Big thanks to Ben for getting me some amazing Gameboy cufflinks.

If you've ever played AOE (Age Of Empires) in the past you'll know it was one of the best RTS' of its time and still holds up today as a classic. So when Microsoft announced it was working on a new online version I was excited, but what stood out was that they were giving it away for free.

(download)

Click here to download:

age-of-empires-online-JwsavjmdJFkurAAxeCDc.zip (2.32 MB)

For the first few hours of AOE Online you'd be forgiven for thinking that there wasn't a pay element included in the game at all. The developers have been very careful to hide away anything to do with purchasing until you've grasps the basics of the game. It's only after you've complete the first set of tutorial missions that you're exposed to a purchase upgrade. You're informed that an exclusive item can upgrade your units giving them stat bonuses but at a price, 1840 gamer points in fact, which works out at £15.76. For your money you gain access to the 'premium content pack' allowing you to use rare items, star tech and advisers. Helpfully the AOE website provides a comparison table that makes it easy to see what you get for your money.

The good news it you can pretty much ignore the purchase side of the game if you wish. Casual gamers will have fun with the missions and can play with friends in co-op mode. It's only when you want to get serious with the game do you need to upgrade, and at around £16 that's a lot less than a full retail game.

So far it looks like Microsoft have gotten the balance right with AOE Online. Upgrade purchases aside, AOE Online looks great, is fun and doesn't cost you anything to play. Its hard to complain about that.

Updated http://moretrackslikethis.appspot.com/ with similar artist search and annoying bobbing notification bar. UX is the next thing I'm going to work on, bring back drag&drop and playlist generation.

Added similar artists to moretrackslikethis dev code. Now to make it look pretty. However, the lime green is growing on me.

For a kids game it gets bloody hard in the last few levels.

Aladdin for the Megadrive.

Picked the whole set up cheap on Ebay.

I'm really enjoying reading the Pluto series.

With my recent interest in HTML5 gaming I've started replaying some of the classic games from my childhood. The late 80's and early 90's was a golden era for gaming seeing several generations of consoles and home computers enter the market. From the industrious Commodore 64 and the classic NES to the much loved Sega Mega Drive.

 su -c 'yum install joystick'
 su -c 'modprobe joydev'
 su -c 'modprobe iforce' 

Play SkiFree HTML5 clone

Gaming, art and coding are three of the my most enjoyable pursuits. So with the rise of HTML5 and growing creditability of JavaScript I've decided to step into the indie-game development scene with this, a SkiFree clone.  It is my first attempt at pulling all the elements of programming, pixel art and simple game mechanics into a single game.