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World of Darkness information revealed in open letter to fans
Outside of confirmation that CCP Games is still working on World of Darkness, news on the game has been hard to come by. Some of the reasons behind that were revealed by senior producer Chris McDonough in a recent letter to members of the Mind's Eye Society, a fan group devoted to the tabletop and LARP games in the same IP. While the focus in the letter was not on the MMO, McDonough did still discuss the state of CCP as a company and what it means for the game. In short, after a difficult financial year, CCP is devoting the lion's share of its resources to ensuring that DUST 514 is a successful game on launch. That doesn't mean that World of Darkness is being shelved -- McDonough stresses that development is still ongoing -- but it does mean that the company's first priority is elsewhere. How long that will be the case remains to be seen, but if you're hoping for more substantial news on the game this year, the odds are low.
iPhone devsugar: Simulating device events with iSimulate
Anyone struggling with the challenge of developing for the iPad, a platform whose hardware has not yet been released, should welcome iSimulate. For just ten bucks, you can test your applications using event inputs from a real device. Yes, you'll be working with the limited geometry of an iPhone -- fewer pixels, not the same device shape -- but you'll gain access to a much wider range of gesture and accelerometer events to help you debug and develop your apps. Using iSimulate involves little more than compiling in a framework and running an iPhone-based application that you download from the App Store. You'll need to add -ObjC to your linker flags and include the Core Location framework. This latter is needed in order to provide simulated compass and GPS events to your app. Once run in the simulator, iSimulate will automatically find that running app and offer to link to it. It took me only a few minutes to bring my Xcode project into iSimulate compliance and get it working with the iPhone. In use, I found the entire process of interacting with my phone to generate events on the Simulator far easier and more intuitive than I expected. I suspect I'll keep using iSimulate over the next few weeks until the iPad debuts and can comfortably recommend it to other devs. TUAW is commonly provided with not-for-resale licenses or promo codes to permit product evaluations and reviews. For more details, see our policy page. Promo code requests are not guarantees of reviews.
Matsushita talks about future plasma developments
Given that Matsushita (Panasonic's parent company) is slated to start pumping out plasma panels for Pioneer, it's no surprise to hear that the company is getting serious about some seriously impressive developments. During a recent seminar full of TV geeks and gurus, the company talked of the "Fifth Wave" arriving, presumably alluding to its fifth PDP plant in Amagasaki, which is set to open up in May 2009. Generally speaking, we're told that future sets will likely be more interactive, include more "professional digital technologies" that have typically been reserved for professional models, and of course, TVs that are thinner and lighter. All in all, nothing too surprising here, but considering the expectations that come along with the Kuro name, we wouldn't be shocked to see some noticeable upgrades / innovations emerge over the next year and change.
Digital NARM to bring about Zune feature updates?
You don't have to look far to see that the Zune rumor mill has been workin' overtime of late, and while the only conclusive pieces we're seen thus far involve various shades of red, Digital NARM could potentially shed some much-needed light on a bevy of questions. According to the docket, Christina Calio is set to speak about "hot new stuff" in regard to Microsoft's Zune for half an hour on May 1st. Interestingly, ClicZune has it that her speech title previously boasted about "exciting updates on developments in Microsoft's new innovative device," but unless our weary eyes have seriously deceived us, that little diddy has since vanished. Still, any latent updates shouldn't come as a surprise considering the position the player is in, but it looks like we're stuck waiting a few more days to find out what Christina's schpeel will reveal.[Via ClicZune]
