first. It isn't fair, so what we're doing here is giving the usual way of things a big middle finger. Last week, we hit the fire tree, and this week we're going frost. Arcane will have to wait until next week. Take that, conformity! I feel like we've really done something here. Society will be better because of this column. I really believe that. After the jump, we'll look at each and every talent in the frost tree in turn, picking them apart for nutrients, then squeezing the rest into a fine paste to use as a crude adhesive. Yes, once we're done with the frost tree, we should have the raw materials to feed our family and also to build a small hut.
The Art of War(craft): Must-have PvP talents for mages in 4.0.1
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Art of War(craft), covering battlegrounds and world PvP, and Blood Sport, with the inside line for arena enthusiasts. Want to crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentation of their women? Battlemaster Zach Yonzon, old-world PvP grinder and casual battleground habitué, rambles on about anything and everything PvP. The Cataclysm is getting close, so we've only got a few weeks of this transitional stage, but it's important to pick out our PvP talents heading into the expansion. Today, we're going to take a look at mages, who have the usual set of tools and a couple of new ones. Nothing drastic has changed, despite the overhaul in 4.0.1, so mages are still casters who do best at range. Nothing has made them capable of wading into melee and standing toe-to-toe with rogues or anything silly like that. Instead, what we've got are three interesting trees with slightly different ways to crush their opponents -- all of them fun.
PlayStation Plus update for November 16: Abe's Exoddus, Shatter
It only makes sense that after offering PlayStation Plus subscribers a free download of Abe's Oddysee, Sony would let them complete the saga by handing out Abe's Exoddus. It's just one of the handful of freebies coming in the next PS+ update, which is detailed after the jump.
Limera1n jailbreaks the iPhone and iPod touch running iOS 4.1, angers dev community and neuters one of our phones (video)
Looking for a jailbreak for your iPod touch or iPhone running iOS 4.1? Your chariot is named limera1n -- assuming you're willing to risk your device on a software developer showdown. The infamous Geohot just upstaged the iPhone Dev Team and Chronic Dev Team by releasing a reportedly buggy beta exploit of his own, which you can find at our download link immediately below. It only works on Windows at the moment, hacks only official releases and iPhone 3GS isn't supported right now, and it claims to be an unpatchable, untethered release for those of you who appreciate what those terms mean. As you can imagine, rival developers aren't terribly happy that Geohot's back in the limelight. MuscleNerd (of the iPhone Dev Team) claims that limera1n will re-lock iPhones that were unlocked by his team's ultrasn0w software, and recommends you skip limera1n, but the main reason the iOS hacking community is angry at Geohot is because if more than one exploit is released simultaneously, Apple can fix them both in one fell swoop. By releasing first, Geohot has allegedly forced other teams to decide between the good of iPhone users over the short term (by releasing a different, more stable exploit) or over the long term (by saving their exploit for future use) and so far it looks like both teams have chosen to prolong the fight -- the iPhone Dev Team is asking folks to withhold its Shatter exploit, and Chronic Dev Team says it will modify its greenpois0n jailbreak to use Geohot's hack instead. What a weird, wild world we live in. Update: How might this work on an iPad, given that beta versions of iOS (like 4.2) aren't currently supported? Good question. We've struck all references to iPad accordingly, until the powers that be figure it out. Update 2: Video after the break! Also, we're hearing that some folks have jailbroken their iPads successfully with limera1n, and we personally got it working quickly on a pair of iPhones with iOS 4.1... but one of the two was missing icons upon restart and didn't regain App Store, Maps, Game Center and Calendar even after a restore. Be careful, now! Sam Sheffer contributed to this report. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Apple TV jailbreak complete, next step: figuring out how to run apps (video)
Well, there you have it, kids. Your new favorite hobby has gone from having a confirmed exploit to a legitimate jailbreak in the space of a mere couple of days. MuscleNerd reports that the Shatter jailbreaking endeavor has claimed its latest iOS victim today, though as you can see for yourself, it's "not quite ready for prime time yet." App installations still have to be figured out, but at least the door's been opened for making some good, if not magical, things happen. You'll find video evidence of root access after the break. [Thanks, dsbilling]
Apple TV jailbreak confirmed, done via same exploit as other iOS 4.1 devices
The Shatter exploit that was discovered for iOS 4.1 devices has, predictably enough, been found to function on the latest Apple TV as well. Though a jailbreak fit for distribution is still brewing for all of Apple's iOS wares, this will be welcome news to folks interested in trying to add a little extra functionality to Apple's hockey puck of a media streamer. Then again, even the best of apps might not make up for it being a 720p media device in a 1080p world. [Thanks, Jawad]
